Wiedlin

Jane Wiedlin, the iconic rhythm guitarist of 80s New Wave all-woman band The Go-Go’s,  indulged her lifelong fandom of Star Trek with a cameo in 1986’s Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home as Trillya, the comm officer seen relaying her ship’s distress in to Starfleet HQ on a large monitor during the whalesong crisis.

The film’s whale-saving message also fit her longtime passion as an animal rights activist. Although not discernable on the soundtrack, her character is Communications Officer Trillya of the U.S.S. Shepard under command of a Capt. Clampett, per the speech included as an addenda to the ST IV script.

Music made her a star, both in the band and as a solo act since, but Wiedlin has taken many fun small roles—Joan of Arc in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, as a singing telegram girl in Clue, and as a choir member on an episode of Frasier, along with a later string of small independent films—and her appearances on VH1’s The Surreal Life. Born in 1958 in Oconomowoc, Wisc., she remains an ordained minister as “Reverend Sister Go-Go and most recently co-created Lady Robootika, a comic book about an alien abductee who’s turned into a cyborg superheroine.