Rhue-ined

Madlyn Rhue, a veteran character actress who kept a career going for more than a decade despite an escalating battle with multiple sclerosis, died Dec. 18 at the age of 68. First diagnosed with MS in 1977, she concealed her illness as the result of a car accident and later arthritis to avoid losing work. When she finally came forward in 1985, she became a spokesperson for MS and also earned a recurrent role as a wheelchair-bound ballistics expert in the forgotten Houston Knights. She also landed a recurring role as town librarian Jenny O'Neill on Murder, She Wrote, after Angela Lansbury found that she was in danger of losing her Screen Actors Guild health insurance as a result of her diminishing roles. She appeared in dozens of TV series, with perhaps her best-known turn as a Starfleet officer in the classic Star Trek episode Space Seed, where she is charmed by Ricardo Montalban's superhuman Khan Noonian Singh. She nearly helps him capture the Enterprise and opts to join him in exile on Ceti Alpha 6, where her death helps foster the rage that results in another attack on the Enterprise in Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan, a masterpiece of overacting. (I'm a geek; sue me.)

-- kudos to Tammy for not overlooking what I had