Part One
On the sedate tree lined campuses of the Claremont Colleges, the
elegantly beautiful Barbara Babcock could easily pass as an English
professor in residence. And she has worked as everything from a teacher,
race car driver and college trustee to most famously, a performer.
As an actor, Babcock has been seen in numerous movies
and shows, including Ron Howard's' Far and Away’ 'Bang the Drum Slowly’ with
Robert De Niro, and most recently, the hit TV show ' Dr Quinn: Medicine
Woman'.
Her role as Grace on Hill Street Blues ("One of the most fulfilling
collaborations of my career!") netted her an Outstanding Lead
in a Drama Series Emmy award.
Even more impressive, well, to STARLOG readers, is her
appearance in numerous genre projects, ranging from Star
Trek to a Stephen King, adaptation. Babcock turned up
in classic Trek a record four times (two live, two voice-overs). "The first episode I did was on
camera." she recalls. It was the war between the worlds done
by computers ( "A Taste of Armageddon") in which I fall
in love with William Shatner.
"I was just starting out in the business and I auditioned for the casting
director. I got the role and, as a result of that, the casting director found
out that I could do accents. So, I think the next one, I played the mother of
a god ("The Squire of Gothos") and then I played the voice of a cat,
(Isis in "Assignment: Earth ). My last role was a person with a powerful
mind( "Plato's Stepchildren)". One might wonder if she has a favoriteTrek role. "I
like the cat the best," Babcock grins. "First
of all, I was flattered they chose me, because there
are plenty of people who do animal voices for a living.
My own interest in animal behavior and my love of animals
helped. It was great fun becoming a cat. Just in terms
of the sound, I had to try to understand what that
animal was feeling in every frame. Becoming
that creature was a real acting job."
Her first role on the series came as Mea 3, an alien girl in a
computer- dominated culture who falls in love with Captain Kirk.
Babcock says the part wasn't hard to bring to life. "I certainly
had a crush on him! In my first episode, I thought Shatner was
very attractive and very sexy; it wasn't difficult at all for me
to play being attracted to him," she says with a mischievous
smile.
With its automated death tolls and bloodless body counts, “Armageddon" is
an allegory on the pointlessness of war. (And it predicts computerized
warfare and smart bombs.) "That's very much there," Babcock
states. "Gene Roddenberry was a very thoughtful man, which
I think is what made .Star Trek more than just a science fiction
show.
"What makes that series last over all these years is that it dealt with
issues that are pertinent to all of us, even now. Twenty years later. "A
Taste of Armageddon"could be replayed and people can still look at it and
say, 'We've got to be careful because this sort of thing could happen.'
"I liked Roddenberry very much. I didn't know him well, of course-I was
just a working actor on the show, I didn't have a recurring character so I was
not in Star Trek on an ongoing basis, but over the course of the four episodes
that I did, I thought he was a very gentle and lovely man."
Babcock’s last Trek role as Philana, a member
of a cruel telekinetic group that tortures Kirk, Spock,
McCoy and Uhura, in "Plato's Stepchildren," is
her on camera favorite. "That was the most complex
character that I played on the show," she says
proudly. "Somebody gave me the video as a present.
The main reason that episode is so famous is because
it was the first time on television that there was
an inter-racial kiss-Nichelle Nichols and Shatner kiss.
"Remember, this was 1968 and the only reason NBC allowed them to kiss was
because my character was controlling them and forcing them to kiss through the
power of my mind, but 'in reality,' Kirk and Uhura didn't want to. They passed
the censors that way by having it be something that was imposed on them against
their will!"
|
