It’s interesting to go back through an actor’s career and compare his or her roles. I found myself doing that recently with Scott Bakula. I have been a fan of his three TV shows and have recently been watching them concurrently due to the magic of Netflix. Dr. Sam Beckett, Capt. Jonathan Archer, and Agent Dwayne Pride. How are these characters the same, and how are they different?
Sam Beckett is a character Scott Bakula played on Quantum Leap. Beckett is a scientist who develops a way to travel in time; however, he finds himself stuck “leaping” from one person’s life to another “setting right what once went wrong”, presumably by the hand of a higher power. Sam is smart, inventive, and always goes the extra mile for the people whose lives he has leapt into. That being said, he is also a bit naïve. He needs Al, his friend from the future (who appears to him as a hologram) to keep him focused. However, for good or bad, Sam usually wins out.
Captain Archer is from the last TV installment of the Star Trek franchise, entitled Enterprise. Bakula plays the leader of the Earth’s first deep space mission. At the beginning of the series, Archer is a lot like Sam Beckett, but after a while, he learns that he can’t always be “good” and do what his fine moral sense would dictate. Sometimes, for the greater good (e.g., his ship or the Earth), he has to do things that are unseemly and don’t fit his image of what a starship captain should be.
Dwayne Pride, supervising agent on NCIS: New Orleans, is still a bit of a mystery since the show it only in its first season. However, there are parts of both of the other characters in him. Pride definitely wants to help people. He feels for the victims in his cases and for the people who work for him. Yet, he does have a history which is not entirely clean, and he has a bit of a renegade in him. (Like when he runs off to take care of something on his own without telling his team.)
Pride appears to be the most complex of the characters, especially at the beginning of the series. Beckett remained pretty much the same throughout, while Archer grew the most. Time will tell what happens with Pride.
So, Bakula has done a great job in creating three memorable characters. It seems he may have used his experience with other roles to define his current one, a thing which good actors do a lot. And yet, he has also managed to maintain the differences, and give us a great viewing experience no matter what role he takes. Let’s hope NCIS:NO lasts a long time and that Bakula will be acting for a long time after that.