Forgotten Star Trek Legend Got Hired By Not Taking Audition Seriously

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 1 second ago

Older Star Trek fans frequently dunk on the Alex Kurtzman era of the franchise for many different reasons, some more justified than others. Perhaps the most frequent complaint is that the writers, actors, directors, and showrunners bringing NuTrek to life aren’t taking everything seriously enough. Diehards still see this franchise as Gene Roddenberry’s baby, and they don’t like the idea of other creators coming along and treating Star Trek as something lighthearted and silly (like, say, having a main character puke up glitter as a joke on multiple occasions).

However, there are times when Star Trek is best served by not taking everything so seriously. For example, some of the franchise’s best episodes are silly comedies, including TNG bangers like “Rascals” and “Qpid.” After TNG ended, one of the franchise’s most underrated icons actually got the job by not taking his audition seriously at all. Dominic Keating, who played Malcolm Reed on Enterprise, never received a prop that the producers sent for his audition. But that’s okay, because he actually got hired after pretending a water bottle was a plasma coil.

H2O, No

On Enterprise, Dominic Keating plays Malcolm Reed, the ship’s armory officer. While he had some fun buddy comedy adventures with Connor Trineer’s Trip Tucker character (adventures which now continue offscreen with the actors’ hilarious D-Con Chamber podcast), Reed was a relatively reserved and private character for much of the show’s run. In fact, he could be downright dour at times. When you learn how Keating actually landed the gig, though, you’ll understand that the actor is anything but dour.

Paramount was supposed to mail Keating a plasma coil prop to use as part of his audition. Sadly, somebody messed up, and the actor was sent the wrong item instead. This left him in something of a bind: should he complain to someone about getting the wrong prop, or maybe go off-script and try to make the prop he was sent somehow work? Instead, Keating embraced a cheeky third option: he simply used the water bottle that he brought onto the Paramount lot as a stand-in for the plasma coil. Despite (or perhaps because of) the water bottle shenanigans, Keating got the job and joined the Enterprise family.

Tinker, Tenor, Starfleet, Spy

Interestingly, this audition mix-up is seemingly referenced in the very first episode of Enterprise. In “Broken Bow,” there is a scene where Malcolm Reed is supposed to receive plasma coils and receives a different item altogether. No one has ever claimed responsibility for trolling Dominic Keating with that scene, so it’s possible that its inclusion in the script was just a coincidence. However, it seems far more possible that the writers and producers of Enterprise decided to include a winking nod to the actor’s hilarious bit of audition improvisation.

Reed’s character developed significantly over the course of Enterprise, and he was eventually assigned to Section 31. From everything we know about this shadowy organization, they could likely have taught the armory officer all sorts of tricks, including how to kill a man using only his thumb. But if Reed is anything like Dominic Keating, he had a special trick of his own to teach these Starfleet secret agents: how to land the biggest job of your entire life using only a water bottle!