BACK TO THE GRINDSTAFF

Last week we paid tribute to the late Douglas Grindstaff, the brilliantly imaginative sound effects man whose contribution to the atmosphere of the original Star Trek would be hard to overstate. But I think Grindstaff deserves at least one more monster, so...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...let's acknowledge the "neural parasite" that attacks poor Spock in the second-season episode "Operation--Annihilate!"

In one interview I found, Grindstaff claimed that he produced the creature's icky sounds by using samples of kissing.

While we're on the subject of Star Trek, check out...Quentin Tarantino's Star Trek!

NOSE TO THE GRINDSTAFF

RIP to Douglas H. Grindstaff, who I just learned passed on late last month, at the age of 87. Grindstaff was the Emmy-winning sound effects designer and editor for the original Star Trek, the man who created the unmistakable squeal of the phaser, the whirr of the transporter, the swish of the automatic doors, the snarling of the Gorn and the trilling purr of the tribbles, among countless other sounds you'd recognize at once if you heard them.

So, in honor of this insufficiently-sung hero of pop culture...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...our honoree is the giant cat...

...from the second season episode "Catspaw"(written by Robert Bloch), into which the witchy alien Sylvia (Antoinette Bower) transforms herself in the show's climactic minutes, and for which Grindstaff and crew provided the unnerving, deeper-then-natural meows and growls and hisses.