At the age of 79, the brilliantly funny and talented actress Teri Garr has sadly passed away. Known mostly for her comedic roles in classics like Young Frankenstein and Tootsie, Garr was nonetheless a versatile performer, including her dramatic turn in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But her first major breakout role was in an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, called “Assignment: Earth.” Maybe in a slightly alternate timeline, she could have gone on to star in a spinoff Trek series set on planet Earth.
The strange, unique finale of Trek’s second season in 1968 wasn’t just a one-off quirky episode but written specifically as a life raft for the Star Trek universe, if the main series was canceled. And without Garr’s charm, the episode wouldn’t work at all.
As its name suggests, “Assignment: Earth” is an episode in which the USS Enterprise is sent back in time to 1968. But in an unusual move for Trek, this time travel occurs not as an act of desperation or by accident, but because of direct orders. Via his captain’s log, Kirk (William Shatner) explains that the mission is “historical research,” specifically to figure out how Earth made it out of the 20th century’s constant threat of nuclear annihilation. Enter a mysterious figure named Gary Seven (Robert Lansing), a human possessing technology that shouldn’t exist in 1968, and who immediately becomes at odds with Kirk and Spock. Everything revolves around the launch of a sub-orbital nuclear platform, which Gary Seven is trying to prevent, and Kirk and Spock are trying to well... they’re not sure. Because Seven has alien assistance and comes from a group called “Supervisors,” the 23rd-century folks are worried he’s trying to change history. In this way, the entire episode is a kind of game of cat-and-mouse between Kirk and Seven, even though in the end everyone figures out they’re on the same side.
Thrust into the middle of all of this is Roberta Lincoln (Teri Garr), an unwitting secretary who had been working for Gary Seven’s predecessor, without knowing they were secret agents who used alien tech. In this way, Roberta is like one of the companions of the Doctor in Doctor Who — an audience surrogate who is essentially a normal person, surrounded by aliens, weirdos, people who shape-shift into cats, and a talking computer with an attitude problem.
In real life, Garr later said she didn’t enjoy her experience on Star Trek, which many books and interviews have suggested had to do with her dislike for series creator Gene Roddenberry and his over-involvement with opinions about her costume. That said, Garr’s bitterness about Star Trek might have had to do with the fact that “Assignment: Earth” was sold to her as a pilot episode of a new TV series in which she would be the co-star, and then never happened. In her memoir, Speedbumps, Garr wrote, “Had the spin-off succeeded, I would have continued on as an earthling agent, working to preserve humanity. In a very short skirt.”
Rewatching the episode today, Garr’s humor is not only perfect but refreshingly unique in Star Trek: The Original Series. Although the character is coded as scatter-brained, Gary Seven’s computer notes, “Although behavior appears erratic, possesses high IQ.” In this way, Garr’s Roberta Lincoln is almost the forerunner to Donna Noble in Doctor Who; a character who misleads the entire world with her eccentric personality but is really deeply brilliant. Garr conveys all of this effortlessly, which is somewhat shocking considering that this was the biggest speaking part in anything she’d had at that point.
“Assignment: Earth” was co-written by Gene Roddenberry and Art Wallace, and revised by Roddenberry to act as a pilot for a series of the same name, which would have focused on Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln solving sci-fi mysteries on Earth. Spock alludes to the future of this partnership at the end of the episode saying “Captain, we could say that Mister Seven and Miss Lincoln have some interesting experiences in store for them.”
At the time Roddenberry feared the imminent cancellation of Star Trek by NBC and was trying to strategically create a sci-fi series for the same network that could be made at a fraction of the cost. Ironically, Star Trek went on to be renewed for a third season, and “Assignment: Earth” wasn’t turned into a series at all. While fan opinions of the quality of Star Trek Season 3 remain hotly debated to this day, one could imagine a different pop culture timeline in which the Trek canon continued not in space, but on Earth. In this timeline, Trek fans aren’t often cosplaying as Teri Garr’s Roberta Lincoln, but perhaps, in some better world, they would be.
