Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Happy Birthday to Grace Lee Whitney!

Happy Birthday to Grace Lee Whitney! As Janice Rand, she got a raw deal, unceremoniously booted to make room for other women in Kirk's life, but she will always be there in the earlier episodes for us to enjoy. Below, some nice photos showing the progression of her look; first, from before the series started, one of  a large number of promotional photos, this time in a costume left over from "The Cage" and featuring her with her long blonde hair let down.  View some of the earlier posts featuring Grace here, as there are more good photos.
(Click on images to enlarge; once open, you may have to click on it again to view full size.)

And below, Grace as Rand as we saw her in the series, basket weave intact. Saucy!
 

Below, a headshot from "The Motion Picture."

Bonus #2: Below, from Starlog, a hilarious cartoon that looks at one of the most out-of-character moments for Spock in the entire series. At the end of the great episode "The Enemy Within," Spock, while signing off on a report for Janice Rand, says the line below with an uncharacteristically creepy leer. I know the episode was an early effort, when not all the characters were nailed down yet, but the line is something that would have been unsavory coming from anyone, much less Spock. Even coming from Kirk himself it would have been weird, if not completely unexpected. But Spock? It's like he was mentioning the unpleasantness in such a slimy way in order to see if he could get in on some of that action himself. Not cool.

2 comments:

Ye Olde Time Trekkie said...

Re Creepy Spock:

Not really. These were the days of Women's Lib, not Feminism as it's understood today.

Read "Star Trek Lives" or the first, awful Shatner biography to get an idea of the sex fantasies of the time. "star Trek Lives", which I read as a preadolescent boy, made much hay about female rape fantasies. It would be several decades before I could figure out what that even meant, let alone understand it.

So Spock was actually pushing the limits of the day. Call him "edgy".

There was another saying I remember from back then, vaguely, that might add to it: "you can't rape the willing".

It was a different time, indeed.

Frederick said...

OTT,
Thanks for commenting, and shedding a somewhat different light on it! I still can't see it as any other way than a bit slimy and out of character, but you may be right in that at the time it was no big deal!