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Trek guest actors in maybe surprising roles

Just watched Rebel Without a Cause for the first time since high school, and there's Ian Wolfe manning Griffith Observatory's planet...arium.
 
I've been watching the Logan's Run TV series on DVD, and so far, halfway through the show's single 14-episode season, I've seen Morgan Woodward (and VGR's Anthony DeLongis) in the pilot, Leslie Parrish in episode 2, and Liam Sullivan (briefly) in episode 7. Surprisingly few Trek guests for a show story-edited by D.C. Fontana. We've had more Trek-veteran writers, though -- Fontana, TAS's James Schmerer, David Gerrold, Shimon Wincelberg, and Harlan Ellison, plus George Clayton Johnson as co-author of the original Logan's Run novel.
 
Well Morgan Woodward turns up again in two more episodes along with Paul Carr, Mariette Hartley, Barbara Babcock and Lou Elias as a Zedor guard! :techman:
JB
 
Oh yeah, speaking of Ian Wolfe - he shows up as a judge near the end of the 1952 Les Miserables, with Michael Rennie as Jean Valjean.
 
MeTV is currently airing a 1964 episode of Bonanza in which William Marshall plays a famous singer who encounters prejudice in Virginia City when people meet him in the flesh. The really odd thing here is that there's an angle in which he's mistaken for a runaway slave who has a reward on his head in St. Louis...which places the episode squarely pre-Civil War, when I was under the impression that the show had the typical default Western setting of sometime post-Civil War. I can see playing loosey goosey with exactly when a Western takes place, but the Civil War is kind of a big chronological line to cross willy nilly.
 
Wikipedia says Bonanza was set in the 1860s, but it seemed to have both pre- and post-Civil War episodes. It mentions the episode you're referring to, saying that the singer objects to the Dred Scott Decision, which would seem to place the episode in 1857.
 
Wikipedia says Bonanza was set in the 1860s, but it seemed to have both pre- and post-Civil War episodes. It mentions the episode you're referring to, saying that the singer objects to the Dred Scott Decision, which would seem to place the episode in 1857.
it was on for 14 seasons, not that it had any real continuity that I'm aware of (I watched it a lot but not in any kind of sequence I remember, and they reused scripts more than once. ) but even so, they could have stretched it out from the 1850's right into the Grant years
 
I'm reminded of one of the Filmation Saturday morning cartoons of my youth, The New Adventures of the Lone Ranger, which used its stories to teach US history and covered events ranging from the brief run of the Pony Express in 1860-61 to the Oklahoma Land Rush in 1889 -- and yet the Ranger, Tonto, and their horses remain ageless and unchanging over this span of nearly three decades (which is not presented in any kind of chronological order). So teaching history and playing fast and loose with it at the same time.
 
Yeah, I read that info on the Wiki while the episode was on. In general, I'd say that Westerns that aren't explicitly set before or during the Civil War stay set after it. Sometimes it's more explicit...e.g., being a Civil War veteran was a routinely referenced part of Lucas McCain's backstory on The Rifleman. And there you had less of a fudge factor to give or take a decade, because he had a growing son.
 
The really odd thing here is that there's an angle in which he's mistaken for a runaway slave who has a reward on his head in St. Louis...which places the episode squarely pre-Civil War, when I was under the impression that the show had the typical default Western setting of sometime post-Civil War. I can see playing loosey goosey with exactly when a Western takes place, but the Civil War is kind of a big chronological line to cross willy nilly.

There's an early Bonanza about pre-Civil War tensions stirring things up in Virginia City. Which was a surprise to me, with all the 1873 Colts and 1892 Winchesters around.
 
I look to the firearms for western time periods (but of course the production rarely cares about that detail). The classic Colt Single Action Army (SAA) six-shooter was first made in 1873, as was the classic Winchester rifle. Brass-frame Henry lever-rifles were available during the Civil War, but the average handgun pre-1873 would be a cap-and-ball black powder revolver, not a cartridge arm like the SAA. That said, most westerns totally ignore such temporal accuracy, and equip their casts with random period arms. Winchester rifles are often the 1892 model, which is sturdier than the '73. Handguns are usually cartridge types for ease of blank loading, and we've even seen modern (well, turn of the century) double-action police revolvers subbing for proper western-period models.
Heck, John Wayne carried his '73 Colt and an 1892 Winchester in a movie set in the 1840s (The Comancheros)!
 
The other day I was channel surfing and hit upon Leonard Nimoy as an American Indian in Rawhide. The channel popped up and there was a close-up of Nimoy in a "He had a lot of lines for an Indian!" type of role. This was 1961, a b&w show:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0683027/

Clint Eastwood was tied up and being held hostage in the scene. He was a good-looking dude, too. I wonder if he did anything after that.
 
TOS guests in the second half of the Logan's Run TV series include a returning Morgan Woodward (twice), Mariette Hartley, Barbara Babcock, and Paul Carr, all in separate episodes, plus TNG's Nehemiah Persoff. The only TOS writers in the second half are John Meredyth Lucas and story editor D.C. Fontana, though two writers, Katharyn Powers and Michael Michaelian, would reunite with Fontana on TNG's first season.
 
I keep forgetting to mention during my Mod Squad binge, that Harve Bennet's name is on every episode with a list of others under "developed by."
 
I've been watching the 'Vega$' binge on 'DecadesTV' on and off all weekend and a Star Trek alum finally showed up. (Unless I missed one or two during the overnight hours while I was sleeping.) John Colicos playing a mobster.
P.S. While watching I've realized what a missed opportunity it was for Robert Urich not to star in an episode of 'Deep Space Nine' as an old friend of Avery Brooks/Captain Sisko from Starfleet.
 
There's been a 'T.J. Hooker' marathon on Decades TV this weekend so there's been no shortage of 'The Shat' and his eighties hair; however, there's been a surprising lack of TOS alumni.
The current episode does have two DS9 alumni though, James Darren helping track down Marc Alaimo.
 
There's been a 'T.J. Hooker' marathon on Decades TV this weekend so there's been no shortage of 'The Shat' and his eighties hair; however, there's been a surprising lack of TOS alumni.

I remember watching the Very Special Episode where Leonard Nimoy guest-starred. I didn't usually watch the show, but I made sure to tune in for that one.
 
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