Star Trek- Giving credit where it's due.

Cafe Society
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When we think of Star Trek, we think of the big names like Shatner and Stewart. Too often we forget that they didn’t do it alone. They were supported every step of the way by the actors and actresses willing to fill the small roles. I’m talking about all those people walking through the corridors, conversing on the promenade, and handing datapads to random officers. They are the backbone of Star Trek, and they have bent like scoliosis to support five television series and ten films.

In recognition of their efforts, I propose that the next new Star Trek series be composed solely of these bit parts. I have my personal list of my favorites that I would like to see get the credit they are due.

Madeline-

In Star Trek IV- The Voyage Home, when Scotty and McCoy are in the plastics manufacturing plant talking to the owner, his assistant enters. “Not now Madeline!” the owner yells. Madeline backs up and closes the door. These four seconds were her entire part in the movie. She’s always been my favorite.

The Pilot Who Turned the Enterprise Sideways To Fly Through The Dyson’s Sphere-

Admit it, that was really cool. I mean, she turned it sideways! In space!

Quark’s Ferengi Waiter-

I’m not sure if he ever got a speaking part, but he was there for pretty much the whole series. Whenever there was a scene in the bar, he was the Ferengi walking around taking drink orders. Poor guy had to put on all that ridiculous makeup for ten seconds of puttering around in the background.

Picard’s Fish-

Most of my favorite Next-Generation moments involved these fish.
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I don’t need to justify myself to you! The fish are cool!
Anybody have a favorite Star Trek bit part to add to the list? These people deserve recognition. If I had it my way, I’d give them so much recognition that they’d be begging for mercy.

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Sluggo, Hoshi Sato’s alien slug, which she had for only part of an episode during Enterprise’s first season.

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Definitely second the fish. Hell, it’s probably heard enough Picardspeak to command a Federation starship on its own. All we need is a universal translator programmed with lionfish.

I’ve always had a soft spot for the cooks on the Enterprise-A in ST6: The Undiscovered Country. They had to dodge a phaser blast and everything! Admittedly, said phaser blast was aimed at a pot, but still…

Ensign Hawk in First Contact was pretty good. Still a redshirt, but one that got to be one of the more badass Borg drones for a few minutes.

Speaking of the Borg, I remember thinking that the Klingon Borg we see for just a few seconds in the same film was the coolest alien ever to appear on Trek.

Kahn’s minion boy, complete with silly Eighties outfit. “Yours… is the… superior… intellect… bleurghhh”

And who could forget Morn?

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True. And very, very silly.

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I don’t know about Madeline, because really, I look at it from the perspective of the actor’s day “at the office.” I really respect the actors who have to come in for hours in the makeup room and sit in hot uncomfortable makeup, can’t get to craft services so they have to go through the drivethrough at McD’s in a Klingon head, wait around for the big stars to argue about who has more lines this episode, and finally shoot a scene knowing they may not ever make final cut. Madeline had it easy compared to these folks. For this post I’ll start with the movies.

The people without lines:
Young Spock from Star Trek III. I mean, this guy’s audition must have been to crouch over and howl, with the director saying stuff like, “No, bluer. Bluer than that. The bluest balls you’ve ever had. In the universe. Come on! Put more into it!”

Khan’s crew. Come on, give 'em credit. You could have ripped off all the human sacrifice extras from “Cave Dwellers” and given them old Miles O’Keefe outfits, but no, these guys came in and sat through hours of makeup to sit on a soundstage making scale just to watch Ricardo Montelban chew scenery.

Klingon With Mouth Full of Blue Food in Star Trek VI. Take after take. “Do you… enjoy… Shakespeare?” Nichelle says, and this actor has a mouthful of blue crap. Not a related scene to Young Spock, above.

Bloody guy hanging upside down in the Genesis science station and scares the crap out of McCoy. Everybody in the audience knows something like this is coming. They’re waiting for this guy to turn up. Really. This is the kind of a part you dream of. It’s the actor’s first big break. And, ironically, the character’s last.

The SF cop who doesn’t know where the nuclear wessels are. I need say no more.

And the people with lines:
The old woman from Star Trek IV: “Maybe he’s singing to that man.” I don’t know if she’s a relative of a big Trek actor or what, but she’s gonna have some 'splaining to do to her elderly friends who ask about the movie she was in. “No, Violet, it’s Star Tracks. It’s an outer space thing, you know, like in Texas with the rockets. That’s where they keep outer space, you know.”

Crewman Dax: “Yes Commander is There a PROBlem.” The putative gravity-boot-wearer in Star Trek VI. You gotta respect a guy who has spirit gum up his nose, feet encased in warm sweaty plasticine and latex, whose big scene is his feet. What a trouper.

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Remember that episode of the original series, where they find a spaceship where everyone’s been dehydrated? And I don’t mean just thristy, I mean they’ve been turned into jumbo size salt crystals?

The third crystal they found. That guy carried the whole episode.

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I believe Picard’s fish was a lionfish named Livingston. I could be wrong though.

My own suggestions: the O’Brien family. Keiko, Molly, and Kirayoshi. Keiko got some lines and was even the center of some episodes but Rosalind Chao never got any appreciable air time in over a decade with the series.

Morn. Duh. Never once said a line onscreen despite being a huge chatterbox.

The Klingon chef on the promenade in DS9. Always referred to but I can’t remember him once appearing on screen.

All the Dax alter-egos. Granted, they each had their own spotlight occasionally but not often.

Spot. I like cats.

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The reporters on the bridge of the Enterprise-B during its launch in ST:Generations.

I always found that scene funny.

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He was shown at least once. Jadzia ordered a plate of Gach (sp?) from him.

Big, big, big man.

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There was also an episode where Bashir took a date there, an alien who was wheelchair bound on most planets other than her own. She complains that the gagh (or whatever) is barely moving.

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Yeah, and occasionally serenaded couples with Klingon opera while playing an (God help me) accordian.

Frankly, I’d dodge the place.

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Well, yeah…who wants lifeless gagh?

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No, no, the gagh was OK…it was the racht that was half-dead.

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Goo

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Let us not forget Ensign Deadmeat, the red-shirt-wearin’ member of the landing party who, like Sisyphus, is eternally doomed to wander away from the others and yell real loud as he is getting killed.

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From Generations

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She was on a horse

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Do you know that actor wasn’t even credited, at least not when the movie first came out? Something about his agent holding out for better billing, and in the end the guy got no billing at all. It is on IMDB for that movie.

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Those three crewmen in that Voyager episode where Janeway took them on a shuttle mission because they weren’t happy or something. They built an episode around them, and then they were never mentioned again.

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ANTONIA!