Today in Star Trek history: Bob Baker III is born

Puppeteer Bob Baker and his contribution to Star Trek: Beauregard the Plant

FEBRUARY 9, 2022 - On this day in 1924, Robert Alison Baker III was born. Starting when he was 8 years old, Baker trained as a puppeteer with several puppet theaters. He first performed as a professional puppeteer for film director Mervyn LeRoy, known as a producer for The Wizard of Oz.

As a teenager, Baker began creating marionettes, which he sold in both the US and Europe. After graduating from Hollywood High School, he apprenticed with animator George Pal and was quickly promoted to head animator of Puppetoons, Pals’ series of stop-motion animation films. Instead of traditional stop-motion, where a single puppet moves, the Puppetoons utilized wooden puppets with interchangeable limbs and heads, which were swapped around for each frame of film.

Baker would go on to serve as an animation advisor for many film companies, including Disney. His love of puppetry never abated, and, in 1953, he and partner Alton Wood acquired a run-down scenic shop in downtown Los Angeles, turning it into the Bob Baker Marionette Theater.

Baker’s puppets were featured on popular television shows, such as Bewitched, Land of the Giants, and NCIS, as well as films such as Bluebeard, A Star Is Born, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Oh, and he also did a thing for the first episode of a little, unknown show called Star Trek.

In “The Man Trap,” the first Trek episode to air, Yeoman Rand brings a snack to Sulu in the botany lab, the first of several hobbies the helmsman was to be given over the course of the series. Within the lab, there is an unusual kind of plant, described in the script as having “a pansy-type face” and giving off a “CHIMING, MELODIC HUM.” Unfortunately, the special effects of the day weren’t quite up to the task and the plant looks suspiciously like a glove with petals glued onto it being operated by a person’s hand. That hand belonged to Bob Baker. To make matters worse, the “melodic hum” sounds more like a series of short squeals. Robert Justman, the show’s producer, had a few notes about the plant in one of his infamous memos:

We establish a plant named “Beauregard.” This bit is very amusing and quite science fiction. But are we telling science fiction stories or are we doing a television dramatic show? I’m not sure that the plant routine is out of place. I’m just not sure that it is in place in this story.

Gene Roddenberry allowed Beauregard to stay, but warned that “if we go much further, we’ll get outlandish.” Too late for that, Gene.

Despite the mediocre, some might say “failed” attempt at creating an alien flower, Baker was quite a successful puppeteer and his Marionette Theatre in Los Angeles is still going strong, having been honored with a historic monument designation by the LA City Council in 2009, five years before his death at the age of 90.

Please join us at Daily Star Trek News in remembering Bob Baker, and visit the Bob Baker Marionette Theater’s website if you’d like to learn more about them or to plan a visit.