by Mike Hughes
Actors like to range afar, so LeVar Burton should be jolly.
“I went from the 24th century to 1912,” he says. “That’s quite a difference.” In the glory days of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” Burton was an engineer who could do anything. One assumed transchronotemporalocation was possible, if only someone could define it. Now he becomes a regular on CBS’ “Christy,” at 8 tonight, with none of those techno-skills. He plays Daniel Scott, a young man who wants desperately to be a doctor. “Daniel Scott is a man who has a lot of intuition,” Burton says.
He’ll need it, stepping into a Smoky Mountain community. It is a place of geographic beauty, human decency and limited knowledge. Scott will also be bridging a gap: Most of the people have never seen a Black person. “The fact that he is so strange to everyone is imposing,” Burton says. “It takes a lot of strength to be different.”
Now Burton is part of what may be the best TV series to be constantly ignored by its network. On the surface, “Christy” (starring Kellie Martin and Tyne Daly) is just another of those family shows about good intentions. It starts with the true story of a 19-year-old woman who left her prosperous home, to teach in the mountains.
Despite being a show that has nuance and depth, the first thing viewers – or actors – notice is the awesome scenery. “It’s overwhelmingly, breathtakingly beautiful,” Burton says. “It’s very remote, very difficult to live that far from it all,” Burton says. “For my wife and newborn daughter, it’s a very difficult adjustment.”
And still . . .
“You look at the quality of the air, the quality of the setting, the lushness of the landscape. It looks like such a a serene existence.” Staring out at the mountains, Burton finds it isn’t too difficult to travel in time and space.
