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Rambly thoughts about ST castings brought over from Tumblr
i am having feelings on these star trek reboot castings. these are all my own feelings and based entirely on vibes.
+ kirk: far be it from me to compliment shatner, but paul wesley doesn’t have the easy, warm charm that shatner brought to kirk and that chris pine had a great variation on. while i like most of the aos!st cast, pine was the only one who had me fully on board with him as a variation on the characters from the original show. i truly love pine’s kirk, even if shatner IS kirk. as for wesley, he’s nothing like kirk at all and i think he was miscast.
+ spock: okay, i’m the world’s biggest fan of mr. leonard nimoy z”l, so it’s no surprise that i wasn’t super crazy about zachary qinto’s version of spock. he was missing that undercurrent of warmth and steadiness that was so essential to the original character. ethan peck is further proof that literally no one is going to be an acceptable substitute for mr. leonard nimoy z”l and my final feelings on the matter are: i like whatever character ethan peck is playing, but he’s not spock. (this goes for most of the aos cast: i adore anton yelchin’s little baby angel ensign, but he wasn’t my garbage son. john cho can do no wrong, but i didn’t feel like he had really anything to do with the character george takei created. simon pegg is a fun presence onscreen but that’s not scotty, etc.)
+ chapel: i still don’t know what’s going on here. the character in snw bears ZERO resemblence to the one from tos. less than zero. they are actively opposite. unless the writers are going to, like, have her undergo a brain transplant that explains her personality change, it’s inexplicable that they made this decision. that said: i like jess bush’s chapel SO much. i just wish they’d given her another name.
+ uhura: celia rose gooding is the only one of the snw cast that i can convince myself could conceivably grow into the character we know on tos. she doesn’t have nichelle nichols’s confidence, but then she isn’t supposed to. she’s so young that i can believe she’d change that much. it’s the opposite with aos: i like the character zoe saladaña was playing but she didn’t seem like uhura to me.
+ m’benga: we didn’t see much of tos’s m’benga, so i think the casting could have gone in a lot of different directions. i’m glad it landed on babs olusanmokun–i like his performance a lot and i’m so glad he’s part of the show.
+ janice rand: i know she hasn’t appeared on snw but she SHOULD. of all the characters who deserved to be explored!!! where is my yeoman rand??? she better show up in season 3!!!!
i need to ponder why this kind of casting bothers me so much when it comes to star trek but i’m fine with three thousand different people playing elizabeth bennet or sherlock holmes. otoh, i will never accept a hercule poirot who’s not sir david suchet. so is it a matter of “the first version of experienced of this particular character was so formative to me that i can accept no other?” idk. all of it is subjective and NONE of it is logical.
+ kirk: far be it from me to compliment shatner, but paul wesley doesn’t have the easy, warm charm that shatner brought to kirk and that chris pine had a great variation on. while i like most of the aos!st cast, pine was the only one who had me fully on board with him as a variation on the characters from the original show. i truly love pine’s kirk, even if shatner IS kirk. as for wesley, he’s nothing like kirk at all and i think he was miscast.
+ spock: okay, i’m the world’s biggest fan of mr. leonard nimoy z”l, so it’s no surprise that i wasn’t super crazy about zachary qinto’s version of spock. he was missing that undercurrent of warmth and steadiness that was so essential to the original character. ethan peck is further proof that literally no one is going to be an acceptable substitute for mr. leonard nimoy z”l and my final feelings on the matter are: i like whatever character ethan peck is playing, but he’s not spock. (this goes for most of the aos cast: i adore anton yelchin’s little baby angel ensign, but he wasn’t my garbage son. john cho can do no wrong, but i didn’t feel like he had really anything to do with the character george takei created. simon pegg is a fun presence onscreen but that’s not scotty, etc.)
+ chapel: i still don’t know what’s going on here. the character in snw bears ZERO resemblence to the one from tos. less than zero. they are actively opposite. unless the writers are going to, like, have her undergo a brain transplant that explains her personality change, it’s inexplicable that they made this decision. that said: i like jess bush’s chapel SO much. i just wish they’d given her another name.
+ uhura: celia rose gooding is the only one of the snw cast that i can convince myself could conceivably grow into the character we know on tos. she doesn’t have nichelle nichols’s confidence, but then she isn’t supposed to. she’s so young that i can believe she’d change that much. it’s the opposite with aos: i like the character zoe saladaña was playing but she didn’t seem like uhura to me.
+ m’benga: we didn’t see much of tos’s m’benga, so i think the casting could have gone in a lot of different directions. i’m glad it landed on babs olusanmokun–i like his performance a lot and i’m so glad he’s part of the show.
+ janice rand: i know she hasn’t appeared on snw but she SHOULD. of all the characters who deserved to be explored!!! where is my yeoman rand??? she better show up in season 3!!!!
i need to ponder why this kind of casting bothers me so much when it comes to star trek but i’m fine with three thousand different people playing elizabeth bennet or sherlock holmes. otoh, i will never accept a hercule poirot who’s not sir david suchet. so is it a matter of “the first version of experienced of this particular character was so formative to me that i can accept no other?” idk. all of it is subjective and NONE of it is logical.