Oddball Update

I had a couple of “holy cow!” moments yesterday. You know the type — like when you suddenly realize that one of your favorite songs as a child was recorded by an artist you “discovered” later in your life. In my case, I learned something new about two classic movies I’ve always liked.

Yesterday I was watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine during supper. Afterwards, I saw my TiVo HD was recording Dirty Harry in high definition, so I segued into watching it. Somewhere along the line, it occurred to me that the Scorpio Killer character in Dirty Harry was terribly familiar. His voice, to be specific, sounded exactly like the voice of one of my favorite Cardassian characters from DS9, Elim Garak. In fact, the DS9 episode I’d just watched during dinner had featured Garak quite prominently.

At first I thought that the two actors couldn’t possibly be the same guy, because nearly 25 years had passed between Dirty Harry and DS9. The actor playing Garak wasn’t that old…was he? Honestly, it’s tough to tell beneath all that Cardassian make-up. Then again, just how young was the actor playing Scorpio, anyway? Well, in cases like this, there’s only one way to answer all questions, silence all quibbles and settle all bets: Check the Internet Movie Database.

Sure enough, the Scorpio Killer was indeed played by Andrew Robinson, the same man who later played Elim Garak in every season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. In fact, his role in Dirty Harry back in 1971 was one of his very first acting jobs. Fascinating!

The other “Hollywood epiphany” I had yesterday was when I discovered the 1984 sci-fi flick Runaway on TiVo’s list of upcoming HD movies. I remember when I was around six years old, I used to bug my mom to rent that movie for me almost every time we went to the video store. It’s totally ’80s cheese/camp sci-fi, but hey, I was a kid.

Well, I did a little poking around on the all-knowing, aforementioned IMDB about the film, and was astonished to learn that it was written and directed by none other than Michael Crichton, one of my favorite authors of medical/techo thrillers. It then occurred to me that, when I was a kid, I used to love movies that were based on Crichton properties — The Andromeda Strain, Runaway, Jurassic Park, et al — before I had even learned who Crichton was. Guess it’s no wonder I like the guy’s books.

Tagged as Star Trek + Categorized as Media, Media/Movies, Media/Television