Some production facts from Mem Alpha, just because they interest me:

… Similarly to “The Corbomite Maneuver“, this episode was filmed early in the season, but aired much later because of the many, newly created special effect shots which took lot of time to be filmed and added in post-production.

… more costume changes than any other TOS character with the exception of Barbara Anderson (Lenore Karidian) in “The Conscience of the King.” Guest star France Nuyen’s costumes are far more revealing, however: the purple halter top, the silver flowered thing on black mesh, the orange dress, and the blue wedding gown with no sides.

This episode marks the first appearance of the Matt Jefferies-designed Klingon ship ... The new emblem of the Klingon Empire is seen on the model …

War vessel. Like people say, Matt Jefferies did great work. He designed the Enterprise and the bridge, both of which are magnificent, then followed himself with the Klingons’ war ship, also a triumph. The ship is oddly beautiful: kind of scary and off looking, like an alien warship should be, but in subtle ways, and at the same time it draws the eye: the ship is uncomfortable to look at but also pleasing to look at. I think it outclasses everything else about the old-series Klingons: the make-up, the dumb names (“Klingon” itself is kind of dumb). In fact I’d say it was better than the show’s Vulcan stuff, even better than Mr. Spock’s ears. The Klingon ship is old Star Trek‘s best go at representing alienness, a pretty fundamental mission for the series. 

Shatner’s enemy.  MemAlpha mentioned France Nuyen‘s outfits. She was born 1939, Marseilles; original name: France-Nguyen Van-Nga. The wig is copied off the cover painting of a science fiction magazine from a good ways back.

Per Wiki, Nuyen’s father was Vietnamese, mother was a French gypsy. When she was a teen somebody photographed her on the beach and she became a starlet.

In 1958 Nuyen and Bill Shatner starred in the Broadway adaptation of a hit novel, The World of Suzie Wong. Shatner says the play was sold out for months in advance because of mass theater parties booked from out of town. He claims that the result was a disaster because Nuyen was incompetent and impossible, a temperamental brat, somebody who couldn’t be trusted even to deliver her lines or do what the stage directions said.

The play would just fall apart, night after night, and Shatner had to stay alive up there somehow. So he began bending his lines; he twisted their delivery, sent the emphasis where it wasn’t expected. That way he could give the audience something to pay attention to. This is the origin story for the famous Shatner delivery, the crosswire rat-a-tat-tat everyone parodies. (“Man … was meant … to try,” and on “to” his voice goes up, and on “try” it goes down, throws the word away.)  He learned those tricks so he could survive France Nuyen. Sources: Up Till Now and Neal Pollack’s comments during Shatner’s Comedy Central roast, though I don’t advise watching the roast unless you’re some kind of moron. ( update, Not Neal Pollack. It was Kevin Pollak. )

Eyerolling.  In “Elaan,” Nuyen is just fine. Every big scene has got her in it, she has to carry the episode, and she comes thru. Moues, eye rolling, bellowing, cooing: she puts some life into the business, and it’s not just noise, there’s a performance. Some people you are really happy to see when you’re watching old Trek, and she’s one of them. (This effect, I mean brightening at the sight of competence, gets stronger if you’re watching a lot of episodes in a row. Now that I’m a few weeks into doing this rundown, I have to remind myself that I’m not really a James Doohan fan, that I’m just very grateful whenever he shows up.)

Nuyen was a reg on St. Elsewhere, got a master’s in clinical psych in 1986 and started counseling battered women, women inmates. After three years someone gave her a “Woman of the Year” award. 

Ambassador, others.  The green ambassador (Petri), b. 1930, NYC. Wiki says he did a lot of “summer stock and repertory companies,” then Shakespeare on Broadway, first movie was The Robe (1953), played Caligula.

Mem Alpha: “After recovering from a drug addiction and a career-ruining jail sentence, Robinson returned to acting on television in the late 1960s, … Besides TOS, other TV series on which he has made guest appearances include Mannix, Bewitched, The Wild Wild West, Kolchak: The Night Stalker (with fellow TOS guest actor John Fiedler), The Waltons, Barney Miller (with another TOS guest star, Lee Meriwether), and Murder, She Wrote.” Movie parts listed for 1970s to ’90s. In 1997-2000, hosted Beyond Bizarre for the Discovery Channel.

 Orange shoulders.  Big alien flunky, b. 1937, NYC. Married to the woman who played the pretty historian who falls for Khan, 1962-70, had a kid. First credits mentioned are movies in 1964, including Taggart, in which he starred. Last role was in Quantum Leap, decades later.

 During 1960s, Mem Alpha says, “guest appearances on such television series as The Virginian, Mannix, and Mission: Impossible, as well as Fantasy Island …”

Black redshirt. He has a couple of lines, pops up in a couple of scenes, though he doesn’t get to do anything useful. Was also Greg Morris’s stunt double on Mission: Impossible.

 Did a lot of small parts over the years, latest being a judge on Boston Legal.

Swamp Thing.  Alien bodyguard #1. He was born 1938, started as stunt double on Lost in Space in 1965, would eventually have speaking part on the ’70s Battlestar Galactica.

He was the guy in the Swamp Thing costume in Swamp Thing, The Return of Swamp Thing, and the Swamp Thing tv series. Mem Apha mentions movie credits in ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, in most cases decently budgeted films.

Viewscreen role. The Klingon, b. 1922. Mem Alpha: “Guest appearances on numerous television series, includingGunsmoke, Rawhide, The Untouchables, Wagon Train, Bonanza, The Virginian, and Gene Roddenberry’s The Lieutenant. … last appearance was in the 1972 pilot movie for the short-lived series The Delphi Bureau …”

Only known appearance:  The other alien bodyguard, another soul killed by Star Trek‘s wig deptartment:

… Scotty did the voice for the warning device sent up by the aliens (which Mem Alpha i.d.s as “Melkotian buoy”—“buoy” is odd, but nobody’s on board the thing so what else do you call it?)

 … The voice for the Melkotian itself (pop-eyed creature that looks like a dummy) was done by Abraham Sofaer. He voiced a superior glowing light blob two years before, in “Charlie X.”

… There was an early ’60s tv Western called The Tall Man. What a great name.

I’m going to start with the unspeaking slain rancher. Born as Palmer Lee in San Francisco, 1927, stage name was Gregg Palmer. In “Spectre” he gets plugged and falls over; this is right when the Enterprise crew has first arrived in the old West.

Why start with him? Because, if you want to read Wiki entries about minor ’60s tv actors, this is the greatest Wiki entry ever. It goes on for show after show, part after part. Gregg got his first role in 1950, a Martin and Lewis vehicle called My Friend Irma Goes West. Then, from 1955 to 1978, he did nothing except stand in front of cameras, mostly while episodes of tv Westerns were being shot. The entry’s got  character names, episode titles, co-stars: 14 paragraphs of this stuff. Palmer was “Burly Man” in John Wayne’s last movie. 

Somehow he also got over to England and appeared in two episodes of Doctor Who, the episode that closed off the first Doctor’s run and the episode that did the same for the second Doctor. Not major parts, but credited. Wiki says Gregg is the first actor to do both Star Trek and Doctor Who. 

All right, the rest of the actors. They’re good. Like “Devil in the Dark,” this is a real line-up of mugs, hard-bitten masculine types, but “Spectre” has a much better selection. Apparently Hollywood had great choices to offer if you were looking for Western types.

Villains are often a weak point of old Trek casting. Not this time. We have a very good Wyatt Earp, b. 1928, Chicago. The guy is scary. He did some notable manly films of the late ’60s/early ’70s: True Grit, Papillon, Chisum. His first film: Roger Corman’s I, Mobster (1958), which also had Celia Lovsky. “His last film role was an uncredited appearance as a judge in the popular comedy Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo.” Died “from lung and brain cancer in 2002.”

The Virgil Earp, also good, b. 1913. The voice of the announcer on the castaways’ radio in Gilligan’s Island, which Wiki says was his longest-running role. Did a lot of series westerns in the ’60s, including 8 different Bonanzas as different characters. (Mem Alpha and Wiki)

The Doc Holliday, b. 1915 in Lynn, Mass. Did some tv western guest shots in ’60s, also a bunch of Brando films. First role was a cameo in The Men, kept on a with a bunch of other Brandos in ’50s/early ’60s, then pops up in The Missouri Breaks (1976). 

Chekov’s love interest: the blond bargirl, b. 1941. This was her next-to-last acting role. She’d done guest spots on a number of shows: The Fugitive, Gunsmoke, The Invaders, started with a Twilight Zone in 1964 in which she’d been the central character, a folk singer. Had been Bob Dylan’s girlfriend in college, possibly inspired “Girl from the North Country.” In 1965 she married Wavy Gravy. Mem Alpha: “The two are still married, and Beecher now goes by the name Jahanara Romney. With her husband, she helps run a number of charitable organizations.”

Ed the barkeep, b. 1897, NYC. He’s good; he carries the scene where he reacts to Kirk’s claim to be from the future, etc. (by “react,” I mean he breaks up and guffaws elaborately). His credits all seem to be from the mid-’50s into the ’60s, last is Westworld (1973). Lot of Westerns, including tv work and some John Fords.

The sheriff, actor b. 1915 in NYC. TV/movie work from late ’50s on, but entry also says he was in Honeymooners. Last roles are in first Ace Ventura and Naked Gun: The Final Insult.

The barber, b. 1930, Philadelphia. Vincent McEveety put him into five episodes. The thing is, I’d say McCready was quite good; wonder why the other directors didn’t use him.

                             

The Morgan Earp, one hell of a scary face. The actor did an album “called Here in the Land of Victory. It featured a mix of country, blues, and eastern influenced folk.” Born 1928 in Denver, also appeared in Star Trek V, “his last known screen appearance.”

Latter shot directed by Shatner — naturally.

You look at them, you want to look away. And the episode’s whole story is pretty much the crew members trying to dodge the things, which jerk thru the air at tight angles and in straight lines, making for a pervasive anti-plausibility. “Operation: Annihilate!” is a stinker like that one where the guest had a dreadful beard and the trippy optic effects were so painful.  Looking at the screen becomes a mug’s game, and as a result I’m still not sure what happened in this episode except that it involved the things that made me want to look away: in this case, rubber pancakes of dog vomit that fly.

The vomit pancakes were designed by Wah Chang, who is spoken of highly by Inside Star Trek. I can’t sign on there. The pancakes, the Gorn (“Arena”), the yeti (“Galileo VII”), the yeti-plus-spines-plus-horn-plus-tail (Mogotu, I think–it was in “A Private Little War”): put them all together and you’ve got “oy.” I admit that the pancakes, at least, are heavily detailed and richly molded; otherwise they wouldn’t be so disgusting. But they look like objects, not specimens, so they’re not convincing. The Gorn and the rest also fail to convince, and on top of that they look like crap. I think Wah Chang’s big value was probably that he could do big projects fast (a man-size suit or a dozen vomit pancakes count as a big project) and they wouldn’t fall apart.

Mem Alpha says the planet exteriors were shot at the “headquarters of TRW in Redondo Beach, California (currently the Northrop Grumman Space Technology headquarters).” … First appearance of McCoy’s lab, and it’s got one of the people-holding sleep pods from “Space Seed.” 

Actors: not a lot of them. Here’s Jim Kirk’s sister-in-law.

She tells them the horrible thing that happened to the earth colony, then dies with enough agony to have caused some local tv stations to trim the scene in syndication. (Possibly without intent of adding more commercials: I read that, at least in the ’70s, the stations showing Trek kept the episodes intact for fan acceptability. Instead it was a case of local papers assigning suitability grades to tv shows in their listings.)

The actress, Joan Swift, was born in Sacramento, no birth year given. Her credits appear to be concentrated in the ’60s and include The Jack Benny Program and The Andromeda Strain (1971). She did some other Desilu work: The Lucy Show, I Spy. Latest available credit is Lucy Gets Lucky, a Lucy Ball tv movie from 1975.  

Girl redshirt:  In the landing party when it gets attacked, but nothing happens to her. The actress was in a couple of movies and that was it. One was a Presley vehicle with a great title: Stay Away, Joe (1968).

Her redshirt’s last name is Jamal, which is part of a pretty steady background effort by old Trek to infiltrate the screen with non-white bread Enterprise hands. Actress’s name is great: Maurishka Taliaferro.

Man, is she pretty. Makeup isn’t my thing, but I’m guessing the look here is very ’60s and Twiggy-like — I mean the way the eyes are done up.

Afflicted stunt man, b. 1923 in Texas, did a lot of work from late 1940s on, retired in late 1970s. Here he’s just a member of the earth colony emoting because of the parasites:

Another of the planet guys. The actor had bits in the 1954 Star Is Born and Scorsese’s New York, New York. To me, looking at that photo, it’s a surprise that he was a bit player. He’s got regular features but a lived-in sort of face, a good combo for tv work, and his expression here looks like it’s got something going on. 

Also emoting, a second stunt man (Jerry Catron, no birth year; credits seem okay but concentrated in 1960s):

The redshirt is also Catron and  appeared in “Doomsday Machine” and “Journey to Babel,” which are second-season eps; “Annihilate” was the last ep made for the first season. For the record, Mem Alpha gives the redshirt’s name as Montgomery.

Catron’s got quite a look in the redshirt picture; he looks ragged, on the brink. Also, he seems a lot skinnier, though “Annihilate” and “Doomsday” were done only 4 months apart. “Doomsday” is my guess for the redshirt picture because in “Babel” Catron was just part of an honor guard. In “Doomsday” his character loses a fight to William Windom, which is a dispiriting prospect.

Joan Collins (b. May 23, 1933, in London)! Her dad was Jewish and from South Africa. Holy shit, Wiki says he was agent for Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey and the Beatles. (They had someone besides Epstein? Wiki’s Beatles timeline turns up nothing for Collins.) Anyway, from the client list it sounds like the dad was hitting his career peak just when  his daughter was making it as a starlet.

 She trained at RADA, which I didn’t expect, signed with J. Arthur Rank at 17, First movie was Lady Godiva Rides Again (1951). Signed with 20^th Century Fox in 1954 as “their answer to Elizabeth Taylor” (Wiki), was “popular as a magazine pinup in the UK throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s.”

 Chose to slow her movie career in the early ’60s, Mem Alpha says; at any rate, by 1967 she was doing a Star Trek episode, and she also did Batman and Mission: Impossible (which I expect were great credits to have, as tv went ).

 What a face! She was okay in the show, carried off the speech where she gets exalted about how one day there will be space travel.

 I think she had one of the few parts in old Star Trek that put a woman at the center of the story. There was the princess in “Friday’s Child,” the princess in “All Our Yesterdays,” and Elaan in “Elaan of Troylus” (also a princess.) The three alien princesses are spoiled brats; the Joan Collins character is brisk and determined but an idealist, which is meant to be the feminine element in her makeup. In the end, of course, she’s there to be knocked over by a car.

… Only two lines of Ellison’s script made it into the final, per Memory Alpha.

… The story is set in 1930. But in Kirk and Spock’s room you can see the emblem for a fallout shelter up on the wall. That’s per Mem Alpha again. I never noticed, which is humiliating. Also, Mem Alpha says someone matched real calendar dates with the wall calendar on view in one scene and established that it was for May 1930. 

Look at this guy (John Harmon, b. 1905). He’s a bum in the mission, but he was also Tepo, the Durante-like gangster in “Piece of the Action” (the one who got transported in his underwear and said “Mamma!”). About 200 parts over the years, including a Buck Rogers serial in 1939. In 1975 he played “Old Hippie” on The Odd Couple.

“His career spanned seven decades and almost three hundred movie roles and television guest spots, many of them uncredited. Most of his television work was in the 1960s; he was a staple in television of that era …”

The skeptical cop. Actor, b. 1918, started as boxer, then a Marine in WWII, then acting; 200-plus parts. Name: Hal Baylor (orig. Hal Brittan).

Soup kitchen drunk. Actor, b. 1918, played “the hotel clerk for the entire run of Gunsmoke” and showed up a lot on Dragnet. (Name: Howard Culver)

The fellow who drives the truck that hits Joan Collins is the same guy who drove the truck in Duel! Carey Loftin, (1914 –1997, he had an amazing career. Stunt coordinator for THX 1138, The Deer Hunter and The Goonies, which is quite a spread, career-wise, and he drove for Bullitt, The French Connection and The Getaway. I really had no idea.

 Mem Alpha’s caption for the photo below: “The truck driver inside his vehicle.” 

Finally, from Mem Alpha: “Mary Statler is a stuntwoman and stunt actress who was the stunt double for Joan Collins in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode ‘The City on the Edge of Forever.’ She doubled Collins in a scene where she was hit by a truck. Statler received no credit for her work.

“Statler was one of the founding and charter members of the Stuntwomens Association of Motion Pictures in 1967 alongside fellow Star Trek stuntwomen Regina Parton and Donna Garrett.”

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.