Over the last few years, television science fiction series have become oddly...recursive? incestuous? - you know, I couldn't find a term that was appropriate. I refer to the practise of casting both guest spots and ongoing roles using actors who have appeared in other shows. Ben Browder and Claudia Black from
Farscape ended up on
Stargate SG-1, as did Robert Picardo from
Voyager, (who then moved to
Stargate Atlantis, along with Jewel Staite from
Firefly); James Marsters from
Buffy the Vampire Slayer did a recurring role on
Smallville and a guest spot on
Torchwood, and Anthony Head did one on
Doctor Who; Andreas Katsulas from
Babylon 5 showed up on
Enterprise; and in the great recursive coup of all time, Richard Hatch returned to
Battlestar Galactica.
But somehow all of that seems to pale against recent events from
Doctor Who. Rumour has it that David Tennant, the Doctor, has recently started dating Georgia Moffett, who appeared in an episode of
Doctor Who entitled
"The Doctor's Daughter" in the titular role of the Doctor's daughter. Just to make the situation a little weirder than it already sounds, Ms. Moffett is actually the daughter of Peter Davison, who played the fifth incarnation of Doctor Who. So, just to clarify that, they cast the daughter of the fifth Doctor to play the daughter of the current Doctor, who then decided to ask her out. I realize that there's nothing actually wrong with any of that, it just seems odd, somehow.
- Sid
Actors have to work and earn money to pay their bills and raise children... it's nothing wrong with seeing familiar faces on another shows some time later.
ReplyDeleteSorry, didn't mean to make it sound like I was criticizing the practise, but it's interesting that it's such a science fiction thing - I don't have any impression that people from Law and Order are popping up on CSI:NY or anything like that. It surprised me that I couldn't find a term for it anywhere. I think of it as "genre-casting" but that's a clumsy term, there should be some kind of colloquial expression.
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