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Who is this lady? Do you remember the story about the movie The Velvet Vampire and the connection to the three TOS guest stars? This is a photo of the director who was mentioned, Stephanie Rothman. Ms. Rothman possessed above average talent as a student of film at the University of Southern California. Despite being mentored by Bernard Cantor, the chairman of the cinema department at USC and being the first female awarded a Directors Guild of America fellowship, she could not find work in Hollywood until Roger Corman gave her a job as his assistant. From there, she began writing and directing films for him. Corman’s films are filled with violence, blood, and lots of nudity, semi-nudity, and sexual suggestiveness. However, Stephanie managed to put her own stamp on the films she made while in his film studio. Many of her main characters are strong women who make their own way and become leaders instead of just being there as sex objects. Certainly we saw that in The Velvet Vampire. And we are going to continue her story by discussing two more movies she directed, one while she was still employed by Roger Corman and one done by a film production company she helped create herself. And of course they are only being brought up because their main stars also appeared as guest stars or extras on The Original Series.

Actually, The Student Nurses was Stephanie Rothman’s directorial debut (remember The Velvet Vampire was her second). This also could be considered an exploitation film, but Rothman did manage to turn it into a coming of age story about four young women who each find a different path while maintaining their friendships. And there is one particular student nurse we are interested in.

This young lady. In The Student Nurses, her name is Lynn. Her character becomes radicalized after working in a Chicano neighborhood. But we know her better as Tula, the daughter of Reger in “The Return of the Archons” who becomes traumatized during the events of “The Red Hour.” Both characters were played by Brioni Farrell, an actress who achieved minor success in television and film. But hold on… we’re not done with Stephanie Rothman. There is one more movie she directed in 1973 that had two former TOS actors. (Three if you want to count an almost star)

Terminal Island was the first movie Ms. Rothman directed that was not financed by Roger Corman. Instead, it was made by Dimension Pictures, in which Stephanie Rothman and her husband had a minority share. Its formula did not vary much from the ones used in her previous films. Terminal Island is also very much an exploitation film, even with its modicum of a story line. And it’s got all the trademark violence of most prison movies. But as usual in Rothman’s movies, the female characters wind up being much more likeable than the males and more than hold their own. So where are our Star Trek connections?

As it so happens, they are both males - and coincidentally, leaders of the two opposing groups in this film. Sean Kenney appears as Bobby, the tyrannical ruler of Terminal Island, where hardened and violent prisoners wind up now that there is no death penalty in California (according to the story). Along with his enforcer, a muscleman named Monk ( a pre-Magnum P.I.Roger Mosley), Bobby forces the males to work as slave labor and the women to serve the sexual needs of his own men as well as himself. Under that hardened exterior lies a young man we knew in The Original Series as Lt. DePaul in several episodes and as the disfigured Captain Pike in the two part “The Menagerie.” Could the two parts be any more polar opposites than they are?

Don Marshall plays A.J., the leader of a small band of less violent inmates who manage to sneak the newest arrivals (mainly female, it appears) over to their side of the island. They all plot to undermine and eventually defeat Bobby and Monk for good. Even under all that facial hair and a well-groomed Afro, observant Star Trek fans should recognize him as Lt. Boma. Boma was the obnoxious member of the landing party in “The Galileo Seven” who was constantly questioning Spock’s decisions in an insubordinate manner. Maybe Boma wasn’t exactly a bad guy and A. J. isn’t entirely a good guy (just in this situation), but again, it seems Don Marshall certainly played two entirely different personalities.

Two other somewhat interesting side notes here : A) one of the female leads in this movie was a young black actress named Ena Hartman who was one of the finalists for the part of Uhura. She has already been the basis of an article written when this blog first started.

B) this was one of the first Hollywood roles for Tom Selleck who played a doctor working for the good guys in Terminal Island. Seven years later he and Mosley (who was the bad guy Monk in this film) would go on to star together in Magnum, P.I. Once a good guy, always a good guy in this case. Now it is not entirely unusual for a director to wind up with several TOS actors in a single non-related film despite never having worked with them before. But how often did you ever see a fairly unknown female director working with at least seven TOS actors over the course of three different films? Bet the odds are long

#Star Trek TOS #Stephanie Rothman #Six Degrees of Star Trek #Brioni Farrell #Sean Kenney #Don Marshall #Enna Hartman

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