Lawrence Montaigne is a veteran character actor with over 200 television episodes and more than two dozen movie appearances to his credit. We Trek fans know him as the Romulan commander "Decius" in "Balance of Terror" and as Spock's rival for the affections of "T'Pring", the Vulcan "Stonn" in "Amok Time". His most recent role was in the fan production "Star Trek: Of Gods and Men" about which I have recently written. In that three-part epic, Montaigne appears as the (now slightly older) Vulcan.

Montaigne's life has been rich and full of adventures, some of them on the stage and screen, but many of them in the real world. He has chronicled his tale in a fascinating autobiography.

For Star Trek fans, Montaigne doesn't waste any time. In the Prologue he describes how he came to be cast in his two original-series roles, and his first (and quite negative) convention experience. He decries (tongue in cheek, perhaps) that of all his scores of movie, television and stage roles, the one thing people always remember him for were these two parts on Star Trek!

He must not really mind too much, since the cover image is a painting by artist Deborah Lyons depicting Lawrence as he appears today, flanked by his two Star Trek characters. And the title of his book is "A Vulcan Odyssey"!

Lawrence Montaigne is a familiar figure to convention goers. He'll be at the upcoming Official Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas this August. Just meeting him and buying a copy of his book is a great reason to go! In my Tuesday column I'll tell about my convention encounter with him.

You can read more about Lawrence Montaigne at his site, Montaigne's Web.

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Star Trek Remastered

I suppose the "powers that be" can be forgiven for this weekend's rare repeat of the Remastered episode "The Omega Glory" - production number 54 which originally aired in the series' second season, on March 1, 1968. The unbroken string of new remastered episodes goes back more than four months.

Why the repeat? Well, here in the U.S. it's Fourth of July weekend, a time that we celebrate this country's independence. The "holy words" of the Yang people are derived from the Constitution of the United States, and a tattered stars-and-stripes serves as a holy relic to them. This is a very patriotic episode!

The remastered version first came to the small screen on the weekend of June 30, 2007 (just before last year's mid-week holiday).

The episode's script was penned by Gene Roddenberry; Vincent McEveety was in the director's chair. McEveety was a prolific director, with a total of six Star Trek episodes. His credits also include multiple episodes of Gunsmoke, How the West Was Won, and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

You can see the 30-second preview of the remastered version on this page at StarTrek.com. (It seems quite a shame that CBS has not seen fit to offer any episode video previews in the last six months. Alas.)

Six degrees factoid:

 

Vince McEveety directed several episodes of the Disneyland TV series, and he worked on the short educational film "Donald in Mathmagic Land" - as did my long-time friend and mentor Nick Iuppa (with whom I co-authored the textbook "The Multimedia Adventure").

 

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Remastered Trivia

This week's trivia question is in honor of Lawrence Montaigne (since he appeared in "Balance of Terror" - the first remastered episode to be released, back in September 2006).

Among his scores of television appearances were two guest-starring roles on another genre series. The stars of that series were also Trek actors: James Darren and Lee Meriwether. Can you name the series?

Send your answer to me at mwade@roddenberry.com

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Star Trek Family Birthdays

Happy Birthday to that very versatile actor, Vaughn Armstrong, celebrating on July 7. Vaughn is another great reason to attend a Star Trek convention - his experiences on four series - and as the Klingon in "Star Trek: The Experience" - give him a wealth of great stories (which he's happy to share with the audience). And if you catch him in the signing room, you might even coax the very shy and retiring Armstrong (!!) to take out his ukulele and sing just for you!

 

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