If
you're coming into this out of context, check out PART ONE HERE. That
link will take you to the introduction to this, my extended pitch for
the next Star Trek series, which is continued here with my idea for
the season one starting cast of characters and who I'd realistically
pick to play them. A quick note, as you may have noticed in the lead
up to this, I always leave names to the last thing, so I will be
designating characters by rank, job, role, etc, whichever is most
significant to them.
1:
The Captain – The lynch pin of any Star Trek series, our Captain
would be an old soldier who never ascribed to the typical ideal of
the noble explorer, joining Starfleet to protect his home world and
earning his stripes in battle against the Dominion and the Borg. Now
without an enemy to fight, he decides to retire, only to find himself
the leader of a makeshift colony of Starfleet officers and civilians
on a dangerous alien world. As the mysteries of the planet begin to
be revealed, The Captain would be the first to make connections
suggesting more to the world than meets the eye and become strangely
obsessed, leading those around him to begin to question his capacity
to protect the group, and ultimately to question his sanity.
(Proposed Casting: Michael Ironside)
2:
The Captain's Daughter – An expert in establishing human
colonies on alien worlds, originally scheduled for a six month tour
of duty with the Tzenketh colonists that has now become permanent.
When the colonists' original leader dies in the crash, she quickly
and informally assumes the role, often butting heads with her father
who assumes he has the same authority over the civilians as he does
over his own crew. She would also begin to assume more responsibility
for protecting the settlement when her father begins to stray from
that role and seemingly prioritize solving the mystery of the planet
over the welfare of the group. (Proposed Casting: Eliza Dushku)
3:
The Alien Lieutenant - This would be the breakout character in
the same vein as Spock, Data, Odo, or the EMH, that kind of character
not seen before in the series with a unique perspective on the human
condition. In this case, he would be the first non-humanoid alien
officer featured as a main character in the franchise, physically
resembling a Lovecraftian monstrous mass of tentacles and teeth. He
functions in the world and the show through a series of proxies,
humanoid robot drones that he operates psychically, allowing him to
be in multiple places simultaneously. His people are noted as being
the first previously unknown Gamma Quadrant species to request
membership in the Federation following the end of the Dominion War,
and their motives are unknown. (Proposed Casting – Doug Jones,
Drones and Voice)
4:
The Doctor - A fully telepathic Betazoid physician, so used to
dealing with people lying to his face that he has developed a bitter
and acerbic personality, essentially becoming the Star Trek
equivalent of Dr. House. He would be presented as a man with many
secrets, at first dismissed as a function of his being telepathic
while needing to maintain doctor-patient confidentiality,
disciplining himself to be less open than the average Betazoid.
Eventually it would be revealed that he is in fact a member of the
covert black ops organization Section 31, and that he may have known
about the planet's existence before the ships crashed. (Proposed
Casting: Jeffrey Combs)
5:
The Pilot – The Miles O'Brien-esque every man of the show,
pilot for the colonists' ship who begins the series with a
flirtatious, burgeoning romantic relationship with the Captain's
Daughter. As this relationship grows, he gradually becomes the voice
of the colonists' frustration with the presumption that Starfleet
protocol should govern the settlement. When the prevailing sentiment
among the civilians turns to making the planet a more permanent
colony, they try to force him into a position of leadership in
opposition to The Captain. (Proposed Casting: Idris Elba)
6:
The Ensign – A Bajoran ensign communications officer, a female
version of Harry Kim, thrust into a situation she isn't ready for and
forced to cope. The idea would be that rather than rise to the
challenge, she is representative of those Starfleet officers who
don't make it, and usually wash out, but is in a crisis situation
where she can't do that. It would be revealed at some point in the
first season that much of her lack of self confidence stems from a
brief period in which she was assimilated by the Borg while on Borg
inoculation detail, a condition that thankfully for her is now
easily cured, but not without some lasting psychological trauma.
(Proposed Casting: Erica Cerra)
7:
The Ambassador – A Changeling who was aboard the ship as a
passenger on her way to Tzenketh space, in the form of a young woman
she met on Deep Space Nine. The alliance with the Dominion still
being tenuous, her motives are often seen as suspicious by the
others, especially when she spends most of her time searching the
planet for something she refuses to tell anyone about (revealed at
some point to be an infant Changeling, one of the 100 sent off to
explore the universe). While on the planet, she finds that she is
unable to change shape, stuck between her human form and her
gelatinous state to sleep, which is thought to be an effect of the
planet, but would later be revealed to be a chemical injected into
her by The Doctor to keep her in check. (Proposed Casting: Summer
Glau)
8:
The Jem'Hadar – The Ambassador's personal bodyguard, a Jem'Hadar soldier who remained a willing servant of the Founders after
their species was granted independence and cured of their addiction
to Ketracel White as a condition of the treaty with the Federation.
He reasons that rather than live free with his people on one of their
new colonies in the Gamma Quadrant, he still owes his life to the
Founders regardless of the circumstances, though he does not see them
as Gods as they once did, but now more like parents to which he has
an obligation. He spends his time protecting The Ambassador and
helping her search the planet for the other Changeling she senses, otherwise evoking
the strong silent nobility of a samurai warrior. (Proposed
Casting: Tony Todd)
9:
The Chef – A supporting character and member of the colonists,
a young Cardassian chef representing one of the first generation to
come out of the Cardassian Civil War. The idea behind his character
would be to show the kind of Cardassian who wasn't involved in the
backstabbing intrigue of Dukat and Garek, just an average citizen
whose unquestioned love for his fascist government was finally called
into question when his society broke down, resulting in his not
knowing what to do with this life. He decided to join the colony to
find a fresh start, and would have a possible romantic relationship
with the Bajoran Ensign as the two gradually learn to transcend the
historic differences between their two peoples (Proposed Casting:
Burn Gorman)
10:
The Klingon – Not a member of either crew, but rather a
female Klingon warrior from the distant past who was stranded on the
planet (from her perspective) a few months prior to the crash of the two
ships. As the planet travels in time as well as in space, she is from
a time when the Klingons were still enemies of the Federation, but is
forced to work with them for her own survival after her own crew
succumbed to some mysterious force on the planet that made them all
commit suicide. (Proposed Casting: Rekha Sharma)
11:
The Soldier and The Old Woman - Two recurring characters who
would introduce part of the over arching mystery of the show. Both
members of the colonist group, one a mercenary in the Tzenkethi wars
returning to exact some sort of debt or revenge, the other a
seemingly kindly old woman who sought to live out the last years of
her life off world, being one of the rare humans never to leave Earth
in her lifetime. The two would be revealed to have a strangely
familiar relationship where they seem to be keeping each other in
check, implying that they are not as human as they appear and that
the events of the series are part of some great cosmic chess game
between them. (Proposed Casting: Peter Weller and Betty White)
Possible
Characters I'm not quite sure about yet -
1:
The Romulan Ensign – Only concerned that by adding him, I would
be introducing too many main characters, the basic idea would be that
he is the first Romulan to officially graduate the academy since the
re-unification with Vulcan, learning to live and work under
Federation values and to keep his Machiavellian impulses in check.
(Proposed Casting: Iwan Rheon)
2:
The Holographic Engineer – This one might be too on the nose. I
thought about introducing the idea that in the wake of the EMH's
efforts towards Holographic Civil Rights, sentient holograms are now
free to live and re-produce as a species, with the deliberate creation of Holographic life programmed to serve humans being
outlawed as slavery. The chief engineer of the ship would have been a
Hologram, now advanced with an internal mobile emitter system,
reactivated on the planet. Again, might also be too many characters.
(Proposed Casting: Claudia Christian)
That's
it for Part Two, Stay tuned for Part Three if you like to check out
my loose assemblage of ideas concerning how the series would play out
season to season. Or give up now, as no one would blame you at this
point.
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