Born as
Gregory Ray Stone in Los Angeles, California, he was raised in Long Beach, California. Earlier, Stone worked as broadcaster on the Long Beach radio station KLON on which he hosted the show
Stone Trek, a show about the 1960s music. Stone started to work as an actor but soon moved over to the special effects department where he got his first job on
The Next Generation in 1987.
In 1990 Stone became embroiled in an incident that has resulted in the hardening stance of the studio, already wary of doing so, of hiring
fans as production staffers, as then makeup artist
Doug Drexler and
stand-in performer
Guy Vardaman recalled in the
Trek Radio Q&A interview session of 22 January 2011: "[Drexler:]
They also had serious problems, like, I remember there was a videotape that was made by, I am not going to mention any names, of someone who snuck onto the stage wearing a Starfleet uniform, and took videos of himself and going through the sets and giving a tour of the ship. [Vardaman:]
And breaking the clam shell in sickbay and messed up our shooting schedule the next day, do you remember that? [Drexler:]
Yeah, yes I remember, and that, that really set the precedent." [X]
wbm Stone was already known for quite some time in the
Star Trek fan community, despite Drexler's hesitation to divulge names, as his video, in which he identified himself, had, on and off, been circulating on the internet for years.
[1] Stone, having also been involved in leaking behind-the-scenes information the year previously (some of which published in
The 24th Century Technical Manual), has not been working for the studio since.
Do we think Paramount beefed up security after this incident?
