14
Untold Tales of Star Trek’s “Redshirts”
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: The Enterprise sends an away team to explore a previously uncharted planet. The landing party consists of Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, and security officer Kerpopowicz. Who’s not coming back?
As this familiar joke indicates, the tendency of Star Trek screenwriters to bump off nameless or nearly anonymous Enterprise officers—usually brawny security guards in red tunics—is the stuff of cliché. In fan parlance, these short-lived characters became known simply as “redshirts.” Even director J. J. Abrams felt compelled to carry on the tradition, killing off the red-shirted engineer Olsen (Greg Ellis) in Star Trek, his 2009 reboot of the feature film franchise.
Unquestionably, serving under Captain Kirk was hazardous duty. In all, fifty-four Enterprise crew members were killed in the course of the original seventy-nine episodes, including deaths that occurred off-camera. Officers were strangled, suffocated, stabbed, poisoned, struck by lightning, blasted by phasers and consumed or disintegrated by sundry villains and aliens. Those fifty-four casualties do not include the five crewmen killed in the evil parallel universe of “Mirror, Mirror” or officers assigned to other starships who were killed in the course of other episodes. Nor does it count the six crew members who died but were later revived, including Dr. McCoy (in “Shore Leave”), Scotty (“The Changeling”), and Ensign Chekov (“Spectre of the Gun”). In Star Trek’s second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” a record-setting twelve Enterprise officers died, including two members of the bridge crew—helmsman Gary Mitchell (Gary Lockwood) and navigator Lee Kelso (Paul Carr). Ironically, while this episode has the highest body count of any Trek installment, it includes no official “redshirts” because the red tunics had not yet been introduced by costume designer Bill Theiss.
Behind every fallen crewman, however, there was a crimson-tunicked performer with skills and dreams. A few of the redshirts were walk-on day players who came and went without making a ripple in Hollywood. Mal Friedman, for instance, made his only screen appearance as a security officer struck by poisoned darts in “The Apple.” Some were aspiring actors hoping for that big break that would lead to stardom. Although A-list fame never arrived for any of the redshirts, some cobbled together long and productive careers in film and television, either in front of or behind the cameras. But most were experienced stunt professionals who—often laboring without credit and for Screen Actors Guild–scale wages—did the dirty work, week in and week out, to keep action-oriented shows like Star Trek in business. Several of these seldom-celebrated performers remain notable for one reason or another.
Vincent Deadrick
A stuntman and sometime stunt coordinator, Vincent Deadrick made several appearances on Star Trek, including a redshirt role in “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” In that episode he played security officer Mathews, who gets pushed off a cliff by the android Ruk. Deadrick also appeared as a Romulan crewman in “Balance of Terror,” as a nameless engineer in “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” and (sporting red body paint and a blond bouffant wig) as a native of planet Gamma Trianguli VI in “The Apple.” He stunt-doubled for other actors in at least three episodes, standing in for DeForest Kelley in “Mirror, Mirror.” Deadrick never received screen credit for his work on Star Trek. His first stunt job was doubling for Steve McQueen in director Don Siegel’s war drama Hell Is for Heroes (1962). He also worked on the Batman series prior to Star Trek. He went on to perform and/or supervise stunts for more than a dozen TV shows, including Mission: Impossible with Leonard Nimoy, and over forty movies, including Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2006). He later doubled for star Lee Majors on both The Six Million Dollar Man and The Fall Guy. Deadrick’s son, Vincent Deadrick Jr., served as stunt coordinator for Star Trek: Enterprise. The elder Deadrick made a cameo appearance on Enterprise in 2004, playing an alien slave trader in the episode “Borderland.”
Jay D. Jones
The film and television career of Jay D. Jones proved far shorter than Vincent Deadrick’s, perhaps due to the hard luck Jones suffered in his work for Star Trek. Jones’s brief screen career, which lasted from 1967 to 1975, included credited and uncredited bit parts as well as stunt work in many Trek episodes. In “Catspaw,” he played Lieutenant Jackson, who is killed by shape-shifting alien Syria via “sympathetic magic,” and in “The Apple,” he plays Lieutenant Mallory, who’s blown up when he steps on an explosive rock formation. Jones also appeared as the tommy gun–toting goon named Mirt in “A Piece of the Action”; nameless engineers in “The Tholian Web” and “And the Children Shall Lead”; a hooded Gideon guard in “Mark of Gideon”; a Klingon crewman in “Day of the Dove”; and an Ardanian “Troglyte” in “The Cloudminders.” Additionally, he stunt-doubled for James Doohan in three episodes—“Mirror, Mirror,” “Who Mourns for Adonais?,” and “The Changeling.” (It’s actually Jones who’s killed—or not—in the latter episode.) On two occasions Jones had to be hospitalized during his tenure with Star Trek, the performer told interviewers Mark Philips and Frank Garcia for their book Science Fiction Television Series. Doubling for Doohan in “Who Mourns for Adonais?,” Jones hit his head following a back flip and suffered a concussion. He was more seriously injured by the explosion that kills Mallory in “The Apple.” Technicians overestimated the required charge for the effect. The ensuing blast blew Jones off his feet, knocking him unconscious, and left William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and DeForest Kelley, who were standing nearby, with short-term hearing loss and permanent tinnitus (persistent ringing in the ears). Despite these mishaps, Jones went on to appear in a handful of Bonanza episodes (1970–72) and worked on High Chaparral (1969) and Kung Fu (1975) before leaving show business in the late 1970s.
Richard Dial
Veteran stunt performer Richard Dial had more than a dozen credits under his belt prior to Star Trek, including performing tricky underwater stunts on Sea Hunt (1958–61) and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964). His first job was on director John Ford’s classic Western The Searchers in 1956. He also appeared in episodes of The Green Hornet, Time Tunnel, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and later worked extensively on Mission: Impossible as Peter Graves’s stunt double, working on eighty-nine episodes from 1967 to 1970. For Star Trek, he made five appearances, all uncredited. In “The Apple” he played redshirt Lieutenant Kaplan, who gets zapped by lightning from the godlike alien computer Vaal. In “And the Children Shall Lead,” he’s seen as a nameless security guard. Dial also stunt-doubled on three occasions. It was in this capacity that he made his most memorable contribution to the series, doubling for William Shatner during Captain Kirk’s knock-down, drag-out battle with the lizardlike Gorn captain in “Arena.” This thrilling sequence ranks among the most riveting and enduringly popular of all Star Trek’s many fight scenes. Dial died in 1992 at age sixty but worked actively until the end.
Bobby Clark
Bobby Clark and Gary Coombs took turns wearing the heavy Gorn suit during that spectacular fight scene in “Arena,” with bit player William Blackburn appearing under the mask for close-ups. Clark also played three other Star Trek roles. He was one of the Evil Chekov’s ill-fated henchmen who are disintegrated by Captain Kirk’s bodyguards in “Mirror, Mirror.” He also appeared as panicked aliens in both “The Return of the Archons” and “The Apple.” Clark was a former child actor whose screen career began in 1951. He memorably appeared as Jimmy Grimaldi, the little boy who’s afraid of his Pod-people-replaced parents in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1957). He also had a featured role as Casey Jones Jr. in the short-lived children’s series Casey Jones (1957–58). As he aged, however, Clark drifted into bit roles and stunt work. Following appearances in several TV Westerns in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he left the film industry. According to Memory Alpha (a website that provided data integral to the research for this chapter), Star Trek: Enterprise stunt coordinator Vincent Deadrick Jr. invited Clark to the set during the filming of the Enterprise episode “In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II.” Not only was this a Mirror Universe tale, like Clark’s “Mirror, Mirror,” but the story featured the first official appearance of a Gorn in thirty-eight years. The species hadn’t been seen on any live-action Trek series since “Arena” (although a Gorn was glimpsed briefly in the animated episode “The Time Trap”). There was no monster suit to be worn for this 2004 episode, however. The Gorn was created through computer animation. But Clark donned a re-creation of the Gorn costume in 2009 for the BBC documentary Bring Back Star Trek. He and show host Justin Lee Collins, playing Captain Kirk, parodied the famous fight scene from “Arena.”
Julie Cobb
Julie Cobb has the distinction of being the only female redshirt (although in her case, the term perhaps should be “redskirt”). Her character also suffered one of the series’ most unusual deaths. In “By Any Other Name,” the essence of Yeoman Leslie Thompson (Cobb) is reduced to a hexagonal pod by the villainous Kelvan Rojan (Warren Stevens). Later, Rojan crushes the pod, snuffing out Thompson’s life. Cobb, born in 1947, is the daughter of acclaimed actor Lee J. Cobb, who introduced the character of Willy Loman in the original Broadway production of Death of a Salesman. “By Any Other Name” marked the first screen role for the actress, who worked previously as a Playboy Bunny. Julie Cobb, whose career is ongoing, has since appeared in more than eighty movies and TV shows including The Incredible Hulk (1978), Starman (1987), and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1996). She costarred in the highly rated 1979 TV movie Salem’s Lot, based on the Stephen King novel, and landed featured roles in the short-lived sitcoms A Year at the Top (1977) and Charles in Charge (1984–85). From 1986 to 2006, she was married to actor James Cromwell, who played Zefram Cochrane in the movie Star Trek: First Contact (1996) and the Star Trek: Enterprise episode “In a Mirror, Darkly, Part I” (2005). Cromwell also played other characters in earlier episodes of The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. Julie Cobb’s daughter, actress Rosemary Morgan, carried on the family tradition by making her first screen appearance on Star Trek: Voyager in 1996.
Robert Herron
Robert Herron made a brief but memorable appearance—or, rather, disappearance—as Sam, the crewman mentally zapped out of existence by Charlie Evans (Robert Walker Jr.) in “Charlie X.” Sticklers may question his redshirt status since Sam is out of uniform, resting after a workout in the ship’s gymnasium, when he laughs at Charlie’s difficulty learning judo from Captain Kirk and incurs the wrath of the boy with psychic superpowers. Although he was uncredited in “Charlie X,” Herron received on-screen acknowledgment for his portrayal of the mytho-historical Klingon warrior Kahless the Unforgettable in “The Savage Curtain.” In this episode, Kirk and Spock fight alongside Abraham Lincoln and the legendary Surak of Vulcan against four notorious adversaries, including Kahless (founder of the Klingon Empire) and Genghis Khan. Herron’s first job on Star Trek was doubling for star Jeffrey Hunter in the series’ rejected original pilot, “The Cage.” Herron, a former Navy boxing champion, is another veteran stuntman, stunt supervisor, and bit player whose credits stretch all the way back to Anthony Mann’s Western classic Winchester ’73 in 1950 and continue as recently as the TV movie Aces ’n Eights in 2008. In between, he has worked on more than 240 movies and television shows, including the science fiction films Soylent Green (1973), Death Race 2000 (1975), Logan’s Run (1977), and The Black Hole (1979), and two episodes of The X-Files (1998–99). Over the years Herron has doubled for Tony Curtis, Ernest Borgnine, and Robert Conrad, among other stars.
John Arndt
John Arndt made five appearances on Star Trek, receiving screen credit three times. In “The Man Trap,” the first Trek episode to air, he played Sturgeon, a hapless security guard killed by the Salt Vampire. In this early episode the traditional uniform designations (gold for command, blue for science and medical, red for engineering and security) had not yet been established. As a result, Sturgeon wears a blue tunic in what is otherwise a redshirt role. Arndt made four more appearances on Star Trek as crewman Fields, receiving credit in “Balance of Terror,” “Dagger of the Mind,” and “Space Seed” but not in “Miri.” As Fields, Arndt wore the appropriate red tunic. Arndt is an actor, not a stunt performer, whose screen career began with Star Trek. He has worked very sporadically in movies and television since, with thirteen roles spread out from 1966 to 1994. His later work includes appearances on Mission: Impossible (1967) and in the ultra-low budget horror film The Deadly Spawn (1983).
Sean Morgan
Like John Arndt, Sean Morgan played a recurring character—Lieutenant O’Neil, featured in “Return of the Archons” and “The Tholian Web.” He also appeared as crewman Brenner in “The Balance of Terror” and an Ekosian soldier in “Patterns of Force.” Morgan gained redshirt status for his turn as engineer Harper, who is vaporized by the out-of-control M-5 computer in “The Ultimate Computer.” The actor also worked on “The Corbomite Maneuver” and “This Side of Paradise,” but his scenes were cut. Morgan’s first screen work was a recurring role as Sean, one of Rick Nelson’s fraternity brothers on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1964–66). Morgan was a former college classmate of casting director Joe D’Agosta, who found small parts for his friend whenever possible on Trek and helped him land roles on other Desilu Productions series such as The Lucy Show and Mannix. Morgan’s other credits include Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1966) and Harry and the Hendersons (1987). He eventually gave up acting to pursue more lucrative opportunities in the financial services industry.
Robert E. L. Bralver
Robert Bralver played Grant, a security officer who’s killed by the Capellans when he instinctively reaches for his phaser at the sight of the Klingon Kras, in “Friday’s Child.” Bralver, another experienced stuntman, stunt coordinator, and bit player, also appeared as an unnamed yeoman in “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” and as an engineer in “The Tholian Web.” He doubled for DeForest Kelley in “For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky” and later did stunt work on Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) and on the Deep Space Nine episode “Blood Oath.” Grant was his only credited Trek role. Bralver has performed and/or coordinated stunts for more than fifty movies and TV shows, beginning on I Spy in 1965. He has served as stunt coordinator for several television programs, including Battlestar Galactica (1978), Knight Rider (1982–84), and Diagnosis: Murder (1993–99), where he worked on 135 episodes. His most impressive stunt was making the unusual leap from stunt work to screenwriting and directing. He penned teleplays or stories for the action-oriented TV shows Emergency! and Kojak in the 1970s. As a director, he helmed episodes of Knight Rider and The A-Team, among other series.
Arnold Lessing
Arnold Lessing played Lieutenant Carlisle—an inferior “biological unit” vaporized by the unhinged space probe NOMAD in “The Changeling.” He made a half-dozen screen appearances in the 1960s, including the cheesy B-film The Beach Girls and the Monster (1965)—but Lessing was primarily a musician. For that film, in which he played the romantic lead, Lessing wrote and performed the song “More Than Wanting You.” In the late 1960s, he gave up on acting to concentrate on his music, but—to the surprise of no one who’s seen The Beach Girls and the Monster—failed to find success as a singer-songwriter. However, as a gifted flamenco guitarist, he taught guitar at Santa Monica College for more than thirty years, beginning in the early 1970s.