abstract
| - Marshal Ethan Allen Neill (born October 18, 2293, in Oakdale, California) is a fictional character created by Joshua Underwood in the Star Trek universe. Ethan is the elder brother of Marshal Jeremiah Neill, and is portrayed by Gerald McRaney. He is known by Reydovan Intelligence as the "Dark Phoenix" because of his tendencies to disappear for years on end, only to return and wreak havoc on the Imperial government. He is named after American patriot Ethan Allen. Underwood decided to create the "lost brother" of Neill in order to create a dark, conflicted (rather than outright evil) character - a "not-someone-we-talk-about" member of the Neill family. His idea was to have it somewhat like the relationship between Spock and his half-brother Sybok in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier - an elder son who became an outcast and a younger who became an influential presence finally meeting after many years - but there the similarity ends. Where Jeremiah is a loyal, albeit powerhungry and overly zealous, soldier to the Reydovan Empire with the aloofness of a patrician officer, Ethan is highly intelligent, cold and calculating, but has a kinship with the many men and women who follow him.
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