The Beast at Tanagra

ABOVE: Venerable actor Paul Winfield

First, I know that once again, I have been remiss in my posting duties; however, to be fair, I am out there predating every single day, and think that setting an example in the battlefields is equally as important as the rhetoric of such a site as this. Yes, every cause needs its Zola, but even Zola must have his Dreyfus, the persecuted hero who rails against all odds. And perhaps none railed as vigilantly or as boldly as our Pred of the Week, Paul Winfield. True, this brave warrior has gone from this realm, but his influence and presence are felt by all who knew and loved his work.

Getting his start on an episode of Perry Mason, Winfield spent four decades beguiling audiences on the big and small screen. Winfield became a known commodity with his performance as Dr. Horace Huguley in the television epic Roots: The Next Generations. This celebrated mini-series showed that predation is often best expressed by the oppressed -- that the most effective form of predation often comes from those who appear to be the prey. That movie just shouts, "Come get me- I'm here!"

Winfield's next break-out role came in 1982's The Wrath of Khan, the second installment of the popular Star Trek movie series. There, Winfield is victim to evil super-genius Khan's revenge, and takes an earwig to the brain for the team. Ultimately, however, even carnivorous ear monsters cannot keep Winfield down, as he fights through the pain to help deliver Khan to his fate.

Winfield's next note-worthy role was as Julian C. Barlow on the ground-breaking TV series 227. Playing a madcap man of privilege, Winfield offered a contrapuntal version of Jackee Harry's Sandra, and acted as a comment on the state of the African American community of the late 1980s. Though Mary, Rose, Pearl and the gang held no airs, Sandra and Barlow represented the figures in any community, but perhaps even more so in marginalized ones, who seek to place themselves above their own conditions of living. But the fact remains that Barlow lived with his 'inferiors' and relied on their friendships and counsel. Strong cultural work from a dedicated predator.

But all of the work I have surveyed so far only leads up to Winfield's most powerful and lasting role: as Captain Dathon in a 1991 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation entitled "Darmok." There, Winfield gives the performance of a lifetime as an alien captain who wishes only to be able to communicate with humanity. His race, the Tamarians, communicate famously, as Starfleet Captain Jean-Luc Picard ultimately disovers, "by citing example - through MET-a-PHOR!" Before this important breakthrough, no one can figure out how to communicate with the Tamarians, because the Starfleet officers do not know the stories behind the examples the alien race cites. It would be like me saying to some foreign race, "Billy in the Jungle" or "Anna in her Chopper." While we would all understand the first to be an image of solitary and honorable predation, and the second to elicit a feeling of safety and completion of task, the aliens would hear only the words and not know the substance behind them.


ABOVE: Winfield as Dathon. Note the strong predatory head ridges of a true warrior.

It is with the understanding that only shared predatory experience would break through the veritable silence that Captain Dathon transports himself and Captain Picard to an alien planet where a powerful force roams free. He knows from his mytho-history that two men of disparate pasts were brought together by a similarly isolated common struggle against a monster, and he wants to replicate this event with Picard. The episode is built upon the foundation of hunting a vicious beast, to be sure, but the true appeal of the plot is in the unraveling of the Tamarian language by Picard. Through the tireless efforts of Winfield's Dathon, Picard is able to capture and interpret small snippets of the Tamarian language. For example, "Temba, his arms open" means roughly to give something; "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" indicates that shared battle often brings people together in friendship; and "Shaka, when the walls fell "indicates failure. The episode ends with Dathon falling to the beast on the planet's surface, but with Picard learning how to communicate with, and more importantly, to empathize with, this new race of people. Dathon's dedication to his task was full, and his price great; but if we could all reflect such effort, oh, what predation we could effect!

Unfortunately for the world, Paul Winfield has died, and we are left to ponder his example. As for me, I prefer not to imagine that Winfield died in some hospital bed, melting into the stiff sheets of cruel fate. No, I see him lying by a campfire, nursing the wounds of a brave fight with an alien beast, listening to a Starfleet captain regale him with the tale of Gilgamesh and Enkidu. There he will rest for eternity, knowing that he has broken through to the strange man beside him and that his life has not been spent in vain. One of his more famous lines was "Shaka, when the walls fell." Ironic, in that his life was an unparalleled success and has inspired generations of men. perhaps the walls once fell, but through the efforts of men like Winfield, we will soon reforge this wall and will all find ways to communicate with each other.