Worst Star trek actor ever

[Nerys Myk]

Bakula's performance always seemed off. I was very disappointed with his work. Billingsley was great and managed to rise above the material.

 

[BillJ]

Bakula's performance always seemed off. I was very disappointed with his work. Billingsley was great and managed to rise above the material.

Holy crap! An opinion different than mine! Is this where I try to demean you for thinking differently than me?

 

[Nerys Myk]

Not if I demean you first!!!!!!!!

 

[Danger Ace]

Bakula, Trinneer and Billingsly were good.

Bakula was bad most of the way and wasn't cut out to play a Star Trek captain, Billingsley was "there" most of the time but didn't really shine very often.

Well, I did say "good" to the extent the writting allowed. Bakula is recognized as being a fine actor. Billingsly also known to be very good at character work. The writing simply did not support the talent (again, Blalock's unbridled awfulness being excluded from that sentiment).

I mean Blalock was so bad anorexics used to watch her performances as T'Pol to purge themselves of their most recent meal.

 

[BillJ]

Well, I did say "good" to the extent the writting allowed. Bakula is recognized as being a fine actor. Billingsly also known to be very good at character work. The writing simply did not support the talent (again, Blalock's unbridled awfulness being excluded from that sentiment).

Bakula wasn't cutout for the role. He simply wasn't the type of actor that could project authority. That has nothing to do with writing and everything to do with acting style.

As far as Blalock goes, we'll simply have to agree to disagree.

 

[Danger Ace]

... we'll simply have to agree to disagree.

Agreed.

 

[TorontoTrekker]

George Takei. Atrocious actor who reacts to anything by looking confused or giving a shit eating grin.

Nasty person and shameless media whore too. Has milked almost 50 year old quarrels on set and his own sexuality endlessly for tabloid exposure. Feels like he should be constantly in the public eye because he had a minor role in a 60s action show. Obsessively jealous that far more talented actors get more recognition than he should be getting for saying "Aye sir!" every 3 episodes.

His comeuppance thankfully eventually came. After bitching about Shatner's acting for years he made an embarrassing tit out of himself in his Voyager episode with a performance that wouldn't be passable in a school Christmas play. Wonderful. Loathsome human being. The Paris Hilton of Star Trek. He'd do anything to become a bit more famous.

Runner up is Eric Bana as Nero but at least he has given great performances elsewhere.

"Nasty person" "loathsome human being"? Neither. I've met the man. I don't care for his acting, but your choice of words says more about you than you realize. Lighten up.

I've met him as well, on multiple occasions, and I have to agree, he's actually very warm and really enjoys meeting his fans. The issue with his acting in TOS is that the crew was not an ensemble, as is common today, but that Sulu was part of the second tier of cast members. With the exception of "The Naked Time", I can't recall him having anything interesting to do in the entire series. All he was there for was to push buttons and occasionally say, "Aye aye, sir."

I did think he was a little off in his Voyager episode, but he was essentially trying to duplicate a performance he'd given five years earlier. Unless you're performing in theatre, doing the same role every night, that's not easy. When they broke away from replicating scenes from TUC, his performance got a lot better. Grace Lee Whitney was a thousand times worse in that episode, IMO.

I never liked "Battlefield". Frank Gorshin in tights looked too much like Riddler in black/white face. I get the concept, but the execution just didn't work for me.

I was going to cite Frank Gorshin in this thread myself. He was stiff in the role, and every time he had to say the name "Cheron", he paused as though he was trying to remember how it was pronounced. (I'm pretty sure he pronounced it in at least two different ways in the episode, too.)

And you can add me to the list of people who didn't like Jolene Blalock's acting, either. It always seemed to me that she was trying so hard to present an unemotional facade that her face would actually twitch from the strain.

It seems that a common problem among actors who have guest-starred as Vulcans is that they feel like they have to show that they're being unemotional, instead of letting the unemotional dialogue do most of the work for them. "Unemotional" does not have to equal "wooden". In the case of Jolene Blalock, her acting is probably the whole reason they had to do the "Stigma" storyline and retcon Surak's influence to occur more recently in Vulcan history than we'd otherwise been led to believe. (It didn't help that Gary Graham - who is otherwise a fine actor - played Ambassador Soval like he was constantly on the verge of a temper tantrum.)

 

[Anwar]

You can do Vulcan and show some depth, Tim Russ and Mark Lenard pulled off full-blooded Vulcans nicely.

 

[Danger Ace]

You can do Vulcan and show some depth, Tim Russ and Mark Lenard pulled off full-blooded Vulcans nicely.

With Mark Lenard doing it brilliantly. He is full on logical and disciplined but you never once doubt his love for his wife, Amanda, nor his feelings for his son, Spock. Just a super-talented actor.

 

[Danger Ace]

It seems that a common problem among actors who have guest-starred as Vulcans is that they feel like they have to show that they're being unemotional, instead of letting the unemotional dialogue do most of the work for them.

I always felt a common misperception seemed to be people thinking Vulcans didn't have or deeply repressed emotions without any mechanism for release (except Ponn Farr). Vulcans, to my mind, were highly disciplined not emotionless. They felt things but were raised to be stoic - this was done through the embracing of logic as a philosophy.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Guy who played Morn. Wooden featureless performance.

 

[Amaris]

Seriously! His line reading was dreadful!

 

[Mysterion]

Denise Crosby. She was smart to have pulled the escape lever when she did.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

And I dare anybody to come up with clear reasons why Wes Studi would not have been a far greater Chakotay. Studi would have been for Chakotay what Nimoy was for Spock. He would have been a reason to watch the show. His interplay with Kate Mulgrew would have been phenomenal. Completely missed opportunity there.

Plus, Wes Studi is an actual First Nations person, unlike Beltran.

I would've gone with Adam Beach as Chakotay, but around the time Voyager started, he was quite young to be a First Officer on any ship.

 

[Mysterion]

And I dare anybody to come up with clear reasons why Wes Studi would not have been a far greater Chakotay. Studi would have been for Chakotay what Nimoy was for Spock. He would have been a reason to watch the show. His interplay with Kate Mulgrew would have been phenomenal. Completely missed opportunity there.

Plus, Wes Studi is an actual First Nations person, unlike Beltran.

I would've gone with Adam Beach as Chakotay, but around the time Voyager started, he was quite young to be a First Officer on any ship.

I would have gone with Graham Greene (Dances With Wolves) as Chakotay. Older, wiser, a real sense of gravitas. Would have set up a more interesting relationship between that chartacter and Janeway, IMO.

 

[TorontoTrekker]

And I dare anybody to come up with clear reasons why Wes Studi would not have been a far greater Chakotay. Studi would have been for Chakotay what Nimoy was for Spock. He would have been a reason to watch the show. His interplay with Kate Mulgrew would have been phenomenal. Completely missed opportunity there.

Plus, Wes Studi is an actual First Nations person, unlike Beltran.

Actually, Beltran does have some Native blood. From his IMDb profile:

He is the seventh of ten children, of Mexican-Native American ancestry, though Robert describes his heritage as Latindio.

I would have gone with Graham Greene (Dances With Wolves) as Chakotay. Older, wiser, a real sense of gravitas. Would have set up a more interesting relationship between that chartacter and Janeway, IMO.

Graham Greene is actually only about a year and a half older than Robert Beltran - but I agree, he probably would have had his head a lot more in the game than Beltran did. Or maybe Tom Jackson, who's four years older.

 

[heavy lids]

Wang, Beltran, or the entire ENT cast.

 

[Gov Kodos]

Wang or Beltran, especially when set off against Ethan Phillips who could give real feeling to his character in spite of becoming a one note gag for much of the series. His professionalism should have shamed those two into silence.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

^I'd also go with Beltran and Wang, the latter especially for his whining about how he didn't get to direct when he couldn't or wasn't willing to put in the hours to learn how to do it in the informal 'school' set up by Berman & Braga that helped Frakes, Burton, McNeil and Dawson become directors later on in life. If Beltran didn't like the show, he should have quit.

 

[Sam_I_Am]

I don't think at all that Colm Meaney is the worst Trek actor but I do remember one TNG episode when O'Brien and Keiko were eating dinner. Something struck the ship and it shuddered, and O'Brien said, 'something's wrong!'. Something in his expression and delivery had my mother and I burst out laughing.