Your mom was in one of the best Trek's, one of the best Outer Limits, and one of the best sitcoms. That's pretty damn cool.

If you don't mind my being a bit nosy, is she Jewish? It would add a bit to the Star Trek Vulcan Jewish wedding, it would add a bit to the Hogan Heroes Jewish Legacy, and it would explain the role of the schmata.

an MILF thread on Fark.com within the hour.

Amok Time was definitely one of my favorite Star Trek episodes, and the moment when Spock's stoic facade breaks on his discovery that Kirk is alive after all is a major reason for that. The exotic loveliness of Arlene Martel as T'Pring was another. It's amazing how one supporting role in one episode of a TV series is still having such an impact on her life all these years later.

"Amok Time" is one of the better Star Trek episodes because it was written by one of the best science fiction writers, then or now, Theodore Sturgeon. He also wrote "Shore Leave" which isn't as good but is still fun. One of the strengths of Star Trek was the writing by guest sf authors. I'm still amused that Sturgeon, who wrote brilliant sf for decades, may best be remembered for the phrase, "Live long and prosper."

heh. Vulcans are hawt

A "schmata" is not a person; it's an article of clothing. An unappealing article of clothing, generally. There's your Yiddush lesson for today.

every now and then, when I'm beginning to wonder whether subscribing to salon for king kaufman and cary tennis is worth it, i get a morning like this one, with an excellent article by garrison keilor, and then this one.

this isn't an article I'd email to anyone, or even remark about at work, but it was so delightful to read and so true to life.

i sound like my grandmother. anyhow, thanks.

matthew

Really, this article should be prefaced by a spoiler alert.

Wow; I see the story of your family as Ad Fab meets Happy Days (James Dean instead of the Fonze - think about it). Please wite the site com now and maybe I will get to see it on cable in the UK in five years time.

Two elements of this article gave me reason to harrumph; unfortunately, both reveal the element of Star Trek geekiness that lies within.

The first is Jod's dismissal of Grace Lee Whitney with, "It seems that anyone who has even remote ties to the show has a table full of photos and a cash box."

Grace was a presence in many of the original series' first season episodes, as well as a featured player in five of the feature films. In fact, as a regular cast member, her ties to the show are a great deal more substantial than "one-offs" such as Jod's mother.

The second is the elevation of the episode "Amok Time" as if it represented a high point in the series. While it added significantly to the whole Vulcan mythos, it also contained one of the series' absolute low points: the shrugging off of the unthinkable third-act calamity -- the Death of Captain James T. Kirk -- with a single line: "That was no tri-ox compound Bones shot me with, it was a neural paralyzer. Simulates death." Chuckles all around, group hug, fade to black.

That's the quintessential cheap ploy that helps give science fiction a black eye. Embarrassing.

What's the difference between Trekkers and Trekkies? People who call themselves Trekkers don't like the word Trekkie. A lot of the rest of us just call ourselves Star Trek fans. Hell, I like old movies, too, but I don't call myself an old mover.

As for the article, I was curious about the author's experiences being the son of a minor celeb, but instead we got the usual "look at all the geeks and freaks at the Star Trek convention" piece. Not news, not insightful.

.....instead of being the son of the actress who played T'Pring, your father could have been Charles Manson or John Wayne Gacy. Please go with the flow, embrace the genial lunacy of the Star Trek fan universe, and, may you live long and prosper.

What a nice surprise this AM to see a picture of my favorite Vulcan on Salon's homepage. Quite unexpected.

As someone correctly noted, Arlene Martell did a lot of TV both before and after playing T'Pring, so it's misleading to refer to her as a "one spot" actress. I remember her fondly from "Hogan's Heroes", where she appeared a numerous of times in a repeating role as a beautiful spy. I can recall glimpsing her in many other supporting roles over the years -- I imagine the excellent site IMDb.com (Internet Movie Database) would catalogue these very precisely.

It's a little hard to guess why some characters in long running series or beloved films capture the imagination. I have read that the most popular character in the whole Star Wars series is not Yoda or Luke or Han Solo or even Darth Vader....but Bobba Fett, the bounty hunter. I don't know that this kind of thing can be fully explained, but I believe that some characters and the actors who play them have a quality that suggests a backstory, perhaps a whole world of imaginative possibilities, that transcend the actual story or the role (which might be only a few sentences).

Ms. Martell's portrayal of T'Pring fits this descrption. I doubt she has more than five lines in the episode, maybe less. As a lifelong Trekkie, I love this episode for showing fans their first glimpse of the planet Vulcan, but as an adult viewer I concur with the poster who says that it's not that great a script actually -- it relies entirely on false emotions and trickery (Dr. McCoy's "secret shot" -- I guess he carries around neural paralyzer in his med kit just for these occurances!) rather than good writing or character development. The plot theme that if you will actually die if you don't have sex at puberty is inadvertently rather hilarious, not to mention that by the end of the episode, this is entirely forgotten.

So we come back to "why is this so beloved", and I think it's two things: Ms. Martell's extraordinary beauty, highlighted to the nth degree by some really outstanding makeup (she literally glistens like a pearl), hair and costume design. She's really the ultimate Space Babe, has a beautiful speaking voice and although she doesn't do that much, her whole persona shouts "I can kick your ass at chess or science or anything else you can think of".

The other factor was Celia Lovsky as T'Pau, in a much larger role as the legendary Vulcan ruler. I wonder why Vulcan never caught on as a psuedo-language the way Klingon did -- Ms. Lovksy made it seem absolutely natural and believable, down to her accent. No other episode of the series (even later, more expensively produced sequels and theatrical films), captured the exotic, interplanetary feel of "Amok Time".

So maybe some of the mystique of this episode is that its dominated by strong, enigmatic female characters -- not so typical for Star Trek, which was not nearly as pro-feminist as we like to think, and most of the female guest stars in the original series are barely window dressing.

Anyways, despite its flaws, this has persisted very fondly in my imagination (definitely for different reasons than the male geek fans) over the almost 4 decades that have passed. And I am glad that Ms. Martell is able to derive some long term financial benefit from this little blip on her resume after so much time -- it's the very least she deserves for giving so many people so much pleasure over the years.