Dagger of the Mind - What was Dr. Adam's Plan ?

[Pauln6]

And had this character received the Kelley treatment originally, her not being included in the main credits as an "actual" lead, the illusion of Roddenberry's casting being dictated from above could have been maintained, too.

Alternately, Kirk's contacts with alien civilizations might have called for a Contacts Officer of some sort, allowing the female de facto lead to be a guest star rather than a regular. Not every adventure would need involve inspired debates about cultural clashes... but the audience might come to look forward to those.

Timo Saloniemi

TOS had a habit of only using guest female crew if they wanted a love interest, with a few exceptions (mostly yeomen of the week and Masters, whose love interest role was removed as being too similar to the plot of Space Seed).

Both Carolyn Palamis and Ann Mulhall were in roles that could easily have been recurring. There are tons of episodes with weird alien life forms or strange civilisations. They could easily have appeared in four episodes per season each. Even Chapel could have stepped up as a trained exobiologist if they hadn't been so intent on making Spock such a Mary Sue.

Ann Mulhall could have filled a functional role with the right level of gumption. She was also the same rank as McCoy and, weirdly, also an engineer, apparently. That's a lot to work with.

 

[Henoch]

Ann Mulhall could have filled a functional role with the right level of gumption. She was also the same rank as McCoy and, weirdly, also an engineer, apparently. That's a lot to work with.

Scotty replacement? Not my Scotty!

 

[Pauln6]

Scotty replacement? Not my Scotty!

Erm, she's a woman; her job would have been to repeat the computer and say, "But Mr Scott, surely you don't think that you can... [insert exposition or sixties mild technobabble]". To which Scotty would reply, "Aye lass, that's exactly what I mean to do."

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Even Chapel could have stepped up as a trained exobiologist if they hadn't been so intent on making Spock such a Mary Sue.

If fan mail (from both sexes) was any indication, the audience wanted to see Leonard Nimoy a lot more than they wanted to see Majel Barrett. Nimoy was far more talented at that point in their careers.

And if you're already paying Nimoy a star salary that he is going to receive whether he's in one scene or twenty, you might as well feature him and give him the material. Even if he isn't sleeping with the boss.

 

[Pauln6]

If fan mail (from both sexes) was any indication, the audience wanted to see Leonard Nimoy a lot more than they wanted to see Majel Barrett. Nimoy was far more talented at that point in their careers.

And if you're already paying Nimoy a star salary that he is going to receive whether he's in one scene or twenty, you might as well feature him and give him the material. Even if he isn't sleeping with the boss.

Yeah, it seems like a good idea and yet some episodes that just feature the Big 3 predominately are weaker. Sometimes, the stars shine brighter alongside characters they don't often interact with. That said, I expect there was concern about making Chapel too noticeable given what happened the first time ;-p. I'm fairly sure that there was a degree of paranoia among the stars too about encouraging other actors to be too prominent, especially after the female lead was fired in season one.

 

[johnnybear]

It's still odd to me that Chapel only appears in three episodes of season one! But upon seeing her again in the final episode of said season she has brown hair!!! And yet in her second it's mentioned that she's staying with the ship and we hardly ever see her!!! She's almost like a DeSalle or Garrovick character, in that we know they're here but we never see them!
JB

 

[Pauln6]

TNG also had two tier recurring guest stars, those who appear once or twice per season and get a chunk of the story and those who are just around a lot but do little. You see that as O'Brien becomes popular, he appears less but does more. Ro was one exception.

 

[Henoch]

TNG also had two tier recurring guest stars, those who appear once or twice per season and get a chunk of the story and those who are just around a lot but do little. You see that as O'Brien becomes popular, he appears less but does more. Ro was one exception.

Reginald Barclay, too.

 

[johnnybear]

Ensign Robin Lefler anyone? Or even the Scotty clone of season one, Chief Argyle?
JB

 

[DonIago]

IIRC there's a Trek novel that at one point sorta bashes the revolving door of engineers in S1, implying or outright stating that none of them were up to snuff, and I admit my first thought was "Argyle seemed alright to me..."

 

[Pauln6]

IIRC there's a Trek novel that at one point sorta bashes the revolving door of engineers in S1, implying or outright stating that none of them were up to snuff, and I admit my first thought was "Argyle seemed alright to me..."

Like the TOS security chief?

 

[DonIago]

That ship was so secure there was no need for a securit....

Man, I was so close to getting it all out....

 

[johnnybear]

TOS had a different security chief each season! Lt.Giotto in season one, Lt.David Garrovick sometime in season two and Lt.Stan Laure..oops, Dickerson in season three! Just before he threw a loaded shoe at Scotty anyway!
JB

 

[DonIago]

Loaded shoes can be deadly!

Especially if you load them with a phaser set to overload.

 

[Timo]

Garrovick really is the odd man out. A mere Ensign, in command of nothing but other Ensigns or crewmen, and yet apparently Kirk's go-to man on matters gunslinging.

But his actual title was "the security duty officer", which really ought to be different from Chief of Security functionally. For an insight into Starfleet terminology here, the ship has "section duty officers" on each deck in "Enemy Within", and the "duty officer" on the bridge is told to make note of Kirk's decision to take the training ship to Regula in ST2:TWoK.

ITRW, a duty officer really is but a rotating side job for administrative purposes. Garrovick would be the man who got the short stick within Security Department that day, having to liaison with the skipper on the issue of setting up teams to go for Kirk's wild gas hunt. Why Kirk asked for the duty officer rather than for his Security Chief, we can't readily tell. It's not as if the Chief would have been busy with something more important, or beneath the job of organizing his men for rather massive combat action.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Pauln6]

Garrovick really is the odd man out. A mere Ensign, in command of nothing but other Ensigns or crewmen, and yet apparently Kirk's go-to man on matters gunslinging.

But his actual title was "the security duty officer", which really ought to be different from Chief of Security functionally. For an insight into Starfleet terminology here, the ship has "section duty officers" on each deck in "Enemy Within", and the "duty officer" on the bridge is told to make note of Kirk's decision to take the training ship to Regula in ST2:TWoK.

ITRW, a duty officer really is but a rotating side job for administrative purposes. Garrovick would be the man who got the short stick within Security Department that day, having to liaison with the skipper on the issue of setting up teams to go for Kirk's wild gas hunt. Why Kirk asked for the duty officer rather than for his Security Chief, we can't readily tell. It's not as if the Chief would have been busy with something more important, or beneath the job of organizing his men for rather massive combat action.

Timo Saloniemi

Giotto was a Lt Commander? Garrovick as an ensign is clearly just the officer on duty that shift. Most security guards would not be officers (although the Apple might disagree). Oddly, if I recall, in Devil itD, the senior security officers stuck together and left the crewmen to get killed.

In the original draft of City otEoF, Rand took charge of the security team, most probably as she was a petty officer and they were crewmen.

 

[Henoch]

Why Kirk asked for the duty officer rather than for his Security Chief, we can't readily tell.

GARROVICK: Ensign Garrovick reporting, sir.
KIRK: Are you the new security officer?
GARROVICK: Yes, sir.
KIRK: Was your father
GARROVICK: Yes, sir, but I don't expect any special treatment on that account.
KIRK: You'll get none aboard this ship, Mister.
GARROVICK: Yes, sir.
UHURA: Captain, I have a report on Ensign Rizzo. He's dead, sir.
KIRK: You knew Rizzo?
GARROVICK: Yes, sir. We were good friends, graduated the Academy together.
KIRK: You'll get a crack at what killed him. Interested?
GARROVICK: Yes, I am, sir.
KIRK: I want four men armed with phaser two set for disrupter effect. Join me in the transporter room in five minutes. You'll accompany me to the planet surface.
GARROVICK: Yes, sir.

First, Kirk requested the duty security officer probably to relay orders to the security department to set up a special away team. When Kirk realized who Garrovick was, Kirk changed his plans on the spot. Kirk thought that Garrovick would like to get a crack at same monster that killed his father and his good friend, so, he put him in charge of the team. Revenge is one of the best motivators. Plus Kirk is giving Garrovick personal on-the-job training and a chance to distinguish himself.

 

[Qonundrum]

If fan mail (from both sexes) was any indication, the audience wanted to see Leonard Nimoy a lot more than they wanted to see Majel Barrett. Nimoy was far more talented at that point in their careers.

And if you're already paying Nimoy a star salary that he is going to receive whether he's in one scene or twenty, you might as well feature him and give him the material. Even if he isn't sleeping with the boss.

People did "Grok Spock" - the fan mail, of which there was a lot as I recall reading about from various autobiographies and magazine interviews, pretty much had 4 recipients: Shatner, Nimoy, Kelley, and Nichols. As for Spock, a perfect blend of scripting and acting - in a time when the same people who loathed "the guy with the pointed ears" from the original pilot loathed showing women in positions of command or intellect, as feedback from "The Cage" quickly proved. TBH, I'd rather see more of Majel's "Number One" in episodes from 1964 had "The Cage" been green-lit for a full series than pining away and wanting to get inside Spock's commanding trousers during every sweeps episode. Naked Time, Amok Time, and others show Chapel's most defining trait of pining away to get busy with emotionless Spock and it's silly. It's great TMP has her promoted to Doctor, even if McCoy is bleating about that on top of everything else as he's going on and on about disliking how engineers looooove to change things... though in McCoy's case it's not about the promotion that irked him, it's about him having to find a new highly qualified person to work as Nurse as a result of this promotional-based change.

 

[Christopher]

in a time when the same people who loathed "the guy with the pointed ears" from the original pilot loathed showing women in positions of command or intellect, as feedback from "The Cage" quickly proved.

According to Inside Star Trek by Solow and Justman, the NBC suits actually loved the idea of a strong female second-in-command; they just objected to Roddenberry's nepotism in casting his mistress in the role rather than a more experienced actress (I believe Lee Meriwether and Jeanne Bal were considered for the role, and the former would've been fantastic). But Roddenberry couldn't admit to that, so he claimed he was ordered to drop the character due to network sexism. He always liked to paint the network as the bad guys.

 

[DonIago]

^I never heard this one before.

It's sad that the more you learn about GR over time the more you...well...realize he was at least as flawed a human being as anyone else.