I remember an interview with James Doohan in which he mentioned asking the director, when they began shooting the 2nd season, “What happened? He didn’t act like that last year…”
There’s also an interesting fan theory that being captain of a starship drives one right around the bend… most of the captains we meet in the series are bug-fuck crazy: Janice Lester, the guy on the Nazi planet, Garth of Izar (really? how does a guy named Garth of Izar get the center seat), William Windom (Doomsday Device)…
Hmmm… do Star Fleet ensigns have an NCO with 25 years or so experience assigned to assist (train) them? And do Star Fleet captains have a Master Chief Petty Officer who was a 3rd Class PO when the captain was his ensign that now, behind, closed doors, they’re on a first name basis?
I’m afraid I have to agree with the “hyperbolic” assessment of Brooks. I might even go so far as to say “bombastic”—I notice from his wiki page that he has quite a bit of experience in the theatre, including playing the role of Paul Robeson since 1982, and Othello since the mid-80s also. I can easily imagine his style of performance would be well honed and suited to playing a thickly dramatic, anguished role live onstage.
Hey, I’m not saying he’s bad, and I get “intense”—but you don’t have to reach it by channeling one of those propane bird-cannons.
If you stop and think about it, we were watching William Shatner in funny clothes surrounded by pale blue plywood and blinking lights. So it was his job to make sure we didn’t think about that. He had to convey, with every word and gesture, that he absolutely believed that he was on the bridge of a starship; because if he didn’t believe it, we certainly weren’t going to.
Avery Brooks acting was sometimes over the top true. But his brilliance was in making it seem realistic, like a quirk of Sisko’s personality than bad acting.
He could change from kindly mentor to hard ass boss in a heart beat and he made it believable. Like When he orders Bashir to supply the “very bad thing” in the Pale Moonlight, or gets info from Cadet Nog in another episode.
Growing up in an Army family, I always felt Sisko was the most realistic portrayal of what an actual military officer is like.
Avery Brooks was over the top in *Spenser For Hire *as well. No one could do Hawk like him. It was totally OTT, but he did it so well.
I thought it was interesting in the later seasons when Sisko shaved his head and got more bad assed. I believe he was deliberately channeling Hawk. He even posed one time with a phaser rifle that was pure homage (“He’s got a gun!” “Mine’s BIGGER!”).
This. I’d even go so far as to say that it was Shatner’s acting that caused Star Trek to transcend its low-budget, space-western origins and become something historic, memorable, and meaningful.
I don’t mean there’s a total lack of over-acting, just that I didn’t find it typical. My bar might be set higher, though. When I think of overacting, I think of Shatner’s, “This is…intensity!” delivery, so prevalent in TOS that it is still widely regarded as the epitome of ham. Or Kate Mulgrew delivering every line as, “This is the most important thing ever said!”
I honestly didn’t watch a lot of Enterprise so my take on Bakula as Archer is not well-informed. And mostly I paid attention to Jolene Blalock when I did watch it.
(Bolding mine)
Absolutely agree, it was like watching Hawk…in Space! once he grew the goat and shaved the head. DS9 is my favorite of the Trek series, largely due to Sisko going full-on bad-ass, after a pretty slow start to the show’s run.
Man, I am such a nerd-boy Trekkie right now. If Mr. Shatner were here, he’d tell me to get a life. In a very over the top manner, I’m sure.
Brooks and Robert Urich did film four Spenser movies from 1993 to 1995. It was probably easier for Brooks to keep his goatee grown rather than switch his look back-and-forth between Sisko and Hawk, and the producers of DS9 probably agreed to let Brooks keep the Hawk look. And I agree, Sisko became more badass once he went back to the shaved head and goatee. Although I remember that briefly he had both the goatee and a head of hair.
I think the ensemble had a lot to do with it, including of course Nimoy. But don’t sell Roddenberry short. I watched TOS from the beginning, and I had already read a ton of real science fiction, and ST was the first continuing sf show that wasn’t embarrassing. Very early in the first season the scripts were examining issues and concepts far beyond most episodic television of the day. Have Gun Will Travel was the real western Roddenberry worked on, and if you watch those shows (I watched as a kid and have watched all the episodes Netflix had, you’ll see that western didn’t have to be an insult.
BTW, Stewart might be a better actor than Shatner, but Shatner could sell comic lines far, far better. Even when Stewart was on Colbert doing a bit he never quite got the funny right.
Janice Lester was a research scientist, not a Starfleet captain (a position she did not merit by either training or temperament).
John Gill was a historian, not a Starfleet officer (though he did teach at the Academy). He didn’t seem to know much about Nazi Germany, though. (Maybe the works of Ian Kershaw were lost in the Eugenics Wars.)
Garth of Izar’s brain was damaged in an accident that nearly killed him. (Sort of like the Roman Emperor Caligula never being the same after recovering from a fever.)
I might become mentally unbalanced too if I were personally responsible for the death of my entire crew, like Matt Decker was. (Suidicidal, definitely.)
Not even Ron Tracey, who at times did seem batshit crazy, could be legitimately considered whacko. (How would you feel if you were the only survivor from your ship and had to spend the rest of your life on some desert planet fighting off hordes of wild cavemen?)
