Character Insight No. 344: Ilia and Star Trek: TMP

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first Star Trek movie by sharing my experience of seeing the movie for the first time, and then we do a character profile on Lieutenant Ilia from that movie.

https://archive.org/details/characterinsightep344 

My personal first Trek movie experience was seeing The Final Frontier when it hit television, shortly before seeing The Undiscovered Country.  Needless to say, the sixth movie in the theater was far more impressive to a young BuckeyeFitzy than the What Does God Need With A Starship movie.  That led me to seek out a box set of the other movies at the ripe old age of 9 or 10, and so my first experience with The Motion Picture was on a fuzzy small TV screen and a VHS tape.  Given that this movie is more about the amazing big screen visuals than characters and action, that kind of made TMP a heavy disappointment, especially as compared to Wrath of Khan and Voyage Home.  But I admit, I didn't have a chance to appreciate it on the big screen as it was intended.

TMP opened the door for what is now 12 other movies and 6 future TV shows, so the original return of Trek is something we should all be thankful for.

Today's short segment will focus on Lieutenant Ilia, who was a Deltan female conn officer on the Enterprise during what becomes the V'Ger mission.  Deltans are known for their sexuality and strong affect on other races like humans, so in order to be a Starfleet officer, Ilia had to take a vow of celibacy.  This is a bit awkward as she had previously on her home planet had relations with Commander Will Decker, who is also on Kirk's Enterprise.

We don't see much character development of Ilia beyond this background, as she is killed in the movie by the V'Ger probe.  The V'Ger probe then creates an artificial life form in the guise of Ilia to act as a liaison to the "carbon units" infesting the ship.  Although the probe replicated her memories and personality, V'Ger suppresses these aspects of Ilia, which reveals that Ilia really is gone.  Nevertheless, Will Decker decides to sacrifice himself to join what's left of her and the V'Ger probe at the end of the movie, opening these roles on the ship to once again be filled by the TOS regulars in future films.

As you likely know, TMP was a replacement for a Phase II scrapped television project, and some of the general concepts from Phase II did live on when a second TV show eventually aired 8 years later in The Next Generation.  Once of these general concepts was an ESP and sex-positive attitude character who serves on a bridge crew with a commander who had a past romantic relationship with her, AKA Deanna Troi is based on Ilia while Commander Will Riker is a small leap of letters away from Will Decker.  They even named the Betazoid race in a similar fashion as Ilia's Deltans, based on the Greek alphabet.  So while Ilia and Commander Decker only show up in The Motion Picture, the general concepts and underlying character threads were more than fully developed, just with modified characters in TNG.

Persis Khambatta played Ilia, and she had a short unsuccessful Bollywood career in India before establishing herself primarily as a US television actress. TMP was one of her only breakout movie roles.  Khambatta passed away in 1998 at the age of 49.

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Character Insight No. 317: Vina

Welcome back to Character Insight!  This week, we review Vina, a character who appeared on a few episodes of TOS before appearing again on Discovery this week.  Note that spoilers regarding Discovery will be at a minimum here.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp317 

With the character of Captain Pike coming back to a bigger role on Discovery than he had on TOS, you knew the show writers would not miss the opportunity to tie in some TOS stories and characters during his appearance on Discovery.  Although Spock is of course the featured attraction on season 2 of Discovery, another character from Pike's past has now appeared in Discovery, that being Vina.

Vina first appears in The Cage, the pilot episode where Captain Pike is leading the Enterprise.  She is a crewmember on the SS Columbia, which is a ship that crashes in 2236 on Talos IV while carrying a group of scientists on an expedition to the Talos star group.  She turns out to be the sole survivor, and the Talosians nurse her back to health when they take an interest in the human race.

This leads to the events of the The Cage, in which the Talosians lure the Enterprise to their planet and select Captain Pike to be a mate for Vina, hoping they can learn about human sexuality and companionship in the process.  However, the Enterprise crew proves that they would prefer death to life in captivity, and the Talosians lost interest in having humans grow to reclaim the surface of their planet.  Vina chooses to be left behind rather than go with the Enterprise because her beauty is just an illusion created by the Talosians, and she would rather maintain that than die with the humans.

Footage from her encounter with Pike is seen again in The Menagerie two-part episode, and she is determined to still be alive when the Enterprise returns to Talos 13 years after this original appearance.  With Discovery taking place 10 years before TOS, that means it's only been 3 years since the events of The Cage when Pike is aboard Discovery.  And that leads to Vina's appearance in the Discovery episode If Memory Serves.

While the purpose of her visit to Captain Pike will be left in spoiler land for this segment, Vina's reappearance in Discovery allows the show writers to explain what happened to Vina after the events of The Cage.  This helps bring a little closure to a relationship with Pike and a story that was aborted thanks to the reshuffling of the crew after the original TOS pilot.

QUOTE: ""There's something I need to say. When you came to Talos, I'd been alone for so many years. I never imagined happiness or love. And when the Talosians decided we were...unsuited for each other...when you left, it was worse. Because I knew what I'd lost.""

In TOS, Vina was played by Susan Oliver, who spent multiple weeks preparing for and filming the role thanks to all the different appearances she plays, including learning to dance so she can play an Orion slave girl version of herself.  Oliver acted for about 30 years before her death in 1990, including memorable small roles on shows like Love, American Style, Magnum, P.I., and Murder, She Wrote.  In Discovery the role was played by Melissa George, who is an Australian actress who has starred in the movie Triangle and the series Hunted.  She can be seen playing Charlotte as a co-star in the Bad Mothers series currently airing on Australian TV.

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Character Insight No. 311: M'Benga

Welcome back to Character Insight!  This week, we review Doctor M'Benga, a recurring character from TOS.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp311 

The character of Dr. M'Benga was created for an episode that was written by Darlene Hartman and purchased by the showrunners but never made it into the TV show.  Although his first name is never spoken on the episodes he does appear in later, in this script it was reportedly Joseph.

Dr. M'Benga is the ranking chief medical officer on the Enterprise when Dr. McCoy is off the ship.  We don't see him take over much, but we do get to see him participate in a couple memorable episodes.  First, in A Private Little War, he treats Spock from a gunshot wound using the experience he gained while serving a medical internship on Vulcan.  The highlight is the doctor slapping Spock silly to drop him out of his Vulcan healing state.

In another appearance in the episode That Which Survives, he supervises an autopsy of a redshirt who dies following the touch of an alien creature.  His work on this autopsy reveals that the death was not caused by a disease or organism, but instead, by cellular disruption brought on by the touch.

QUOTE

Dr. M'Benga was also to be the brother of a commander who was to be the first officer on the USS Hope in a spinoff show called Hopeship, but that never occurred.  Thus, this character with Ugandan heritage could have been a branch to the bigger Trek world, had it not been for the show running decisions behind the scenes.  As it is, Dr. M'Benga is memorable for the few times he is on screen in TOS.

Booker Bradshaw played Dr. M'Benga, who acted through the 1970s before becoming an accomplished TV series writer for shows like Planet of the Apes and Different Strokes.  He died in 2003 due to a heart attack, but his contributions to many TV shows will live on forever. 

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Character Insight No. 292: Number One

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we cover Number One, the original first officer of the Enterprise from the TOS pilot episode The Cage, and a character who will appear again in the next season of Discovery, just like Captain Pike, who we covered last week.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp292 

In The Cage, Number One is a female human Starfleet officer who serves as a second in command to Captain Pike on the Enterprise.  In addition to her first officer duties, she also serves as the helmsman in this episode.  In this manner, she sets the mold for future characters like Sulu who take similar joint roles in Starfleet.

Number One is a lieutenant, but she is described to be one of the most experienced officers on the ship, perhaps knowing more about ship operations and equipment than even the Captain.  As we learn from the Talosians who capture her and the Captain during The Cage, she has exceptional intelligence and rationality, and she rarely shows emotion.  These qualities of the first officer were transferred into the character of Spock when that character was promoted to the role of first officer in episodes following the pilot episode.  To this end, the Spock that we know is a bit of a hybrid between the original Spock from The Cage and the Number One character.  So she sets the character mold for another major character in this way.

In The Cage, Number One is in command when Pike is kidnapped by the Talosians.  She uses a number of options to try and rescue him, but she ends up being kidnapped herself.  The Talosians wanted to mate her with Pike to keep a race of humans as their slaves.  Number One sets a laser pistol to overload to kill all of them to prove humans will not be kept as slaves anymore, which was a strong commentary on real world events when The Cage was airing.

QUOTE - from The Cage

"It's wrong to create a race of Humans to keep as slaves."

The name Number One is a naval slang term used by Captain Pike to refer to his first officer, and it is not the character's real name.  Indeed, because this character was dropped from the series following the pilot episode screenings, we never learn her real name.  But the moniker Number One would live on, as Picard refers to his first office William Riker as "Number One" frequently, and Michael Burnham is also referred to this way by Captain Georgiou in the initial episodes of Discovery.

And that brings us to last week's news about Discovery season two, where Captain Pike and Number One will be playing a big role in that new season.  It will be interesting to see if Number One finally receives a name in canon this time, and whether the Spock-like qualities originally associated with this character are carried over from The Cage.

Majel Barrett played Number One in The Cage, and this footage also appears in The Menagerie episodes later in TOS.  In addition to her numerous roles on Star Trek series, she is also known for playing Miss Carrie in the original 1974 movie version of Westworld, which has recently been converted into a big sci fi HBO series.  Rebecca Romijn, who is probably best known as a model and in her Mystique roles of the original X-Men movies, will take over as Number One in the new season of Discovery.

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Character Insight No. 291: Christopher Pike

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we cover Captain Christopher Pike, a character who has appeared in TOS as well as the Abrams movies and will now be taking a big role in Discovery Season 2, according to the preview trailer this week.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp291 

Christopher Pike is the Captain of the Enterprise for 11 years, spanning from 2254 to 2265, which is when Captain Kirk takes over that ship.  We see Pike in the original pilot episode The Cage, as this character was intended to be the lead of the show at that early stage.  However, the actor Jeffrey Hunter backed out of the role after screenings of the first pilot, and Gene Roddenberry then turned to William Shatner and a new captain for the show we came to know and love.

In The Cage, we see Pike lead a landing party to Rigel VII, and the crew is attacked by the Kalar with several killed and others captured.  This weighed heavily on the captain and made him question whether he was fit to continue as a starship commander.

QUOTE - from The Cage
"I'm tired of being responsible for two hundred and three lives. I'm tired of deciding which mission is too risky and which isn't. And who's going on the landing party and who doesn't. And who lives...and who dies."

Later in the first season of TOS, Captain Pike plays an important role in The Menagerie two part episode.  We see in this episode a more detailed account of the Captain's capture by the Talosians from the earlier episode The Cage.  The Talosians were a telepathic race that can create any number of tempting illusions to keep trapped their subjects in a zoo-like setting.  Pike resists the allure of these illusions and saves himself and a couple of female crewmembers who the Talosians were trying to make mate with Pike, again, much like a zookeeper would.

Pike again convinces himself in this mission that he is very fit to be in command, and he goes on to have one of the most decorated careers in Starfleet, including having awards and discovered places named after him.  It is in this successful command period on the Enterprise where the USS Discovery runs into Pike and that's where we will pick up Season 2 of Discovery, apparently.  Thus, this character is about to become a lot more fleshed out than has been done previously.

Pike was promoted to fleet captain in 2265, which is when Kirk takes over the ship.  A few years after this, he is crippled by delta-particle rays when saving cadets on a training vessel from an accident where a baffle plate ruptured on the ship.  We see his wheelchair-bound form in The Menagerie.  His Abrams timeline colleague turns command over to Kirk as well, while serving as more of a mentor to Kirk this time, but he also suffers a grisly fate at the hands of Khan in the movie Star Trek Into Darkness.  

Christopher Pike was played by Jeffrey Hunter, who played in a number of movies in the 1950s and 1960s before appearing on the Star Trek pilot.  His career took a downturn following his decision to leave the show, and he sadly died three years later at the age of 42 due to complications from two strokes and a fall.  Sean Kenney plays the disfigured wheelchair version of Pike in TOS, Bruce Greenwood played the role in the Abrams movies, and Anson Mount will take the role this year for Discovery.

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Character Insight No. 279: The Roles of Brock Peters

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we continue our series on actors who played multiple roles in Star Trek, with a look at Brock Peters.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp279

Peters was born in New York City to immigrant parents who came from Africa and West India, so he's kind of like a modern day Alexander Hamilton.  He studied acting in high school and quickly landed a role in the opera Porgy and Bess coming into college.

That led to roles in several movies and on Broadway shows, most notably as the black man unjustly accused and convicted suspect in the rape of a white woman in the classic 1962 film To Kill A Mockingbird.  He also became friends with Charlton Heston in this time period and that led to roles in several of this famous actor's films, including Major Dundee and Soylent Green.

He eventually became a regular TV show guest star, with credits on shows spanning from Gunsmoke to Murder, She Wrote.  In this middle of this span, he was a regular on the soap opera The Young and The Restless, playing a character for seven years.  While on this soap opera, he started in Trek and became Admiral Cartwright from the TOS movies The Voyage Home and The Undiscovered Country.  We covered the Admiral in detail on our movie villains series of this segment.

QUOTE (from Star Trek VI)
Admiral Cartwright: Arrest those men!
Spock: Arrest yourself.

The Star Trek production team couldn't just leave such a good actor as a villain, so Peters was brought back to play Commander Sisko's father Joseph Sisko, a restaurant owner in New Orleans on Earth, in several latter season episodes of Deep Space 9.  He was the only actor to portray a parent of a commanding officer, at least before the events of Star Trek Discovery.  That allowed the writers to add more depth and complexity to the main character of Ben Sisko, as a result of his interactions with Joseph.

QUOTE (from Joseph Sisko)

More detail on this character can be found in last year's segment dedicated to Joseph Sisko.  Peters adds one additional Trek credit in one of these Joseph Sisko episodes, as he also appears as a 20th Century preacher in the episode Far Beyond the Stars.

Brock Peters is like other actors we have profiled in this series in that he brought multiple highly memorable characters to life for Star Trek.  His contributions to the tapestry of characters will not soon be forgotten.  Peters continued acting until his death of pancreatic cancer in 2005.  His many characters live on, however, thanks to his broad reach and depth of experience in movies, television, and stage shows.

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Character Insight No. 270: The Roles of Mark Lenard

Welcome back to Character Insight!  This week, we continue our series on actors who played multiple roles in Star Trek, with a look at Mark Lenard.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp270

Mark Lenard is best known for his portrayal of Sarek, Spock's Vulcan Ambassador father on various episodes of Star Trek as well as in several of the movies. Sarek marries a human named Amanda while serving as Ambassador, and that union leads to the half-Vulcan, half-human Spock character which is so vital in the original Star Trek. Of course, this is not the only role he played on TOS and its movies.

To this end, Lenard was first case in season 1's Balance of Terror as a Romulan Commander. He's the first Romulan to be seen on screen with Vulcan-like ears, and these must have been a natural fit considering his hiring to be Sarek just one year later. Lenard wanted to play Sarek in the first Star Trek feature film, but that character was not written into the script for him. Instead, Lenard gets to play a Klingon Commander and be the first to show off the then-new distinctive forehead ridges we now associate with all Klingons, as well as the Klingon language. Lenard also got his wish for Sarek to appear in three of the next five movies.

INSERT KLINGON QUOTE

A couple interesting tidbits about Lenard's time on Trek. He was one of the options to replace Leonard Nimoy as Spock when contract negotiations for Season 2 broke down, but that obviously did not become necessary. He was also the first choice to play Abraham Lincoln in the episode The Savage Curtain, and that did not happen as a result of his regular role at the time on TV series Here Come the Brides. We just have to live with Lenard portraying groundbreaking Vulcan, Romulan, and Klingon characters instead.

Outside Trek, Lenard worked for many decades in theater, television, and film. He's a two-time graduate of the University of Michigan (Boooo!), and he settled in New York following the majority of his career wrapping up in 1980.  He still appeared in Star Trek at this time, but most of his work in this time period was teaching other actors and voiceover work for things like commercials, covering things like Saab vehicles and Zenith watches:

INSERT COMMERCIAL

Lenard was brought into acting while serving in the military as a paratrooper in World War 2.  He won the lead role in an Army presentation of the play Volpone, which toured throughout Europe during the war. His passion for writing and acting flourished and caused him to move to Hollywood and New York. He passed away of multiple myleoma in 1996 at the age of 72, leaving behind two adult daughters and his wife.

Although we see a different Sarek in the JJ Abrams movies as well as in Discovery, Mark Lenard established a high baseline for what to expect from this complicated parental figure. His contributions to be on the cutting edge of a number of different races in Star Trek adds a ton to what he brought to this franchise, and we have to respect and thank him for all that.

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Character Insight No. 255: Alice and the White Rabbit

Welcome back to Character Insight!  This week, we review Alice and the White Rabbit, two characters who surprisingly show up on two episodes of Star Trek.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp255

Kirk's Enterprise crew never visited pleasure planet Risa, but they found the next best thing in the episode Shore Leave.  An amusement park planet that can create characters and experiences right out of your own memories and thoughts!  What an amazing and terrifying concept, all at once.

Alice and the White Rabbit, well known characters from Lewis Carroll books and the 1951 Disney movie Alice in Wonderland, show up after Dr. McCoy says that the beautiful shore leave planet was like something out of that same Alice in Wonderland movie.  The characters turn out to be robots created by the planet, but it was a fun trip to Disneyland as the crew must figure out the mystery of this planet.

The crew sees these characters again in the TAS episode Once Upon a Planet.  As you might expect if you're familiar with Carroll's original works, Alice is chasing the White Rabbit, who is always concerned about being on time.  In this episode, McCoy and Sulu have a picnic with these fairy tale characters and a dragon.  Because if we've learned anything from Game of Thrones, it's that everything is much better and more believable with a dragon.

QUOTE (from Conspiracy):
Remmick: "We mean you no harm...we seek peaceful co-existence"...(Picard and Riker shoot him).

To date, these are the only Disney characters to invade Star Trek.  Given how Paramount and CBS are on the opposite end of the spectrum from Disney and ABC...it's probably not likely we will be seeing any Disney princess crossovers in Discovery or otherwise.  Some TOS episodes become memorably wonky, and Alice and the White Rabbit accomplish that for sure.

The White Rabbit was played by William Blackburn in TOS and voiced by James Doohan in TAS.  Blackburn also played Lieutenant Hadley, the Gorn Captain, and other guest characters on TOS.  He was a profession ice skater before being an actor and costume director, and those slick moves come in handy when running away from little girls from fairy tales.  Alice was played by Marcia Brown in TOS and then voiced by Nichelle Nichols in TAS.  Brown did not have any other notable acting roles, so one might consider this a one hit wonder...from wonderland.

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Character Insight No. 233: Torg

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review another memorable character from the TOS movies, the Klingon officer Torg from Star Trek III.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp233

Back when we covered the best Star Trek movie villains a couple years ago, Ken and I did an April Fools switch and he covered Commander Kruge for that list. However, his right-hand man Torg has yet to be covered by this segment, so we review this other prominent Klingon villain from The Search for Spock.

While serving on the Bird-of-Prey which would later become the HMS Bounty, Torg supported Kruge in his attempt to obtain the Genesis technology from the Federation. As discussed last week in the Ambassador Kamarag segment, the Klingons believed based on a stolen summary of the device that this was a potential weapon that was to be used against the Empire.

Torg is in command of the Bird of Prey when Kruge locates the stranded away team on the Genesis Planet following the destruction of the science ship USS Grissom. He wisely goes to cloak when the Enterprise arrives to look for the same away team, which includes the reborn Spock as well as Kirk's son David Marcus. While that tactical move gives Kruge the advantage in the eventual combat with the Enterprise, Kirk has the last laugh.

To this end, Torg leads the boarding party to take over Enterprise when Kirk surrenders to the Bird of Prey. Torg could not figure out that the ship was deserted because the self destruct had been activated until it was too late, and Kirk's ploy works as the Enterprise crew eventually takes over the Bird of Prey following the dramatic clifftop end to Commander Kruge. Unfortunately, Torg is just the henchman of a villain destined to fail when he battles wits with Captain Kirk. That being said, he's a good counterpart to Christopher Lee's Kruge in this movie, and the duo are arguably the most classic of the Klingon villains in the movies.

Torg is not really a recurring character, but we see archive footage of this character in Star Trek IV, when Ambassador Kamarag makes his case that Kirk should be punished for crimes against the Empire. So this character does show up in two of the movies.

Torg was played by Stephen Liska, who had a number of small TV and movie roles in a 30 year acting career from the 80s to the 00s. He can be seen as a chauffeur in Beverly Hills Cop II, and as a detective in Lethal Weapon 4.

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Character Insight No. 232: Ambassador Kamarag

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review Ambassador Kamarag, a recurring character who appeared in the latter TOS movies.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp232

Kamarag is the Klingon ambassador who serves as the official representative of the Empire to the Federation.  He is an outspoken and hotheaded diplomat in the appearances we see on screen, and his distaste for Captain Kirk is readily apparent.  It seems that one brash individual will never see eye-to-eye with a similar brash individual on the other side.  Regardless, this ambassador does clearly have the interests of the Klingon Empire at heart, and he therefore serves his role well.

In his first appearance, Kamarag is the lead protestor of the Federation's development and testing of the Genesis device.  Too bad he wasn't able to speak up more before the madman Khan got his hands on Genesis. 

He then defends the actions of Klingon crews who attacked the Enterprise on the Genesis planet as necessary to defend their race, as the Klingons apparently felt the weapon capabilities of this technology were a direct threat to them.  To this end, he proclaims that there can be no peace between the Klingons and the Federation as long as Kirk lives without prosecution by the Federation for his alleged war crimes in defending himself against the Klingon attack. 

It should come as no surprise that he then defends the Klingon government when they arrest Kirk and Dr. McCoy following up on the assassination of chancellor Gorkon.  He is forced to begrudgingly applaud Kirk when the Enterprise crew later saves the Federation president and the new Klingon chancellor from another assassination attempt, which was designed to bring war between these factions.

Kamarag was originally to be played by Eddie Murphy, and one wonders what an interesting difference that would have made on this character.  Instead, the character was played by John Schuck, who had ben previously married to Susan Bay, a friend and later spouse of Leonard Nimoy.

Schuck endured some long days of make-up and wardrobe design in order to pull off the unique look for the Klingon Ambassador.  One of the sacrifices was that the make-up base used on his skin to match the prosthetics did serious damage to his original skin, but all such issues heal with time. Schuck wanted to bring a King Lear-type theatrical performance that evoked a lot of humanity, and he successfully pulled this off, according to both Gene Roddenberry and film director Leonard Nimoy.

Schuck still occasionally acts today, although some of his older work on shows like The Munsters Today, Murder She Wrote, and Matlock is more memorable.  He's rarely recognized for this role as a result of the make-up, at least until he opens his mouth and speaks.  It's something a lot of podcasters and content producers can relate to!

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Character Insight No. 231: Admiral James Komack (and Admiral Westervliet)

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review Admiral James Komack, a recurring character who appeared on TOS.  We also review a potentially related character named Admiral Westervliet.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp231

Admiral Komack is a flag officer who serves as the head of Starfleet Command in Sector 9, which is one of the Sectors of space where Kirk's Enterprise is exploring during the five year mission.  The first reference to this character happens in crew dialogue during the episode This Side of Paradise.  He was the oversight on the Omicron Ceti III mission, and he sends orders to the Enterprise to evacuate the colonists who were discovered to survive a bombardment of deadly berthold rays.  That would have been easier if not for the effect of some spores on the crew, which leads to some away mission craziness.

Komack appears on screen for the first time in the episode Amok Time.  In this episode, he first demands that the Enterprise stay on a mission rather than return to Vulcan to deal with Spock's onset of pon farr, but he later changes his orders when a separate request is made by Vulcan matriarch T'Pau.  This episode is notable, of course, as it shows other Vulcan characters for the first time while also establishing some of the important lore of this Federation species.

QUOTE

It is clear from these appearances and the scripts of these episodes that Admiral Komack is a strong willed and highly competent leader, but he also does not like to have starship Captains question his orders.  He is also referred to and re-confirmed as a character in the 2009 Star Trek movie with the Abrams actors, in which we see a nameplate with this Admiral's name during one scene, but he has no active roles or appearances beyond the two episodes in TOS.

Interestingly, Byron Morrow, who played Admiral Komack, was also used to portray a different character named Admiral Westervliet in the episode For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky.  The Admiral character in the script for Amok Time was also named Westervliet, but this was changed to Komack before final filming. 

Despite some noticeable changes made to Morrow's appearance between the two appearances to differentiate these Admirals, the high amount of overlap makes it unclear if these were really intended to be the same character.  So perhaps this Admiral should have more credits to his name in TOS.  Regardless, the character or characters are a bit unique in TOS because Kirk often reports to commodores rather than directly interacting with admirals.

The James Komack character is named for a director who worked on other parts of TOS.  When not playing Komack and Westervliet, Byron Morrow could be seen in many movies over a 35 year career and in other TV projects like Trapper John, M.D.  He was 94 when he passed away a little over 10 years ago.

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Character Insight No. 230: Colonel Green

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review Colonel Phillip Green, a recurring character who appeared on TOS and Enterprise.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp230


Colonel Green was a despotic militia leader on Earth during World War III in the 21st Century.  He was known for his ruthless waging of war as well as some other very Hitler-esque qualities.  For example, in his only appearance in TOS in the episode The Savage Curtain, we find out that one of his tactics was striking at enemies during treaty negotiations.  So in dealing with him, it was kind of like dealing with the Freys in Game of Thrones...AKA, never to be trusted.

The reason we see Green in The Savage Curtain is that an alien race called the Excalibans formed a replication of him to help them study various concepts of the nature of humans and their concepts of good and evil.  Obviously, there was not a much better example of evil than this.

His motto says it all:

QUOTE
"Overwhelm and Devastate!"

The character appears again in the final season of Enterprise.  As we covered last week in the Arik Soong segment, a descendant of Colonel Green was supposed to be the centerpiece of the Augments trilogy of episodes, but that was re-written for Brent Spiner when that actor showed interest.  Nevertheless, other stories were written to work this character in to Enterprise.

The most notable of these is in the episode Terra Prime, where a student of Green's teachings made use of the same ideologies to try and expel all non-humans from the Sol system.  We learn in this episode another atrocity of Green, that being the euthanasia of hundreds of thousands of radiation-sickened humans over 3 years after the World War ended, on the basis of not passing mutations onto future generations.  Much like the complicated figure of Hitler, this act had two sides and was fiercely argued at the time and in the history books.  But it was pretty evil, indeed.

The character of Green was developed by Gene Roddenberry as a direct corollary to the then-recent word history, so this was another chance to speak on a social issue as Trek does so well.  Green was played by Phillip Pine in TOS, who loved the part because it was such a perfect Machiavellian role.  He stated before his death that it was his most recognized role, likely because in his words, "he was such an unmitigated bastard, he had no redeeming qualities at all!"

Because Pine had passed away before Enterprise was made, Steve Rankin played him during his appearances in the latter show.  Rankin still acts today, but his most notable role was a 25 year stint on the soap opera All My Children.

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Character Insight No. 213: Lieutenant Kelowitz

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we profile Lieutenant Kelowitz, a tactical aide serving aboard Kirk's Enterprise in TOS.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp213

Kelowitz serves in the sciences division, which entitles him to a blue shirt and the right to survive away missions. Most of his appearances are on these away missions, and he survives some really notable trips off Enterprise.

When the shuttlecraft Galileo goes missing in the episode The Galileo Seven, Kelowitz leads one of the landing parties who is searching the Taurus II planet for the shuttle. His party is ambushed by the planet's inhabitants, leading to a death and some injuries. Kelowitz survives though, as the party leader and someone now wearing the dreaded red of security.

The tactical aide is next seen in the episode Arena, where he accompanies Kirk to investigate the destruction of an observation outpost on Cestus III. Kelowitz helps Kirk force the Gorn back to their ship by executing a flanking maneuver, which leads to the eventual chase and showdown between the Gorn captain and Kirk caused by the Metrons.

QUOTE (from Arena)

Kirk: Kelowitz, head over there.

Later on, in the episode This Side of Paradise, Kelowitz is again accompanying a landing party to investigate a mystery about a colony there. He is taken over by alien spores, but is saved when the spores are destroyed by a subsonic transmitter. Despite being put in a lot of dangerous situations, Kelowitz survives and keeps on serving during the 5-year mission. 

Interestingly, these latter two roles for Kelowitz were originally written for other characters, a new one named Molton and for Crewman Dimont. However, by re-using Kelowitz and making him a recurring character, it brings more continuity to the show, making you cheer for his survival and success much more than an unknown face in the crowd. His blue uniform while serving in a tactical role is fairly unusual, but it has been explained in novels and other works to be a sign of him working as a generalist officer in many departments, with the viewer only seeing him in the tactical role of away missions.

Kelowitz was played by Grant Woods, who was an actor and stuntman after retiring from the Navy around 1960. Woods died at age 36 in a motorcycle accident, just one year after filming these appearances on Star Trek. His final work was as a regular on the Custer TV series and associated movie.

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Character Insight No. 208: Lieutenant DeSalle

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we profile Vincent DeSalle, a lieutenant jack of all trades who appears on several episodes of TOS.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp208

DeSalle is first seen as a command division navigator in the episode The Squire of Gothos. He specifically joined a landing party which is looking for Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Sulu, and he comes into conflict with Trelane in this process. The most notable scene is where he is temporarily paralyzed when he tries to stun Trelane, and instead, Trelane uses the phaser to experiment with disintegrating some of his trophies.

Desalle appears again in a landing party in the episode This Side of Paradise, where many of the crew fall under the influence of Omicron spores. The Frenchman mutinies, but like all French revolutions, it ended quickly, specifically thanks to a subsonic transmitter.

The next time we see DeSalle at the beginning of season 2, he is placed in command of the Enterprise when the remainder of the command chain was off the ship in the episode Catspaw. He has to lead an effort to try and get through an alien barrier to send help to the crew off the ship, but he does not succeed before the alien Korob removes the barrier himself.

QUOTE (from Catspaw)
DeSalle: Mr. Chekov, recalibrate your sensors. If you need help...
Chekov: I can do it, sir. I'm not that green.

DeSalle: We know they're down there. I want them found!

Interestingly, he has a different color uniform and a different role as assistant chief engineer in the sciences division in this second appearance. This shift occurred because Gene Coon wanted there to be a backup chief whenever Scotty has to take over the bridge as part of the chain of command, so this episode was to introduce DeSalle as a recurring character in this role. Perhaps the shift in role would be typical as crews continue to develop on a long multi-year mission.

However, this was another of Coon's writing plans that went to waste as none of the scripts involving such circumstances with Scotty in charge ended up requiring communication between the bridge and main engineering. Thus, DeSalle is never seen again, in this role or otherwise.

Desalle is played by Michael Barrier. He acted throughout the 1960s, but Star Trek was one of his final roles. He can also be seen in 60's TV classics Mission Impossible, Bonanza, and the movie Angel in my Pocket.

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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.

Character Insight No. 197: Koloth

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we profile Koloth, a Klingon recurring character who spans episodes in The Original Series, TAS, and Deep Space Nine.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp197

Koloth was a legendary warrior and military leader of the Klingon Empire who serves over many decades, which allows him to appear in multiple Star Trek series. His first appearance was as Captain of the battle cruiser IKS Gr'oth in the TOS episode The Trouble with Tribbles. Koloth demands an apology for the brawl that breaks out between his crew and the the Enterprise crew, but all he ends up with in the end is a ship full of Tribbles.

Ironically, this first appearance of a Klingon foil to Captain Kirk and played by William Campbell was supposed to happen much sooner according to the producer of the first two seasons Gene Coon. However, Campbell's work as Trelane in season 1 was so memorable it pushed his debut off until the Tribbles episode. The rest of this plan was dashed when the production staff changed for season three and had different plans.

Koloth also shows up in Trials and Tribble-ations, the DS9 homage to the original tribbles episode. His most notable episodes are those in Deep Space Nine which deal with the blood oath Koloth made with fellow warriors Kor and Kang. A band of depredators left by the Albino are stopped by this trio of warriors, and the Albino escapes while vowing to exact revenge on the three Klingons. The Albino does just that, infecting three children with a genetic virus that kills them.

Along with Curzon Dax, these three warriors make a blood oath to hunt down the Albino and avenge their sons' deaths. Despite having to wait years and needing to work with Jadzia Dax instead of Curzon, these Klingons overcome traps set for them and Kang kills the Albino after a long duel. Although Kang and Koloth die in this effort, at least their deaths are honorable in completing the Blood Oath.

Odo: How did you get in here?
Koloth: I am Koloth.
Odo: That doesn't answer my question.
Koloth: Yes, it does....what are the charges against this man?
Odo: There are no charges, he's today's guest of honor.
Koloth: You must be a brave man to attempt humor...

Although Koloth did not get to return as a regular foil for Captain Kirk after all, he does re-appear in TAS to battle with the Enterprise in another tribble-related episode. William Campbell did not voice the character in this appearance though, as James Doohan once again lent his voices for this project. Campbell's work did make this a great recurring villain, despite not getting to see the vision of 10 or 13 episodes in TOS like the original plan for this character.

Who knows, perhaps this character will return in an Abramsverse movie. That would make for an interesting call back, if they choose to do it. When not playing Koloth, William Campbell had roles in many 50s and 60s movies like Cannonball and Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte. His final acting days came in 1996 but he did not pass away until a few years ago at age 87 in 2011.

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Character Insight No. 192: Best of James T. Kirk

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we finish up the "Best Of" series for The Original Series characters with a look at Captain James T. Kirk. Here are some of his most memorable quotes and appearances.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp192


Captain Kirk has plenty of strong character moments, but perhaps none quite as strong as when he falls in love with Edith Keeler before accepting that she must die in order to reverse changes in the timeline caused by Dr. McCoy after they travel through the Guardian of Forever in the episode The City on the Edge of Forever:

Capt. Kirk: Spock... I believe... I'm in love with Edith Keeler.
Spock: Jim, Edith Keeler must die.

One of Kirk's greatest assets is figuring his way out of impossible situations, like in the episode The Corbomite Maneuver, where Kirk makes up the existence of a destructive material to regain control of the ship from Balok. Even in tough situations, he can find time for a funny quip:

Capt. Kirk: When I get my hands on the headquarters genius that assigned me a female yeoman...
Dr. McCoy: What's the matter, Jim, don't you trust yourself?
Capt. Kirk: [Kirk suppresses a smile] I've already got a female to worry about. Her name's the Enterprise.

Another example of Kirk making things up on the fly came in the episode A Piece of the Action. This time, the Captain must invent rules for a card game on the fly while dealing with Kalo on a planet crafting itself after 1920s America and gangsters:

Capt. Kirk: The name of the game is called, uh... fizzbin.
Kalo: Fizzbin?
Capt. Kirk: Fizzbin. It's, uh... not too difficult.
Kalo: Mm-hmm.
Capt. Kirk: Each player gets six cards, except for the dealer, er, the player on the dealer's right, who, er, gets seven.
Kalo: On the right?
Capt. Kirk: Yes. The second card is turned up, except on Tuesday.

Sounds simpler than some board games I've played. Captain Kirk is a bit like James Bond, in that he has countless scenes wooing women and countless scenes of bravado, highlighted by the Gorn fight in Arena and the Spock fight in Amok Time. However, he's so brash that he's also willing to take on an alleged God with this challenge from the otherwise forgettable movie The Final Frontier:

Kirk: What does God need with a starship?
McCoy: Jim, what are you doing?
Kirk: I'm asking a question.
"God": Who is this creature?
Kirk: Who am I? Don't you know? Aren't you God?
Sybok: He has his doubts.
"God": You doubt me?
Kirk: I seek proof.
McCoy: Jim! You don't ask the Almighty for his ID!

Much like Spock and McCoy, Captain Kirk is such a vital central piece to what made The Original Series work well. It's impossible to cull his contribution down to a few clips, so we may revisit more great moments like we have multiple times with Spock already. Until next time, boldly go like Gene Roddenberry's original vision to celebrate 50 years of Trek.