Star’s nose for TV fame
QUESTION The Sixties U.S. sci- fi series The Invaders starred actor Roy Thinnes. What became of him?
ROY THINNES was born on April 6, 1938, in Chicago, Illinois. He began acting in high school and moved to New York in 1957, where he made his screen debut as a teenage arsonist in a 1957 pilot for a never- screened TV series, Chicago 212.
After a variety of film, theatre and TV roles, Thinnes’s big break came with a two-year stint on General Hospital, starting in 1963.
Female viewers noticed his piercing blue eyes and rugged good looks — the thrice-broken nose courtesy of his days as a teenage street brawler.
Success in General Hospital and a role as Ben Quick in the TV adaptation of William Faulkner’s The Long Hot Summer saw Thinnes snapped up by producer Quinn Martin to play David Vincent in The Invaders.
He married his co- star Lynn Loring, who also acted with him in the movie Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun (1969). They parted in 1984.
Though Thinnes has occasionally appeared in films, such as The Hindenburg (1975), Airport 1975 (1974) and Blue Bayou (1990), he has remained essentially a TV star. Among his post-Invaders TV roles was Dr James Whitman on The Psychiatrist (1970), Captain (later Major) Holms on From Here To Eternity (1980) and Nick Hogan on Falcon Crest (1981).
His most notable recent appearance was as the alien Jeremiah Smith in The X-Files.
Thinnes lives on the west coast of America with his fourth wife, author Stephanie Batallier, and concentrates on his art work with exhibitions in Texas and California.
Jerry Haymer, Preston, Lancs.
QUESTION Following Blue Planet II’s revelations about the sea toad — it’s a fish with feet — what traits do humans share with fish?
CHARLES DARWIN once said he thought the evidence from the comparative anatomy of embryos was ‘by far the strongest single class of facts in favour of change of form’. While it has since been eclipsed by genetics, it remains a compelling argument for evolution. In this context, perhaps the single most striking details in the comparative embryology of vertebrates are structures colloquially known as gill slits.
Embryonic gill slits or branchial clefts ( branchia is Greek for gill), or more properly pharyngeal clefts (grooves and folds), are part of what is called the pharyngeal apparatus found in the front (ventral) and sides (lateral) of the head/neck region of all vertebrates in t he pharyngula stage development.
At this stage, the embryos of all vertebrates are similar, having developed the beginning of a spinal cord.
In fish and the larva of amphibians these gill slits develop into respiratory organs used to extract oxygen from water. In am niot es( reptiles, birds and mammals) they are modified into the ear drum and glands such as the thymus and parathyroid.
Two vestiges of our fishy ancestry are the propensity of men to suffer from hernia and hiccups.
The gonads of sharks, other fish and humans develop in the same place — the chest. This works well of for sharks, as they stay there, but in human males, the gonads need to travel down into the scrotum to keep cool. This causes a looping of the spermatic cord, which causes a weakness in the body wall, leaving them prone to hernia.
The path of the human phrenic nerves begins at the base of the skull and goes through the body cavity to the diaphragm. This is an efficient path to fish and amphibian gills, which are in the neck, but is an inefficient path to the diaphragm in humans. The irritation of these nerves can cause problems such as hiccups, a reflexive vestige.
Other evidence fish and humans share ancestry is more obscure. The mammalian left recurrent laryngeal nerve, a branch of the vagus nerve (cranial nerve X) that supplies all the intrinsic muscles of the larynx, appears to have been poorly designed.
It travels downward past the larynx, then round the aorta and back up to the larynx. A much shorter route directly to the larynx would be far more effective.
The evolutionary model, however, is a precise fit, especially when one considers fish anatomy.
In fish, several branches extend from the vagus nerve, each looping around arterial arches that connect the dorsal and ventral aorta between each gill slit, which is a direct route.
Dr Ian Smith, Cambridge.
QUESTION When and why was it decided there should be 12 members on a jury?
THE previous answer reminded me of the following story.
A serial burglar came before a judge and was told the case could be tried immediately. However, if he wished to plead not guilty, he would go for a full trial and his guilt or i nnocence would be decided by 12 of his peers.
‘Excuse my ignorance, but who might these peers be?’ he asked.
‘ Twelve people, chosen at random and from the same social background as yourself,’ replied the judge. ‘Good grief,’ said the accused. ‘There is no way I want my fate decided by a bunch of thieves!’
More seriously, contemporary medieval commentators suggested that juries of the time were not particularly impartial. They were usually recruited from groups with a higher social standing than the local peasantry, maybe freemen, craftsmen or village chiefs.
They would almost certainly know the accuser or defendant, and depending on who gave them a brown envelope would give judgment in that direction. Lyn Pask, Blackwood, Gwent.
QUESTION Tom Cruise broke his ankle, but have any actors been seriously injured or killed on a film set?
FURTHER to earlier answers, Stewart Granger told the following story about when he was making the 1952 film, Scaramouche. During a swordfight, he had to fall on the floor, then the villain was to cut through the cord holding up a spiked iron chandelier, which was to fall upon our prone hero.
Granger asked the director, George Sidney, for a test run. Sidney said it was perfectly safe, but the actor insisted. The chandelier crashed onto t he mattress intended to break Granger’s fall and tore it to shreds. B Dallow, Kempston, Beds.