^^Pretty certain they're not related.
Star Trek passings
- Thread starter keel
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Mary Mascari McDermott passed away Sept. 2020, age of 91. She played a number of background roles in Deep Space Nine and was a patient in ST IV.
By the way, I've quit listing here the minor background characters that had no character name and had just one role and weren't in the credits..... unless you want me to.
By the way, I've quit listing here the minor background characters that had no character name and had just one role and weren't in the credits..... unless you want me to.
I think she got credit for the background acting mention in her obit due to her having a role in ST IV.
Since just under 270 actors from the original series have passed away who had speaking parts that means it you have identified 70 extras or stunt people with no speaking lines as having passed away! That's pretty amazing. I didn't even really think there were that many background extras who had appeared. I figured they were the same couple dozen that showed up in episode after episode.
No stunt people unless they acted in a role. Many just had one non-speaking role as a guard, someone sitting at a table, walking by or dead, etc... No directors, producers, writers, electricians, construction workers either, tho I do include Gene Roddenberry. The odd thing is that not one episode of any series has had all the actors from a single episode pass away yet.
What about "THE CAGE"?
Going through the MA list of actors we have (this includes actors that don't fit this thread's narrow purview):
* Leonard Mudie (Survivor) - 1965
* Clegg Hoyt (Pitcairn) - 1967
* Anthony Jochim (Survivor) - 1968
* Jeffrey Hunter (Pike) - 1969
* Janos Prohaska (Bird/Ape) - 1974
* Joseph Mell (Trader) - 1977
* Jon Lormer (Haskins) - 1986
* Susan Oliver (Vina) - 1990
* John Hoyt (Boyce) - 1991
* Bob Johnson (Talosian/Pitcairn voice) - 1993
* Adam Roarke (Garison) - 1996
* Georgia Schmidt (Talosian) - 1997
* Serena Sande (Talosian) - 2001
* Meg Wyllie (Keeper) - 2002
* Michael Dugan (Kalar) - 2002
* Ed Madden (Fisher) - 2004
* Majel Barrett (Una) - 2008
* Malachi Throne (Keeper voice) - 2013
* Peter Duryea (Tyler) - 2013
* Leonard Nimoy (Spock) - 2015
* Robert Phillips (Space Officer) - 2018
* Felix Silla (Talosian) - 2021
* Laurel Goodwin (Colt) - still with us at 79 (only credited performer from The Cage)
* Carey Foster (Orion) - still with us at 77 (uncredited; scenes deleted)
* Sandra Gimpel (Talosian) - still with us at 82 (uncredited)
* Barker (Talosian) - unknown
* Bidwell (stand-in) - unknown
* Daniels (stand-in) - unknown
There are also twenty-five more performers (which may include the two above stand-ins) that we have no name or information for from The Cage.
That's great research! But random people standing in the background with no lines just to fill up a crowd scene or walk down a hallway? People whose first or last name is unknown? People follow actors. And people Mark milestones. The last actor from a series to die is always kind of sad and nostalgic. But if we're going to say that there are surviving cast members because they appeared in the background with no lines and we don't know who they are so we have to wait 100 years from the end of the show because they looked to be 20 years old at the time of the episode and the oldest living human is 120 years old so therefore sometime in 2066 we can declare that all the performers from the original series are dead? If I happen to outlive Laurel Goodwin I will sadly note the passing of the entire cast of the cage. I will not be waiting for somebody last name Barker to be identified and confirmed dead.
I wasn't making any judgments, but of the three known "survivors", which is all we should pay attention to, only one credited actress is with us (Goodwin), and one had her filmed scenes deleted (Foster), and you can make your own judgment on importance. All three were in their early 20s at time of filming. That's probably not the case with Barker (whoever he or she is) or many of the 25 unknowns, although there likely weren't any underage actors.
There was also the 'birdman', I think was played by Janos Prohaska, that was in a cage on Talos. You can't see him in 'The Menagerie' but can barely glimpse him in 'The Cage'. As for stand-ins, even if they performed a stunt, I don't recognize them as 'actors'. Others might, but for my purposes, I don't. ImdB or a few Star Trek sites I visit don't list Carey Foster. Interesting. I do list the 'actors' just walking thru a scene that have died, but as I said, that's for my purposes only. In my opinion, 'walking' is acting if they were hired for the job. In ST:IV, in San Francisco, they did pay pedestrians for having walked thru a scene far behind the actors but they weren't 'actors'. I don't recognize them for my purposes.
I only count the 401 actors that had featured speaking roles. Actually 400 actors with speaking roles and then Katherine Hays as Gem. Because clearly she's not an extra or a stand-in but a featured actor. Back when I started trying to identify every actor on the series there were literally dozens that had dropped out of sight. So it was hard enough to find actors who had speaking lines let alone those who had they had hired to walk down a corridor. But then with the IMDB and Memory Alpha and contributors on this site I was able to find the name of every actor who had a spoken line and had also appeared on screen. Now all these years later there are only 10 actors that have not been confirmed as living or deceased that have dropped off the radar. I am actually amazed that people can find the names of the background extras and keep track of them.
I listed Prohaska (who died in 1974) amongst my Cage actors timeline.
Since all nine Captains are still alive (Shatner, Stewart, Brooks, Mulgrew, Bakula, Pine, Martin-Green, Lewis, Mount), every Star Trek show and movie following The Cage has at least one living performer. The non-Captained episodes are few and far between (The Slaver Weapon and six out of ten Short Treks), and all coincidentally have living performers.
If something happens to Shatner, that might open up a few post-Cage episodes, but not many, because of Takei, Nichols, Koenig. But in ten-to-twenty years, we'll probably have a list of episodes started.
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