Marc Alaimo Photo

Sci-Fi Blast From The Past - Marc Alaimo (Star Trek: Deep Space ...

.  Four years later the Cardassian is forced to put on his best diplomatic smile and fight alongside Sisko when the Starfleet officer rescues him and key members of Cardassia’s government from the Klingons.  Dukat eventually joins forces with the Dominion to fight against the Federation but the war ends up costing him more than he bargains for.  It is the character’s unpredictability that makes portraying him such a treat for actor Marc Alaimo. “I think when I began playing Dukat their [the show’s producers] objective was to have an aggressive, fairly one-dimensional Cardassian,” explains Alaimo.  “However, I eventually got to add to what they gave me in the scripts.  I was able to slowly make the character my own and I endowed him with a variety of different characteristics.  I think they picked up on the fact that I was more versatile, perhaps, than they had at first thought.  So they began writing these wonderful situations for Dukat where he could be seen as being sensitive or irrational or intellectual.  All of these things came out in the character through the writing and in my way of playing him. “I like Dukat,” proclaims the actor.  “I think he’s the most exciting character on the programsimply because the writers can take him in so many different directions.  He can be evil, mean, charming, lovable, funny, vulnerable and, yes, even sexy.  Our heroes on the show never get to really be bad.  We’ve all got a dark side to our nature but in a civilized culture you try to restrain or control that part of your personality.  However, Dukat is an opportunist, so he plays both his good and bad sides to get exactly what he wants.” Despite the fact that he had already appeared as a Cardassian on The Next Generation Alaimo was not the first choice when it came time to cast the part of Gul Dukat.  “I didn’t even know this until much later on but they brought in someone else to do Gul Dukat.  It turned out that he was an incredible friend of mine but didn’t work out, so they called me in.  Since then I’ve had this sense that nothing is forever and that you can’t count on anything, particularly in this business.  I went in, though, did the audition and got the part and Dukat’s been a marvelous extension for me as an actor.

Variety and Daily Variety Television Reviews, 1993-1994

Encyclopedia of Television Series, Pilots and Specials: 1974-1984

Movies made for television, the telefeature and the mini-series, 1964-1986

Action!, the action movie A-Z

The Art of Star Trek