American actress born in 1937 who played the gravely ill Assistant Federation Commissioner Nancy Hedford in the second-season Original Series episode Metamorphosis.
Elinor Donahue is an American actress, born in 1937, known as Betty Anderson, the elder daughter in Father Knows Best, and as the pharmacist Ellie Walker in the first season of The Andy Griffith Show.
In Metamorphosis she played Nancy Hedford, a diplomat being rushed to the Enterprise by shuttlecraft for treatment of the rare Sakuro's disease when the craft is pulled down to Zefram Cochrane's planetoid. Sharp-tongued and dying, she regrets never having been loved; at the end the Companion merges with her, curing her and becoming human enough to share Cochrane's life.
Donahue continued to work in television for decades, with roles in The Odd Couple and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.