good@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA (11/06/84)
William Windom (Decker of "The Doomsday Machine"--ah, my favorite)
has not vanished from the screen in recent years, thank heaven; he was in
a completely hilarious episode of "Barney Miller," plus an episode of "Hart
To Hart" and, of all things, the pilot film of "The A-Team." I was watching
it with a few friends last summer, and when he appeared, the whole roomful
yelled "It's Matt!!" You had to be there.
But have any of you ever noticed that in every role he plays,he
ends up sooner or later with that Decker-ish three-days-growth of beard??!
Without fail...
Last night I watched a classic 1965 film, "Ship Of Fools" on tv;
and rediscovered that its cast includes not one but two well-remembered
Trekkish personalities: Michael Dunn (Alexander of "Plato's Stepchildren")
as Herr Glocken and Barbara Luna (the "Captain's woman" from "Mirror, Mirror")
as a Spanish prostitute. In fact, I hear Dunn got an Oscar nomination for
the role. He certainly deserved it. Query: has any other Star Trek performer
been so recognised? And--I know ST won some Emmys-at least I think it did--
but for what categories??
Before I forget, the episode wherein Spock's legs were broken was
"Charlie X," one of the earliest episodes, and also the one with the turkeys
that the net was wondering about a while ago... Charlie was mad at Kirk and
Spock because they weren't "being nice." Speaking of Charlie X...does anyone
remember how Charlie (Robert Walker Jr.) keeps saying menacingly to Captain
Kirk, "you shouldn't have done that, Captain.."? Well, last week I saw the
1951 film "Strangers On A Train" by Hitchcock, which concerns a young man who
becomes unwillingly involved in a murder pact with a creepy stranger he meets
on a train ("you do my murder, I'll do yours; noone will ever suspect, see?").
What made it so funny was that the actor playing the psychopath was Robert
Walker, Senior...and you have to see to believe the family resemblance between
the two. It's positively uncanny; even their speaking voices are almost exactly
the same. Anyway, in the film the nice guy finally loses his patience and
punches the Walker right in the mouth. Walker falls backward onto a sofa, and
looking menacingly up at the other man, says, "you shouldn't have done that,
Guy..." in EXACTLY the same tone of voice, same look, same intonation, EVERY
THING!! Was D.C. Fontana having a little joke, I wonder, or was it just a
coincidence? It's very weird.
Ah well, end of another trivia hour...except, for the "City
On The Edge Of Forever" fans... was that the silhouette of the Parthenon
visible in the distance through the Guardian of Forever, whenever it wasn't
displaying anything??? I went to Athens last summer to visit my grandparents,
and it's been bugging me ever since...
J.E. Lawrence
"That's very nice, Mr. Ears!"