Movies - TV
William Shatner Couldn’t Stop Laughing At This Early Star Trek Death
By WITNEY SEIBOLD
In the "Star Trek" episode "The Deadly Years," an away team beams down to the planet Gamma Hydra IV to investigate a seemingly disused research station.
The team returns to the Enterprise, not knowing they have contracted a kind of radiation sickness that causes accelerated aging.
Lieutenant Galway (Beverly Washburn), a science officer not previously seen on the show, is hit hardest. Before the end of the episode, Galway will have died of old age.
Washburn was interviewed by StarTrek.com in 2013, and she remembered shooting "The Deadly Years" quite well. The makeup process had to make her look like a woman in her 80s.
Even while Washburn was acting out Lieutenant Galway's death scene, Shatner was making old man jokes and horsing around on set.
While Washburn was digging deep, however, William Shatner was giggling. "William Shatner was a very funny guy and he was just cracking up the whole time,“ she said.