Most interesting casting choice

[CaptPapa]

Frank Gorshin (Bele) and William Campbell (Koloth) stand out to me. I liked Gorshin as the Riddler, but didn't care for him in any other roles I can think of - including this one. I liked Campbell very much in any other roles I can think of, except this one. I don't know if his acting, or the writer (or director) were responsible for the watered-down Klingon that apppeared onscreen, but it just didn't work - for me.
The other thing that was . . . odd, were the background characters that would die in one episode, and reappear later on, either as the same, or another background character - Eddie Paskey, take a bow.

 

[EnsignHarper]

then there is the Jack Webb Repertory Company -

Art Balinger: 18 episodes of Dragnet 67/70 in three seasons
15 episodes of Emergency! in four seasons

Art Gilmore: 15 episodes of Adam 12
15 " of Dragnet 67

Virginia Gregg: 13 Dragnets
8 Adam 12


Olan Soule : 8 Dragnets


you get the idea...

 

[plynch]

^Macauley also played Landru in "Return of the Archons".

doh

47 years of watching. Hadn't noticed that.

 

[TOSalltheway]

How can we forget Ricardo Montalban, a Hispanic playing Khan, a Sikh from India. Crazy think is, he pulled it off !

 

[Christopher]

How can we forget Ricardo Montalban, a Hispanic playing Khan, a Sikh from India. Crazy think is, he pulled it off !

Happened all the time in the '60s. Anyone remotely "ethnic" in appearance got cast as all sorts of different ethnicities. Michael Ansara, who was from Syria, often played American Indians. Barbara Luna got cast as all sorts of different ethnicities. Even Leonard Nimoy was sometimes cast as an Indian or Asian.

But no, Montalban did not remotely pull off playing a Sikh. Sikh men are not clean-shaven, they do not have neck-length hair, they do not go bareheaded in public, and those who come from India do not, as a rule, have Mexican accents. (Although there is a Sikh community in Mexico, and a distinctive Punjabi Mexican American community that's formed around Yuba City, CA and includes Sikhs as well as Hindu, Muslims, and Catholics.)

 

[Sir Rhosis]

I thought the very strangest casting choices for guest stars were the ones where a recognizable guest star repeated in a very different role. Mark Lenard's role in "Balance of Terror" was not small or easily-overlooked, so seeing him again as Spock's father in "Journey to Babel" was rather a shock.

I have long heard (don't ask me for a source -- probably an old issue of Starlog, or just fannish gossip) that Lenard was approached to portray Abraham Lincoln in The Savage Curtain but was unavailable, so the part went to Lee Bergere.

Can anyone confirm?

Sir Rhosis

 

[FormerLurker]

How can we forget Ricardo Montalban, a Hispanic playing Khan, a Sikh from India. Crazy think is, he pulled it off !

Happened all the time in the '60s. Anyone remotely "ethnic" in appearance got cast as all sorts of different ethnicities. Michael Ansara, who was from Syria, often played American Indians. Barbara Luna got cast as all sorts of different ethnicities. Even Leonard Nimoy was sometimes cast as an Indian or Asian.

But no, Montalban did not remotely pull off playing a Sikh. Sikh men are not clean-shaven, they do not have neck-length hair, they do not go bareheaded in public, and those who come from India do not, as a rule, have Mexican accents. (Although there is a Sikh community in Mexico, and a distinctive Punjabi Mexican American community that's formed around Yuba City, CA and includes Sikhs as well as Hindu, Muslims, and Catholics.)

I have to call nitpicking on this one. Khan may have been born to a Sikh family, and may have even been raised Sikh, but such an arrogant, self-aggrandizing rat bastard with delusions of grandeur can not, in any sense, have been a practicing Sikh. By the time he was exiled, Khan must have thrown off all the trappings of his childhood religion, fully believing himself above them, and all they represent to the true believers.

 

[Christopher]

^But none of that is evident in the episode itself. So there's nothing in his actual performance that constitutes "pulling off" the role of a Sikh from India.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Then there's the fact that Marla can tell he's a Sikh even though nothing about his outward appearance says "Sikh". Is she psychic? Love to read the Kellam de Forrest feedback on that.

 

[Christopher]

^I recall that somebody (Harvey?) actually posted the de Forrest notes about the inaccuracies in "Space Seed" somewhere on this BBS just a month or two ago. Too bad the producers ignored them.

 

[mb22]

^I recall that somebody (Harvey?) actually posted the de Forrest notes about the inaccuracies in "Space Seed" somewhere on this BBS just a month or two ago. Too bad the producers ignored them.

http://startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-evolution-of-space-seed.html

Page 13, Scene 27

A Sikh probably. A 'Sikh' is a member of the Sikh religion, not a racial type, any more than a Roman Catholic is a racial type. They are distinguish-able physically only because one of the tenets of their religion is that men do not shave or cut their hair.

Page 38, Scene 59:

Sibahl Khan Noonien – This name is not Sikh or Indian in form. 'Khan' is a Mongol title which has found its way into some Muslim names in India and Pakistan. For proper name suggest: Govind Bahadur Singh. All Sikhs use the name Singh after their own sir name.

 

[Commishsleer]

^I recall that somebody (Harvey?) actually posted the de Forrest notes about the inaccuracies in "Space Seed" somewhere on this BBS just a month or two ago. Too bad the producers ignored them.

http://startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-evolution-of-space-seed.html

Page 13, Scene 27

A Sikh probably. A 'Sikh' is a member of the Sikh religion, not a racial type, any more than a Roman Catholic is a racial type. They are distinguish-able physically only because one of the tenets of their religion is that men do not shave or cut their hair.

Catholics as a part of their religion are not allowed to use birth control. Yet at my local Catholic Church no one has 12 children.
I know about 5 Catholic people who have been married twice without being excommunicated. I don't know personally any Sikh who have cut their hair though but sometimes you have to adjust your religious beliefs to live in the 'real world' unless you are very lucky.

 

[Christopher]

^Yes, but the point is that Marla claimed to recognize Khan as a Sikh on sight, knowing absolutely nothing about the man but what he looked like. And since there was nothing about his appearance that suggested that he followed the Sikh religion, this was impossible.

The only way to rationalize it is to assume that Marla recognized Khan on sight and lied about it. That's the only way she could possibly have known that he was a Sikh.

 

[FormerLurker]

That's always been my take on it. And I still call nitpicking, with Marla recognizing Khan one of the reasons why. If Khan were raised a Sikh, but had thrown off all the trappings of his childhood religion by the time he was an adult, or at least by the time he ruled a quarter of the Earth, he wouldn't very well have been expressing any of those trappings once in the company of the Enterprise crew. Montalban played a very aggressive, arrogant character to the hilt, and that was what Khan was.

 

[Christopher]

^Yes, but one more time: It's not about whether it's plausible that a Sikh would've chosen to cast off the trappings. It is entirely and exclusively about whether Marla would have recognized him as a Sikh based on his appearance alone.

 

[TOSalltheway]

I humbly stand corrected. I should clarify that I meant he pulled over the role of Khan.

 

[Christopher]

^Sure, he pulled off playing Khan. He did not remotely pull off playing "a Sikh from India." That's the point. Name and makeup aside, there was nothing distinctly ethnic about the character.

 

[MarsWeeps]

Not only was that par for the course in the '60s and '70s, it still happens from time to time today.

the next star of Doctor Who is Peter Capaldi, who's played two previous roles in the franchise -- and former companions Freema Agyeman and Karen Gillan had also played other guest characters not long before.

I didn't care for Capaldi's character in the Torchwood episode at all and I thought he was just average in Fires of Pompeii. Those are the only 2 times I saw him so I wasn't thrilled when he was chosen as the next Doctor. I think a cool twist would be for them to remake Fires of Pompeii where it's revealed that Capaldi's role is really that of the 12th Doctor and for some reason he had to "cross his own timeline" and interact with his former self.

Freema Agyeman's previous character was explained as being her cousin. Yeah, a bit of a cop out but at least they addressed it instead of completely ignoring it.

Karen Gillan was hidden in makeup and I had no clue that she had previously played in an episode. Even going back and re-watching it, she wasn't instantly recognizable.

Back to Trek - as others have mentioned, Mark Lenard's role as the Romulan Commander and also Spock's father really had me confused. I initially wondered what the heck Spock's father was doing on the Romulan ship and the fact that Spock and the rest of the crew showed surprise when seeing him only reinforced my misunderstanding. Why choose the same actor, put him in the same makeup (Romulans looked just like Vulcans) and have both characters in a strong role was a strange choice in my opinion.

 

[MarsWeeps]

Catholics as a part of their religion are not allowed to use birth control. Yet at my local Catholic Church no one has 12 children.

My parents were Catholic and I'm one of eight children, so yeah, it does happen (or did happen.)

 

[Christopher]

I didn't care for Capaldi's character in the Torchwood episode at all...

Wow, I thought he was utterly brilliant and stole the miniseries.

Freema Agyeman's previous character was explained as being her cousin. Yeah, a bit of a cop out but at least they addressed it instead of completely ignoring it.

Well, that was partly because there was virtually no interval between her appearances in the two different roles, aside from the gap between seasons. They did a similar thing when Lalla Ward, who had just appeared as Princess Astra in the season-ending "The Armageddon Factor," was cast as the regenerated Romana in the next season's premiere: it was explained that Romana modeled her regeneration on Astra. But usually there's no attempt to explain it away, for instance, Jeremy Sisto in Law and Order or Lucy Lawless in Hercules (although when they brought back Lawless's first character after she'd been established as Xena, they did mention the resemblance in passing).

Back to Trek - as others have mentioned, Mark Lenard's role as the Romulan Commander and also Spock's father really had me confused. I initially wondered what the heck Spock's father was doing on the Romulan ship and the fact that Spock and the rest of the crew showed surprise when seeing him only reinforced my misunderstanding. Why choose the same actor, put him in the same makeup (Romulans looked just like Vulcans) and have both characters in a strong role was a strange choice in my opinion.

I assume you've since learned that "Balance of Terror" was made nearly a year before "Journey to Babel." And I'd expect the reason they cast him as Sarek was because he'd worked well as a Vulcanlike character before. Recall that Lawrence Montaigne also played both a Romulan (Decius) and a Vulcan (Stonn) even before Lenard was cast as Sarek. And there are other Trek actors who've played multiple characters of the same species: Armin Shimerman and Max Grodenchik had each played two previous Ferengi before getting cast as Quark and Rom, and other actors to play more than one Ferengi included Frank Corsentino and Lee Arenberg. Marc Alaimo played Gul Macet before he was Gul Dukat. Vaughn Armstrong's many roles include three Klingons and two Cardassians, and J.G. Hertzler played two different Klingons, DS9's Martok and ENT's Kolos. (I'm not counting Michael Dorn playing Worf's namesake ancestor.)