Post Star Trek roles

May 9, 2006 9:58 AM

Is there a site that highlights shows where Star Trek alumni have appeared together? Is Boston Legal the biggest (ie, decent ratings, longetivity, etc.) show to include Star Trek actors?

I'm not sure why I find this intriguing, but I do.

The thought first came to me watching Boston Legal with William Shatner & Rene Aubejonois.

Then I saw last week's episode of NCIS and Connor Trinneer & Tim Russ had guest parts.

Then last night I saw an ad for 7th Heaven and there were Stephen Collins & Catherine Hicks.

I was also curious if some of the TOS actors had appeared together before the show was created?

posted by notcostello to media & arts (16 comments total)

Gargoyles, a Disney channel cartoon was infamous for using (and using, and using) former Star Trek actors.

Someone once said "Old Star Trek actors don't die, they get jobs on Gargoyles.

Mirina Sirtis played a recurring role, as did Jonathan Frakes, who was actually one of the principal characters. Brent Spiner had another recurring role, actually two kind of separate characters at different times. Michael Dorn voiced a few characters, as did Kate Mulgrew, Nichell Nichols, and many guest stars. See the wikipedia entry for Gargoyles for more info.
posted by Eldritch at 10:07 AM on May 9, 2006

It will take some serious mining, but this archived Star Trek Actors' Other Roles FAQ (circa 2002) looks promising.
posted by grabbingsand at 10:11 AM on May 9, 2006

The fine film AI Assault on SciFi last weekend featured George Takei (TOS), Michael Dorn (TNG/DS9), and Robert Picardo (Voyager).
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:18 AM on May 9, 2006

After TNG went off the air, LeVar Burton, Brent Spiner and Dwight Schultz all made appearances in the single season of UPN's "Deadly Games."
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:21 AM on May 9, 2006

Researching this a little bit yielded the interesting tidbit that both Levar Burton and Michael Dorn were in "Ali".

God I'm bored.
posted by saladin at 10:22 AM on May 9, 2006

The "common cast/crew" and "people working together" searches on the Internet Movie Database would be your friend in this case, although, granted, it would require manual input of the actors' names.
posted by WCityMike at 10:30 AM on May 9, 2006

Most of the actor pages on Memory Alpha have descriptions of what the people have been done before and after ST. They usually call out when Trek actors work with each other in non-Trek roles.
posted by revgeorge at 10:40 AM on May 9, 2006

Check out boston-legal.org's Star Trek parallels page for more.

According to an ABC press release, Jeri Ryan will be featured in the 2-hour season finale.

Denny Crane!
posted by neilkod at 11:47 AM on May 9, 2006

You could work it out for yourself using info from IMDB.
posted by tiamat at 12:41 PM on May 9, 2006

The IMDb search capability seems to really do the trick.

The earliest pre Star Trek common appearance I can find is for Leonard Nimoy & DeForest Kelly for "26 Men", from January 13, 1957.

I would have thought with John Hoyt & Paul Fix (the first 2 doctors) would have appeared in something together before Star Trek, but not according to the IMDb.

Tahnks for the leads.
posted by notcostello at 1:34 PM on May 9, 2006

I was also curious if some of the TOS actors had appeared together before the show was created?

TOS? Dunno; not that I'm aware of.

But LeVar Burton (TNG), Kate Mulgrew (Voyager), and Avery Brooks (DS9) were all in Roots.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 2:06 PM on May 9, 2006

Several TOS cast members appeared in episodes of Playhouse 90, The Twilight Zone, and The Outer Limits, but not concurrently. Nimoy and Shatner were in an episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E together. Most other appearances of the main cast members together were in 1966 or later. I think what you want is this feature of IMDB, which will let you search who worked with a given actor--there's not a blank form that lets you enter two actors as far as I can see, so you'll need to either change the name in the URL, or go to the actors' individual pages and hit the last link ("credited with") under "filmographies" on the left sides of the pages.
posted by Cricket at 7:41 PM on May 9, 2006

Not sure if this is what you mean, but in the st:tng episode "The Perfect Mate", Picard (duh, patrick stewart) has a somewhat quasi-affairish type thing with Kamala (none other than Famke Janssen).

(not sure if I should pretend most askmefiers are really stupid and don't know that both Stewart and Janssen are in the Xmen movie series... so I'm not going to mention that)



I'm such a nerd.
posted by damnjezebel at 3:01 AM on May 10, 2006

Well, there's always that episode of Futurama. But it hardly counts as they are playing themselves.

Props for Frakes showing up for exactly one line in that episode, though...
posted by slimepuppy at 3:22 AM on May 10, 2006

The TNG & XMen connection is one I had forgot.

There will be a new connection in the latest installment of the XMen franchise with Kelsey Grammer.

Other minor ones I found were Shatner & James Cromwell on The Barbary Coast (Sep 29, 1975) and Shatner & Gary Lockwood on TJ Hooker on two occasions (Jan 14, 84 & Oct 9, 85).

Excitign stuff.
posted by notcostello at 12:10 PM on May 10, 2006

And I have to learn to use spellcheck.
posted by notcostello at 12:26 PM on May 10, 2006