Author Archives: Tom Crippen

Wiki Trek: Iconic redshirt edition

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“Actor Jerry Ayres made two appearances on Star Trek: The Original Series. Ayres would go on to become a regular on the soap operas General Hospital and The Bold and the Beautiful. He also had a recurring role on the TV series Dynasty.”



Now down to the poster — I think that’s him. Episode’s definitely “Arena” and he’s the best match off the Mem Alpha cast list. (Quite a pose for Kirk there.)


Photobucket



The poster’s joke would be funnier with just the title word, not the legend below it — everyone knows about redshirts, and if they don’t the poster won’t mean much to them no matter what. [ update, No, I guess people who aren’t into Star Trek might get the joke with the legend’s help: that picture speaks volumes. But for people who do know Star Trek, and there’s a lot of them, the joke would be five times better w/ out the legend. ] 

Great first sentences

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The Providence Journal flags its corner of the ongoing story that is Sarah Palin. (I broke off the second sentence and stuck in “etc.”)

update, Last I heard, the Senate Finance Committee was not going to allow the death-counseling clause to stay in the bill, reason being the scare about “death panels,” which, as I understand it, was started by Sarah Palin with a Facebook post. Taken all in all, I believe this could be called driving the debate. Not bad for somebody I say is a wash-up.

On the other hand … this health care debate is so off-balance it seems like anyone can land a punch against the Democrats. Which isn’t good news either.

update 2, When the conventional wisdom sucker-punches you.  Joe Klein slips in this by-the-way toward the end of his new column: “it was government action — by both Obama and, yes, George W. Bush — that prevented a reprise of the Great Depression.”

So we’re agreed that the fall ’08 situation really was that bad — that, pre-TARP, the economy was heading for cardiac arrest? Don’t want to challenge Klein, just checking. It’s kind of a scary thing to face up to, even in retrospect. How glad I am to be invested in a mutual fund.

update 3, Arthur Frommer is the nervous type. He sums up the Arizona situation: “According to the Phoenix, Arizona, police, people with guns including assault rifles do not need permits in Arizona, but can simply carry such weapons with them, openly and brazenly, when they gather to protest a speaker at a public event.” It just reels the fucking mind. (Sorry, Uland, but this is a preoccupation I have.) update 4, Talk about wedge issues. Open-carry-for-Obama may be up there with NAMBLA as an “I get off the bus now” moment for the general population. There are some things that no idea can justify.

update 5, My senator is five years younger than me.


Peter Cook line

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He fell apart in his mid-40s and stayed that way for about 10 years. Most days he just stayed home and drank. But a decade is a long time, so every now and then he wound up on a talk show. When this happened he managed to be very funny, or that’s what I’ve read.
For instance, a tv interviewer asked him what he’d been doing. Cook said he had taken up a form of yoga so subtle and arcane that to the uninitiated it would look exactly like a middle-aged Englishman staying in bed until 1 o’clock every single afternoon.
I have to admit that’s one of my favorite lines. He was such a wreck by then but he could strike a glimmer, which is good to know.

Overheard

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My neighbor Henri, while watching the scene in Godfather where Don Corleone views his son’s body: “When you’re dead, they don’t take care of you, they get rid of you.”
He expands on the theme a while. “When a cow is dead, you say get rid of that fucker. You do not keep it around, no.” The whole speech is typical of him, because he’s pretending you treat a dead person the way you treat a dead animal. Henri wouldn’t visit his stepfather at the hospital when the old man was dying, and as a result Henri’s daughter wouldn’t talk to him for two years. It’s just a month or so that she started again.
Henri is talking to the guy from Apartment 3 while I do my qi gong. The Godfather that’s playing is from Henri’s collection of old video tapes and the colors have gone blurry, like the print was made of toilet paper.

Wiki Trek: “Return of the Archons”

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The good guy among the people on the planet was played by Harry Townes, who was born in 1914 and played 200 tv parts and 29 movie parts. Wiki says he was “ordained as an Episcopal priest in St. Paul’s Cathedral on March 16, 1974, and served at St. Mary of the Angels Church in Hollywood, California.” He retired from acting in 1989, when he was 75, and lived his last 11 years in his hometown of Huntsville, Ala.

… In 1995, a movie called Project: Metalbeast, with cast members named Diaunte (one word only) and Musetta Vander.

… A tv episode titled “Long and Thin, Lorna Lynn,” from a show called The Duke (1979).

The episode’s girl, Tula, was played by Brioni Farrell, whose real name was Xenia Gratsos. She was born in Greece in 1940, then came to the U.S. to act.  She seems to have been doing okay with tv work right thru 1968, then there’s a 5-year gap, then her parts resume but not at as frequent as earlier. What she was doing around when she did “Archons,” per Wiki:

A lot of ethnic names in those parts: Rossi, Waa-Nibe, Luciana.

…as Tula


The First Lawgiver, meaning a guy in a monk’s robe and hood, is played by Sid Haig, who turns out to have a cult-films career behind him. He was in a bunch of Jack Hill films, meaning blaxploitation and the ‘70s, and a bunch of Rob Zombie films, meaning Fantagoria-type comedy-horror vehicles. And he’s worked a whole lot in tv shows. He turned down the part of Marcellus Wallace because he wanted to get out of the B’s. His real name is Sidney Mosesian and he was born in Fresno, went to the Pasadena Playhouse, met Stuart Margolin there and roomed with him.

Landru, sort of the head alien, was this guy, who sometimes played Hamilton Burger (“Perry Mason’s hapless opponent”):

 

All right, this is weird. The guy who played the brunette mid-30ish ensign (“Lindstrom”) was also in Perry Mason but as Perry Mason’s assistant. And both he and Sid Haig were in Diamonds Are Forever.

This guy is a babyface who popped up in a few Trek episodes because he was friends with Joe D’Agosta, who did casting. He did a Lucy Show too, in 1968, for whatever that tells us: by then Lucy had sold Desilu. Anyway, the guy’s credits keep on into the ‘80s. Wind-up: “Morgan eventually left acting to pursue a career in financial services and insurance. Today, he lives in Kalispell, Montana.” Here he is in “Archons”: 


 

This guy (“Bilar”) was also in Stargate and Independence Day. Born Lev Mailer, called himself Ralph Maurer:

He was born in 1933 but just starting on tv when he did Trek. Other credits around then: “The Lucy Show (1967), Mission: Impossible (1967, alongside Mark Lenard, Jack Donner, and Dick Dial), Daniel Boone (1967, with Michael Forest and Morgan Jones), and It Takes a Thief (1968, with Malachi Throne, Steve Ihnat, and Lawrence Montaigne).” That’s from Mem Alpha, so the other actors’ names are all of people who appeared in Trek. Of the shows named, Lucy and Mission: Impossible were both Desilu, and Gene L. Coon (who produced “Archons”) was producer for It Takes a Thief when Mailer/Maurer worked there.

Recurring Redshirt watch:  Lieut. Galloway, who sometimes had a name and sometimes didn’t, who died in one episode and was back in another. The actor was pushing 30.

Galloway 

Only known appearance:  Barbara Webber. The Archons had mass fits where everyone acted out, and during one of these fits she twirled around and danced.

 

Wiki Trek: “Tomorrow Is Yesterday”

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… An actress named Helen Kleeb.


I find this episode hard to remember too, possibly because I resist seeing Kirk and the rest in a present-day setting (or a 1960s present-day setting).

The air force pilot (I mean the actor) who winds up on the Enterprise was married to Joanne Worley (Laugh-In) for 25 years and did a lot of tv work from the late ’50s to the early ’90s. I thought he was good in the part, which was a leading-man role like Kirk’s: two rugged men looking hard at tough situations. But it sounds like, though the guy worked, he never bounced too high in the cast lists. Wiki here. 

The tough air force sergeant with the stare occasions this Memory Alpha sentence: “Lynch was born as James Harold Tilton Lynch in Birmingham, Alabama, but grew up in the city of Opp.” That’s hard to beat. He was friends with Lee Meriwether.

A fellow who shows up in this and a few eps is John Winston, who plays Lt. Kyle, a flagrant redshirt. Wiki’s got his filmography and looks like he was around for all 3 seasons, also Wrath of Khan. He was English. Incredibly, he appeared in the Time Tunnel pilot, entitled “Rendezvous with Yesterday” and Lee Meriwether was in it too.

… A movie from my childhood whose title would have driven me crazy with desire if I’d ever known about it: Valley of the Dragons (1961).

Sherri Townsend. This was her only known screen appearance.



Wiki Trek: “The Alternative Factor”

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“… the 1971-1972 syndicated sea adventure series Primus,” whose lead character was named Carter Primus.

… Incredibly a pilot was shot of a series that would be about a Swede and an Irishman who immigrate to the U.S., God knows when it was set, but the series had William Shatner as the Swede. His Swedish accent exists out there someplace and we’ll never hear it. Remember, there is also an episode of Mission: Impossible that is called “Cocaine” and features Shatner. The mind reels at the possibilities.
The actor in question for this episode replaced John Barrymore Jr. at the last minute because Barrymore flaked. The incident is described in Inside Star Trek. Barrymore was Drew Barrymore’s fucked-up father.
What a dreadful beard on that poor guest lead. The optic effects in this episode are also a drag, the big light blobs or inflamed trip-adelic screen transformations or whatever. This is one of the episodes I have trouble remembering, even now that I’ve gone back to watch it a second time. The show goes beyond being a snooze and starts hazing you. You get so many recurring reasons not to look at the screen.
The beard:

… as Lazarus