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• TOS performers
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This list of performers has all actors and actresses who appeared in, or gave voice to, roles in Star Trek: The Original Series .

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Leslie Parrish

Series: TOS

Character(s): Carolyn Palamas

Leslie Parrish is the actress who played Lieutenant Carolyn Palamas in the Star Trek: The Original Series second season episode “Who Mourns for Adonais?”.

According to author Stephen Whitfield, Parrish, when she had to adorn the titillating dress gifted to her by Apollo (designed by William Ware Theiss), was herself completely comfortable and had no qualms about wearing and moving in it, though it were “the crew and set visitors who had all the qualms”. (The Making of Star Trek, p. 361)

Parrish herself has expressed immense pride in her Star Trek performance in later life, “Whenever I watch it, I go right back to the whole thing again and cry my way through it. I relive it. My impression of it is that it’s one piece of work that I’m very proud of. Of all the work I did, this is outstanding, because it is rooted in something which I believe so deeply.” (These Are the Voyages: TOS Season Two, p. 115)

Nearly five decades after the Star Trek episode had aired, Parrish became acquainted again with it when she was invited to reminisce on her performance for the special feature “Inside the Roddenberry Vault (Part 3)” included on the 2016 Star Trek: The Original Series – The Roddenberry Vault Blu-ray Disc-set, commenting on recently rediscovered outtakes from the episode, including some featuring herself, most notably the one in which it was divulged that her character was pregnant from Apollo which had been omitted from the episode as aired. She also reiterated her beliefs in the futuristic philosophy behind Star Trek and her friendship because of them with Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, whom she had already met when she appeared in an episode of the 1963-64 television series The Lieutenant, which he created.

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35 Actresses You Forgot Appeared In ‘Star Trek’

For the past 50 years, the  Star Trek  franchise has captured audiences imaginations on both the big and small screen, with six TV series and a dozen feature films, as well as some upcoming  projects in the pipeline . During that half-century, Star Trek has managed to accrue quite the ensemble of guest stars, playing everyone from alien races from far-off worlds to people from Earth’s past and present. We’ve previously looked at some of the great actors who have popped up , so here’s a rundown of 35 actresses that are forever part of Star Trek history.

Michelle Forbes

Having had recurring roles in several TV staples like  True Blood  and  Homicide: Life on the Street , Forbes is also known for playing Ensign Ro Loren in Star Trek: The Next Generation , a part she got after impressing producers with a one-off performance as the character Dara earlier in the show’s run.

Ashley Judd

The now-famous Judd got her start in front of the camera as Ensign Robin Lefler in two episodes of  Star Trek: The Next Generation’s fifth season. While she’s since made it to Hollywood’s A-List as an actress, she comes from a famous family, with both her mother and step-sister singing vocals in the country supergroup The Judds.

Julie Warner

Warner had acted in a handful of TV roles prior to Star Trek: The Next Generation , where she played Cristy Henshaw, a civilian resident of the Enterprise D and an on-again, off-again girlfriend to Lt. Geordi La Forge (Lavar Burton).

Olivia d’Abo

The cool older sister from The Wonder Years,  Olivia D’Abo, did a one-episode spot as Amanda Rogers in Star Trek: The Next Generation, who started aboard the Enterprise-D as the intern to Dr. Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden), before it was revealed that she was a descendant of Q. Which meant she had to come to terms with that whole super-powerful, four-dimensional being thing.

Famke Janssen

The original Jean Grey from the   X-Men  film franchise had her first small-screen role as Kamala, a Kriosian who falls in love with Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) during an episode of  Star Trek: The Next Generation .

A minor TV star throughout the ’90s and early-2000s, Cox was barely recognizable behind all the prosthetics as Sarjenka, a Dreman girl in communication with the android Data (Brent Spiner), who urges Picard’s help in saving her world. Data even manages to show some affection toward her after she’s returned home having had her memory of the Enterprise erased, because sometimes the Prime Directive is harsh.

Kirsten Dunst

Having just finished starring as Peggy Blumquist on the second season of  Fargo  on FX , Dunst has literally grown up on the silver screen. Which meant she had a pretty impressive acting resume by the time she guest starred as the telepathic Cairn Hedril in the seventh season of Star Trek: The Next Generation .

Brenda Strong

The character of Rashella, played by Brenda Strong, was an Aldean who aimed to repopulate her near-sterile planet using the Enterprise-D’s resident children in an early episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation . Strong has since returned to the sci-fi genre these days, guest starring in The CW’s brilliant original series The 100 .

Pamela Adlon

Before she was the cranky, apprehensive girlfriend on FX’s Louis , Pamela Adlon, (then Pamela Segall), she played Oji in a single episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation . A member of the less-advanced Mintakin tribe, she’s left in awe of how the technology aboard the Enterprise-D was able to heal her father, Liko, leaving Picard to re-explain to her the concept of mortality.

Bebe Neuwirth

Neuwirth, best known as Frasier’s ex on Cheers , played Nurse Lanel in the fourth season of The Next Generation . Stationed aboard the Malconian medical facility, she helps First Officer William Riker (Jonathan Frakes) escape, but only on the condition that he helps her cross ‘sex with an alien’ off her bucket list.

Teri Hatcher

Early on in her career, with only a couple roles under her belt, this  Desperate Housewives star had to settle for an uncredited part as a transporter chief in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s second season.

Whoopi Goldberg

Yes, you remember Whoopi Goldberg’s Guinan, the El-Aurian bartender of Ten-Forward, the Enterprise-D’s lounge from Star Trek: The Next Generation , but maybe some people don’t. While she was part of the race known as The Listeners, making her the ideal barkeep, she was also known to dole out sagely advice to Starfleet personnel now and then.

Kim Catrall

Vulcan Starfleet officer Valeris was, at first, written in as Saavik, the character first played by Kirstie Alley in 1981’s  Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan  — a role Catrall herself auditioned for. She agreed to appear in Trek’s sixth installment, The Undiscovered Country , but only after learning that she’d be playing an entirely new character all her own.

The actress/supermodel played Martia in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country , a double-crossing shape-shifter who, over the course of the film, would also take the form of a massive alien, a young girl, and eventually Captain Kirk himself, the last one giving us one of the most self-aware  Star Trek  jokes of all time.

Yvonne Craig

In the mid 1960s, Yvonne Craig went from playing Batgirl on TV’s Batman to playing Marta, a member of the Orion race and one of  Star Trek’s quintessential green seductresses. However, despite her very best efforts, she fails to both seduce and stab Captain Kirk.

Jane Wiedlin

Wiedlin was already famous as the singer/guitarist in the definitive ’80s band The Go-Gos, but she had an extremely brief cameo in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home as Trillya, a Communications Officer sending out a desperate distress call out to Starfleet. Thankfully, she got a bit more screen time as Joan of Arc in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure .

Catherine Hicks

Dr. Gillian Taylor, a 20th century in-house whale expert in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, was played by soap opera mainstay Catherine Hicks, who’d go on to play family matriarch Annie Camden for 11 seasons on  7th Heaven .

Kirstie Alley

In her big-screen debut, Alley played Saavik, the Vulcan Starfleet officer in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan . She’d turn down the chance to reprise her role in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock over a financial dispute, which meant the role was recast with actress Robin Curtis. She’d go back and forth between roles on the big and small screen, and would eventually make TV history by replacing Shelly Long on the long-running Cheers .

The Oscar-winning actress and comedy icon had a role as secretary Roberta Lincoln in Star Trek ‘s Cold War episode “Assignment Earth.” And, like many in the 20th century the Enterprise crew seems to encounter, she ended up playing a fateful role in the future of humankind.

Julie Newmar

One of the three actresses to play Catwoman opposite Adam West in Batman,  Newmar had a role on Star Trek as Eleen, a pregnant Capellan who was forced to flee her home after a coup against her husband left him dead. She ended up returning to the role of Catwoman by voicing the role in Rocksteady Video Games’ Arkham Knight last year.

Sally Kellerman

After CBS elected to re-film the  Star Trek  pilot, they made a few changes. One, they cast William Shatner as James T. Kirk, another was their hiring Sally Kellerman to play Elizabeth Dehner, a Starfleet officer who develops uncanny abilities after encountering the psionic barrier.

Joan Collins

While she’s most readily associated with 80’s TV staple Dynasty , she stars in one of Star Trek’s most beloved episodes, “City On The Edge of Tomorrow,” playing the big-hearted Edith Keeler. When Kirk and Spock go back in time to rescue Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley), Kirk ends up falling in love with her, despite knowing the pivotal role she plays in the future of mankind (of course!).

Dina Meyer played the Romulan Commander Donatra in Star Trek: Nemesis  back in 2002, the same year she was cast as Barbara Gordon in the series Birds of Prey , a Batman adaptation sans-Batman. She’s probably best remembered, though, as the ill-fated Dizzy Flores in the 1997’s Starship Troopers .

Heather Langenkamp

You wouldn’t know it from looking at her, but that’s Nightmare on Elm Street’s Heather Langenkamp underneath all those prosthetics playing Moto, a Starfleet Security Officer in Star Trek: Into Darkness . The actress was initially working on the film as a make-up artist before she landed the role.

Lark Voorhies

Voorhies, known for an entire generation as Lisa Turtle from Saved By The Bell , was also part of the Star Trek universe as Leanne, a civilian resident of the Deep Space 9 station who was romantically involved with Jake Sisto (Cirroc Lofton) for a spell.

Gabrielle Union

Former teen heartthrob Gabrielle Union stuck fairly close to typecasting for her one-episode role in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as N’Garen, a young Klingon weapons officer.

Sarah Silverman

This comedy superstar played 20th century scientist Rain Robinson on Star Trek: Voyager in the mid-1990s during the two-part episode “Future’s End,” which like all female scientists from the 20th century, ended up falling for a Starfleet office. Silverman has managed to stay in the spotlight throughout the bulk of her career, balancing her standup with guest starring roles in shows like Masters of Sex , as well as lighthearted material, like her frequent voice work on Bob’s Burgers .

Virginia Madsen

While she was immensely popular in the mid-80s, actress Virginia Madsen has continued to work consistently, proving her ability to blend herself into any part. Such was the case with her role in Star Trek: Voyager as Kellin, a Ramuran tracer who, because of the traits of her species, ends up having a rather complicated love affair with one of the crew members.

Sharon Lawrence

During her run as Sylvia Costas on NYPD Blue , Lawrence starred as Amelia Earhart, the female pilot and 20th century icon who was written in as a character on  Star Trek: Voyager.  The show goes so far as to solve her mysterious disappearance, which was the work of the alien species the Briori.

Rachael Harris

Another well-known staple in the world of comedy, Harris played Martis, an Ocampan who gives birth to her daughter, Kes, who would later become a crew member of The USS Intrepid on   Star Trek: Voyager .

The Orange is the New Black actress, perhaps best remembered from  A League of Their Own, pops up in a Star Trek: Voyager  episode as Noss, a mysterious stranger who lives on an uncharted planet, teaching Tom Paris and Tuvok how to survive on the desolate world she calls home.

Joanna Cassidy

Cassidy has been acting since the late-1960s, and eventually added Star Trek to her resume as the Vulcan T’Les, an instructor at the Vulcan Science Academy in Star Trek: Enterprise back in 2004 . 

Wynona Ryder

For the J.J. Abrams ‘  Star Trek reboot, Winona Rider played the part of Amanda Grayson, the human mother of Spock (played by both Zachary Quinto and Leonard Nimoy), who was killed while trying to evacuated her adopted home planet.

Jennifer Morrison

Yes, Emma Swan from NBC’s Once Upon A Time played Winona, the mother of Captain Kirk (now played by Chris Pine), in Star Trek and the sequel Star Trek: Into Darkness .

Alfre Woodard

A survivor of the third world war, Alfre Woodard played Lily Sloane, a human who helps Zefram Cochrane (James Cromwell) build the first ever warp drive, drawing intergalactic attention to planet Earth in Star Trek: First Contact . Of course, the Enterprise-D is drawn in to help stave off some unwanted attention from the time-traveling Borg.

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Published Dec 26, 2010

Where Are They Now? T'Pring Actress Arlene Martel

One of our goals at StarTrek.com is to revisit every facet of Star Trek , so that longtime fans can fondly look back and brand-new fans can learn more about Trek’s storied history and the people who helped transform Gene Roddenberry ’s “Wagon Train to the Stars” into the timeless franchise it is today. And that brings us to today’s interview with Arlene Martel. The actress guest starred as T’Pring in the TOS episode “ Amok Time ,” an hour pivotal in so many ways: it marked Walter Koenig ’s first appearance as Chekov , DeForest Kelley ’s debut in the opening credits, and the first time Spock said “Live long and prosper.” It was the first and only episode set on Vulcan , with Spock in the throes of Pon farr and returning home to mate with his betrothed, T’Pring. Only she prefers another Vulcan, and Kirk finds himself lured into a fight to the death... against Spock. The episode ends happily, of course, with the stoic Spock even flashing a rare smile.

Martel is still working – acting and writing scripts – and continues to enjoy her Trek association. She occasionally attends conventions, interacting with fans, and even turned up (oh-so) briefly in the fan film, Star Trek: Of Gods and Man . Let’s start with Trek. You originally auditioned for “ Where No Man Has Gone Before ,” right?

Martel: Yes, but I couldn’t do it because I would have had to have worn contact lenses. My eyes are very sensitive and I said, “I can’t do it.” They said, “Well, something else is coming up,” and that turned out to be the episode “ Catspaw .” So I went up for “Catspaw.” I heard the buzzing and whispering and someone saying, “Well, let’s save her for that.” I didn’t know what they were talking about, and what I didn’t know was they were talking about “Amok Time.” So when that came up and I read for it, that was it. I think there were eight decision makers in the room – Gene Roddenberry and Herb Solow and Robert Justman and others. And I got the part. T’Pring was this exotic, super-smart, supremely logical Vulcan. What do you remember of playing her, of finding the character?

Martel: One of the joys was that I knew I had an exotic in me, but I didn’t know I had a flawlessly logical exotic in me, because I’ve always run on my emotional center and have usually been cast as very emotional women. I’d played women with different accents and of different ethnicities, and this was a very cultured, sophisticated woman who insisted on specificity and got what she wanted, not because she was calculating and manipulative, but because she was smart. She knew what she wanted was not going to be provided to her by this seven-year mating call. So she took her future into her own hands. And I think she was one of the first really powerful feminists to emerge out of the sci-fi world and I was just utterly surprised that they didn’t bring her back. To just dispense with a character that was so iconic didn’t make any sense to me. What do you recall of the shoot?

Martel: The shoot itself was a hoot and a howl. Given William Shatner ’s proclivity for colorizing phrases with his own inimitable, risqué humor, I was in hysterics most of the time, to the chagrin of the director. Joseph Pevney would say, “Do I really have to come and separate you two? Take a break. Come back and stop laughing.” I have tremendous concentration, but in spite of that Bill Shatner just broke through my reserve and he just had me in hysterics. Especially when dear, dear T’Pau would try to say a Vulcan word, he would twist that word so that it was really very, very naughty. And that made it a lot of fun. Leonard Nimoy , on the other hand, was very isolated and very to himself, probably keeping in character. Leonard and I actually worked together twice more. Before we did Star Trek we were both in an episode of The Rebel (entitled “The Hunted”), where we played mountain people, and after Star Trek I did a Mission: Impossible (on which Nimoy was a regular). If you were to see us in The Rebel and in Star Trek , you’d never know it was the same two people.

Many fans consider “Amok Time” among the best and/or most important TOS episodes. How does it hold up, how does your performance hold up, and what’s it mean to you to be a part of such an important hour of TOS?

Martel: It does hold up. If it didn’t, they wouldn’t re-run it as much as they do. I just saw it a couple of weeks ago. It’s re-run almost more than any other episode, and it seems to be so popular because of the mating issue. To see a Vulcan in the heat of his sexuality is a very interesting thing. It’s interesting to see anyone in that situation, if the story is good, but to see someone who’s usually so repressed going through it, I think that captured people’s imaginations. I think that’s the fascination about it. And then to see how this woman deals with that, and the decisions and choices she makes. My performance, I think, holds up quite well, especially visually. I didn’t have that much to say, but I think you see me and my reactions, and my presence is felt. Looking at it, I can see why they cast me in that role. As I said, I’m only surprised that they didn’t re-cast me. I’m awfully nice to have around on a set, full of laughs and goodwill. We’re not quite sure how to word this question, but over the years T’Pring helped a lot of young male fans through their own version of Pon farr. You’re aware of that, right? That T’Pring was quite the sex symbol?

Martel: I’ve had many men saying “Do you know how my erotic fantasies were stirred by seeing this kind of woman?” You were given such pap about the blond, blue-eyed, giggly girl, and T’Pring was a woman that would be a challenge, they said. Men say to me, “When I was in my teens, I used to really fantasize about you.” Well, that’s really nice to hear. I’m glad that they survived their fantasies and, more importantly, that I did. You’ve been acting since the 1950s. Apart from Star Trek, which of your other 100-plus credits are you proudest of?

Martel: Nobody seemed to realize I played Consuelo in “Demon with a Glass Hand,” that Harlan Ellison wrote for the original Outer Limits . That won all kinds of awards. When people come to hear that I played Consuelo, they say, “Oh, that was you?” She was such an emotional woman, the total opposite of T’Pring. I’ve never had a publicist to connect my face with the name, so some of my work comes as a total surprise to people. I also did two episodes of the original Rod Serling The Twilight Zone . One of them was “Twenty-Two,” where I played the Angel of Death as the nurse in the morgue and then as the flight attendant who says, throughout, “Room for one more, honey.” Those are the three shows most people know – Star Trek , Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone – but if anyone looks at IMDB, they'll see that I did nearly 150 shows.  I did Gunsmoke and several episodes (each) of Columbo , Bewitched and Hogan’s Heroes and other shows. But no one knew it was the same actress. What are you working on these days?

Martel: I did a TV pilot in which I was cast as one of the leads. It’s called A Matter of Family . I play the mother of a mafia family and it was an excellent part. They probably would have cast Anjelica Huston if she’d been available. It had an excellent script and exciting new actors. I hope that gets picked up. I'd love to do a series and really develop a character.  Recently, I did an episode of Brothers & Sisters and, just the opposite of my role in A Matter of Family , I played a very elegant Pasadena woman who was the grandmother of one of the children in a recital where all the scenery fell down. One of the writers was familiar with my work and recommended me to the producers for that, and hopefully they’ll bring me back. I’m completing a book now, and it’s a love story. I’m working with a wonderful co-writer, Jeff Minniti, and we’re doing it long-distance, which I’ve never really done before. I'm also working on a memoir. And I’ve completed a screenplay. I now have three Oscar winners who want to be a part of it, and they’re ( Deep Space Nine recurring guest star) Louise Fletcher, Maximilian Schell and (cinematographer) Vittorio Storaro. I’m very honored that they all feel drawn to the material. I’m actively looking now for funding for that and I feel it will fall into place. So I haven’t exactly been idle.

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Star Trek: Every Guest Star From TOS Who Appeared In Another Star Trek Series

A handful of these actors reprised their original Star Trek: TOS roles while others took on new and exciting characters.

In 1966, Star Trek , better known as Star Trek: The Original Series or TOS , introduced audiences to a vast universe occupied by unique and memorable characters, most of whom are aliens. As a result, many actors have guest-starred on the show, either as recurring characters or as one-time guest stars.

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Some of these actors, however, have had the opportunity to appear in the sequel and spin-off Star Trek shows, everything from TNG to DS9, to Discovery . A handful of these actors reprised their original TOS roles while others took on new and exciting characters.

17 Stanley Adams voiced Cyrano Jones in the animated series after playing him in TOS

In the fan-favorite episode "The Trouble with Tribbles," Adams plays Cyrano Jones, the intergalactic tradesman who was responsible for the tribble infestation on Deep Space Station K-7. He was ultimately sentenced to prison but manages to escape and make a reappearance in the animated series episode "More Tribbles, More Troubles."

In the episode, he once again runs into a problem with the tribbles and comes into the possession of a Klingon predator tribble called a glommer. Stanley Adams was one of the only non-regular cast members to have been in both TOS and the animated series.

16 Malachi Throne voiced the Keeper & played Commodore José I. Mendez in the original series; Throne would later play Pardek, a Romulan politician, in TNG

Though the Keeper was physically played by Meg Wyllie, Throne voiced the character. The Keeper was a Talosian, a race of telepathic and sentient aliens from the planet Talos IV, who tried to convince Captain Pike, captain of the Enterprise prior to Kirk, to stay and live out the rest of his life with Vina on Talos IV. The Keeper appears in "The Cage," "The Menagerie, Part I," and "The Menagerie, Part II." In "The Menagerie, Part I" and "Menagerie, Part II," Throne also played Commodore José I. Mendez, the commander of Starbase 11 where Captain Pike was hospitalized after his exposure to delta radiation .

In "Unification I" and "Unification II" from TNG , Throne appeared as Pardek, a Romulan politician who befriends Spock. He appeared to be an ally at first but his ulterior motives were soon revealed and thwarted by Data and Picard.

15 Jack Donner portrayed Tal, a Romulan Sub-Commander, in TOS & a Vulcan priest in Enterprise

Jack Donner is one of the few actors to have appeared in both the original series and in Enterprise . In "The Enterprise Incident," Donner is the Romulan Sub-Commander Tal. Tal assumes  command of the ship  after his captain is apprehended while trying to seduce Spock.

Donner returns to the Star Trek franchise in  Enterprise , playing a Vulcan priest. He appeared on two episodes, "Home," where he marries T'Pol and Koss, and "Kir'Shara," where he removes Surak's mind essence from Captain Archer.

14 Iona Morris made a minor appearance in the original series as an Onlies & then as Umali, an alien bartender, in Voyager

Iona Morris played a girl who was part of the Onlies, a group of orphaned children from a planet near identical to Earth in "Miri." Due to a life-prolonging project gone wrong, the adults on the planet have died off, leaving the children to fend against the virus and infected adults for themselves.

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In "Workforce" from Voyager , Morris returned as Umali, an alien bar owner who worked on the planet Quarra. She hires an amnesiac Tom Paris. After Tom tries to increase his workplace reputation by giving away free drinks, Umali calls him out on his act.

13 Brian Tochi played Ray Tsing Tao in the original series & Ensign Lin on TNG

Tochi was 9 when he appeared as Ray Tsing Tao in the episode "And the Children Shall Lead." In the episode, Tao is one of the surviving children from the planet Triacus. Tao and the rest of the children in his party are under the influence of a mysterious entity who plans on stealing the Enterprise and enslaving more children elsewhere in the galaxy.

Tochi reappears, 23 years after his role as Tao, as Ensign Lin in TNG . He is an ensign on the Enterprise-D , captained by Picard, who takes over the helm from Sariel Rager when she forgets how to operate the console after the starship entered the Tyken's Rift in "Night Terrors."

12 William Schallert was Nilz Baris in TOS & a Bajoran musician named Varani in DS9

In the TOS episode "The Trouble with Tribbles," Schallert asserts the role of Niltz Baris, the Undersecretary who oversaw the transfer of quadrotriticale grain from Earth to Sherman's Planet from Deep Space Station K-7. He soon becomes a pester to Kirk and their contention, though lighthearted, is a subplot for the episode.

Schallert returns in DS9 as the Bajoran musician Varani in the episode "Sanctuary." Varani attempts to restore part of the Bajoran culture, partially destroyed by the Cardassian occupation, by asking Major Kira to ask the Provisional Government to consider rebuilding the Jalanda Forum, a public event center, on Bajor.

11 John Colicos reprised his role as the Klingon Kor in DS9

Most fans might not be familiar with the name Colicos but many are familiar with his character from "Errand of Mercy." Kor was one of Captain Kirk's more formidable foes, commanding the IKS Klothos . He is shown to be a cunning and deviant commander during his time on TOS .

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Colicos reprised his role as Kor in Ds9 in the episodes "Blood Oath," "The Sword of Kahless," and "Once More Unto the Breach." In DS9 , Kor, now looking like a more traditional Klingon , finds himself at odds with the current Klingon Empire, particularly with Chancellor Gowron, and is struggling to keep his relevancy and fame within the empire. Because of this, his story becomes intertwined with Worf's.

10 Michael Pataki portrayed the Klingon Korax in TOS & Karnas in TNG

Michael Pataki played the Klingon Korax in the TOS episode titled "The Trouble with Tribbles." In the episode, he famously gets into a scurry with Scotty and Chekov, and subsequently Miles O'Brien and Julian Bashir, after insulting the Enterprise and Captain Kirk.

Michael Pataki later returned to Star Trek and portrayed Karnas in the TNG episode "Too Short a Season." Karnas was the governor of a planet called Mordan IV. While leader, he takes a Starfleet ambassador and his crew hostage in order to exact revenge on Starfleet Admiral Mark Jameson, who had a significant role in instigating a civil war on the planet years earlier.

9 Charles Napier played Adam in TOS & Lt. General Dennings in DS9

In the TOS episode "The Way to Eden," Napier plays Adam, a hippy, musician, naturalist, and disciple of Dr. Sevrin, a cult leader. Adam and Dr. Sevrin attempt to find Eden, commandeering various shuttles and starships along the way.

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Napier also played Lt. General Denning in the Ds9  episode "Little Green Men." In an attempt to transport Nog to the Starfleet Academy on Earth, Quark, Nog, and Rom are sent back in time to 1947 Roswell, New Mexico . There they meet Lt. General Denning, the person overseeing the investigation into the alien incursion.

8 Charlie Brill was Arne Darvin in both TOS & Deep Space Nine

In "The Trouble with Tribbles," Charlie Brill played Arne Darvin, a Klingon spy who was physically altered to appear human. He poisons a shipment of quadrotriticale grain and attempts to send it to Sherman's Planet. Kirk manages to foil his plot using a tribble .

Brill reprises his role as Darvin in the DS9 episode "Trials and Tribble-ations." In this episode, Darvin travels back in time, along with the rest of the DS9 crew, using the Orb of Time to take revenge on Kirk, thereby altering the original timeline.

7 William Campbell portrayed the alien Trelane in the original series & the Klingon Warrior Koloth in the original series & in DS9

Trelane was an alien from the planet Gothos in the TOS episode "The Squire of Gothos." Fans often compare him to the character Q, who would later be introduced in TNG , due to his abilities and beliefs regarding humans. He toyed with Kirk and often meddled in the lives of the crew on the Enterprise.

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Koloth was the captain of the IKS Gr'oth in "The Trouble with Tribbles." While taking shore leave at the Federation Deep Space Station K-7, some of his crew, including his first mate Korax, starts a physical altercation with Scotty and Chekov. Koloth then confronts Kirk about the brawl and demands he issue an apology. In the DS9 episode "Blood Oath," Koloth, once again portrayed by Campbell, along with Kang, Kor, and Jadzia Dax, seek to find The Albino, a criminal who infected and killed Koloth's firstborn son with a virus.

6 Michael Ansara played the Klingon Kang in TOS,  DS9, & in Voyager. He also played Jeyal, the Tavnian ex-husband of Lwaxana Troi, in DS9

In the TOS episode, "Day of the Dove," the crew of the enterprise responds to a distress call from the planet Beta XII-A. While exploring the planet, a Klingon ship arrives, damaged, under the command of Kang. Kang accuses Kirk of attacking his ship and proceeds to commandeer the Enterprise . Fast forward to the DS9 era, in "Blood Oath," Ansara reprised his role as Kang, who is now an ambassador and close friends with Curzon Dax, the godfather of his firstborn son. Like Koloth and Kor, he seeks the Albino for murdering his firstborn son with a virus.

Ansara once again played Kang in the Voyager episode "Flashback," where Kang congratulates Sulu for his promotion to captaincy. Ansara also portrayed the alien Jeyal, the now ex-husband of Lwaxana Troi,  in the DS9 episode "The Muse." Jeyal demands that their expectant son be raised only by men, as according to Tavnian standards, to which Troi responds by running away to Deep Space 9.

5 Roger C. Carmel played Harry Mudd in TOS & later voiced him in Star Trek: The Animated Series

Carmel played Harcourt Fenton "Harry" Mudd, professional conman and smuggler, in "Mudd's Women" and "I, Mudd." He first attempts to marry off three women under the effects of an illegal Venus drug, which enhances their attractiveness, to a group of lithium miners. Mudd then returns from jail and becomes trapped on a planet full of androids looking to study humanity.

Carmel reprised his role as Mudd in the episode "Mudd's Passion" from the animated series. In the episode, Mudd apparently escapes the android planet and attempts to make a profit from a concocted love potion. His plans quickly go awry.

4 Joseph Ruskin appeared on TOS, DS9, Voyager, & Enterprise as various characters

Ruskin is one of a few actors to have appeared on multiple Star Trek series. He appeared in "The Gamesters of Triskelion" as Galt, the master thrall on TOS . In Ds9 , he portrayed the Klingon Tumek, advisor to Grilka, ex-wife of Quark, in "The House of Quark" and "Looking for par'Mach in All the Wrong Places." He also played a Cardassian informant in "Improbable Cause."

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In the  Voyager episode "Gravity," he was a Vulcan master who taught Tuvok to better control his emotions. He also played a Suliban doctor in the Enterprise episode "Broken Bow." Lastly, Ruskin appeared in  Star Trek: Insurrection  as a Son'a officer aboard Ru'afo's ship.

3 Clint Howard was on TOS, DS9, Enterprise, & Discovery

As of now, Howard is the only actor to have appeared in the original series and in the latest series, Discovery. There was more than a 50-year gap between these two appearances. Howard was first the physical actor for Balok,   an alien from the First Federation who captained the Fesarius, in "The Corbomite Maneuver" from TOS.  In the Ds9 episode "Past Tense, Part II," he was Grady, a homeless man who believed in aliens; he later meets and interacts with Jadzia.

In  " Acquisition" from Enterprise , he was a Ferengi pirate named Muk who boards and attempts to loot the Enterprise. More recently, in "Will You Take My Hand?" from  Discovery ,  he portrayed a creepy Orion man from Qo'nos who had a rather strange interaction with Sylvia Tilly.

2 Phil Morris played five different characters across three series (TOS, DS9, Voyager) & a movie

Similar to Iona Morris, Phil Morris' first role was in the TOS episode "Miri" as one of the Onlies, though he was not credited. He would later return to play Thopok in the DS9 episode "Looking for par'Mach in All the Wrong Places" and a Jem'Hadar soldier named Remata'Klan in "Rocks and Shoals." Morris returned to Star Trek in the Voyager  episode "One Small Step" as astronaut Lt. John Kelly.

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And lastly, in  Star Trek III: The Search for Spock , he was Foster, a Starfleet cadet who asked Kirk if there would be a hero's welcome when the Enterprise returned to Earth.

1 Mark Lenard reprised his role as Sarek, Spock's father, in TNG, the animated series, & in three of the Star Trek films

Although he played various roles in TOS , his most notable was as Sarek, Spock's Vulcan father. Sarek first appeared in "Journey to Babel" along with his human wife Amanda, Spock's mother. Lenard appeared again as Sarek in "Yesteryear," from the animated series, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country .

Lenard returned once again as Sarek in the TNG episodes "Sarek" and "Unification I." In TNG , Sarek is diagnosed with Bendii Syndrome and eventually dies from the condition.

NEXT:  Star Trek: 10 Greatest Battles, Ranked

Den of Geek

Star Trek The Original Series: 30 Interstellar Guest Stars

We rank Star Trek: The Original Series guest stars by their contributions to science fiction

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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.

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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 , B ewitched , 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 .

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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

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 .

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.

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

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 .

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 .

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

27. Elisha Cook Jr.

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.

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.

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

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 Trek turn, doting on the kids as if they were his own — but especially Caesar Belli, his real life son who appeared in the episode.

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).

Belli represented Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker.

25. Michael J. Pollard

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.

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.

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).

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

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 Voyage s internet show twice.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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 P retty 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.

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

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 .

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.

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

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 Serie s 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).

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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 .

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

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.

Meriwether was one of the two Catwoman actresses from the original B atman 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.

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

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.

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 .

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

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.

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 Gunsmo ke 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.”

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

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.

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 .

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

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.

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.

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. 

11. Susan Oliver

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 .

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.

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

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?

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.

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

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.

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).

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

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.”

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.

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

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.

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).

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.

6. Nancy Kovack

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?

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.”

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.”

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.

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

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.

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 .

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

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.

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.

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. 

Tony Sokol | @tsokol

Culture Editor Tony Sokol is a writer, playwright and musician. He contributed to Altvariety, Chiseler, Smashpipe, and other magazines. He is the TV Editor at Entertainment…

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In the 23rd Century, Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise explore the galaxy and defend the United Federation of Planets. In the 23rd Century, Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise explore the galaxy and defend the United Federation of Planets. In the 23rd Century, Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise explore the galaxy and defend the United Federation of Planets.

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• Trivia In the hallways of the Enterprise there are tubes marked "GNDN." These initials stand for "goes nowhere does nothing."
• Goofs The deck locations for Kirk's Quarters, Sickbay and Transporter Room vary (usually between decks 4-7) throughout the series.

Dr. McCoy : "He's dead, Jim."

• Crazy credits On some episodes, the closing credits show a still that is actually from the Star Trek blooper reel. It is a close-up of stunt man Bill Blackburn who played an android in Return to Tomorrow (1968) , removing his latex make up. In the reel, He is shown taking it off, while an off-screen voice says "You wanted show business, you got it!"
• Alternate versions In 2006, CBS went back to the archives and created HD prints of every episode of the show. In addition to the new video transfer, they re-did all of the model shots and some matte paintings using CGI effects, and re-recorded the original theme song to clean it up. These "Enhanced" versions of the episodes aired on syndication and have been released on DVD and Blu-Ray.
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Set Phasers To Bone: Star Trek Shows, Ranked By Sexiness

Anyone who's ever watched an episode of "Star Trek" knows that space wasn't the only frontier they were exploring. The franchise is wonderfully horny, from its hormone-driven Captain Kirk (William Shatner) in the early days all the way to Spock (Ethan Peck) having a passionate (by Vulcan standards) love affair with his fiancée on "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds." In celebration of the debut of "Strange New Worlds" and its proper appreciation for keeping "Star Trek" sexy, I've put together a ranking of all of the "Star Trek" shows, from least sexy to sexiest. " Strange New Worlds " hasn't been out long enough to make the list, but if the five episodes made available to critics are any indicator, it'll be close to the top. 

Sexiness is relative and subjective, so this list is ranked by judging overall cast sex appeal, diversity and quality of romantic story-lines, and how frequently the series shows its characters getting down. While each of the "Star Trek" series is sexy in its own way, some are just better at the salaciousness, balancing camp and some silly sexuality with the franchise's heavier, allegory-driven output. Series creator Gene Roddenberry included sexuality from the beginning, but every iteration since has taken its own path. 

So, which series is sexiest? See how your favorites pan out below.

9. Enterprise

How can "Enterprise" be the least sexy, you say, when it was the show that tried the most desperately to be sexy? Well, just that. "Enterprise" is chock-full of naked flesh and see-through shirts, but it all feels so weirdly exploitative that it's never actually very hot. The hotties of "Enterprise" are all lovely to look at, but their sexual exploits never really seem like much fun. T'Pol (Jolene Blalock) is the focus of most of the series' sexual escapades, including an episode where she goes into an uncontrollable sex-craze due to Pon-Farr, the Vulcan mating cycle. (Think of it like a cat in heat.) The costumes are also all skin-tight, the crew gets naked pretty regularly, and the camera follows people's most sexually appealing parts more than you see in other "Star Trek" series. I don't even think of it as the male gaze so much as the Rick Berman gaze, objectifying every woman onscreen and the occasional man for good measure. Berman has a long history of treating the women of "Trek" like objects and he co-created "Enterprise," so there's not too much surprise that it's as voyeuristic as it is. It's really too bad, too, because series captain/hot dad  Scott Bakula looked pretty good in a Starfleet uniform.

Sexiest moment:  In the season 3 episode "Damage," T'Pol has a wet and wild shower sex scene with Chief Engineer Tucker (Connor Trinneer), though it is eventually revealed to only be a hallucination as a result of her withdrawal from a Trelium-D treatment. 

While it's impossible to deny the incredible hotness of Jeri Ryan, who plays the former Borg Seven of Nine , "Star Trek: Voyager" just really isn't all that sexy. Perhaps in an effort to stand apart from the character-driven "Deep Space Nine," "Voyager" didn't really give its crew many romances or even opportunities for casual hookups. Sure, Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) slept with the enemy in season 5 and there was an annoying "will-they/won't they" situation with Chakotay (Robert Beltran) and Seven of Nine, but beyond the simple ogling of women in spandex that always comes with '90s "Trek," there just isn't much to get the engines going.

Sexiest moment:  Chakotay and Seven of Nine had one deliciously spicy moment, but unfortunately, much like T'Pol's shower scene on "Enterprise," this one also didn't actually happen. While trying to reconcile her romantic feelings for Chakotay, Seven of Nine recreates him on the holodeck and they end up getting hot and heavy. This complicates things in the real world for poor Seven of Nine, whose feelings for Chakotay are so strong that her brain shuts itself down as a protective mechanism left over from her Borg programming. Then again, if his smoldering eyes ever gazed my way, my brain might shut off, too. 

Once more, the sexiest thing about the series is Jeri Ryan, though her season 2 romantic subplot is chaste to the point of being non-existent. She's also not stuck in the awkward "Voyager-era uniform, either, and seems more comfortable in her own skin. "Star Trek: Picard" isn't all that focused on sex or sexuality, though the eternally simmering hotness of Sir Patrick Stewart cannot go without being mentioned. A man who enjoys good wine and understands the nuances of time travel? Meooww. Season 3 is bringing back the rest of the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" cast, too, which means there will be even more silver-haired hotness to enjoy. 

Sexiest moment:  The existence of Seven of Nine and Picard, basically. 

6. Lower Decks

"Lower Decks" is an animated comedy series, so it's not exactly trying to be all that sexy. There are some fun flirtations and a few sex jokes here and there among the crew that work the lower decks  on a mostly forgotten starship, but overall, things are relatively chaste or are played for laughs. Ensign Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) even misses out on the chance to bone down with his date because he's too interested in weird technical minutiae. The crew of the Cerritos are voiced by plenty of sexy people, but their animated counterparts are hindered by the show's animation style, which simplifies everyone's features and highlights silliness. That is, except for one very special guest appearance. 

Sexiest moment: I don't know if it's just that Johnathan Frakes is attractive across all mediums or if they did something special while designing cartoon Will Riker, but yum. Utilizing only a handful of hard lines and a very limited color palette, they somehow managed to make the man who can never sit correctly a total hottie in two dimensions. Well done. 

5. The Animated Series

Like "Lower Decks," "Star Trek: The Animated Series" is animated and not really trying to be all that sexual, at least most of the time. There are two notable exceptions, however, and one of those is sexy enough to get a leg up on "Lower Decks." In an episode called "Mudd's Passion," Nurse Chapel tries to use love crystals on Spock in order to get some Vulcan lovin', which is a pretty gross attempt to basically space-roofie the poor man. Thanks, 1970s. Thankfully, there's also an episode called "The Lorelei Signal" where the male away-team members end up entranced by hot alien sirens and Lt. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) has to save their sex-stupefied behinds. 

Sexiest moment:  The men falling under the spell of the beautiful, Barbie-esque sirens is pretty great. It's the kind of thing that would go on to be spoofed in other shows, like the " Futurama " episode "Amazon Women in the Mood."  

4. Discovery

"Star Trek: Discovery" is a mixed bag of sexiness. On the good side of things, there's an incredibly diverse cast of hotties that are getting between the sheets in all kinds of ways. There's an actual romantic relationship between two men, after all, and the series was the first to depict a same-sex masculine kiss in the franchises' long history. There's trans and non-binary characters ! Perhaps most importantly, the mirror universe version of Michelle Yeoh's character, Philippa Georgiou, is a pansexual who has a threesome with a man and a woman in season 1. If "pansexual Michelle Yeoh" doesn't get your heart racing, I'm not sure what will. Unfortunately, points have to be removed for the episode "Into the Forest I Go," which depicts sexual assault in a bizarrely "titillating" way.  

Sexiest moment: Most of the sex on "Discovery" is only hinted at, or is just a bit of love between romantic partners, but again: evil mirror universe threesome.

3. The Next Generation

Alright, now we're getting into truly sexy "Star Trek" territory. "Star Trek: The Next Generation" gave the crew of the Enterprise under Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) plenty of chances to bone down with each another, aliens, and even a ghost. Unfortunately there really isn't much LGBTQ+ representation, and the one chance the series had to really explore a character's potential bisexuality was frustratingly not taken , but otherwise there's plenty of wild interstellar interspecies action. "The Next Generation" taught us about the intricacies of Klingon mating rituals when Q tried to give Worf a female mate, advocated for polyandry in certain situations in "Up the Long Ladder," and introduced us to the character of Lwaxana Troi (Majel Barrett, who played the original Nurse Chapel in "The Original Series"), who might be the horniest character in all of "Star Trek." Seriously, this woman is  thirsty , and has no qualms stroking a Ferengi's lobes or hitting on Odo (Rene Auberjonois) on "Deep Space Nine" until he wants to stay a puddle forever. Instead of punishing her or chastising her for her sexuality, however, "Star Trek" made her into everyone's favorite horny space aunt and let her be herself. (The fact that she was  married  to Gene Roddenberry, who cast her as the demure Nurse Chapel, honestly makes her onscreen flirtations that much funnier.) 

One of the series' wildest sexy moments happened in season 7 with the infamous episode "Sub Rosa." In that episode, Gates McFadden's Dr. Beverly Crusher attends the funeral of her grandmother only to discover that the women in her family have been haunted by a hot ghost for generations. It turns out that there's a special candle that can wake the ghost, and Crusher lights it. She and the ghost then get it on, and it turns out that he's some kind of alien ghost who uses the candle as an energy source to survive on. Their romantic entanglement is a funhouse mirror to the scene in "Ghostbusters" where Dan Aykroyd similarly tangles with the erotic undead, though it's not played for laughs.

Sexiest moment:  In season 1, episode 3, "The Naked Now," there's an infection that lowers the crew's inhibitions and is spread by physical contact. The episode was an expansion of the events from an Original Series episode called "The Naked Time," though "The Next Generation" got decidedly more naked in its episode. Under the effects of the infection, Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) starts looking for someone to have sex with on the ship, though she eventually sets her sights on Data (Brent Spiner), the ship's android crew member. She asks him how "functional" he is sexually and he replies that not only is he "fully functional" but he's programmed with a variety of pleasurable techniques. The two do the horizontal tango, inspiring android fetishes everywhere. Data's sexuality would be further explored in the movie "Star Trek: First Contact," where he has a complicated affair with the Borg Queen (Alice Krige). Is it weird? Yes. Is it hot? Undoubtedly. 

2. The Original Series

"Star Trek," now known as "Star Trek: The Original Series," is the one that started it all. The series debuted in 1966 and starred a whole bunch of hotties in skintight costumes, gallivanting about space and meeting even more space hotties. While the original series was never allowed to get as explicit as some of the later shows, there's still plenty of sex appeal and references to sexuality peppered throughout. In fact, Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) has such a habit of sleeping with women who pop up throughout his adventures that Dr. "Bones" McCoy laments it by the time we reach the movie "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. When Kirk hooks up with a shapeshifter on the prison planet Rura Penthe, Bones grumbles "What is it with you, anyway?"

Because it's a series from the 1960s, there are plenty of skimpy skirts and shirtless men to gaze upon, and the series did break ground for showing an interracial kiss in primetime between Kirk and Lt. Uhura, only a year after interracial marriage was deemed legal by the United States Supreme Court. "Star Trek" has always been about progressive ideals and pushing boundaries, and the show pushed for more progressive love and sexuality from the very start. While there aren't any explicitly queer characters on the original series, many fans felt that the relationship between Kirk and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) was more than just a deep friendship. They were a true odd couple , the passionate human and the logical half-Vulcan, and even though the series never made them officially romantic, Roddenberry famously had no problem with the stacks of fan-fiction written to make it so. 

Sexiest moment:  In the episode "Amok Time," we're first introduced to the idea of Pon-Farr, where Vulcans must mate or they go mad. Spock starts acting really strangely and Kirk tries to help, but the two end up forced to battle with bladed weapons. There's homoeroticism, Spock being wildly horny, and it's hinted that Spock and Nurse Chapel hooked up off screen. It's a perfect mix of all things horny in Trek, and it's a lot of fun, too. 

1. Deep Space Nine

Here we are at last, at the sexiest "Star Trek" series of all time: "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine." While I am admittedly biased towards this series because it helped me process my own sexuality and gave me queer role models , "Deep Space Nine" is just ridiculously sexy. The series focused on the interpersonal dynamics of the crew much more than previous series, which made some fans feel like it was a "soap opera in space," but that attention to character relationships was what really made the series sing. Every character was given a chance to explore their identities, and that almost always included their sexuality. "Deep Space Nine" explored a number of relationships, each of them with their own unique twist. Captain Sisko (Avery Brooks) and Kasidy Yates (Penny Johnson Jerald) had to learn how to balance their careers with their romance. Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor) and Odo (René Auberjonois) had to figure out love between a former terrorist with PTSD and a shapeshifter exiled from his people. Worf  (Michael Dorn) and Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) have perhaps the most loving, healthy, hot relationship in the series, despite being a joined Trill and a Klingon raised by Russians. There are multiple lesbian makeout sessions, and Garak (Andrew Robinson) and Dr. Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig) have a homoerotic friendship to put Kirk and Spock to shame. Everyone's hot, everyone's humping, and it all plays into their complex relationships.

Sexiest moment:  "Deep Space Nine" really goes wild with the mirror universe, letting the actors who play some of the more repressed characters unleash their inner campy horny selves in their doppelgänger counterparts. The alternate version of Kira is an oversexed villainess who slinks around and tries to seduce the other version of herself because, hey, why not? When Sisko ends up in the mirror universe, he not only hooks up with the dominatrix-esque Mirror Kira, he also bones Mirror Dax. It's more than a little ethically fuzzy because both of them think he's Mirror Sisko and not Prime Sisko undercover, though both women are totally unphased when they discover that they slept with a different Sisko. 

Watching Mirror Kira strut her stuff and act like a Bond villainess turned up to 11 is not only an incredible amount of fun, it's also pretty darn sexy. Visitor seems to be having a blast acting the part, and the other actors similarly lean in to being deliciously devilish villains. If the crew of "Deep Space 9" are among the hottest in all of Trek, their mirror counterparts blow everyone else out of the competition. 

Diana Muldaur says there was no humanity in Star Trek: The Next Generation

O ne of the biggest issues fans had with the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation was the replacement of Gates McFadden as the Enterprise's primary doctor, Dr. Beverly Crusher . McFadden was let go, and Diana Muldaur was hired as Dr. Katherine Pulaski. Meant to be abrasive much like Dr. Bones McCoy [DeForest Kelley] on Star Trek: The Original Series, Dr. Pulaski wasn't as welcomed as Dr. McCoy was aboard the Enterprise.

Writer Tracy Tormé, as reported in The Fifty-Year Mission The Next 25 Years From The Next Generation to J.J. Abrams by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross, said that the abrasiveness lasted only two episodes before it was decided that changes needed to be made.

Pulaski was supposed to be abrasive. That lasted about two shows. "People aren't going to like her," they said. "We'd better make her loveable."Tracy Tormé

From Muldaur's side of things, though, she didn't seem to think that The Next Generation cast and crew had what it took, at least not for her. In fact, she called her time on the series "a waste of time."

You go into something with a good group of people, but it wasn't a great, creative, wonderful world. It was all techn. There was no humanity in it, there was nothin gto get my creative juices going whatsoever, and that was a waste of time to me, so my leaving the show was very mutual."Diana Muldaur

Fortunately, season three saw the return of McFadden, who, although wasn't 100% happy with the way her character was written, remained with the series until the end, following up with four movies before a return to season three of Star Trek: Picard gave her character the depth needed to make her shine.

Though one could say that Muldaur simply wasn't a good fit with The Next Generation, it's clear it wasn't a good fit with her, either. It wasn't just the fact that Dr. Pulaski came across as unlikeable; it was that she was replacing Dr. Crusher. And the fans didn't want that. They weren't ready to welcome anyone else into that slot. So even if the fans had liked what the producers did with the character, it still would have been an uphill battle to keep her as McFadden had made more of an impact in season one than even she could realize.

Muldaur had one season to make an impression on the fans, and it clearly didn't happen...at least not the one she and the creative team wanted. She went on to say that Star Trek: The Next Generation didn't have a "great mix of people and directors" while calling the directors "all kids, who had just come over from the old country, and didn't know what they were doing." Perhaps some of the directors did struggle in the second season, but by season three, The Next Generation had found its stride, and with the return of McFadden, it became a solid ratings hit.

This article was originally published on redshirtsalwaysdie.com as Diana Muldaur says there was no humanity in Star Trek: The Next Generation .