Favourite minor characters in Trek?

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Graham Kennedy
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Favourite minor characters in Trek?

Post by Graham Kennedy »

So I'm thinking here of people who aren't the main characters, aren't even recurring like Damar and Q, but rather those who are either in one or two episodes at most, or perhaps are in many episodes but only ever in the background.

For me, in the former category we have Dr. Helen Noel, played by Marianna Hill.

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Only ever in one episode, but I like her because she's a remarkably good character.

First, she's introduced as an expert in psychology. She and Kirk met at a christmas party thrown by the science lab... and Kirk seems remarkably awkward about that, whilst Noel seems perfectly calm and assured about it - to the point where Kirk seems to think McCoy assigned her purely to wind him up. And she even needles Kirk a little about it, too, much to his discomfort. Score one for her!

Second, on the mission she's not just there to cheer lead Kirk. She's perfectly willing to stand up to him and argue her side of things. Yes, she turns out to be wrong, but she had no way to know that - and although she thinks Kirk is wrong, she goes along with him to test his theory, and as soon as the evidence is clear she switches her views.

Third, as well as just arguing her case to begin with, she gets to do physical action stuff that is critical to the mission. She is the one who crawls through the air ducts to the control room where she turns off the power to the machine, allowing Kirk to escape - she saves him, rather than vice versa. Then she's confronted by a bad guy whom she kills. No help from others, no last minute "he slipped and fell on a pointy thing", she just flat out kills the guy. And more, look how she does it. He throws her to the floor and she lies there, apparently all helpless. He comes in at her to do his thing... and she suddenly brings her legs up and gives him a hell of a kick in the stomach with both boots, throwing him back into the power system and frying him. If you watch it, it's obvious that she wasn't panicking or lashing out in fear - she quite deliberately played possum to draw him in, and then took him out with extreme prejudice.

And in bringing down the power system, she brings down the forcefield and thus allows Spock and Enterprise security to beam down, resolving the entire situation. She saves the day!

In other words, they wrote her as a confident, self assured and above all competent and professional Starfleet officer throughout.

Plus, as the factoid on my ep review points out, Marianna Hill was born Marianna Schwarzkopf, a cousin to the well known American General "Stormin" Norman Schwarzkopf who commanded the allied forces in the first Gulf War. Which is just a very cool fact.


With background characters, I always liked this one :

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Played by Tracee Lee Cocco, she was a background extra in many, many episodes of TNG and into the TNG movies. I first noticed her when they did Worf's "crew lined up in salute" as he left the Enterprise to go fight in the Klingon civil war - she was the very first person in line, which makes me wonder if maybe she had some sort of friendship with Worf, or maybe worked in security at some point. She sat next to Picard at Data's poetry recital, too, which makes me wonder if maybe she knows Picard somehow. I really wish they had developed a couple of the background characters like this - no special powers, no weird alien race, just normal people doing a job. Of course O'Brien is the ultimate example of that "ascended extra" meme, and look how well that turned out!

Anyway, those are my two favourites. Anybody else have any?
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Re: Favourite minor characters in Trek?

Post by Mikey »

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Elaan of Troyius. Of course the story was derivative and the character design was obvious, but it was a striking character at a time when strong female protagonists were far from the norm, and we ended up seeing an exploration of what that strength cost.

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Dr. Miranda Jones. Great character from a great story.
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Re: Favourite minor characters in Trek?

Post by Teaos »

I like the Ferengi characters who fleshed out that species, the arms dealer, Brunt ect.
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Re: Favourite minor characters in Trek?

Post by Nutso »

Edith Keeler. Such a tragic ending.

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Re: Favourite minor characters in Trek?

Post by Black Jesus »

Morn.

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Re: Favourite minor characters in Trek?

Post by Teaos »

Winner.
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Re: Favourite minor characters in Trek?

Post by Graham Kennedy »

Morn was awesome. :)
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Re: Favourite minor characters in Trek?

Post by RK_Striker_JK_5 »

I got two off the top of my head...

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Leck, pretty much ripping apart almost every single Ferengi stereotype and being overall badass. He was in one of my favorite DSN episodes, the Magnificent Ferengi, stealing the show and being pretty damned competent overall. He helped to expand the Ferengi character and develop it. And he was a hell of a knife-thrower, too. 8)

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Re: Favourite minor characters in Trek?

Post by Atekimogus »

Brunt! FCA.
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