American dancer and actress: died 17 August, aged 78. Best known for playing Batgirl in the final season of Batman (1967-8) and an Orion mental patient in the original Star Trek (‘Whom Gods Would Destroy’, 1969). Other genre appearances included Mars Needs Women (1966), plus roles in The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Ghost and Mrs Muir, Land of the Giants and The Six Million Dollar Man.
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The redoubtable Felicity Walker has pointed out to me that the Star Trek episode is actually entitled ‘Whom Gods Destroy’. I now have to hand in my ‘I grok Spock’ badge and switch my allegiance to Space: 1999 fandom to atone for my shameful error.
She also appeared as a Russian ballerina, dancing a pas de deux, with James Coburn in one of the Our Man Flint movies.
Very talented lady. She’ll be missed.
Her appearance on that Star Trek episode was one of its high points – she really stole the show from the ostensible villain.
I would like to suggest, with Jay Lake and Iain Banks seconding, that this cancer fad has been done to, er, death, and should be henceforth discouraged. In all caps, perhaps.
Gail Simone has a nice rememberence of what Yvonne Craig meant to her
http://www.playboy.com/articles/remembering-the-revelatory-yvonne-craig-by-batgirl-writer-gail-simone
Also Adam West as well
http://nerdist.com/batman-star-adam-west-tribute-yvonne-craig/
She was in the second Flint movie, In Like Flint, and she was a spy as well as a ballerina.
I didn’t know until now that at the time I was watching her on ABC as Batgirl, that she was just two years younger than my mother, which made her 29 at the time. Unless you agree with the Calista Flockhart version of Cat Grant in the Supergirl pilot, she wasn’t a girl at that age, she was a woman.
Melody Patterson from F Troop (no genre connections AFAIK, but same TV era) is gone too. Only 66.