Speculative: TOS Era Actors who would have worked well on Star Trek

[JonnyQuest037]

Robert Culp would've been incredible. I'd have definitely liked to have seen Robert Vaughn or David McCallum if they weren't too busy with The Man From U.N.C.L.E. at the time. Martin Landau would've been interesting, especially if he was playing a Vulcan.

Monte Landis could've been cool. He guest starred on seven different second season episodes of The Monkees and looked fairly different in all of them. He was obviously a versatile character actor.

Someone here once suggested Honor Blackman as a female Captain, which I think is a really great idea.

 

[Brennyren]

Elizabeth Montgomery would have served up strength and sass as an officer or a government official -- and with her beauty, you just know she would also be an ex of Jimmy T.'s.

Was Redford a big-screen star yet? He would have made an interesting rival to Kirk.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Was Redford a big-screen star yet? He would have made an interesting rival to Kirk.

Looking at Redford's IMDb, his last TV credit is an episode of The Defenders in 1964. And Barefoot in the Park came out on May 25th, 1967, so I'm going to say "Yes."

 

[Christopher]

Was Redford a big-screen star yet? He would have made an interesting rival to Kirk.

He wouldn't become a star until Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in 1969, but it looks like his last television role was in a December 1964 episode of The Defenders.

 

[gottacook]

I would have enjoyed seeing Patrick Macnee (then-spouse of Kate Woodville) or Darren McGavin (soon-to-be spouse of Kathie Browne).

 

[Kor]

Probably too big in feature films to appear in a TV show, but:
Yul Brynner as a bald Klingon general.
Charlton Heston as a power-mad admiral.

Kor

 

[Grant]

Actors of color they could have used...
James shigeta
James Hong
Ivan Dixon
Will Kuluva
Hari Rhodes
Greg Morris
Henry Silva
Gail Fisher
.... almost all of these appeared on either the outer limits or the Twilight Zone or both. Star Trek got kind of lazy after season one with giving minorities decent parts.

 

[GNDN18]

As much as I loved William Windom, Norman Spinrad called it:

Robert Ryan would have killed.

 

[Shawnster]

I'm surprised nobody has yet mention Martin Landau. He was even considered to play Spock. https://www.cbr.com/star-trek-martin-landau-leonard-nimoy-play-spock/

Landau would have made a fascinating Vulcan special guest of the week.

 

[Maurice]

I'm comparing Robby to the design direction of TOS robots such as Nomad, or the androids of "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" That's a very different approach than the man-in-a-suit, domes and spinning gears look of Robby.

Ahhhh, but one can argue that was an entirely budgetary issue. You said they "deliberately avoided that kind of robot image". That's pure assumption unless you can cite a source.

 

[Christopher]

I want to say Ed Asner, but I think he would've worked better as a TNG-era Klingon. Although the reason I think that is probably because Hudson on Gargoyles looked kind of Klingon-ish.

Carroll O'Connor would've been interesting. He was quite a versatile and gifted character actor.

I have a suggestion from the animated series. Alan Dean Foster added original stories to the last four Star Trek Logs, two of which featured a charming, devious Klingon rival of Kirk's named Commander Kumara. My mental casting for Kumara's voice has always been Jonathan Harris. He starred in Filmation's My Favorite Martians (an animated sequel to the Ray Walston/Bill Bixby sitcom) in the same season that TAS debuted (airing just half an hour earlier on CBS, in fact) -- and directly opposite Filmation's Lassie's Rescue Rangers, whose lead actor Ted Knight played Carter Winston in "The Survivor." So it was plausible that Harris could have potentially been in TAS if they'd had the budget for more guest actors. And he could be very good at debonair menace when he wasn't going for laughs.

Actors of color they could have used...
James shigeta
James Hong
Ivan Dixon
Will Kuluva
Hari Rhodes
Greg Morris
Henry Silva
Gail Fisher
.... almost all of these appeared on either the outer limits or the Twilight Zone or both. Star Trek got kind of lazy after season one with giving minorities decent parts.

Greg Morris was pretty busy on Mission: Impossible at the time, although his children Phil and Iona appeared in "Miri."

James Shigeta would go on to play Admiral Nogura opposite George Takei in the infamous unreleased fan film Yorktown II: A Time to Heal back in the '80s (which I gather has finally been completed and is due for release soon).

Wasn't James Hong a runner-up for Sulu?

 

[Maurice]

I'm surprised nobody has yet mention Martin Landau. He was even considered to play Spock. https://www.cbr.com/star-trek-martin-landau-leonard-nimoy-play-spock/

Landau would have made a fascinating Vulcan special guest of the week.

Actually, not. That's a rumor that was repeatedly shot down by Dorothy Fontana. At best they put him on lists of maybes if Nimoy walked, but she said it was always Nimoy, and no one else was ever seriously considered.

 

[Grant]

And The Usual Suspects they're mentioned in Threads like this....
Robert Culp
Martin Landau
Burgess Meredith
Earl Holliman
Anne Francis
Richard Kiel
Beau Bridges
Vera Miles
Gail Kobe
Barbara Rush
Joe Moross
Simon Oakland
Don Gordon
H M Wynant
Robert Loggia
Robert Webber
Jack Klugman
Albert salmi
John Larch
James Best
Ben Wright
Inger Stevens
Edward Andrews
Martin Balsam
...... basically a ton of actors who were on the Twilight Zone who didn't make the jump to Star Trek. Although there were 96 actors from the original Twilight Zone that ended up being on Star Trek at some point.

 

[Christopher]

Actually, not. That's a rumor that was repeatedly shot down by Dorothy Fontana. At best they put him on lists of maybes if Nimoy walked, but she said it was always Nimoy, and no one else was ever seriously considered.

Do we have a second source for that? If Fontana was the only one saying that, she could've been saying it out of partisanship or politeness toward Nimoy.

 

[DarrenTR1970]

Thinking about it some more, I would add Roddy McDowell and Victor Bruno to the list.

I'm trying to come up with someone who would have made a good Robert and Sarah April if 'The Counter-Clock' incident had been live-action instead of animated.

My initial thought was Boris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester, a 'Bride of Frankenstein' reteaming.

But Karloff was in failing health and died in 1969, so my second choice is Robert Young.

Too bad Jane Wyatt had already appeared as Amanda.

 

[Maurice]

Do we have a second source for that? If Fontana was the only one saying that, she could've been saying it out of partisanship or politeness toward Nimoy.

My personal experience with Fontana was she pretty blunt and not averse to telling it like it is/was, and when she didn't want to, she'd just say, "Not going to get into that." I seem to recall the role was effectively written for Nimoy, but I would have to go digging to see what other sources say. @Harvey?

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Ahhhh, but one can argue that was an entirely budgetary issue. You said they "deliberately avoided that kind of robot image". That's pure assumption unless you can cite a source.

Yes, its more assumption, but wouldn't you--if working on TOS-- have tried to create a unique robot design instead of going the route of a Robby, or the robot he inspired (and was on TV at the same time) in the form of Lost in Space's B-9?

 

[Scott Kellogg]

Yes, its more assumption, but wouldn't you--if working on TOS-- have tried to create a unique robot design instead of going the route of a Robby, or the robot he inspired (and was on TV at the same time) in the form of Lost in Space's B-9?

Both Robby and B-9 were extremely expensive props. (That's why Robby was reused so often.) If Robert Kinoshita (who designed both of them) had been tasked with creating one for Star Trek, I'm sure it would have been way outside the show's budget.

The Robby suit was 7 feet tall. I'm sure it would have had difficulty on Star Trek's sets.

 

[Scott Kellogg]

Robert Culp would've been incredible. I'd have definitely liked to have seen Robert Vaughn or David McCallum if they weren't too busy with The Man From U.N.C.L.E. at the time. Martin Landau would've been interesting, especially if he was playing a Vulcan.

Monte Landis could've been cool. He guest starred on seven different second season episodes of The Monkees and looked fairly different in all of them. He was obviously a versatile character actor.

Someone here once suggested Honor Blackman as a female Captain, which I think is a really great idea.

Good Choices!
How about John Stephenson? The original voice of Dr. Quest. He made several appearances on Hogan's Heroes.

 

[Christopher]

Yes, its more assumption, but wouldn't you--if working on TOS-- have tried to create a unique robot design instead of going the route of a Robby, or the robot he inspired (and was on TV at the same time) in the form of Lost in Space's B-9?

TOS was constantly cutting costs and scrimping to make its budgetary ends meet. If they needed a large bipedal robot in a story and someone had been willing to rent them the Robby suit for less than it would cost to build a whole new one, they probably would've gone for it. If their choices had been dictated by pure aesthetics and money had been no object, then the shuttlecraft would've looked more like a small private plane than a butter dish with nacelles, and the Guardian of Forever would've been a valley full of giant statues.

The Robby suit was 7 feet tall. I'm sure it would have had difficulty on Star Trek's sets.

Robby's scenes could've been on a planet surface rather than the Enterprise.