Fact-Checking Inside Star Trek: The Real Story

I'm sorry, but I can't buy that's not a real cleft on the Isis actress' chin. Why would they bother taking the time to give her a fake chin cleft for such a brief shot? It's not like chin clefts are particularly catlike.

 

Babcock took home $200 for 1 day of work on February 15, 1967 for her "Assignment: Earth" voice work, well after photography had wrapped. Filming a live action role would have meant an extra day of work several weeks prior; it's unlikely she would have done this for free or that it would have not been reflected on the cast sheet.

 

Hmm. I was sure we had this solved, but perhaps the mystery remains.

 

No, we don't. There are three distinct angles on Isis in the scene -- a long shot from the front, a close-up from the same angle, and a fairly wide profile view that ends with her turning her face toward the camera.

 

Hmmm. The chin cleft is a lot more subtle in this shot, but I still don't think she looks much like Babcock. Sorry, Greg.

 

Yes, well said. There are a lot of obvious errors in Cushman, but I count this forum very lucky that Harvey had been working with the archival material himself and could show how bad some of the primary-source stuff really is. One recent poster was going to present a paper at an academic conference, and he posted a Cushman quote here, and sure enough there was an error in it (though not Star trek related). The more scrutiny the better.

Her union would have made sure of that, I'd imagine.

It's obviously not Barbara Babcock, anyway, "Isis" has a more square jawline and their profiles are way different. It looks about as much like Babcock as it does Vetri.

 

Hmm. We missed those photos before. The resemblance isn't quite as compelling there to be sure.

 

I don't see her like Barbara Babcock sorry!
JB

 

Would a cameo not be a step down for someone who had a feature speaking role earlier?

 

Hold on: Allan Asherman's The Star Trek Compendium (first edition) says something different:


I don't think Barbara Babcock played Human Isis, but your date is off.

Also, I wonder why "A:E" had a split filming schedule, assuming the book is right.

 

Maybe they shot some pickups later on? I know that was the case with "Mirror, Mirror." Barbara Luna had a cold during the regular filming so they shot her romantic scenes with William Shatner a few weeks later after she'd gotten better.

 

The voice over work was recorded after filming had wrapped. Asherman is wrong about the filming schedule; the episode was shot in early January and it wrapped on January 10, 1968.

 

Okay. It's just that you had it as 1967, which was clearly a typo.

 

The latter being in reference to the former, for clarity's sake.

 

Oh! Oops!

 

This shouldn't be that difficult. Somebody must have gotten paid for that shot. Even extras get paychecks.

 

Plus, I imagine there would have been a costume fitting, etc., since it looks like a Theiss creation and not something they found in the wardrobe department. But maybe he was able to generate something close enough they were able to pin the actress into on the day of the shoot...

 

New post this morning:

https://startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com/2016/05/on-credits-and-creators-star-treks.html

 

Interesting piece. I posted a comment on it earlier, but I'll repeat the question here: How did they work out the disagreement with the Director's Guild in order to restore Roddenberry's creator credit in seasons 2-3 (and TAS)? Indeed, all the later Trek series included creator credits in their opening titles, and I think most modern TV series in general do so as well.

 

By moving the writer and director credits up to the opening of Act 1.

Neil