Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Character Insight No. 201: Angela Martine

Welcome back to Character Insight! After celebrating anniversaries last week, let's take a look at a wedding, and specifically a memorable recurring character from TOS involved in such a wedding, Angela Martine.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp201

A notable scene from the episode Balance of Terror shows Captain Kirk performing one of the most fun duties a starship Captain gets to do: officiate weddings on board. This wedding was between an enlisted phaser gun crewmember Angela Martine and another crew member and phaser specialist Robert Tomlinson. I guess when you spend your time working on phaser banks all day, the romance just fires up. Interestingly, Angela genuflects before the altar, which indicates a Catholic background.

Of course, in typical TV fashion, the poor bride and groom-to-be were interrupted by a distress call received from an outpost along the Romulan Neutral Zone. During the mission, the Enterprise has to chase and fight with a Romulan Bird-of-Prey which had attacked the outpost. Working on phasers is dangerous business, and Robert died during the battle thanks to inhaling a lethal quantity of phaser coolant. So much for anniversaries!

Kirk: It doesn't make any sense. You both know that there has to be a reason.
Angela: <<long pause>>  I'm all right.

The next year, we again see Angela Martine, this time as part of the first landing party to go on the Shore Leave planet in the episode Shore Leave. She joins a science officer Esteban Rodriguez in conducting a specimen survey. This, much like her wedding day, did not go well. After completing the survey and starting to enjoy themselves, a tiger traps them and threatens them. Having escaped from the tiger, the pair then gets strafed by a Japanese Zero, a World War II aircraft.

Angela is presumed dead in the attack so Rodriguez leaves her to go back to the ship. Instead, she is taken below the planet's surface to be healed, and she re-appears near the end of the episode during the Caretaker's explanation of the planet's function. Poor Angela can't even get a relaxing shore leave on screen without having something bad happen, so maybe she should turn her gold tunic in for a red shirt.

The character of Angela was also to appear in Space Seed, but this scene was left on the cutting room floor. Thus, we only see this ensign on a couple occasions.

Angela Martine was played by Barbara Baldavin. Baldavin acted in various TV roles from 1964 through 1980, and then she had more renown as a casting assistant on the 80's series Trapper John, M.D., and Dynasty. She's still married to the original casting director from Star Trek TOS, Joseph D'Agosta.



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