The Mugato really gets around

[mego73]

So I am watching an episode of Here's Lucy.

The episode guest stars Howard Keel as a guy who is trying to catch an exotic gorilla like animal.

Lucy has a crush on him so she joins him on safari. It turns out that Lucy's bad singing approximates the mating call of the creature. So when Lucy is alone and singing out comes... the Mugato.

The Mugato, only this time with no horn and back spikes. And the same guy is in the suit (Janos Prohaska).

The episode was from 1969 so that killed my speculation that the suit was made for Lucy and then "aliened up" for Star Trek.

It's not the first time I noticed a Trek thing in a Here's Lucy. One of the Tholian Web helmets shows up when Lucy is on stage doing a skit about the future. It's fun to see little artifacts of Star Trek in Lucy's show as of course she owned Desilu.

The Mugato suit also shows up in a forth season Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea.

[Mikey]

Desilu didn't like wasting anything

[mego73]

I wonder if Janos Prohaska owned the suit since it did end up in 20'th Century Fox's VTTBOTS.

[toys2cool]

wow good observations man

[Captain]

I wonder if Janos Prohaska owned the suit since it did end up in 20'th Century Fox's VTTBOTS.

I believe he did. He specialized in "acting in suits", and created many of them himself. He also owns the Horta suit, and the weird bird man thing (only seen in silhoutte) from the Cage/Menagerie. He also made a few more weird creatures for the "zoo" in the pilot, but most werent used, or seen in the final version.....Somewhere I have seen pictures of a spider suit, and a ape....I believe it was the same ape thing Pike strangled.
He did a bunch of Outer limits and Twilight Zone appearances as "things" as well.

[Bo8a_Fett]

Is that the same bird creature that turned up in outer limits, lost in space and bewitched?

[palitoy]

I'm not sure but I think the Creeature Pike strangles is from the "Fun and Games" episode of Outer Limits.

[palitoy]

Wow, From wikipedia:

A few of the monsters reappeared in Gene Roddenberry's 1960s Star Trek show. A feathered creature was modified to appear as a zoo animal in the background of the first pilot of Star Trek; a prop head from "Fun and Games" was used to make a Talosian appear as a vicious creature. The moving carpet beast in "The Probe" later was used as the "Horta", and operated by the same actor (Janos Prohaska). The process used to make pointed ears for David McCallum in "The Sixth Finger" was reused in Star Trek as well. Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock) appeared in two episodes, "Production and Decay of Strange Particles" and "I, Robot", William Shatner (James T. Kirk) appeared in the starring role in the episode "Cold Hands, Warm Heart" as an astronaut working on a project ironically called Project Vulcan, James Doohan (Montgomery Scott) appeared in a supporting role as a policeman in "Expanding Human", Grace Lee Whitney (Janice Rand) appeared in the episode "Controlled Experiment" and other actors established in the genre by the first series appeared in Trek episodes.

In fact Gene Roddenberry paid a lot of attention to what The Outer Limits team was doing at the time, and he was often present in their studios. Later he hired several Outer Limits alumni, among them Robert Justman and Wah Chang for the production of Star Trek.[1]

[Bo8a_Fett]

In fact Gene Roddenberry paid a lot of attention to what The Outer Limits team was doing at the time, and he was often present in their studios. Later he hired several Outer Limits alumni, among them Robert Justman and Wah Chang for the production of Star Trek.[1]
[/I]

Bet he never admitted that though....lol