Monday, April 4, 2011

April's Space Babes: Anne Lockhart & Laurette Spang

This month, it's a Space Babes Battlestar Galactica two-fer, with Anne Lockhart as Lieutenant Sheba and Laurette Spang as socialator-turned-medtech Cassiopeia.

Introduced in the two-part episode, "The Living Legend," Lockhart's Sheba was the daughter of the legendary Colonial Commander Cain, of the Battlestar Pegasus. A tough and tough-minded Viper pilot, Sheba was the equal of Captain Apollo or Lieutenant Starbuck. At the end of that classic two-parter, she remained on the Galactica as both a new love interest for Apollo and number three Viper pilot, pretty much supplanting the character of Boomer in most adventures. Sheba was strongly independent, but definitely feminine, and was a great addition to the crew.

Pretty, perpetually pouty Anne Lockhart is the daughter of actress June Lockhart (best known for her role as June Robinson on Lost In Space), and was a fairly prominent guest artist on the television series of the Eighties. Aside from her recurring role on Battlestar Galactica, she appeared on Project: U.F.O., Tales of the Gold Monkey, Knight Rider, Voyagers, and guest starred in the Buck Rogers episode, "A Dream of Jennifer." According to the IMDb, in recent years, it appears she has been doing mostly voice work, including providing the voice of the U.S.S. Kelvin's computer in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek.

Introduced in the Galactica pilot as a "Socialator" (i.e. prostitute), Laurette Spang's Cassiopeia was quickly given a more family-friendly career as a "medtech" (i.e. nurse), which made the network and sponsors a lot happier. Cassiopeia was Starbuck's main squeeze and was given very little else to do on the show, although we learned in the aforementioned "The Living Legend" that she had once had an intimate relationship with Cain.

Like Lockhart, the attractive Spang appeared on lots of 70s and 80s television shows, including The Six Million Dollar Man, Isis, Man From Atlantis, and (like Lockhart) Project U.F.O. She seems to have pretty much retired from acting after 1984 to raise a family.

7 comments:

  1. I loved Anne Lockhart in Galactica and Buck Rogers, I'd rather see a woman like her than the bimbo's they're dragging out in the film Sucker Punch at the moment !!

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  2. Anne Lockhart... My favorite appearance by her comes a little later, in the movie TROLL, when the character mom June Lockhart was playing gets swapped out for Anne, revealing that the old lady in the building was just a disguise for this younger woman. One well-cut set of transition shots, and you have one of the best switches in genre films ever; thanks for evoking a good memory...

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  3. *quote from my wife, looking over my shoulder at the picture of the two beautiful gun-toting women in tight black leather jumpsuits*

    "What kind of website is this?!?"

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  4. Whatever kind of website she thought it was is probably cooler than what it actually is: a nostalgia dump for a 45 year-old arrested adolescent....

    :)

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  5. Jim - I like Troll too (written by Starlog vet Ed Naha), and the Lockhart switcharoo is a big reason why.

    Of course, when i showed it to my wife not long ago, she couldn't get over the fact that the kid's name was "Harry Potter".... ;)

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  6. Love both Anne Lockhart and Laurette Spang, though I believe they should have been given separate Space Babes posts.
    By the way, I don't recall the Galactica episode where they were black-clad gun-toting babes. Sheba was a soldier but Cassiopeia was not so it's strange to see them both in battle gear.

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  7. The still is from "The Living Legend, Part 2," where Cassiopeia joined Apollo, Starbuck and Sheba in a commando assault on a Cylon base.

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