The year 2016 continues to deal devastating blows. Actor Ron Glass has passed away at the age of 71. He had been battling various illnesses, and ultimately succumbed to respiratory failure.

Glass was someone who meant something to a lot of different people. To many of us geeks, he was Shepherd Derrial Book on Joss Whedon’s cult favorite space western, Firefly, and the movie that followed, Serenity, a soft-spoken older man with a mysterious past and seemingly infinite wisdom and guidance to offer. For those who are a little bit older, Glass was Detective Ron Harris on 164 episodes of Barney Miller, which ran from 1976 to 1982. His work there was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in 1982, going up against fellow Barney Miller star Steve Landesberg, two stars on M*A*S*H, and Taxi stars Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd, with Lloyd taking home the award.

Gene Wilder, the actor best known for his headlining roles in such films as Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory, Young Frankenstein, Stir Crazy, Blazing Saddles, and The Producers, died today at his at home in Stamford, CT, of complications from Alzheimer’s disease, according to Variety. He had also been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1989.

Wilder was the star of many beloved classics and helped pave the way for “pure imagination” to many of today’s creative artists, whether they are directors, actors, or music performers.

Kenny Baker, who became an international star for portraying R2-D2, the lovable iconic droid in the Star Wars franchise, has died after fighting a long illness, according to CNN. He was 81.

Like Peter Mayhew, David Prowse, Anthony Daniels, or even James Earl Jones in a way, the British-born Baker became a household name to the immense legions of Star Wars fans, who span almost 45 years of generational adoration for the franchise by donning the instantly recognizable R2-D2 costume. Not many people knew what the diminutive actor looked like in real life, but Star Wars fans wore a proud badge of honor knowing that it was Baker inside the R2 unit, a sort of early trivia nugget before the trivia boom started in the 1980s and never let its grip on popular culture.

Just a few weeks ago Disney In Depth celebrated this summer’s 15th anniversary of The Princess Diaries, a major commercial hit for Walt Disney Pictures and Garry Marshall, the film’s director.

Regrettably, there was the news this week of Marshall’s death. Having directed seven films for The Walt Disney Company and being responsible for creating a slew of hit shows for ABC during its comedy heyday in the 1970s, Marshall played a substantial role in developing popular content. His passing at age 81 comes across as almost too soon for a man still hard at work, always wanting to produce laughter and happiness.

Garry Marshall, who brought some of the most remembered and successful sitcoms of the 1970s to American television and directed some notable films such as Pretty Woman, died on Tuesday in Burbank, CA, of complications from pneumonia following a stroke, according to Variety. He was 81.

Marshall’s programs, which pretty much dominated ABC-TV for the entire decade of the 1970s, consisted of The Odd Couple and Happy Days and its spinoffs, Laverne and Shirley and Mork and Mindy. With each of them came a kind of innocuous hilarity that had healthy doses of mild slapstick, easily resolved narratives, and always an emphasis on a slight surreal aspect of fun. Unlike say the socially conscious programs of the time that were being churned out by the stable of TV pioneer Norman Lear (like All in the Family and Maude), Marshall’s sitcoms, although they were rather perfunctory and innocuous by way of social redemption or awareness, held almost equal footing in terms of ratings success. And indeed, like many of the characters on Lear’s programs (Archie Bunker, Maude, Fred Sanford), Garry Marshall also helped create and was instrumental in bringing characters that were and have remained almost as iconic, such as The Fonz, Mork from Ork, Laverne, and Shirley.