Dominic and Me

Yeah, well, it's a cell phone camera, so what can I do.

Anyway, if you're not a sci-fi fan, move right along. As you now know, I met Dominic Keating of Star Trek: Enterprise last night in New York. Yeah, I stopped him as he was walking by and asked if he was him. He was. And man he was a nice guy. We talked a good ten to 15 minutes. As you may know, the show was just canceled, and Keating had a number of interesting observations, including:

- The show was canceled because of politics. The people on high kept telling the shows producers to do inane things to make it more interesting, like "add a tamborine to the theme music" (they did), and, my favorite, "add a boy band to one of the mess hall scenes, entertaining the crew" (I'm not kidding). They didn't take that last advice. Suffice it to say, I'm told, that all this meddling caused some bad will between the show's producers and the upper brass and that killed the show, even though Dominic says it's the #2 rated show at UPN.

- The fans apparently raised 3.5 million (in pledges, I think) to buy the show! But they'd have been smarter to spend that money on lobbying, oh well, someone should have called...

- I did tell him I really felt the show finally got its legs last season, and that this season especially, the Vulcan scenes, were fascinating. He agreed.

- Otherwise, Dominic was in NYC filming a mockumentary about Jonathan Winters. He's the role of the guy who "discovers" Winters, they were filming earlier that day outside the MOMA, where I ran into him last evening.

- Future plans? Probably gonna head back to London for this summer, then see what to do next. He sounds like he's planning to stay in the US, LA, find more work. But he was clearly very disappointed (I'd say a bit sad and ticked) about the show being canceled.

My overall impression was simply "what a nice guy". My friend Ki concurred. He totally didn't mind having fans stop him on the street, and while I kept trying to tell him I wasn't THAT much of a Star Trek geek, I don't think I was very convincing (hell, I'm blogging about it). But yeah, very very nice guy, and cute too. I told him I was posting this on one of the top lefty political blogs, so hopefully someone out there will know him and send him the link (and tell him that if he's ever in DC he BETTER email me for a drink, and if he's single...)