Lieutenant Leslie: Star Trek's very own Mementic Badass

[Lance]

en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Leslie

As played by the incomparable Eddie Paskey, Lieutenant Leslie was one of TOS's most prominent background artistes, making his first appearance on the bridge in the second pilot ("Where No man has gone before"), and lasting all the way through to season three (IIRC, "And The Children Shall Lead"?).

Leslie could most frequently be seen in a particular background position during bridge scenes, often reacting with detached bemusement at whatever the main characters were up to in the foreground of the scene. His raised eyebrows and almost silent infered "Why me?" expression were a common sight in many classic episodes of TOS. And the few occasions he was allowed to speak were always memorable too, like the time he mouthed off at Captain Kirk in "This Side Of Paraside", leaving the good Captain rather shocked (nay, speechless!) at Leslie's blatant insubordination.

But it's a little known fact that, as with Chuck Norris on the internet, Leslie is Star Trek's very own Mementic Badass.

Ex Astris Scientia has this to say about Mister Leslie:

Leslie occupies so many different positions as if he could run the ship all alone, as a navigator, a science officer, a medical officer and, of course, as a security officer.

To heck with him only running ONE ship alone... I think that Leslie could, if he really wanted to, run an entire Armada! Remotely, using only his carefully honed brain wave patterns!

That's how badass Lieutenant Leslie is.

 

[F. King Daniel]

He must have trained under the great Captain Robau.

 

[Levi]

I love characters like this.
I don't know if they were written in as depicted, or if it was just a flaw of an extra actor taking on too much. But I love discussions such as this, how they were probably just a great officer who did good work while in StarFleet.
I also love the episodes where it focuses on some random crew member.

 

[Melakon]

Mr. Leslie is so tough, he can survive all the red corpuscles being removed from his body!

The joys of deleted or never filmed scenes.

 

[mb22]

http://graeme.50webs.com/trek/leslie/index.htm

 

[Lance]

http://graeme.50webs.com/trek/leslie/index.htm

That website is made of win!

 

[Botany Bay]

Indeed it is

I was recently stunned to see Paskey was also a member of the IMF team in a first season Mission : Impossible episode. Not a villain, but an actual team member. George Takei, Eddie Paskey and Leonard Nimoy can all boast being Enterprise crew members and IMF agents. There may be others - I've only seen a dozen or so M:I's so far.

 

[Nerys Myk]

You thought there was only one?

Starfleet mass produces them.

 

[Captain Rob]

"Bring in the clones!"
Pointless Austin Powers reference.

 

[Doomsday]

Seeing this thread, I really have to give props to Eddie Paskey. For decades, my wife and I used to joke about Lt Leslie, and his always being there in the background, with his wonderful facial expressions, and coming back from the dead, etc.

Then, several years ago (and I'm thinking it was around 10 years ago), I ran across his website (have no idea if he still has one). And I contacted him through the website, and asked about getting an autographed picture. I was going to give it to my wife as sort of a gag gift.

Eddie Paskey responded personally to my email, and sent not one but two personalized (to my wife) autographed photos, which he appended "Red Shirts Rule!" I kid you not.

And he sent me a couple of lengthy emails about what he was doing now (or I guess, then). Anyway, he had the best attitude about his somewhat unique place in ST history, and was just an all around nice guy. My wife loved the pictures, and we even had them framed and hung in our library.

So both my wife and I are very big Leslie fans now, and also Eddie Paskey fans, because of how cool he was about the whole thing.

 

[Push The Button]

Leslie was an everyman, an average Joe that got up every morning and did his job without any complaints or drama, making civilized life possible for the rest of us.

Well, except for that time in This Side of Paradise when he mutinied, but I blame the spores for that.

 

[PCz911]

http://graeme.50webs.com/trek/leslie/index.htm

What an awesome website! I had no idea how important lt Leslie was! This guy WAS the enterprise!

 

[Botany Bay]

Seeing this thread, I really have to give props to Eddie Paskey. For decades, my wife and I used to joke about Lt Leslie, and his always being there in the background, with his wonderful facial expressions, and coming back from the dead, etc.

Then, several years ago (and I'm thinking it was around 10 years ago), I ran across his website (have no idea if he still has one). And I contacted him through the website, and asked about getting an autographed picture. I was going to give it to my wife as sort of a gag gift.

Eddie Paskey responded personally to my email, and sent not one but two personalized (to my wife) autographed photos, which he appended "Red Shirts Rule!" I kid you not.

And he sent me a couple of lengthy emails about what he was doing now (or I guess, then). Anyway, he had the best attitude about his somewhat unique place in ST history, and was just an all around nice guy. My wife loved the pictures, and we even had them framed and hung in our library.

So both my wife and I are very big Leslie fans now, and also Eddie Paskey fans, because of how cool he was about the whole thing.

What a great story.

I hope to meet him one day - on the rare occasions he is quoted, he seems like a great guy.

I recently read somewhere that during his stint at the helm in "The Naked Time" he got his big chance to say a few lines, but unfortunately he just couldn't get the words out. So to help him, the director wrote his lines on the helm console (check it out next time you watch the episode), and Nimoy came over and did a few of the lines for him.

Even all these years later Paskey was disappointed to let the team down that day, but he said that on TOS, they just helped each other out if one of them was having a bad day. Nice guy.

 

[Shik]

There's something in all of this...perhaps Leslie's fame as "working man's hero" in Starfleet leads to his name becoming a catch-all term for people like that, e.g. "Don't worry about it, Commander. I've got my leslies handling that sensor analysis right now."

 

[Kevman7987]

We all know we would not be the hero character in an episode of Star Trek, but hopefully we'd at least get to be Mr. Leslie. The hard-working crewman that may not get the glory, but without him the world would fall apart.

 

[PCz911]

We all know we would not be the hero character in an episode of Star Trek, but hopefully we'd at least get to be Mr. Leslie. The hard-working crewman that may not get the glory, but without him the world would fall apart.

Well said sir!

 

[Ensign_Redshirt]

Don't forget Mr. Hadley!:

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Hadley

 

[mb22]

How often did Hadley (not Bill Blackburn in other roles) get off the bridge?

 

[Shik]

"...And that's how it came to pass that on the second-to-last day of the job, the starbase crew that rebuilt the saucer damage in the spring of 68 wound up sitting in a row at ten o'clock in the morning drinking icy cold, Bohemia-style beer, courtesy of the hardest screw ever to walk a turn on Starship Enterprise."

 

[Kinggodzillak]

How often did Hadley (not Bill Blackburn in other roles) get off the bridge?

Some off the top of my head;

Planetside security detail in Devil in the Dark and The Alternative Factor.

Taken hostage by Khan in the briefing room.

Queued for the transporter in This Side of Paradise.

Chatted to Ambassador Petri in a corridor.

Listened to Lokai's speech in the rec room.

Punched by Larry Marvick while wandering through a corridor.

Shoved by an insane guy at Kirk's memorial service.

So quite a bit.

Speaking of Leslie (and I know I only posted this a few weeks ago but what the heck) I made a video celebrating his greatness;

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJk1tdshzlY[/yt]

Eddie has seen it and likes it a lot.