The New Zealand actor, best known for playing paleontologist, Dr. Alan Grant in multiple Jurassic Park movies, has passed away. It was sudden, but his family said he was recovering from blood cancer.
Tag Archives: Obituary
Robert Redford has passed away at 89
While he didn’t have a lot of genre credits, his impact on cinema is not to be understated. In addition to numerous roles in iconic movies (All the Presidents Men, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Natural, Captain America: The Winter Soldier), he created the long-running Sundance Film Festival in Utah.
Jeri Taylor, Star Trek writer and co-creator of Voyager has passed
The Okudas just broke the news on Facebook, Jeri Taylor has passed away at the age of 86.
Taylor wrote a number of episodes for Star Trek: The Next Generation, DS9, and Voyager. Taylor was the first woman to receive a “Created By” credit for a Star Trek series (Voyager).
Among the episodes she penned was the iconic (and still prescient) TNG Season Four episode “The Drumhead”.
James Earl Jones has died
Well, this just sucks. The man who voiced one of the greatest villains of all time has left us. James Earl Jones has left us at the age of 93.
To say the man had quite a career is a massive understatement. Picking out a favorite role is insanely difficult.
What was your favorite role?
Kentaro Miura Passes Away At The Age of 54
Hakusensha’s editorial department and the writer’s official Twitter account have reported that Kentaro Miura, the writer and artist of the manga Berserk, has passed away at the age of 54 of an acute aortic dissection.
Berserk, which started in 1988 and was still ongoing as of Miura’s death has been adapted into several anime series, one in 1997 adapting the Golden Age Arc (which was followed by a trilogy of films adapting that arc), and a later series in the late 2010s picking up where the Golden Age Arc left off (which has run for 3 seasons).
Miura’s work had been credited as influencing various works, from video games like Dragon’s Dogma, Dark Souls, and Monster Hunter and the design of Cloud Strife’s Buster Swordin Final Fantasy VII, to various other anime and manga series like Demon Slayer and Vagabond, as well as the Netflix Castlevania animated series.
RIP Ben Bova
The Science Fiction author passed away on November 29 at age 88 of complications from COVID-19. He authored over 120 works of sci-fi, won six Hugo Awards, and has been the president of both the National Space Society as well as the Science Fiction Writers of America.
RIP Chadwick Boseman (1977-2020)
Variety is reporting that Chadwick Boseman has died of colon cancer at the age of 43. Most recently he was best known for the role of Black Panther in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, however his earlier film roles including playing the first African-American Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall, and the first African-American man to break the color barrier and play in the MLB, Jackie Robinson, in bio-pics for both people (Marshall and 42, respectively).
RIP Grant Imahara, Mythbuster, Engineer, and Geek
Grant Imahara, robot engineer and builder extraordinaire on Mythbusters has passed away at the way-too-young age of 49.
Grant’s resume reads like a geek’s dream. Worked on the Star Wars prequels (operating R2-D2 no less), competed in BattleBots, built countless robots and gadgets for Mythbusters, and even played Sulu on Star Trek Continues.
“Hidden Figure” Katherine Johnson dead at 101
The pioneering mathematician overcame both gender and racial barriers to help humanity reach the moon in the 1960’s.
Johnson spent 35 years at NASA (and its predecessor NACA) where her calculations of orbital mechanics were critical to the success of the Mercury program and subsequent missions.
Star Trek Pioneer D.C. Fontana Has Passed Away
Dorothy Catherine “D.C.” Fontana has passed away at the age of 80 after a brief illness. She wrote for a variety of TV shows, including four Star Trek series, Babylon 5, and much more. She wrote the Star Trek novel, Vulcan’s Glory, which tells of Spock’s first mission aboard the Enterprise and explored Captain Pike’s “Number One” character (played by Majel Barret in the unaired pilot, “The Cage”).
In a male-dominated industry, she hid her gender using her initials (a common practice in those days for women writers).
Fontana wrote one of (if not the best) episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series, “Yesteryear” as well as the DS9 episode “Dax” which explored the past hosts of Jadzia’s symbiote. She also wrote “Journey to Babel” for TOS, which introduced Spock’s parents, Sarek and Amanda.
Raise a glass of Romulan Ale, “To absent friends.”