"Shore Leave"...was Ruth Mitchell's blond lab assistant?

Kirk was pretty massively into the attentions of "Ruth" in this episode. I'd always thought the "lab assistant" Mitchell had referred to in WNMHGB was probably Carol Marcus, but after re-seeing this ep, Kirk seems massively into someone from about 15 years back in his past named Ruth....

Just a stray thought!

 

I doubt Ruth was a lab assistant. Kirk was seeing her as she was 15 years before, and the actress was 32 at the time and looked it. She was pretty clearly an "older woman." One would expect a lab assistant at the Academy to be closer to Kirk's age. Maybe Ruth was more of a "Mrs. Robinson" type.

FWIW, Bibi Besch was about 9 years younger than Shatner, which would make Carol too young to have been the lab assistant if she was the same age as the actress. But it's possible Carol was older. Picard was a full decade older than Patrick Stewart, and Chekov was 9 years younger than Walter Koenig during TOS.

 

Besch was an actress and was certainly playing a character older than her years...by at least a decade or so. Which is why I was a bit surprised she wasn't involved in SOME way with ST:3,4,+. But it works, I suppose, just as well without her.

Still...it's fun to retcon the Gary Mitchell lab assistant line.

 

I should also point out that McCoy's "accompaniment" (the two girls with him when he reveals he's still alive) showed off their NAVELS!

That was SO inappropriate at the time...yet they let it through. What's up with that?!?

 

I think your avatar could be any straight male's "little blonde lab assistant."

Sorry, had a Shatmandu moment, there.

Sir Rhosis

 

(Sorry--trying to fend off the women with hot dudes avatars in the MISC forum...otherwise it would be a cartoon or a pic of Kryton from Red Dwarf.)

 

Mmmmm. Yeoman Barrows.

 

No.

 

Coo, coo, ca-choo, Mrs Robinson
"Joltin' Joe has left and gone away"

 

Even though there is no strong onscreen evidence for it, I still think that it could have been Carol.

 

Only if that straight male likes silicone. Or women with chronic back pain.

 

Hypothetically speaking, maybe an actress' "skill" on the casting couch was a more important consideration than getting someone who better fit the role.

 

Hmmmm, "silicone avatar", now WHERE have I heard THAT before?

 

Huh? You could've fooled me.

But I don't think Ruth was the lab assistant either. Mainly because you don't "almost marry" someone and retain almost adolescent romantic feelings for them years later. That, and I doubt Kirk was a Lieutenant teaching classes at the academy at 18.

Carol is a far less unlikely choice. Kirk must've fathered David in his mid- to late twenties, which is not irreconcilable with a position at the academy.

 

I like the theory that the lab assistant was Carol Marcus. In my mind the "I almost married her!" line fits well with them having had a child together.

But his subconscious summoning of Ruth on the SL planet tells me that Ruth, not Carol, is the woman Kirk most regrets leaving behind.

 

Well, one could argue that losing her son might be enough punishment.

 

I don't get that - he had to DIE because he cheated on an experiment?! Strange Hollywood thinking.

 

^^^
Hrrmmmrrmm, I'm not edumakated or anything, but I believe writers refer to this as "the law of consequences" or something. I think it's an old Greek thing? You know... "what ye sow ye shall reap."