Designer Double-Dip: Earring-y Ding-y

I don't go on and on and on about it, but I still love Star Trek. I never really got involved in it much beyond the initial series (now dubbed Star Trek: The Original Series or TOS, to avoid confusion with all that came afterwards. As a kid, my big fascination was with Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhura, who was just mind-bogglingly elegant and beautiful to me, even in her rather limited role on the show.

Initially, Uhura had the sort of severe hairstyle shown above, but by the second season she was sporting a more iconic 'do, stiff, but still appealingly feminine. (All of the females on the show were shown off to their best advantage with short, clingy uniforms for the crew and diaphanous, flowing gowns with strategic cut-outs on most of the guest stars, courtesy of William Ware Theiss.) To accent Uhura's connection to Mother Earth, she wore a pair of jade earrings for the first two seasons of the show, seen here and in the photo above.

Then, of course, there was the wonderful episode "Mirror, Mirror," in which four of the Enterprise crew, including Uhura, found themselves transposed with evil counterparts in an alternate universe. Here, the designer outdid himself, putting Nichols in a sexy two-piece version of her uniform and giving her different, more attention-getting earrings.

As a kid, I could not get enough of her in this guise. She was always so regal and soft-spoken on the show, but this time she got to strut her stuff and prove that when her back was against the wall, she could still cut a bitch if necessary! LOL

As the third and final season got underway, Uhura's jade earrings were gone for good and she was now sporting some dangling gold spiral ones as seen here. Nichols was becoming increasingly disheartened by the direction of the show and her part on it, though she still had some important moments to come (including the famously groundbreaking interracial kiss with William Shatner.)

She began to change her hairstyles here and there through the season, too, but kept the gold spiral earrings as a regular costume accessory. In the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Nichols found it too difficult to continue working on the show and was absent for some of the last episodes. The final season of Star Trek took place in 1968-1969.

Now let's cut to another time and place. Earth, November of 1967. Mike Connors is in his first season as private investigator Mannix and in this particular installment, "Coffin for a Clown," he's interviewing an art teacher played by Diana Muldaur.

Muldaur is one of a few actresses that I used to avoid like the plague, but eventually came to adore. You can read all about that here if you wish. As Muldaur and Connors continue their interplay, it becomes clear that she is wearing a distinctive pair of earrings.

Yep! You guessed it! One season before Nichols claimed them for her character on Star Trek, Muldaur is wearing the gold spiraled earrings on Mannix!

Both Mannix and Star Trek (and Mission: Impossible) were Desilu productions, so it stands to reason that there might be some cross-pollination when it came to wardrobe and accessories. (There certainly was a lot of it with casting. These series share a lot of the same guest stars.) I wonder if Desilu's president, Lucille Ball, ever hit the town in these earrings!

As a matter of fact, Muldaur made two appearances on Star Trek herself. The first time was in "Return to Tomorrow" - a second season episode, as a crew member who, along with Kirk (William Shatner) and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) allows her body to be temporarily used as a vessel for an alien being who doesn't have one of her own.

It's also more than likely that Muldaur wears the same hair fall in her first Star Trek appearance that she has on in the Mannix episode.

She came back with darkened hair for the third season episode "Is There No Truth in Beauty?," as the companion of an alien who cannot be directly looked at without protective eye wear, lest the viewer will go insane.

This was not to be Muldaur's final brush with the Star Trek universe, however. When the second series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, came about, the Enterprise's doctor played by Gates McFadden departed after one season and Muldaur was brought in as the rather cranky Dr. Pulaski to fill the void. Due to fan outcry and Muldaur's own lack of comfort with the show, McFadden was returned to the series for the third season, where she remained ad infinitum.

We hope you enjoyed this brief examination of yet one more example of costume pieces being used more than once in iconic television shows and/or movies.

Oh, speaking of movies, I thought you might get a little hoot out of seeing your usually glamorous and beautiful webmaster (riiigghhhtt!) done up as a sixty-something hill-jack farmer with a family full of yahoos. This is for the independent film I've been working on and will wrap today. Should this gem ever see the light of day, you my loyal readers will be the first to know!  :-)

(For reference's sake, this is me without the makeup! I'm old, but I'm not THAT old...!)   :-)