The Way to Eden Redshirts
Certainly everyone admits being a redshirt is a stressful job. You wake up and wonder if this is your last day. You hear your name announced for the next landing party and break out in a cold sweat. You are not even safe on your own ship. Some alien force, an out of control robot, or a bratty kid with super-powers might blast you away. It would not be surprising if a redshirt would break down under all this pressure. He or she might even turn into the polar opposite of a Starfleet officer - a space hippie who just wants to get back to the Garden of Eden. Which brings us to this interesting situation. How did two redshirts - one alive and one dead- become tie-dyed, multi-color hair flower children in “The Way to Eden”? Did Mears freak out after the events of “The Galileo Seven” and join the band? Did Watson’s ghost decide that a second life as a singing hippie would be safer after having his neck broken in “Elaan of Troyius”? No, as tempting as it is to make a case for a redshirt rebellion, the answer is that the same actor played both parts in each case.
Phyllis Douglas played both Yeoman Mears and Mavig. She was probably cast in her first role because the director, Robert Gist, had been her acting teacher. Two other actors in that episode, Peter Marko and Don Marshall, had also been in her acting class. In a Starlog interview (August 2008), Phyllis admitted while she was very proud of this role, she was not as happy with her appearance as Mavig in “The Way to Eden.” She found it so embarrassing, she tried to hide as much as possible. To her, a bunch of singing hippies had no place on such a serious show as Star Trek.
Her father was well-known assistant director Ridge Callow, who had cast her in the part of the two year old Bonnie Blue Butler, daughter of Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With The Wind. In an interesting twist, years after his daughter’s appearances in Star Trek, he became the production manager for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Victor Brandt, on the other hand, has a more interesting story as to how he managed to land both the part of the Engineering crewman named Watson and that of Tongo Rad, Mavig’s fellow space hippie. John Meredyth Lucas had directed him previously in an episode of The Invaders in which Victor’s character dies. When it came time to cast “Elaan of Troyius”, Lucas himself contacted Brandt and said he had another death scene for him. Victor had another plus going for him too. His father was Louis Brandt, another assistant director, who at that time was working on Mannix. His office was just down the hall from those of Star Trek. Because Victor occasionally visited his father, he would often run into Robert Justman and Herbert Solow. One day as he was walking down the hallway, they grabbed him to read for the part of Tongo Rad and later he learned he had been hired. Unlike Phyllis Douglas, Brandt rather enjoyed his time as Tongo, even though it meant spending hours in makeup and getting catcalls for his purple and silver hair. However, he stated his biggest challenge was learning to play the bongos. If you watch carefully, you will note that the movement of his hands does not exactly match the beat of the music.
Whether you love it or hate “The Way to Eden,” you still have to admit that the odds of two actors portraying redshirts on one episode and space hippies in this one are pretty slim. But wait... that is not the only coincidence in this episode.
It turns out that there were three actors in “The Way to Eden” who had acted in previous Star Trek episodes. Skip Homeier played both the Ekosian Deputy Führer Melakon (”Patterns of Force”) and Dr. Sevrin in “The Way to Eden.” Three out of five space hippies. Those are even more impressive odds.
