It’s no secret that Lt. Leslie is a man of many talents. After all, it’s been discussed previously that he has worn the shirts and technician jumpsuits in all three colors plus one of the colors only used in the two pilot episodes. However, Lt. Leslie seems to have an other talent worth discussing - he can change outfits and be in multiple places on the ship in the same episode. Sometimes the appearances are nearly simultaneous. Nowhere is this more obvious than in “Assignment: Earth.” In the opening scene, the Enterprise is being rocked by an unknown force and Kirk orders Leslie to begin a sensor scan. If you look in the upper right hand corner of the top photo, there he is in his usual spot at the Engineering station (with the ever-present Jeannie Malone next to him).
Several scenes later - the mysterious Gary 7 finds himself accidentally beamed onto the Enterprise instead of Earth as he had planned. At this point, he has been confined after a struggle. Both Lt. Leslie and Lt. Brent are strolling down one of the corridors as Captain Kirk comes on the intercom, asking for all pertinent personnel to add their input to the situation. But for some reason, Leslie is no longer wearing his red tunic. Now he is wearing the command gold uniform. Maybe the good lieutenant decided this was not a good time to be wearing a red shirt.
Except, within the next few frames, we see Lt. Leslie in a red engineering technician jumpsuit down in Engineering with Mr. Scott. Is this an undetected Mirror Leslie? How can he be both in the corridor with Lt. Brent and in engineering at the same time, much less in different uniforms? And now he’s a technician, not a bridge officer?
Now, certainly, this is the last time we see Lt. Leslie working for a different department/section, right? Because it would be impossible for him to appear ....
Uh... hold on. What is Lt. Leslie doing on the floor? He and Lt. Lemli both appear to be sleeping on the job. Except that is not what has just happened. Gary Seven manages to neutralize the forcefield that is holding him prisoner and uses his servo pen to put the young security guard stationed outside the door to sleep. On his way into the transporter room, he does the same to Lemli and Leslie. So instead of being in Engineering with Mr. Scott in a technician jumpsuit, our mysterious Mr. Leslie is now in the transporter room and is once more dressed in his red tunic. But is he acting in the capacity of a transporter engineer or security?
It’s more likely he is meant to be a transporter engineer in this scene but that is only based on what we see Lemli doing after Mr. Seven has beamed down into his office on Earth. He appears to be scanning for something as Scotty works with the controls on the transporter. But wait... we’re not done yet.
Toward the end of the episode, things are getting tense. And more confusing. In the Transporter Room, Scotty is now operating the same visual scanner Lemli was using earlier to locate Gary Seven. Lemli is nowhere to be seen at this point. Finally, Scotty spots Seven fiddling with a control access panel to the missile armed with nuclear warhead. He calls Security, asks for two men to be sent up and then attempts to bring Gary Seven on board. Guess who are the only two redshirts in the room with Mr. Scott? Mr. Lemli and now Mr. Leslie. So are these two the security men Scotty has asked for? Or are they both transporter engineers? It appears Mr. Lemli is now holding a phaser at the ready which suggests he and Lt. Leslie were meant to be the security detail. We haven’t seen Mr. Leslie since he was asleep on the floor in Engineering in the first Act. Where has he been all this time? Ouch, it’s enough to make your head hurt. In any case, Lt. Leslie stands by with Lt. Lemli as Gary Seven begins to materialize in front of them. And looks on in bemusement with his fellow redshirts as Gary Seven suddenly starts to dematerialize and finally disappears from the transporter pad.
We all know that all ends well. Gary Seven manages to send the missile off-course and detonates the warhead before it reaches 100 feet from ground level. But we are left pondering the mysteries of the multiple Leslies. Was each Leslie one of a set of triplets? Quadruplets? Exactly how many Leslies were there? Luckily, above is a handy-dandy visual aid detailing each appearance of Mr. Leslie with a caption detailing exactly what his duty was in that part of the episode. So it appears there were possibly five (count ‘em - 5) Mr. Leslies total. Of course, there is an easy explanation for this. For one thing, there is only one time Lt. Leslie is called by name and that is at the beginning when Kirk calls for Leslie to start a sensor scan. The other times we see Eddie Paskey, he may only be playing a random character. Viewers in the 60s were not allowed the luxury of zooming in and/or replaying sections of the episode. No such thing as screencaps posted on the internet. So those who watched “Assignment: Earth as it first aired may not have noticed Eddie Paskey was the same person in each case. Especially since a few of his appearances only lasted a few seconds. But how did he manage to switch from red to gold and back to red again in a short period of time? A little something called stock footage, which simply means a section of video taken from another source and inserted into an episode. The scene where Mr. Leslie and Mr. Brent walk down the corridor in their command gold shirts was taken from one of the first season episodes. Again, it’s only seen for a split second and most people would not notice anything but two crewmen in gold shirts. As extras, they were being paid for a full day so the producers used them wherever they could to save money. They certainly got their money’s worth out of Mr. Paskey. He’s been everywhere, from being nearly frozen to death with Sulu in “The Enemy Within” to sitting in the Captain’s chair. Still, isn’t it fun to think that Mr. Leslie is some kind of Wunderkind, able to appear at random in different uniforms and performing multiple tasks?
