Saturday, December 26, 2009

Space Babe: Persis Khambatta

Persis Khambatta as Ilia in Star Trek The Motion Picture. Thirty years ago this month, Gene Roddenberry's iconic science fiction television series made its highly-touted transition to feature film status, bringing along with it several new characters, including this exotic beauty from the "sexually advanced" planet Delta - navigator Lieutenant Ilia.

The former Miss India may not have been a particularly good actress, but she was striking woman who managed to make a shaved head look damned sexy. And she did appear in a few other genre films, including 1982's MegaForce and 83's Warrior of the Lost World.

Sadly, the lovely Khambatta passed away in 1998 from a heart attack at the too-young age of 49.

3 comments:

  1. My dad worked on the first couple of ST films, and I got to make visits to Paramount to see the sets and meet the actors. Dad's Scottish, and James Doohan actually worked on his accent a bit with pops. AFter the sickbay scene shooting is when I got to meet Persis. As a young teen being in her presence for just a moment was even a bigger deal than meeting Nimoy and Kelly.

    I never knew she passed away. Bummer. I think ST1 gets too much hate from fans. I pretty much dig almost everything about it (OK, was never a Decker fan), and Persis' role didn't really require Maryl Streep or anything. She was just fine.

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  2. I was terribly disappointed in ST1. After all the years of waiting. But with the exception of the Canadian Mounty uniforms, I enjoyed the sequels.

    I used to work with an art dept guy who worked on the Vger model. Wonder if he knew your dad, Brunomac?

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  3. She had better legs than DeForest Kelly, that's for sure

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