Wiki Trek: “For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched” the Sky”

The episode involves a space disease. I find the following item hard to believe, but it’s from Mem Alpha:

An early press release misspelled the disease as “xenopallasathemia”. Fan writer Ruth Berman picked up on the gaffe and reported it to Devra Langsam’s zine Spockanalia, adding “Talk about too much of a god thing.”

Because of “pallas” being in the middle of the space disease’s name. I don’t normally go for nerdy bad puns, but this case is so extreme that it commands respect. (Side note: Kind of odd that the script would impose such a tongue twister on the cast.) 

By now Star Trek had sets, props and footage it could cannibalize. MemAlpha notes:

 The Book of the People is the same as Chicago Mobs of the Twenties in “A Piece of the Action“.

The metal helical staircase is recycled from “The Empath“.

The scenes showing Yonada are reused footage of the asteroid from “The Paradise Syndrome“, and the curved staircase in the control room at the end of this episode seems to be the same one used inside the Obelisk in that same episode.

Lousy script.  “Hollow” is another lousy show, again because of script. Space disease hits reg from nowhere; there’s a space tribe bossed by a computer; the head gal falls in love w/ regular for no apparent reason; Kirk and Spock are captured, then let go, so what; the regular decides he’ll stay w/ gal and die from his disease, but then he doesn’t have to because the tribe’s memory banks have advanced alien knowledge; regular winds up back on bridge w/ rest, gal stays w/ tribe, but I forget how we reach this point.

Just a fucking stinker of a turd of a dead plot, and the regular who gets the terminal disease/alien gal is McCoy. Of all old Star Trek’s first-line cast, DeForest Kelley had the least to keep him afloat. He was likable, which counts, but there wasn’t much he could pull off as an actor. I think James Doohan was a good deal better. In season three he was getting enough business to count as number 3½ of the big three, but too bad he wasn’t higher up. Would have helped if he’d been the lead for this ep, which Mem Alpha says was the case in the story’s early stages.

McCoy’s eyebrow.  McCoy and the alien priestess have their first clinch. The camera tracks in slightly on McCoy – and DeForest Kelley raises one eyebrow. It’s like Dave Thomas doing an impression of McCoy registering consternation.

Also, when the show wants to remind us of McCoy’s fatal illness, he coughs. It’s like Chopin in a biopic. And there’s a lot of standing around and talking, though that’s the case even with decent old Trek. Couldn’t the writers/directors use the hack’s trick of giving the actors something to do with their hands? Even that would have helped.

The episode is a planet show, big on sets and costumes, about a dozen extras running about in various configurations. Theiss went crazy with the costumes, as he tended to when a whole bunch of aliens had to be got up. Wish I could show some, but Mem Alpha and Google aren’t helping me on this one.

 

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Alien priestess.  The love interest, b. 1938, London. Didn’t really hear an accent. She was Patrick Macnee’s wife when the episode was shot. Wiki says she had parts in “Z-Cars, The Avengers, Danger Man, Mission: Impossible, Mannix, Days of our Lives, and Eight is Enough. She retired from acting in the late 1970s.” Married Eddie Albert’s son in 1978, when she was 40 or so and he was 28. IMDB lists 53 screen acting jobs, first was in 1960 (ep titled “A Girl for George” on Inside Story), last was in 1979 (two eps of Eight Is Enough as “Ms. Chovick”). Around time of “Hollow” she had eps of The Spies, Mission: Impossible, and The Outsider, and a role in something called The Greatest Mother of Them All


The cruelty of the system, or what?.  My theory is that tv science fiction was a tough thing for old character actors back in the 1960s. They wanted to keep working, but they had no idea how strange tv sf’s demands might be, or how awful the results were when the production crew didn’t hit the mark.

Below, I think this is a bad way for someone to wind up — at least per my theory. Maybe the actor (b. 1906 in Canton, Ohio; orig name Jon Lormier, stage name Jon Lormer) himself didn’t care. But the progression looks sad. Star Trek upped its demands on him until there he was, 62 years old and … Christ.

 

             

 

That runs from “The Cage” (first pilot) to a stand-by alien in “Return of the Archons” to the wig shot, which is from the actor’s brief but big scene in “Hollow.” He staggers up to the Trek men like an apparition and gives them a quavering, old-soothsayer speech that includes the episode’s title phrase; then he falls over and dies. This is by far the most that Trek ever gave the actor to do, but he had to put on that robe and that wig.

On the other hand, check out these credits:

 “Judge Chester on the prime time soap opera Peyton Place (1964-69 …), and guest appearances on Thriller (1960, hosted by Boris Karloff), The Untouchables (1962 …), Family Affair (1970 …), Barney Miller (1976 …), Mission: Impossible … and The Twilight Zone (1960-1963 …). He also made repeated appearances on Perry Mason (often as a coroner) from 1959 through 1963 …

He also had roles in the 1978 TV miniseries Arthur Hailey’s the Moneychangers and Loose Change

His many feature film credits include The Comancheros (1961 …), The Singing Nun (1966 …), Dimension 5 (1966 …), Doctors’ Wives (1971 …), Rooster Cogburn (1975 …), and George A. Romero’s Creepshow (1982 …).

IMDB lists 147 screen acting jobs, starting with an ep of Nash Airflyte Theater in 1950 (great series title, of course), ending with a movie called Beyond the Next Mountain in 1987. Around the time of “Hollow,” he was doing eps of Batman, Lancer, Run for Your Life, The Big Valley, The Outcasts, The Guns of Will Sonnett, Mission: Impossible, and The Wild Wild West, not to mention the role of “Chaplain” in a movie called If He Hollers, Let Him Go. So I doubt that he was desperate to get a part. Maybe being a working-pro actor just requires a certain degree of not getting too fussed about a wig for one role.

Gunsmoke had an episode called “Jailbait Janet” in 1960.

First admiral. Wiki says this man (b. 1911, Chicago) played the first admiral to show up in a Star Trek episode, namely “Amok Time.” Here he is again, in “Hollow.”

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Played Nimitz in Baa Baa Black Sheep and admirals in the 2 Herman Wouk miniseries about World War II, Winds of War and Winds of Remembrance.

Did theater during his own WWII service, started in tv/movies in late 1950s, finally retired in 1991, had “amassed some 200 appearances in a career spanning … 35 years.” Seven times as a judge on Perry Mason, 1960-66. Tons of ’60s/’70s tv work, even ’80s: Untouchables, Twilight Zone, Rawhide, The Invaders, Get Smart, I Dream of Jeannie, Wild Wild West, Waltons, Kolchak,  Rockford Files, Fantasy Island, Quincy, on and on. Mem Alpha says:

On film, Morrow made appearances in the English version of 1962’s King Kong vs. Godzilla, the 1963 dramedy Captain Newman, M.D. …, Gore Vidal’s The Best Man (1964), Disney’s The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969 …), the war drama Johnny Got His Gun (1971 …), and Elia Kazan’s 1976 drama The Last Tycoon …), among others. Morrow went uncredited in nearly all of these films; however, one film he did receive credit for was the 1970 science fiction classic Colossus: The Forbin Project, directed by Joseph Sargent.

Wiki Trek: “The Tholian Web”


Not a really bad show, I think, though it’s one of my missing four and I can’t watch it again to make sure. As I remember, the episode’s effects were pretty good and I liked the space suits the guys wore early on. I think Kirk has his suit all thru the scene he does as a phantom. (And I see from Mem Alpha that the episode got an Emmy for its special effects, so there you go.)


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The episode’s gimmick is dimensions and passing between them; the script introduces a special term, “interspace.” The idea is fairly advanced s.f., like the ideas in “Empath” and “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” None of the ideas involved were breakthrus for the field, but they took some thought and explaining; they weren’t the sort of thing normally lobbed in front of tv audiences as s.f. at the time.

Yet the episodes aren’t good. “Tholian Web” may not suck as much as “Truth No Beauty,” but the show is still faulty work. There’s a lot of standing around for the characters, the dialogue spins its wheels, or so I remember.

“Pointy-eared Vulcan.”  The worst of it is Spock and McCoy. Because Kirk is in limbo, the two of them are thrown on each other. This brings out a serious recurring weakness in old Trek, because the Spock-McCoy relation never worked too well. It needed a light touch, and maybe not enough writing/acting skill was around to do the job. The two characters sound carping and snide; they seem to dislike each other and they’re petty about it. This is also the case during the first and second season—yes, there’s the occasional McCoy-Spock moment that works, but not a lot of them.

The faultiness of the relationship really comes thru when something big is at stake, as in this episode. (Another example: “Paradise Syndrome.”) The ship is in a crisis, the burden is on Spock, so what does McCoy do? He says nasty personal things about Spock’s judgment and motives. He kicks the guy when he’s down and he does it viciously. Then a little time goes by and he comes back and says how maybe Spock isn’t a monster after all. Well, damn.

Moment of truth.  If McCoy could say such nasty things to Spock, and believe such nasty things about him, how can we pretend we’re watching a warm, barbed, bantering relationship between two professionals who have their differences but still like and respect each other? That’s what we’re supposed to be looking at; the pretence runs all thru the old series. But the relationship is not there. Odd, because 1) writing such a relationship doesn’t seem like it would be so tough for tv pros, 2) character banter/schtick has been such a mainstay of the franchise from one incarnation to another, and 3) why would viewers sign on to such an emperor’s-new-clothes sort of situation?

Side-note: during his Spock-confrontation scenes, McCoy always seems ready to stroke out. DeForest Kelley was a likable actor, but he didn’t really do a high-performance job as McCoy. When he put his character into gear, made him active in a scene and not just a sounding board, he did it by acting like an overcafeeinated man who’s confronting the fellow in the next cubicle about clicking his pen. Reasoning with Kirk, defying a space computer, bantering with Spock—he always gets ferocious real fast. (Did he ever do that shit back during his Westerns? In those days he had mainly villain parts, and I thought those guys played it cool in Western films.) 

Space helmets.  McCoy makes himself useful here by showing one of the “environmental suits” worn in the episode. I like these. They’re more like what you’d see in 2001, and as a kid that gave me the sense of a crossover. Mem Alpha says: “These suits were designed by William Ware Theiss and consisted of silver lamé with a fabric helmet with screen mesh visor. This allowed the actors to breathe easier while wearing the suit.”


 

 Also Mem Alpha:

This is one of the few episodes in which all of the regular second and third-season characters—Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scott, Sulu, Uhura, Chekov, and Chapel—appear.

In the scenes in which Captain Kirk’s head is partially obscured by his spacesuit, William Shatner does not wear his frontal hairpiece.

The ship’s chapel, which had previously appeared in “Balance of Terror“, was a redress of the transporter room.

The Exo III graphic from “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” reappears in the sickbay of the Defiant.


Utility man. Paul Baxley, b. 1923, Wyoming. He had six Trek appearance, including as a native in “Private Little War” (wig) and the captain of the ghost ship Defiant:

          

 

Mainly he was a stunt man. IMDB gives him 85 stunt credits, 41 acting credits, plus he directed a half dozen tv eps and worked as 2nd unit director or assistant director a dozen times. Stunt credits start in 1947 (Deep Valley), end in 2000 (Dukes of Hazzard: Hazzard in Hollywood, a tv movie). Acting credits start in 1948 (Whiplash), end in 1980 (In God We Tru$t).

 

Crazy redshirt.  Got up to director, had about a dozen credits as such from mid-80s thru early 90s.

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Stunt work: 48 credits. Acting: 20. Both start in the mid-60s (with I, Spy), and the stunt work is going strong in the late 90s, after his directing career. His Trek credit came after stunt/acting credits for eps of I, Spy, Man from U.N.C.L.E., Girl from U.N.C.L.E., and after Trek his next stunt/acting jobs were both for Mission: Impossible.

During the 70s he also worked as a gym teacher at Sutter Junior High in Canoga Park, Calif., though he was doing tv work too.

Wiki Trek: “The Empath”

update,  Down in Comments, Joe S. Walker tells us about the BBC and Star Trek:

There were four TOS episodes that for many years weren’t shown on the BBC. I think they were left out of the original run (c. 1969) because of attitudes back then, and it just took a long time for somebody to include them in a repeat showing.

Anyway, they were “The Empath,” “Whom Gods Destroy,” “Plato’s Stepchildren” and “Miri.” 

Didn’t see “Empath,” but “WGD” is about the insane, “PS” about a dwarf, and “Miri” about children. Maybe the BBC didn’t like the way they were all being presented.

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Kirk does some reasoning with a misguided local set-up: “This Arena of Death that you’ve devised for your pleasure … will it prevent this catastrophe?

Jerry Finnerman’s last episode. He was the cinematographer and had been with the show from the start. Inside Star Trek says that just before the guy’s first show Robert Justman had to talk him out of a bad case of cold feet, and then Finnerman got all cocky and would make an ass of himself on set by goosing people with a swagger stick. At any rate, he did some great lighting, all those oranges and purples and deep shadows and so on. The idea was to make the colors jump off the screen: RCA owned the network and had color tvs it wanted to move.

This is another of the four I don’t have. Saw it last year but have forgotten it. The MemAlpha/Wiki synopses indicate a subterranean planet world with corridors and hulking guys who have strange foreheads. There’s an asteroid or something heading toward the alien culture or the Enterprise, probably both, and a woman who forms a monumental but transient connection with a member of the cast.

The story’s centerpiece is the woman and her psychic powers — third-season Trek has a lot of psychic powers, especially on the part of women. Earlier Trek, such as the first pilot, had its share of mind powers but not episode after episode, and not necessarily with girls. Spock’s mindmelding is the main example, I think.

Another example of sf ideas that require some talking out and explaining to the audience. In this case there’s a whole new word that’s front and center, the way “cyborg” would be in a few years. 

From Mem Alpha:

This episode was written by Joyce Muskat, one of only four fans who were able to sell scripts to the original series; the others being David GerroldJudy Burns, and Jean Lisette Aroeste. Co-producer Robert Justman read her unsolicited script and recommended it be bought.


The Jean Lisette Aroeste script, or the first one by her, was “Is There in Truth No Beauty?”, which also has a woman psychic and sf concepts that needed explaining.

Wasn’t there a lot of ’60s/70s/80s sf with alien cultures that had women as mind-reading/soul-sensing alien priestesses/witches/etc?  Dune, the Darkover books, the Pern books, and a bunch of others, right? I haven’t actually read up in the area. My impression is that most were written by women (not Dune, of course) and that the trend really picked up steam in the ’70s after getting started in the ’60s. If so, “The Empath” puts Star Trek early enough in the trend, and the script is by a woman.

The BBC wouldn’t show this series until 1994 because it was too violent. Trek books are always making fun of NBC standards & practices, but the BBC seems more skittish.

 

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The empath, b. 1933 in Princeton, Ill. Kim on As the World Turns from 1972 on. During “Empath” she was married to Glenn Ford. IMDB credits start with Hawaiian Eye and Surfside Six in 1962, continue with Alfred Hitchcock, Kraft Suspense Theatre. The Virginian, Bonanza,  High Chapparal, The Man from UNCLE, The Road West, Night Gallery, even a Law and Order and a Law and Order: SVU in recent years.

Wiki says, “Hays played bit parts in many sitcoms and drama series throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s … Billed as ‘and introducing Kathryn Hays,’ she had a major role in a June 1962 episode of Naked City, ‘The Ryedecker Case.’ The script was written by Gene Roddenberry. Hays appeared on the Roddenberry’s series The Lieutenant.”

In 1968 she appeared in a New York stage production of Dames at Sea that starred Bernadette Peters just starting out.

 



 

Big-headed alien. Born in NYC. ’60s/70s tv, some familiar titles: High Chapparal, Mannix, Wild Wild West, Big Valley, M:I, Bracken’s World, etc., plus a few movies. IMDB lists first credit in 1963 on soap The Nurses (episode’s incredible title: “To Spend, to Want, to Give”), last credit for main career is “Director” on a 1977 Wonder Woman ep where she visits Hollywood, so I guess he was just playing a director. A long while after, we get one last credit “Mr. Kramer” in the 1997 film Turbulence,  a would-be action blockbuster from MGM that starred Ray Liotta and Lauren Holly. Yish.

 


 

 

Black doctor, b. 1917 in Mobile, Ala. “More than 30 feature films,” something in Roots, Gunsmoke, I Dream of Jeannie, All in the Family, Sanford and Son, Mary Tyler Moore Show. IMDB and MemAlpha don’t quite match up, but guy may have had more than a hundred roles from circa 1950 to 1993. The Killers with Reagan (1964), To Sleep with Anger (1990). Lot of tv from mid-1950s into 1980s. A role in Jungle Drums of Africa (1953) as “Native Ambusher.” In the very early years he even did the Amos and Andy tv show (he was “Mr. Royal,” one ep).

 


 


Boba Fett’s voice. B. 1919 in Brooklyn. Plus he was in Twilight Zone’s famous “A Stop at Willoughby” and another ep, “Midnight Sun.” And he was “Man #2” in a Seinfeld (“The Opera, 1992). Voiced Boba in pre-2004 versions of Empire Strikes Back. His “Empath” role is as an earth scientist who gets tortured and killed by the aliens.

IMDB lists about 150 roles, going back to 1955 and Armstring Circle Theatre, ending with In the Heat of the Night in 1994.

Wiki says, “best known for his role as Harry Snowden on the classic television sitcom All in the Family and its spin-off series, Archie Bunker’s Place. He played the character from 1977 until 1983.. … regular during the 1960-61 season of The Untouchables, playing Police Captain Dorsett…. recurring role as Judge Arthur Beaumont in the series Matlock  guest-starred in … Mission: Impossible, The Outer Limits, Bonanza, The Rockford Files, and The Fugitive,” among others. Also was in Roots: The Next Generations.





Another alien, b. 1922 in Canada. IMDB gives him 82 credits from 1943 to 1974, when he died. “Second Reporter” on The Lloyd Bridges Show, things like that. In 1963 appeared as “Self” in The Man Nobody Liked, which IMDB lists as a documentary. The cast also had Philip Boyce, who was the Enterprise medical officer in “The Cage” (Star Trek’s first pilot). Weird. Apparently it was a service film.

Wiki Trek: “Is There in Truth No Beauty?”


A clunker. The writing sucks. Everything is pinned to nothing—the story is all gimme. The idea is that every human everywhere is bound to go mad at the sight of the alien because that’s how ugly the alien is, and the dope who comes along with Diana Muldaur is bound to flip out and go homicidal with jealousy because that’s how much he loves her. And then he sees the alien and flips out extra and sends the Enterprise into someplace beyond the universe (what?) because he designed the Enterprise so this means he knows how to find the coordinates for, uh, for that place there

“He’s dead, Jim.” So far this is the only episode where I’m sure I heard the line spoken as precisely those three words, the classic formulation. McCoy says them right after the dope falls frothing to the ground. Maybe there’s a correlation between moments of extreme stupidity and the appearance of belovedly dopey lines of dialogue in their best-known forms. Maybe not.

Nimoy gets written up in a big way. He has a scene where he gets to grin and act hail-fellow-well-met, to laugh with a rich appreciation of life’s variety, because Spock has mindmelded with the alien (the alien has a great personality). Then Nimoy gets a mad scene because Spock de-mindmelds with the alien and forgets to bring along his protective visors that hold back the alien’s full ugliness. He left them on Sulu’s desk, the helm. Sulu sees them, gasps, snatches them up—“Mr. Spock …!” Too late. 

Dumb lights. The alien’s ugliness is represented by a light show: light pours out of the metal box where the alien is held, and then the screen gets trippy with the strobodelic light sequences old Trek falls into. Well, of course you’re not going to see the alien itself. But why a light show?

My theory: The light shows is like the big sparks that superhero artists draw around a guy’s fist when he’s knocking down a wall or punching the Hulk—impact balloons, or whatever they’re called. The strobodelics and the light pouring from the box aren’t themselves ugly, but they represent the impact of the alien’s ugliness. Which is a hamhanded device, sort of like going for all caps and rows of asterisks to indicate how awful the monster is. Then the show takes the mistake further, starts to live inside the mistake. The show treats the ugliness as if it were composed of light, so that putting on visors can protect against the ugliness. The visors reduce the amount of ugliness that gets thru, the way sunglasses hold back a percentage of UV rays. I guess if an alien was overwhelmingly generous or winsome, that would be a light show too and people would be wearing visors so they didn’t get dazzled.

The trippy light shows of old Star Trek … do those ever show up in the movies or Next Gen or the other successor series? Fan love has preserved so much from old Trek, but I get the feeling the strobodelics have been left buried back in the ’60s.

Plug for IDIC.  Roddenberry insisted on writing in the IDIC, an alien Vulcan brooch, because he was selling them thru his mail-order company. In order to justify the fuss made over the IDIC the script has to give Diana Muldaur an especially acute attack of nervous bitchiness.

About the mindmeld … Spock has to tell Kirk what it is. “Explain,” Kirk says, like it was a new idea.

 

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Diana Muldaur. I like her, I think she does a better job than most of the show’s guest actresses. Her other episode was “Return to Tomorrow,” and she was a reg for Next Gen’s second season.

She was b. 1938, NYC, started her career in 1964 with an ep of Du Pont Show of Week, in 1965 became a reg on The Secret Storm, a soap opera, then five eps of Dr. Kildare, which was primetime and big. A reg on a new series in 1969, but it got canceled after 15 episodes. After that she was a reg on McCloud, the Dennis Weaver vehicle where he was a big-city cowboy who solved crimes. A lot of other roles, including ’70s movies and tv guest shots. In her fifties she really hit it big on L.A. Law, and after that she said the hell with it.

A neat quote: “I find so much tv depressing, even the sitcoms.” But I think she meant acting on the shows, not watching them, and had in mind co-worker relations on set.

 


Brown sash.  Okay, here’s the dope, b. 1926 in Kent, England. I like the costume Theiss did for him, the way it fronts a jumpsuit with a stylized sash and pocket, and the way light brown predominates, so the thing is businesslike but somehow festive.

Wiki says, “He appeared in guest roles on American television from the late 1950s through the 1970s. His career peaked in the 1960s with frequent roles on such popular series as The F.B.I., Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., Star Trek and The Outer Limits. He played Sergent Tibbs the cat in One Hundred and One Dalmatians.” He was not good in his Trek episode. In fact he shows that Shatner’s hamminess was not so unusual by tv standards of the day, except for the energy and commitment that Shatner gave his hamminess. IMDB lists 45 screen acting jobs, first is “Leftenant” in show Navy Log (1957), last is “Man” in film Ant (2002). Around time of “No Beauty” he was doing eps of Beverly Hilbillies, 12 O’Clock High (3 eps, different roles), The F.B.I. (eventually 5 eps, different characters).




Paskey’s last show.  Eddie Paskey’s last appearance (56 eps as redshirt Mr. Leslie). His back got injured in the fight with Spock, which is hard to believe. As shot, the fight involved a minimum of physical contact, just a lot of camera spinning and fisheye lens. The immediate prelude to the fight is a fisheye-lensed Shatner with hands held out, telling the crazy Spock that he’s safe—it’s quite a vision. Anyway, Paskey said the hell with it and found better things to do.

Talked about him here, and his IMDB list is here. He did some Mission: Impossible in 1966. Wiki says he was born in a Delaware farm town in 1939, moved to Santa Monica at age 12 or 13, worked in his dad’s garage.

Wiki Trek: “Spock’s Brain”

It really is dreadful. “Brain and brain! What is ‘brain’?” After the brain goes missing, there’s a scene where Kirk, McCoy, and Scotty discuss the problem at hand. The exchange becomes a surrealist exercise just because the term “Spock’s brain” keeps popping up.

A woman is the chief menace, and she can’t strong-arm the men, so she uses a pain device that zaps them. Shatner does some extroverted waltzing with the air and the floorboards to demonstrate his suffering. There’s one scene where the other guys have settled to the ground and Shatner, having also settled, then arches his pelvis to give the moment that last little bit.

For some reason, Spock has to wear overalls. Why? If he’s brainless, would have been simpler to leave him in his old clothes. It’s not like they were going to slide off because he couldn’t keep pulling at them.   

Gene L. Coon wrote the script under duress, to play out his contract with the show after he had moved on to It Takes a Thief. He knocked out “Brain” and “Spectre of the Gun” and some outlines for other eps as fast as he could. “Spectre” wasn’t so bad, but “Brain” … Jesus.

Coon had become fed up with Nimoy’s demands for line rewrites and bigger roles, so maybe “Brain” is his revenge: Spock has to walk around like Frankenstein’s monster for most of the show and gets no lines until the end. He does the automaton walk quite well, which I guess is the sign of a professional. (Counter to my grudge theory, there’s an anecdote about Shatner deliberately turning his back on Coon toward the end of Coon’s time with the show, and yet Shatner does okay in the episode.)

Spock’s brainkeeper. Marj Dusay (b. 1936 in Hays, Kansas as Marjorie Ellen Pivonka Mahoney),was just starting out but went on to work for decades, wound up in the 90s as  a regular on Guiding Light and All My Children. 

 

                    Marj Dusay                                   


  

 

“Spock’s Brain” catches her early on, and she’s game and overeager. She does a lot of reactions, none of them lifelike. But at least she’s in there, tracking all the events with her eyes, doing something with her mouth and nose. You can see how she might hang on and get a soap career later.

IMDB lists 90 acting jobs, starting in 1967 with “Susan” in the episode “Instant Fatherhood” of Occasional Wife, then “Kaos Girl” in a Get Smart ep, then “Waitress” in a Presley film, Clambake (1967), then eps of Cimarron Strip, The Second Hundred Years, someone in Sweet November (1967), the Star Trek, 2 eps of Wild Wild West (different characters), a Felony Squad two-parter, a Bonanza, eps of Hogan’s Heroes and Hawaii Five-O. She kept working thru the ’80s, on primetime soaps, 


Other girls.  This is the other girl with a speaking part, not much of one. IMDB lists seven acting jobs, first is “Salesgirl” in “The Dippy Blonde Affair” (Man from UNCLE, 1966), last is “Secretary #4” in the Beverly Hillbillies ep “Hotel for Women” (1970).

 


 

The two other babes, Mem Alpha doesn’t know who played them. Wig on the first, don’t know about the second:

 

                        

 

 

Wig and beard. Actor’s name was James Daris. IMDB lists 19 credits, earliest being “Burly Man” on I, Spy in 1966.




Fair amount of tv work thru 1975, then a long, long gap, then a tv horror movie called Larva in 2005. Around Trek he was doing “Realtor” in I Dream of Jeannie, “Shorty” in a Bonanza, “Matt” in Daniel Boone, “Super Giant Robot” in Land of the Giants, some guy in a Hawaii Five-O

Big guy.  Stunt man and extra Pete Kellett. IMDB lists six stunt credits, 33 acting. Earliest is in 1949, movie Canadian Pacific, stunts and a part (“Saboteur”). Last is “Security Guard” in The Magic of Lassie (1978). Mem Alpha says, “He performed stunts and made numerous appearances on the Western television series Gunsmoke. Other TV shows on which he appeared include BrandedThe Man from U.N.C.L.E. … Mission: Impossible, Mannix … The Big Valley … and Land of the Giants

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The unidentified.  No names or lines for the people below. The first has a uniform like Pete Kellett’s because their two characters have been enslaved as guards.


 

I think these guys are kind of pets of the babes:

 

        

 


 


 

And three savage surface dwellers:



 

 


 

Wiki Trek: “And the Children Shall Lead”

I like this episode okay. Melvin Belli, the celebrity lawyer, plays a space demon who takes over a bunch of kids. The kids use telepathy to take over the Enterprise, but then Kirk shows them a tape of the old days when they had parents, so the kids come back to normal and reject the demon. The story works okay and the children playing the possessed kids are nice.

Belli’s shower curtain.  Mem Alpha says Walter Koenig was pissed because casting Belli meant that a working actor wouldn’t get the job. If I recall right, co-producer Robert Justman also objected. Belli seems okay in the role, but he comes to us thru a lot of studio tricks that make him blurry and fuck with his voice. His costume is a real crime, but I don’t think anyone got cheesed off about that.

Here is the translucent Belli (b. 1907 in Sonora, Calif.) wearing his Mother Hubbard/shower curtain:

 

 

Shatner’s musical director.  The skinny redheaded kid who’s ringleader of the messed-up children. This guy (b. 1953, Minneapolis) has had the most extraordinary high-level schlock music career you can imagine. Mem Alpha doesn’t do it credit; you have to check Wiki.



 

He did a lot of tv acting and jazz combo-leading in his teens, took a couple of years to study “progressive, multi-dimensional philosophy with a number of important futurists,” then started the high-level Hollywood schlock music career.

How to say this? He became “the Music Director for William Shatner, appearing in many shows and concerts, and helping to create songs such as Rocket Man, and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Of course Shatner did his “Lucy in the Sky” in 1968, so the kid would have been just the age he in this episode. Maybe Shatner figured the kid had what it took.

Also, in the early ’80s the kid “began performing most of the synthesizers on a variety of Stevie Wonder albums, and later with Earth, Wind & Fire. This prolific era culminated with a half year project in which Huxley performed most of the keyboard work on Michael Jackson’s Thriller.”  This career section largely is not schlock. But he also contributed bits to the scores of the first four Star Trek films, he produced the soundtrack of 2010, and he wrote and produced (or helped to) the music for Captain Eo.

Started the Enterprise Group (I guess the Star Trek connection was a good calling card with clients), which Billboard “named the #2 mixing studio in the US” in 2001.

All in all, that’s a lot.

 

 



Cute kids.  Above, Felix’s little girl in the tv Odd Couple. What a cute little blond girl (b. 1959 in LA), now an animal rights activist who likes to go to Trek cons and sign autographs. She was quite good in “Children,” notably better than the skinny redheaded boy.

She did a lot of movie and tv work in the ’60s/’70s (“the original voice of Lucy Van Pelt in the Peanuts series of television films,” the lead girl’s voice in Charlotte’s Web, etc.), became a nurse, married a surgeon, and the two of them got into animal rights. IMDB lists 72 roles, starting with an ep of The Littlest Hobo in the early ’60s, ending with Christmas the Horse in Elf Sparkle Meets Christmas the Horse (2007). Around the time of her Trek episode she was doing Monkees, Green Acres, Custer, Gunsmoke, Mad Mad Scientist, Blondie (5 eps), an ep of The Flying Nun called “The Reconversion of Sister Shapiro” in which she played “Linda Shapiro.”


  

One and only.  Above is a one-and-only appearance, and Mem Alpha doesn’t give his age. There’s a moment when Belli as space demon is giving the kids their instructions and this boy breaks into a grin. Not in line with the scene, but it was charming.


Career start. The guy below (b. 1959, LA) has done a ton of voice work and tv guest spots, including a Next Gen episode.”Children” was his first role. 

          

 


Takashi from Revenge of the Nerds 1, 3 and 4. (James Cromwell was also in the listed films, which blows my mind). Also Police Academy 3 and 4. He was also a St. Elsewhere reg for one season, and the voice of Leonardo in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1, 2 and 3.  Wiki says, “Of Asian ancestry, Tochi frequently plays characters who are Japanese, Chinese, or of other Asiatic origin, adopting the appropriate accent as needed.” IMDB lists 74 acting jobs, of which “Children” was the first, then a Brady Bunch, a Partridge Family, a Nanny and the Professor, 14 eps voicing a kid in The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan, and so on to “Preacher” in I Do (2007). 



Doesn’t like it.  Melvin Belli’s kid, b. 1957. Made a face over some ice cream, if I recall. Role was also a one-time thing.


 

In the grip.  Above is the hypnotized tech guy who mouths off to Scotty. Name was Lou Elias, did two other Trek episodes, both as guards. Mem Alpha: “Additional TV credits include Batman, Gunsmoke, M*A*S*H, Hill Street Blues, The Fall Guy, Knight Rider, and L.A. Law … performed stunts for films like Spartacus, True Grit, The Wild Bunch, The Longest Yard, Flashdance, and Dick Tracy.”

 

            


Jewish redshirt.  The redshirt who was going to arrest Kirk. Dick Dial, b. 1931. In “The Apple,” left, he was the only Jewish redshirt I’ve heard about, Lieut. Kaplan.


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Enigma.  The episode’s mysteriously beautiful but wordless tech guy. He was Jay Jones and also worked as Doohan’s stunt double.


“To Serve Man.”  The man below, no birth year, is listed as “Second Man in Line” for the Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man,” the one about aliens who are really doing a cookbook. In “Children” he’s the lost colony’s leader who delivers a warning on tape. He looks a bit like Randy Quaid. IMDB lists 13 acting jobs, starting in 1950 as “Welsh Captain/Gardener” in a (I think) British tv version of Shakespeare’s Richard II, then over to the U.S. with Zone, then a few others. Did a Lucy Show (as “Airport Passenger”) and in 1968 a Mission: Impossible (as “Hotel Manager”), right after his Trek. The Trek part may have been his biggest on screen. Last credit is 1972. 



Wiki Trek: “Enterprise Incident”


The Romulans have a woman commander, and she’s in charge in all, but she has to do the sort of dumb things a commander has to do in a bad tv script. The big thing: she romances Spock without knowing about the seven-year mating cycle. (WTF? Mem Alpha says this of D. C. Fontana’s first draft: “the first draft script describes Spock as ‘raining kisses on every square inch above the shoulder.’” Fontana wrote that? Apparently she went further and used a Trek novel to rejig the rules so that Vulcans didn’t become horny every seven years, they became fertile, which is bullshit. Spock in “Amok Time” does not behave like a man who is suddenly and painfully fertile.

To me D.C. Fontana will always be the woman who wrote “Journey to Babel,” the script that did the neatest job of getting drama and fun out of the three core series regulars. Disappointing to see her do this silly tap dance.)

 



 


The commander, b. 1928, Bakersfield, Calif. IMDB lists 74 parts. She did some movies, but mainly tv. Her credits go back to 1954 and Studio One, then the Kaiser Aluminum Hour, things like that. She and Shatner played husband and wife a few times. Wiki says her “many television credits include appearances in The Twilight Zone, COronado 9, The Eleventh Hour, Bus Stop, Hawaii Five-O, Dr. Kildare, Ben Casey, Kojak, I Spy, Bonanza, Felony Squad, Gunsmoke, The Streets of San Francisco, L.A. Law, Columbo, The Invaders, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and Charlie’s Angels.


Married to director Mark Rydell from 1962 to 1979, per Wiki. Mem Alpha says they’re still married and “it was only for a supporting role in his 2001 TV biopic on James Dean that she briefly came out of retirement” (to play Hedda Hopper).


… The Romulans have knit uniforms. That’s unexpected for a warrior race.





The number-two Romulan, b. 1928, LA. Wiki says he did “such shows as The Streets of San Francisco, Mannix, Kojak, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and eleven episodes (the most by any guest star) of Mission: Impossible. … He founded Oxford Theater with fellow actor Lee Delano. Their students included Barry Levinson, Craig T. Nelson, Barbara Parkins, and Don Johnson. He now has a recurring role on General Hospital as Nikolas and Spencer Cassadine‘s butler Alfred.”


 

          


Romulan tech officer, b. 1938. He directed and co-wrote Macon County Line and Return to Macon County, a couple of mid-’70s guns-and-gas exploitation films. Then he directed tv episodes for a couple of decades, including a first season episode of Next Generation. He was also in “The Deadly Years.”


Romulan tech flunky, b. 1938.


 


The commander’s guards.


 


Unknown redshirt, goldshirt . Mem Alpha says they were also at Kirk’s funeral in “The Tholian Web.”


         

              

 



Two Romulan hostages. Notable for the shadowy glimpse of their plus-fours.