2022 has seen the passing of another performer well known to Star Trek fans with the loss of Louise Fletcher, the actress who played Winn Adami on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
RIP Louise Fletcher
News of the passing of Louise Fletcher was first reported Friday night by the Hollywood trades, with a representative for the actress telling Variety she died at her home in France. She was 88.
Fletcher’s career dates back to the 1950s, consistently working in both film and television through the 2010s, with her last role on the television series Girlboss in 2017. Fletcher won an Academy Award for portraying Nurse Ratched in the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, also picking up a BAFTA Award and Golden Globe. Throughout her career, she was honored with a number of additional accolades, including two Emmy Awards nominations.
Louise Fletch in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and with her Oscar
Star Trek fans know Fletcher for her recurring role of Winn Adami, appearing 14 times over seven seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The Bajoran Vedek who rose to Kai often came into conflict with Benjamin Sisko and Kira Nerys, making her one of the franchise’s best-known adversaries. Fletcher was nominated for five (and won four) awards from the Online Film & Television Association for her work on Deep Space Nine.
In a 2012 interview with startrek.com, Fletcher spoke about how she approached the character’s motivation:
Power. She wanted power and she was ambitious. She was sort of a Margaret Thatcher in space, or, as I used to say, I was the Pope in space. People would say, “Oh, you’re doing Star Trek. Who are you playing?” I’d say, “Think the Pope in space, except she’s like an ancient Pope, from the old days when Popes were ruthless and powerful and exerted their powers and fought wars and did all kinds of naughty things.”
Louise Fletcher as Winn Adami in Deep Space Nine
Trek community remembers Fletcher
On Friday night Deep Space Nine executive producer and showrunner Ira Steven Behr said on Twitter that fans of the series should be in mourning, and he praised Fletcher’s work saying she was a “key player” and “stone cold pro who committed totally to her character.” Behr also picked up on how fans love to hate the character of Winn, saying “She was so damn good being so damn bad.”
Every fan of #StarTrekDS9 should be in mourning tonight.
Louise was key player for us.
A stone cold pro who committed totally to her character.
I would have loved to interview her for our documentary but we never could synch schedules.She was so damn good being so damn bad. https://t.co/0600NLzUOZ
— Ira Steven Behr (@IraStevenBehr) September 24, 2022
Discovery co-creator Bryan Fuller, who worked on DS9 before moving to Voyager, expressed his condolences by saying Fletcher’s Kai Winn “walks with the Prophets.”
KAI WINN WALKS WITH THE PROPHETS – REST IN POWER, LOUISE pic.twitter.com/7SDW6CoPvP
— Bryan Fuller (@BryanFuller) September 24, 2022
TNG Star Jonathan Frakes also offered his condolences.
RIP Nurse Ratched #LouiseFletcher pic.twitter.com/bbmChrpPGy
— Jonathan Frakes (@jonathansfrakes) September 24, 2022
TrekMovie offers our condolences to the friends and family of Louise Fletcher.
Well I appreciate her for playing a character I liked to despise.
A good Actress, a remarkable character.
Excellent actress who was unfortunately pigeon-holed into playing ‘bad’ characters. I also remember hating her as the overbearing mother in The Karen Carpenter Story, knowing how Karen died. Her work on DS9 is another example of excellent performances being overlooked because of the “its just a silly sci-fi show” mentality.
Paramount has thoroughly embraced the “silly sci-fi show” mentality with Lower Decks and kiddie fare, so even if we’re ever lucky enough to get more actors of her caliber playing well-written characters, expect more of the same.
So, you do not approve of SNW or Discovery? If so, what is it you are waiting for Paramount to present as Star Trek to pique your interest again?
I think his point is that LDS lowers the level or seriousness even further for others who don’t get Star Trek. And you know what? He’s right!
Paramount should have focused on a single, high-quality show, set 100-200 years after TNG: essentially STAR TREK: THE THIRD GENERATION. Instead, they gave us too many low-quality shows, comedies, kiddie fare, alternate timelines, prequels, etc. And they should have appointed someone like Christopher Nolan or Vince Gilligan or even Manny Coto — in other words, someone who cares about the craft — to helm the franchise.
I have more-or-less enjoyed SNW (I could have done without “Spock Amok” and the fairy tale episode) and Picard (season one, anyway), as a coda to TNG. As to the others, they’ve occasionally had their moments — Saru’s arc in particular — but on the whole, they’re either dumbed down, or cringeworthy, or excessive nostalgia ploys/fan service, or overly emotional and new-agey (ghosts and magic mushrooms, anyone?). No one is going to be celebrating these shows as masterpieces in 25 years, they way we are with DS9.
Toning down the gravitas of the franchise is only going to deter the likes of Sean Connery or Tom Hanks or Toshiro Mfume or Louise Fletcher from clamoring to appear in Star Trek. It was just announced that Rhea Seehorn (Kim Wexler from BCS) is going to headline a new quasi-sci-fi show by Vince Gilligan. Even odds the cultural mojo is with him, not NuTrek.
A lot of the future depends on how SNW plays out. The crossover with Lower Decks, and the promises of comedy and melodrama on steroids, admittedly have me looking at season two with some trepidation. These promises do not foretell wonderfully subtle stories such as “The Perfect Mate” or “The Inner Light.” We’ll see. Promotional material often has little relationship to the end product.
I very much concur with pretty much everything you said there, River. But it seems instead of some good ‘gravitas,’ developed by showrunners you’ve mentioned above, we’re getting the remedial (yet fun, sometimes) fare we’re seeing. My guess is this approach is all a way to increase sub$$$. Quantity over quality.
Man reading your posts for as long as I have now, it’s pretty obvious you have become disillusioned with Star Trek or to be more fair about it NuTrek. For me, I actually love most of the new shows (and tolerate the ones I don’t love ;)) but same time I actually agree with your main point and that is I wish they would’ve restarted the franchise starting with a bold new show in the mid to late 25th century and wipe the slate clean. Take a bold chance again with new characters, situations and settings we never seen before.
If it was up to me, there would be NO prequels or reboots of any kind. The Kelvin movies, Discovery, Enterprise, SNW, none of that would’ve ever existed in the first place. Even sequels like Picard may not exist either. I prefer that direction to the others but it still wouldn’t have been my first choice either.. And I love nostalgia and fan service like most fans obviously but I do feel the new stuff wallows in it to an extreme.
We already have over 40 legacy characters who have appeared on all these new shows and Trek has only been back on TV for 5 years now. Kirk, Picard, Janeway and Pike are all back! I won’t be shocked if Archer and Sisko turns up too at some point (but it’s a bit harder with Sisko ;)). But this is probably what happens when A. you hire hardcore fans themselves to help run the franchise and B. you’re trying to get fans to pay for it full time.
And I love shows like LDS and SNW because they ARE lighter and more fun. And frankly, I prefer fun and entertaining stories to the heavy handed and dreary melodrama we get in shows like Discovery and Picard for the most part. Amok Spock is my favorite SNW episode so far lol. But unlike LDS, that can change with SNW in the future. I just think they wanted that show to feel lighter than the other live actions shows but may be too light at times.
But I don’t disagree with your main point, to make a show that tells intelligent and serious thought provoking stories again. I feel ALL the live action shows has done that here or there at times but not at the level TNG and DS9 did it. I think both of those did it the most out of all the shows (and why they are my top 2 shows in the franchise). And yes obviously TOS probably did it the best; especially for its time.
And I would lose a Vince Gilligan version of Star Trek. And yes please bring Manny Coto back and give him his own original show! I still want that guy for a fifth season of Enterprise too!
For my money, Coto’s stewardship of the fourth season of “Enterprise” is vastly overrated. (If you object to what SNW has done with the Gorn, you have no idea what level of disdain I feel for what Coto did to the Vulcans, who are infinitely more important to the Trek mythos.) In terms of fleshing-out a fictional universe while making you rethink what you already knew, “Better Call Saul” turned out to be just about everything a prequel should be, and I’m sure there are lessons there that the SNW producers would do well to heed. But though he’s reputed to be a fan himself, that Vince Gilligan’s talents would be well-suited to Trek is something we’ll never know.
Concur, Michael. After years of hearing praise for Es4, stuck my toe in the water last year and tried watching a few (had only seen finale and MIRROR DARKLY all the way through.) Since I’d also skipped all of s3 and all but first 20min of s2, it may be that I was missing nuances, but honestly, I didn’t think it was much of an improvement, The eps with Peter Weller kept me engaged, but it might as well have been BABYLON 5 because it still didn’t feel like TREK, or TREK done right to me.
That’s too bad Kmart, but you did try!
I think ENT’s fourth season is appreciated by fans so much mainly because Coto set a direct course for what Berman and Braga had strenuously avoided: playing-up the connections between the show and TOS. As to which, I grok, but the results were mixed at best. I really wanted to like the Vulcan episodes (and fully expected to given that the Reeves-Stevensons, whose Trek novels I had really admired, had come up with the story), and was bitterly disappointed. The performances by Robert Foxworth and Joanna Cassidy were just terrible (they were delightful together on the later seasons of “Six Feet Under”), and the notion that this elegant, pacifist, hyper-rational species needed the intervention of a human starship captain to rediscover their mojo offends me no end to this very day.
I have all kinds of issues with SNW, but after their mostly being horribly mishandled during the Berman era (yes, even on DS9), a Trek series has finally gotten the Vulcans right again. Gia Sandhu and her chemistry with Ethan Peck is a delight, and making T’Pring a sympathetic figure is exactly the sort of counter-intuitive thing a decent prequel should be up to. I’m not nearly so keen on the return of Sybok — but, well, we’ll see.
Didn’t know Cassidy had done SIX FEET. I really liked s1, but never saw anything past that, now have even less of an excuse to not go back and plow through them. I’m actually writing something right now where I am using Cassidy in my mind (circa 1980) as a basis — in fact the screen directions say that if this was being done period, we’d be seeing Joanna Cassidy, but since we’re not, this just has to be Charlize Theron.
The first season of SFU (lol) is easily its best. The series might have ended there, with the revelation that the viewpoint character Nate might not be long for this world himself. The later seasons still boast wonderful acting and direction, but the plot lines grow increasingly soapy, and the death-themed anthology aspect that made it so revolutionary was almost entirely lost. Plowing-on might yet be worth it, though, if only for the series finale, which is simply one of the best in TV history, so clever and heartfelt and bittersweet-reflective of the show’s themes that I get goosebumps just thinking about it.
I saw a handful of ENT episodes, mainly when I was hospitalized with injuries from a fall during one of the worst Covid months. Aside from being stuck in a hospital room with an addict yelling, screaming and singing (?) all night long, I did get to see a delightful episode, Carbon Creek. That alone made me want to buy the complete four seasons on DVD. It was my only escape from that Snake Pit of a hospital room, and my excuse to be sent home after a week. For that alone, I am quite grateful for ENT.
I dimly recall “Cross Creek” being overall decent enough, as all of the Trek series have their high and low points, “Enterprise” included. I’m glad that the show helped you to get through your hospital stay, in any case. I remember waking-up myself after surgery to what my roommate was watching: the original 1978 pilot for “Battlestar Galactica.” I had gotten to be a big fan of the Ron Moore remake, and was surprised to find that the first half wasn’t nearly so bad as I remembered. It ‘s only after they go to the Casino pilot that the show really falls into the abyss, from which it never recovered.
Thanks for your comment re: my hospital stay and that ENT episode. That night in the hospital really did remind me of the old ’40s movie Snake Pit with Olivia de Havilland, but once I found that ENT episode, it was the one thing that got me through! I did watch the older version of Galactica on occasion, but never saw the remake. All I’ve had at home to watch for the last 30 years has been via antenna, or on DVD and Blu-ray.
I know you don’t like Enterprise much but frankly I loved fourth season. But I also loved second and third season as well. ;)
And I don’t have a huge issue with what they did either with the Vulcans in Enterprise or the Gorn in SNW.. But I definitely get people who do have problems with them and I wish they just avoided the Gorn in SNW completely but it is what it is now.
And as I said in the same post, if it was up to me we would’ve never had prequels like ENT and SNW in the first place even though I do love both. But it would be to help avoid issues like this in the first place. ;) That’s the problem with all of them, fans are always unhappy over the changes with them on some level.
And agree on Vince Gilligan and Better Call Saul. But I actually said this before, it’s easier to make a straight forward prequel when its only one other show to think about, it’s a modern day show and there is no time travel or alternate universes to think about. But they tried very hard not to change or retcon anything from Breaking Bad to fit with Better Call Saul.
To me, the lesson for Star Trek prequels are never to do Star Trek prequels lol. Because they can’t seem to help themselves although SNW is the best one so far IMO.
I’m sfraid I’ll have to judge SNW from the pilot, that is until I can see some more on DVDs/Blus.
You are not wrong.
How sad. She created a truly compelling antagonist on DS9.
IIRC she was supposed to be just a one and done character. But she was so wonderful that she became a pivotal part of the show.
you could say that about a lot of ds9’s range of supporting characters
I did not know that but not surprised in the least. And yes that happened with so many characters on that show. That’s why DS9 had so many supporting characters in the end because half of them were never meant to stick around lol. They hired brilliant actors in so many roles and saw the great potential they had for the stories and kept using them accordingly. Fletcher’s role was great because she was the only true Bajoran villain the show had. It was nice not all Bajorans were painted with the same brush and you saw real depth there.
Kai Winn was the villian the fan base imagines Khan was. Rest in peace, Ms. Fletcher.
Well said!
Kai Winn would have bitched slapped the F out of Khan!
She wouldn’t have been afraid of him, that’s for sure.
She was a remarkable actress and one of Star Trek’s great villains. I love to hate her character on DS9. She was wonderful!
What an excellent actor, she made the character of Kai Winn and made everyone despise her. I believe she was also one of 4 actors who won Academy Awards for acting to appear in Trek. I remember her, Whoopi Goldberg and Joel Grey but I can’t remember the last name. RIP dear lady, you deserve your rest.
Christopher Plummer.
Right, exactly, in fact his name just came to me now.
5 actors. F. Murray Abraham won Best Actor for Amadeus.
Ah, how can I forget the great F.Murray Abraham. You are absolutely correct. I know it was nagging me that there was perhaps one more person.
Wait, what? This wonderful lady won an Oscar? I searched online and I can’t find it. Would you please tell me the movie so I can immediately watch it?
Cuckoo’s Nest.
I remember her most for BRAINSTORM, in which she was just sensational, plus a very off-kilter performance (most of them are) in EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC. Regardless of which cut you watch, the movie is a mess, but it is a fascinating failure. There’s a ‘making of’ book on the film that is a very warts&all portrayal, and a few years back somebody actually put the contents up online someplace, so there’s no excuse not to read it. I’ve read it at least 20 times, and still consider it among the best of its type, up there with SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE (making of ROSEBUD.)
Re: EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC, now there’s a great/wild soundtrack, by Ennio Morricone. My late friend Ron M. turned me on to that film and soundtrack. I bought it on CD only last year, along with Morricone’s THE CHOSEN aka HOLOCAUST: 2000.
Brainstorm was unfairly swept under the rug due to Natalie Wood’s death. Douglas Trumbull never directed another film after being berated by the studio who wanted to cancel it and claim insurance. It has a lot of merit, including Fletcher’s performance, and a great James Horner soundtrack.
I just rewatched BRAINSTORM last night for the first time in at least 20 years (probably 25, given how long ago I got rid of my laserdiscs.) I still very much like it, but feel there were some odd creative decisions, especially with respect to the cinematography (which is a little bland, and does Wood no favors except when she is filmed beneath the covers) and the editing, which perhaps needed somebody like Paul Hirsch who could unearth gem-like moments (one of the editors was a Walter Hill regular, so I’m surprised by how little he seems to have helped things.) My wife found that Trumbull’s view of AfterLife could have been less Westernized.
Of the credited scriptwriters, one had no previous writing credits and the other came from Saturday Morning TV, so I’m thinking maybe Trumbull rewrote them a la SILENT RUNNING. I know the original writer’s story was a lot different, and that he managed to do variations on it with GHOST and JACOB’S LADDER.
As much as I like the death scene part of the Horner score, I do still wonder what the movie might have been like if Trumbull could have afforded Goldsmith. Apparently the two were very much fans of one another’s work — in the RETURN TO TOMORROW book Goldsmith says he is anxious for Trumbull to direct again because he wanted to work with him — and I’m guessing that the only reason that didn’t happen was due to BRAINSTORM’s tiny and belated post schedule and Lloyds of London not wanting to spend more than what was necessary to complete the film. Between BRAINSTORM and NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN (another film that Goldsmith was up for in the same year, and he had a fan in Connery due to THE WIND AND THE LIION), that may be the year of biggest lost opportunities for him (and in the case of the pseudo-Bond film, he might have lent it some much-needed energy.)
I guess the most exciting thing about the movie for me is the same now as back when I saw it 3x in the theater — the idea of a machine being utilized to capture and share feelings, plus the still-sensational visual effects, even though they are far too brief. That shot racing towards a galaxy is just unbelievably solid.
I haven’t seen the film in a very long time myself, but my main issue with it was Trumbull’s decision to intercut the FX representing Fletcher’s transcendent death experience with the standard-issue stuff of the bad guys trying to break into the lab, which seemed to drag on forever. I understand his reluctance to suggest anything reminiscent of 2001’s Stargate, but the whole sequence feels robbed of its potential power.
Tonally that stuff you cite is really off, as you’ve got super-broad comedy (like the robot arm ‘hissing and laughing’ at a security guard) jarringly included between snippets of the death tape.
Also, I just ead some stuff about Trumbull’s utter failure to even direct Wood and Walken — apparently he couldn’t even get them to come out of a trailer of the ‘don’t bother knockin’ type to shoot when everything was ready to go, and the screenwriter says for the last scene of the movie, both of the actors were completely drunk — that makes me reluctantly acknowledge how a lot of the failings are directorial choices rather than just a failure to deliver goods by all his collaborators.
Actual title is One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.
Such a wonderful actress, she will be missed. Her Oscar acceptance speech was the only one I’ve seen that actually genuinely made me emotional as she signed to her deaf parents. She was brilliant in DS9, and it was a joy to behold her across all seven seasons. Kai Winn episodes were among some of the best. Respect and love.
Oh that speech was delightful.
It takes real skill to be a compelling villain, and actors tend to relish the opportunity, though Nurse Ratched started to unnerve Fletcher according to her later interviews. But the Oscars will often pick up on the merits of such performances, even though the typecasting that often ensues is reductive. I have great admiration for Fletcher and how she grounded Ratched and Winn with a sense of iron-willed determination and self-confidence but would up with such wildly different creatures on screen. It’s not just the writing, she’s tapping into completely distinct skillsets and inspirations. To paraphrase her, it’s been a joy to love hating her.
Great post, Ian.
May her soul rest in the celestial temple, and live long and prosper over yonder! 🖖😌🌌
When I first saw Milos Forman’s adaptation of ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEXT at age 20, one of the first things that struck me was how much Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher didn’t at all match Ken Kesey’s descriptions of the characters in his novel. This might have been a big deal, because a fair amount of what happens in the story hinges on the physical presence of Randall Macmurphy and Nurse Ratched, and how it fuels their conflict. . . yet, in the end, the performances were so honest and assured and true to what Kesey had written that it didn’t matter. It was a risk on the part of Forman and the producers that really paid-off.
As to Kai Wynn, as an avowed secularist I actually appreciated that the character was portrayed somewhat more sympathetically in the earlier DS9 episodes, and regret that she had become a total caricature of a corrupt religious zealot by the series finale. But that’s on the writers, not the actress.
Sympathetically? In her first episode she was intentionally stirring up controversy (including the bombing of a school) as part of an elaborate plot to assassinate a political opponent. In her second appearance, she was supporting a military coup to overthrow Bajor’s legitimate government. She was always a corrupt, religious zealot.
“Sympathetic” may have been a poor word choice on my part. “Dimensional” may better sum-up what I was going for. No doubt Winn was an antagonist from the get-go, and her methods were questionable to say the least. But you also got the sense that the character actually believed in something at the start, and when she points out to Keiko O’Brien that the Federation’s secular stance is not in fact value-neutral she’s not entirely wrong. At the end, she clearly believes in nothing but her own will to power. I don’t deny that’s historically a pretty typical path for that sort of person to take, but dramatically I can’t say I find it very interesting.
It was always about her own power. The debate over the school didn’t really have anything to do with how Keiko taught about the wormhole. Winn didn’t really care how a tiny school with maybe a dozen Bajoran students handled the issue. It was about stirring up enough shit so that Bareil would come to the station to be assassinated.
Well, that’s your interpretation; we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
Michael, we agree on this one. She wasn’t instantly “hateable” as a power hungry zealot early in the series, but the writers started focusing more and more on that aspect as the series went on. Whether that was deliberate to her story arc or slightly lazy writing is open for discussion I think.
Good point!
I definitely agree it was plain that her lust for power was her primary motivation, what she does in In the Hands of the Prophets makes that plain – she is not so much a zealot as she is a political opportunist.
I do agree with those who say she had shades of grey – her being a able politician meant that at times she would see the way the wind was blowing and do something reasonable or would even reach out to Sisko when she was overwhelmed. There were great moments like when she berated Kira for forgetting that she too suffered and resisted during the Occupation.
Along with Dukat, the character wasn’t quite as believable when the writers decided she needed to fit neatly in a “dastardly villain plotting conquest” box in season 7, but she was a unique antagonist the likes of which Star Trek had never tried before.
but then you see her misjudge the situation in ‘Shakaar’ and ‘The Reckoning’.
her move near the end of the series was not as a ‘dastardly villain plotting conquest’ but someone who had been rejected as she saw it by the prophets, unable to see any vision when using an orb.
I will disagree with you about Winn not caring how the children were taught. Even a relatively “liberal” and lapsed religious Bajoran was against the way Keiko taught the students. Kira mentions in Sisko’s office that she didn’t agree with teaching only one ‘philosophy’ of the wormhole. At the time Kira was far less religious and didn’t seem to take a religious stance on the wormhole (one example: calling it the wormhole, instead of the Celestial Temple), so I do think a very conservative orthodox member of the religion would actually take interest in how the wormhole was being taught to students. Also, it is being taught that way at the MOUTH of the wormhole. That would be like teaching kids science that contradicts Islam at Mecca. She would have been pissed.
Bummer. :(
Kai Winn is one of my favorite Trek villains. Louise Fletcher will be missed.
Her performance in Douglas Trumbull’s 1983 theatrical feature, BRAINSTORM (accompanied by a fantastic James Horner score), is an experience well worth having. Here’s the trailer in HD (watch for Ms. Fletcher in several scenes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueYcVmH0edk
Thanks for the reminder about her role in BRAINSTORM, which (spoiler) ultimately centers on her character’s death-experience. I’ll bet she was happy not to play the villain for once.
I watched one of her “b-movie” appearances earlier today, a “Full Moon” release from 1990 called SHADOWZONE. She’s the best thing about the film, also it’s nice to see James Hong. There’s little else to recommend it. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1y4ou5Exzs
I used to love Full Moon features and they were a company that gave good actors opportunities for rare leading parts. I believe one of Jeffrey Combs’s rare lead roles in a cinema film was a Full Moon feature called “Doctor Mordrid”. Those guys and Corman were the king of entertaining B movies.
Combs is also in CYCLONE, which I rented decades back on the basis of it being R-rated and starring Heather Thomas. Unfortunately, it was a fail on all fronts. The titular motorcycle looked like it dressed up with household craft materials, Thomas was less than appealing and pretty much stayed clothed, and Combs didn’t last long enough to make his usual impact.
Man, I really wish I could have seen his Edgar Allan Poe on stage, I remember seeing something from Harlan Ellison on his weberland page (which he rarely vistited) just raving endlessly about how good Combs was in it.
Yeah, as I recall, CYCLONE was pretty weak.
Saw this and thought of you:
https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?isbn=&an=melchior%20david%20hewitt&tn=time%20travelers&n=100121503&cm_sp=mbc-_-ats-_-used
The movie-theater-going experience that changed my life, way back in 1964.
Thanks for thinking of me. Sold! :)
I was about to say if you like that score, you’ll probably also like UNCOMMON VALOR, but then I saw it was you!
Guys, I have forgotten about both of these movies — thanks. Maybe I can get them on Blu…I do seem to recall that Brainstorm had a release.
I played the BRAINSTORM soundtrack a few times last night. Lots of early nice Horner there. On the double feature CD of UNCOMMON VALOR is another early Horner score, WOLFEN. Played that in the car driving around the valley yesterday, occasionally rolling down the windows and cranking up the volume, lol.
Cool! I love Horner. It’s unfortunate that he is not around to do the Avatar sequels.
The one thing that I’ve noticed is that in recent years, I’ve become more fond of his sweeter, quieter scores, as opposed to his bombastic, military ones. Just a change of taste, as I approach my ‘three score and ten.’
Yeah, I have a pretty complete collection of Horner’s soundtracks. I have a CD of UNCOMMON VALOR and WOLFEN. I’d still love to hear his unused/unreleased score for STREETS OF FIRE. But if there’s one Horner soundtrack I listen to each week, it’s ST: TSFS. (I was listening to the Return to Vulcan track just as I got the call from the VA hospital that my dad had passed.)
WOLFEN is really the test-bed for one of the trademark 80s Horner autorepeats as I recall, even more than BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS. It has that one fun raucous piece that gets played during ‘Kirk’s Explosive Reply’ in TWOK and when the marines are getting routed and Ripley engages in unsafe velocities in ALIENS. I’m sure if I rewatched KRULL — not a bad idea, as I just rewatched BATTLE — I’d hear a more sophisticated arrangement of it there too.
I hadn’t listened to WOLFEN in a couple of years or so, but I found it fun listening the other day, for sure. It’s a real shame Horner wasn’t called in to score ST:TVH, because that film’s lack of a Horner score is what killed the so-called “trilogy” for me.
She won A Saturn Award for her role in Brainstorm.
Well now I’m heartbroken. She was as lovely in real live as she was evil on screen. May she forever rest with the prophets.
What made Winn so utterly frightening is that you could see in her eyes that she thought she was right. Even when she accepted the pah Wraith, she KNEW she was doing the right thing. Granted, that right thing only benefited Winn Adami most of the time, but the most sinister, most frightening, most believable villains are the ones who are not villains at all — they are people with a moral compass out of alignment. I’ve always likened Winn to Dolores Umbridge – another person who truly believed that the evils they enacted were for the good of their cause.
Louise Fletcher, you brought all of this out in Winn and I thank you for years of entertainment, escapism, and realization. May you finally walk with the Prophets.
Well said!
RIP Ms. Fletcher — you were outstanding in DS9.
She was a brilliant professional actress that brought solid reality to everything she played.
Louise Fletcher was very good at playing a muti-faceted villain. I remember her scaring the crap out of the late 1980s playing “Grandmother” in the original Flowers in the Attic film, based on a book by V.C. Andrews. Kai Winn was an amazing secondary character on DS9 who was wonderfully written and developed, but Fletcher just made her so much fun to watch.
When and Actress can make you hate the role she is playing and despise the role. She has to be that Damn good. She will be Missed. Walk with the Prohphets
I can’t say anything that hasn’t been eloquently stated about this great actress already. While sadly it’s the only role I have ever seen her in, I loved her performance as Kai Winn. It was both written and acted so well. Winn was interesting because in her first episode you obviously knew she was evil and YET truly cared about Bajor. She was power hungry to the point she was willing to kill but everything she believed in was still for the good of Bajor. It wasn’t until she felt the prophets rejected her that she went fully dark side lol. But Fletcher did such a great job and we got a fully three dimensional character.
I don’t want to ‘rant’ but these are the types of villains I miss in Star Trek today. Not just cartoon villains very very angry at the Federation and want to blow up planets over it or murderbots who want to wipe out the galaxy, but something more relatable and dare I say it, human. A character who was willing to do evil deeds for power but did it because they felt they were philosophically right and thought being in power would ultimately benefit everyone as well. And Fletcher gave a great performance that probably would’ve at least got her an Emmy nomination at some point if it was any other series or genre.
May she rest in peace!
Louise Flether was just a tremendous talent.
Your heroes are only as good as their bad guys and Fletcher’s Kai Winn was just a tremendous bad guy.
She Was A Wonderful Actress.
I Want To Praise Her,
To the Stars, And Back.
But, I keep thinking,
“Damn It All To Hell, It WAS, TOO SOON!”
She has joined the pah-wraiths..or maybe the prophets have forgiven her.
Sad news about a very talented actress. Louise Fletcher’s father was a priest (albeit the nice type), but she was clearly familiar with corrupt clergy too; she brought all those nuances and complexities to her performance on DS9, including Kai Winn’s prioritisation of narcissistic entitlement, ritual orthodoxy and ethnic identity over fundamental ethics and motives (and Winn’s total incomprehension of the notion of her gods objecting to this). These issues are still relevant today — “clerics/priests/monks/preachers” like that exist for real, in multiple faiths all over the world.
Kai Winn’s “romance” with Dukat was unexpected and deliciously twisted too. One scene I particularly remember showed Winn asleep at her desk, while Dukat (disguised as a Bajoran) creepily circled her like a predator. At one point Dukat suddenly leaned in and briefly did a silent “snarling” expression; I don’t know if Marc Alaimo ad-libbed that, but it was brilliantly done and added another layer of evil genius to the depiction of the Winn-Dukat love-affair-literally-from-hell.
Rest in Peace, Louise Fletcher. My condolences to her family and friends too.
Very saddened to hear about this. She was a great actress, her performance in Brainstorm really made an impact with me and it was always a pleasure to see her in other roles, even if the characters were less than likeable. May she rest in eternal peace.