OT: Star Trek Actress with Ann Arbor Ties Passes On

Submitted by MadMatt on

Grace Lee Whitney, who played Yeoman Rand in the original Star Trek series and several of the movies, died at home this past weekend.

http://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/tv/grace-lee-whitney-yeoman-rand-original-star-trek-dies-n353001

I bring this up because many of this site’s fans are Trekies, and Ms. Whitney was born and raised in Ann Arbor.

I also wanted to comment on something the article from NBC News mentioned about the arc of Yeoman Rand’s career.  Speaking as a retired Naval Officer, she had a very plausible career path for a Limited Duty Officer (Administration).  She began the series as a Yeoman, a Petty Officer, who handled correspondence for the Commanding Officer.  In the first Star Trek movie, she was Chief Petty Officer Rand, and in her last appearance in the sixth movie, she was Lieutenant Rand.  That’s very “realistic” in terms of today’s Navy.  Also, the steps in her fiction career seemed to track the modern pattern of women joining and being fully integrated into the Armed Forces.  Look at the evolution of CAPT Kirk’s interaction with female Star Fleet personnel through the years, and you have reasonably accurate mirror of what was happening for real.

I thought this was worth noting.

LSAClassOf2000

May 4th, 2015 at 10:14 AM ^

She had very short scenes in Star Trek III and IV too, the first being non-speaking and just shaking her head as a battered Enterprise docks, and then working at Starfleet's Operations Center in San Francisco in "The Voyage Home", I believe.

One lesser known fact about Whitney is that she spent a good deal of time in her life helping people battle addiction in its various forms (she had become hooked on amphetamines during filming of the original series). 

mooseman

May 4th, 2015 at 12:19 PM ^

Although this could be said about any female humanoid on star trek, there were some not very subtle implications about Kirk wanting to violate her prime directive.

Engin77

May 5th, 2015 at 2:01 AM ^

She was 85?

Good grief, Shattner is 84?!?

No wonder Bones and Spock are dead; we need to get that antimatter and reverse time, Scotty.  Scotty, are you there?  Scotty ...