MovieChat Forums > Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993) Discussion > Miscast characters

Miscast characters

posted 7 months ago by Sparky (2613)
3 replies | jump to latest

I always felt like Riker was miscast on TNG- he was not a good actor, had two facial expressions I think and zero subtlety. On DS9 IMO Sisco and Kira were miscast- Sisco is just too quirky and Kira is too excited and happy to believe she's some battle-hardened warrior at 100 lbs. The doc also- he's a little too cute and silly.

Who did they get right? IMO Odo, all of the Ferengi (awesome!), Jadzia's OK, the Cardassians were well chosen. I get that it's essentially a soap opera set in space but a bit more space and less opera would have done us better IMO.

[–] Sparky (2613) 7 months ago

I've seen the show from start to finish but it's been some time and so I'm giving it another go. One thing that I notice is this: Quark and the other Ferengi are the targets of a remarkable amount of racism (speciesism?) In an early episode, S2 we see Quark ostensibly killed and Rom is beside himself. Odo and Sisco approach the innocent Rom who is understandably devastated and straight accuse him to be the murder, with no sensitivity to his plight. Why did they do this? To get information. It happens before they even ask him cursory questions about the incident. In other scenes many of the other characters address Rom, a good er, man, as well as the other Ferengi with much ire. I never noticed it before but it jumps out at me this time around. They are not unfamiliar with the general nature of the Ferengi yet they act as if the behaviors of those Ferengi on the space station are not just intolerable but especially so, and this after Sisco admittedly blackmailed Quark into staying.

[–] xergan (1067) 7 months ago

Ferengi were initially planned as the bad guys of TNG Trek, scumbag version of 60s Klingons. This only really changed during the cause of DS9 when Armin Shimerman and the producers spend more time on Ferengi lore, after everyone agree, that no one likes the current interpretation. So in Season 1 and 2 of DS9, you still see remnants of this version, so no one trust them. The murder fits well in the old version and its related prejudices, it might be also the producers intend to play with this on purpose.

[–] xergan (1067) 7 months ago

Yeah, early Sisko and especially Kira didn't worked well for me. Kira felt quite misinterpret and I personally had been ok with her getting cut out. But I guess this is also related to the decision of Michelle Forbes not to continue her Ro Laren character at DS9 and the producers had to adopt their ideas to the new character. The pilot was already written at the time Forbes declined, so the decision was really late in the process. That's likely why Kira felt so much off, as her character arc was just made up later as the others. Luckily they got a fantastic actress with Nana Visitor.

Sisko was also feeling off. I didn't like the arc of the single dad, but I really think what was off, was that Avery Brooks couldn't play Sisko as he would have liked to play him. This was most visible by him having short hair and no beard, a style Brooks feels definitely most good in it as he barely changed that look since the 80s - except he was forced to it. But the producers didn't want a Hawk (from his earlier show Spenser) in Space and told him to have this hair style like this. Imo you can notice quite a difference in his acting after he finally convinced them to do the change of style.