May 2004

Union Jack

Issue 111

page 19

LIEUTENANT Malcolm Reed is the British astronaut with the most extensive experience in space. But unless we wage a successful letter-writing campaign on his behalf, his career may be terminated.

Reed is descended from a long line of Royal Navy men. Indeed, when he joined Starfleet instead of the Navy, his father was insulted that the ocean didn’t seem big enough for his son.

Currently Reed serves as the weapons and tactical officer aboard Enterprise NX-01. His duty station is the tactical console on the ship’s bridge. In any encounter with an alien vessel he is the one who immediately scans the ship for weapons and engine configurations.

He is also in charge of security and procedures for locking down the ship in an emergency, such as being boarded.

A natural pessimist, Reed’s misgivings about the friendliness he and his shipmates would encounter in deep space have been proven valid. Many times he has had to improvise against hostile aliens with superior weaponry.

In one battle early in the Enterprise’s mission, the ship’s torpedoes failed to penetrate an enemy ship’s defences. The crew were nearly captured, to be drained of their bodily fluids. Only the cooperation between Reed and an friendly alien enabled them to destroy their common foe.

Reed is fascinated by munitions and what he can create next in his Armoury. It was he who presented the Enterprise’s crew with their new hand weapons, called "phase-pistols." As he explained, "They have two settings, stun and kill. It would be best not to confuse them."

He has made technological strides in other ways, such as perfecting a stable electromagnetic barrier, also known as a "forcefield." When a strange, growing organism invaded Enterprise and tried to absorb several crewmembers, Reed needed a way to stop the creature from spreading and capturing more people.

He jury-rigged a prototype based on specs in the Enterprise’s database and found a way to control the particle density, something Starfleet had not been able to do in five years.

Reed’s knowledge of ship’s weaponry, his professionalism and his dedication to duty make him vital member of the crew as Enterprise now probes the mysterious area of space known as the "Delphic Expanse."

Almost 2000 light-years across, the Delphic Expanse is an intergalactic equivalent of earth’s Bermuda Triangle. It is home to many strange anomalies and dangerous species. Sometimes even the laws of physics do not apply. Ships have been known to return from the Expanse with their crews’ bodies anatomically inverted, if they return at all.

In 2153, the crew of Enterprise NX-01 were dispatched on a mission to the Expanse to locate the mysterious alien race known as the Xindi, after Starfleet determined the Xindi were responsible for a devastating attack upon earth.

For full details, visit www.startrek.com/startrek/view/series/ENT/.

British actor Dominic Keating portrays Starfleet Lieutenant Malcolm Reed weekly on Star Trek: Enterprise on Sky One in the UK and on UPN in the United States.

A native of Leicester, Keating went into acting after earning a BA with Honours in history from University College London. His personal website is online on http://dominickeating.com/.

His television credits include the regular role of Tony on Channel Four’s Desmonds, a recurring role of Mallos in the Canadian TV series The Immortals, and one-off roles in Inspector Morse and Casualty.

His film credits include a starring role in the feature film Jungle 2 Jungle opposite Tim Allen and Martin Short, and an appearance in the Oscar-nominated feature film Almost Famous.

Keating remains a resident of Los Angeles, as reported in Union Jack last September: www.ujnews.com/html/DominicKeating.shtml. This could change, of course, should Star Trek: Enterprise be cancelled, as is rumoured.

AUTHOR: Dr Richard Tracey is an educational researcher based in Carlsbad, California.