A couple of questions regarding Ilia

[Michael]

Have just been watching the theatrical version of The Motion Picture. What a glorious and completely magical movie, I love it!

So I have a question regarding Ilia and Chapel. There's this one scene in Ilia's quarters where the Ilia probe is trying on a head piece when Chapel says: “I remember Lieutenant Ilia once mentioning that she wore this.” Does this mean Ilia and Chapel were acquainted before she came onboard the ship? Or did Ilia actually serve on the Enterprise before and isn't a new crewmember at all?

A technical question: Do we know how they made the little sensor light on Ilia's neck glow? That was before the time of tiny LEDs, right? Because I don't remember seeing any kind of cable running up her neck. And I was watching that spot like a hawk.

Is it documented somewhere, that the name “Ilia” was an allusion to “Leia” from the Star Wars movies? Because they sound kind of similar and I know TMP was more or less a result of the success of Star Wars.

Also, how insanely beautiful was Persis Khambatta!

 

[Christopher]

So I have a question regarding Ilia and Chapel. There's this one scene in Ilia's quarters where the Ilia probe is trying on a head piece when Chapel says: “I remember Lieutenant Ilia once mentioning that she wore this.” Does this mean Ilia and Chapel were acquainted before she came onboard the ship? Or did Ilia actually serve on the Enterprise before and isn't a new crewmember at all?

Ilia was new, and indeed was apparently one of the "final crew replacements." So what Chapel was referring to was always a little unclear. I always figured the two of them had a conversation during the 20-plus hours between launch and interception, the downtime that the movie skipped over. Although I suppose it's possible they encountered each other sometime before the ship was launched, during the advance process of selecting and vetting its crew (something Chapel would've been involved in as CMO).

A technical question: Do we know how they made the little sensor light on Ilia's neck glow? That was before the time of tiny LEDs, right? Because I don't remember seeing any kind of cable running up her neck. And I was watching that spot like a hawk.

There was a hair-thin wire that was hidden under her body makeup. I gather it was a pretty thick layer of "pancake" makeup that the wire was basically buried within.

Is it documented somewhere, that the name “Ilia” was an allusion to “Leia” from the Star Wars movies? Because they sound kind of similar and I know TMP was more or less a result of the success of Star Wars.

That seems very unlikely. Paramount made the project into a feature film as a response to Star Wars, but it was being developed as a TV revival before then, so I doubt very much that Roddenberry himself was trying to copy Star Wars -- if anything, he probably saw it as an imitation of his work, not as something he would want to imitate.

Granted, the first documented mention of Ilia is in the July 1977 draft of the Phase II series bible, a couple of months after Star Wars came out. So influence can't be disproven on those grounds. But coincidental similarities happen in writing all the time. Lots of feminine names end in -A, and I imagine that different creators trying to come up with pleasant-sounding female names would tend toward similar sounds. See also Doctor Who's Leela, introduced four months before Star Wars came out. Or earlier Star Trek characters like Leila Kalomi and Eleen. Or, heck, David McCallum's The Man from UNCLE character Illya Kuryakin, who was probably the inspiration for Chekov.

If anything, I would guess that if Roddenberry based the name "Ilia" on anything, it was far more likely to have been the name of his first wife, Eileen.

Also, how insanely beautiful was Persis Khambatta!

You said it.