Ok, my wife's not home yet, and my inner geek is barking up a storm and demanding attention, so the subject of today's geek Soliloquy is STUNT CASTING.
Going back to Star Trek Continues, the writer of the series (who also plays Capt. Kirk) clearly grew up watching the same SciFi classics of the 60's, 70's & 80's that I did, so I feel like we're on the same wavelength.
Ep 2 (Lolani): as mentioned in a prior post, the lead guest star is
Lou Ferrigno, and his presence on the show is a classic example of stunt casting. Why ? Dude, it's the green body paint ! Back in the 1970's he starred as the iconic green skinned Incredible Hulk. I almost sprayed my soda laughing and applauding when he stepped off the transporter pad in Ep 2 as the hulking green skinned Orion slave trader. Oh man. That was almost as big of a stunt cast as Marvel scoring Robert Downey Jr (a spoiled wise-cracking alcoholic narcissist cutup in real life) for Iron Man (a spoiled alcoholic wise-cracking playboy in the comic books).
Oh, and in a secondary stunt casting note, the strong willed female Starfleet Admiral that Kirk consults with via subspace is none other than Erin Grey, who played Colonel Wilma Deering on
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. Back in 1979 it was still pretty rare for a woman to be cast as a Colonel in a TV role. As a footnote, she auditioned for the role of Capt. Janeway in Star Trek Voyager, but Kate Mulgrew got the role (probably because of her resemblance to Kate Hepburn).
Ok, on to Axanar ...
Casting Tony Todd as Admiral Ramirez was a bit of stunt casting too. Why ? Because as the leader of the Federation, it fell to him to give all the great bombastic rallying speeches that helped turn the tide of the war and galvanize the drive to ultimate victory ... and the fact that he'd previously guest starred on both Star Trek The Next Generation and Star Trek Deep Space Nine as the tall (6' 5") dark and menacing Captain Kurn (Worf's full-blooded klingon brother), made it a matter of pure irony. He was even better known as lead unkillable baddie in The Candyman horror movie series. Listen to his speech in Pelude to Axanar (time index 08:30), and tell me you dont feel a thrill run down your spine, and I will call you a liar ... he's awesome in that role.