Doctor Who; Spock from
Star Trek; the Crystal Gems in
Steven Universe; Valkyrie, Gamora, and Nebula from the Marvel Cinematic Universe … our most beloved characters often come from other worlds, even if they’re recognizably played by human actors.
Alien characters don’t just entertain us with their strange and unfamiliar ways — they also reflect our humanity back to us. Science fiction is all about exploring what it means to be human, and we can do that more easily by comparing ourselves against the alien characters we love or hate. This works a couple of different ways for writers:
You can create alien characters who act human in many ways, except for a few major differences — and those differences can provide a contrast that reveals something about that human-seeming behavior.
ST:ENT was seemingly finding its footing with engaging story lines, the plug was pulled.
Star Trek producer Rick Berman pointed to “franchise fatigue” as the reason for a drop in viewership. Actor Connor Trinneer, who played the chief engineer Trip on the show, cited poor scheduling by the UPN network and the departure of a corporate supporter in 2001 as leading to the show’s eventual demise with the final episode airing in May 2005.
An attempt was made to resurrect the
ST:TOS brand in 2009 — same characters but played by different actors. The movie
Star Trek was highly successful at the box office. This can be attributed to pent-up demand from long-time Trekkies, interest from sci-fi aficionados, as well as good promotion that attracted younger, curious fans. However, the writers, director, and producers had not captured the essence of
Nathan Jung dead: Star Trek and The A-Team actor dies aged 74
Nathan Jung, who appeared in Star Trek: The Original Series and famous The A-Team has died aged 74, after a long life filled with iconic roles throughout the decades
Updated
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Nathan Jung, who appeared in Star Trek, The A-Team, and Starsky & Hutch has died aged 74.
Stardate: 4040.7
Enterprise has found debris that appears to be the remains of the
S.S. Beagle, which has been missing for six years. Spock detects no bodies, so it’s possible the crew got to safety somewhere. Chekov computes the drift pattern of the debris and Spock traces it to the fourth planet of system 892.
The
Beagle‘s shipmaster was R.M. Merik, who went to the Academy with Kirk, but who washed out in his fifth year and went into the merchant service.
The planet in question is Class M, appears to be early-to-mid-twentieth century equivalent in terms of technological development. Uhura is picking up amplitude and frequency modulations (AM/FM radio!), as well as TV broadcasts (she refers to it as something that used to be called “video,” and Spock pedantically corrects her by saying it was usually referred to as “television”). She picks up a news report of treasonous behavior among slaves, who are taken away and arrested. The sports report shows gladiatorial arena combat. The announcer mentions a bout in which a barbarian named William Harrison was killed, and Spock comments that Harrison was a member of the