Jackie Bundy and Tom Sharp of the Deep Space Nine Avatar Website Are Proud to Present:
Ask Martok - The J.G. Hertzler Q & A
If you ever get an opportunity to see J.G. Hertzler at a Star Trek convention or another event, it soon becomes apparent that what you see is what you get. He is a charming man; warm, intelligent, extremely observant, and at times a little bit silly. (Hey aren’t we all) The man you see on the stage or meet in the autograph line really understands what the fans find so appealing about Star Trek, because he is a fan himself.
Although he has played a wide variety of roles in the Star Trek universe, John Garman Hertzler is perhaps most identified as General Martok, the Deep Space Nine character who is for many fans the personification of a Klingon warrior. Like the character he played for four years on DS9, J.G. Hertzler throws himself into every new project with everything he has, passionately and wholeheartedly. He has a strong code of ethics and values his family dearly.
So, when J.G. was offered the opportunity to pen a couple of novels about Martok for Pocket Books he set to with his usual enthusiasm. Although he had plenty of experience writing screenplays J.G. was not too proud to acknowledge that the prose format is a different animal entirely and so he was really pleased to have be given the opportunity to work with critically acclaimed writer, Jeffrey Lang. “I had read his story in The Lives of Dax anthology, and I also read Abyss and I loved his Jem’Hadar, the way he treated the Jem’Hadar”, said J.G. Between the two, they have produced the two-part story The Left Hand of Destiny, a magnificent and epic heroic saga about Martok’s return to the Klingon Homeworld at the end of the Dominion War. The books have received rave reviews and taken readers by storm.
Over the past few weeks, Mr. Hertzler was kind enough to answer questions sent by fans about the novels and/or some his experiences working on Star Trek. If you have not yet read these two phenomenal books, I will warn you now that the questions and Mr. Hertzler’s answers to those questions do contain spoilers for the novels. Unfortunately, it is not possible to include every answer in this feature but we have included as many as possible and those we thought that others would find the most interesting. In some cases, more than one person asked virtually the same question, and where possible I have tried to acknowledge that. So here we go, as the fans ASK MARTOK.