August 19: Happy Birthday Jonathan Frakes, Gene Roddenberry & Diana Muldaur

[TMC]

https://lebeauleblog.com/2017/08/19/...e-roddenberry/

Today is proclaimed to be Star Trek Day here in the birthday series. We have, in fact, three Star Trek birthdays today. I was able to track down a handful of photos of our headliners together, of which this one, taken when Roddenberry visited the set of the TNG episode “Future Imperfect,” appears to be the best, even with Number One not facing the camera.

Jonathan Frakes is celebrating his 65th birthday. He graduated from Penn State, and one of his first performing experiences was as a Captain—he worked for Marvel and appeared in costume as Captain America at fan conventions of the 1970s. Beginning in the late 1970s he started getting regular guest roles on television series like Charlie’s Angels, The Waltons, Hart to Hart, and Quincy, M.E. More recently he has worked primarily as a director. He has directed the feature films Clockstoppers and Thunderbirds, but has done most of his work on television. He was an executive producer of Roswell and directed several episodes of the sci-fi teen drama. He has done a lot of work on Leverage, Burn Notice, and NCIS: Los Angeles, and was a producer for The Librarians as well as directing several epsiodes.

However, he is best known for his work with Star Trek. Frakes has appeared in four of the five Star Trek series (all but the original) as either Commander William Riker, or as his transporter-malfunction-created clone, Thomas Riker—most significantly, of course, as one of the stars of Star Trek: The Next Generation. He began directing on TNG, and also directed episodes of Deep Space Nine and Voyager, and is scheduled to direct at least one first-season episode of Star Trek: Discovery. And he directed Star Trek: First Contact, generally considered the best of the TNG-related films, and Star Trek: Insurrection, which is—not the worst.


Gene Roddenberry (1921-1991) was the son of a Los Angeles police officer, and worked for the LAPD for a few years after his World War 2 service; he was also an airline pilot for a short while. While with the LAPD he began selling television scripts, and soon resigned his police position to write full-time. In 1963, he created his first series, The Lieutenant, which aired for one season on NBC; it starred Gary Lockwood, while the guest star roster included names such as Majel Barrett, Sherry Jackson, Walter Koenig, Ricardo Montalban, and Leonard Nimoy (to pick a few not entirely at random).

For several years, Roddenberry had been developing an idea for a science fiction series, and in 1964, Roddenberry and Desilu Productions persuaded NBC to fund a pilot episode for what would become Star Trek. And the rest is history—which is probably familiar to many readers of this blog.


The entire rest of Roddenberry’s life did not center exclusively on Star Trek—he developed several ideas for other TV series in the 1970s, but not successfully—but a lot of it was. He was the executive producer of Star Trek: The Animated Series in 1973-74. He produced Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which was financially successful, but also very expensive, one reason why Paramount essentially kicked him “upstairs” for the remaining feature films. His final period of intense involvement with Star Trek seems to have been during the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Our third Star Trek birthday today is Diana Muldaur, who is 79. She made two guest appearances on Star Trek: TOS, as separate characters, in the episodes “Return to Tomorrow” and “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” She then was a regular on the second season of TNG as Dr. Kate Pulaski. She also appeared in a number of feature films and TV movies, and was a two-time Emmy nominee as Rosalind Shays on L.A. Law.