Actors with Experience in the Role

[ZapBrannigan]

• Leonard Nimoy played an alien in Zombies of the Stratosphere. Gene Roddenberry personally invited Nimoy to play Spock, but I'm still going to say it was a coincidence.

• Susan Oliver was in an episode of The Twilight Zone with similarities to "The Cage," and in a similar role. She might have come to mind for that reason, but in any case she was fantastic as Vina. She had a haunted quality.

• From Chapter Nine of The Trouble with Tribbles (1973):
"The Trader was a fellow named Guy Raymond—he’d been doing some beer commercials as a bemused bartender while crazy things happened in his bar. So he was perfect for the Trader." That one was deliberate.

I'm pretty sure there are more examples.

 

[Spock's Barber]

I think this counts…Janos Prohaska played numerous creatures in Outer Limits before he moved onto TOS as the Horta, Mugato, Yarnek…

 

[Tosk]

Before playing Spock in Where No Man Has Gone Before, Nimoy had already played an almost identical character in an unaired pilot episode called The Cage.

 

[Henoch]

Bring in Morgan Woodward if you need a crazy man (twice).

 

[Spock's Barber]

Bring in Morgan Woodward if you need a crazy man (twice).

I really missed him during Season 3. Maybe he could have been cast as a Klingon?

Or as one of the Earps?

 

[mb22]

I think this counts…Janos Prohaska played numerous creatures in Outer Limits before he moved onto TOS as the Horta, Mugato, Yarnek…

Prohaska was the 'go to' guy in the 1960s when it came to playing costumed animals, aliens, etc. in many shows beside The Outer Limits.

 

[Spock's Barber]

Prohaska was the 'go to' guy in the 1960s when it came to playing costumed animals, aliens, etc. in many shows beside The Outer Limits.

Too bad he, his son and 34 others were killed in a plane crash in California while traveling to a movie set.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

DeForest Kelley had already studied fictional medicine before becoming McCoy:

DeForest Kelley - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In 1956, nine years before being cast as Dr. McCoy, Kelley played a small supporting role as a medic in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, in which he utters the diagnosis "This man's dead, Captain" and "That man is dead" to Gregory Peck. Kelley appeared as Lieutenant Commander James Dempsey in two episodes of the syndicated military drama The Silent Service, based on actual stories of the submarine service of the United States Navy. In 1962, he appeared in the Bonanza episode titled "The Decision", as a doctor sentenced to hang for the murder of a journalist. The judge in this episode was portrayed by John Hoyt, who later portrayed Dr. Phillip John Boyce, one of Leonard McCoy's predecessors, on the Star Trek pilot "The Cage". In 1963, he appeared in The Virginian episode "Man of Violence" as a "drinking" cavalry doctor with Leonard Nimoy as his patient (Nimoy's character did not survive). Perhaps not coincidentally, the episode was written by John D. F. Black, who went on to become a writer-producer on Star Trek. Just before Star Trek began filming, Kelley appeared as a doctor again, in the Laredo episode "The Sound of Terror".

 

[Nerys Myk]

Kelley also has some experience at the OK Corral.

 

[Phaser Two]

I really missed him during Season 3. Maybe he could have been cast as a Klingon?

Or as one of the Earps?

Yeah, he really showed some range on Star Trek. Sure, Ron Tracey was deranged, but he exuded authority when he wasn't showing the psycho (take the conversation with Sulu) and was completely plausible as a starship captain - which I don't think anyone would have expected from his turn as the unfortunate Dr. Van Gelder.

 

[Roundabout]

He played a neo nazi in Mission Impossible's "The Legacy".

I'm talking about Patrick Horgan.

He was merely a henchman attempting to create a fourth reich in M.I. In ST "Patterns of Force", he had risen to playing chairman of the party.


In a similar vein, but in this case with Star Trek as the stepping stone, John Crawford was the bureaucrat, Commissioner Ferris, in "Galileo Seven".

In the movie The Enforcer, Crawford was now the head of the bureaucracy, the mayor.

It was funny that in each of those two Crawford roles, a character of subordinate rank talked smack directly to Crawford's character face. Kirk did so in ST, and Dirty Harry certainly did it in the movie.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

So TOS has plenty of typecast actors. Are there some types of shows that tend to typecast more often than others?

 

[Nerys Myk]

So TOS has plenty of typecast actors. Are there some types of shows that tend to typecast more often than others?

Some actors are go tos for particular roles. They become their bread and butter. The shows know this and casting seeks them out. Want an evil business guy? Get Charles Lane. Want a milquetoast? Get John Fielder. Want a bureaucrat? Get William Schallert. ( Also good for dads and teachers)

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

Bring in Morgan Woodward if you need a crazy man (twice).

Love him in OMEGA GLORY.....when he rips the Shat out of ner during their first fight.

 

[vandevere]

I really missed him during Season 3. Maybe he could have been cast as a Klingon?

Or as one of the Earps?

He would've made a very interesting Klingon...