Finally, we’ve got some TNG antagonists in Star Trek Fleet Command. Tomalak, as you might remember if you watched TNG, was the Romulan Commander in four very memorable episodes. Of course, he also appeared in all those episodes if you don’t remember him.
The character of Tomalak was always trying to be threatening, but never, for me anyway, seemed to pull it off. In Star Trek Fleet Command, he’s a rare officer, who could be threatening if you use him correctly.
Captain’s Maneuver
While cloaked, Tomalak increases Armor Piercing, Shield Penetration, and Accuracy by 100%.
After having cloaking added last month, now we’ve finally got an officer who takes advantage of it.
Synergy will get this buff up to 200% total, eventually, but as of the current moment, the only officer he’ll have synergy with is Sela, and she’s also a command officer, so you’ll have to settle for a total of 125%.
It’s a pretty straightforward ability that will increase your offensive stats.
Officer Ability of Tomalak
Tomalak increases Weapon Damage against Klingon targets by (25%, 35%, 75%, 175%, 500%) of total Crew Attack.
This is an officer ability that has been a long time in coming. We’ve had two anti-Federation officers (Krell and Mirek), and two anti-Romulan officers (Yan’agh and Yuki Sulu) that you could load up for PvP, but just lonely L’Nar as an anti-Klingon officer. The need seemed so pressing that many times I convinced myself that there must be one there, and that I was just missing it.
For quite some time, this wasn’t that big of a deal, at least for me, as the biggest opponents I was seeing for a while were all in Augurs or Enterprises. But now that there are starting to be some more K’Tingas out there, another anti-Klingon officer could be quite useful.
The only rub is that Tomalak, like the other anti-faction officers, doesn’t really get to be all that helpful until tier four or five. The 25% bonus that you’ll have with him right out of the box is on the trivial side.
But once you get the 500% bonus, he should make a big difference.
Andreas Katsulas
Tomalak was played by character actor Andreas Katsulas.
Katsulas was born in St. Louis, Missouri on May 18th, 1946. He graduated from Indiana University with a master’s in Theatre. He spent 15 years in Peter Brook‘s traveling theater company.
He spent some time acting in Greece and France before coming back to the US, and getting into the film and TV industry in the early 80s.
His first movie role came in the 1981 Milos Forman movie, Ragtime. Coincidentally, it was also the last film role for Jimmy Cagney, and the first for Samuel L. Jackson, Jeff Daniels, Debbie Allen, in addition to Ethan Phillips (Neelix), and of course, John Ratzenberger.
From there he worked steadily throughout the 80s as a character actor. He showed up in bit parts in movies like Someone to Watch Over Me and the Patrick Swayze movie Next of Kin.
On television, he made his American debut in a 1981 episode of the soap opera, Another World. He had a three-episode run on Max Headroom, and made appearances on the original The Equalizer, Alien Nation, and of course, Father Dowling Mysteries.
He also made a guest spot on Jake and the Fatman. Now seems as good a time as any to sit and ponder the meaning of the fact that you and I inhabit a universe in which a series called Jake and the Fatman not only ran for five seasons on CBS. Ponder if you will a phone call in which William Conrad, (TV’s Cannon and the narrator of the Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle) was offered the role of “The Fatman,” and said, “Sure, sign me up!”
Sorry, back to Katsulas.
His Star Trek debut came in the TNG season three episode, The Enemy. Here’s his first onscreen appearance.
The character of Tomalak made two more real appearances, in The Defector and in the TNG finale All Good Things…, and in Riker’s fantasy in Future Imperfect.
Apart from his appearance on TNG, Katsulas is best known for his work on Babylon 5. I’ll freely admit that I’ve seen exactly zero episodes of Babylon 5, which was, for the most part, on when I was in college, so I missed it. But here’s a clip of Katsulas as the red-eyed G’Kar showing off his acting chops.
Probably the biggest mainstream role of Katsulas’s career was as “the one-armed man” who killed Dr. Richard Kimball’s wife in the 1993 Harrison Ford movie, The Fugitive. It’s his “that guy,” moment.
Katsulas last TV role was brought him back to Star Trek for a guest spot on Enterprise in the season two episode, Cogenitor.
Sadly, we lost Andreas, a long-time smoker, to lung cancer in 2006.