Star Trek The Original Series: 30 Interstellar Guest Stars

Star Trek: The Original Series only lasted three seasons, but it had a tremendous impact on both the science fiction genre and society in general. The show that started as a “Wagon Train to space” helped the former frontier country make great strides in the fight for racial equality, emerging technology, and even in gathering funds and excitement for NASA’s nascent space program. Science fiction writers clamored to promote the show and the art. And, because the series was art and artfully done art at that, it also took in some of the top acting talent in the industry.

Many legendary actors appeared on Star Trek: The Original Series. Some of them, admittedly, became legends because of their appearance. Others, were already legends before beaming aboard. Some of the actors came with wonderful science fiction bona fides. Others, became bona fide science fiction players after their careers went into warp drive. There are so many guest stars to choose from, but Den of Geek would like to start with these magnificent thespians…

30. Vic Tayback

His role on Star Trek:

Because I am the official Gangster Geek at Den of Geek, I would like to start with the most Damon Runyon-esque character on The Original Series: Jojo Krako, played by the gruffly great Vic Tayback in the episode “A Piece of the Action.”

One of the most fun episodes, “A Piece of the Action” reimagined Captain James Tiberius Koik as a post-post-modern Lucky Luciano, creating the Organization and setting up a capo di tutti capi. Krako ruled the empire he carved out from the Federation like a king in concrete golashes.

William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and the rest of the regular cast are clearly having a more fun than fizbett sharps on Beta Antares IV and Tayback is mad enough to chew neutronium. Ultimately, the turf was split between Krako and Bela Oxmyx, played by Anthony Caruso, probably best known for his work in John Huston’s gangster classic The Asphalt Jungle.

Where else we know him from:

Tayback is best known for slinging hash as the owner of Mel’s diner, Mel Sharples. Tayback was the only actor to carry over from Martin Scorsese’s 1974 film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. The series Alice, which starred Linda Lavin, ran from 1976 to 1985. Tayback directed the episode “Alice Faces the Music” and reprised his role as Mel in the spinoff series Flo.

Unsurprisingly, Tayback was born in Brooklyn, but he is well known in the borough of Queens when he played Joe Tucker, Archie Bunker’s old friend in the All in the Family episode “Et Tu, Archie?”

Tayack was a TV staple in the sixties and seventies, appearing on Hawaii Five-O, Rawhide, Bewitched, Columbo, three episodes of The Monkees (including “Son of a Gypsy”), and Get Smart (in the episode “Appointment in Sahara,” as Jamal). He guest-starred as Bill Colton on the F Troop episode “Corporal Agarn’s Farewell To The Troops.”

He played in both comedies and dramas. In the seventies, he played Mr. Savocheck in the Barney Miller episode “Stakeout” and appeared on MacGyver, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and most other shows you could think of.

Tayback appeared in the film With Six You Get Eggroll (1968), which might have been more interesting if eggroll came with sex. He was in two Steve McQueen film classics, Bullitt (1968) and Papillon (1973), and watched Ernest Borgnine kick the shit out of hoboes in Emperor of the North Pole (1973).  Taybak was a standout in the cult film The Big Bus (1976) and had broader shoulders than “Shoulders.” He also cooked up a comic criminal for Neil Simon’s loving noir sendup The Cheap Detective (1978).

With a voice like Tayback’s, cop movies are a natural and he was in two great ones: The Blue Knight (1973) and The Choirboys (1977), which was based on an even better book by Joseph Wambaugh. He played in the gangster films The Don Is Dead (1973) and Lepke (1975).  Tayback back-talked Clint Eastwood in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974). That voice also got him cast as Carface Caruthers in the animated feature All Dogs Go to Heaven.

One of Tayback’s last roles was in the 1989 video music video for Ringo Starr and Buck Owens duo for the song “Act Naturally.” Tayback died in 1990.

Science fiction street cred:

Taybeck appeared on the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode: “A Man with a Problem.” He was featured on two Tales from the Darkside episodes. He played Alan Coombs in “The New Man” and Tippy Ryan in “Basher Malone.” He was also in the little known Beverly Hills Bodysnatchers from 1989.

Tayback was also in the cast of the pilot of the failed 1982 series Mysterious Two. It starred John Forsythe and Priscilla Pointer as He and She, extraterrestrial couple that come to Earth to recruit misfits and adventurers. It also starred Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy, Robert Englund, as Boone.

And if all that means nothing, Tayback reunited with Koik as Lt. Pete Benedict on the T. J. Hooker episode “Hooker’s War.”

29. Roger C. Carmel

His role on Star Trek:

Roger C. Carmel played Harcourt Fenton Mudd in the “Mudd’s Women” and “I, Mudd” episodes. He was the only non-Enterprise crew actor to appear as the same character in more than one episode. Or is that a lie? Everything the guy said was a lie, even when he was telling the truth.

This guy could sell a mail-order bride to a mail man, whether they could clean a pot in a sand-storm or not. Carmel reprised the character for the Star Trek: The Animated Series episode “Mudd’s Passion.” Carmel died before he was able to bring back Harry Mudd for a season one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Where else we know him from:

Before Carmel made a mechanized tribute to his ever-loving spouse on Star Trek, he played Roger Buell, the henpecked husband on NBC’s 1967 sitcom The Mothers-in-Law. He also played Colonel Gumm on Batman.

Brooklyn-born Carmel brought his six-foot-four frame and mustache to almost every show on TV. He had guest roles on: The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Patty Duke Show, I Spy, Blue Light, The Everglades, Hogan’s Heroes, Car 54, Where Are You?, Banacek, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Munsters, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Hawaii Five-O, The High Chaparral, All in the Family, Laverne and Shirley, Diff’rent Strokes, Three’s Company, All in the Family and Chico and the Man. He always had that mischievous glint in his eyes.

He appeared in the films Gambit, Myra Breckinridge, Breezy, Thunder and Lightning, and Jerry Lewis’ 1981 comeback film, Hardly Working. Carmel died in 1986.

Science fiction street cred:

Carmel played Judge Jones on The Invisible Man science fiction series that ran from 1975 through 1976. The series starred David McCallum as invisible scientist Dr. Daniel Westin, who could sometimes be seen giving ideas to a private thinktank. It was created by future TV institution Steven Bochco, along with Harve Bennett. Carmel voiced Decepticon deputy leader Cyclonus and the Quintesson Leader in the animated science fiction film The Transformers: The Movie.

28. William Campbell

His role on Star Trek:

William Campbell played two important characters on The Original Series: the preening and petulant Trelane in “The Squire of Gothos,” and the pompous and pet-hating Klingon Captain Koloth in both “The Trouble With Tribbles” and the “Blood Oath” episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Say what you want about Campbell, he knew how to rock a pair of sideburns.

Admiral, retired, just squire Trelane by the time the Enterprise crew beam down for a spot of tasteless tea and wooden-tasting chicken, engages Kirk in a very dangerous game, reminiscent of the classic 1932 film starring Fay Wray and Joel McCrea. He is kind of Charlie X’s spoiled cousin.

Koloth, of course, is the Klingon you most love to hate. Dripping with insinuation, he is the perfect diplomat spoiling for a fight. His first officer gets that honor, goading Scotty into throwing the first punch in an old-fashioned knock-down, drag-out fight reminiscent of the opening credits of F-Troop.

Where else we know him from:

Campbell’s first film, The Breaking Point from 1950, starred the legendary tough guy actor John Garfield. Throughout the early fifties, he was a supporting player in films like Battle Circus, which starred Humphrey Bogart as a M*A*S*H army doctor who used humor and gin to anesthetize the pain of the war in Korea, The People Against O’Hara, and Holiday for Sinners.

His first starring role came in Frank Korvac William Wellman’s The High and the Mighty (1954). Campbell was the first person to sing onscreen with rock and roll legend Elvis Presley in the movie Love Me Tender (1956). On TV, Campbell was the co-star on the 1958 truck driver series Cannonball. He appeared on the series Perry Mason twice, once as a killer and once as a victim.

But Campbell is best known for his 1963 work with Roger Corman. He starred in car race picture The Young Racers in 1963 and then stuck around Ireland to star in what director Francis Ford Coppola promised to be the cheapest horror movie ever made: Dementia 13. The future Godfather director knew how to build suspense without cash. Campbell had an axe to grind in the movie that also starred Patrick Magee and Luana Anders.

Campbell made Corman’s horror movie Operacija Ticijan, which was finally released in heavily re-edited form ten years later on TV as Portrait in Terror. Reshot with additional footage, it was also edited into the film Blood Bath, which went on to become the cult favorite Track of the Vampire.

Science fiction street cred:

William Campbell played Chad on the 1978 The Next Step Beyond episode “Portrait of the Mind.”

27. Elisha Cook Jr.

His role on Star Trek:

Elisha Cook Jr. played Samuel T. Cogley in the “Court Martial” episode from season 1. Kirk’s defense attorney in the case of the missing crewman, Lt. Commander Ben Finney preferred books over computers. I don’t want to sound like some hindsight mystic, but this was probably the first time that now-clichéd joke was made, just one more example of Star Trek’s power of predictive insight.

Today, you could fit The Bible, the Code of Hammurabi and of Justinian, the Magna Carta, the Constitution of the United States, and the Fundamental Declarations of the Martian Colonies on a zip drive, but when Cook Jr. said those words, computers still filled whole floors and sometimes buildings.

Where else we know him from:

Elisha Cook Jr. is probably best known as Harry Jones, the good kid who got shot down in The Big Sleep or as Wilmer, the New York gunsel with the gaudy patter in The Maltese Falcon — the two iconic Humphrey Bogart private detective movies. Cook was also only one who seemed to know what was going on in House on Haunted Hill.

Eugene O’Neill himself cast Cook for the Broadway run of Ah, Wilderness! as soon as the teen actor rode the vaudeville circuit to New York City. The actor then cut out his own niche in film — not to mention his own lifestyle, only coming down from his idyllic and remote home on Lake Sabrina in the Sierra Nevada mountains to shoot movies.

But which movies? I, the Jury (1953), Shane (1953), and Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956) only begin to hint at the range of the actor most people think of as a patsy, or a fall guy. Cook was a natural at comedy, like his bit part in Hellzapoppin’ (1941) and drama, like Born to Kill (1947).

On TV, Cook played private detective Homer Garrity, “Semi-Private Eye,” on Adventures of Superman, the title role in “The Hermit” episode of The Real McCoys, and Gideon McCoy in an episode of The Wild Wild West (1966). He also appeared on The Dennis Day Show, The Rebel, The Fugitive and on The Bionic Woman episode, “Once a Thief” (1977). He also played Professor Isaacson on the Batman TV series.

Science fiction street cred:

Elisha Cook Jr. played Uncle Albert on the TV series ALF. Science fiction was not his forte. His horror credentials, however, aren’t bad. Cook was the nervous impromptu tour guide in William Castle’s classic B-movie horror flick House on Haunted Hill (1959), which also starred Vincent Price. He played Gordon “Weasel” Phillips in the miniseries Salem’s Lot. He also appeared in Roman Polanski’s satanic classic Rosemary’s Baby (1968).

26. Melvin Belli

His role on Star Trek:

Melvin Belli was the friendly angel in the 1968 episode “And the Children Shall Lead.” The newly orphaned space kids see Gorgan as their beneficent beneficiary until Kirk exposes him for what he is: the king of torts in a Day-Glo lime green muumuu. Rumors starting right now tell of how Belli tried to secure the rights to the “Hail, hail, fire and snow” and sell it to the Rolling Stones, with soundtrack right in the Albert and David Maysles documentary Gimme Shelter (1970).

Gorgan is the picture of fatherly reverence in his Star Trekturn, doting on the kids as if they were his own — but especially Caesar Belli, his real life son who appeared in the episode.

Where else we know him from:

Belli wasn’t an actor, but he played one on TV — and that, perhaps, would have been the life for him… if he wasn’t such a good mouthpiece. Melvin Bellicose, as insurance companies called him after he fought the good fight with Ralph Nader, was known for his celebrity clients, like Muhammad Ali, Errol Flynn, Chuck Berry, Lana Turner, Tony Curtis, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Mae West.

And of course, The Rolling Stones, for whom Belli negotiated the relocation of the December 6, 1969, Altamont Free Concert. (That went pretty well, considering.) Belli’s first gig after he graduated law school, was to go undercover as a hobo for the Works Progress Administration and ride the rails. Belli worked on early consumer rights law cases in the 1940s and 1950s.

But Belli’s most infamous client is Jack Ruby, the guy who killed the guy who killed Kennedy, who the lawyer represented for free. Belli couldn’t prove Ruby was insane when he killed Lee Harvey Oswald, but got the conviction (and the death sentence that went with it) overturned in 1966. Ruby died of cancer before the retrial.

Belli also sat ringside in 1969 when the San Francisco Zodiac Killer said he’d do a morning radio interview if Belli or F. Lee Bailey were also on air. Belli appeared and the Zodiac killer called but kept hanging up and calling back before the cops could trace where the calls were coming from. Brian Cox played Belli in the 2007 film Zodiac.

Dow Corning killed Belli’s firm in December 1995 after they declared bankruptcy to get out of a breast implant class action suit.

As for acting, Belli played a criminal defense lawyer in an episode of the series Hunter and produced the first Hollywood picture to be shot entirely in Japan, Tokyo File 212 (1951).

Science fiction street cred:

Belli represented Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker.

25. Michael J. Pollard

His role on Star Trek:

Michael J. Pollard guest starred in the season one episode “Miri.” He was 27 when he played the teenager doomed to a future immune system breakdown. Pollard brought a sullen insolence to Jahn, the leader of the orphaned tribe of “onlies.” You just wanted to give him a bonk bonk on the head.

Where else we know him from:

Pollard played the young gas-station-attendant-turned-getaway-car-driver C.W. Moss in the 1967 gangster classic Bonnie and Clyde. Pollard won a BAFTA Award and was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar and a Golden Globe Award for his role in Bonnie and Clyde.

Actors Studio-trained Pollard made his TV debut as a shoeshine boy in a 1959 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. He played his first lead the same year when he played Homer McCauley in the TV adaptation of William Saroyan’s The Human Comedy.

Pollard kind of replaced the Maynard G. Krebs character on CBS’ The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis when Bob Denver got drafted. Pollard played Jerome Krebs, Maynard’s first cousin, but never appeared on screen with Denver, because you couldn’t have two beatniks onscreen at the same time. Jerome retreated to a distance coffee house when the future Gilligan was classified 4-F and came back to the series. He also appeared on the series Window on Main Street, The Andy Griffith Show, Channing, Going My Way with Gene Kelly, Gunsmoke, The Lucy Show, I Spy and Honey West.

Pollard originated the role of the jealous boyfriend Hugo Peabody in the original Broadway cast of Bye Bye Birdie in 1960, which also included Julie Newmar (who is also on this list). Antiseptic pop singer Bobby Rydell played Peabody in the 1963 movie.

On film, Pollard was featured in the movie Summer Magic, starring Hayley Mills. He played Stanley in Norman Jewison’s The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming and had a part in Carl Reiner’s 1967 comedy Enter Laughing. He played an escaped American POW in the 1969 World War II movie Hannibal Brooks. Pollard played one of the title roles in the 1970 film Little Fauss and Big Halsy with Robert Redford.

Pollard played Billy the Kid in Dirty Little Billy (1972), appeared in the 1980 cult film Melvin and Howard, and fought fires with Steve Martin in the Cyrano de Bergerac-inspired comedy Roxanne. He also played the homeless guy that Bill Murray thought was Richard Burton in the Christmas comedy Scrooged. Pollard appeared in in Tango & Cash, with Kurt Russell and Sylvester Stallone, played Bug Bailey in the Warren Beatty’s 1990 film Dick Tracy, and played Aeolus in The Odyssey (1997).

Michael J. Pollard put the J in Michael J. Fox.

Science fiction street cred:

Pollard had a recurring role as Mister Mxyzptlk, a trans-dimensional imp, in the Superboy television series in 1959. Pollard played an alien boy in the 1966 “The Magic Mirror” episode of Lost in Space. He played a mortician on the Ray Bradbury Theater season six episode “The Handler.” In 1993, Pollard was in the horror film Skeeter and played Stucky in Rob Zombie’s 2003 cult horror classic House of 1000 Corpses.

24. Sally Kellerman

Her role on Star Trek:

I don’t know if I’d say Sally Kellerman was a goddess, but she was more powerful than a photon torpedo rifle in “Where No Man Has Gone Before” (1966), the second pilot for Star Trek. Psychiatrist Elizabeth Dehner thought she was keeping the universe safe from intergalactic cabin fever… until she learned to move mountains with her mind.

Where else we know her from:

After sixty years in the business, Kellerman is probably still best known as being part of Robert Altman’s repertory of actors. Kellerman originated the role of Major Margaret “Hot Lips” O’Houlihan in his 1970 anti-war comedy M*A*S*H. The role got her nominated for a Best Actress in a Supporting Role Oscar. She played in Altman’s films Brewster McCloud (1970), Welcome to L.A. (1976), The Player (1992) and Prêt-à-Porter (1994).

Kellerman was also unforgettable as Rodney Dangerfield’s professor cum tutor, whispering sweet crip notes in his ear in Back to School (1986). Kellerman was, after all, the Last of the Red Hot Lovers (1972).

Kellerman started out on the road to show business as a budding rock and roller. She was a teenager when she signed a contract with Verve Records founder and head Norman Granz, but didn’t record her first album until 1972. She’d go on to record quite a few albums covering different genres and even contributing music to the soundtracks of the movies she starred in. Kellerman once said the thing she most regretted about passing on Altman’s Nashville was that she would have had a chance to sing.

Kellerman made her film debut in Reform School Girl (1957) and debuted on stage in Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People. She continued to move around stage, screen and TV for her entire career. She played in Leslie Stevens’s The Marriage-Go-Round and Michael Shurtleff’s Call Me by My Rightful Name. Kellerman played Mag Wildwood in the original Broadway production of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which closed during preview. She also appeared in productions of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues.

Kellerman put in appearances on TV’s The Outer Limits (1965), Bachelor Father, Bonanza (1966, 1970) Chemistry (2011), and the CW teen drama series 90210. She played Marla, an aging Hollywood actress with dementia 90210 (2008) and Marc Maron’s mother in the “Dead Possum” episode of Maron (2013). She hosted Saturday Night Live on February 7, 1981.

On film, Kellerman acted in The Third Day (1965), The Rogues (1965) Boston Strangler (1968), The April Fools (1969), the slasher film A Reflection of Fear, Lost Horizon (1973), Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins (1975) the highly underrated screwball comedy The Big Bus (1975), Welcome to L.A. (1976), George Roy Hill’s A Little Romance (1979), Secret Weapons (1985), Moving Violations (1985), Blake Edwards’ That’s Life (1986), Boris and Natasha: The Movie (1992) and The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman (2006). She starred with Ernest Borgnine and Mickey Rooney in Night Club (2011).

Science fiction street cred:

Kellerman played Ingrid Larkin in “The Human Factor” episode of The Outer Limits from 1963. She returned to the series to play Judith Bellero, the wife of Richard Bellero (played by Martin Landau) in the 1964 “The Bellero Shield” episode.

She also played Laura Crowell in the “Labrynth” episode of the TV series The Invaders in 1967. In 1990s, Kellerman appeared on The Ray Bradbury Theatre TV Series as Clara Goodwater in the “Exorcism” episode. She voiced The Watchbird on the series Masters of Science Fiction in 2007.

23. BarBara Luna

Her role on Star Trek:

BarBara Luna played Kirk’s Machiavellian mistress Lt. Marlena Moreau in the “Mirror, Mirror” episode (probably better known as the “Spock with a beard” episode). 

Moreau would be well suited for ancient Rome, a Cleopatra to Kirk’s Caesar. The good lieutenant was the only person, crew member or not, who knew about the Tantalus field, which Luna pronounces tantalizingly enough to make you want to scream like Chekhov moving up in rank in an agonizer.

The first time we see Marlena, she is splayed out on the captain’s bed, still picking up chem lab pieces from the Halkan storm after party. Luna also appeared in the fan-created Star Trek: New Voyages internet show twice.

Where else we know her from:

BarBara Luna was still in high school when she debuted on Broadway. She originated the role of Ezio Pinza in the original Broadway production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific and sang the opening song, “Dites-Moi.” Luna remained on Broadway because she didn’t want to drop out of school to go on the road, which she did as soon as she graduated, joining the touring company of Teahouse of the August Moon.

Her first film role was as Nico in Tank Battalion (1958), with Frank Gorshin and Edward G. Robinson Jr. She followed that up with parts in Cry Tough (1959), The Blue Angel (1959), and the classic Burt Lancaster movie Elmer Gantry (1960) before she was cast as Frank Sinatra’s blind love interest in director Mervyn LeRoy’s The Devil at 4 O’Clock.

Luna spent Five Weeks in a Balloon. She also played in Women in Chains (1972), Gentle Savage (1973), The Gatling Gun (1973) and played Cat in the 1982 movie The Concrete Jungle.

Luna acted on more than 500 television shows, including Walt Disney’s Zorro, Perry Mason, The Wild Wild West, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Mission: Impossible, Hawaii Five-O, Search for Tomorrow, One Life to Live, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Charlie’s Angels.

Through all the screen work, Luna never stopped appearing on stage. She played the role of Anita in five different companies of West Side Story. Luna’s last Broadway show was as Diana Morales in the 1976 cast of A Chorus Line. After that, she headlined her own cabaret show in New York City, the Catskills, Atlantic City and Los Angeles.

Science fiction street cred:

BarBara Luna played Gaby Christian, the girlfriend of a missing Southern California physics research center worker, in the “It Crawled Out Of The Woodwork” episode of the original The Outer Limits and Lisa on The Invaders. She played Koori on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

22. Michael Dunn

His role on Star Trek:

Retrospectives of “Plato’s Stepchildren” are so focused on Lt. Uhura and Kirk’s lips that they sometimes forget that the episode also featured Michael Dunn’s turn as court jester Alexander.

The Platonians were psychokinetic philosophers who believed knowledge reached its pinnacle during the time of Earth’s Greek empire, around 450 B.C. They should have paid more attention to Hippocrates because their mind games left them with Achilles’ anti-immune system. The diminutive and spiritually unarmed Alexander could lay the most powerful Platonian to waste with a hangnail, but his dignity will not allow it.

Where else we know him from:

Dunn was an inspiration to shorter-statured performers. He was born with medical dwarfism that stunted cartilage production and grew to three feet, 10 inches by the time he was an adult. He also suffered from related health issues.

Reminiscent of the Platonians, Dunn’s gifts were intellectual. He was reading by the time he was three, won the 1947 Detroit News Spelling Bee, and taught himself to draw and play piano. He didn’t have a bad singing voice either. He wrote and ultimately became editor-in-chief of the University of Miami, College of Arts and Sciences’ magazine, Tempo.

Dunn was a hotel private detective, a nightclub performer, and almost joined a monastery before he started acting in New York’s off-Broadway circuit. Future Cornelius himself, Roddy McDowall, advised him to do a nightclub act with actress Phoebe Dorin called “Michael Dunn and Phoebe.” The producers of The Wild Wild West television series caught the act and immediately created the mad scientist character Dr. Miguelito Loveless, with Dorin taking on the role of the doctor’s assistant, Antoinette. They even got to sing together.

Dunn played the head of K.A.O.S., the gangster Mr. Big in the pilot episode of Get Smart, the James Bond takeoff from Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. Most of the shows of the period found room for the actor, who was featured on Bonanza, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and other shows.

Dunn exceled on stage, winning the New York critics’ Circle Award for best supporting actor in 1963 and getting a 1964 Tony Award nomination. Dunn was nominated for a supporting actor Oscar for playing Karl Glocken in Stanley Kramer’s Ship of Fools (1965). He also played in the 1968 film No Way to Treat a Lady with Rod Steiger and George Segal.

Michael Dunn died in his sleep on August 30, 1973 while shooting the film The Abdication on location in London. He was 38.

Science fiction street cred:

Michael Dunn’s death was a real-life mystery. The New York Times reported that cause of death was undisclosed. Scotland Yard had to throw water on rumors that Dunn died of foul play and that his body was stolen. Some speculated that he committed suicide, others that he died of acute alcoholism or of the drugs he was reportedly given by a London doctor. St. George’s Hospital’s autopsy report said Dunn died because the “right side of the heart was widely dilated and hypertrophied to twice its normal thickness” and labeled the death as cor pulmonale.

21. Elinor Donahue

Her role on Star Trek:

Elinor Donahue played the entitled-but-doomed commissioner Nancy Hedford in the second-season episode “Metamorphosis” (1967).

The USS Enterprise is hurtling through space on a mission of medical mercy for the terminally ill Hedford when it is blown off course by The Companion. The Companion has been taking care of starship captain and astronomical legend Zefram Cochrane (Glenn Corbett) who disappeared in space generations ago.

Donahue is especially effective as she allows her character to go through the ugliest emotional and needy demands. The audience can’t blame her — we know she knows she’s dying and is the only person on the planet with little time to spare. But Donahue really gives in to her most selfish core as an actress to pull this off. Of course, when she becomes The Companion and selflessly gives up her own immortality for the love of one man of flesh, this becomes doubly moving.

The Companion may very well have been all evil and ugly had Donahue not used all her voices, as Peter O’Toole once commanded, to bring the two unfinished characters into a whole and living being. It is a minor tour de force for the actress, even if she spends most of the episode covered in a blanket. This one character really gives an early clue to the diverse talent of the 1960s TV acting pool.

Where else we know her from:

Elinor Donahue started in films when she was five, dancing in the chorus and taking ballet in the same class as Barrie Chase, who would go on to dance with Fred Astaire. Donahue toured the remains of the vaudeville circuit and played teen bits in films like in Three Daring Daughters in 1948 until she supported Elizabeth Taylor in the 1952 film Love Is Better Than Ever. This led to better and bigger roles like Girls Town in 1959.

Donahue judged the swingingest hits on ABC’s Jukebox Jury from 1953–54 and danced with the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz on The Ray Bolger Show. She started showing off her comic chops as one of “The Newlyweds” on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show. Donahue played pharmacist Ellie Walker, who was sweet on the sheriff for twelve episodes of The Andy Griffith Show. Donahue continued to thrive in comedy with parts on Dennis the Menace and as F.U.’s girlfriend Miriam Welby on ABC’s The Odd Couple.

Heavenly enough to play Sister Bertrille’s (Sally Field) sister on The Flying Nun, she also played Mrs. Broderick, whose teenaged kid was a junkie on the last season of Happy Days. An addict on Happy Days? I’m as surprised as you are.

Her dramatic roles included appearances on the western series Redigo and Have Gun Will Travel, and the psychiatry medical drama The Eleventh Hour. Donahue played Felicia, Alex’s mother on One Day at a Time in 1974. She starred in the NBC sitcom Please Stand By in the eighties. Donahue had a recurring role as Rebecca Quinn on Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.

Donahue started the 1990s as Beverly Hills boutique manager Bridget, who dresses down Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. But Elinor Donahue will forever best be known as Betty, the eldest daughter to Robert Young’s title character on Father Knows Best. Her on-screen younger siblings included Billy, James “Bud” Anderson, Jr., and Lauren Chapin. Her mother was, of course, Jane Wyatt — aka Spock’s mom.

Science fiction street cred:

Elinor Donahue played an Orphanage Woman in Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991) and appeared on the science fiction comedy and Robin Williams vehicle Mork & Mindy as Dr. Joni Lincoln in 1981.

20. Jane Wyatt

Her role on Star Trek:

Jane Wyatt played Spock’s mom, Amanda Grayson. It might seem highly illogical, but the emotional terrestrial interrupted the mating cycle of the extraterrestrial ambassador from the hot planet Vulcan, Sarek, played by Mark Lenard.

Wyatt first badgered her son and husband to the brink of death in the 1967 episode “Journey to Babel.” Eternally emotionally distant, neither parent showed up at their son’s wedding in the episode “Amok Time.” (Wyatt did show up for one episode of Mark Lenard’s series Here Come the Brides. She snubbed him on that episode too.) Wyatt made up for missing the thwarted nuptials by reprising her role in the 1986 film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

Wyatt maintained that she got more fan mail for her Star Trek turns than she did for her the role that she is most known for, Stella Forrester, in the beautiful black and white mystical fantasy film Lost Horizon.

Where else we know her from:

Wyatt became an icon of fifties TV by playing housewife and mother Margaret Anderson on Father Knows Best. Her own mom was a drama critic for Catholic World magazine and Wyatt was related to historical luminaries like Rufus King, one of the guys who signed the United States Constitution, and was a distant cousin of Eleanor Roosevelt. Wyatt let her own society light dim when she took an understudy gig on Broadway.

Universal Pictures signed her and put in her first movie in 1934, One More River. She co-starred in Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon in 1937 for Columbia Pictures. The Shiksa goddess also appeared in the Semitic social commentary film Gentleman’s Agreement with Gregory Peck as the journalist passing for Jewish and John Garfield as his Jewish friend just passing through.

Not content with containing her social concerns to film, Wyatt was an early critic of Senator Joseph McCarthy. The anti-Communist senator penalized her for hosting a Bolshoi Ballet performance during World War II, in spite of the fact that President FDR asked her to do it. Blacklisted from Hollywood film, she returned to the New York City stage, where communist empathizers like Lillian Hellman, laughed at the blacklist and put on plays like The Autumn Garden.

New York also had great TV studios and her comedic role as Margaret Anderson, which she played from 1954 to 1960, netted her three Emmy Awards. She also starred on the 1962 “The Heather Mahoney Story” episode on NBC’s Wagon Train, a Roddenberry favorite.

She did turns on the show Going My Way, guest-starred in an episode of Gibbsville and played Anna, the mother of the Virgin Mary in The Nativity from 1978. Wyatt also played the recurring role of Katherine Auschlander on St. Elsewhere, the eighties medical soap.

Jane Wyatt died on October 20, 2006, aged 96.

Science fiction street cred:

Jane Wyatt played Anne White on the 1965 The Alfred Hitchcock Hour episode “The Monkey’s Paw – A Retelling” on CBS. She also guest starred on the TV series Starman. But her role as Stella Forrester in Lost Horizon did take place on the mythical secluded utopia of Shangri-La, where no one seems to ever get old.

19. Mark Lenard

His role on Star Trek:

The first thing Trekkies think of when they hear the name Mark Lenard is he was Spock’s father Sarek, but that wasn’t even the beginning. Lenard played the Romulan commander who played a deadly shadow game in the first season episode “Balance of Terror” (1966). “Balance of Terror” was inspired by the classic 1957 submarine movie The Enemy Below that starred Robert Mitchum and Curt Jürgens and was directed Dick Powell. That movie was an adaptation of the book by British Naval Officer Denys Rayne.

Lenard also played a Klingon Captain in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), making him the only star player to land a role three different alien race characters. He never played a human on Star Trek, thought he married one.

Lenard first played Sarek in “Journey to Babel” (1967) from season 3. But he also played the Vulcan patriarch in the Star Trek: The Animated Series episode “Yesteryear” (1973) and in the three of the Star Trek feature films: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). Lenard played Sarek as a young man, when he voiced the character in a flashback in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), and as an old man in the Star Trek: The Next Generation season 3 episode “Sarek” (1990) and the season 5 episode “Unification: Part 1” (1991).

Where else we know him from:

Lenard was born in Chicago. He began performing start on stage while he was in the Army. He hit New York in parts in classic plays Off Broadway. He made his Broadway debut in Carson McCullers’s Square Root of Wonderful and played Conrad in the Sir John Gielgud production of Much Ado About Nothing.  He acted in Measure for Measure for the New York Shakespeare Festival.

Lenard followed a star west to play one of the Three Wise Men in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). He was the Fort Grant prosecutor in Hang ‘Em High (1968), starring the Clint Eastwood. He appeared in the Woody Allen comedy Annie Hall, in the historical film The Radicals (1990), and played a lead role in the movie Noon Sunday.

Lenard was a regular as Aaron Stempel in Here Come the Brides. He had several roles in the western TV classic Gunsmoke and guest starred on Mission: Impossible a few times, once when Leonard Nimoy was playing Paris in the regular cast. He played Charles Ingalls’ older brother Peter on Little House on the Prairie in the episode “Journey in the Spring, Part I.” He also starred in The Power and the Glory with Laurence Olivier.

He returned to the stage in 1993 to play a middle-aged Huckleberry Finn against Walter Koenig’s grown up Tom Sawyer in The Boys in Autumn. Lenard died in 1996 at the age of 72.

Science fiction street cred:

Mark Lenard played the role of Urko, Chief of Security of the Ape Council on the 1974 television series, Planet of the Apes. He also appeared on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Otherworld, and the science fiction/western crossover, Cliffhangers: The Secret Empire.

18. William Windom

His role on Star Trek:

William Windom played Commodore Matt Decker, the sad commander of the USS Constellation, which was rendered inoperative by “The Doomsday Machine.” Decker blamed himself for his crew’s destruction and becomes almost catatonic with grief and the shock of self-recrimination. He did what he was trained to do. He went down with his ship. Or so he thought…

It is a triumphant moment when Decker is brought back to life in a vengeance-fueled showdown with Spock. Windom gives him a twinkle of madness and a sprinkle of charm. When Decker assumes command from Spock he also assumes the crablike defensive stance of a young Jake LaMotta. That is, until he has his fight scene, then Starfleet training kicks in and he does that clenched-fist karate chop thing.

Where else we know him from:

Windom is best known as the dad on My World and Welcome to It, the James Thurberesque series that ran on NBC from 1969 through 1970, spanning two decades, in a kinda Simpsons way. He was also the father of The Farmer’s Daughter that traveling salesmen have been talking about since the days that Windom’s great-grandfather was the Treasury Secretary of the United States.

Windom would happily reprise the role of the sorrowful commander for Star Trek New Voyages 40 years after he rammed his ship down the throat of the planet munching machine.

Windom won the 1970 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series Emmy for his turn as cartoonist John Monroe on My World and Welcome to It. When the show was canceled, Windom toured the country in a one-man James Thurber show that was ranked with Hal Holbrook’s Mark Twain, Leonard Nimoy’s Theo Van Gogh, and James Whitmore’s Will Rogers bioperformances.

New York City-born Windom was a former World War II paratrooper with Company B, 1st Battalion 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division. He made his motion picture debut in the 1962 Academy Award-winning motion picture classic To Kill a Mockingbird. Windom played Mr. Gilmer, the prosecutor who went up against Gregory Peck’s Atticus Fitch, the legal defense for Tom Robinson.

Windom was in two movies that starred James Garner. The classic The Americanization of Emily (1964) written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Arthur Hiller, and Hour of the Gun (1967) a slow-moving but historical accurate character study of Wyatt Earp, played by Garner, and Doc Holliday after their 1881 Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Jason Robards played Doc Holliday, who stuck a badge on Windom’s down-and-out gunfighter and cut him in on reward money. The movie was directed by John Sturges as a sequel to his Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, which starred Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas in 1957.

In 1968, Windom starred with Frank Sinatra in The Detective, playing a homophobic killer. Windom also appeared in the films Sommersby with Jodie Foster, Planes, Trains & Automobiles, a vehicle for vehicles and James Candy and Steve Martin; For Love or Money, Thurber I and II, and Ernie Pyle I and II and The Emperor of the Night. He also did the voice of Puppetino in Pinocchio.

Windom played the recurring character, Dr. Seth Hazlitt, on the CBS series Murder, She Wrote and starred on the short-lived series Is there a Doctor in the House?

Windom died on August 16, 2012, at the age of 88.

Science fiction street cred:

The actor who played a starship captain also skippered seven of his own civilian craft to sailing trophies starting in 1953. Windom appeared on two episodes of The Twilight Zone. He played the President of the United States in Escape from the Planet of the Apes. He played the character Randy Lane in the Night Gallery episode “They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar.”

17. Joan Collins

Her role on Star Trek:

Joan Collins broke Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy’s hearts as Edith Keeler, the forward thinking do-gooder in the episode “The City on the Edge of Forever.” Possibly the best-written Star Trek episode, “The City on the Edge of Forever” has always been a point of contention for the original scriptwriter, Harlan Ellison. Ellison was a master writer and a major pain in the ass who got fired from Disney after suggesting they make cartoon porn on his first day on the job. I kid him, but because I am a huge fan. The guy is a beast who could scream love at the heart of the world.

Where else we know her from:

Collins is probably best known for her role as Alexis Carrington Colby on the 1980s nighttime soap Dynasty and for playing the Siren on Batman. She also appeared on such series as The Virginian, Mission: Impossible, Police Woman, Roseanne, The Nanny, and Will & Grace.

Collins was nine when she made her stage debut in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, she made the British films Lady Godiva Rides Again (1951), The Woman’s Angle (1952), Judgment Deferred (1952), I Believe in You (1952) Cosh Boy (1953), Decameron Nights (1953), Turn the Key Softly (1953), The Square Ring (1953) and Our Girl Friday (1953) before she went to Hollywood to play Princess Nellifer in Land of the Pharaohs (1955). She appeared in movies like The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955) Rally Round the Flag, Boys! (1958) and Bing Crosby and Bob Hope’s last road movie The Road to Hong Kong (1962).

The sister of Jackie Collins, Joan published her first novel, Prime Time, in 1988. She wrote the bestselling novels Prime Time, Love & Desire & Hate, Infamous, Star Quality and The St. Tropez Lonely Hearts Club.

Collins also took Elizabeth Taylor’s role of  Wilma Flintstone’s mother Pearl Slaghoople in the Flintstones movie Viva Rock Vegas. She was also featured in Molly Moon and the Incredible Book of Hypnotism in 2015. The dame recently played herself in Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie.

Science fiction street cred:

Collins appeared in Empire of the Ants (1977) directed and co-written by Bert I. Gordon, who was influenced by the short story by H.G. Wells. In 1975, she played Kara on the Space: 1999 episode “Mission of the Darians.” She also appeared on the short-lived NBC Bermuda Triangle series Fantastic Journey, which was written by Star Trek’s D.C. Fontana, among others.

16. Lee Meriwether

Her role on Star Trek:

Lee Meriwether played one of the most touching roles on the entirety of the original series: the ghostly Losira in the “That Which Survives” episode. She was so beautiful, but so, so evil that she almost makes you forget what an asshole Spock can be when he takes the com. Audiences half expected the pointy eared science officer to jettison Scotty into the icy depths of space along with the spent matter-antimatter fuel.

“That Which Survives” also saw the return of Dr. M’Benga, who explains Dr. Sanchez’s autopsy report on Ensign Wyatt showed that  every cell in man’s body was disrupted from the inside out. Why Sanchez couldn’t see that in his own charts makes you wonder about the old country doctors Starfleet hires.

Where else we know her from:

Meriwether was one of the two Catwoman actresses from the original Batman TV series cast to play on Star Trek. She played the feline femme fatale in the movie version from 1966. Meriwether also played Bruce Wayne’s girlfriend Lisa Carson on the Batman TV series episodes “King Tut’s Coup” and “Batman’s Waterloo.”

Lee Meriwether won the 1955 Miss America pageant before she hit screens big and small, starting as the “Today Girl” on NBC’s The Today Show. Meriwether went to high school with breathy crooner Johnny Mathis and to college with future Hulk Bill Bixby. Famed columnist Walter Winchell started a rumor that Meriwether was engaged to baseball legend Joe DiMaggio. She is probably best known for playing Buddy Ebsen’s secretary Betty Jones in Barnaby Jones, which got her an Emmy nomination in 1977.

The long list of TV credits for Meriwether runs from the Phil Silvers Show episode “Cyrano de Bilko” through Leave It To Beaver, Dr. Kildare, Route 66, The Jack Benny Program, Perry Mason, 12 O’clock High, Hazel, The Fugitive, The Lloyd Bridges Show and Mannix. She played Dr. Egert on the Man from U.N.C.L.E. episode “The Mad, Mad Tea Party” in 1965 and the F Troop episode “O’Rourke vs. O’Reilly.”

Meriwether replaced Barbara Bain on Mission: Impossible in 1969. She also played Andy Griffith’s wife on The New Andy Griffith Show (1971) and played Ruth Martin on the soap opera All My Children. She played Lily Munster in the 1980s sitcom The Munsters Today. More recently, she was featured on the Disney Channel’s Wizards of Waverly Place, Desperate Housewives, Hawaii Five-0, The League and Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23.

Meriwether’s first movie was 1959’s 4D Man. She was also featured in John Wayne and Rock Hudson’s The Undefeated and starred with Andy Griffith in Angel in My Pocket, the TV movies True Grit: A Further Adventure with Warren Oates and Cruise Into Terror. She also appeared in Return to the Batcave: The Misadventures of Adam and Burt, The Ultimate Gift, The Ultimate Life (2013) and the short film Kitty.

In other medium, Meriwether voiced EVA in the video game Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots for the PlayStation 3.  She played President Winters in the video game Vanquish by Platinum Games. She appeared in the interactive comedy, Grandma Sylvia’s Funeral during its original off-Broadway run.

Science fiction street cred:

Meriwether played Linda Davis in 4D Man, the 1959 science fiction independent film written and produced by Jack H. Harris, who made The Blob in 1958. The film also featured Patty Duke. Davis co-starred as Dr. Ann MacGregor in The Time Tunnel from 1966 to 1967.

15. Julie Newmar

Her role on Star Trek:

Julie Newmar played the Capellan princess Eleen, escort to the High Tier Akaar. She levels a paternity charge at Dr. “Bones” in the 1967 episode “Friday’s Child.” Eleen was a much less touchy part than the part of the other Catwoman on this list. As a matter of fact, touching the princess is a capital offense, which brings a lot of laughs to the medical examination scenes. It’s a real face-slapper.

Where else we know her from:

Newmar is an icon. Best known for her purrfect take on Catwoman, when she first started out Eddie Cantor labeled her gams “the most beautiful legs” in the Ziegfeld Follies. Newmar’s moves slayed audiences in Slaves of Babylon (1953) and hypnotized Li’l Abner (1959) as Stupefyin’ Jones. She got whatever she wanted as Lola in Damn Yankees! (1961). She played herself in the loving movie tribute To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995). Is that too funky or what?

Julie Newmar’s spin as Katrin Sveg in the 1958 Broadway production of The Marriage-Go-Round won her the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play. She danced in gold paint as the “gilded girl” in Serpent of the Nile (1953), tempted Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954), individually and as a group and was one of the Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954).  She was also a ballerina with the Los Angeles Opera.

Newmar was probably on every TV show in the sixties. She brightened The Phil Silvers Show, Route 66, F Troop, Bewitched, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Monkees and Get Smart. She took wet work contracts on Robert Wagner in both It Takes a Thief and Hart to Hart and almost glamboozled Columbo. In the seventies she boarded The Love Boat, and gave rise to daydreams on Fantasy Island. She sublet an episode on Melrose Place in the 90s and let a leaf-blower push her into a role on Jim Belushi’s According to Jim.

Science fiction street cred:

Julie Newmar was the devil incarnate in The Twilight Zone episode “Of Late I Think of Cliffordville.” She played the title role as “Rhoda the Robot” in the TV series My Living Doll from 1964 to 1965. She appeared on The Bionic Woman and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century in the 1970s. But Newmar’s real bona fides come as an inventor. She has two patents for cheeky derriere pantyhose and one for a brassiere with a cloaking device.

14. Diana Muldaur

Her role on Star Trek:

Diana Muldaur played three different characters on two different episodes of the original series. In 1968’s second season, she played Science Officer Dr. Ann Mulhall and the godlike astral projecting alien Thalassa in the episode “Return to Tomorrow.” In the season three episode, “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” she played Dr. Miranda Jones, the blind and telepathic translator for Medusan ambassador Kollos, a creature so ugly people go mad when they look at him.

Where else we know her from:

Muldaur also played Chief Medical Officer Dr. Katherine Pulaski in the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation but she was so mean to Data that she was beamed into the icy cold of space after the one season. That mean spirit would serve her well when she got served to play the ruthlessly ambitious attorney Rosalind Shays on L.A. Law. Muldaur was also the first woman to serve as president of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, which she did from 1983 to 1985.

Muldaur started on soap operas, playing Ann Wicker on CBS’ The Secret Storm. She played the character Jeannie Orloff in NBC medical drama Dr. Kildare, which starred Richard Chamberlain. She appeared on Bonanza, I Spy, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, before she first teamed with Burt Reynolds on the “An Act of Violence” episode of The F.B.I. episode in 1965. Muldaur and Reynolds continued their onscreen collaboration for the shows Hawk (1966) and Dan August (1971).

In 1967, Muldaur guest-starred on the Gunsmoke episode “Fandango,” with James Arness, that was sampled on Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Muldaur got her first big break in 1969 when she was cast as Belle in the Lana Turner comeback series The Survivors from Harold Robbins. The show was cancelled after 15 episodes.

Muldaur went on to guest star in Alias Smith and Jones, Kung Fu in 1973, the pilot episode of Charlie’s Angels and a Hawaii 5-0 episode with Ricardo Montalban. She also played the title role in the “Mrs. Bannister” episode of The Rockford Files with James Garner. She also appeared on Police Woman, Quincy M.E., The Streets of San Francisco, Fantasy Island, The Love Boat, The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries and Hart to Hart and Murder, She Wrote. She starred with Gary Collins in the NBC series Born Free about Elsa the Lioness.

In film, Muldaur appeared with Burt Lancaster in The Swimmer (1968), the psychological thriller The Other with Uta Hagen in 1972 and with John Wayne in the crime drama McQ (1974). She also played in the 1977 independent film Beyond Reason with Telly Savalas. She also appeared in Terror at Alcatraz (1982) with The Smothers Brothers, Murder in Three Acts (1986) with Peter Ustinov and Locked Up: A Mother’s Rage (1991) with Jean Smart and Angela Bassett.

She played Helen Keller’s mother in the 1979 made-for-television movie The Miracle Worker with Melissa Gilbert and Patty Duke Astin as well as the Black Beauty mini-series (1977), Pine Canyon is Burning (1977), The Word (1978), and Joseph Wambaugh’s Police Story: A Cry for Justice (1978) with Dennis Weaver and Larry Hagman.

Diana Muldaur is also a former sister-in-law to Maria Muldaur, the singer best known for spending “Midnight at the Oasis.”

Science fiction street cred:

Muldaur guest starred as Claire, one of the invaders on The Invaders. She finds some good in some earthlings on the episode “The Life Seekers.” She also played Marg in Gene Roddenbury’s television movie Planet Earth (1974) with John Saxon. She was in the apocalypse thriller Chosen Survivors (1974) with Jackie Cooper. Muldaur also played Helen Banner, David Banner’s sister on The Incredible Hulk in 1979 and a nun on the series in 1981.

13. Michael Ansara

His role on Star Trek:

Michael Ansara originated the role of the Klingon warrior Commander Kang, in the “Day of the Dove” episode in 1968. “We have no devil, Kirk, but we know the ways of yours,” he cautioned.

Kang was the only man in the known universe who could get Klingons to “cease hostilities” with, well just those two words and then slap Kirk on the back so warmheartedly the captain had to stop holding in his gut. Such menace. Such humor. Completely unforgettable.  Ansara played Commander Kang on three versions of Star Trek and reprised the role on the Deep Space Nine episode “Blood Oath” in 1994 and the Voyager episode “Flashback” from 1996.

Where else we know him from:

The actor, who died at the age of 91 just a few years ago, was married to a TV icon: Barbara Eden of I Dream of Jeannie from 1958 until 1974. Before Eden, Ansara was married to the mom on The Patty Duke Show, Jean Byron.

Ansara was born in Syria and came to the United States with his American parents at the age of 2. He went to Los Angeles City College with plans of becoming a doctor but put away his scrubs after he got a gig at Pasadena Playhouse where he studied with Charles Bronson, Aaron Spelling and Carolyn Jones, who played Morticia Addams on the original The Addams Family TV series.

Ansara is also known for his role as the Native American Cochise on the ABC series Broken Arrow and the Apache Deputy U.S. Marshal Sam Buckhart on Law of the Plainsman. Ansara played Pindarus in the 1953 version of Julius Caesar, which starred Marlon Brando. He played Judas in The Robe and he was in the movie and TV series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. He also appeared in Jupiter’s Darling from 1955, The Comancheros with John Wayne from 1961, The Greatest Story Ever Told from 1965, Guns of the Magnificent Seven from 1969, The Bears and I from 1974 and The Message from 1977.

On TV, Ansara played in The Untouchables, Perry Mason, I Dream of Jeannie with his wife, Hawaii 5-0, Murder, She Wrote, James Michener’s Centennial miniseries and played Sam Buckhart on two episodes of The Rifleman.

Science fiction street cred:

Ansara appeared on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Perry Mason, and The Outer Limits. On Lost in Space, he was the father to the alien boy Quano, played by Kurt Russell, who competes against Will Robinson in a battle of strength and courage. Ansara was also the voice of Mr. Freeze on the cartoon series Batman. It’s not science fiction, but you have to love his appearance in the 1974 low-budget horror classic It’s Alive.

12. William Marshall

His role on Star Trek:

Don’t be a dunsel, by the time Star Trek is set, whatever replaces the thing that replaces the app will make the M5 obsolete. William Marshall played Doctor Richard Daystrom, the genius who invented the title machine in the episode “The Ultimate Computer.”

Dr. Daystrom is, ultimately, a tech bubble victim. He models a computer on his brain, which means everything he is belongs to some corporate conglomerate in the military industrial complex. He programs it to put 430 people out of work but he blows it all during the beta phase. Today, Dr. Daystrom would be played by a teenager, most computer savants peak in their early 20s.

Daystrom went into the project with the loftiest of goals. He converted righteous indignation into FITS files so people would no longer need die in space, or on some alien world and go on to achieve greater things. In Marshall’s hands, universal problems become tragic Shakespearean soliloquys. He doesn’t hide the deep pain or the overriding, well, bypassed through auxiliary control ego, burning behind his remote intellect. Marshall also played on the “The Vulcan Affair” episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. entitled.

Where else we know him from:

That Shakespearean quality was the product of a lifetime of training from the actor who redefined the role of Othello on stage. Marshall would be considered one of the great classical actors if he wasn’t so well known for a certain iconic horror exploitation role.

He studied theatre at the Actors Studio and with Sanford Meisner. He made his Broadway debut in 1944 in Carmen Jones the World War II-era reimaging of Bizet’s opera Carmen. He also understudied for the legendary Boris Karloff as Captain Hook in the 1950 Broadway run of Peter Pan. He played the lead role of De Lawd in the 1951 revival of The Green Pastures and played definitive versions of Paul Robeson and Frederick Douglass on stage and television.

Marshall’s first film role was as a Haitian leader in Lydia Bailey (1952). He played the gladiator Glycon in in the 1954 film Demetrius and the Gladiators with Victor Mature and lead a Mau-Mau in Something of Value (1957). He played Attorney General Edward Brooke in The Boston Strangler (1968).

For television, Marshall starred on the short-lived series Harlem Detective in the early fifties. He appeared on the British spy series Danger Man, played an opera singer on Bonanza, and was a consort to royalty on The Wild Wild West episode “The Night of the Egyptian Queen.” He would play the King of Cartoons on Pee-wee’s Playhouse in the 1980s.

Marshall was named as a communist in the anti-communist newsletter Counterattack in the early fifties, but kept working and began teaching acting, which he did throughout his career.

Science fiction street cred:

Besides Star Trek, Marshall didn’t have much science fiction fare, but that’s okay because he is a horror legend. He played the iconic role of African-prince-Mamuwalde-turned-vampire in the 1972 blaxploitation classic Blacula and its sequel Scream Blacula Scream (1973). Blacula cleaned up Harlem in the first movie and got down with voodoo priestess Pam Grier in the sequel. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dNGU772_cI

11. Susan Oliver

Her role on Star Trek:

Susan Oliver may be the most recognizable face from the original Star Trek series after the regular cast. Oliver’s Orion slave girl ended the credits of almost every episode, that green lady with the blue eyes searing itself into our consciousness. But the undulating Orion lava lamp was just one of the characters Oliver had to inhabit as Vina, the malformed survivor of a craft that crashed on remote planet a generation before the Enterprise got the distress call.

The first time the public saw Vina was in the first season two-part episode “The Menagerie” (1966), but Oliver’s performance predated everyone on the show except Mr. Spock. Vina was the seductive space hostage in the first Star Trek pilot episode, “The Cage,” which was shot in 1964. That’s when the interstellar savior Captain Christopher Pike commanded the Enterprise and was played by the actor Jeffrey Hunter.

No amount of color correction could stop Oliver from becoming so much of a Star Trek icon. A 2014 documentary about her life was called The Green Girl.

Where else we know her from:

Oliver’s dad was a journalist and her mom was a famous astrologer and Oliver rode the stars to her television debut on the live drama series Goodyear TV Playhouse on July 31, 1955. She made her Broadway debut in Robert E. Sherwood’s 1957 comedy Small War on Murray Hill.

The Green Lady had her first and only starring role in The Green-Eyed Blonde in 1957. Oliver played the wife of country music legend Hank Williams, played by George Hamilton, in the 1964 biopic Your Cheatin’ Heart and starred opposite Jerry Lewis in The Disorderly Orderly.

She put in appearances on all the late fifties and sixties staples: Father Knows Best, The Americans, Johnny Staccato, Route 66, Dr. Kildare, The Naked City, The Barbara Stanwyck Show, Burke’s Law, The Fugitive, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., I Spy, The Virginian, and The Name of the Game. Oliver played a spoiled runaway in “The Maggie Hamilton Story” on NBC’s Wagon Train, Gene Rodenberry’s earthly inspiration for Star Trek.

Oliver turned to directing by the late 1970s. She was one of the original 19 women admitted to the American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women. She wrote and directed the short film Cowboysan in 1977. Oliver directed two TV episodes of M*A*S*H and one of its sequel series, Trapper John, M.D.

Science fiction street cred:

Oliver put in her requisite appearance in The Twilight Zone. She made her last onscreen appearance in the November 6, 1988 episode of Freddy’s Nightmares but it was a nightmare experience of her own that earns her the biggest bona fide of all: Oliver was an actual aviator. She had a horrific air experience on February 3, 1959, the same day Buddy Holly died in an airplane crash.

Oliver was on a transatlantic flight on a Pan Am Boeing 707 when it dropped from 35,000 feet to 6,000 feet. She could’t fly for a year after the experience until she was hypnotized to deal with it. She decided that if she had to fly, which she did often because she was an actor, she was going to do it herself and took an impromptu lesson from pilot Hal Fishman and then got a private pilot certificate. She even survived a crash when a Piper J-3 Cub, with her as second chair in the cockpit, ran into telephone wires.

She was the fourth woman to fly a single-engine aircraft solo across the Atlantic Ocean and the second to do it from New York City in 1967. She was on her way to Moscow but had to land in Denmark. She did it in her own Aero Commander 200.

In 1970, Oliver was named Pilot of the Year. Captain Pike was never named Pilot of the Year.

10. Yvonne Craig

Her role on Star Trek:

The other Orion slave girl on Star Trek was Marta, played by Batgirl herself, Yvonne Craig, in the episode “Whom Gods Destroy” from 1969. Marta was only green on the outside. Inside, she was an experienced lover who had an interesting way of keeping men faithful. After she slept with them, she stabbed them, to death, happily, manically. Oh, did I mention that this was on a planetary penal colony for the craziest kids in the galaxy?

Where else we know her from:

That crazy kid played Commissioner Gordon’s studious librarian daughter Barbara Gordon starting in September 1967, the third and last season of the ABC TV series Batman. Gordon learned those Batgirl moves when was the youngest dancer to study under ballerina Alexandra Danilova at the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, a decade before.

Craig first teamed up with the actor who played her commissioner father, Neil Hamilton, when he played her stepfather in the 1958 episode of Perry Mason, “The Case of the Lazy Lover.” She followed that up with the films The Young Land, The Gene Krupa Story, which also featured Susan Oliver, and Gidget and a guest-starring part in the TV series Mr. Lucky in 1959.

Two years later, she would act against the Joker, Cesar Romero, in the film Seven Women from Hell. Craig was in two Elvis movies It Happened at the World’s Fair (1963) and Kissin’ Cousins (1964), which was not the story of Jerry Lee Lewis. Craig also put her ballet chops to good use in the film In Like Flint (1967) which starred James Coburn.

On TV, Craig was five of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis from 1959 and 1962.  She saved the world from brain drain on The Man from U.N.C.L.E., was an exotic dancing assassin on Wild Wild West, and an Arabian dancing nurse on McHale’s Navy as well as starring in the first episode of Love, American Style. She also taught Robert Wagner a few tricks in It Takes a Thief and played on The Mod Squad, Kojak and The Six Million Dollar Man.

Craig called her autobiography From Ballet to the Batcave and Beyond in 2000. She died on August 17, 2015, at age 78.

Science fiction street cred:

Yvonne Craig starred as Dr. Marjorie Bolen, an expert on space genetics in the hypnotizing 1966 cult sci-fi film Mars Needs Women, which also starred Bruce Dern and an actor named Tommy Kirk. How weird is that? She guest starred on the 1970 Land of the Giants episode “Wild Journey.” She put the past on rewind for series stars Gary Conway and Don Marshall, who also both played on original series classics.

 

9. Don Marshall

His role on Star Trek:

Don Marshall played the emotional quasar analyst Lt. Boma in the season one episode “The Galileo Seven” (1967). Boma was one of the first characters to get hostile towards Mr. Spock. He gets sick and tired of the machinelike first officer and his logic. Marshall turns what could have been an example of interspecies prejudice into a debate over the essence of humanity.

It is fascinating, or at least interesting, how the sands of righteousness shift during the episode. At one point, Boma and the other terrestrials outvote the officer in his first command over how to deal with the natives of the planet. Spock adheres to his belief that indigenous life should remain unmolested and certainly not killed. The others would attack to save themselves.

Boma is actually insubordinate, in the military sense, when he insists on a decent burial for crewmember Lattimer. He even makes Bones and Scotty gasp when he says he’d stick to that insistence even Mr. Spock’s body was back there.

Marshall brings a reality to his acting in the role in little mannerisms like the way he breaks off from a report to thank Dr. McCoy for a tissue for his bleeding nose. His eyes are constantly focused and measuring, searching for more than what he sees on the surface. You can actually see him looking for reasons to hate Spock and to rationalize the damage that was overlooked when they put the Vulcan’s  head together.

Where else we know him from:

Don Marshall got the acting bug while he was studying engineering in the army in the late fifties and studied Theatre Arts at Los Angeles City College. His first onscreen role was in the movie The Interns (1961). As Chris Logan, he helped his wife, played by Nichelle Nichols, get their kids get ready for their first day of school in a newly racially integrating south in the TV production Great Gettin’ Up Mornin’ (1964).

Nichols’ communications officer Uhura, Greg Morris’ tech geek Barney Collier on Mission: Impossible, and Marshall’s characters changed the face of black characters on television. They were cast as competent, confident experts whose reliability is beyond doubt.

Marshall was in the 1965 pilot for the series Braddock. He played Luke in three 1966 episodes of Daktari and appeared in episodes of Tarzan, Dragnet and Ironside. Marshall had a recurring role as Ted Neumann, Julia Baker’s sometime boyfriend, on the 1968 series Julia. Marshall played Captain Colter in a 1976 episode of The Bionic Woman. He performed a C-section on Little House on the Prairie in 1976.   

Marshall played an FBI man in the 1978 TV special Rescue from Gilligan’s Island and guest starred on such series as Finder of Lost Loves, Capitol and the 1992 drama Highway Heartbreaker. Warren Oates’ bigoted Cpl. Leroy Sprague sprayed racial abuse on Marshall’s Pvt. Carver LeMoyne in Robert Day’s suspenseful Korean War film The Reluctant Heroes (1971).

Science fiction street cred:

Traveling backward and forward in time, Don Marshall played Julio in the two-part “Planet of the Slave Girls” episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century in 1979. He played Dr. Fred Williams The Thing with Two Heads (1972). Directed by Lee Frost, the sci fi-horror-exploitation movie starred Ray Milland, the man with the X-Ray eyes himself, as a rich racist white guy who gets his head handed to  him by Rosey Grier. Marshall’s doctor sews Milland’s head onto Grier’s body with the help of future special effects legend Rick Baker.

But this is that you’ve been waiting for: Marshall played Dan Erickson on Land of the Giants. Coming from Irwin Allen, who brought us the classic science fiction series Lost in Space and The Time Tunnel, Land of the Giants was a kind of Gilligan’s Island in space. Seven people thought they were on a routine trip that should have taken about three hours. They get blown off course by a storm and cast away in a remote environment. They even had an eccentric millionaire, Alexander Fitzhugh, played by Kurt Kasznar. The series also starred Gary Conway as Spindrift Captain Steve Burton, Don Matheson, Stefan Arngrim and Heather Young. Deanna Lund, who played Valerie Ames Scott, turned down the chance to play Mia Farrow’s friend in Rosemary’s Baby to be on the show.

Land of the Giants was made with a kind of breathless excitement. This was evident from the very first seconds of the theme song, which was written by John Williams. Marshall went beyond the call for the series, learning to box and play trumpet when he acted against Sugar Ray Robinson in one episode, and injuring himself several times while doing his own stunts. 

8. Ricardo Montalbán

His role on Star Trek:

Ricardo Montalbán’s Khan Noonien Singh is such a big part of Star Trek’s lore and allure, you almost don’t want to think of him as a guest star. He’s just too big, and we’re not just talking about the actor’s physique, which some people think was fabricated muscle. It wasn’t. That was pure Montalbán.

Khan was first rescued from his interstellar penal star ship in the episode “Space Seed” and reprised the role Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) where he put things in Chekhov’s ears. Khan recognized the ensign’s face, even though Walter Koenig wasn’t on the original episode.

Montalban brought enough macho sensuality to the role of the genetically altered superman to make Captain Kirk holler his name to the heavens. The only other time we heard William Shatner scream so passionately was in the coda to his interpretation of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

Where else we know him from:

In a career that spanned seven decades, the Mexican actor’s talents were richer than Corinthian leather. Montalbán is best known as Mr. Roarke, the ever-charming host to rich adventurers on the television series Fantasy Island from 1977 until 1984.  He and Hervé Villechaize, who spotted planes as his sidekick Tattoo became cultural icons.

Montalbán’s first role was in the play Her Cardboard Lover, staged in New York City in 1940. He started in the chorus line of forties jukebox movies and got his first starring role as a singer-guitarist in the He’s a Latin from Staten Island (1941). Montalbán’s first Hollywood lead came in Border Incident, a film noir movie made in 1949.

He went on to be cast in diverse roles like his New England cop in the film noir Mystery Street (1950) and his role as the Japanese national Nakamura in the film version of James A. Michener’s Sayonara (1957). Montalbán played in dramas like Across the Wide Missouri (1951), musicals like The Singing Nun (1966) and in such comedies as Love Is a Ball (1963), The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988). Robert Rodriguez created the role of the grandfather in the movies Spy Kids 2 and Spy Kids 3 for Montalbán, who needed a wheelchair after spinal surgery left him paralyzed from waist down in 1993.

The busy actor appeared on most of the shows that have been listed here. He played a Japanese character named Tokura in the Hawaii Five-O episode “Samurai” from (1968).  Montalbán guest-starred as a genetically engineered cow in the Family Guy episode “McStroke.” He played Guitierrez on the animated series Freakazoid and did the voice of Señor Senior, Sr., in five Kim Possible television episodes from 2002–2007.

Montalbán graced the stage regularly in between film and TV roles including a run of the Lena Horne Broadway musical Jamaica that lasted from 1957 to 1959. Montalbán also starred the weekly 30-minute radio program Lobo del Mar (Seawolf) that aired Spanish-speaking countries from the late sixties until the early 1970s.

Montalbán co-founded the Screen Actors Guild Ethnic Minority Committee with actors Carmen Zapata, Henry Darrow and Edith Diaz in 1972. He won an Emmy Award for his role in the miniseries How the West Was Won (1978) and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild in 1993. Montalbán’s last role was in an episode of American Dad! from 2009. It was aired posthumously.

Science fiction street cred:

Ricardo Montalbán played the kindly circus owner Señor Armando who saves Zira and Cornelius’s baby Milo in Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) the third of the five original Planet of the Apes movies. It starred Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter and Sal Mineo as the primate space travelers.

7. Kim Darby

Her role on Star Trek:

Kim Darby played the title role in the first season episode “Miri,” which debuted on October 27, 1966. Set on a planet that is almost identical to earth, the teenaged Miri is one of the “onlies” who survived a virus that wiped out all the grups, or grownups. As soon as one of the children passes adolescence, the virus kicks in, and eats their sanity — and their lives.

Darby and Michael John Pollack, brought the fresh energy of the new generation to the original series. They were the same age as a lot of the viewers and brought an instant empathy. “Miri” is one of the best acted episodes on the series. But the generational gap between Grace Lee Whitney’s melodramatic Yeoman Janice Rand and Shatner’s over-attentive parental skipper, and the young actors is evident.

Even the kid who cries over his bike brings a new acting method. Most of the “onlies” were played by children of the series crew. William Shatner’s daughter Lisabeth, Grace Lee Whitney’s two sons, and Gene Roddenberry’s daughters joined Greg Morris’ (Mission: Impossible) kids Phil and Iona and John Megna, who also played Charles Baker “Dill” Harris in To Kill a Mockingbird in 1962 and would go on to play a young Hiram Roth in The Godfather: Part II, to fill in the town.

Where else we know her from:

Kim Darby is best known for her role as Mattie Ross in the classic western True Grit (1969), which also starred movie legend John Wayne and future rhinestone cowboy Glenn Campbell. If you ever read the Mad magazine spoof “True Fat,” you know that Darby was able get through the whole picture without using contractions. A contraction is a convenient way to shorten a group of full words – which as you can see – I have not done in six possible spots in this clumsy paragraph you are reading. Now seven.

Darby was the daughter of the “Dancing Zerbies,” Inga and Jon, who nicknamed their daughter Derby. Darby danced and sang under the name Derby Zerby until she took the name Kim from the book by Rudyard Kipling and changed Derby to Darby and started acting. She made her screen debut as a dancer in Bye Bye Birdie (1963).

Darby also saddled up for the TV series Gunsmoke, Bonanza and The Road West, all in 1967. Her first TV role was on an episode of the NBC series Mr. Novak in 1963. She went on to guest star on The Eleventh Hour, The Fugitive, The Donna Reed Show, Ironside and The John Forsythe Show. In the seventies she appeared on Crazy Like a Fox, Family, The Love Boat, The Streets of San Francisco, Riptide, and Becker. She played the blind crime witness Stacia Clairborne in a 2014 episode of the series Perception.

Darby co-starred in the first television miniseries, Rich Man, Poor Man. She played Virginia Calderwood who wrote the dirtiest love letters in high society. Darby starred as Sally Farnham in the made-for-TV movie Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (1973). She also appeared in the feature motion pictures The One and Only (1978), Better Off Dead (1985), and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995).

Science fiction street cred:

Kim Darby and William Shatner starred in the January 22, 1972 ABC Movie of the Week The People. The film was based on Zenna Henderson’s science fiction novella “Pottage,” with snippets of her stories “Ararat,” “Gilead,” and “Captivity.” Darby played Melodye Amerson, who teaches a bunch of telepathic aliens at a school in an isolated community. Darby also appeared on the “Sein und Zeit” episode of The X-Files in 1999. She played Kathy Lee Tencate who falsely cops to the murder of her son, who is one of several children who disappeared mysteriously.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IO7o1I-DGU

6. Nancy Kovack

Her role on Star Trek:

Nancy Kovack played the magical, mesmerizing Kahn-ut-tu woman Nona in the 1968 second season episode “A Private Little War.” Nona saves Kirk’s life after he is attacked by a mugato monster and all she asks in return is his soul.

Of all the seductions of the star fleet skipper, hers is my favorite. A combination or mysticism and herbal psychedelics, she really gets under the skin. Who cares if she’s Tyree’s woman, Nona bleeds for her conquests. Too bad she can’t use that magic to ward off the overly interested. Anyone else ever wonder if one of her attackers was Mickey Dolenz from the Monkees when you were a kid?

Where else we know her from:

Nancy Kovak is probably best known for her role as Medea in the 1963 classic start-stop-motion picture adaptation of Jason and the Argonauts. She started out as one of the Glea Girls on The Jackie Gleason Show in the 1950s. She worked on all the major programming of the decade, including Perry Mason, I Dream of Jeannie, Batman, I Spy, Bewitched, Get Smart, and Hawaii Five-O. She was nominated for an Emmy Award for her turn in the title role on the Mannix episode “The Girl Who Came in with the Tide.”

Kovak is a good example of how small the guest acting troupe of the 1960s could be and how often Star Trek guests, and stars, overlapped. She appeared in an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour that also featured Frank Gorshin and Richard Hale and an episode of Twelve O’Clock High that guest starred Gary Lockwood. She also appeared on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, concurrently with James Doohan, and Family Affair, which starred Brian Keith, who would guest star on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Kovak was featured in two episodes of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. one that featured Yvonne Craig and another that starred Ricardo Montalban. She was in the 1964 “Parties to the Crime” episode of Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theater with Jeffrey Hunter and Sally Kellerman and the 1969 It Takes a Thief episode “38-23-26” with Malachi Throne. She was featured in the films Sylvia (1965) with Majel Barrett; Enter Laughing (1967) with Michael J. Pollard and the 1966 spy thriller The Silencers with Roger C. Carmel and James Gregory.

Kovack starred in the films Strangers When We Meet (1960), The Wild Westerners (1962) and the horror flick Diary of a Madman (1963). She was in the 1966 Elvis Presley movie Frankie and Johnny. She lightened it up with the 1965 Three Stooges comedy The Outlaws Is Coming.

Kovack married conductor Zubin Mehta. Interesting side note that may only be interesting to me, when the master orchestra leader conducted Frank Zappa’s classical pieces for the London Symphony Orchestra, Zappa cues him in by saying “Hit it Zube.”

Science fiction street cred:

Nancy Kovack played Teresa Stone, the wife of astronaut Clayton Stone, played by James Franciscus, in the science fiction masterpiece Marooned from 1969. The movie was directed by John Sturges and also starred Gregory Peck, Richard Crenna, David Janssen, Gene Hackman and fellow Star Trek guest actress Mariette Hartley. The film was based on the 1964 novel by Martin Caidin that told the story of three Gemini astronauts who can’t get back to earth and are suffocating in space.

The film updated it to the Apollo program and came out four months after the moon landing. It remains one of the most realistic science fiction films ever made. If you haven’t seen it, find it and remedy that.

5. Frank Gorshin

His role on Star Trek:

Frank Gorshin was the face of prejudice in the 1969 episode “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.” Well, half of it anyway. He and Lou Antonio, probably best known as Koko in Cool Hand Luke, faced down the Enterprise command while they faced off against each other in an allegorical battlefield on race.

Gorshin brings a kind of imperial madness to Bele. Fighting a battle that ended in the mutual destruction of each of their races, he learns nothing. Bele is ever the aggressor as he brushes aside petty distractions like extinction. Gorshin’s Bele grieves for a heartbeat and then he’s back at his prisoner’s throat. He holds nothing back. Most actors want some part of their character to be liked, but Gorshin brings enough glee to his venom that you can tell he doesn’t care how much you hate him.

Where else we know him from:

Gorshin is a fearless actor. He got that way doing standup and facing every kind of crowd. He was the comedian who went on The Ed Sullivan Show the night The Beatles premiered. That takes balls.

Gorshin is best known as the manic super-criminal The Riddler who terrorized Gotham City with cryptic clues on the original Batman TV series, although the affable John Astin quizzed the caped crusaders for one episode. Gorshin based The Riddler on Richard Widmark’s gleefully threatening Tommy Udo from the film noir classic Kiss of Death (1947).

Gorshin could barely speak English when he started doing impressions of the movie stars he watched while he was a teenaged usher at a Pittsburgh movie theater. He mimicked his way through nightclubs and the United States Army Special Services unit until he landed himself on screen.

Gorshin never stopped performing live. Gorshin’s made his big screen debut in Between Heaven and Hell and then made some B-movies like Hot Rod Girl (1956) and Dragstrip Girl (1957). He played the bass player Basil in the Connie Francis movie Where the Boys Are (1960). He snatched Hayley Mills’ kitty in That Darn Cat! (1965). Gorshin played a mob boss behind bars in Otto Preminger’s Skidoo (1968).

On TV, he brought menace to The Untouchables, false valor to COMBAT! and comedy to all the variety shows. He also appeared on The Name of the Game (1969) Ironside (1974), Hawaii Five-O (1974), Get Christie Love! (1975), Charlie’s Angels (1977) and Wonder Woman (1977). The Edge of Night (1981–82), The Fall Guy (1984), Murder, She Wrote (1988) and Monsters (1989).

Gorshin’s last television appearance was in “Grave Danger,” an episode of the CBS series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation which aired two days after his death. The episode, which was directed by Quentin Tarantino, was dedicated to his memory. While he was known for his impressions, his role on CSI was as himself.

Gorshin appeared on Broadway in Jimmy (1969) and Guys and Dolls (1971). His role as George Burns in the hit one-man Broadway show Say Goodnight, Gracie (2002) was nominated for a 2003 Tony Award for best play

Like many comedians, Gorshin lived and died on the road. Early in his career he got into a car accident between gigs and lost the role of Petty Officer Ruby in Run Silent, Run Deep to Don Rickles. On April 25, 2005, Gorshin finished a Memphis road performance of Say Goodnight, Gracie and had difficulty breathing on the plane back to Los Angeles. Gorshin died on May 17, 2005, at age 72.

Science fiction street cred:

Gorshin played the drunken hustler Joe Gruen who stashes aliens bodies after a UFO crash in Saucer Men (1957). He also put his Tommy Udo in space when he played interplanetary assassin Seton Kellogg on the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century episode “Plot to Kill a City.” Gorshin played Dr. Owen Fletcher, who kept Madeleine Stowe’s psychiatrist Kathryn real in Terry Gilliam’s science fiction noir masterpiece 12 Monkeys (1995).

4. Teri Garr

Her role on Star Trek:

Terri Garr played Roberta Lincoln, the harried, day-gig secretary to Gary Seven in the 1968 episode “Assignment: Earth.” The episode was made as a way to sneak a Gary Seven series onto TV without a pilot. Oh, they couldn’t say that, of course, but what the logical command exec could say was that Mr. Seven and Ms. Lincoln had some interesting experiences in store for them.

What can we say about Miss Lincoln that wasn’t put so eloquently on her computer files? Employed by Garys 347 and 201. She was 20 years old and wondered if she’d make thirty. She was five feet, seven inches and 120 pounds. Her hair was tinted honey-blonde for the Gary gig. Although her behavior appears erratic, she really has a high I.Q. She had interesting birthmarks.

Where else we know her from:

Terri Garr is a more than just a roll in the hay with a young Frankenstein, she is a treasure who brings deeply kooky characters humanity and perception. We liked her in Tootsie no matter how big her teeth were. She knew when to say when to mashed potatoes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. She really brought home the pressures of computing sales tax in a beehive bun in Martin Scorsese’s After Hours. The scene where she suddenly changed music from the Monkee’s “Last Train to Clarksville” to Joni Mitchell’s “Chelsea Morning” is a minor comic miracle. It was also possibly a nod to her first speaking role in a feature, in the Monkees film Head (1968), which was written by Jack Nicholson.

Garr started out as a dancer like her mom, who was a Rockette. Her father performed on the vaudeville circuit. Terri’s hips swiveled near Elvis in nine movies including Viva Las Vegas. She danced on rock and roll shows like the T.A.M.I. Show, Shindig! and Hullabaloo. She had an uncredited role on Batman, appeared on The Andy Griffith Show, Mayberry R.F.D., It Takes a Thief, McCloud, M*A*S*H, The Bob Newhart Show, The Odd Couple, Maude, Barnaby Jones, and played Phoebe Abbott, the estranged birth mother of Phoebe Buffay, in three episodes of Friends.

In film, she was nominated for the Supporting Actress Oscar for Tootsie (1982) and also starred in Oh, God! (1977), The Black Stallion (1979), Mr. Mom (1983), The Sting II (1983), and Let It Ride (1989). Garr is National Ambassador for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and National Chair for the Society’s Women Against MS program (WAMS). She disclosed that she suffered from the disease in October 2002.

Science fiction street cred:

Terri Garr was Richard Dreyfus’s short-suffering wife in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Written and directed by Steven Spielberg, the film reinvigorated science fiction movies with the most positive vision of extraterrestrial relations since Star Trek itself. Garr was more scientifically fictional as the lab assistant Inga in Young Frankenstein (1974), a timeless classic of science fiction horror comedy. Mel Brooks’ lab raised the standard of cinematic biomedical accoutrements.

3. Ted Cassidy

His role on Star Trek:

Ted Cassidy is full of surprises. He lent his deep voice to several great characters on Star Trek. He provided the voice for the false face Balok presented in “The Corbomite Maneuver” before it turned out to be the kid from Gentle Ben, Opie Cunningham’s little brother. He played the android Ruk in the episode “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” He was also the voice of the Gorn in the episode “Arena.”

Three classic characters, as deep and rich as the actor’s dulcet tones. We can still hear him promising to be “merciful and quick” or determining an equation while pushing Kirk’s head through a rock ceiling. Cassidy’s presence is undeniable. But the Star Trek references continue. He was a goon on the very first episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. It was called “The Vulcan Affair.”

Where else we know him from:

Cassidy is best known for playing Lurch on The Addams Family, who he also played on the Batman episode “The Penguin’s Nest” and on The New Scooby-Doo Movies (1972). He is only slightly less known for also lending his hand to the role of Thing. While it is pretty much common knowledge that he only mimed playing the harpsichord on the show, he was actually a very good keyboardist.

You probably also didn’t know he was regularly voicing Hanna-Barbera cartoons while he was doing The Addams Family or that he recorded a dance tune, called “The Lurch,” that he got to perform on the same Shindig! that Boris Karloff did the “Monster Mash.” And it might surprise you that Cassidy was a child genius who was in third grade by the time he was six and hit high school and 6 feet 1 inch by the time he was 11.

Cassidy started as a disc jockey on WFAA in Dallas and was broadcasting when President Kennedy was assassinated. Cassidy got some of the earliest eye witness reports when he interviewed W.E. Newman, Jr. and Gayle Newman.

Cassidy’s first TV role was the lowest of budget science fiction. He played an outer space creature named Creech on WFAA-TV’s “Dialing for Dollars” segments that ran between the afternoon movies. He went on to appear as Injun Joe on The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Gentle Sam on Daniel Boone and Mr. Ted, the muscular flower gardener on The Beverly Hillbillies. Cassidy also played Jeannie’s cousin and her sister’s master on two different episodes of I Dream of Jeannie. He also narrated the opening and assorted grunts and growls on The Incredible Hulk.

Cassidy was in the movies Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), the first pair-up between Paul Newman and Robert Redford, Mackenna’s Gold (1969), The Limit (1972), Charcoal Black (1972), The Slams (1973), Thunder County (1974), Harry and Walter Go to New York (1976), The Last Remake of Beau Geste (1977) – an underrated and very silly Marty Feldman movie – and Goin’ Coconuts (1978).

Cassisdy co-wrote the script to the 1973 college orgy movie The Harrad Experiment with Michael Werner. Cassidy died on January 16, 1979 at age 46.

Science fiction street cred:

It probably isn’t surprising that Cassidy did more than his share of science fiction. He appeared in the Lost in Space episode “The Thief from Outer Space” with Malachi Throne, who usually starred in It Takes a Thief and who appeared in Star Trek’s “The Menagerie.”

Cassidy appeared in the pilots for Gene Roddenberry’s Genesis II and Planet Earth as Isiah. He replaced André the Giant as The Six Million Dollar Man’s resident Bigfoot in “The Return of Bigfoot” (1976), and “Bigfoot V” (1977). Cassidy voiced Meteor Man in Birdman and the Galaxy Trio, and Ben Grimm, the other Thing in The New Fantastic Four. He did temporary voice tracks for the TV movie pilot for Battlestar Galactica.

Cassidy also did the voice of Godzilla, the king of all monsters, in the 1979 Hanna Barbera/Toho cartoon series Godzilla.

2. Gary Lockwood

His role on Star Trek:

Gary Lockwood played the helmsman Lieutenant Commander Gary Mitchell in the second pilot episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before” (1966) which also co-starred Sally Kellerman. The pair thought they were god-like after shiny space junk triggered extreme abilities like telekinesis and telepathy. Star Trek incorporated paranormal activities that can be activated in mortals and explored inner and outer space and found that the depths of each were boundless. Star Trek’s first episode promised great things.

Where else we know him from:

Gary Lockwood started out as a stuntman before he got a bit part in Warlock (1959), a western, not a horror movie. He got his first real credit in the Elvis Presley movie Wild in the Country from 1961. He would also turn up in Elvis’ 1963 musical-comedy It Happened at the World’s Fair. He first got noticed for his supporting role in Splendor in the Grass (1961).

Lockwood’s first two TV series, Follow the Sun and Bus Stop, each only last a season in 1961. Lockwood also played a soldier with a crush on Mary Stone (Shelley Fabares) on The Donna Reed Show. All three shows were on ABC. For CBS he starred in an episode of the anthology series The Lloyd Bridges Show and in the “The Case of the Playboy Pugilist” episode of Perry Mason in 1963.

Lockwood first worked with Gene Roddenberry when he played Lieutenant William T. Rice in the NBC series The Lieutenant, which co-starred The Man from U.N.C.L.E.’s Robert Vaughn as Captain Raymond Rambridge. It ran from 1963-1964 and was cancelled after 29 episodes.

He also appeared on 12 O’Clock High in three episodes including “V For Vendetta,” The Kraft Mystery Theater, The Legend of Jesse James, The Long Hot Summer and Gunsmoke with James Arness. Lockwood co-starred with his then-wife Stefanie Powers on an episode of Love, American Style and guest starred with her and Robert Wagner on the “Emily by Hart” episode of the series Hart to Hart.

Science fiction street cred:

Gary Lockwood played Dr. Frank Poole, one of the two astronauts in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Stanley Kubrick’s science fiction masterpiece based on Arthur C. Clarke’s short story “The Sentinel.” 2001 might be the only film more influential on the development of science fiction than Star Trek itself. Without 2001, there would be no Star Wars, no Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien, Blade Runner, Contact nor The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. There might not even be a Steven Spielberg or a George Lucas. Well, they would have been born, but may never have taken to space.

Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey was truly groundbreaking. It rendered everything that came before it in science fiction obsolete. The man who some believe faked the moon landing didn’t just change movies, he changed technology. The HAL 9000, one letter removed from IBM, invented Siri. The astronauts went to the space station and the spaceship Discovery on a space shuttle that looked astonishingly like the one that would one day be invented and developed for exactly that reason. They even had the first iPads.

2001: A Space Odyssey could be a silent film. It opens and closes with almost half-hour long sequences without any dialogue and the dialogue that is in the film is so sanitized it is almost insipidly unnecessary. Also, the movie trusted itself so much they never had to show an alien, they just had to let the audience know that the possibility existed.

1. James Gregory

His role on Star Trek:

James Gregory played Tantalus director Tristan Adams in the season 1 episode “Dagger of the Mind,” which first aired November 3, 1966. Developing a machine called the neutralizer at a rehabilitation facility for the criminally insane, Dr. Adams is one of the best mad scientists on sixties television. He brainwashes his assistant Van Elder until he can’t get through his own name and then makes the captain worship him as a god and weep over a neglected Noel at a Christmas party. The power-mad psychiatrist ultimately loses his mind to the neutralizer. The episode also showed Spock doing the Vulcan mind meld for the first time.

Where else we know him from:

Gregory is a no-nonsense professional artist who never lost his Bronx accent. He spent 83 days in Okinawa during his three-year stint in the Navy and Marine Corps during WWII. Gregory made his Broadway debut with acting legends Paul Muni and Jose Ferrar in a 1939 production of Key Largo. That play would be brought to the screen with Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robison in the roles.

Gregory was also in the original cast of The Desperate Hours that prompted Bogart to bring Paul Newman’s then-signature stage role to life on film. He also acted in All My Sons, played Biff in Death of a Salesman on Broadway through five different actors playing Willy Loman, including Lee J. Cobb.

Starting in 1939, Gregory worked in over 25 Broadway productions over sixteen years. He made his motion picture debut in Naked City in 1948. Gregory acted with everyone. He held his own with screen icons from Sinatra, Presley, Barbara Streisand and John Wayne, as well as acting legends like Claude Raines, Vincent Price, Barbara Stanwyck, Angela Lansbury, Andy Griffith, Kim Hunter, Robert Montgomery and Lillian Gish.

Gregory shocked audiences when his Morgan Hastings character cold-bloodedly killed his own son in The Sons of Katie Elder. He also played Sgt. Schaeffer in the sixties gangster classic Al Capone, starring Rod Steiger. Gregory starred as Cmdr. C.R. Ritchie, John F. Kennedy’s commanding officer in the film PT 109 (1963) with Cliff Robertson. He was Dean Martin’s spy boss MacDonald, in the Matt Helm detective film series.

Starting in the mid-fifties, Gregory put in appearances on almost every major live TV production on both coasts. He set a record for acting in five live productions in 10 days. He also did radio work, including a starring role as Captain Vincent J. Cronin on 21st Precinct. Gregory was the lead Det. Barney Ruditsky in the 1959-61 television series The Lawless Years.

Gregory brought the same work ethic to taped television, being featured or guest starring in Twilight Zone, Columbo, McCloud, The Big Valley, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Virginian and Playhouse 90. He played the comic Major Duncan on F Troop, President Ulysses S. Grant on The Wild, Wild West and would go on to play Iron Guts Kelley, a five-star general with a lucky gun, on M*A*S*H.

He based his most known character on Barney Ruditsky, a famous New York City rackets detective from the 1920s. Gregory played the brusque but wildly sentimental Inspector Luger for eight seasons on Barney Miller. The perennial bachelor spent Thanksgivings eating heated up leftovers, forged credentials on mail-order bride orders and almost took one in the head from the same sniper that Wojo ducked. He loved those guys.

Science fiction street cred:

James Gregory paid his science fiction dues on Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, but he became SciFi legend when General Ursus proclaimed “the only good human is a dead human” in Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Gregory tosses off a grandiose tour de force from the top of a horse. His eyes under the gorilla makeup are a wonder in the scene where Dr. Zaius steals his glory by bravely confronting the bleeding Lawgiver. All the actors in the original Planet of the Apes movies managed to bring humanity to their primates, but Gregory mined his primal urges to celebrate the animal. He is feral. He is an ape among apes.

The Manchurian Candidate, directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey, is one of the greatest films of all times. Remembered as a taut political thriller it has the heart of a science fiction classic. The film explores the science of brainwashing. The mechanics of breaking down all the men under Sergeant Marco’s command is told with astonishing accuracy because it was based on extremely well-researched source material.

The 1959 book by Richard Condon is even more shocking than the movie. The film is a wonder of psychological traps laid bare by some of the best camerawork in motion picture history. Gregory’s Sen. John Iselin is despicable. One of the worst creatures to ever crawl out of the swamp that is Washington DC and the actor goes to town with it. He is as real as the headlines of the day.