The writing not withstanding, Dominic did do a great job - he's a fantastic actor. Both he and Connor as it happens, were acting against type. Scott was also, but less successfully IMHO
Fo'sho.
My problem with Reed is the same with Trip. I like the actor and the character but feel the writers leaned too much on a one-note stereotype.
Most of the time, Reed is so stereotypically British that I'm surprised he wasn't guzzling tea by the barrel. He comes across as repressed, stiff and a dullard bound only by his oath to his duty and captain. Oh, and he's obviously more cultured because he is British.
The scene I detest the most is in the teaser for "Shuttlepod One," where Reed is reading a Vintage edition of James Joyce's
Ulysses.
Reed and Trip get into some cliche sparring on how Americans only read comics and Brits are more erudite because they read "challenging" literature. The scene would've been far more interesting if they reversed the expectations of the audience.
Trip, the country bumpkin (and he was written that way for most of the show), reading that piece of modernist garbage or better yet, reading a postmodernist work like Thomas Pynchon's
V. And Reed, the pompous Brit, having to admit that he's never read it and that he prefers
Judge Dredd (if we are to come up with a British
Superman equivalent). Or, hell, make Reed actually enjoy reading
Superman comics.
Okay, the scene further grates because I had to trudge through
Ulysses in my graduate program after having survived undergrad without reading that damn piece of... well, you know how I feel. Also because what's wrong with
Superman comics... nothing! Rant over.
Moreover, It's hard to imagine Trip being a well-versed theoretical physicist or warp field engineer. He often comes across, especially in the first two seasons, as a redneck car garage mechanic, making bigoted comments directed at T'Pol and the Vulcans in general.
)
(which is why I was quite surprised to find only two British Cardassians on the whole run of Trek!)
.
