TREKKING BALL

Happy 50^th Birthday Star Trek!

Yes, that’s right, fifty years ago today my favorite TV show, the original Star Trek, debuted on NBC with “The Man Trap.” This Saturday evening retro network MeTV celebrates the auspicious anniversary by showing “The Man Trap,” after which their horror host Svengoolie presents the Star Trek pilot The Cage—later abridged into the two-part original series episode “The Menagerie”—as his feature selection. Talk about your must-see TV!

Obviously a Star Trek monster is called for this week, and since the hideous salt-sucking shape-shifter (or shape-sucking salt-shifter?) from “The Man Trap” was a MOTW just last year, how about…

Monster-of-the-Week: …this snarling beast…

 

…from “The Cage,” played by Janos Prohaska, who also designed and played The Mugato and The Horta!

TREK SAVVY

Zoolander 2 opens this weekend, again featuring Will Ferrell as the villainous Mugatu…

So, in his honor…

Monster-of-the-Week: …the nod goes to his presumable namesake the Mugato, the terrifying horned white-furred venomous ape-monster designed and played by Janos Prohaska in the second-season original Star Trek episode “A Private Little War”: 

Zoolander director/co-writer/star Ben Stiller would seem to be a pretty hardcore Trekkie: Along with the name “Mugatu,” the new film has a villainess named Alexanya Atoz (Kristen Wiig)—presumably a reference to the well-meaning librarian (Ian Wolfe) in “All Our Yesterdays,” and there’s also the name of Stiller’s company, “Red Hour Productions,” presumably a reference to the “festival” in “Return of the Archons.”

Live long and prosper, dude.

OIL BE SEEING YOU

Su-PRIZE, Su-PRIZE, Su-PRIZE! Gomer Pyle, USMC, himself, Jim Nabors has gotten married, at 82, to his partner of 38 years. Mazel tov.

Tomorrow is Phoenix First Friday art walk for February; this month’s festivities include a screening of Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange at Phoenix Art Museum. So...

Monster-of-the-Week: …let’s do a gallery-oriented ghoul, specifically the title character of H.P. Lovecraft’s “Pickman’s Model,” as realized in the ‘70s TV anthology series Night Gallery. Here’s how the eldritch sitter for haunted artist Pickman (Bradford Dillman) appeared in the Tom Wright painting that introduces the episode:

And here he is in the episode, played by costume designer Janos Prohaska, also known as the Horta and the Mugato on Star Trek, and the giant spider on Gilligan’s Island:

The show—one of the better Lovecraft adaptations available, believe it or not—may be viewed in its entirety, here.

NOT SO ITSY-BITSY

RIP to Sherwood Schwartz, creator of such unshakeable TV icons as Gilligan’s Island & The Brady Bunch, passed on at 94. In his memory...

Monster-of-the-Week: …let’s honor the gigantic “Black Morning Spider” that menaced the Seven Stranded Castways on That Uncharted Desert Isle, until they were saved by a pigeon named Walter, in one of the weirder episodes—& that’s saying something—of GI.

This imposing arachnid was played, by the way, by the Hungarian costume-maker & performer Janos Prohaska, perhaps better-known as the Mugato & the Horta on Star Trek.