Sad news out of Los Angeles: Sally Kellerman has passed away at the age of 86 after a battle with dementia and an extended stay in an assisted care facility.  

Her portrayal of Dr. Elizabeth Dehner, a no-nonsense Starfleet psychiatrist, is one of the best parts of the Star Trek’s second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before.”

In addition to Star Trek, her acting career included many guest starring gigs in shows like The Outer Limits, Mannix and That Girl in the 60s, along with an Oscar-nominated turn as Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H. 

JEAN CLAUDE MEZIERES

Dead at 94, Sidney Poitier

Millie Hughes-Fulford (December 21, 1945 – February 4, 2021) was an American astronaut, medical investigator, molecular biologist, and professor.

She was the first woman to launch into space who was not a professional astronaut but a working scientist. Originally selected by NASA in 1983 to train for a science-dedicated space shuttle mission, her launch was delayed by the 1986 Challenger tragedy. But finally lifting off on the space shuttle Columbia on June 5, 1991, she became the first female payload specialist to enter orbit and a member of the first crew to include three women.

Aboard STS-40 Spacelab Life Sciences (SLS 1), she was part of the first Spacelab mission dedicated to biomedical studies. The SLS-1 mission flew over 3.2 million miles in 146 orbits and its crew completed over 18 experiments during a nine-day period, bringing back more medical data than any previous NASA flight. 

Hughes-Fulford was a Professor at the University of California Medical Center at San Francisco where she continued her research until her death in 2021.

Paris, Texas (1984) dir. Wim Wenders