Trek guest actors in maybe surprising roles

[Christopher]

Vincent Price was 6'4". They would have had to put Shatner on a box.

Michael Ansara was 6'3". Didn't pose a problem.

 

[Praetor Baldric]

Dig this:

Vincent Price as:
1) Claudius Marcus
2) A Vian
3) Mr. Atoz
4) Lincoln
5) Col. Green
6) Lincoln and Col. Green (cool duality there)
7) Garth
8) Plasus
9) Flint
10) Korob

 

[Forbin]

In one of those little cosmic coincidences, I was reading that new Trek book "These Are the Voyages" this afternoon, the chapter about "What Are Little Girls Made of?"

Then tonight we picked a random episode of "Naked City" to watch, and Michael Strong was the featured crook!

 

[Greg Cox]

I don't know... what was great about Price was that he could be menacing, debonair, and snidely funny all at once -- like Colicos as Kor, DeLancie as Q, or Robinson as Garak. There wasn't much room for humor in Kodos.

On the other hand, Price did play tormented, possibly murderous thespians in both Madhouse and Theater of Blood.

And, you know, he would have been perfect for "Catspaw."

 

[Melakon]

Vincent Price as Richard Daystrom. Price could have brought as much theatricality to it as William Marshall.

 

[Maurice]

In addition to his talent, Marshall had a physical bearing that really sold the character that Price didn't possess.

 

[The Old Mixer]

William Campbell spent some time handcuffed in the backseat of Adam-12 today.

 

[Melakon]

In addition to his talent, Marshall had a physical bearing that really sold the character that Price didn't possess.

Agreed, no complaints about Marshall's work. I still wish they could have gotten Leslie Nielsen back then for something, he was all over the place in the 60s as villains.

 

[HGN2001]

A fun MANNIX conicidence regarding TREK actors:

In season one, Mannix is hired by a potential gubernatorial candidate to dig up dirt on himself in an effort to see if his political rivals could do the same. Charles Drake ("Commodore Stocker") plays the politician in "Skid Marks On A Dry Run."

In season six, Mannix is hired by a potential gubernatorial candidate to dig up dirt on himself in an effort to see if his political rivals could do the same. William Shatner ("Captain Kirk") plays the politician in "Search For A Whisper.

Sound the same? You bet. The season six offering was a re-do of the same John Meredyth Lucas script. It was possibly done again because of a potential Writers Guild strike in 1973.

Oh - and for more Trek actors, you'll find Vic Perrin inhabiting the season one episode, and Yvonne Craig and Phillip Pine in the season six version.

Harry

 

[Christopher]

Wow, they really figured TV was a disposable medium back then, didn't they? I've heard of shows remaking scripts from other shows, and there's a Bionic Woman episode that's a remake of a Six Million Dollar Man episode -- but the same show doing the same script twice, five years apart? I've never seen that before.

 

[Mysterion]

I've recently noticed Arlene "T'Pring" Martel in two episodes of The Monkees. In one, she is a blonde russian spy. In the other, a dark-haired assistant to a vampire. Pretty and funny in both.

 

[HGN2001]

Wow, they really figured TV was a disposable medium back then, didn't they? I've heard of shows remaking scripts from other shows, and there's a Bionic Woman episode that's a remake of a Six Million Dollar Man episode -- but the same show doing the same script twice, five years apart? I've never seen that before.

It happened on MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE too - while the show was still on CBS. They also recycled some scripts for the later ABC incarnation of the series - that was also due to a writers strike.

Harry

 

[Praetor Baldric]

^I am guessing this was possible because there were no reruns then?

 

[Christopher]

It happened on MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE too - while the show was still on CBS.

I don't recall any such instances. Sure, the sixth-season "Invasion" was pretty similar to the first-season "Operation Rogosh," but they weren't identical and they had different writing credits.

They also recycled some scripts for the later ABC incarnation of the series - that was also due to a writers strike.

I didn't count that because it wasn't the same contiguous series, but a revival/sequel series fifteen years later. The only reason M:I was revived at all was because of the '88 writers' strike -- the networks feared they'd have no new content, so they revived the show as a way to reuse old scripts, intending to have new actors play the original characters. But the strike ended soon enough that they instead decided to bring back Peter Graves as Jim Phelps, rename the other characters so it'd be a sequel rather than a remake, rewrite the four reused scripts just a bit to modernize them, and do original scripts for the rest of the series.

You have to admit that the same continuing show remaking one of its own scripts after only five years is a rather different situation. I've seen a number of shows with unbroken runs longer than five years, but I can't think of any other instance of the same show shooting the same script twice.

 

[Melakon]

Wow, they really figured TV was a disposable medium back then, didn't they? I've heard of shows remaking scripts from other shows, and there's a Bionic Woman episode that's a remake of a Six Million Dollar Man episode -- but the same show doing the same script twice, five years apart? I've never seen that before.

Obviously you've never seen any Three Stooges shorts.

 

[M'Sharak]

^I am guessing this was possible because there were no reruns then?

Nope - there were reruns then. A show's year typically went something like:

Fall season (13 new eps)
Reruns
Spring season (13 new eps)
Reruns
Summer (more reruns)​

Shows no longer in production might be shown as reruns in a regular afternoon or weekend slot - I remember watching The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, One Step Beyond, The Rifleman, Branded, The Real McCoys and other shows in those timeslots. Summer would be mostly reruns until the early 1970s when the idea began to catch on of introducing a new show as a summer replacement series.

 

[Melakon]

Also during the summers of the 1960s, networks would sometimes create a show title but just run unsold tv pilots, as if they were an anthology series. I think that mostly stopped due to complaints from the unions regarding residual benefits.

 

[Forbin]

There was a Charlie's Angels where one of them gets accidentally grazed in the head by a kid playing with a real gun and gets amnesia. It was a direct reuse of a script from a Mod Squad ep (Julie was hit in that).

Then there was that TNG ep where Riker is accused of murdering an alien scientist to get his wife, and they reenct the crime on a holodeck. The same script was recycled on Voyager with Tom Paris in the hot seat. Can't recall either ep title at the moment.

And if you wanna see a complete theft, watch the closing scenes of Babylon 5's "Mind War", then watch the closing scenes of Voyager's "The Gift." Complete. Rip. off.

 

[HGN2001]

It happened on MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE too - while the show was still on CBS.

I don't recall any such instances. Sure, the sixth-season "Invasion" was pretty similar to the first-season "Operation Rogosh," but they weren't identical and they had different writing credits.

Okay, I'll concede that one. My statement came from an interpretation of a paragraph in THE COMPLETE MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE DOSSIER by Patrick J. White, wherein Mr White writes in the notes for the seventh season episode, "Two Thousand" (emphasis mine):

"Two Thousand" is fresh, audacious, and outrageous--unless of course you've already seen episode 4, "Operation Rogosh." This show is simply a more expensive-looking remake of the earlier classic. Just like in "Rogosh," there are futuristic dates inscribed in Collin's cell walls, and Barney repeats the Carribean prisoner character he originated six years earlier.

After reading that, you can understand why I thought it was a direct remake of the same script, yet the writers credits are different. So my apologies for my incorrect assumptions.

You have to admit that the same continuing show remaking one of its own scripts after only five years is a rather different situation. I've seen a number of shows with unbroken runs longer than five years, but I can't think of any other instance of the same show shooting the same script twice.

I also have a feeling - and no proof - that there may have been episodes of BEWITCHED with recycled scripts and different Darrens. A BEWITCHED expert could probably confirm or deny that.

As for the MANNIX recycle, the producers probably figured that the show was different enough - in season one, Mannix worked for Intertect and in all other seasons he was out on his own - that only diehard fans would remember the script.

One of the reasons MANNIX was finally canceled after eight seasons was that Paramount wanted to sell it into syndication so that ABC could run it in late-nights. In those days, syndications didn't start until the series was finished its prime time network run - a situation that would soon change.

So, the thought process was probably that no-one would recall that earlier version of the same script. And season one was never offered in syndication.

Harry

 

[Christopher]

Also during the summers of the 1960s, networks would sometimes create a show title but just run unsold tv pilots, as if they were an anthology series. I think that mostly stopped due to complaints from the unions regarding residual benefits.

Oh, the networks were doing "showcases" like that well into the '80s. In the '60s, though, they often did actual summer-replacement series, often variety shows and such. Reruns existed, but were far less common than they later became. In fact, I've seen it asserted that it was the success of Star Trek in rerun syndication -- with far fewer episodes, and thus more repetition, than a standard syndication package would have -- that convinced TV programmers that audiences would tolerate more reruns, and led to the ongoing reduction in the number of new episodes per year that we've had ever since.

Then there was that TNG ep where Riker is accused of murdering an alien scientist to get his wife, and they reenct the crime on a holodeck. The same script was recycled on Voyager with Tom Paris in the hot seat. Can't recall either ep title at the moment.

Those were not the same story. In TNG's "A Matter of Perspective" by Ed Zuckerman, which was a riff on Rashomon, the holodeck was used to reconstruct the crime from various perspectives. In VGR's "Ex Post Facto" by Evan Carlos Somers and Michael Piller, Tom Paris was forced to relive the victim's memories of the crime over and over, and Tuvok used a mind meld to experience Paris's own memories; no holodeck was involved.

It's true that there were some stories that were very similar in concept, like DS9's "Shadowplay" and ENT's "Oasis" or DS9's "Children of Time" and ENT's "E^2." But they were still different scripts by different writers. Using similar concepts is not the same as actually remaking the same script, which is what we're talking about here. The two Mannix episodes under discussion had different titles and character names, but they were both credited to John Meredyth Lucas.

And if you wanna see a complete theft, watch the closing scenes of Babylon 5's "Mind War", then watch the closing scenes of Voyager's "The Gift." Complete. Rip. off.

Oh, come on. Different stories have similarities to each other all the time. That's not deliberate theft, it's just because there are only so many ways to put story elements together. And we're not talking about perceived similarities between different stories, we're talking about the exact same script being refilmed. That's a completely different subject.

Okay, I'll concede that one. My statement came from an interpretation of a paragraph in THE COMPLETE MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE DOSSIER by Patrick J. White, wherein Mr White writes in the notes for the seventh season episode, "Two Thousand" (emphasis mine):

"Two Thousand" is fresh, audacious, and outrageous--unless of course you've already seen episode 4, "Operation Rogosh." This show is simply a more expensive-looking remake of the earlier classic. Just like in "Rogosh," there are futuristic dates inscribed in Collin's cell walls, and Barney repeats the Carribean prisoner character he originated six years earlier.

After reading that, you can understand why I thought it was a direct remake of the same script, yet the writers credits are different. So my apologies for my incorrect assumptions.

Quoting from my own blog review of "Two Thousand":

Despite what I said in my “Operation: Rogosh” review, this episode isn’t nearly as much a remake of that one as “Invasion” was.

Though of course neither was literally a remake; all three scripts had different credits.

As for the MANNIX recycle, the producers probably figured that the show was different enough - in season one, Mannix worked for Intertect and in all other seasons he was out on his own - that only diehard fans would remember the script.

One of the reasons MANNIX was finally canceled after eight seasons was that Paramount wanted to sell it into syndication so that ABC could run it in late-nights. In those days, syndications didn't start until the series was finished its prime time network run - a situation that would soon change.

So, the thought process was probably that no-one would recall that earlier version of the same script. And season one was never offered in syndication.

Well, that makes sense. Sort of like how The Naked Gun reused a lot of jokes from Police Squad! because that show had been cancelled after 6 episodes and they didn't expect anyone would ever see it again. But really, what surprises me is not so much that Mannix did it, but that I can't recall any other show from the era doing it.