• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Star Trek passings

Oh no! What sad news to wake up to. He was such an inspiring person and I‘m glad he got to be part of Star Trek. May he now rest in peace. :(

Someone should start a dedicated thread in the Discovery forum about this.
 
Very sad to hear of Kenneth Mitchell's passing. He was one of those actors who could put in a great performance even with tons of makeup covering his face. Such a cruel disease :(
RIP
 
I wonder if he ever felt like he just missed the fame of being a Trek regular. Those lines they wrote for him in Catspaw -- "credits to navy beans", etc. and giving Chekov a hard time didn't endear him to the fans.
 
I wonder if he ever felt like he just missed the fame of being a Trek regular. Those lines they wrote for him in Catspaw -- "credits to navy beans", etc. and giving Chekov a hard time didn't endear him to the fans.

I recall him calling Chekov ''mister'' once or twice, which is arguably better than just ''Chekov.'' If he was hard on the fella, Kirk certainly had him beat on that score.

I wonder how they would have developed the character, had he stuck around. What niche would he fill?

Trelane froze him when he tried to act up. It's something Worf would often regret whenever he rushed aliens on the bridge. So I suppose DeSalle could have become the retroactive ''flipper'' of TOS. In TNG, it's usually Worf.

That's what security guards are seemingly for in TREK.....to make the superior officers look good.
 
They're also there to get their asses totally beaten to convey a sense of dread and jeopardy to the audience. We're meant to think, "Holy shit! That alien just kicked Worf's ass - he must be really powerful!"

Unfortunately, such plot devices were nearly always misused, forgotten about or rolled-back in Trek. Two cases in point:
  • The Borg were initially called a "force of nature" and super-scary, only to be whittled down in later episodes.
  • The Jem'Hadar's suicide run that took out the Galaxy-class USS Odyssey (DS9: "The Search - pt.1") was designed to shock us into realizing how extremely dangerous the Dominion was, but then we see those same JH bug ships getting easily swatted down by Klingon BOP's and Federation Peregrine fighters in later episodes.
The baddies always get totally Nerfed in order for the heroes to ultimately win.
 
Last edited:
I wonder if he ever felt like he just missed the fame of being a Trek regular. Those lines they wrote for him in Catspaw -- "credits to navy beans", etc. and giving Chekov a hard time didn't endear him to the fans.
According to Memory Alpha (which at the moment still lists him as alive) Barrier later became a Coast Guard officer. When asked if he was a fan, he replied "he doesn't watch reruns on TV, and he's only seen two of the Star Trek movies – and he can't recall which two."
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Michael_Barrier
 
It would be a crazy and pointless hoax if it turned out to be fake -- but stranger things have happed. He is/was 90 and his dad died at 57.
 
Wait... a.guy whose most famous line is "credits to navy beans" later became a Lt. In the Coast Guard? Maybe he ad libbed that line!
 
There have been many faked Trek deaths reported both here and elsewhere over the years.
 
I recall one for Antoinette Bower from over twenty years ago that was, to my recollection, never countered. I in fact thought she was deceased until the announcement of her demise in this thread last year shocked me.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top