Who created M'Ress?

But he just wants to help!

 

Well, he can just help himself into this wood chipper right here. Along with Urko, Fuzz, Peepo and every other annoying comic relief character Filmation blighted us with.

Sincerely,

Bill

 

I wish I could blame Filmation for Scrappy-Doo.

 

I forgot where I read it, so I don't have anything to back up my following statements. Just take it for what it's worth.

When developing the initial Scooby concept, several ideas were tossed around. One was that the teens would be musicians, but then considered that might be too much to juggle in the episodes. Later series (not Scooby shows) would employ that bit after all. Of greater import would be the role of the dog. One idea was to make him large but cowardly, the Scooby we actually got. The other was the opposite, a pocket sized mutt that wouldn't back down, basically Scrappy.

Funny how all those ideas wound up being used one way or another.

For all its debated faults, at least the animated Trek did NOT force a cute mascot comic relief character upon us. If that had happened, I don't think there'd be ANY debate whether or not Kirk and company had those missions! Fans would demand the master negatives be burned!

Sincerely,

Bill

 

^ Amen.

As annoying as Scrappy is on his own, the worst thing about him is what he does to the concept of Scooby (and this is true of Scooby-Dum and Scooby-Dee as well). Instead of a remarkable quasi-talking dog, Scooby-Doo becomes a talking dog with a speech impediment.

Sorry for the topic drift. (corrects course)

 

Then how do you explain Wesley Crusher?

(Sorry... couldn't resist the cheap shot.)

For that matter, Chekov was kind of a cute mascot comic relief character himself....

 

No need to apologize. I mucked with the rudder nyself and I started the thread.

Back to the topic of "who created M'Ress," it was suggested Dorothy Fontana would be the best source for that potential information. Alas (and understandably) the more direct lines of communication such as an e-mail, FaceBook or Twitter type account seems to be lacking. So posing the question directly to her will be a challenge. (I will admit I have not dug too deep into the matter.) I think one first has to have an account with the Internet Movie DataBase and through it one can obtain a link with a university with which she is affiliated.

Hmm, Alan Dean Foster... I wonder if he can be more readily reached? After all, he novelized the episodes. In theory, one can at least ask him if he made up her family members or if he worked from information already written within a "series bible".

I think I'll see if he has a site e-mail like David Gerrold does.

Sincerely,

Bill

 

I would have been one of them. I hated all those mascot character in cartoons even as a child and would not watch any of them.

 

One would hope so

 

Well, at least you, or rather, your namesake gets a glorious cameo in the latest "Star Trek: Phase II" production, complete with full body establishing shots and close-ups. He even has the honor of Jimmy Doohan's son voicing him, continuing his father's work.

A future production, may, not will, just may have a shot of Uhura wiping down her station for loose hairs suggesting M'ress was sitting there earlier.

You got a far better tribute.

Sincerely,

Bill

Sincerely,

Bill

 

The inclusion of the character or species in a later production would have been a thrill TVH did so though not explicitly with the cat aliens in the council scenes

 

True, I can't deny that. I was just thinking about relatively current material, be it "official' or "fan created". And in that regard, your namesake still got the better deal. Not just an alien that could...or might not be Edoan. He's irrefutably Edoan and is directly addressed as "Arex". Plus, he got a couple of lines.

Sincerely,

Bill

 

I always wondered why Connors would be in possession of, and able to play, an Edoan instrument. The pasted-over name is further proof of a substitution. I wonder why they were able to use M'Ress but not Arex.

 

Yeah, Mr. Zulu. It reminds me of the animated New Adventures of Gilligan, where they gave Ginger Grant white hair for fear of a lawsuit from Tina Louise. (Not to mention the presence of the inevitable annoying animal sidekick.)

 

Except that if you look past the coloring, Neal Adams clearly drew Uhura to look like Nichelle Nichols and Sulu to look like George Takei. Of course Sulu had the Afro added, but it'd be easy enough to photoshop the Uhura panels with the right skin and hair coloring. I'd like to see that done.

I thought that the reason M'Ress was drawn wrong is that Power Records didn't have photo reference for the character and just had to make something up.

Platinum blonde, rather. Naturally they could only use any character's likeness with the consent of the performer, and Louise has never been willing to participate in any Gilligan revivals, so they had to recast her (Jane Webb did the voice) and redesign her based on the character's original conception as a Marilyn Monroe clone. (Look at the early first-season episodes and Tina Louise is basically doing a Marilyn impression. Fortunately the show allowed Ginger to develop her own, much less vacuous personality over time. But she lost that in the animated shows and reunion movies and became just a dumb starlet again.)

TNAoG didn't get Dawn Wells either; Jane Edwards played Mary Ann. But that was probably more a budget thing, the same reason Walter Koenig was dropped from TAS. Filmation's Mary Ann did look pretty much like Wells, as much as any of the caricatures looked like the actors. For the '82 sequel Gilligan's Planet, Dawn Wells played both Mary Ann and Ginger.

 

Well, platinum blonde represented by white.

And isn't it the case that Jane Webb and Jane Edwards were the same person?

 

Hmm. IMDb lists them separately, but Wikipedia says that Edwards was Webb's married name and that she played both characters. Not sure why Filmation would've billed her twice on the same show, though, given that it was pretty routine for most of their cast members to play multiple roles.

Ah, except I found the credits on YouTube, and, unusually for an animated show, it credits the entire cast in the opening titles, in the style of the original show. (Following the TAS precedent, I guess, but that was only three actors/characters while this is seven.) So I guess the fiction of Webb and Edwards being different people was employed to justify crediting Ginger and Mary Ann separately. Whereas on the Gilligan's Planet credits (holy cow), they swapped the positions of Ginger and the Professor so that both Dawn Wells characters could be billed consecutively.

Oh, now I'm going to have that theme music running through my head all day...

 

Look I'm going to show my ignorance here so forgive me. If Tina Louise could sue if they used her likeness as Ginger does that mean that every time they sell a TOS Kirk figurine, salt shaker, ninja turtle, Shatner gets a cut ? I didn't realise that - I thought that CBS got all the money. Or have I missed something?