Rand as First Officer, Spock as (only a) Science Officer?

Agreed. I wouldn't say this if she were alive and reading us, but Grace was never an accomplished actress. And it seems to me she got worse as time went on, with her final performance on ST: VOY being a complete embarrassment. I'd blame off-camera life stressors and a lack of commitment to the craft. Stardom just wasn't in the cards for her.

Re: your other picks, I would endorse Lee Meriwether and Sally Kellerman. Kellerman was much better suited as a heroine on Star Trek than she was as the butt of jokes in M*A*S*H. If the TOS staff would have allowed it (and GR definitely would not, after the way he gaslighted Majel and had to keep her in the dark about her failure), Kellerman would have been exceptional in a strong, no-nonsense leadership role.

My sense is that Julie Newmar would not have taken well to a job like this, she would have disliked it as a "mannish" part and quit. And I think the sensational Bond Girls Diana Rigg and Honor Blackman were beyond Star Trek's reach.

But again, it was never going to happen because GR had to maintain the fiction that NBC forbad women in command.

 

Yeah. That's the trouble with lying as much GR did. You have to keep lying to maintain the original lie. But considering that this lie gave us Leonard Nimoy in a more prominent role as Spock, I can't quibble with the results too much.

On the tangent I inadvertently started on a world without TOS, I can think of another real world consequence of there being no Star Trek: Several astronauts wouldn't have entered into NASA without Nichelle Nichols' recruiting efforts, including Mae Jemison, Sally Ride, and a couple of the astronauts who ultimately died in the Challenger explosion.

Shatner I feel probably would have landed another TV series before too long. He was a popular and in demand actor at the time. Nimoy and Kelley would've kept working steadily I'm sure, but they maybe wouldn't have found the right breakout roles. Doohan, Takei, Nichols, and Koenig... Who knows?

I wonder what Roddenberry's career would've been if he didn't spend the rest of his years chasing the cult hit he had with Star Trek. I don't know if there's enough information to even speculate.

 

That wasn't Shatner's fault. He got the best shit, everybody else got to replay Airplane 1.

 

I don't think one can fairly judge Grace's abilities on the basis of Trek and her very limited part. It's too bad Roddenberry's Police Story pilot (1965, I think, albeit I see mentions of if from 1967 which may be when it aired...if it ever aired)—which featured Grace and De—had never surfaced because the story goes that it was her performance as Sgt. Lilly Monroe that landed her the role of Rand. It starred future Garth, Steve Inhat as Captain James Paige.


Roddenberry's The Lieutenant is not a good show. @Harvey has been suffering through it, and I was never impressed by the episodes I saw.

I don't have what I consider reliable documentation handy, while I know Roddenberry wrote and produced a number of other pilots before Star Trek I'm not entirely clear which were his creations, what were works for hire, etc. But they included:

• 333 Montgomery (1960), an OK pilot with De in the lead (sadly the copy that used top be on YouTube is long gone).
• A.P.O. 923 (1962)
• Defiance County (aka Ty Cooper) (1962) <—which looks like a 333 reboot
• The Wild Blue (1962) for CBS

 

I think Grace's performance is fine Trek. Her characterisation is all over the place due to uneven writing. After she was fired, she started drinking and burned her acting bridges so by the time of her later appearances she was a singer, not an actor and she'd suffered a stroke by Voyager so you can't really compare.

However, I don't see her as possessing a commanding presence. She sparkles, she doesn't command the screen.

 

What off-screen problems? The only problems I've ever heard of Grace Lee Whitney having came after she was sexually assaulted by a member of the production team and then fired from the show.

 

In her autobiography she confirmed that she used to drink heavily at weekends and that used to interact with the diet pills prescribed by her doctor. In essence, she suffered from a puffy face in some scenes.

I think many people claim that she had more serious problems during her Trek tenure. She drank too much but fell into full blown alcoholism as a consequence of being fired, although she also went through a weed smoking phase too. Her autobiography is so honest, there is no reason to believe she would underplay her problems on the show.

 

Thanks. I never read it so I didn't know she had alcohol problems prior to leaving the show.

 

I think Nimoy was an alcoholic too although I'm not sure when that took hold.

 

De Kelley bellowing, "YES, I WANT FINGERPRINTS!!!" is incredible.

 

De Kelley sure do like ‘dem cowboy duds.

 

Well, the other guy must have been an idiot who needed to be told the obvious.

 

That idea about her being the head of enlisted staff is a great idea (maybe more so if the show had been less episodic) - she could butt heads with Kirk over his lack of understanding of what it's like to not be an officer.

 

Well... the 1967 writers/directors guide downplayed overtly militaristic aspects and said, "we are not aware of "officers" and "enlisted men" categories."

Kor

 

TNG did fine having the first officer removed from any of the specific ship departments.

Plenty of people wonder what TNG would have been like had Picard died in BoBW and Riker assumed command with Shelby as his XO. This suggestion has that same vibe. I'm really intrigued by the concept.

It does alter the dynamic of the Logic (Spock) balanced with the Emotion (McCoy) and Kirk in the middle fusing the two. I'm trying to see what 3rd perspective Rand could have brought. Typically a 3 way scales or balance wasn't portrayed.

 

Had Picard "died", aka Stewart left the show, they would have probably hired someone of the same caliber to take his place. I doubt they would have continued with Frakes as the head honcho.

 

In that case, why did they not keep Shelby in the show?

 

CPO Rand, I like it. Highest ranking NCO on the ship, looking out for the grunts but always having the Captain’s back.