TWOK:DE
- Thread starter Captrek
- Start date
Who knows. Certainly, they are talented-enough actors and highly entertaining personalities. I know when I met George Takei several times in the 80s and 90s, he desperately wanted to do some stage work, but there are very few plays performed in the USA written for Asians, and he even tried to garner interest in he and Doohan doing a stage version of "The Odd Couple".
Every actor dreams of their first big break, of course, but the four of them acknowledged that their individual ST roles were not crucial to the success of the show. And yet, ironically, they spent the most time with the fans in the 70s and 80s.
But what were they to do? In the 70s and early 80s, TOS was a huge success in reruns, and that can make it extremely hard to be seen as another character on the opposite channel. To turn down paid convention appearances in the hope of nabbing that new, big TV or stage role is another gamble, especially when their TOS contracts paid them royalties for only "one play and two repeats", and then the show was repeated ad infinitum, something unheard of at the time. (This also affected the cast of "Batman", IIRC.) These days, actor contracts have perpetual royalty clauses built in, to help take account of possible syndication longevity with may then threaten an actor's chance of new work (that would be in competition with older work).
If you don't believe in typecasting then you simply haven't met enough hungry actors.
Well, everyone has to start somewhere. What actor career has no "pedestrian" roles in it?
This.
Still doesn't change the fact that the story set it up on the wrong ship.
Yeah. People who take the described attitude toward others are called "assholes."
While that gives some insight into his state of mind, in fact his job was to show up, say his lines and not bump into the furniture.
I have no doubt that these hungry actors honestly believe that that their one highly visible role is to blame for their otherwise unimpressive careers. That doesn’t make it true.
Robin Williams was known to the public as Mork. Will Smith as the Fresh Prince. Pierce Brosnan as Remington Steele. Alan Alda as Hawkeye Pierce. Ted Danson as Sam Malone. Jennifer Aniston as Rachel from “Friends.” Rob Reiner as Meathead. Michael J. Fox as Alex Keaton. Richard Dean Anderson as MacGyver. Neal Patrick Harris as Doogie Howser. Jason Alexander as George Costanza. That didn’t stop them from going on to successful careers.
It’s true that most actors who have had one highly visible role will not go on to very successful careers. It’s also true that most actors who have not had one highly visible role will not go on to very successful careers. The former will blame typecasting. The latter will come up with different “I’m sure that I could be a movie star if I could get out of this place” excuses.
number6
Vice Admiral
Can you prove somehow that the Enterprise couldn't have had that kind of equipment aboard??
That seems like a flimsy example, at best, of a plothole that anyone should care about.
Can you prove somehow that the BOP prototype couldn’t have had a design defect that could cause it to spontaneously self-destruct at the most inopportune moment??
No, but it would have been a pathetic rabbit for the writers to pull out of their hat.
I just figured it was a general fleet assignment, a multi-ship mission, if you will, to catalogue gaseous anomalies. Not the sort of thing to worry about. I was a lot more worried about the Klingon having red blood in the theater, only to see later that they added the Scooby Doo ending...
Yeah, because that one plot element was the key component used in the climax of the film to stop Chang from destroying the Enterprise and beaming down to the peace conference to save the President of the Federation.
If you look at it in a certain way, the Excelsior is pretty much useless during the entire fight. You could delete all the footage and not miss a darn thing. So why was the Excelsior there in the first place? Because it was set up earlier on to have the equipment that was needed to stop Chang!
Ummm, I am forever reading that Jennifer Aniston is still seeking that one successful movie that will finally allow her to break out of her "Rachel from 'Friends'" role. She's had a string of rather forgettable movies that failed to make the money that was expected of them. Didn't Rob Reiner give up on acting ages ago and move into directing? Is Jason Alexander really known for anything other than George Costanza? Is Richard Dean Anderson doing anything these days?
I really think you're inflating the perceived problem way too much. I've met Grace, Majel, George, Jimmy and Walter and had numerous talks with them over the three days of each convention they were attending, eaten meals at their table, and I've worked on the convention stage with them. They did not spout anti-Shatner sentiments with every breath. In fact they hardly mentioned him, although they did get asked frequently, by avid fans in the audience and chatty fans on the convention floor and in the dealers' rooms, "So what was it really like to work with William Shatner".
What is perhaps very interesting is that they were always full of praise for the talents of Leonard Nimoy. And they all called DeForest Kelley a true gentleman.
I believe the way he explained it in his autobiography was that he's always approached his life from the position of a struggling actor, and if he hadn't always been grabbing the spotlight in TOS, then that might've just shown TPTB that he wasn't the reason the show was a success, and they might elect to replace him with someone cheaper, and then he'd be out on the street. For the longest time, he assumed that everyone else felt the same way and were trying, themselves, to hold onto work as long as they could. It was years before he realized that, from the perspective of the supporting cast, he was living like a king, and could've afforded to be more of a team player rather than just trying to ensure his own survival.
On the other hand, after TOS, I seem to recall that he spent a while living in his car, so maybe he had a point.
He has had a rich full life with stellar success, deep failiure and heartbreaking loss.
YARN
Fleet Captain
Shatner may very well have been a selfish jerk, but on the other hand...
Sulu is not really an iconic character. He's the helmsman who always looks back at the camera (Kirk's POV) when something weird appears on the view screen. There are Trek episodes without Sulu, and it is not as if his absence matters all that much in those episodes.
As for George, I understand he was lobbying for many years to get a Star Trek film made just for Sulu in command of the Excelsior. But it didn't happen.
I think Takei is, partly, upset simply because wasn't able to achieve his own designs for shameless self-promotion.
Sulu is not really an iconic character. He's the helmsman who always looks back at the camera (Kirk's POV) when something weird appears on the view screen. There are Trek episodes without Sulu, and it is not as if his absence matters all that much in those episodes.
As for George, I understand he was lobbying for many years to get a Star Trek film made just for Sulu in command of the Excelsior. But it didn't happen.
I think Takei is, partly, upset simply because wasn't able to achieve his own designs for shameless self-promotion.
I have to disagree with that. She has played numerous roles that IMO are not very “Rachel” (except of course in appearance and voice). At any rate, it doesn’t really matter whether her other roles resemble Rachel or whether her movies made as much money as expected. The claim that was put forth is that having a highly visible role prevents an actor from getting other roles, and that is clearly not the case with Aniston. She has had many significant roles and garnered critical acclaim.
The other main cast members of Friends were also not held back by typecasting. They all got plenty of roles for a while, and it’s clear that their exposure on Friends was precisely what led TPTB to try to take advantage of the popularity they garnered from that show. The problem is that they proved to have no talent. What made Friends work so well is simply that it was a perfect match of actors to characters. Aniston is the only one of the bunch who really has talent.
Once again, the point is that he has had a lot of significant roles. The claim was that exposure on Trek prevented Kelley, Doohan, Takei, Nichols and Koenig from getting other roles and having a successful career. Alexander is just one example of an actor who in a similar situation and didn’t go on to have the problems that K+D+T+N+K blamed on typecasting.
He went on to a lot of success in the Stargate franchise. The kind of success that K+D+T+N+K would have loved to have but claim they couldn’t because of their exposure on Trek.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about here. The discussion was about whether a highly visible role on Trek is to blame for the disappointing careers of certain actors. The paragraph beginning with this sentence and the remainder of your post are about feelings toward Shatner and nothing I can see to the subject of our discussion.
The discussion has taken many turns. It was originally about the ST II DE.
The discussion I was responding to had suggested that the supporting actors of Star Trek had no right to ever say a negative thing about William Shatner, even though they found him difficult to work with, and were probably incredibly frustrated being asked about him in interviews.
We then went into a session where the possibility of typecasting in acting was put in doubt.
Oh, OK. In the post to which I was responding, it looked like the “you’re inflating the perceived problem” comment and following comments were addressed to me, who had said nothing about the Shatner topic. I guess it was just a misunderstanding. Was there supposed to be another quote in there indicating what you were responding to with that part of the post?
On the subject of typecasting, I think it's also significant that the Trek actors all starred on a science fiction series. Science fiction, especially in the 60s and 70s, was definitely a tougher genre to break out of. Once you were considered a "science fiction actor", people assumed that:
A) That was ALL you could do, and:
B) The general public would only buy you in science fiction roles.
Those are problems that someone coming from a show like "Friends" or "Seinfeld" wouldn't neccessarily have.
A lot of that stigma is gone, but it still exists to a degree today. Why do you think so many Trek actors show up on other scifi shows? Because the producers know that the fans will recognize them and it might help bring in ratings.
A) That was ALL you could do, and:
B) The general public would only buy you in science fiction roles.
Those are problems that someone coming from a show like "Friends" or "Seinfeld" wouldn't neccessarily have.
A lot of that stigma is gone, but it still exists to a degree today. Why do you think so many Trek actors show up on other scifi shows? Because the producers know that the fans will recognize them and it might help bring in ratings.
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