star trek eyebrow guy

Remembering Leonard Nimoy's Spock and His Famous Eyebrows

By Catherine Quinn O'Neill

In the long history of megafamous eyebrows (Audrey Hepburn, Brooke Shields, Cara Delevingne), none are quite as iconic as Spock's. And what many people don't know is that Leonard Nimoy, the actor who originated the role on Star Trek and passed away today, actually went through a lot to get them that way.

Nimoy told the TV Times in 1982, "The makeup is a tough problem for me. It always has been. It's tedious. lt's painful, and it's confining. The entire makeup takes two hours. It's extremely complicated makeup, and it's not just the ears. The eyebrows can take longer because they must be laid on hair by hair and cut fresh every morning. They are not one piece. lf they were, you would not get mobility. They would sit there and look unnatural."

And if you think Zachary Quinto, who played the character in the most recent film versions, had it easier thanks to CGI, you're wrong. Makeup-department head David Anderson told Entertainment Weekly, "I'd apply about 60 to 80 hairs, one by one, to each eyebrow." The process took about two and a half hours, but part of that was Quinto's fault: "I kept wondering why it started taking longer and longer, and then I found out that Zach had been going home each night and trimming his brows on his own. For each fraction of a millimeter that he shaved off, I'd have to apply dozens more hairs!" said Anderson.

So thank you, Leonard Nimoy. Not only for your contribution to movie-makeup history, but for your immeasurable talent and ability. You will be missed.

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By Jenny Bailly

By Nykia Spradley

By Sophie Saint Thomas

Ethan Peck is Ready to Beam Up

Star Trek 's newest Spock has been on a journey to become "worthy" of the iconic role. Now, he's a changed man.

Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. We may earn a commission from these links.

When Ethan Peck was cast as Spock, Star Trek ’s legendary science officer, two extraordinary things happened. First, he nearly blacked out. Then, he embarked on a journey of “profound evolution” to become someone worthy of wearing those iconic pointy ears. The pursuit of living up to Spock changed him—made him more confident, more deliberate, more considered. Four years after his fateful debut, the imposter syndrome has worn off, but the journey of becoming remains ongoing. “I’m still trying to grab the Vulcanism in myself,” he tells Esquire .

Peck is the third actor to shave his eyebrows and suit up as everyone’s favorite Vulcan; the late Leonard Nimoy originated the role in Star Trek: The Original Series , then passed the baton to Zachary Quinto for J.J. Abrams’ three Star Trek films. Peck joined Paramount’s ever-expanding Star Trek universe in 2018, when Spock figured into season two of Star Trek: Discovery as the estranged brother of protagonist Michael Burnham. Spock and his reimagined Enterprise colleagues made such a splash on Discovery that fans clamored for a spin-off—and got their way, luckily for the rest of us. This spring, that long-awaited series arrived in the form of Strange New Worlds , a back-to-basics return to the episodic storytelling of The Original Series , set during the captaincy of Christopher Pike (Captain Kirk’s predecessor). Strange New Worlds is the best Trek outing in years: uplifting, optimistic, and gloriously retro, it’s a character-driven series where each episode pairs a top notch sociocultural story with some good, clean, spacefaring fun.

Part of the secret sauce behind Strange New Worlds is, of course, Spock. Peck has nailed everything fans know and love about this legendary character, from his arch formality to his bone-dry humor, while also boldly going where no one has gone before. For the first time ever, viewers get a peek into Spock’s sex life; in one standout episode, a soul-sharing ritual gone wrong sees Spock and his fiancée swap bodies, leading them to profound insights about duty and sacrifice (and, of course, some funny hijinks). But Peck doesn’t want too much credit for his rendition of the role. “I don’t feel like I have any ownership over Spock,” he tells Esquire. “I’m just a custodian.”

A lifelong science fiction fan and a deep, scholarly thinker, Peck has been thrown into the deep end of a multi-decade phenomenon—and come out the other side grateful and changed. He Zoomed with Esquire to discuss all things Star Trek , from what it’s like wearing the Vulcan eyebrows to how he ended up on an ocean cruise full of Trek fans. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Esquire: What was your relationship to Star Trek before you joined the franchise?

Ethan Peck: I'm a big science fiction fan, but in my younger years, I somehow avoided or overlooked Star Trek . Then I became a big fan of J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek movies. I remember the very first time I saw the posters. Each character looked so developed and thrilling. I thought, “I wish I could do something like that.” Now I'm on Star Trek. It's crazy, but it’s exactly where I want to be in terms of genre.

ESQ: What are some other meaningful science fiction touchpoints for you?

EP: It started with Golden Age science fiction books. I recall reading Isaac Asimov’s The End of Eternity when I was around twelve years old—that was really seminal in terms of how I perceive the universe, and the bigger philosophical quest it sent me on. From a young age, Akira was huge for me, too. It asks so many big questions. It’s an allegory for the threat of nuclear war and the mass destruction we can wreak on ourselves, but it also asks: what is consciousness? That was the first time I'd been exposed to those ideas in a way that I could begin to understand. Of course, 2001: A Space Odyssey made a huge impact, too. Oftentimes a book comes out before a movie, but with 2001: A Space Odyssey , Kubrick reached out to Arthur C. Clarke and said, "I want to create the quintessential science fiction film. Will you help me?" The script was actually completed before the book. I remember reading the book and thinking, “I wish hadn't seen the movie so I could create my own imagery for this,” only to discover that it came out after. I love that book.

ESQ: When you first auditioned for Discovery , how did you feel about stepping into the iconic role of Spock?

EP: When I first auditioned, I didn’t even know what I was auditioning for. The project had a code name, so I was blissfully unaware. We knew that it was code for Star Trek , but I had no idea what the role was. I assumed it was something small. By the time I learned what the role was after two auditions, I was quite frankly terrified. I was terrified of the audition, but also of the need to live up to this mythical icon, as Spock has become. I blacked out the very last audition—I barely remember what I did. After getting the part, I was still terrified. I felt unworthy of it. I felt I had so much personal growth to undergo in order to fulfill the needs of this character. Spock is such a vast-minded person—he’s otherworldly, hyper-intelligent, and has great integrity. I’m constantly working to live up to him.

ESQ: What’s been your experience of joining and navigating this robust fandom?

EP: The conventions are surreal. You have a big group of people who love the concepts, the ideals, and the openness that Star Trek is a vessel for. They’re sometimes marginalized for different reasons, and they find a lot of commonality among one another. That’s a beautiful and incredible thing. I've been plugged into something much bigger than me. I don't feel like I have any ownership over Spock; I'm just a custodian. People come to me at these conventions, and it's almost like they want confirmation of some sort—to be seen by this character and this universe. They're not there to see Ethan. They're there to see Spock, and I just happen to be a representative of this character at this one point in time. These people are so thrilled and excited and moved by the world that we are a part of as actors, and they come with such vulnerability—that’s very special and unique. In the year after Discovery ’s second season, I did thirteen conventions that culminated in Star Trek: The Cruise , which was wild. I kept thinking, “Wow, I get to have this experience. I get to see these people in this light and in under these circumstances.”

ESQ: I need to hear more about Star Trek: The Cruise .

EP: It's everything I've just described, but hyper-condensed and intensified, because you're on this floating skyscraper. I think there were around 2500 to 3000 guests on the ship, with about 30 "talents," as they refer to us. I would walk out of my little suite, which is basically a room with two double beds, and people would say, "Ethan Peck?" You're there with everybody. It’s mostly a celebration of the community that Star Trek has created, which is infused with the show's ideals and vision and optimism.

ESQ: Now that you've played Spock across multiple television shows, what keeps you coming back to him?

EP: I'm still trying to grab the Vulcanism in myself. I felt that I was called to undergo profound evolution to serve the needs of this character, because he’s just so extraordinary. I've been pushed to develop in ways that maybe I wouldn't have if I hadn't been cast in this role. I was cast in 2018, but I'm only just starting to feel like, “I’m here, and I’m doing this, and I'm capable of it.” I still have doubts about that sometimes because there's so much nuance to the character. That challenge is what brings me back. I don't see that it ever would get old or stale or known to me, because the writers keep presenting me with new challenges for this character, and I'm on my toes constantly.

ESQ: What are some of these ways that Spock has driven you to develop?

EP: He challenges me to be more confident. To have more useful thoughts. I found that I spent a lot of time thinking about ways in which I wasn't worthy or good enough, and that wasn’t useful. Spock would never have these thoughts—he would never think about something that doesn't have great utility. That rubbed off on me in the best way, though I’m still on that journey of weeding out toxic and circuitous thinking. I see Spock as a monument in motion, because he’s so pure and pristine in his decision-making, his actions, and his philosophy. As an artist and a person, that feels like a very worthy pursuit, to be in search of Spock.

ESQ: I feel like there’s a book here: The Spock Guide to Self-Help .

EP: It would be a bestseller. CBS should probably think about that.

ESQ: How did you approach making your Spock distinct from the previous iterations of the character?

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EP: I’m still figuring that out. I'm so fundamentally different from Leonard Nimoy and Zachary Quinto, so I don't think I have to do too much work to differentiate myself, because I’m inseparable from my work. Another one of the reasons I knew I had to develop personally was because I needed to become greater and more myself to distinguish the character. Leonard Nimoy is inimitable; he brought certain qualities that I can observe and attempt to internalize, but I can't impersonate him, because that would be such a misstep. I had to understand the character and what he meant to me personally. What I bring to Spock is the impression that I have of him, which is unique to me, I think. I hope, anyway.

ESQ: Strange New Worlds finds a lot of new shades in Spock. Within the first fifteen minutes of Episode One, he's falling into bed his fiancée, T’Pring. Spock has had romances, but now, for the first time ever, he has a sex life. What was that like, to be the actor who gets to take him there?

EP: It was really scary, because there's no blueprint for that. Unfortunately, Leonard Nimoy is not alive to offer me any guidance or advice. Those moments are quite terrifying, because I'm treading into the unknown, and I'm captaining whatever ship is taking me there—albeit with a huge amount of support from the people that I work with. During my preparation for that scene, I thought, “What's too human? What's too sexual? What's too Vulcan? What's weird enough? What's so weird that it doesn't feel relatable to viewers?” That discussion was ongoing with Akiva Goldsman, who directed the episode, and Gia Sandhu, who plays T'Pring. It was a very careful and cautious process.

ESQ: Another shade you bring out in Spock is his capacity for humor. How do you make this guy who has no sense of irony or sarcasm so funny?

EP: A lot of that has to do with the writing. It’s always funny to see Spock in a situation where you think, “Oh no, this is going to be bad for Spock. He's going to do something awkward and goofy and strange.” When he comes into conflict with his own social constructs, that presents a lot of possibilities. For example, there’s a moment where Captain Pike smacks Spock on the shoulder, and he's mystified by the idea of someone touching him. The writers do such a great job of putting him in humorous situations and allowing him to be jocular.

ESQ: How has your grandfather Gregory Peck's legacy figured into how you approach your own work as an actor?

EP: I didn’t know him very well. Ten or fifteen years ago, I wanted to reject the part of me that comes from him, because I felt so undeserving of that pedigree. There’s nothing I did to earn a position in my family tree—I could have been born anywhere. That’s something I ruminate on quite a lot, and now, I feel extremely lucky to be a part of this family, because it does come with perquisites. I think the greatest gift from my grandfather is the possibility of huge success. A lot of people are born into families that don't have this level of recognition, so to attain that seems like an impossible, otherworldly thing. For me, that level of respect and public appreciation felt achievable. In terms of success, it’s given me an openness to the strange or the weird. I’m so proud of being on this show. I can't believe it. I feel so lucky to be a part of Star Trek and to be Spock; that feels like a really big achievement. I can trace that sensation of success back to being born into this family.

ESQ: In the series premiere of Strange New Worlds , we learn about World War III on Earth. Humanity tore itself apart in its own hubris, with thousands of species and hundreds of thousands of lives lost. Star Trek has provided half a century’s worth of commentary on human society, but what does Strange New Worlds have to say about our current moment?

EP: There's a useful scientific analogy called the Great Filter. I'm probably not going to speak very knowledgeably about it because I'm not a scientist. Essentially, civilization will obtain a level of technological development that enables us to destroy ourselves, and that point in time becomes a filter. Will we destroy ourselves, or will we evolve beyond that primal warring state? I think that’s where we’re at. When you look at the news, it's just people killing people because of ideas. People are so afraid of other people's ideas. Strange New Worlds reminds us, “Be careful about your fear, and about the violence that your fear inspires.” That’s a message we can never hear often enough.

One of my buddies always says, "We're just monkeys, man." There's a hopelessness about where we're at, because the behavior of destroying ourselves and killing one another has become so redundant. Strange New Worlds is trying to highlight the tragedy of that, and it's begging us to move beyond it—to move forward, to unite and combine our energies, to be curious about what more is out there.

ESQ: I’ve got just one last question for you—the question every actor playing Spock has to answer. What’s it like walking around with these eyebrows?

EP: I honestly don't even think about it. My friends will say, "Oh man, your eyebrows are so fucked up.” I'm sure other people are thinking, "What's going on with your face?" But I don’t even care. It’s all so worth it.

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Tracing the Shocking Chic of Spock's Legendary Star Trek Haircut

By Mackenzie Wagoner

Fans who put Star Trek Beyond in the number-one spot at the box office this weekend went boldly where no man has gone before—but they may also have acquired a yen to take their beauty look to soaring new heights. For all of the inexplicably alluring oddities featured in the cult classic series—Worf’s mountain range of a furrowed brow, Data’s robotic ice-white eyes—we can’t seem to look away from the cooly crisp half-Vulcan, half-human known as Spock. There are the acute alien ears yin-yanged to the equally sharp side burns, the severe obsidian bowl cut, and the extreme linear eyebrows—which emphasize his commitment to unemotional rationality. As absurd as the look is, it continues to live long and prosper due to some rather chic roots.

First airing in 1966, Star Trek was launched just one year after Vidal Sassoon sent shockwaves through the hair world with the five-point cut, the famously graphic trim given to Grace Coddington that rewrote the rules for the way hair frames a face. It's not hard to image why those crisply undulating lines, razor-sharp angles, and severe helmutlike bangs may have appealed to the show’s creators when dreaming up a look for Spock—they certainly seemed to be of another time, if not another galaxy.

Given its nod on television, Spock’s raven fringe was raised to reveal another dramatic aesthetic statement: a set of Marlene Dietrich–esque eyebrows that Leonard Nimoy shaved off for the series (he would later admit that they never regrew to their full capacity). In the ’30s, Dietrich adopted what Cecil Beaton reportedly referred to as “limned butterflies’ antennae on her forehead,” to further her enigmatic star power appeal; filled out to a fatter width more akin to, say, Audrey Hepburn’s caterpillar set for the original series, they gave Spock a similarly otherworldly look. Five decades later, now seen on Zachary Quinto’s modern-day incarnation of the beloved character in Star Trek Beyond , the Spock effect still marries the elegance of restraint with the shock-inducing power of severe angles. In other words, it sets phasers to stun.

clock This article was published more than  9 years ago

Leonard Nimoy, a pop culture force as Spock of ‘Star Trek,’ dies at 83

“Someday,” producer Gene Roddenberry said many decades ago, “I’m going to make a science-fiction series and put pointed ears on that guy.”

The series was “Star Trek,” and the guy was Leonard Nimoy, who died Feb. 27 at 83. A tall, taut-faced actor, he had been laboring in obscurity for 15 years before Roddenberry hired him in 1966 to play the half-human, half-alien space explorer Spock.

Those pointy ears — along with the upswept eyebrows and “five-point” Vidal Sassoon bob — brought Mr. Nimoy enduring stardom in an entertainment and merchandising empire equaled perhaps only by the James Bond, “Star Wars” and “Harry Potter” franchises.

“Star Trek,” a drama about the adventures of the starship Enterprise as it explored “the final frontier” of space, was not a critical or popular hit during its initial run on NBC from 1966 to 1969.

In syndication, however, it became a phenomenon.

[ Leonard Nimoy’s final public words: ‘Live long and prosper’ ]

Communities of fans known as “Trekkies” burst forth in the 1970s, creating richly imagined fantasy worlds that were based on the show and that were played out at large-scale conventions. Filmmaker George Lucas said “Star Trek” helped pave the way for his “Star Wars” movies. The success of “Star Wars,” in turn, helped spur the “Star Trek” film series.

As a television program, “Star Trek” proved groundbreaking in many ways. It served up allegorical tales about violence, greed, jealousy, prejudice, peace and love — the roiling social issues of the 1960s — in the guise of intergalactic adventure.

It did so, said television scholar Robert Thompson, “at a time when American television completely shied away from any kind of relevance or social controversy, except in the news.”

Its 23rd-century starship crew was a utopian federation of men and women, blacks and whites, Americans, Russians and Asians — and Spock, who was born on the planet Vulcan in a civilization that has mastered control of its feelings. (The Vulcan aphorism “live long and prosper” became a catchphrase.) He becomes the science officer and first mate aboard the Enterprise and was, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov once observed, a “creature of pure reason and no emotion.”

[ President Obama: ‘I loved Spock’ ]

Spock was the ultimate outsider — a trait Mr. Nimoy said he understood. He was Jewish and had grown up in an Irish section of Boston. Going to movies as a child during the Depression, he was drawn to actors who specialized in bringing pathos to the grotesque — especially Boris Karloff in “Frankenstein” (1931) and Charles Laughton in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1939).

By most accounts, Mr. Nimoy portrayed the most popular character of the “Star Trek” cast. While some critics thought that Mr. Nimoy’s acting was dour or wooden, fans might have argued that these were precisely the characteristics of the emotion-suppressing, logic-obsessed Spock.

In one episode called “The Naked Time,” a virus infects the spaceship and causes the crew’s “hidden selves” to emerge — revealing previously unknown dimensions of Spock’s nature. At one point, the chaos overtakes him, and he breaks down and cries.

“It solidified everything,” Mr. Nimoy told the New York Times in 1968. “I knew that we were not playing a man with no emotions, but a man who had great pride, who had learned to control his emotions and who would deny that he knew what emotions were. In a way, he was more human than anyone else on the ship.”

He added: “In spite of being an outcast, being mixed up, looking different, he maintains his point of view. He can’t be bullied or put on. He’s freaky with dignity. There are very few characters who have that kind of pride, cool and ability to lay it out and walk away. Humphrey Bogart played most of them.”

[ William Shatner and George Takei mourn Leonard Nimoy’s death ]

Leonard Simon Nimoy was born in Boston on March 26, 1931, to parents who had been peasants in what is now Ukraine. His father became a barber and urged his sons — Leonard and an older brother, Melvin — toward stable careers.

The boys grew up in a Yiddish-speaking household and attended Orthodox Jewish services, which became an unexpected influence on Mr. Nimoy’s role as Spock. His “Vulcan salute” — made by parting the middle and ring fingers of each hand — was based on a hand gesture he noticed while attending a synagogue as an 8-year-old.

“I didn’t know what it meant,” he once said, “but I knew it looked like something magical.”

Mr. Nimoy developed an early interest in acting, and he recalled that his parents were “grief-stricken” when he abandoned a scholarship at Boston College to seek a career in Hollywood.

In 1952, he won the title role, a boxer with a disfigured face, in the low-budget film “Kid Monk Baroni.” Mr. Nimoy mistakenly thought the part would launch his career. “It played about three days as a second bill somewhere in Hollywood and then died,” he told the Times. “Nothing happened and, in 1953, I went into the Army.”

After his discharge, he mostly played heavies on TV shows such as “Dragnet,” “Sea Hunt” and “Wagon Train” before his breakthrough in 1964 while acting on the adventure series “The Lieutenant.” Roddenberry was a producer of the show and soon hired him for “Star Trek.”

“For the first time, I had a job that lasted longer than two weeks and a dressing room with my name painted on the door and not chalked on,” Mr. Nimoy later told the Times.

Mr. Nimoy struggled with his “Star Trek” legacy. His first memoir, published in 1975, was called “I Am Not Spock.” It was followed 20 years later by “I Am Spock,” in which he said he had come to peace with the show that defined him in the public imagination.

He spoke openly about personal problems that developed during the making of the show. He became a heavy drinker, he said, to escape the pressures of sudden fame.

Mr. Nimoy described an intense “sibling rivalry” with William Shatner, who starred as the heroic Capt. James T. Kirk. Mr. Nimoy was nominated three times for the Emmy for best supporting actor but felt he deserved recognition for what was essentially a leading role. Meanwhile, Shatner received no nominations.

[ Reaction from Leonard Nimoy’s fans — famous and not — pours in ]

Mr. Nimoy, who took an earnest approach to his art, was often the butt of Shatner’s on-set pranks. On one occasion, Mr. Nimoy recalled, Shatner asked him to repeatedly retake an emotional scene in which the Vulcan cries out, “Pain! Pain!”

As Mr. Nimoy increased his volume and intensity, Shatner finally quipped to the crew, “Can someone get this guy an aspirin?”

Mr. Nimoy didn’t talk to Shatner for weeks.

They later reconciled. Mr. Nimoy said he stopped drinking in the late 1980s and that he helped Shatner through his marriage to an alcoholic and comforted him after the woman, Nerine Kidd, drowned in a swimming pool.

The original run of “Star Trek” was canceled because of dwindling ratings, and Mr. Nimoy’s strong identity as Spock made it hard for him to transcend the role. On the CBS series “Mission: Impossible” from 1969 to 1971, he played a master of disguise named Paris. From 1976 to 1982, he hosted the syndicated documentary series “In Search Of . . .,” which explored phenomena such as the Loch Ness monster and the Bermuda Triangle.

Mr. Nimoy wrote and performed in a one-man stage show about Theo van Gogh and his troubled but brilliant painter brother, Vincent.

[ Leonard Nimoy’s struggle with being Spock ]

He had supporting roles onscreen, but he was reluctant to reprise Spock for the first “Star Trek” movie in 1979. Mr. Nimoy felt he was owed royalties from the sale of toys, posters and other memorabilia bearing Spock’s image.

To persuade Mr. Nimoy to appear in “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” (1982), Paramount studios offered him a plum role in its television production “A Woman Called Golda” about Israeli prime minister Golda Meir.

Mr. Nimoy was cast as Morris Meyerson, Meir’s husband, opposite Ingrid Bergman in the title role, and earned an Emmy nomination for his supporting role. The only consolation in losing, he said, was that it was to Laurence Olivier in the limited series “Brideshead Revisited.”

Spock had been killed saving the Enterprise crew in the second “Star Trek” movie but, to the relief of many enthusiasts, the character was revived in future movie installments that Mr. Nimoy also directed: “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock” (1984) and “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” (1986).

He later directed the hit comedy “3 Men and a Baby” (1987), starring Tom Selleck, Ted Danson and Steve Guttenberg as bachelors who care for an infant left on their doorstep. To less enthusiastic reviews, he directed Diane Keaton in “The Good Mother” (1988), based on the Sue Miller novel about a divorced mother whose newfound sexual passions threaten to consume her life.

Around the same time, Mr. Nimoy left his wife of 33 years, Sandra Zober, and they divorced. In 1989, he married actress Susan Bay. Besides his wife, survivors include two children from his first marriage, Adam and Julie; a stepson; a brother; six grandchildren; and a great-grandchild.

His son confirmed the death to the Associated Press. Mr. Nimoy had announced in 2014 that he had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

[ PHOTOS: The man behind Starship Enterprise’s Vulcan ]

Mr. Nimoy parlayed his “Star Trek” fame into a singing career in the late 1960s and 1970s, cutting albums such as “Leonard Nimoy Presents Mr. Spock’s Music From Outer Space.” He also published books of poetry and photography and championed progressive causes, including civil rights and Cesar Chavez’s efforts on behalf of immigrant farm workers.

The film or television offers that rolled in during his later life tended to be in the realm of science fiction. He was the voice of Sentinel Prime in the 2011 film “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” and he participated in nearly all “Star Trek” film and TV incarnations.

He spoke to the writer Digby Diehl in 1968 about the strange effect Spock and his foam rubber ears had on women in particular. “I tell you frankly, I’ve never had more female attention on a set before,” he said. “And get this: They all wanted to touch the ears.”

Leonard Nimoy’s struggle with being Spock

George Takei and William Shatner mourn Nimoy’s death

Reactions pour in after Nimoy’s death

Nimoy’s final public words: ‘Live long and prosper’

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Published Sep 27, 2016

Creating Star Trek's First Alien: Mr. Spock

Fred Phillips designed Spock’s famous pointed ears for the original pilot episode “The Cage.” Fourteen years later, during the production of Star Trek: The Motion Picture , Phillips cast his two thousandth Spock ear.

While familiar today and seemingly a simple makeup design, Gene Roddenberry recalled in The Making of Star Trek (1968) that it look a lot of tries to get it right.

"We had to try a lot of different types of ears on Leonard to get the right ones, one that looked real. We had them too big, too flat, too pointed, and so forth. So Leonard came in four or five days in a row and tried on these different kinds of ears. We would then shoot test footage and view them the next day in the projection room."

The longer it took to find the right pair of ears, the more jokes were made among the production crew about the alien makeup design. Eventually, even Leonard Nimoy began to doubt whether it was right to begin with.

"This Spock part was beginning to look to him like he’d be playing a freak with ears. He wound up by saying, 'I’ve decided I don’t want the part.'"

"Well, after all that we had gone through, and with only a few days left before shooting, and I’m certain Spock can be a meaningful and challenging role, now comes the problem of talking Leonard out of this. We must have argued for at least half an hour. I was desperately trying to convince Leonard that there is dignity in Spock and for the actor portraying him. But there had been too many comments and remarks about the pointed ears. Nimoy was unconvinced."

"Finally the only thing I could think of to say to him was, 'Leonard, look, believe me. I make this pledge to you. If by the thirteenth show you still don’t like the ears, I will personally write a script in which you will get an ear job and go back to normal.' He looked at me for a minute and then practically fell down on the floor laughing. Suddenly the ears had been put back in proper perspective. And that was the end of that problem."

Which still left the problem of applying the proper makeup. Associate producer Bob Justman recalled the complicated process in Herbert and Yvonne Fern Solow’s Star Trek Sketchbook ( 1997).

"The theory was that, once the molds were made, duplicate ears could be cranked out when needed and glued onto Leonard’s ears. Easier said than done. Once a pair of them had been painstakingly attached and colored to match the rest of Spock’s yellowish complexion, that was it for that pair. And when they were removed (a painful and time consuming process for Leonard, since they were attached with spirit glue and could be removed only with the use of strong solvent), they couldn’t be saved for use the next time. New day, new ears. And the rubber being used wasn’t dependable. The makeup lab had to cast pair after pair of ears until a good set was made. Later, when the series was filmed, Charles Schramm of the MGM makeup department would use an improved latex formula and crank out ears on an assembly-line basis."

It still took an hour and a half every day before filming to apply the ears. Justman recalled in The Making of Star Trek how he played a little joke on Nimoy about the problem.

"Before we started the second season, I put Leonard on, telling him I could solve the ear problem for the whole second season. I said, 'Leonard, I think I’ve come up with the answer to the ear problem. You’re going to be able to save all that time in makeup. No more being uncomfortable, no more pain, no more problems. You can just get regular makeup and everything will be perfect.' And he says, 'Yeah, what is it Bob?' And I said, 'We’re going to send you to a plastic surgeon and we’re going to point your ears. When the series is finished, we’ll pay to have them put back to normal!' I almost had Leonard convinced that it would be much easier, much less painful. The more I talked, the more he began to listen and sort of nod his head. You could almost hear the thought going through his mind, 'You know… it would possibly be much better…' At that point I couldn’t keep a straight face any longer and broke up. That’s when Leonard realized that I was putting him on and he cracked up, too."

The second stage was the creation of Spock’s characteristic Vulcan eyebrows. This required Phillips to shave the outside halves of Nimoy’s actual eyebrows during each makeup session. Phillips filled in the shape of the new eyebrows with an eyebrow pencil, then painted over those lines with spirit gum. The spirit gum was used to attach short lengths of yak belly hair, which Phillips cut from long stands, blending the small tufts into what remained of Nimoy’s own eyebrows. The final stage of the process involved applying base makeup and adding shading to ensure that shadow contours would be seen even under the bright lights of the shooting stage.

As the series began production, the use of Spock’s pointed ears was cause of great controversy between the Star Trek production team and the television network. “In 1965, the NBC Sales Department was concerned,” recalled Herb Solow, Desilu executive in charge of Star Trek at the time. “It was as if they believed that, after Satan had been cast out the the Garden of Eden, he was reincarnated as actor Leonard Nimoy and cast into Star Trek as science officer Spock, a pointed eared, arched eyebrowed ‘satanic’ Vulcan alien.” NBC feared its advertisers and local stations would be targets of a religious backlash protesting this “devil incarnate.”

“It took several weeks for us to learn the extent to which NBC Sales had gone to disguise Spock’s ‘satanic’ pointed ears,” says Solow.

NBC had sent a very attractive Star Trek sales brochure to its station affiliates and advertisers. Close scrutiny showed, however, that an artist working for the NBC Sales Department had airbrushed Spock’s pointy ears round in all the photographs.

In order to placate the network, which was strongly advocating the use of regular ears and eyebrows on the Spock character — a move that would have seriously undermined the concept that an alien was serving onboard the Enterprise — the Star Trek production team decided to “tell NBC what they wanted to hear” in agreeing to greatly reduce Spock’s visibility in the show for the first thirteen weeks while actually proceeding without limitations on the use of the Vulcan first officer.

“The first four episodes to air featured Mister Spock in varying degrees,” according to Solow. “But by the time the fifth show was ready to air, ‘Spockmania’ had erupted and NBC’s anti-Spock campaign came to a grinding halt. Desilu’s mailroom was bulging with huge sacks of fan mail, most of which was addressed to Mister Spock.”

Nick Ottens is the man behind the Forgotten Trek website. The site bills itself as "the largest resource about the production and behind the scenes of Star Trek ." Online since 2002, it features concept art, photographs and interviews, some of which has never been published before.. or until now. Be sure to visit the site at Forgotten Trek and keep an eye on StarTrek.com for future pieces from the site's archive.

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Ear-resistible? Leonard Nimoy told NBC 10 about pointed conversation with 'Star Trek' boss

by NBC 10 NEWS

Jay Kroll was a popular fixture on WJAR-TV from the 1950s, all the way into the late '60s.

One guest on his talk show was a Boston native named Leonard Nimoy. He talked about landing the role on the original "Star Trek" that came to define him.

"Fellow named Gene Roddenberry, who was the producer of a series called 'The Lieutenant' on NBC about three or four years ago, got the idea. I had worked for him on 'The Lieutenant' once, and he said to my agent, 'I have a science fiction show in mind and I'm going to put pointed ears on that guy,'" Nimoy related.

Nimoy wasn't enamored with Spock's ears at first.

"I'm a serious actor. What is this with pointed ears?" he told Kroll.

Nimoy said he went to Roddenberry and asked to ditch the ears.

"I think we've got enough going for us with the haircut and the eyebrows," Nimoy said.

• 75TH ANNIVERSARY: Jay Kroll was noted for celebrity interviews on WJAR-TV

Nimoy said Roddenberry assured him that "those ears are going to be very popular and very famous and they're going to make you popular and famous."

Nimoy said the two made a deal.

"He said, 'I promise you that If you'll do 13 shows with those ears, that at the end of the 13 shows if you're not happy with it, we'll write a script where you get an ear job,'" Nimoy said.

Nimoy went ahead and wore the ears, and the rest is "Star Trek" history.

"At the end of 13 shows, we laughed about it because I wouldn't give them up for anything," Nimoy said.

The pointed ears were popular with fans, but not apparently quite enough in some quarters. At the time of the interview, Nimoy said "Star Trek" was in danger of cancellation.

"Evidently, in the cosmopolitan areas such as this, and the West Coast and Chicago, the show does phenomenally well. But in the Midwest, it hasn't done that well," Nimoy said.

Famously, the original "Star Trek" ran just three seasons, but the franchise has lived long and prospered.

How Leonard Nimoy was cast as Mr. Spock on ‘Star Trek’

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His role as Mr. Spock made a lasting impact on pop culture, but Leonard Nimoy barely noticed when he first heard about the role back in 1966.

“I really didn’t give it a lot of thought,” Nimoy recalled of the time his agent first called about the part.

Nimoy -- who died Friday at 83 -- recalled how he won the landmark role as the relentlessly logical half-human, half-Vulcan Spock during a November 2000 interview with the TV Academy for its Archive of American Television Project.

Writer-producer Gene Roddenberry was developing “Trek” as a pilot for a sci-fi series about a team of explorers aboard a spaceship. He had worked briefly with Nimoy on another series called “The Lieutenant” and thought the actor might be right for the new show.

Nimoy, who had been working for years on TV at that point, kept a Spock-like cool.

“You hear that kind of thing and you’re [still] a long way from getting a job,” he recalled.

Roddenberry wanted to see what kind of range Nimoy had as a performer. So his agent sent over a scene the actor had done on the medical drama “Dr. Kildare.”

Roddenberry was impressed and asked Nimoy to visit the studio, where he showed him the set and costumes and began talking in detail about the project. Slowly it dawned on Nimoy that he was hearing a sales pitch.

“If I keep my mouth shut, I might have a job here,” he recalled thinking.

Once he was cast, Nimoy began trying to nail down exactly what kind of a character Spock would be. Settling on his appearance was important. Roddenberry had decided he would have pointy ears so that viewers would immediately perceive him as otherworldly.

He also wanted to give Spock red skin. But that proved problematic.

Most TVs in the mid-1960s were still black-and-white, Nimoy remembered.

With red skin, “I was going to be black on a black-and-white set,” he said.

The idea was dropped.

What do you think of Nimoy and “Star Trek”?

Twitter: @scottcollinsLAT

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Scott Collins is a former staff reporter for the Calendar section of the Los Angeles Times. He joined the staff in 2004 after previous stints at the Hollywood Reporter and Inside.com. Author of the book “Crazy Like a Fox: The Inside Story of How Fox News Beat CNN,” he is a frequent pop-culture expert on national TV, radio shows and industry panels. He left The Times in 2016.

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The Man Trap

• Episode aired Sep 8, 1966

Dr. McCoy discovers his old flame is not what she seems after crew members begin dying from a sudden lack of salt in their bodies. Dr. McCoy discovers his old flame is not what she seems after crew members begin dying from a sudden lack of salt in their bodies. Dr. McCoy discovers his old flame is not what she seems after crew members begin dying from a sudden lack of salt in their bodies.

• Marc Daniels
• George Clayton Johnson
• Gene Roddenberry
• William Shatner
• Leonard Nimoy
• 46 User reviews
• 12 Critic reviews

• Captain James Tiberius 'Jim' Kirk

• Mister Spock

• Nancy Crater

• Prof. Robert Crater

• Yeoman Janice Rand

• (uncredited)
• Crewman Sturgeon

• Lieutenant Hadley
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Did you know

• Trivia Although this was the first episode to air on NBC, it was actually the sixth episode produced. NBC chose to air this episode first because they felt that it had more action than any of the first 5 episodes and it also featured a monster.
• Goofs Professor Crater identifies human incisor teeth as having once been fangs. This is incorrect. The canine teeth were originally fangs.

Mr. Spock : Miss Uhura, your last sub-space log contained an error in the frequencies column.

Uhura : Mr. Spock, sometimes I think if I hear that word 'frequency' once more, I'll cry.

Mr. Spock : Cry?

Uhura : I was just trying to start a conversation.

Mr. Spock : Well, since it is illogical for a communications officer to resent the word 'frequency'... I have no answer.

Uhura : No, you have an answer. I'm an illogical woman, who's beginning to feel too much a part of that communications console. Why don't you tell me I'm an attractive young lady, or ask me if I've ever been in love? Tell me how your planet Vulcan looks on a lazy evening when the moon is full.

Mr. Spock : Vulcan has no moon, Miss Uhura.

Uhura : I'm not surprised, Mr. Spock.

• Alternate versions Special Enhanced version Digitally Remastered with new exterior shots and remade opening theme song
• Connections Edited into Star Trek: What Are Little Girls Made Of? (1966)
• Soundtracks Theme From Star Trek (uncredited) Written by Alexander Courage

User reviews 46

• Samuel-Shovel
• May 8, 2017
• September 8, 1966 (United States)
• United States
• Official Facebook
• Desilu Studios - 9336 W. Washington Blvd., Culver City, California, USA
• Desilu Productions
• Norway Corporation
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 50 minutes

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Balok was a male citizen of the First Federation , who was child-like in appearance. In 2266 , as captain of the Fesarius and the sole occupant of that vessel, he made first contact with the Federation .

• 2.1.1 Origins
• 2.1.2 Casting
• 2.1.3 Portrayal
• 2.1.4 Legacy
• 2.2 Apocrypha
• 2.3 External links

History [ ]

Balok encountered the USS Enterprise while it was midway through a star mapping mission. He used a puppet of a bluish, cat - eyed alien , that wavered and rippled on the Enterprise 's viewscreen , to fool the starship 's crew into believing the puppet was named Balok and was in control of the Fesarius . Balok apparently condemned the crew as warlike, because they had been forced to destroy a marker buoy , and repeatedly threatened them with the consequences, such as seemingly planning to destroy the Enterprise .

Balok sitting in his pilot vessel

After Balok's pilot vessel (a much smaller craft, launched from the Fesarius ) was damaged by the Enterprise and Captain James T. Kirk beamed aboard with a landing party that also included Doctor Leonard McCoy and Crewman Dave Bailey , the real Balok divulged the truth to his visitors; he revealed his use of the puppet and that the entire encounter had been an elaborate test of character and ethics. Balok was amused by having manipulated the Enterprise crew with the puppet, which he called " Mr. Hyde to my Jekyll ", and which he commonly used to frighten and intimidate others. He shared a drink of tranya with the landing party, and gave them a tour of his ship.

As the Fesarius had a crew of only one, Balok was the only representative of the First Federation encountered by Starfleet so far. He admitted he was lonely, so Kirk left Crewman Bailey with Balok, for an exchange of cultures and ideas. Balok gave all three visitors a tour of his small pilot vessel, before Kirk and McCoy departed. ( TOS : " The Corbomite Maneuver ")

Portrait of Balok's puppet

In 2381 , a framed photograph of Balok's puppet personae was among several others displayed on the walls of a bar on Starbase 25 . ( LD : " An Embarrassment Of Dooplers ")

Appendices [ ]

Background information [ ], origins [ ].

Balok was portrayed by Clint Howard and voiced by Walker Edmiston .

Originally (in an outline called "Danger Zone", from March 1966 ), Balok was an avian who initially told the Enterprise crew that he was the liaison officer of the Fesarius . Balok lost consciousness, but was saved by the Enterprise medical staff. Aboard the Enterprise at the end of the story, he revealed he was actually the commander of the Fesarius and shook Kirk's hand with his talons, in a friendly gesture . Before leaving the Enterprise , Balok extended an open invitation for Kirk and his officers to visit the Fesarius at any time. Balok was also described as having more attractive plumage than two of his subordinates, who were of the same species as him.

In the second draft outline of " The Corbomite Maneuver ", the character was portrayed as acting in much the same way. However, Balok was no longer an avian. Instead, he was described as a non-descript alien who was taller than his fellows and who shook hands with Kirk (though a question mark indicated that there was still some uncertainty as to whether Balok even had hands). Another change affecting Balok was the introduction of the concept of corbomite ; Balok was insistent that no such substance existed, though at the end of the story, he admitted he was unsure as to whether it did or not.

Jerry Sohl developed Balok further while trying to devise the conclusion to the episode "The Corbomite Maneuver". He later commented, " How the hell were they [the Enterprise crew] going to get out of this one? And then we added the fellow at the end, which was so much like the end of many of my novels, where a little kid is behind the whole thing. That tickled Gene Roddenberry . " ( Starlog #136, p. 69) This idea was first established in the third draft outline of "The Corbomite Maneuver", in which Balok was the only member of his species to appear – doing so only at the end of the story, using a puppet before that point – and was simply described as "a midget by Earth standards." The outline also related some uncertainty over whether he could smile . Also, rather than coming aboard the Enterprise at the end of the episode, Balok met Kirk, Spock, the doctor from the Enterprise and two of his aides onboard Balok's pilot vessel. Without shaking hands with Kirk, Balok revealed that he himself was the Fesarius ' commander, extended his open invitation for the Enterprise crew to visit the Fesarius , and admitted to being unsure if corbomite really existed.

In the first draft script of "The Corbomite Maneuver" (submitted in April 1966 ), Balok was described as "tiny by earth standards, almost childlike (a child actor), soft, warm, almost lovely in his tiny simplicity." In the final draft of the script (dated 3 May 1966 ), Balok was characterized as "a veritable child of a man, pudgy, soft-looking, warm and cuddly, wearing a robe of fine cloth, [...] smiling cherubically." The second revised final draft of the script (dated 20 May 1966) added to this description by commenting that Balok was to be "less than four feet tall." A later description in both the final draft and the second revised final draft stated, " Balok's voice, deep and commanding, belies his small stature. "

In a memo Robert H. Justman sent John D.F. Black (on 21 April 1966 ), Justman proposed that, rather than staying on his own ship and being visited there by officers from the Enterprise , Balok should come aboard the Enterprise at the end of the episode, a potentially cost-cutting but ultimately unrealized story point.

In the first draft and final draft of the teleplay for "The Corbomite Maneuver", Balok met only Kirk and McCoy from the Enterprise . In at least the final draft, though, he allowed them to contact Spock, who was on the bridge of the Enterprise . At one point in the same draft of the script, Balok reacted dismally to being asked what would have happened if they hadn't tried to save him. The scripted stage directions concerning Balok's gloomy response remarked, " The merest shadow of some of Balok's former fierceness plays over his small features and we get a glimpse of the strength that lies beneath. It passes. " All of these elements were excluded from the script by the time the second revised final draft of the teleplay was issued, that version also including Balok meeting Bailey and arranging for him to stay.

Casting [ ]

At first, the casting requirements for the role of Balok were different than they eventually became. In retrospect, Casting Director Joseph D'Agosta offered, " As I recall we had to get someone who could play young, but was an adult. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 27, No. 11/12, p. 60) This, though, was problematic. In the aforementioned memo Robert Justman wrote John D.F. Black (on 21 April 1966), Justman critiqued, " Although I like the conception of the character called Balok, there could be one drawback with regard to this. The part should be played by a midget or a dwarf. There aren't many actors with these physical characteristics who could handle the job. And certainly the few that are available are rather well known to our audience. "

NBC Manager of Film Programming Stan Robertson essentially came up with the notion of hiring two different actors to play Balok, with one of them voicing the part while the other's physical performance would be used. Robertson submitted this concept in a letter he wrote John D.F. Black (on 2 May 1966 ). However, Robertson's idea was actually to cast a large actor to appear as Balok's puppet, and the voice of "a smaller person" for that same role, then for the latter performer to appear as the real Balok in the episode's conclusion. Regarding the real Balok, he commented, " When we actually meet him in person, at this time we could see that he is a 'Michael Dunn' type person. Obviously, as you pointed out, we will be giving the whole thing away if we show Balok at the outset to be a 'Dunn' type character. " In fact, Michael Dunn himself eventually guest starred, two years later [!] , in " Plato's Stepchildren ".

During a casting meeting for "The Corbomite Maneuver", much discussion was concentrated on how Balok, who was conceived as being three-and-a-half feet tall, should look. Multiple strange ideas were suggested and considered, in an effort to resolve this problem. After quietly listening to the proposed ideas, Gene Roddenberry finally commented, " I think if you cast anyone over seven years old, you're in trouble. " ( The Making of Star Trek , p. 348) Concerning the casting of a child actor to appear as Balok with an adult actor providing the character's voice, Richard Arnold , who worked as a research consultant for Roddenberry, commented, " Yeah, that was Gene pushing the envelope. It was the sort of thing that good science fiction did. " ("Inside the Roddenberry Vault, Part I", Star Trek: The Original Series - The Roddenberry Vault special features)

Clint Howard was found by Joe D'Agosta, who added, " I met Clint Howard through the agents as a type, a dwarf-like type. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 27, No. 11/12, p. 60) Howard himself explained, " The Star Trek audition entailed a lot of learning of dialogue, because although they eventually voiced my character, I learned the dialogue. " ("Inside the Roddenberry Vault, Part I", Star Trek: The Original Series - The Roddenberry Vault special features) The day after Gene Roddenberry advised casting an actor under the age of seven as Balok, D'Agosta brought Howard, who was then aged seven, onto the Desilu lot. He then auditioned for the role. ( The Making of Star Trek , p. 349) " I remember his interview as being kind of overwhelming, " D'Agosta admitted, " because he had the built-in cry-baby sneer on his face. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 27, No. 11/12, p. 60) Nonetheless, Howard was offered the role. ("Inside the Roddenberry Vault, Part I", Star Trek: The Original Series - The Roddenberry Vault special features) He was cast in the part immediately after auditioning. ( The Making of Star Trek , p. 349) Decades later, Howard commented, " The character of Balok, interesting character because of the way he would taunt the Enterprise , and then the choice of hiring a child, almost with a cherub face, with an adult voice, this kid face, having played this game of death poker with Captain Kirk, was an odd [but successful] choice. " ("Inside the Roddenberry Vault, Part I", Star Trek: The Original Series - The Roddenberry Vault special features)

A voice-over performer was additionally sought for the role of Balok. In a memo Robert Justman sent Gene Roddenberry (on 4 August 1966 ), Justman wrote, " I spoke last night with Joe D'Agosta with regard to bringing in some people to be interviewed for Looping Balok's voice in 'The Corbomite Maneuver'. It is important that we set this actor or actress as soon as possible, so that we can do the necessary looping this coming Tuesday morning, August 9 , 1966. This will enable us to take advantage of the Looping Stage, as we have to do other Loops for the show currently in progress that day anyway. We should have someone cast by Friday, or Monday at the latest. "

Portrayal [ ]

Clint Howard was originally asked if, to play Balok, he was willing to shave his hair off, but both he and his father said no. ( The Making of Star Trek , p. 349; These Are the Voyages: TOS Season One ) Decades later, Howard recalled, " Now, [that] wouldn't be an issue, but back then... hell, yeah, it was an issue! They went and put a bald cap on me. " ("Inside the Roddenberry Vault, Part I", Star Trek: The Original Series - The Roddenberry Vault special features) The make-up Howard wore for the role of Balok was designed to be minimal and inexpensive. The bald cap was premade from plastic by John Chambers . It was glued around Howard's hairline with spirit gum. Once dry, the bald cap's edges were dissolved with a little amount of acetone, making the seam between the cap and the actor's head nondistinguishable on camera. To establish the overall skin tone, a tan cream base was sponged over Howard's bald cap and face. As a final touch, a pair of extremely bushy eyebrows were also employed to exaggerate the actor's alien look. These bushy eyebrows, almost belying the character's childlike appearance, were hand-laid on the actor's face, then affixed with glue. The make-up made Balok look noticeably different from the Enterprise crewmembers, but was entirely non-threatening in comparison with his puppet. ( Star Trek: Aliens & Artifacts , p. 35) (Make-up test shots of Howard as Balok, from the Gene Roddenberry Collection at UCLA, can be seen here: [1] )

The scenes involving Clint Howard as Balok were shot on Wednesday 1 June 1966 . ( Information from "The Corbomite Maneuver" call sheets )

One challenge Clint Howard found with portraying Balok was having to drink the character's tranya, which – according to the actor – was grapefruit juice, a beverage he detested in his childhood. " I saw the guy pouring it from the carton, so I went over to my dad and said, 'Dad? Come on. I mean, [...] grapefruit juice makes me gag. Can you get them to change it to apple juice? I love apple juice.' And my dad said, 'We're not going to change it. Just think about this as an acting challenge. Drink it and just act like you really enjoy it' [....] Probably the most difficult acting I did back then was to drink that stuff, " Howard laughed. ( Star Trek: Communicator  issue 115 , p. 65)

It was because Balok was meant to be an adult alien, despite having a childlike appearance, that Clint Howard's vocal track was deleted in post-production and the character was instead voiced by Walker Edmiston. ( Star Trek: The Original Series 365 , p. 34) Edmiston later recalled, " We'd tried a number of different things and then we just went to one of those very soft, child-like, ethereal vocals. It was more in timing and attitude than in voice. That's what's so important in creating a voice for creatures and all types of unearthly things. You have to analyze what it is, what they do, are they large, small, and what is the process behind them. And physically, of course, that makes a lot of difference as he had those big teeth and a weird little smile. " ( Starlog #58, p. 21)

Seeing Balok in "The Corbomite Maneuver" was one of Star Trek author David R. George III 's earliest memories of watching Star Trek . In his adulthood, he remarked, " I remember understanding that the alien whom the Enterprise crew encountered was not all that different from any Human being – and not simply because it turned out that Balok actually appeared quite Human, and not at all like his spooky doppelgänger – but because he lived and thought and felt in a recognizable way. I really think that helped form an empathy within me, an ability to see things from other people's points of view. " [2]

The fact Clint Howard appeared as Balok was referenced during an audition the actor later had, when he was about twenty-two or twenty-three years old, with renowned filmmakers George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola . Howard remembered, " [Lucas] looks at me and he goes, 'Commander Balok, Corbomite Maneuver .' " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 49 , pp. 50 & 51) Lucas' reference to the character was the first thing he said to Howard. ( Star Trek: Communicator  issue 115 , p. 65) " It absolutely blew me away, " the actor recalled. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 49 , p. 51) In reply, Howard felt he wanted to yell at Lucas to "get a life." ( Star Trek: Communicator  issue 115 , p. 65; Star Trek Monthly  issue 49 , p. 51)

Clint Howard as an adult Balok

Clint Howard later reprised his role as a grown Balok as part of Comedy Central 's 2006 roast of William Shatner . In it, Howard portrayed Balok as being an alcoholic, addicted to tranya . As with the episode, Balok's voice was again dubbed in by another actor.

Apocrypha [ ]

In the Star Trek: Voyager short story "Ambassador at Large" from the anthology book Strange New Worlds , Balok explored the Alpha Quadrant with Bailey for around twenty years. After that, the two decided to continue their explorations into the Delta Quadrant . Their next contact with anyone from the Federation came in 2373 when Captain Kathryn Janeway and the crew of the USS Voyager rescued Bailey from the Mondasians. In gratitude, Balok escorted Captain Janeway on a tour of the Fesarius .

External links [ ]

• Balok at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• 1 Daniels (Crewman)
• 3 Jamaharon

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Star trek: 15 things you need to know about spock.

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When Is The Next Star Trek Movie Coming Out?

Star trek confirms nog's post-dominion war fate, star trek’s rest of 2024 is all animation - that’s good (& bad).

In the pantheon of science fiction aliens, few are more iconic than Star Trek ’s science officer/first officer/Captain/Ambassador Spock. Honestly, who would you put ahead of the universe’s most famous Vulcan? Yoda? E.T.? Chewbacca? The Alien aliens? A pretty good case could be made for Spock.

He’s appeared in the original Star Trek series, the animated series, six original Star Trek movies, a couple of episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation , soon to be three reboot movies and countless other places across pop culture in different forms. Adult Spock has now been portrayed by two actors, first by the late Leonard Nimoy, and currently by Zachary Quinto, both with the stoic logic and deceptively big heart that is the trademark of Spock and his fellow Vulcans.

As we get ready for his latest appearance in Star Trek Beyond , here are 1 5 Things You Need to Know About Spock .

15. HE’S THE REASON FOR THE REBOOT MOVIES

With the 2009 reboot, Star Trek , an alternate timeline was introduced ( recently officially declared The Kelvin Timeline ), featuring all the original characters played by different actors. Although there was the whole issue of original Spock (Leonard Nimoy) being there, alongside new Spock (Zachary Quinto). How was all this possible? Well, it was thanks to Spock himself.

As the story goes, Romulas, home planet of the Romulans, was being destroyed by a supernova. Original Spock tried to stop the supernova from destroying any other planets by creating a singularity, but while doing so, Spock’s ship and a Romulan ship were dragged into the singularity and both were flushed out into different points in the past. In the past, the Romulan ship attacked Captain James T. Kirk’s father’s (George Kirk) ship, the USS Kelvin , and George ultimately died just as James was being born. All this creates The Kelvin Timeline, as history is altered due to George’s death, which didn’t occur in the original timeline. All this is to say, you have Spock to blame for your brain exploding in confusion.

14. HE WAS ALMOST CUT FROM THE PILOT

In the mid-60s, when Gene Roddenberry was trying to get Star Trek on the air, it may have been the early stages of the freaky-deeky psychedelic, free-love era, but much of America was still living under the super-conservative 1950s mindset. So it’s not too much of a surprise to know that NBC executives at first wanted to cut the Spock character from the show because he looked too Satanic, with his pointed ears and eyebrows.

It was producer Oscar Katz who helped convince those execs to let the Vulcan’s freak flag fly, “evil” angular features and all, despite him saying those execs were afraid “the ‘guy with the ears’ would scare the sh*t out of every kid in America.” Still, in early publicity photos for the series, Spock just looked like another guy in a Federation shirt, albeit one with oddly high-cropped bangs – the points of his eyebrows and ears were airbrushed out.

13. BONES WAS GOING TO PLAY SPOCK

It may be difficult to imagine anyone but Leonard Nimoy as the original Spock, but the original choice was Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy himself, DeForest Kelley. It certainly would’ve been a lesser world without McCoy’s hilarious jabs at Spock coming out of the mouth of Kelley, and without Spock jabbing right back with his fellow blue-shirt. Take this classic: Spock: “Random chance seems to have operated in our favor.” Bones: “In plain, non-Vulcan English, we’ve been lucky.” Spock: “I believe I have said that, Doctor.”

Kelley himself told Star Trek Monthly, “It wouldn’t have worked with me as Spock.” But even Kelley wasn’t the only famous choice before Nimoy to play the Enterprise ’s original resident alien. Gene Roddenberry also considered 1960s Batman Adam West, which would’ve made for a battle of iconic, laid-back voices with William Shatner as Captain Kirk. Even Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) says she originally auditioned for the role of Spock, but some believe she may have actually auditioned for the role of “Number One,” which was cut before filming the first episode of the original series and whose role as first officer was handed to Spock.

12. HE’S NOT A FULL-BLOODED VULCAN

Certainly this is old news for die-hard Trekkies or Trekkers, but might raise a Spockian eyebrow for casual fans: Spock is famous for being a Vulcan, but he’s actually only half-Vulcan. While his father, Sarek (more on him to come), was a high-ranking native of the planet Vulcan, their Ambassador to the United Federation of Planets, his mother was a human woman named Amanda Grayson.

While Vulcans are notoriously unemotional, the same, obviously, cannot be said of humans. So the two sides are often in conflict, and as a child he was teased by full-blooded Vulcan kids into showing emotion. But his decision, when he was younger, to end the life of a badly injured pet led him to follow Surak, a legendary Vulcan philosopher who emphasized logic and control over one’s emotions. And he would later decline acceptance into the Vulcan Science Academy because he knew, due to his half-human side, he would never be seen as an equal among teachers and peers.

11. HUMANS CAN’T PRONOUNCE HIS FULL NAME

Though he’s referred to as Spock, when written out, that appears to be his last name. In the Vulcan language, Spock’s actual full name is S'chn T'gai Spock. In the original series episode, “This Side of Paradise,” Spock meets a love interest named Leila Kalomi, thanks to a blast of spores that temporarily release his emotions, but ultimately he can’t return her affections. When she asks if he has “another name,” he responds, “You couldn’t pronounce it.”

All that being said, some of this is debatable. He definitely said his “other” name is unpronounceable, but it seems that it isn’t really his first name. Since his father’s full name is S’chn T’gai Sarek, it would seem that Vulcans structure their name similarly to Koreans, with the family name coming first and the given name last. The name S’chn T’gai has never been uttered or revealed on screen, but was first written out in a Star Trek novel called Ishmael in 1985.

10. HE ALMOST HAD AN “EAR JOB”

Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry was insistent that Spock would have pointy ears. He was an alien, after all, so he shouldn't look too human. So a number of concepts were created before the iconic, slightly curved ears were settled upon. Nimoy wasn’t too thrilled with the idea of wearing them – after all, they took about 45 minutes to apply in the early days. But a producer told him , “‘If, after episode 10 or 12, you’re still unhappy, we’ll have Bones do an ear-job operation.”

Clearly, that never had to happen because viewers loved the Vulcan science officer and his pointy ears. But it wasn’t like they could create one pair of ears for a full season or movie shoot. They’ve never been reusable, so every time Nimoy or Quinto wears a pair, they’re either tossed in the garbage or make their way onto a collector’s shelf. In fact, if you’re in Washington, D.C. you can go visit a pair in the National Museum of American History. And, weird fact: there’s a sect of humanity out there who have actually had plastic surgery to make their ears pointy in honor of Spock or Lord of the Rings elves. Just a thought, Zachary Quinto, it would save a lot of time in the makeup chair.

9. LEONARD NIMOY CREATED THE VULCAN SALUTE

The now-ubiquitous Vulcan salute first appeared in the first episode of the second season of the original Star Trek series, way back in 1967 – that means it turns 50 years old next year. Made by spreading your fingers into a V, with the ring and pinky fingers together on one side and the middle and index on the other, it’s intended to be both a greeting and a gesture of farewell, sometimes accompanied by the words, "Live long and prosper."

And it was created not by a writer, director, or anyone else behind the scenes. It was created by Nimoy himself, based on a gesture he learned as a child made by a Jewish Kohanim (priest) as part of a blessing. It means Almighty God. While the Vulcan salute uses just one hand, the original blessing uses both hands performing the same gesture and represents the Hebrew letter Shin . The salute, of course, became massively popular and was even done by astronauts to honor Nimoy upon his death in 2015, and President Obama gave Nimoy the salute when the two met.

8. ZACHARY QUINTO HAS TROUBLE WITH THE VULCAN SALUTE

While the Vulcan salute was second nature to the original Spock, the new Spock, Zachary Quinto, has been unable to master it. In fact, for 2009’s reboot, Star Trek , Quinto had to squeeze the appropriate fingers together and spread the appropriate ones apart with his other hand off camera before filming a Vulcan salute scene. But other times, they actually had to glue his fingers together to get the shot right.

In Quinto’s defense, he’s certainly not the only one who’s had trouble with it. As the original Captain Kirk, William Shatner couldn’t do it and had to dip into his tackle box for some fishing line to tie his fingers together. Like raising a single eyebrow (another Spockian gesture), it’s just one of those things that some people can do and others can’t. Some people can do the Vulcan salute with one hand but not the other, others can easily do it with both.

7. NIMOY ALSO CREATED THE VULCAN NERVE PINCH

As we all know, actors can get very attached to their characters. At times, that can work against them, but other times it can lead to decisions that make more sense for their character than decisions made by producers, writers and directors. Case in point: Leonard Nimoy’s creation of the Vulcan nerve pinch.

The script for the fifth episode of the original series’ first season, “The Enemy Within,” said that Spock “kayoes” the evil version of Captain Kirk. That sounded rather violent for a Vulcan, opined Nimoy, especially Spock, who preferred not to resort to extreme violence unless innocent lives were threatened. It’s hard to imagine Spock hauling back and whacking his best friend over the head. So Nimoy conceived of a more dignified maneuver, a simple pinch of the shoulder that triggered a cluster of nerves into knocking the victim out. Just try to tell us you haven’t wished at least once… or a few dozen… times in your life that you could actually power down some annoying soul with a Vulcan nerve pinch of your own.

6. WOLVERINE HAS BEEN A NERVE PINCH VICTIM

That’s right, speaking of everybody’s favorite subtle knockout maneuver, worlds have collided and Wolverine was once put out of commission by Nimoy’s creation, the Vulcan nerve pinch. First of all, how was it possible for those two worlds to collide? In 1996, Marvel Comics produced a one-off crossover book called Star Trek/X-Men , written by Scott Lobdell.

In it, Kirk, Spock and the crew of the Enterprise are cruising through the galaxy when they spot another ship being destroyed by a rift in space. That destroyed ship just happened to be carrying seven members of the X-Men , who had secretly transported themselves onto the Enterprise just before the destruction. Of course, at first, the Enterprise crew didn’t know they were dealing with good guys. Spock sensed the stowaways and when he came upon the hyper-violent Wolverine, the non-violent Vulcan slapped him with a nerve pinch, briefly putting Logan on the sidelines.

5. HE WAS ORIGINALLY GOING TO HAVE RED SKIN

Spock was originally conceived of as a Martian. Mars being the “red planet,” Roddenberry decided that would mean the character should have red skin. There were a couple of reasons they didn’t follow through on this plan. First, there was a sensitive racial issue. Technology as it was in the mid-60s, many people still had black-and-white TVs. So for those viewers who could only see shades of grey, Nimoy’s skin would not appear to be red, but a shade of dark grey, which would make him appear to be wearing blackface. Not good.

The other issue with the red skin was a logical matter of time, which Spock would appreciate. It would simply take too much time every day to smear Nimoy’s face with red makeup every morning. In the end, they did apply some makeup to give Spock a bit of an alien sheen, but it was a more subtle yellowish green.

4. HE HAS DADDY ISSUES

Spock and his late father Sarek had a bumpy relationship. It had long been a distant one, but it was Spock’s decision to join Starfleet Academy that broke the tribble’s back, as it were. Sarek had wanted Spock to join the Vulcan Science Academy, more or less following in his footsteps as an astrophysicist. As a result, father and son didn’t speak for 18 years, until the time of the Coridan debate in the original series, when Sarek had a series of heart attacks and required a blood transfusion from Spock.

From there on, all was shiny and happy between the two. That is until Spock died in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan . But it was Sarek who helped resurrect his son, against all odds, by performing an ancient Vulcan ritual called Fal-Tor-Pan in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock , reasoning that even his ingrained Vulcan logic faltered when it came to his love for his son. Some time after Spock was resurrected, Sarek even apologized to his son for the whole “why didn’t you follow in my footsteps?” issue that led to their 18-year estrangement.

3. HE’S AN ANIMAL LOVER

There’s always been a soft spot in Spock’s hybrid heart for the universe’s varied fauna. In fact, he had a childhood pet on Vulcan, a fanged bear-like creature called a sehlat. It was mentioned in the original series and depicted in the animated series, amusingly described in the script like this: “A sehlat can be dangerous as hell. If you make a wrong move, a sehlat will probably rip your arm off... but Vulcans never make wrong moves. That would be illogical."

He also adored those infamous fuzzballs, the tribbles, and is generally opposed to the taking of a life, unless the circumstances are particularly threatening. So it follows that, like all Vulcans (and Nimoy himself), he’s a vegetarian. In fact, he was TV’s first vegetarian in a major role. He once ate meat out of desperation in the original series and was appalled with himself, groaning, “I’m behaving disgracefully. I have eaten animal flesh and I’ve enjoyed it. What is wrong with me?”

2. HE’S BELIEVED TO BE THE FIRST VULCAN IN STARFLEET

But was he? It’s certainly the popular belief that Spock was the first Vulcan in Starfleet, but it’s actually a contentious topic among Trekkies/Trekkers. One thing cannot be denied: He’s definitely the first Vulcan depicted to be in Starfleet. But even that statement is somewhat complicated.

First of all, there are two different Starfleets: United Earth Starfleet and Federation Starfleet. United Earth Starfleet (or Starfleet Earth) came first, in terms of canon chronology, and in the series Star Trek: Enterprise , which takes place before the original series and Spock, we see the Vulcan woman T’Pol (Jolene Blalock) as a Commander in Starfleet Earth. The Starfleet we more commonly know is Federation Starfleet, and that’s where Spock is said to be the first. But even then, the original series depicts the all-Vulcan crew of the Federation’s USS Intrepid , which muddies the claim somewhat that Spock was the first Vulcan in Starfleet.

1. HIS AMAZING DEATH SCENE ALMOST DIDN’T HAPPEN

After the first feature film, 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture , Leonard Nimoy was done with all the hand gestures, pointy ears, neck pinches and logic. He didn’t want to play Spock anymore. If he hadn’t, Star Trek history would be vastly different. And we wouldn’t have had one of its greatest scenes: the Spock death scene in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982).

But part of the reason that scene at the end of the movie is so great is because that’s how Nimoy was convinced to come back: he was promised a super dramatic death scene. The first film was expensive to make and didn't quite make as much as anticipated, plus critics were lukewarm on it, so Khan was originally going to be the final Star Trek movie and Nimoy felt the heroic death scene, sacrificing himself for his friends and crew, would be the perfect way to go out. And it sure was. It’s a touching scene of friendship and heroism amidst all the space adventure, ranked the best scene in Star Trek history by IGN .

Star Trek Beyond will arrive in theaters July 22, 2016.

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50 Star Trek Moments That Still Make Us Raise An Eyebrow

| September 8, 2016 | By: Jared Whitley 74 comments so far

At this point, we’ve all been lured at one or another by the clickbait headline that says something like: “10 things you never knew about Star Trek!” If you’re a Star Trek fan or have just spent any time on the Internet, you’ve pretty much heard every story there is to hear and seen every meme.

But with almost 1,000 hours of canonical material, there is probably something about the phenomenon’s storied history you haven’t heard, or at least haven’t realized. Here are 50 of them, one for each year of the franchise, to help celebrate its birthday today.

1. First thing Picard does … is surrender

When “Encounter at Farpoint” hit the airwaves in 1987, it was a bold decision to replace the iconic American hero James T. Kirk with a British actor playing a French captain. And proving that the accusation of “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” will last well into the 24th Century, the first order our French captain gives … is to surrender.

2. Jonathan Frakes became a good director because he was a bad actor

As a young actor on the early days on TNG, Jonathan Frakes is extremely good at being tall, handsome, and charming. Apparently that’s about the extent of his range though as he confessed to Whoopi Goldberg a few years ago that the reason he moved behind the camera is because “ I wasn’t that good an actor .”

And honestly, his contributions behind the camera may be more valuable than anything he did in front of it.

3. William Shatner was not the 1st choice to play Kirk

Although both he and his bombastic performance style are now synonymous with Capt. James Tiberius Kirk, William Shatner was not the first choice to play him. Jack Lord was first approached and turned the role down. Lloyd Bridges was almost cast as the first Enterprise captain, Chris Pike. Bad for them, but good decision for fans (both men died in 1998).

Shatner and Bridges would later have the chance to team up to save the day on Airplane 2 .

4. Kirk appeared in all but one episode

After his appearance in the second pilot, Shatner’s Kirk appeared in every episode and movie until his death in Generations, except one: The Animated Series episode “The Slaver Weapon”, written by sci-fi great Larry Niven. Spock makes up for his captain’s absence with some ludicrous space-karate against pink alien cat-people.

5. Eddie Murphy was almost in the whale one

So remember that one with the whales? The one everybody liked, with the kind-hearted whale scientist who was on 7th Heaven and Child’s Play ? Yeah, her role was originally supposed to be played by Eddie Murphy .

Legend has it that when Paramount executives first approached Murphy to sign him up with the studio, he made them wait until he’d finished watching an episode of The Original Series . The actor was one of Paramount’s most valuable properties in the 80’s, thanks to 48 Hours and Beverly Hills Cop , so his presence in a Star Trek movie would have been great synergy.

It probably would have been ridiculous, but admit it: you would have loved to seen that Star Trek movie.

6. The intro to Enterprise is a perfect match

Star Trek: Enterprise deviated from its predecessors with an introductory pop song (Rod Stewart and Diane Warren’s Faith of the Heart) rather than an orchestral piece. Someone realized that it lines up perfectly with the intro to Perfect Strangers .

The reverse is true too!

7. One redshirt survived – more episodes than Sulu or Chekov

While the redshirt death is the Star Trek cliché of all Star Trek clichés, one redshirt managed to avoid an untimely demise every time he appeared: Eddie Paskey’s Lt. Leslie. He appeared in 57 episodes – which is more episodes than George Takei and Walter Koenig did.

OK technically he did die in one episode, but it apparently didn’t slow him down.

Paskey’s character had no official name until Shatner one day decided to give him one – after his own daughter, Leslie.

8. Dax played the Cat for the American Red Dwarf

With The Next Generation reinvigorating audience interest in science fiction, it inspired copy-cats. One of those was the British comedy classic Red Dwarf , which is set 3 million years in the future. In an utterly failed effort to translate the show for American audiences, Star Trek’s Terry Farrell (Dax) plays a hyper-evolved cat creature.

It doesn’t remotely work, but good for her for trying.

9. IDIC symbol was created to spread diversity … and make money

More popular nowadays than it was when first invented, the Vulcan symbol of IDIC (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations) symbolizes the perfect Vulcans’ celebration of life in all its forms.

But Leonard Nimoy insisted that Gene Roddenberry created the IDIC symbol as a cheap ploy to sell replica merchandise to fans. Nimoy was perhaps particularly annoyed by this because his likeness was being used to promote the tchotchke, but he was receiving exactly zero of the money for it. Live long and prosper… by using your co-workers to sell stuff.

10. Roddenberry also exploited the show’s song for profit

This would not be the only time Roddenberry would try to take advantage of the franchise for profit (exemplifying the Ferengi Rule of Acquisition that “exploitation begins at home”). After commissioning Alexander Courage to write the classic intro theme song, Roddenberry wrote lyrics to it so he could get 50% of the song’s royalties – without Courage’s consent or even knowledge.

Courage called it unethical (which it was), but in Gene’s defense he made enormous sacrifices for the show and wouldn’t really start making money from it until much later with the show’s success in syndication, movies, and (of course) merchandising.

11. Chakotay isn’t really an Indian

As part of the post-Dances With Wolves craze over the American Indian in the 1990s, Star Trek Voyager broke ground with the character of Chakotay, played by Robert Beltran. His Indian-ness is a constant plot point, although the character’s specific tribe is never mentioned – which may be a good thing because Beltran isn’t actually American-Indian. He’s Mexican .

12. But why aren’t there any actual Indian people?

So eagle-eyed fans may notice that despite consisting of around 2 billion members of the human race, there aren’t a lot of South Asians featured on the show. People may just chock that up to Hollywood casting biases, but clever Star Trek fans have another theory: super-villain Khan Noonien Singh and his ilk had rampaged across Asia during the Eugenics Wars in the distant future of the 1990’s, killing millions.

13. Wrath of Khan isn’t actually about A Tale of Two Cities

So if you’re like me, everything you know about the Charles Dickens classic “A Tale of Two Cities” comes from Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan . (Spock gives Kirk a copy of the book for his birthday.) But a story about the French Revolution informs the story quite a bit less than another classic: the biblically inspired Paradise Lost . The Marcuses are Adam and Eve (having “created life” with “Genesis”). Spock is the Christ-figure who sacrifices himself so others may live while Khan is Lucifer, having been cast down to hell by Kirk, who then would be…

God himself.

14. Star Trek V really, really is about Shatner’s ego

Speaking of God-Shatner: at this point everyone knows that Star Trek V is a huge ego trip for Shatner, wonderfully typified in this video of him climbing the mountain.

But it’s on a scale of ego that even people who know it don’t realize. In contrast to the usually perfect society the franchise had shown us thus far, we see one where: 1) the Federation’s diplomatic mission has completely failed, 2) its ambassador there is a worthless drunk, 3) the flagship of the fleet barely works, 4) capable bridge officers are cartoonishly incompetent, 5) a brilliant doctor is incapable of curing, and therefore euthanizes, his own father, 6) NASA’s seminal Pioneer 10 is just target practice for Klingons, 7) and so on.

In essence, everything fails in the world Star Trek V … except Kirk. Who not only finds God but beats him in a fight.

This could all be why…

15. Gene wanted to sue Shatner over it

Roddenberry didn’t have as much of an impact on the movies as many fans may think, but that didn’t keep him from letting his voice be heard. He decried Star Trek V as “apocryphal” to his franchise’s canon and even went “as far as having his attorney Leonard Maizlish prepare legal procedures against Shatner.”

Alas things didn’t turn out as well for Shatner as they did for Nimoy because …

16. Leonard Nimoy was actually kind of a huge deal in the 80’s

Of course Mr. Spock is the beloved icon of Star Trek fans everywhere, but when he beamed into the director’s chair he was kind of a big deal for everyone. His opus Star Trek – “The One With the Whales” was the highest-grossing Star Trek film ever and, adjusted for inflation, second-highest grossing until 2009. It was also the 5th most successful film of 1986 (behind Top Gun , Crocodile Dundee , Platoon , and Karate Kid 2 ). In 1987 , he directed the year’s best-performing film period in Three Men and a Baby .

Leonard was kind of a big deal in the 60’s too because…

17. Leonard Nimoy was nominated for an Emmy every year

Reflections about TOS are usually either “it was the greatest thing ever!” or “it was constantly under threat of cancellation!” Reality was probably somewhere in between. What was also real was Leonard Nimoy stealing the spotlight from the show’s lead. Leonard’s performance as Spock was nominated for an Emmy every year the show was on.

He never won, alas, but that’s still an impressive sweep.

18. But Cartoon Kirk brought home Emmy gold

While TOS never won an Emmy, The Animated Series did. It won the Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Entertainment Children’s Series in 1975. That’s the only “major” (that is to say non-technical) Emmy that Star Trek ever won, although TOS and TNG did get nominations for outstanding series. I guess no one at the Emmy’s realized that Patrick Stewart was on TV?

19. Star Trek producer fired one of his Emmy winners

Of course Star Trek dominates the technical Emmys (make-up, special effects, etc.) but composer Ron Jones snagged a sound mixing award for TNG one year. He later went on to score the seminal Borg episode “The Best of Both Worlds”, which won both sound editing and sound mixing Emmys.

Jones released his score for the two-part episode as an album, which won the American Association of Independent Music’s Best Soundtrack Album of the Year award.

Regardless of his contributions, controversial Trek kingpin Rick Berman went on to fire Jones because his music was “too noticeable.”

Yeah. Noticed by people who were giving him awards and buying his album.

20. Yet it took 30 years to snag an Oscar

As primarily a television series, it’s not surprising that Star Trek hasn’t done too well with the Academy. (Some of that has been bad timing: The Undiscovered Country got crushed by Terminator 2 .) It took until the 2009 reboot for Star Trek to finally win an Oscar for make-up.

Fans still complained relentlessly that the make-up failed to capture the spirit of make-up in The Original Series.

21. And Star Trek also won a Peabody once (randomly)

The Peabody Award, which is more commonly associated with journalism, was awarded to The Next Generation episode “The Big Goodbye” for raising the bar on syndicated TV. (That’s the episode with the gangsters. OK not that episode, but a different one.) According to the Peabody Board , the episode “set a new standard of quality for first-run syndication” in “all facets of the production.”

It’s the only episode of the franchise to be so honored. Keep that in mind next time someone knocks the first season of TNG.

22. But it hasn’t won a Hugo Award in over 20 years

The Oscars for science fiction, the Hugo Award is pure nerd gold. With TOS sweeping the nominations in 1968 and nine of the films earning nominations, Star Trek has a history of dominating them .

However, it’s just that: history. None of those films have won a Hugo and the franchise has not won an award since “All Good Things…”, the 1994 series closer for TNG.

Star Trek may be a victim of its own success. In popularizing sci-fi in the 1990’s, it created more competition for itself. Or it could be that the franchise ran out of dilithium a long time ago. Either way, I really want to see Star Trek: Discovery win a Hugo next year.

23. That time Shooter McGavin was a big damn hero

Actor Christopher McDonald is better known to audiences as the Happy Gilmore antagonist Shooter McGavin, but to Star Trek fans he’s the hero of one of the best episodes ever, “Yesterday’s Enterprise”, where he takes command of the Enterprise C to save the universe in a hopeless battle against Romulans.

He also wins the heart of Tasha Yar. Which reminds me…

24. Tasha Yar was originally a rip-off of that Aliens space marine

You know that scene in Aliens where Bill Paxton says to the tough lady space marine Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein), “Have you ever been mistaken for a man?” and she says, “No. Have you?”

So that character was initially supposed to be on TNG. Roddenberry initially envisioned a Latina security chief named Macha Hernandez , and they even considered just hiring Goldstein to basically reprise her role from Aliens . They didn’t go through with that idea, though, as DC Fontana pointed out that Goldstein “is not Latina. She is petite, blue-eyed, freckle-faced.” So they did the logical thing. They hired a Latin actress.

No, I’m joking obviously. But what happened was…

25. Tasha and Deanna were cast in the wrong roles

Originally Marina Sirtis (who is Greek, not Latin) was cast as the security chief while Denise Crosby was to play the ship’s counselor. But Roddenberry intervened and swapped the two because he felt Sirtis’s appearance was better for the “exotic” Troi. This wasn’t the weirdest example of an actor swap though as…

26. DeForest Kelley was the first choice for Spock

Back when Roddenberry was still developing the show, he initially approached DeForest Kelley to play “an alien who’s going to have pointed ears and a green color.” Kelley blew him off and told him he’d rather do a Western.

Luckily, Roddenberry found the right role for him later.

27. “He’s dead, Jim” – DeForest Kelley’s last performance

Kelley’s popular Dr. McCoy character appeared in almost every episode of The Original Series and all of the movies – but the actor died in 1999, long before any of his co-stars. If you want to catch his final performance as the Old Country doctor, it was in the 1993 video game Star Trek: Judgement Rites .

28. Sulu starred in the most controversial Twilight Zone episode ever

There are a lot of connections between Star Trek and the old Twilight Zone – both sci-fi shows from the 1960s – but perhaps the coolest is “ The Encounter “, a 1964 episode where George Takei as a young Japanese-American squares off against a veteran of the WW2 Pacific Theater. It maturely and frankly deals with the issue of race following the conflict.

So naturally it was only ever shown once then pulled from the airwaves for 52 years.

29. And Enterprise did a clever Twilight Zone promo once

The two franchises remained intertwined – to the point of John Lithgow and William Shatner both joking about “There’s something on the wing of the plane!” on 3rd Rock from the Sun – to the point that when UPN premiered a new version of Twilight Zone in 2002 they had Commander Tucker explicitly reference the show in the preceding episode of Enterprise that night.

30. Star Trek invented the term “Bottle Episode”

The TV show Community popularized the use of the term “Bottle Episode” in the vernacular of TV viewers: an episode which only uses existing sets, costumes, props, and so forth to minimize cost and save money for more expensive episodes.

Now (because you’re reading this list) it shouldn’t surprise you that the term comes from Star Trek , which constantly had budget-stretching episodes to explore strange new worlds. It comes from the phrase “ship in a bottle.”

31. Kirk steals a time machine from Doc Brown

While we’re getting meta, did you ever notice that in Star Trek IV Kirk and Spock make a time machine out of the Klingon ship they stole from Christopher Lloyd in Star Trek III ? You know – the guy who’d played Doc Brown the year earlier in Back to the Future ?

32. That time Data almost made a fart joke

There’s this pretty decent first season episode called “We’ll Always Have Paris”, where an experiment gone awry is spewing extra time into the universe. The crew calls it a hiccup. (Yes, of course there is a Memory Alpha entry for hiccup .)

Data pedantically points out that analogy is wrong and almost says a better comparison would be a fart, but Picard cuts him off.

33. The book about Insurrection is better than the film

A frequent cliché is the phrase “the book is better than the movie.” When it comes to Star Trek: Insurrection , easily the most forgettable film in the franchise’s history, the book about how it was written is better than the movie.

Michael Piller’s unimaginatively titled Fade In details how “sausage is made” in Hollywood. He goes through the development process of his script, how his initial ideas needed to be changed to meet the demands of producers, the director, and actors (notably Patrick Stewart) then changed again and again to juggle budget restrictions and Hollywood egos.

His early concept for the film was to do a Heart of Darkness -style story, where Data goes native and becomes the villain that Picard needs to defeat. Alas that wasn’t the movie we got to see.

Piller, maybe the most important contributor to modern Trek, succumbed to cancer in 2005.

Fade In was never published, but copies have been floating around the Internet for years.

34. Seven of Nine kind of gave us President Obama

This is a weird one. Back in the day actress Jeri Ryan (Seven) was married to Illinois politician Jack Ryan, who was favored to win an open state Senate seat in 2004… until word came out during their divorce proceedings about some of the creepy sex stuff he demanded from her . A humiliated Jack was forced to drop out and the election went to a then-unknown Barack Obama, who leveraged the race to a plumb speaking spot at the DNC that year, then a US Senate seat, then the presidency.

Obama should have appointed Jeri administrator of NASA to say thanks.

35. Red Letter Media got its start with Star Trek reviews (and they’re brilliant)

OK so you’ve all probably seen the hour-long reviews of the Star Wars prequels by the YouTube channel Red Letter Media – honestly the reviews are better than the movies themselves. But the channel actually got its start doing reviews of the TNG movies.

They’re not quite as polished as the prequel reviews, but they’re absolutely worth a watch (and they’re much lighter on his running “gag” of killing prostitutes).

36. Ron Moore started Battlestar because of Voyager’s shortcomings

There are those in the Trek community who feel that Voyager never lived up to its potential of showing the crew really dealing with tough situations, isolation, and limited resources. Preeminent among those is Ronald D. Moore, a TNG/DS9 writer who left Voyager because of the bad taste it left in his mouth. Luckily Moore would wash that taste out with the minty freshness of Battlestar Galactica , wherein his crew really dealt with tough situations, isolation, and limited resources.

And saying “frak.” A lot.

37. Leonard did the best Q and A for fans

So you don’t have to go to a lot of Star Trek conventions to realize one can only plumb the depths of untold stories for so long before they’ve all been told. Recognizing this, Leonard Nimoy and John de Lancie developed a stage routine where their two characters, Spock and Q, had a lively debate about life, the universe, and everything (which at the time included the impending Y2K).

It was a great gift to fans… and a lot more interesting than watching that video where the door doesn’t open (yet again).

38. Roddenberry considered Wil Wheaton the son he never had

Rod Roddenberry, son of Gene and heir to the Star Trek empire, did a wonderful documentary a few years ago called Trek Nation , which is really more about his coming to terms with his long-lost father than it is about Star Trek. Rod, who was born when Gene was 52, had barely any relationship with the man.

There’s a painful sequence where he’s talking to Wil Wheaton and realizes the actor got to be more of a son to Gene than he ever did. Ouch.

39. A secular devil teaches Kirk about sacrifice and forgiveness

There’s this remarkably unusual episode of The Animated Series called “ The Magicks of Megas-Tu ” where the Enterprise meets an extra-dimensional creature named Lucien, whose people put the crew on trial as revenge for the Salem Witch Trials and Kirk volunteers to sacrifice his life for Lucien to save him from condemnation in limbo for eternity. And Lucien turns out to be the actual Lucifer that the Judeo-Christian devil is based on.

All this in 25 minutes on a Saturday morning children’s television show.

40. Idea of a prequel has been around since 1968

Prequels, reboots, and re-imaginings are commonplace nowadays, but would you believe that the idea of a prequel with young Kirk, Spock, and McCoy has been around since before The Original Series went off the air? Roddenberry first introduced the idea at the 1968 World Science Fiction Convention.

The idea came up again in 1991. Alas we had to wait until 2009, when this kind of thing happens all the time.

41. Guinan was Picard’s great-great-great-great… grandmother

This year Whoopi Goldberg attended her first ever Star Trek convention. To the crowd in Las Vegas, she shared that – in her actor’s mind – she had always envisioned that her long-lived Guinan character had been an ancestor to Patrick Stewart’s Picard (however many greats it took), which is why the characters were so close and she took such care to mentor him.

42. Ron Howard’s weird brother was an alien bartender

This one a lot of you may know already, but legendary actor-turned-director Ron Howard has a kind of weird brother named Clint, who shows up from time to time in Ron’s movies and elsewhere in front of the camera. His first big break was as an innocuous alien named Balok who gives the crew an adult beverage called tranya.

As a grown man, Clint would reprise the role at the Shatner roast.

It’s… it’s an unusual watch.

43. The Borg were supposed to be insects

The Borg as a villain are now pretty ubiquitous, with any imposing square building compared nowadays to a Borg Cube . The threat of assimilation has become more and more real, with technology permeating our lives in ways that could not have been conceived in 1988.

But they were originally supposed to be bugs .

The reasons they went the cyborg route is chocked up to budgetary constraints and a Writer’s Guild strike, but I think we can all agree this is was a better alternative. Bugs are certainly alien, which can be scary (like the Alien -franchise xenomorphs) but the Borg are humans who abandoned their humanity for technology, which is scarier. Now excuse me while I open six more browser windows and IM with my roommate instead of talking to him IRL.

44. Memory Alpha is basically the greatest wiki ever

There’s a saying that the three things that created the Internet were porn, the military, and Star Trek (so sex, violence, and nerdery). The online Star Trek wiki Memory Alpha is not just one of the greatest fan wikis but one of the best wikis period . It’s been around since 2003, contains more than 40,000 articles, and has been translated into Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, Esperanto, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, and Swedish.

Meanwhile, most articles over on Wookiepedia have flags like this:

45. Star Trek actually wasn’t the first interracial kiss

This one surprised me when CNN reported on it last year, and it’s a bit disappointing. The first interracial kiss on TV was not, in fact, Capt. Kirk and Lt. Uhura, but rather six years earlier when a black man and a white woman kissed in a televised play of “You in Your Small Corner” in 1962. This was on British TV so, technically, Star Trek was still the first interracial kiss on American TV.

Also this kiss appears to be an entirely consensual expression of love and affection rather than an act of telekinetic humiliation by alien super beings. But that sounds less charming than “first interracial kiss!”

46. The modern convention was created by two 14-year-olds

So at this point over-the-top entertainment conventions with hordes of cosplayers and celebrity zoos are commonplace. On one level I think everyone who goes to a con these days realizes that Star Trek created the modern convention system, but I don’t think they realize that the Star Trek fans who created this system did so when they were 14 .

Queens schoolboys Adam Malin and Gary Berman started Creation Entertainment way back in 1971, mainly for comic book creators, but quickly started doing Star Trek cons as well. They weren’t the only ones doing conventions, but they’ve certainly become one of the biggest names on the convention circuit since then. Did I mention they were 14?

(TrekMovie interviewed Gary a couple months ago on our podcast, the Shuttlepod .)

47. Pretty sure JJ was riffing on Seinfeld , not Trek

So JJ Abrams admitted that he was never really a Star Trek fan and didn’t have much knowledge of the series. That came through pretty clearly in Star Trek Into Darkness when Spock delivers the famous KHAAN! yell. Because when Zachary Quinto does it, I’m pretty sure it’s not supposed to be him channeling the Shatnerian rage of the initial yell…

I think he’s making a Seinfeld joke.

48. Spock loses his mind a lot

The episode “ Spock’s Brain ” is a pretty famous one. It’s the one where Spock’s (wait for it) brain is removed and the adventure is trying to get it back inside his skull. It’s one of those “so bad it’s good” episodes best enjoyed with a nice glass of tranya.

The same idea would be revisited in Star Trek III when his mind (or soul, I guess) needs to be re-fused with his resurrected body .

But the best example of where Spock’s marbles get lost and then found has got to be from The Animated Series episode “The Infinite Vulcan” where a mindless Spock receives a mindmeld from, of course, a giant cloned version of Spock. (Written by Walter Koenig, incidentally.)

49. Patrick Stewart compares a fictional character to Hitler – and it works

At this point, comparing Hitler to people in the Internet is such a cliché that it’s become the Hitler of the 21st Century. In the 24th Century though, Patrick Stewart’s Jean-luc Picard discusses philosophy and pre-determination with a time-traveler, wherein he asks what if a baby who is going to die becomes “the next Adolf Hitler or Khan Singh.”

I didn’t even blink the first several times I saw this, because one is history’s greatest monster and the other guy sold Rich Corinthian Leather, but Stewart sells it so amazingly well that you don’t notice the difference because to Picard they’re both monsters. And remember, in seven years, this guy got exactly zero Emmy Nominations. #EmmysSoStupid

50. The Motion Picture is actually better than most people realize

This one was as much a surprise to me as anyone else. TMP is regularly panned and is seen as contributing nothing to the series except setting up Wrath of Khan . There’s the old joke that it’s so slow they should call it “Star Trek: The Motion-less Picture.” But it’s actually beautifully directed, wonderfully scored, and possesses both a campiness and a grandiosity that fits the tone of the original TV show better than any of the other movies. Seriously, give it a second try (on as a large of a screen as you can find, it was made to be seen and heard as a grand cinema experience). I decided I needed to revisit it after losing an argument about it on our podcast, The Shuttlepod . Even after 50 years, this old franchise can still surprise you. The human adventure is just beginning.

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Great article! You managed to inform even this old trekkie!

you are right about TMP. it could have come out a ‘star wars’ clone, joining the many released in the 70s. shame paramount did not recut the movie after its premiere as mr wise wanted.

it would changed people’s opinions of the film over the years.

I think, TMP is the best movie of all when you watch it on bluray with a beamer on a big cinema screen. It’s so beautiful and it is really Star Trek.

We all became acquainted with TMP on the small 4:3 TV sets in VHS-quality. Even the DVD isn’t better. It looked dark, it was boring. This is the Star Trek movie that only works on the big screen in HD. That’s what cinema is made for. The bluray was an eye-opener, although the film could use a full restauration, a better master and a transfer to 4K.

I watched it recently in blu ray on my 65″ Panasonic plasma after probably two decades that I hadn’t watched it. Sorry, but it’s very slow and drawn out.

Plasma TVs are prehistoric and the worst TVs to watch films on

Star Trek the Motion Picture is the only one I watch regularly. I remember how awe-inspiring it was to see the Enterprise on the big screen for the first time, and Mr. Goldsmith’s music really added to that. While I have enjoyed aspects of all the other movies with the original series cast, I think they lacked that epic quality of the first one. As for it being slow, I will take that any day over the thoughtless quick-cut shaky cam stuff they serve up now.

Two things the article got wrong. It was Bill Paxton in Aliens not Bill Pullman and Back to the Future came after Star Trek III. And yes TMP is better than people say. It’s how I got into star trek at the age of six. And when people talk about the long quiet sequences in the movie I say that’s how it would happen. If scientist, astronomers or explorers were on a ship flying through the never before see wonder of v’ger they would be siting back watching, observing in awe.

Fixed Pullman/Paxton thing for Jared, so many people make that mistake.

Technically what Jared said is not wrong (it might be a bit awkwardly phrased). In TVH (1986), they use the Bird of Prey as a time machine, which they stole from the actor who played Doc Brown in BTTF (1985). Yes they stole the BoP in TSFS (1984), but… they only used it as a time machine the year after BTTF came out.

Your right. I didn’t think about WHEN it was used as a time machine.

So much of this list is very common knowledge. A shame.

Incidentally, it’s been well-documented over the years that Star Trek did not feature the first interracial kiss on TV. There were other examples, and it’s not hard to find them online. The “first kiss” thing was just a myth perpetrated by Roddenberry.

Not even American TV–there were others.

D. C. Fontana disputes #26. In her most recent interview, she says that Leonard Nimoy was the ONLY actor ever considered for Spock.

Fontana might have said it but STAR TREK FACT CHECK refuted this back in September of 2013

http://startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com/2013/09/casting-ideas-for-star-treks-first-pilot.html

Martin Landau disputes Fontana in this too:

http://catacombs.space1999.net/press/wrefplandau.html

””Star Trek was ahead of its time, so much so the world has finally caught up with it,” Landau comments. “…

Although Haunted didn’t sell, Landau was soon offered Star Trek. He has “absolutely never” regretted turning down Spock, a character he saw as “the antithesis of why I do what I do” while Rollin Hand on Mission: Impossible was “the antithesis of Spock, a character who was everybody, all emotional levels, all colors, shapes, sizes.

“I would make the same decision today,” he announces. “But I knew if the show hit, Spock would be very effective. You have to think of the turmoil of the ’60s. A superintelligent creature with pointy ears who thought logically was exactly right-except I didn’t want to act it. I did not want to be saddled with the role of a character without feeling. I would have become a newscaster. Actually, newscasters are more emotional than Spock.”

Then, Desilu sold out to Paramount and the gradual decline in [MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE] quality became a sudden plunge.

“Paramount wanted to make it better, cut down the shooting schedule, pay less for scripts, less for actors, less for directors and they took the show away from Bruce Geller, ” explains Landau, who balked at returning for a fourth season. “They spread lies that I wanted ridiculous amounts of money. That’s not true. They were destroying the shows. An elevator can only go so high before it goes down. I thought it was going down.””– ‘Martin Landau, Space-Age Hero’, by David Hirsch, STARLOG – No. 108, July 1986

Thanks for passing that along, Disinvited. I hadn’t heard that about Landau before.

You are welcome.

Private Hudson was played by Bill Paxton… not Bill Pullman.

http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/news/thank-you-star-trek

https://twitter.com/WilliamShatner/status/773878951739523072?lang=en

We get it TrekMovie… The JJ-movies are where your heart is, 3 movies… 3 action, nonsensical movies. “Red Letter Media reviews are better than the movies”. Well done, not even trying to hide your politics. Whatever deal you have with Bad Robot, congrats, for continuing to undermine and undervalue REAL prime universe Trek.

Congrats. You have posted the most rambling, pointless comment on this site today. Grow up, kid.

You are such a remarkably negative person, it astounds me that Star Trek would even appeal to you.

I have no idea where you get the notion that we favor the JJ movies. That quote is in reference to the Star Wars prequels.

Yeah Ralph it’s clearly in reference to the SW reviews, which totally are better — I think I’ve watched all of them over a dozen times each, in comparison to the one and done with the movies themselves. Hell, even the ST reviews are leagues more entertaining than the TNG films!

Maybe the moderators could explore the virtues of a competent marketing strategy (in contrast to Paramounts “effort”) which has contributed to the strong success of STB in China.

Star Trek The Motion Picture is the BEST Trek film of all time!

I like it a lot, but it had “issues”, a result of not enough time to tighten up the second half before the Dec 1979 release date (and pushing to Summer 1980 was out of the question due to going up against The Empire Strikes Back). The Director’s Edition helps, but the second half still slows to a crawl. And the main cast is very stilted (except Kelley) in the first half. And then there are those horrible costumes…

No, it isn’t the best Trek film.

Re:pushing to Summer 1980 was out of the question due to going up against The Empire Strikes Back

No, pushing to summer of 1980 was out of the question because Paramount would have had to return around $40 million dollars they earned in the theater exhibitors blind bind auction where they quaranteed the December 1979 release.

It certainly is for me. And unquestionably the best score of Jerry Goldsmith’s career.

I really hope to be able to see this one on the big screen at least once during my lifetime, someday. (Though a proper blu-ray remake of the Director’s Edition would be the next best thing!)

http://www.roddenberry.com/media/vault/Script-TheManTrap.pdf

https://www.wired.com/2016/09/gene-l-coon-star-trek-hero/

https://www.facebook.com/roddenberry/photos/a.379278853143.160328.39143388143/10153826349543144/?type=3&theater

The first interracial kiss on US television was actually a peck on the cheek Sammy Davis Jr. gave Nancy Sinatra on her TV special in Dec 1967, nearly a year before Plato’s Stepchildren.

Hmmmm…. given that race is not a scientific classification when it comes to humans, and more often than not merely denotes ethnicity, I think it was in 1954 when a very American James Bond kissed the luscious lips of the Mexican Valerie Mathis in the CLIMAX! Live performance of CASINO ROYALE?

Don’t forget American Lucy and Cuban Ricky.

Re:Don’t forget American Lucy and Cuban Ricky.

I haven’t as you can see here:

https://trekmovie.com/2015/09/04/larry-nemeceks-on-speaker-series-celebrates-voyagers-20th-anniversary-with-a-new-release/#comment-5282792

But excuses have been made in the past that it didn’t directly confront The Southern affiliates inspired black/white Network STANDARDS AND PRACTICES taboos in living color with a scripted unmarried couple. That’s why I cited CLIMAX!’s James Bond which was rewritten as a very AMERICAN single white male secret agent.

When it came time to air PLATO’S STEPCHILDREN stations in the South that were owned by members of the KKK definitely had “technical difficulties”.

You can see S&P’s concern in this memo:

“Further, it must be clear there are no racial over-tones to Kirk’s and Uhura’s dilemma.” — JEAN MESSERSCHMIDT, NBC STANDARDS & PRACTICES

As you can see here on page 49:

http://americanradiohistory.com/Archive-BC/BC-1969/1969-01-13-BC.pdf

In the first month of the third season, 210 stations were NBC affiliates contractually obligated to carry NBC’s prime time line-up and yet only 181 of them were airing STAR TREK. The article makes economic hay about the majority of those 21 stations motivation in doing so, but the fact remains they only came to the realization they could get away with the tactic because of stations like WLBT pulling NBC programming for non-economic reasons earlier and not suffering legal consequences for it.

Eventually WLBT Lamar’s chickens came home to roost in 1969 when the FCC pulled their license because their long documented racist programming tactics were clearly not serving the entire community. They staved it off for a few more years with appeals which were all lost in the end.

I like that for once there is a bit of biting edge to this article.

Christopher Lloyd played Commander Kruge a year before he played Doc Brown.

Technically what Jared said is not wrong (it might be a bit awkwardly phrased). In TVH (1986), they use the Bird of Prey as a time machine, which they stole from the actor who played Doc Brown in BTTF (1985). Yes they stole the BoP in TSFS (1984), but… they only used it as a time machine the year after BTTF came out.

25th anniversary and Judgement Rites are still my favorite Star Trek games. Always nice to see them get a mention. A remastered game including all episodes from both titles would be a real treat.

I loved those games too. Trek meets point-and-click adventure. Yes, re-masted would be awesome.

I also loved TNG: A Final Unity and DS9: Harbinger.

#1: “And proving that the accusation of “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” will last well into the 24th Century, the first order our French captain gives … is to surrender.” Tired conservative cliches on a Star Trek site, nice… (but kind of disheartening)

Geez. It’s a Simpsons reference, not a political point.

In its origin, yes. Though in its use, it became the go-to bashing phrase for anti-french pundits

At any rate, I believe it was intended as humor and not an indictment of the French.

Much better than the constant flow of bleeding heart liberal moonbat comments.

Great article! Thanks!

Nice article! Another little known fact I haven’t seen in the hundreds of articles leading up to today is that Ben Stiller’s production company, Red Hour Productions, is named after the scheduled riots in “The Return of the Archons”. That company produced Zoolander, DodgeBall, Blades of Glory, and Tropic Thunder.

I tried to take a different path to celebrate today — my top 50 Trek memories. Not memorable shows or episodes, but 50 moments where Star Trek molded and shaped my life. http://www.chicaneryproductions.com/johns-blog/2016/9/8/star-trek-at-50 It’s a long piece, but hey, 50 years is a long time.

Great 50 moments John. LLAP

There’s an Indian captain in Star Trek IV.

Seven to these are priceless and should be memorized and repeated to all fans everywhere: 7, 9, 10, 31, 45, 47, 50.

7: This one, like Kirk’s libido, is one of the constant myths around our beloved TV show. But, it has extra poignance when viewed in the light of other day players on the show. When was the last time you heard Eddie Paskey run down any member of the cast, George? 9: Nimoy, Shatner, Justman and Solow told corroborate the origin of that product. 10: One of our “Great Bird’s” more disgraceful acts. Like most of us, Gene was just trying to make a living and was not particularly careful about who he stuck it to. After 50 years, I’m tired of not looking at the guy for the womanizing, paranoid huckster that we was. 31: This one is just fun. THAT had never occurred to me. Mind-blowing. 45: Please can to realize that we love Star Trek (faults and all) and we don’t have to force socially relevant First. No one has ever produced a single bit of evidence that this moment (or crew diversity) shocked anyone or cause any affiliate to blackout the show. I watched it originally and my Southern mother’s only comment was saying the the WHOLE episode was “silly.” 47: We all knew it, but its hard to hear. I wanted JJ to work and once Simon Pegg got ahold of the scripting, it has markedly improved. I loved Beyond. 50. ST:TMP was a very, very good Science Fiction movie. What we wanted in ’79 was STB.

GaiusSulla,

Re:Seven to [ sic ] these are priceless

7. One possible reason for the longevity of the character is that Shatner named him after his daughter and would be loathe to see her die, even metaphorically. But please note that both Mr. Leslie and Mr. Scott are redshirts that died. The fact that they were resurrected doesn’t actually destroy the myth anymore than Spock’s resurrection destroys the meaning of his self-sacrifice

9. Takei was on Colbert’s CBS show last night and said he’ll never forget the first day Rodenberry took them all into a conference room for a run through the script and told them all to keep in mind that the basis for the strength of the ship was its diversity in infinite combinations. Also, I never quite understood why Gene creating that tchotchke was somehow worse than Paramount licensing toy disc shooter guns and many many other STAR TREK objects that NEVER appeared in any episode or movie with Nimoy’s uncompensated likeness to the point Nimoy eventually brought a lawsuit against Paramount?

10. Gene might have those characteristics but it hardly justifies claiming that’s all that he was as what he was was hardly an unusual type for the entertainment industry of the era. And I’ve never heard of a tale were he pulled a casting couch maneuver like Whitney claims a Paramount executive did to her. Also, the young Courage himself says he wasn’t that miffed about it – he did continue composing for the series. And the extremely talented Coon had so many angry sf writers that his production secretary, Andreea Kindryd, says, ““He was living on amphetamines to try and keep up.” Norman Spinrad even outright accused Coon of rewriting some scripts solely to split the money much as the hay made over Roddenberry’s lyrics.

45. I was born and raised in the South. The most infamous for killing NBC programming, which included STAR TREK, was WLBT

http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2004/fall/channels-1.html

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-everett-parker-20150923-story.html

50. Again, I was there. What we wanted was a very, very good Science Fiction movie.

10. I’m curious as to what judgement you make of Nimoy’s writing the song “Maiden Wine”. Singinig it in PLATO’S STEPCHILDREN and cutting record with it?

I thought that “Maiden Wine” was an old traditional folk song. Never heard that Nimoy wrote it.

Re:“Maiden Wine” was an old traditional folk song

Because that’s the way Leonard wrote it to seem. Just check “The Touch Of Leonard Nimoy” album’s side 1 song credits:

http://www.maidenwine.com/lps_04.html

Just one of the many incongruities of the episode as supposedly the Platonians were forcing such performances from the Platonian’s own memories but how would visitors to an Earth of the Greek Civilization era come away with knowledge of old traditional English folk songs, “Alice in Wonderland”, or Shakespeare?

OK, somehow they hailed the Enterprise but if they’ve been listening to the Federation’s Intergalactic Subspace Radio Network and learned of such things, how is it they know absolutely nothing about basic antiseptics and antibiotics? For that matter, how was the result of their eugenics program less robust than Khan’s recuperative powers?

“Apparently he did put an end to their little trek through the stars.” Hahahahaha! That was brilliant. Great article, too. Now I’ve finally heard those TOS lyrics put to music! A lot of great nods on here, and I appreciate your closing by giving my favorite Trek film the nod.

I’m curious, though- was Judgement Rights Deforest Kelley’s last performance as McCoy- or would that be the unreleased Secret of Vulcan Fury from circa 1996? I don’t know how far production got, but it sounded as if the voice cast had already recorded it… (of course, judgement Rights is certainly the last one you can HEAR, at present).

Great stuff TrekMovie!!

As for the Red Dwarf bit, NO WAY can you change the original for anyone. Sir Patrick is a well known fan of the Dwarfers, so I urge you all to check it out!

Additionally, on number 50, if you can find it, make sure you give The Motion Picture a second look with the Director’s Edition. Sadly, it isn’t on Blu-ray yet (ahem…YET….Paramount…are you listening?), but it is a huge improvement being that the film is actually finally FINISHED (it wasn’t when originally released). Give it a shot. The Director’s Edition made TMP my favorite Trek film.

Regarding number 5, no….no I absolutely would NOT want to see that. I do, in fact, loathe the concept.

Re 12: Other than Bashir and his parents, there was Assistant Chief Engineer Of The Week Lt. Singh, in an S1 episode of TNG: http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Singh_(engineer)

I think when Frakes said that ‘he wasn’t that good of an actor’ he might have been joking a little

Well, there’s some crossover between Mexican and Native American lineage. Beltran isn’t THAT far off. Not as far off as a Mexican playing a Sikh!

Great article, Jared.

Some comments…

Rod Stewart is actually not a co-author of “Faith of the Heart” — he just sang the original, which is a Diane Warren composition. The ENT remake, with some lyrical changes, was performed by Stewart sound-alike, English tenor Russell Watson.

Regarding the inspiration for the Borg, I’ve long assumed it was the Cybermen from Dr. Who. The two characterizations are extremely similar, far too similar to be accidental.

Regardless of his contributions, controversial Trek kingpin Rick Berman went on to fire Jones because his music was “too noticeable.” Yeah. Noticed by people who were giving him awards and buying his album.

Oh! Rick Berman, you jus’ got tried!

I’ve always thought those GR lyrics to the TOS theme seemed ridiculous on paper, but hearing them with the song really cements that impression. There’s not even a pretense that the lyrics are supposed to match up rhythmically with the melody. Even Mr. Washee Washee’s lyrics in Family Guy are more convincing: Su-luuuu, he star of the show… Other guyyyyys just along for the ride…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oe0yWRPaQs

Great piece! I have been meaning to give Trek V a second chance recently but after reading this I might opt for TMP instead and crank it!

Beltran was “accused” of not being an American Indian back when the show was on the air. He simply told people to look at his face.

The vast majority of Mexicans are either partly or wholly Native American. Beltran is clearly one of them.

Fun list. For once, a list of 50 facts that isn’t riddled with myths and half-truths…

I agree about TMP, particularly the Director’s Edition. When the Director’s Edition first popped up, I picked up the DVD in a slightly ‘what the heck?’ way, thinking I might as well add it to my collection. I watched it on my 14″ mono CRT in my little bedroom in my shared flat and was blown away by it. If only that was the version originally released. I can’t believe we’re still waiting for a cleaned up, restored HD/UHD version of it. It’s a shame Star Trek’s handcuffed by a duff studio.

Re:For once, a list of 50 facts that isn’t riddled with myths and half-truths

Really? Compare and contrast:

“After commissioning Alexander Courage to write the classic intro theme song, Roddenberry wrote lyrics to it so he could get 50% of the song’s royalties – without Courage’s consent or even knowledge.” — Jared Whitley

http://startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com/2013/06/alexander-courages-marvelous-malarkey.html

” There wasn’t any rift, really, with Gene. What happened with Gene was a I got a phone call once…it was Gene’s lawyer, [Leonard] Maizlish. He said, ‘I’m calling you to tell you that since you signed a piece of paper back there saying that if Gene ever wrote a lyric to your theme that he would split your royalties on the theme.’

Gene and I weren’t enemies in any sort of way. It was just one of those things…I think it was Maizlish, probably, who put him up to doing it that way, and it’s a shame, because actually if he’d written a decent lyric we could have both made more money.” — Alexander Courage, Archive of American Television Interview (February 8, 2000)

That sounds like Mr Courage being diplomatic decades after the incident. Actually, there needs to be a film made about Leonard Maizlish; he sounds absolutely fascinating!

The article states: ‘In contrast to the usually perfect society the franchise had shown us thus far…’

Doctor Adams? Kodos? The TOS universe was far from perfect, even though it had good intentions. That’s why people embraced it.

‘the Federation’s diplomatic mission has completely failed’ ‘its ambassador there is a worthless drunk’

And Tasha Yar’s home colony was such a glowing success! There were clearly many diplomatic missions and attempts at founding colonies in TOS in particular, but it was clearly like throwing mud at a wall: some would stick, some would fall off.

I actually rather liked some of the less conventional aspects of STV, seeing trashy bars running futuristic versions of The Price is Right on monitors. It’s a rare brush with planet bound civilian life that we rarely see in most Star Trek.

‘the flagship of the fleet barely works’ ‘capable bridge officers are cartoonishly incompetent’

That was disappointing and at the behest of Paramount who wanted more comedy. The Enterprise was hardly the flagship of the fleet anymore. It’s an old-fashioned Constitution-class ship, clearly superseded by the Excelsior class and probably others.

‘a brilliant doctor is incapable of curing, and therefore euthanizes, his own father’

There’s nothing wrong with that bit. It’s a devastating moment in McCoy’s tragic past.

‘NASA’s seminal Pioneer 10 is just target practice for Klingons’

Well, they were particularly yobbish Klingons.

STV wasn’t necessarily so much about Shatner’s ego, but was a botched attempt at an epic that seemed to run out of budget about ten minutes into the film. It’s a shame, because there’s a good 45 minute TV episode buried away in there. As a rule, if Gene Roddenberry disliked a TOS film, it was probably going to be enjoyable. STV is probably the exception…

Dom – you’re right about “a good 45 minute episode buried away” in STV. The Jack Marshall edit that was floating around for a while is proof of that, IMO. He took out the whole half-brother story, a good amount of the forced comedy, tightened other scenes and even used some TOS soundtrack music. It played out as a decent Star Trek episode. With some remastered FX it would have been better, but viewed as a tv episode, rather than a feature film, it fares much better. Unfortunately, I don’t know if this edit can be found anymore.

Two major “did that really happen” TOS scenes: #1) McCoy slapping a pregnant woman back in “Friday’s Child” to care for the baby. Yes, he was acting as a Doctor. Yes the scene was apparently funny for my pregnant wife. Yes, it did stress equality of the sexes (slapping a man back wouldn’t be questioned). But man, does that just look wrong today! #2) Uhura in Bread in Circuses talking the “son of God”. Takes a couple seconds to realize that yes, it really did happen.

Incredible write-up – and you’re right about STTMP – not the best but far better than most say it is…ESPECIALLY Persis Khambatta (RIP) as Vyger (sorry but it had to be said)…

and TMP gifted the movie saga kirk’s midlife crisis and spock finally reconciling his human/vulcan nature.

i watched TMP on blu and the commentary kept mentioning how good the work done on the directer’s edition was!

I always thought Star Trek’s connection to the Twilight Zone was Shatner on a plane. (or in a restaurant) I was not aware of ‘The Encounter’ nor George’s part in it. Thank you. Quite powerful in it’s entirety I’m sure.

Home > 12 Actors With Strange and Unique Eyebrows

12 Actors With Strange and Unique Eyebrows

• UPDATED: May 15, 2024

Table of Contents

Eyebrows are essential components of our facial features. They help us express emotions and enhance the look of our eyes. Since eyebrows have such an impact on how we look, they must be appropriately groomed to fit with one’s face shape, eye color, and hair color. They add detail to the form and structure of the face while also adding a sense of depth.

People with unique eyebrows can be seen as strange or weird because they stand out from the rest. Many people have different eyebrow shapes and sizes, but some eyebrows are unusual in their appearance. For example, one type of eyebrow is called the “unibrow” (also known as a monobrow).

This type of eyebrow grows together to form one large brow. There is no such thing as having a unibrow on only one side of your face; it always appears on both sides because it’s caused by a genetic condition that produces more hair than usual.

Another type of eyebrow that might be considered strange or unique is the Harelip Eyebrows. These eyebrows grow close to each other and resemble a mouth with teeth-like lines going across them. They’re also commonly referred to as wolf’s eyebrows because of the look.

The following are some of the actors with strange and unique eyebrows:

1. will poulter.

Will Poulter, age 29, born in 1993, is an English actor and producer well known for his role in the movie We’re The Millers. What makes him unique is that he has two different color eyebrows! His right eyebrow is brown, while his left eyebrow is blond.

This doesn’t make any sense because each eyebrow should have the same color hair follicles and color tone. He has a slightly different style from most men, opting to keep his left eyebrow thin and long while keeping the right one thicker and shorter to give him an overall asymmetrical look. They slant downward and have a massive gap in the middle which gives the appearance of a unibrow.

2. Eugene Levy

Eugene Levy is a Canadian actor, comedian, director, writer, and producer known for various roles, including The Second City comedy troupe and comedy movie American Pie. He became almost famous with his position on the sitcom S.C.T.V. (Second City T.V.), where he played numerous characters, one of them being an older man with what some say are strange eyes and eyebrows that hang down over his eyes.

He has two different shaped eyebrows. The left eyebrow is arched, while the right eyebrow looks like it just got out of bed. His eyebrows are thick and slightly unkempt, but they work well with his overall appearance, which has remained relatively unchanged over the years. He opts to keep them low when possible so they don’t stand out too much when he’s on camera.

3. Cara Delevingne

Cara Jocelyn Delevingne, age 29, born in 1992, is a British fashion model and actress who has been in movies such as Paper Towns and Suicide Squad. She has long dark hair and brown eyes that match her eyebrows which are short but symmetrical. Her plump lips and rosy cheeks enhance her youthful look.

Her unique style involves grooming her left eyebrow to be thin and long while allowing the right one to remain thick and dramatic. This can be very tricky, but she pulls it off flawlessly.

4. Jennifer Connelly

Jennifer Lynn Connelly was born on December 12, 1970, and is an American actress well known for her roles in the films Requiem for a Dream, House of Sand and Fog, A Beautiful Mind (which earned her an Oscar), and Blood Diamond. She’s tall at 5’10” with blonde hair and blue eyes. They’re short and symmetrical, and she’s considered to be quite attractive.

The actor with the eyebrows doesn’t have much to say about her eyebrows except that they’re blonde as well. She keeps her left eyebrow thin and defined while retaining the right blonde and thicker to draw more attention to her eyes. Her style is sophisticated and easy enough for most people to mimic easily.

5. Jack Nicholson

Jack Nicholson, age 85, born in 1937, is a legendary American actor and filmmaker who has been in movies such as Chinatown, The Shining, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (which earned him his first Oscar), and Terms of Endearment. He also produced movies like The Two Jakes (a sequel to Chinatown ) and Hoffa (starring Danny DeVito).

He has always had bushy eyebrows that stand out no matter what they look like as long as he maintains them well. His eyebrows are dark brown but thin, making them seem darker than against his white hair . He tends to keep both of his eyebrows about the same size with slightly unkempt ends, so they appear thicker than they are.

6. Zachary Quinto

Zachary John Quinto was born on June 2, 1977, and is an American actor well known for his role as Spock in the new Star Trek films starting with 2009’s Star Trek. He also has a recurring role on American Horror Story and portrayed Sylar on the television series Heroes. His eyebrows are dark brown, thick but somewhat long.

He is one of Hollywood’s most creative eyebrow groomers and opts to keep both eyebrows long and unkempt, which is a beautiful style that works well with his appearance. He can be seen using brow gel frequently to hold them in place and prevent them from growing out too much.

7. Chris Pine

Christopher Whitelaw Pine was born on August 26, 1980, and is an American actor who got his start by playing Kirk in J.J. Abrams’ 2009 reboot of the classic Star Trek series. What sets him apart from most other actors is his thick dark brown eyebrows.

Chris Pine keeps both of his eyebrows long and wide with slightly undefined ends that look like they haven’t been trimmed in years. He has an elegant yet rustic style that many men consider copying due to its ability to make him appear more masculine without being too harsh

8. Robert Pattinson

Robert Douglas Thomas Pattinson was born on May 13, 1986, and is a British actor best known for his role as Edward Cullen in the Twilight movies. He has light blonde hair but very long and almost white eyebrows, which enhances his brooding appearance.

He keeps both eyebrows long with a thick and straight appearance that matches his overall dark style that he seems to have perfected over years of commitment. His look can be challenging to mimic due to its exact symmetry 

9. Colin Farrell

Farrell is an Irish actor whose eyebrows are unkempt and tend towards bushy without many definitions, which works well for him since he doesn’t tend to groom them very much. He has an elegant yet wild beauty that matches perfectly with this style, giving him a unique aura.

His eyebrows are brown, thin but complete, with the left one arching inward toward the bridge of his nose, which adds to his intense appearance.

10. Jake Gyllenhaal

Jacob Benjamin “Jake” Gyllenhaal was born on December 19, 1980, and is an American actor widely known for starring in movies like Donnie Darko (which earned him some award nominations). He has light brown hair but blonde eyebrows that tend to stand out more than his hair color.

He keeps both eyebrows long and slightly unkempt, which works well with his overall style to match his messy, dark waves that frame his face nicely. This style can take years of commitment and patience, but it’s worth it for the result!

11. Jack Black

Thomas Jacob “Jack” Black was born on August 28, 1969. He is an American actor, singer, writer, producer, and comedian well known for his role as Jacob Goodnight in the movie version of The Goonies. He has thick eyebrows that tend to be bushy throughout, giving him a handsome and honest appearance that he rocks well.

His eyebrows are dark brown, almost black but very bushy, making them stand out along with his long blonde lashes for comic relief. He tends to keep both of his eyebrows shaped the same but allows his left one to grow slightly longer than his right, which is a great style for men who want an updated look.

12. Jason Momoa

Joseph Jason Namakaeha Momoa was born on August 1, 1979. He is an American actor best known for his roles as Ronon Dex on the military science fiction T.V. show Stargate: Atlantis and Khal Drogo in the HBO series Game of Thrones. He has dark brown eyebrows that tend to look shaggy and bushy.

He has thick eyebrows typically towards bushy, unkempt ends that perfectly match his overall rugged appearance. His bushy brows can be difficult to manage, but if he’s coping with them, then you certainly can as well! Overall, this is a more masculine style that isn’t too pretty or stylish, balancing out nicely against his more polished looks on the red carpet.

Conclusion: 

The eyebrows are a very expressive part of the face, so it’s no wonder that many actors have experimented with their eyebrow shapes. Some celebrities even get crazy and dye their eyebrows an unnatural color!

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Why Men Wore Mini-Skirts on "Star Trek: The Next Generation"

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Every now and then, it comes up. Someone watches an early episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation . They look in the background, and they ask the question: "Why is that man wearing a mini-skirt?"

The answer is rooted in both sexism and non-sexism, Star Trek 's claim to be all about equality, and the reality of pandering to male fans to boost ratings.

There are few more controversial elements about the original Star Trek series than the Starfleet mini-skirt . In the classic series, men of Starfleet had a wide variety of uniforms. They wore pants with shirts, pants with jackets, pants with tunics, and variations in-between. But women of Starfleet almost without exception wore dresses. In fact, the majority of them wore mini-skirts.

An interesting note is that in the original unused  Star Trek  pilot "The Cage, " female Starfleet crew wore pants just like the men. In the reshot pilot, the women were dressed in skirts and remained so for the rest of the classic series. (This wasn't the only change that the studio forced on the production as a step away from feminism. The studio also demanded they cut a female first officer named Number One.)

How Fans Received the Mini-Skirts

Later on, Star Trek fans began to criticize the mini-skirts. They said such overt sexualization of the women on the show contradicted its claims of feminism and equality. Star Trek made bold strides for television at the time, when women were rarely seen in positions of power, and women of color even less so. But this was a glaring exception. The situation only got worse as society moved out of the sixties and into the seventies and eighties.

Of course, Star Trek could have just said, "Yeah, we admit it. We just wanted some cheesecake on the show." But that doesn't fit the narrative of Star Trek being a place for equality and feminism and multiculturalism and what-not.

Mini-Skirts for Male Star Trek Characters

When people began to complain, the Trek community's response was, "Nuh-uh! The mini-skirts weren't sexist! Because, uh, men wore them, too! It was unisex!" This seems to have been most clearly stated in 1995's The Art of Star Trek . In it, the book says, "The skirt design for men 'skant' [a combination of "skirt and pant"] was a logical development, given the total equality of the sexes presumed to exist in the 24th century."

Of course, this is easier said than done. The next question would always be, "So where were all the men in mini-skirts on the original series?" The answer would be that there were some, but you just didn't see them, which left uncomfortable stares and raised eyebrows. That gap is what Star Trek: The Next Generation tried to fill.

The "Skant"

When the pilot episode "Encounter at Farpoint" aired in 1987, the skant is worn by both Deanna Troi and Tasha Yar (briefly). But we also get our first glimpse of the male skant in the background in this episode. Overall, the men wearing skants appeared in five episodes of the first season ("Encounter at Farpoint," "Haven," "Conspiracy," "Where No One Has Gone Before" and "11001001"). They also appeared in second season episodes "The Child," "The Outrageous Okona," "The Schizoid Man," and "Samaritan Snare." Their final appearance came during flashbacks in the series finale "All Good Things..."

However, it's significant that the skant-wearing men only appeared as background characters, never as major characters with speaking parts. It's also significant none of the main male cast wore the skant. That, plus the phasing out of the skant in the third season onwards means that TNG probably felt the point was made, and quietly made them disappear. The skant continues to be a part of Trek culture, but mainly as a source of comedy instead of discussions of gender roles.

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“I just vibe with the guy”: The Star Trek TNG Actor Brent Spiner Best Vibed With Was Never Patrick Stewart

A fter Brent Spiner’s character Data died in Star Trek: Nemesis , he initially parted ways with the Star Trek franchise. However, with the birth of Star Trek: Picard on Paramount+, Spiner returned to reprise his role along with his old pals Patrick Stewart and LeVar Burton. This marked a 20-year reunion for the physical cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. 

Since their final collaboration in 2002’s Nemesis , following the conclusion of The Next Generation series in 1994, the cast has maintained a close bond. Notably, Brent Spiner shares a strong connection with his co-star LeVar Burton.

This One Person’s Vibe Perfectly Matched Brent Spiner’s

Brent Spiner and LeVar Burton ended up spending a considerable amount of time together on S tar Trek: Picard, and luckily, their off-screen vibe was a perfect match.

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Towards the end of the show, Spiner’s Data and Burton’s Geordi share touching moments, underscoring their strong bond and collaborative spirit on the USS Enterprise. In an interview with TV Guide , Spiner revealed further,

Well, on-screen it works because it is just that aspect of humanity that Data’s able to explore more fully, and that’s friendship. And he’s able to explore it and understand it more fully through his relationship with Geordi. Off-screen, I just vibe with the guy.

In the end, Brent Spiner and LeVar Burton’s on-screen magic in Star Trek: Picard owes much to their off-screen buddy vibe. As Data and Geordi, they bring heart and humor to the show , reminding the fans why they fell in love with their characters in the first place.

Patrick Stewart Rooting for Brent Spiner to Win an Emmy For This Star Trek Performance

However, there is one more person with whom Brent Spiner’s vibe matches and that is, Patrick Stewart. In Stewart’s autobiography , Making It So: A Memoir, he openly praises Spiner’s portrayal of Data. Stewart particularly recalls the emotional impact of the episode The Offspring where Data experiences the loss of his self-built android daughter.

“It would platform a universe of ‘Star Trek’ shows”: Original Plans for Star Trek: Discovery Would’ve Saved the Show from 1 Severe Criticism it’s Cursed With for All Eternity

For Stewart, this episode solidified Spiner’s talent as a great actor. As Stewart reflects on other Data-centric moments he said,

Brent Spiner’s performance is staggeringly good — he found new depths to his character’s Pinocchio-like predicament of being a human invention who wishes to become human. It’s a major injustice to me that Brent has never won an Emmy for playing Data, not to mention the androids Lore and B-4 and the bizarre Soong family of mad scientists.

The bond shared by the cast members was truly remarkable. It was two decades in the making, that Star Trek brought everyone together again in the third and final season of the Paramount+ spinoff, Star Trek: Picard.  Fans couldn’t be more happier.

Star Trek: Picard is streaming on Paramount+

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Paul giamatti boards ‘star trek: starfleet academy’.

He will play the season’s central villain in the Paramount+ drama starring Holly Hunter.

By Lesley Goldberg

Lesley Goldberg

Television Editor, West Coast

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Paul Giamatti is joining the Star Trek universe at Paramount+.

The Oscar-nominated star of The Holdovers has booked a major role in the streamer’s Star Trek: Starfleet Academy . The actor will have a recurring guest star role as the season’s central villain, described as a man with an ominous past with a connection to one of the show’s cadets.

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“Sometimes you’re lucky enough to discover that one of the greatest actors alive is also a huge Star Trek fan, and meeting Paul was one of those miraculous moments for us. The sheer delight with which he dove in on Starfleet Academy is only surpassed by the gratitude we feel about him joining our incredible cast,” said co-showrunners and exec producers Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau.

Giamatti becomes the second actor cast in Starfleet Academy and joins Holly Hunter, who stars as the captain and chancellor of Starfleet Academy.

The series hails from CBS Studios, which oversees the Star Trek universe for Paramount+. Kurtzman, who captains the Star Trek TV franchise for the streamer, exec produces via his CBS Studios-based Secret Hideout banner alongside Roddenberry Entertainment’s Rod Roddenberry. Gaia Violo, Aaron Baiers, Olatunde Osunsanmi, Jenny Lumet, Trevor Roth, Frank Siracusa and John Weber also exec produce, with Violo having penned the pilot.

Production on Starfleet Academy will begin later this summer.

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‘We Were the Lucky Ones’: How Minute Details in Costume Helped Joey King Become Halina

By Jazz Tangcay

Jazz Tangcay

Artisans Editor

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In Hulu’s “ We Were the Lucky Ones ,” Joey King plays Halina, a young girl who dreams of finding romance, but the looming Second World War throws her life down another unimaginable path. Based on Georgia Hunter’s book, the series follows the true story of the Kurc family living in Poland and how the Holocaust threatened to rip the family apart.

In dressing Halina, costume designer Lucy Duncan made sure to keep outfits anchored in the period of Polish history. Florals and bright clothing give way to darker palettes as Halina battles to survive.

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JOEY KING: I’m focused on the accent, the lines and getting the emotions right. And I walked into my first fitting with Lisa, and there were no questions. She thought of everything. My undergarments are from the correct period, the bra that you never see and the slip were all so thought-out. It was so detailed. Every detail was so helpful mentally.

Halina is the youngest, so she’s more youthful with her patterns, and what’s so great about Lisa is she intentionally pulled pieces for each of us because she really thought about what our character’s journey was and where we were in the story at that specific time.

That first Passover scene we see is so important because it shows the family together. What colors did you use on Halina and what did you want to say in that scene?

How do their costume evolve, given the circumstances of this family being separated.

DUNCAN: I really did keep the family in the 1930s because I felt quite strongly that firstly, they’re not living in New York or London or Paris. They’re in Radom, Poland. It felt very much that they would be wearing 1930s clothes. War broke out and they wouldn’t have been shopping and seeing the fashions of Hollywood. I was very conscious. I wanted them to always look like they were wearing what they had and those clothes were good fabrics.

KING: When you think about how many years our show spans, it’s very true and that’s what would have happened. So the fact that in Episode 3 we see a piece repeated later in Episode Six — many years have passed and they’re still wearing these clothes because that’s all they have. The clothes were often impractical.

You mentioned good fabrics, what did that mean in terms of what you used?

DUNCAN : So much of it was rented. We had hundreds of 1930s coats made from sturdy wool. There were so many suits. Most of our tailoring was from the period, but we did make a lot of beautiful coats that we copied.

In the show, Halina uses coats to trade and pass off as Aryan. How do you incorporate that into her arc?

DUNCAN: I wanted to make sure it didn’t look like we were taking it lightly. I didn’t want them to suddenly look like they were dressed too fashionably, too frivolously, and wearing things they couldn’t afford. I just always wanted to make it feel real. There were times when Halina had moved cities and was trying to pass Aryan and had to look a certain way for her job. So, she was earning money and she did get some new clothes,  I would be careful to restrict them. So she only had a few pieces, and they would be worn over and over.

KING: It’s interesting because there she’s passing as Aryan, it’s important she blends in. It looks like she can afford the same things everyone else can, but because she’s not Aryan, and there are so many other moving pieces that she’s dealing with. She’s trying to get false papers, so she’s spending money in other ways. There’s so much restriction in her real life that others don’t know about. She’s trying to look normal as possible and trying to blend in, while taking care of what really matters. Of course, she’s doing her hair every day and she’s putting on a nice blouse as best she can. She’s making sure she looks clean and fed given the circumstances. It’s all these things and, as she goes on, we see Halina become a ghost of herself, whether that be in health, appearance, hair or clothes.

Joey, you mentioned how stepping into costume helped you. How did that completed look with hair and makeup help you tap into Halina?

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