Joan Didion said belief in more advanced alien civilizations was a sign of intellectual immaturity. Three points: 1) She should know, 2) It’s nice that Jerry Siegel and Doris Lessing have something in common, and 3) Didion is probably right, kind of, and especially if a person fetishizes the superior alien development, makes a big fuss about the aliens being up there and us being down here, which old Trek certainly does — Jesus, again with the all-powerful light blobs. I guess the easiest way to get across we-are-not-the-center is by means of we-are-not-the-top, and the easiest way to understand we-are-not-the-top is to say they-are-the-top, those guys there, just look at them. It’s the baby version of a decentered perspective.

Anyway … The head guy on the planet. This time a 60-ish character actor in charge of a misguided local set-up—they’re pacifists—but it turns out the set-up isn’t really misguided because the aliens are all-powerful light blobs and can exercise overwhelming force without it counting as force, which I think is pacifism at its best.

Mem Alpha says the actor (John Abbott, born John Kefford in 1905, England) was “particularly active in sixties television, with guest appearances in many of the shows of that era. He lent a quiet dignity to the roles he played …” Wound up in Hollywood because during wartime that was the safest way home from Moscow, where he’d been serving as part of the British consulate. Got blacklisted a little later on, was then un-blacklisted because a producer wanted him. 

And the Klingon commander, in the first episode with Klingons. John Colicos (b. 1928, Montreal!). 

 A long and lush career on U.S. tv, including three villains on Mission: Impossible and a lot of other guest spots, plus he was a reg on the first Battlestar: Galactica. Wiki says he was also “a distinguished stage actor in the UK, USA and Canada. He is mentioned in The Kenneth Williams Diaries, where the acerbic British actor/comedian mentions how impressed he was by the performance of the young understudy who took over a stage performance as King Lear when the aging, alcoholic star name who was supposed to play the role was unable to perform …” (Kenneth Williams starred in the Carry On films.)

Mem Alphs says: “Colicos made his final acting appearance in the concept demonstration trailer for Battlestar Galactica: The Second Coming, in which he reprised his role as Baltar … The four-minute trailer … was actually part of a thirty-minute pilot film for a proposed new Battlestar Galactica television series that would have continued where the original series left off. … However, the project was never picked up …”

Sidekick old alien. The actor (b. 1903, American) lived in Laurel Canyon for 40 years, got killed off twice in the Reeves Superman series, got blacklisted during the red scare, and basically worked a ton of smallish parts over the years. Wiki says he was Colonel Matterson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. 

 Unnamed flunky Klingon:  Mem Alpha says he’s been doing convention appearances.

Quite a face: Another venerable alien. Actor (b. 1901) had only four screen appearances, Mem Alpha says. Presumably they were all around this stage of his life. 

 Jill Ireland, b. 1936 in London. I didn’t know she was English. She married David McCallum (Ilya in Man from U.N.C.L.E.) in 1957, they divorced in 1967, and the next year she married Charles Bronson! I didn’t know any of that, or that she and Bronson did a lot of movies together. Reagan gave her the Medal of Courage in 1988 because she suffered from breast cancer and had testified before Congress about medical costs. She died of breast cancer in 1990, and in 1991 Jill Clayburgh played her in a tv movie. (Mem Alpha, Wiki) 

The 50ish leader of the misguided planetary society (which in this case is an earth colony where spores make people into happy dopes). The dialogue played up the perfect physical health of the spore dopes, including the leader’s, of course; but the actor died of a heart attack the month after the episode was shown. Born in 1918 in Babylon, N.Y. He was the sheriff in To Kill a Mockingbird and a general in Fail-Safe (the Cold War nuclear showdown thriller that was overshadowed by Dr. Strangelove). (Wiki here.)

Earl Grant Titsworth again, a.k.a. Grant Woods, the stunt man who died in a motorcycle accident. Different episode than “Side,” though:

Random helmsman: Dick Scotter. Don’t think he had any lines, but good-looking:

Almost a regular:  Lieutenant DeSalle appeared in this one and in “Squire of Gothos” and “Catspaw.” That’s two from season one plus the first episode to be shot for season two. Don’t think he ever did much, was just on hand and maybe said, “Aye, Captain” or the like. Did what looks like a respectable amount of work on Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Mission: Impossible, My Favorite Martian, etc. “Barrier’s final credit was the 1969 film Angel in my Pocket with Andy Griffith and Lee Meriwether. After leaving the acting profession, he became a legal officer for the US Coast Guard. As of 2007, he is a substitute teacher in northern Oregon.” 

I like Ricardo Montalban (b. 1920, Mexico City).

Not really a great actor, but you’re always glad to see him. He’s got vitality, and I think in real life he was supposed to be notably generous and good-natured. You can imagine him spending eighty years sharing his glory with everyone and never realizing he couldn’t act. Hey, it all worked out. The guy was built and he always gave it his all.

Note: That was Montalban’s real chest when he played Khan, according to Nicholas Meyer, who didn’t direct “Space Seed” but did direct its movie sequel, Wrath of Khan, a decade and a half later. Khan’s costuming was designed to show off the bod, per Nicholas Meyer quoted in Wiki’s Montalban entry.

Shatner didn’t like other leading men being on the set; Inside Star Trek says he baffled Montalban with his hostility. Shatner has the same vitality as Montalban and a lot more tricks as a performer. But he’s kind of a dick, very grasping and neurotic about his screen time. It’s a mania for him, and in the end it took him over. Hence the “Shatman” stage of his career, which has been busy but humiliating. I don’t think Montalban ever sank that low, though Fantasy Island sounds like it was right on the edge.

Wiki says Montalban’s “first starring film was He’s a Latin from Staten Island (1941).” Also: “Montalbán recalled that when he arrived in Hollywood in 1943, studios wanted to change his name to Ricky Martin. He frequently portrayed Asian characters – mostly of Japanese background …”

His first big U.S. film was opposite Esther Williams. He was also in two films with Joan Crawford. In 1949 he became “the first Hispanic actor to appear on the front cover of Life Magazine.” He sang opposite Lena Horne on Broadway, “light-hearted calypso numbers.”

Montalban was crippled in 1993 by an injury he had suffered in 1951 filming a Western and kept secret. He continued to take roles and lived until 2009. For instance, he was the granddad in the Spy Kids movies.

“His final role was the voice of a cow in an episode of Seth MacFarlane‘s series Family Guy, in which he parodies his Khan role by paraphrasing some of his lines from Star Trek II.”

The pretty historian who falls in love with Khan: Madlyn Rhue, born Madeline Roche in Washington, DC, in 1936. She played Montalban’s wife in a 1960 Bonanza episode, and she did a Bracken’s World. In 1977 she was confined to a wheelchair by multiple sclerosis. She did a Fantasy Island appearance that way. 

A favorite actor name: Blaisdell Makee. He was Hawaiian, b. 1931, and played Spinelli in “Space Seed” and Singh in “The Changeling,” in each case one of your standard Enterprise underlings. When Nimoy was being troublesome about his contract, Makee showed up on a list of possible replacements.

Makee’s Singh (l.) and Spinelli (l.):

Only known appearance: Kathy Ahart as a superhuman Khan follower. I could swear the costume involved bubble wrap.

Random redshirt: Bobby Bass, who was also James Doohan’s stunt double sometimes. He did stunt work in Smokey and the Bandit and the Pacino Scarface, among others. His widow was Bo Derek’s mother.

Single appearance:  Joan Webster as a nurse, no lines. The spray bottles showed up a lot in sickbay; I guess they were considered modern enough.

(Once again, all hail Memory Alpha, although Wikipedia also contributed to this report.)

I am faced with a task that never ends, and I’m posting this episode out of order — Friday should have been this one, not “Devil.” Hence my bright mood:

Costume is from “Amageddon,” which has especially wacky costumes. Maybe Theiss was feeling punch drunk by this point.

Okay, looking at the cast. The head alien guy (a recurring type on old Star Trek: the 50ish character actor who is front man for some misguided local setup, this episode being the one about the computer-estimate war and the alien civilians submitting to disintegration chambers). Called Anan-7, played by the son of a Yiddish writer. First movie role was Yiddish. “His Semitic features and knowledge of the Yiddish language led to frequent roles as Jewish or Arabic characters.” (update, That’s a wig, per Joe S. Walker in Comments.)

Exodus, The Wall (Broadway), Raid on Entebbe (as Begin). Got into tv when he was 34, stayed there into his 60s, apparently did okay. He looks distinguished, and it’s nice to know he married at 23 and apparently stayed married, “to Lillian Weinberg, a psychiatric social worker.” He was born 1918. 

… As near as I can make out, the voice for one of the 2 alien societies’ all-powerful computer is done by the guy who voiced the chief Keebler elf. (Mem Alpha identifies his part as “the Eminiar Security [Voice].”) He also did voice work in The Green Berets, Bullitt and, years later, the Warren Beatty Dick Tracy.

Below is the police commissioner from Ironside (b. 1921):

Mea 3 was Grace Gardner in Hill Street Blues! I had no idea; she was really good. Barbara Babcock, b. 1937 in Pasadena, Calif. Also did voice of Trelane’s mother for one of the floating superior light-blobs in “Squire of Gothos,” a voice in “Tholian Web,” and played the mean lady in “Plato’s Stepchildren.” (Mel Alpha)

Grew up in Tokyo because her dad was a general in the occupation. Went to Miss Porter’s School and Wellesley. (Her page at Wellesley’s site, with a jolly first sentence: “Where does one go after being named Wellesley’s Tree Day Mistress at the placid start of the turbulent ’60’s?”) Won the Emmy in 1981 for Outstanding Lead Actress—Drama as part of the big Emmy sweep that helped keep Hill Street alive. Did a lot of tv work thru the ’80s and ’90s.

Mea 3 has to be saved by Kirk from disintegrating herself. Apparently she gives Kirk a speech about the virtues of disintegration, so Babcock gets some sort of moment there.

Either Grace Gardner or from around then:

Bridget’s hip-Catholic-priest brother in Bridget Loves Bernie, the 1974 sitcom about a young taxi driver getting his degree (who’s Jewish) and a wealthy young blond teacher (she’s Irish Catholic) who get married and cause headaches for their families. The show was no 5 in the ratings but got canceled because of viewer mail complaining about the intermarriage. 

… A tv series called Hey Landlord, NBC, 1966-67.

… “the 1973 blaxploitation film That Man Bolt”

… Walter Koenig sold a script to Land of the Lost.

Miko Mayama, “Yeoman Tamura,” appeared in “I Spy, It Takes a Thief (with Malachi Throne), The Flying Nun (in an episode with Gregory Sierra), The Beverly Hillbillies, Ironside, Medical Center (with Glenn Corbett), Hawaii Five-O, Kojak, and Mannix.”

Recurring blueshirt:  Lieutenant Brent.

He was also a redshirt called Vinci:

Single-appearance watch:  A Starfleet flunky.

By now most of these links are coming from Memory Alpha. The more pictures in the post, the more links to Mem Alpha — that’s the rule of thumb. Anyway, my thanks to them once again for running such a thorough and useful site. As mentioned, it also has a very nice look to it.

Janos Prohaska (b. 1919, Budapest) thought up the Horta. Prohaska died seven years after “Devil,” Wiki says, when he was working on a series for ABC/Wolper and the plane the production had chartered for shooting flew into one of the Sierras.

Prohaska invented the Horta costume and horsed around in the office with it; then Gene Coon wrote a story to match. The result was one of Trek‘s closest approaches to its series ideal, namely we-are-not-the-center-of the-universe combined with different-is-not-bad: the so-called “monster” was protecting her eggs!

What we have here is a classic science fiction situation reinterpreted from a new standpoint, and the standpoint was simply this: more than one perspective is possible.

 The choice of situation — monster hunts spacemen — was such a fat, obvious target that hitting it produced an effect that’s now almost as trite as the original cliche. Still, there must have been 18 months or so when the “Devil” reversal seemed like the freshest idea in the world.

And the larger idea — the combo of not-the-center plus difference-not-bad — isn’t trite, even if you disagree with it. It can be rendered into very trite forms, but the idea itself is important and worth expressing. Personally, it’s my favorite, and I don’t claim to be original on that score. Gene Roddenberry said difference-not-bad was an idea that he and his generation of tv writers all tried to advance. Being tv writers of his generation, they probably didn’t do the best job of it, but still — the job was worth doing.

GR was a great believer in difference-not-bad, and I think Gene Coon went a step further and focused on not-the-center, which is a subtler concept and implies difference-not-bad. Coon was an immense liberal and a believer in the need for people to listen to the viewpoints of others. Being tv, “Devil” weighs the odds for the desired outcome; after all, what if the very rocks the miners were there to mine had turned out to be the Horta’s eggs? Try reconciling those interests.

Another dodge: the Vulcan mind meld. This is its first time out (and a huge production for its debut; halfway thru season 2 it would become a good deal more economical and for convenience’s sake might be applied to a simple stone wall). The mind meld is a pure gimme, a straight-up job of tv script soldering: we need to talk with a character that’s so alien it doesn’t have a mouth, what do we do? Well, uh, Spock has this power … A solution that amounts to “Get another alien!”

 [ update, Damn it, Anonymous says in Comments that “Dagger of the Mind” did a mind meld before “Devil in the Dark,” and it turns out this is true. I think the news takes some of the snap out of  my thoughts on the meld and Spock’s Otherization: yes, Spock is still the weird guy you give wild-card, story-helping powers to, so he’s Other, but it’s not like Gene Coon had to amp up his sense of Spock’s Otherness right when Coon was telling us his parable about how no one is really Other. Reason: reaching for an already invented element takes less gimme hunger than inventing an entirely new bullshit element right on the spot. ]  

Each dodge is fraudulent in two different ways, as writing and as thinking. The writing failures are a bit lazy and easy in the way of  run-of-the-mill scripting. The failures of thought are a bit lazy and easy in ways that are typically liberal: differences of interest are underestimated, and the liberal’s own understanding of others is greatly overestimated. So, in the course of our lesson about the foolishness of Otherization, Spock gets Otherized into a parking spot for impossible qualities.

On the other hand … great moment for Nimoy, a real chance to wail and he took it. This was when Spock-the-phenom had taken hold, and the show had to keep Nimoy happy.

Shatner was very jealous of the moment, something I surmise from this I Am Spock anecdote. Shatner had to miss the scene’s shooting because of his father’s death. On Monday, back in the studio, he prevailed upon Nimoy to give him a rendition. He kept urging Nimoy to do it bigger, do it all out. When Nimoy was at full pitch (“Pain! Pain!“), Shatner turned to the rest of the cast and crew and said, “Hey, somebody get this guy an aspirin!” Nimoy never forgave him, except that eventually he did because there were movies to be promoted.

A lot of manly men lumbering around in this one, the miners, and they make for a nice lineup of mugs. No women in the cast except the Horta and possibly an ensign or two as extras on the bridge.

Now the mugs …

The sergeant from McCloud, which was the Dennis Weaver series about a cowboy who solves crimes in the big city. The guy, b. 1910, did a ton of work, including appearances in some pretty big films of the late ’50s, early ’60s.

This guy did a lot of tv work in the late ’50s/early ’60s, heavy on the Westerns. Sounds like his career pretty much wrapped up at the end of the ’60s.

Next, Biff Elliot, b. 1923. Did a lot of war films, was friends with Jack Lemmon. Started out as Mike Hammer in the film of I, the Jury, but apparently his roles got smaller.

Only screen appearance, redshirt div.: John Cavett. 

A favorite: Barry Russo, who was also the Commodore in “The Ultimate Computer” (“What in blazes does Kirk think he’s doing?” or words to that effect.) He was a regular on a mid-’60s sitcom with Lee Meriwether. Sometimes he used the screen name John Duke.

 In “Devil” he was a redshirt but a lieut-commander of redshirts, name: Giotto.

Genuinely random redshirt:  They think the character’s name was Osborne. Nobody knows the actor’s name, but he pops up in “Devil,” “Archons,” and “Armageddon,” which were all made close to each other. (Like a lot of Star Trek extras, at least the men, he appears to find the work exquisitely painful.)

Osborne