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With Dominic Keating
Star Trek Enterprise Dominic Keating is the actor who portrayed the NX-01 Enterprise's armory officer,Lieutenant Malcolm Reed, on Star Trek: Enterprise. Dominic was the “life of the party” at our recent Star Trek Convention He was well received and enjoyed by all. I hope you enjoy his thoughts. Wow, umm… There was one particular day, I guess it was when we were just launching the show I think. Scott went off to New York to do a bunch of press and he did the Rosie O’Donnell show which is a chat show and she’d found this old commercial that he’d done back in the 70’s when he was getting started as an actor and it was late 70’s early 80’s and it was done as a musical theatre commercial and he was the Canada Dry guy, you know with a little head scarf you know and leg warmers, leggings I mean and it was pretty cheesy. Anyway, the supervising producers got a copy of the said commercial and they got it linked up by the guy that did all our video stuff so that at a hit of a switch it would go all over the computers and the big plasma screen at the back of the bridge and the situation room. And Scott was… no, sorry now that I think about it you can’t get Canada Dry bottles anymore. They don’t make them but the props department made up a bunch of these green bottles with the logo on it and we all had one hidden. So one of the PA’s was sent off to get Scott to go do the next shot and he comes swaggering in like the captain you know he’s all good to do the scene and then someone goes shhh and this cheesy commercial and we all started dancing Canada Dry guy, Canada Dry guy (he actually sang this in the interview) you’ve never seen a grown man go so pure red in just an instant. It was pretty funny. What is the worst situation you have found yourself in? I was in Africa gosh early 90’s and I was in Ghana and it was pretty bad I got Malaria and I was in the middle of nowhere and I was taken to a field hospital six and a half hours over this dirt track road and summarily injected in the hinny with a needle this big (shows a fairly long needle length with his hands) by a big black man and it was a pretty low point in my life. I was hallucinating and just malaria smacks you like a ton of bricks and it was a pretty bad time I would have to say. If you could be god for a day what would you do and why? Well wouldn’t it be nice to you know just make the world a better place. Sprinkle some magic dust and you know there is so much poverty and injustice and suffering. Just look at the TV. The floods in Guatemala and the earthquake in Pakistan and Indiana and just now in America with the hurricanes in the gulf coast area there’s just so much… I touch wood a lot. I don’t know if I believe in God anyway. So that’s what I’d do if I was. If I had that kind of power. Is there anything that you would do for yourself? You know I would probably buy a Lamborghini (laughs). I don’t know what would I do for myself. I am pretty good with the things the way they are I guess. I wouldn’t mind… if I was God for the day and I could just swing it that I could suddenly play some parts that I really wanted to play. You know get to work with some people I really wanted to work with yeah I’d tack that on the end of ending world poverty. So you’d still work even if you didn’t have to for monetary reasons? Yeah, I think so, I mean I often say out loud that I wouldn’t mind retiring and putting it all behind me. It’s quite stressful you know being an actor, even a working one it’s a tuff game. But you don’t want to moan too much about it. It’s also a great game and I get to travel a lot and you know meet people and then you get to, when you do work, you get to just play. What do you think is the future of Star Trek? Goodness knows. They’ll certainly put it on ice I mean paramount owns this franchise and the name and but I don’t know what the future will be for Trek. Its possible that under someone else’s auspice and creative guidance it could be re-invented in such a way that it would attract, finally, a bright, young new audience that would take it to its heart as the older audience has already done. You know there is all sorts of rumors at the moment that it might be sort of 90210 Trek set in a space academy, in Starfleet academy. I thought about actually CSI Star Trek which I think would be quite a good idea but you know and you go around the universe solving inter-galactic sci-fi crimes. Something like that maybe. Maybe Star Trek survivor or something? (Laughs). Yeah this week on planet Thag… The UFP fan club of Australia thanks Dominic for all he did for us at our recent convention and we wish him all the best for the future. Thanks to our beautiful interviewer, Ms Maryanne Scutella, for the interview.  |
