OT: Star Trek Actress with Ann Arbor Ties Passes 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.
I gots the off season blues... and this certainly didn't help
it is more thread-worthy than Tiger's relationship status. but maybe not by much.
Or did Lindsey Vonn once eat at Krazy Jim's?
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).
She also had cameo appearances as the transporter chief in Star Trek: The Motion Picture and as the communications officer of the USS Excelsior in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
Was she wearing a red shirt?
Now I have to change my shirt due to coffee being snorted out the nose
to the surface of an M-class planet, didn't she? It was her, Spock, McCoy and Kirk. She didn't stand a chance...
Many of those of us old enough to remember the original series always had her rated No. 1 in looks on the Enterprise crew. RIP.
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.
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 ...
William Shatner is 84
Nichelle Nichols is 82
Walter Koenig and George Takei are both 78
Hell, even Patrick Stewart is 74