May 2002

Star Trek: The Magazine 

As ENTERPRISE approaches the end of its opening season, we catch up with Dominic Keating to get his view of Lieutenant Malcolm Reed, weapons officer and action hero.

After several months of ENTERPRISE's grueling weekly shooting schedule, Dominic Keating is as energetic as he was on day one. "I'm still cheery!" he says. "It's going well. It's been a hell of a ride, but I've really found my place, and I'm having a great time. And they're starting to look at Malcolm quite closely, and that's really fun."

MAJOR EPISODE

Dominic's biggest show so far has been 'Shuttlepod One,' aired in February, and he was delighted with it. "Dare I say it was quite the best work I've ever put into a camera lens. Connor and I had an amazing time; the chemistry between us was electric. It was a great dynamic, and I think the fact that I'm English adds an extra angle for an American audience, just in that I would be the voice of reason. Malcolm isn't all doom and gloom, although Trip refers to him as the Grim Reaper; he bares his soul, and it's a very moving moment when you actually get to see inside the somewhat brittle shell of this army man. He's becoming a real, breathing, living human being. This episode was groundbreaking--I can't say it in any other way; you see a side of this man that's real and that's very touching and vulnerable, and I just hope that episode does not just sit out there and never happens again."

The actors suffered real-life discomfort while making the show. "They froze the stage!" says Dominic. "That was the hardest part of the whole filming. They brought the temperature down inside this igloo that they had built, and put the shuttlepod in there. In the script we had turned down the thermostat in the shuttle to conserve oxygen, so, space being as cold as it is, the temperature inside the shuttle drops to below zero, so they wanted to see our breath.

SUFFERING ON THE SET

"The gag kind of worked, but you weren't seeing enough breath, so it became a hell of a process, which took about a day to figure out. They literally shot 20 seconds at a time, and in between they just filled up the shuttlepod with liquid nitrogen and turned on six huge, massive air-conditioning units that made a real din. We shot for three days like that, and it was hard! It was freezing cold, very noisy, and it was hard to listen and hear, and you never really got a run at a scene. If I'd had to do another day I'm sure I could have dug it up from inside of me, but at the end of the third day, when we knew it was over, my knees just buckled. But, like I say, we put some incredible stuff in the camera, and I think it's one of the finest hours."

May 2002

Star Trek Monthly

Issue #91 

Taking your first few tentative steps into the wilds of space is a daunting prospect, particularly when there are all sorts of nasties out there. So, there's no better person to have at your side than a first class tactical officer who knows all about the business end of a phaser.

"I nagged my dad rotten to get the first colour telly in our street so I could see Star Trek in colour," Dominic Keating reveals. "I was absolutely gobsmacked when Spock's shirt was blue!"

Star Trek was an important part of Keating's early life - whether watching the "fried eggs fall off the civic walls" in Star Trek: The Original Series' Operation: Annihilate!, or being inveigled into the universe of Star Trek: The Next Generation when his housemate would only allow that one programme to be watched on his satellite system. Kirk's "various Helen of Troy girlfriends, in their flowing chiffon, were my first foray into, 'Phwoar! She's nice!" while his interest in Patrick Stewart's Jean-Luc Picard was piqued by seeing "an English actor in an American show". A friend tried to entice him to watch Star Trek: Voyager by describing Seven of Nine in glowing detail, but Keating carefully explains that, "I'm really surprised and pleased that yes, it is Star Trek that we're doing on Enterprise, but it is also really distinctly different from Voyager."

Now, 18 episodes into the filming of Enterprise's first season, Keating has come over to the UK to promote the series' launch on Sky One - and to catch up with old friends, family and the latest plays in London's West End. As he admits, he's becoming more and more used to the frenzy that surrounds Star Trek after some initial reservations. "I've done three conventions now: I'm the convention queen, actually! There was a certain amount of trepidation for the first one or two, but by the third one I was in a stride. It's like interviews, once you get into doing them, you just free up and let yourself come through."

There aren't many interviewees who punctuate the discussion with a free vocal rendition of their series' theme tune, but Keating will warble à la Russell Watson at a moment's notice. "It's my convention opener," he admits. "They always say, 'We haven't got the soundtrack', and I say, 'No worries - give me the mike!'"

The relaxed atmosphere on the Enterprise set clearly suits Keating. "There's a great energy," he points out. "Right from the get-go at the read through, when we all met that one time. We just had a simpatico and a generosity. None of us took each other too seriously, and there was some good gentle ribbing."

As he leans backwards and forwards on the hotel bedroom chair, gesticulating wildly to make his points, his own energy is very evident, and he's starting to bring that out in Malcolm Reed. "I'm learning to free him up a bit," he says. "I'm not frightened to have him be contratictory. He doesn't have to be this quintessential, buttoned-down, by the book English guy, who's shy of girls. He can also be all that I am. God knows, each in our own way, we are all a multitude and a mass of contradictions. I'm glad they didn't shoot me out of the gate as quickly as they did with one or two of the other characters. I didn't have to make my mind up and make those split second decisions about the character, what his likes and dislikes were, and how he would react in given moments. It's been a nice trickle up from the boots, right up to the Prada Right Stuff boiler suit!"

Keating has enjoyed the pace. "It's changed a lot, even in seven months," he explains. "The first time I ever see myself play a particular role on screen, it's always a shock. And God knows it was, on that big screen at Paramount, which is 35-feet high! It wasn't even on a fuzzy little telly so I could hide behind the sofa. It takes me two or three viewings until I start to think that I wasn't so bad in it. It was a little bit disconcerting the first time though. What really got me though, was the scene in the temporal room. I really got excited, because suddenly this pilot looked like a movie. I was really proud that I was in something that was bloody good, and not just some TV sci-fi show. It really looked expensive and exciting. The hairs on the back of my neck went up, and the reaction afterwards in the foyer at Paramount was just so good."

Most of the discoveries about Reed have been as much a surprise to the actor when he receives the scripts as they are to the viewer on transmission.

"There was a time when I was getting a little worried that Malcolm was getting left out of things," he admits. "And that this first thrust of the triumvirate of Archer, Trip and T'Pol, which they obviously had as a game plan, was going to be the plan for the duration. I didn't say anything, but I started to get a little antsy. But luckily I just showed up, I was of service, and did the best with what they gave me. And it worked out, because they started looking at the dynamic between me and other characters, particularly Trip, and they got right on it. There were a couple of scenes in an episode, at about the one-third mark, where it was obvious that as actors he and I had a certain chemistry. We just finished a wonderful episode where we are in a room together on Shuttlepod One. It's him and me for 50 pages, and I never thought I would get that kind of experience and be presented with that kind of challenge as an actor on Enterprise. I've done some really hard-hitting plays here in London - new plays and award-winning stuff - and this was equal to that. And, of course, it's in front of a camera, so you know that instead of an audience of 900, it's going to be seen by an audience of millions. That's exciting!"

Keating is still getting a buzz from the role. "When I walk through what they call the Godfather Alley between Stage 8 and Stage 16 and I turn around, there's the Paramount water tower in the background. I get to my trailer with my name in embossed italics on the door...May that feeling I get never end, and I mean to keep that as close to my heart for as long as I can. There may come a day when that isn't there anymore, so I have to be really aware of it right now."

The cast are all now finding their feet with their characters, and Keating passes on a word of advice that executive producer Brannon Braga gave him. "We were standing outside in the sunshine, and he said, 'Don't be frightened to say to a director that you actually know this better than him. Thanks for the suggestion but that's not going to work in this scene.'" As it's transpired, Keating can't recall a time he's needed to put that into operation, and he has nothing but praise for the various directors who have worked on the show. "Rick Kolbe was wonderful to work with," he enthuses. "I really got on with him. He was open to discussion about the tone and tenor of some scenes. My natural inclination as an actor is sometimes to overact. I grew up as a stage actor, and if you do that in front of a camera, it looks ridiculous."

Keating explains that there's a difference between being a guest actor on a show, as he's done on numerous occasions, and being a series regular. "To be honest, I was still a novice when I came to do Enterprise," he admits. "I hadn't done 15 episodes back-to-back on a drama in front of a camera. I'd done a half-hour sitcom here in London, but that's a whole different ball game. It's a totally different dance. The camera still held a certain fear for me. I wasn't playing to it, but now, I have to say, I'm getting quite good at understanding the language of film and the camera's part in the production process. You play the scene between two people, but open up ever so slightly to let the audience in when you know that it's dramatically right.

"[Laurence] Olivier used to talk about the three 'I's: there's part of you as an actor that knows you are an actor playing a part, there's part of you that must be the part, and there's part of you that knows you are an actor playing a part in front of an audience and never forgets that. The camera is your audience, and I'm slowly and surely growing to really love that audience."

Indeed, Keating loves the camera to the extent that he has started attending the LA Film School, learning how to direct. "I want to take that to Rick Berman, and he'll probably go, 'Oh God, another actor who wants to direct!' I heard that there was this opportunity if you really show the intention, and if you nag him enough, he'll let you do it."

Keating reveals that various scenes in the pilot had to be re-shot after Paramount Pictures studio head Kerry McCluggage queried the hairstyles, particularly "Scott [Bakula's] little beatnik, trendy young haircut, so they gave him a side parting."

Ask about his favourite experience, and without hesitation Keating nominates Shuttlepod One. "I can't tell you how excited I was," he says. "And I get excited when Marvin Rush gets excited. Our director of photography is one of the old hands on the show, and particularly when he's got the camera on his back and he is part of the scene with you, it gets his juices going. I get really excited when I see this 16-year veteran of the franchise get excited about what he's filming."

The conditions under which the episode was shot were different as well. "It was something else!" Keating recalls. "We had three days in an igloo that they built for us. In the show, we'd turned the thermostat down to preserve our oxygen: we're running out of oxygen fast and we're floating in space. They placed six or seven huge air-conditioning units with dry ice everywhere, and put the pod on plinths. They wanted the breath gag, where you can see our breath, but even with dry ice packed everywhere, it wasn't doing it, so before each take one of the prop guys was filling the shuttlepod with liquid nitrogen out of this huge gaping pipe. We were literally frozen to the bone for three days straight, for 15-hour days, but there was something so wonderful about the camaraderie and getting the job done. Connor [Trinneer, a.k.a. Trip] and I put some good stuff in the camera that week. I was worn out when it was over, but the morning after, I'd have got up and done it all again!"

Keating has high hopes for Reed's character development as the seasons progress. "There is some sort of sense that he is an enigma," he says. "I can see in Malcolm, somewhere in that repression, there is a passion that can't quite find its way out. People are going to read this and go, 'It's Star Trek, kiddo!' and yes, it is Star Trek, kiddo, but maybe it will be different. I think Brannon Braga is going to like writing for Malcolm Reed. I think he is the most interesting character on the ship!"

By Paul Simpson and Ruth Thomas

*Submitted by Vikki

May 2002

Issue #298

ARTILLERYMAN IN ACTION

"I thought I was going to be the first *gay* character in space," Dominic Keating mock-complains. "I read all about it. I was in the supermarket and I saw it in TV Guide, so I rang up Brannon Braga and said, 'What's this all about?' He said, 'It's going to be fantastic, Dominic. You'll be outed in November. You'll be on the cover of TV Guide.' But he was jesting with me. We've just shot a couple of episodes that make it self-evident that he's not, in the end, gay."

And so it is that Keating plays Lt. Malcolm Reed, the very straight security officer aboard the NX-01, on Enterprise. Reed, as promised early on, is a Brit who likes to blow things up, and seems to get on fine with the rest of the crew, though he, like everyone else, frequently differs with the Vulcan sub commander, T'Pol (Jolene Blalock).

BUTTONED-DOWN BRIT

"I'm having a very good time," says Keating. "'Shuttlepod One' was a real eye-opener. It was a wonderful episode. Trip [Connor Trinneer] and I were marooned on a shuttle pod with 40 hours of air left to breathe, and we think the Enterprise has been blown up. It was just him and me for 47 pages. You really get to know the personalities of these two guys, and you realize that Malcolm is multi-layered. That's what I love. They didn't just make him the buttoned-down, gun-crazy Brit with the pompous attitude. I was fearful that he might run that course and I'm so glad that he hasn't. He's very much a mutli-faceted character. He's an oftentimes contrastable, living, breathing human being. Each episode, you get to know a bit more about him; he's just a joy to play. I really like Malcolm. And I'm getting to act. 'Shuttle Pod One' is some of the best work I've ever done, if I may say so. We did something quite extraordinary.

"The dynamic between Connor and me, both as actors and as characters on the show, is really strong. We had a little scene together in an episode we shot a few months ago, but then we never really got to do anything together again until 'Shuttle Pod One.' It was quite a dramatic little scene in which we butted heads and didn't see eye-to-eye about how to solve a particular problem. Connor and I sparked really well with each other. We have a great understanding of each other's timing and the rhythm of how we like to do a scene and play our characters. There was an inherent drama there that the writers hadn't seen before, and as soon as they saw it [in that episode], they really got into it. It's quite clever. They watch the shows and see when something works. They're not frightened. Whatever they may have planned, they'll just say, 'Hey, this is really working. Let's use this some more. Let's tap into this.' Consequently, 'Shuttle Pod One' came out of that little moment.

"I hope they keep doing that, because I would like for Malcolm to find his voice, so he has a place at the Captain's table along with Archer [Scott Bakula], Trip and T'Pol," Keating comments. "It's something that could be used not just sporadically, but more day-to-day, week-to-week, episode-to-episode. I was worried when we started that Malcolm wouldn't have a voice. It seemed to be the Captain, Trip and T'Pol forever and forever, amen, but I think that may change. I hope it does, but I know as much as you know. Rick [Berman] and Brannon were dreaming up this show for two years, and I guess that, in conceptualizing it, they had a triumvirate in mind, certainly for the first season."

While it's true that Reed, Sato (Linda Park), Mayweather (Anthoy Montgomery) and Dr. Phlox (John Billingsley) have thus far served as supporting characters, they're not missing out on all the action. In fact, Keating can rattle off quite a few episodes that have helped evolve his character. "I was blown away by the pilot," Keating enthuses of "Broken Bow." "The one before 'Shuttle Pod One' I love, too. 'Sleeping Dogs' is about a Klingon cruiser that's marooned in some gas giant, and Sato, T'Pol and I are trying to help out these poor Klingons who are slumped over their consoles. Malcolm gets to be very much a man of action in that, getting stuff done and fixing the ship. Then he gets beat up by a Klingon supermodel. He gets his ass kicked. So that's one angle of the character that I really hadn't seen, and I liked that.

"I also liked the bit we did in 'Cold Front,' when I bust Mayweather for sitting in the Captain's chair. That scene was written after the episode, actually; the show was short and they needed to add a scene. Several people have told me, 'God, I really liked that scene.' That's something they should be doing more of. They should spend a little time each week showing scenes like that, where the crew, or main seven, interact with each other in triangles and in pairs. I would love to see us doing more of that. It would be like ER. Let's take the characters away from the patients--the aliens, if you will--and see them actually interacting with each other. I would like to see us explore that dynamic of the drama rather than reacting to external stuff each week. I hope they do that."

Keating knows there's still a great deal of character uncharted. "There's so much I would like to see, so much I don't know about Malcolm," he admits. "Each week when the script comes, it's always new to me, what they've decided they want me to play. I want to see Malcolm become a real human being, not just a two-dimensional character--so that he's not just British and likes to shoot guns. That has some mileage in it, and those things are always good for a little rib tickle and a smile from the audience, but I hope that we'll really see him as a living, breathing human being who just happens to be a lieutenant on a starship. I hope we'll see that he has contrasting and conflicting character traits. I find myself playing some of the stuff and thinking, 'Oh, that's *not* very Malcolm-like.' And then I'll think, 'You know what? Let's do it like that. Let's not just go down one avenue and make all the colors the same. Let's salt and pepper this.' So I find myself bringing more of me to Malcolm than trying to find more of Malcolm in me."

VAMPIRE MAILMAN

Keating was born in Leicester, England, and more of less kicked off his acting career at age nine, when the English mistress at his school decided to put on a play and cast young Keating in the lead. But performing was in the actor's blood well before then. "My mother was an actress from age 17 to 20," he recalls. "She left RADA [Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts] to do a job, and she married my father pretty soon after. But he wasn't up for [her acting career], so she quit. He rescued her from the Devil's jaw, as it were, and I didn't learn until later on that she was where I got my base of talent from.

"I acted very often at school, and then at the University College of London. It took me a while to pluck up the courage to do it professionally. I was quite late coming to it, really. I was 24 or 25, and I must have been 26 when I got my first professional gig, a play called The Best Years of Your Life. Then I did the rounds on all the TV shows in England until I got Desmond's. I did five years on that sitcom and became a TV star back home. I then came to America because I was nearly cast two years running in Merchant-Ivory films. I nearly played Leonard Bast opposite Helena Bonham Carter in Howards End--the role went to Samuel West--and the following year I almost played the underbutler to Anthony Hopkins in Remains of the Day. It just didn't work out either time. I got impatient, I guess. 'When is it going to be *my* turn?' So I came to America."

Upon arriving in the U.S., Keating worked fairly regularly, and often in genre fare. His credits include episodes of Poltergeist: The Legacy ("Father to Son"), Buffy the Vampire Slayer ("Helpless"), G vs E ("Immigrant Evil", "Orange Volvo"), and Special Unit 2 ("The Wraps), as well as a recurring role as Mallos--the powerful demon out to kill Rafe (Lorenzo Lamas)--on The Immortal.

"Poltergeist was fab fun," says Keating. "I was doing some interim work at the time, as a courier, and I was actually delivering stuff from Mary Jo Slater's office. She was the casting agent on Poltergeist, and had an associate named Paul Weber. He only knew me from turning up in the morning to pick up their mail, and then one day I showed up in a suit and he said, 'Dominic, you're awfully well-dressed to come and pick up the mail.' And I went, 'Well, I'm actually coming in for a Poltergeist audition.' H was like, 'Oh, right,' but then I went into the room with him to read and I blew him out of the water. I was literally on of those moments where he took me by the hand and was like, 'You'll never guess. Oh my God! This guy was the mail guy! Look what I've found!' It was one of those wacky LA moments. And I had a great time in Vancouver shooting the episode. They were lovely.

"I made Buffy history with my episode. I was the first Watcher to be bitten and then morph into a vampire. I chased Buffy around Glendale for two days. We had lots of fun. Jeff Kober played this demon vampire who they had shipped in to test Buffy's powers as a Slayer. It was a good show."

CAMPY IMMORTAL

As for G vs E, "it was just terrific," Keating raves. "Jolene and John were in one together, too. The Pate brothers, well, they just know talent. They can spot 'em. I was sad that that series really didn't get its life. It was so clever--almost too clever. Unfortunately, USA [Network] didn't quite know how to market it. But you will see those boys again. The Pate brothers will be huge, in time. They're very talented lads. 

"Special Unit 2 was a giggle. It's such a small business in the end. One of my best friends, Dave Straiton, has directed Special Unit 2. He did the pilot for The Immortal and he's going to do an Enterprise. So it's coming full circle. But Special Unit 2 was a wacky show. Michael Landes and Alexondra Lee were really good.

"I did a bunch of Immortals," continues Keating, whose non-genre credits include Inspector Morse and the films Jungle2Jungle and Almost Famous. "I had a great time. I went back to Vancouver, and we shot a couple of episodes in Prague, too. I have to say that Mallos was one of the funniest characters I've ever gotten to sink my teeth into. Given the style of the show we were doing, within reason, he could be as broad, bitchy, campy and nasty as he liked. It was a joy. In the episodes we did in Prague, I got to dress up in medieval gear. I was the king of the castle. I saw Lorenzo at the Christmas parade in Los Angeles. They're waiting to hear if they're going to Australia to do more episodes. If they have a couple of episodes sometime in April or May, maybe I'll go do them. It was good fun, and Lorenzo's such a nice chap and really good to work with."

But for now, Keating is concentrating on Enterprise and contemplating the effect the popular series could have on his life. "I'll tell you what it *could* do. It *could* make me a name actor and show the world that I'm really good at what I do," Dominic Keating remarks. "And it *could* make producers and directors say, 'We want him for this part in our movie.' That would be great. I do worry a little bit about typecasting. I would love to go on to other roles. I'm a versatile character actor, and I would hope that Enterprise wouldn't bar people from thinking of me in those terms. But if this is it, so be it. I'm happy. If Star Trek is the end of the line for me, professionally speaking, and I get to do a couple of Trek movies with these guys and use them as a stepping stone to direct, that would be great. 

"I would love it if I could get an office on the Paramount lot and come up with my own projects. LeVar Burton and Jonathan Frakes have offices on the lot; maybe I could, too. The Star Trek family is obviously very tight-knit. Once you're in the family, they're going to look after you. So if Enterprise is the end of the road and this is the only family I'm going to know, that's OK. It's more than OK. It's bloody marvelous."