Age: 59
male
David Nykl (born 7 February 1967 in Prague, Czechoslovakia) is a Czech Canadian actor of film, television, commercials and theater. After the Soviet invasion in 1968, he and his family left then-Communist Czechoslovakia for Canada. Upon arriving at Victoria, British Columbia, his father found work as a structural engineer and his mother found work as a nurse. Nykl attended the University of British Columbia, where he majored in liberal arts. Nykl has appeared heavily in Vancouver and Prague in dozens of theater, film and television productions. Known for his versatility and depth as an actor, he has also produced theatre and film projects, and in 1994 he co-founded Prague's Misery Loves Company Theatre with Richard Toth and Ewan McLaren. He is known to science fiction fans as the recurring Stargate Atlantis character of Dr. Radek Zelenka, a Czech scientist on Earth's expedition to the "lost city" of Atlantis. His character often provides a foil to the main scientists, who forget the limits of their situation. He is fluent in Czech, English, French and Spanish. Though his character on Stargate Atlantis speaks English with a Czech accent, Nykl normally speaks with a Canadian accent. Whenever Zelenka spoke Czech in Stargate Atlantis, Nykl was given the lines in English, and he translated them. Description above from the Wikipedia article David Nykl, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
This story is inspired by a novel by the Czech writer Viktor Dyk. One day, the mysterious Pied Piper appears in the Hanseatic city of Hameln to use his magic whistle to exorcise all the rats that have been plaguing the city's inhabitants. The town council offered him 100 gold pieces for this service. The Pied Piper fulfilled his task and led all the rats into the river by playing his whistle. But before that, he met a local girl, Agnes, and the two fell in love. After completing his work, he decided to stay in Hameln to live with Agnes. Moreover, he had not yet been paid. One day, the Pied Piper approaches the town council in a local pub and asks for his reward. However, they refuse to pay him because they feel he has done his job too easily. This leads to an argument between them. After a conflict with the councilors and after discovering that Agnes is pregnant with the unwanted child of her former lover Kristian, the Pied Piper decides to leave the city. But his love for Agnes is stronger than his will and forces him to return. He cannot find her anywhere, however, and when he discovers that she has killed herself by jumping into the river out of grief, he decides to use his whistle to lead the whole town to the edge of the abyss of Mount Koppel. He does so not for the money that should have been paid to him, but out of grief for his failed love. When he was alone above the abyss, he threw away his whistle and also threw himself into the abyss.
