Benjamin Sisko alias Avery Brooks actor. i am watching ds9 again, and i still think that Avery Brooks acting is wooden even after all this time my opinion hasn't changed. he was definitely not the right person for that role. and that has nothing to do, with black and white. before you say, is it cause hees black
wooden acting
- Thread starter wolfroy
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Brooks was probably the weakest actor overall out of the main cast, save for Terry Farrell. That said, he could put in a great performance (particularly when paired up with Lofton - the father/son dynamic always worked) and even though he could be hammy at times, he had the same kind of gravitas as an actor that Shatner and Stewart did, which meant he could command the room.
Hell, when you look at Sisko's worst acting in DS9, he's basically being a black Shatner. Same cadence and everything.
That said, they should have given the role to Tony Todd, who did audition for it. It's always been a shame that man wasn't given a regular role in a Trek series, because he would have hit it out of the park.
Hell, when you look at Sisko's worst acting in DS9, he's basically being a black Shatner. Same cadence and everything.
That said, they should have given the role to Tony Todd, who did audition for it. It's always been a shame that man wasn't given a regular role in a Trek series, because he would have hit it out of the park.
I like Todd as an actor, not sure he would have been a good Sisko.
Possibly.
But there are a couple of things to consider before passing total judgment.
He is coming back to his first "real" command position since his wife was killed.
There would be various levels on which this could effect him.
Does it remind him of when he was on the shop where his wife was killed by being a command position? Or just being back out in space? Out in space now is he worried about his son? All of these to some degree?
Also(Starfleet isn't a military, yea, okay) since he has risen to the level of commander, he has a certain level of professional bearing that he has and must maintain.
In perilous situations you can't be the person in charge breaking down in tears, running around throwing things, screaming at people, whining etc. ( that's one of the reasons I hate Kira in the first couple of seasons)
In my military experiences the higher ups were very controlled and calm even in bad situations. If they hadn't been, I'd have had no confidence in them. I would have not wanted to follow them in to bad situations.
He may have not been the greatest actor but when you factor in, the Character he was supposed to "be" you might see him differently.
I think Brooks did a great job acting. As Nakita Akita said, he's the CO. He's supposed to be calm. So in situations where he wasn't the CO -- with Jake, or punching the bag with Dax after Starfleet gave chasing Eddington to another captain, or with Kassidy -- he was a little more excitable.
Can you elaborate? "Wooden" is not the word I would use in a million years for him. He was very passionate and emotional across a huge variety of situations. I'm thankful that Brooks agreed to put on the uniform and do it with excellence for so many years. Welcome to the forum.
My issue with him as an actor wasn't that he was too calm; he had every emotion in the book. And his lofty pomposity can be seen as a genuine character trait. My problem was that his facial expressions always seemed deliberate and thought out, rather than genuinely felt. And that's the essence of bad acting.
I never specifically noticed.
The only dumb, bad one I ever noticed was hi and Garak in the turbo lift and Garak tells him something or another and it's like he can't keep a grin off of his face but he should have Ben just about any emotion other than grinning.
Again though, I know that when I was in the Army, sometimes NCO's or officers would act a certain way, leave the area and bust out laughing, for example.
I had a command Sergent Major have to leave the room and pretend to be sick because he was supposed to be threatening me and another peon but underneath he was laughing his ass off.
The Captain held it together somewhat.
I'm sure there are numerous incidences where an office has to cultivate as he/she can an attitude and act a way contrary to how they choose.
Being permitted, as we were with the camera it's possible we were privy to that.
I don't know how you can equate him with Terry Farrell as the weakest actor when you admit he had great chemistry with the cast and he had the same gravitas and authority as Shatner and Stewart. Because he had such authority he could carry the show. Thats why I think he was one of the best actors on DS9, alongside Rene Auberjonous, Colm Meaney and Marc Alaimo.
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Yeah, no one was going to say that.
To me, it was a matter of everyone getting comfortable with their roles, chemistry and the direction of the show. That took some time here. To me, it was season 4 when performances started to "equalize" for lack of a better term. I thought they were always good, and there were great performances earlier, and I knew it was a great show much earlier than that, but they all started to really mesh better together and seem more natural season 4 onward.
I think Avery Brooks' delivery sounds almost like a TTS voice (like Siri or Amazon Alexa). There is some weird breath control mannerism in how he sort of sends the words out in controlled bursts with tiny gaps inbetween like morse-code. I wonder whether this is his notion of "theatrical" style but it actually comes across as robotic/artificial. It's kind of the spoken-word version of Aaron Neville's staccato singing style which I find equally off-putting.
Interesting. I'll be thinking of his delivery when I watch him now. When I do watch clips of Sisko, I see moral conviction and authority, the 2 essential qualities for a leading man(or woman).
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