For this week's "Keep it Comin'!" post, I'm going to talk about the guy who plays my favorite villain ever.
You probably recognize Jonathan Frakes best if you're a Star Trek fan, as Frakes plays Commander William Riker in Star Trek: The Next Generation. He would reprise this role in Star Trek: First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection, Star Trek: Nemesis, and Star Trek Generations, along with episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Lower Decks and Star Trek: Enterprise.
What some Trekkies may not realize is that Frakes played quite possibly one of the best animated villains ever, and my personal favorite villain of all. In the 1990s animated series Gargoyles, Frakes was the voice of business magnate David Xanatos, who helped bring the titular gargoyles to life by raising their castle above the clouds - specifically, by placing their castle on top of the roof of his own corporate office. I'll try and be as objective as I can while talking about this guy.
As a villain, David Xanatos is a multi-billionaire, industrialist, master combatant, and a strategic, financial and technological genius. Imagine if Tony Stark decided to use his genius for evil and you'd likely get someone like Xanatos. Xanatos's ultimate goal was to learn the secret to immortality so that he and his family could enjoy the wealth and power he'd accumulated for all eternity. To do so, he fulfills a prophecy involving the aforementioned gargoyles in an effort to learn more of the secrets of magic. In terms of personality, Xanatos is intelligent, cunning, calculating, and willing to go to almost any extreme to achieve his goals. Even when the gargoyles of the Manhattan Clan manage to defeat him, Xanatos is almost always able to derive some sort of success from his failures, always taking his failures as a learning experience. He also tends not to be held down by what others would view as "impossible" - if he thinks he can do something, he will do it, no matter what anyone else says. Frakes manages to deliver all of these traits of Xanatos by giving a subdued performance, letting Xanatos's actions speak for him, but at the same time delivering some rather well-placed lines, all of which is seasoned by a calm, confident delivery that only someone of Xanatos's intelligence can muster.
Unfortunately, while Xanatos is likely the best, it also seems to be the only performance of note by Frakes. He did play the High Evolutionary in an episode of The Super Hero Squad Show by Marvel, and appear in an episode of Adventure Time as an adult version of series protagonist Finn. And in 12 episodes of Guardians of the Galaxy, he played J'son of Spartax, who, contrary to what the MCU movie Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 would have you believe, is the actual father of Peter Jason Quill/Star-Lord. Beyond those roles, Frakes mainly seems to do bit voice parts in TV shows where he plays a fictionalized version of himself, or some version - true or parodied - of Commander Riker.
I would personally like to see more from Mr. Frakes. I'm not saying we need another David Xanatos, but it couldn't hurt. You know, just some kind of calculating evil genius type of character. And as we've seen, Frakes does well playing characters in positions of authority. If Frakes could play a character who is like Riker without actually being Riker, it would make for a refreshing change. If nothing else, I think Frakes would make for a good mentor figure of some kind for the hero of a story, or perhaps even the star of his own series, maybe as some sort of detective or vigilante type of character.
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Gargoyles can be streamed on Disney+.
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