Keating Asks, 'What Would Bakula Do?'

Although Dominic Keating (Malcolm Reed) was not surprised by the news of the cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise, he found himself in tears a couple of times during the end of filming, the actor admitted.

"There were a couple of times that night where I welled up. That Friday it really hit home for all of us that this was it," Keating told TV Zone (via DominicKeating.com). "We were shooting a scene in the shuttlepod launch bay...it was me, Scott [Bakula], John Billingsley, Linda Park and Anthony Montgomery. I remember watching Scott at work and thinking, 'Scott, I can’t tell you how great these past four years have been. I've learnt so much working with you, not only about the craft of acting and how to carry oneself on a film set, but also about being a human being.'"

Keating said that although he took the cancellation "on the chin" because they all suspected that it would happen, he found the timing particularly distressing because the show "seemed to have finally found its stride this season." While he did not have much to do during the first half of the fourth season, "things started to pick up for Malcolm with 'Observer Effect', in which his body is among those taken over by an alien life form. I had some fun scenes in that one." He also enjoyed the Klingon duology which revealed Reed's secret past with black ops unit Section 31. "I just figured that Malcolm was a member of some skull and crossbones society that he joined years ago and that it had now come back to haunt him."

The Section 31 storyline carried through to the penultimate episodes of the series, and Keating enjoyed working with Eric Pierpoint, a frequent Trek guest star who played Harris. "The two of us really hit it off and we had a lot of laughs together on set," Keating noted. "Harris and Reed meet in a dark alley and he suggests that my character go work for him. During one of the rehearsals I asked, 'Why, what have you got? A TV pilot? A movie?' That brought the house down, especially as we’d already heard about the cancellation."

Though he is sorry no longer to be working on Enterprise, Keating said that he recalls that when his UK sitcom Desmonds was not renewed, he was "gutted", only to visit friends in California and end up moving to the US. "Had things not turned out the way they did on Desmonds, I wouldn’t be here today," he observed. "I love living in Southern California...I'm a different acting animal than I was four years ago. The show was an amazing luck of the draw for me."

For more, including details on the effect Bakula has had on Keating, read the original interview in the May issue of TV Zone (#63) or visit DominicKeating.com.

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