Geek Trivia: A star of all Treks

by Jay Garmon | Feb 20, 2007 12:00:00 AM

Tags: Star Trek, DS9, Jay Garmon, Next Gen, Next Gen episode, Ferengi, Geek Trivia Newsletter, TV, Computer, Trek, Voyager, ENIAC

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Takeaway: Who is the only actor with credited appearances in all five Star Trek TV series?

I think we can all agree that the amount of Geek Trivia you could wring out of the Star Trek franchise is immeasurable. But for the sake of simplicity, let's start with the self-referencing realm of Trek casting, shall we?

For example, every pilot episode of every spin-off Trek series�Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, and Star Trek: Enterprise�featured a guest star from a previous Trek incarnation.

Next Gen's "Encounter at Farpoint" had a cameo by the original Star Trek's DeForest Kelley as Dr. (now Admiral) McCoy.
DS9's "Emissary" featured Patrick Stewart as Next Gen's Captain Jean-Luc Picard.
Voyager's "Caretaker" boasted an appearance by DS9's Armin Shimerman reprising his role as the Ferengi barkeep Quark.
Set decades before any of the other series, Enterprise has perhaps the least noticeable pass-the-torch casting touch. In the Enterprise pilot, "Broken Bow," James Cromwell appears in an uncredited video clip as Zefram Cochrane, the warp drive inventor Cromwell portrayed in the time-travel segments of the movie Star Trek: First Contact.

With the exception of DeForest Kelley, the other three actors above played more than one role in the Trek franchise.

Besides his role as Cochrane, James Cromwell also appeared in the DS9 episode "Starship Down" as Hanok, as well as three Next Gen episodes: "Birthright, Part I" and "Birthright, Part II" as Jaglom Shrek and "The Hunted" as Prime Minister Nayrock.

Meanwhile, Armin Shimerman has several Ferengi roles under his belt besides his star turn as Quark. He played Letek in Next Gen's "The Last Outpost" (the first onscreen appearance of Ferengi) and DaiMon Bractor in "Peak Performance." Shimerman also played Counselor Troi's holographic wedding gift in "Haven," and he turned up as Quark in the Next Gen episode "Firstborn" and in the movie Star Trek: Insurrection (although his scenes didn't make it into the final cut of the theatrical release).

Patrick Stewart had perhaps the most subtle alternate role, appearing in a scene with himself (rather, Capt. Picard) as the holodeck character William in a rendition of Shakespeare's Henry V during the teaser sequence of the Next Gen episode "The Defector" (a personal favorite of this Trivia Geek).

Yet all of these reprising actors' Trek credits pale in comparison to one tireless thespian who can boast credited appearances in all five Star Trek television series.

WHO IS THE ONLY ACTOR WITH CREDITED APPEARANCES IN ALL FIVE STAR TREK TV SERIES?

Who's the only actor to have garnered credited appearances in all five Star Trek television series?

The answer is Roddenberry. Not Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, but his widow, Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, who appeared or spoke in all five Trek shows.

In the original Star Trek pilot, "The Cage," Barrett-Roddenberry played the mysterious raven-tressed first officer of the USS Enterprise, Number One. Once NBC picked up the show, they recast her as Dr. McCoy's assistant, nurse Christine Chapel (who later became Dr. Chapel in the Trek films).

In every other Trek series, Barrett-Roddenberry has appeared in a credited role as the disembodied computer voice of Starfleet vessels and stations. (If you're wondering at which point the computers started talking on Enterprise, check out the episode "In a Mirror, Darkly," where the USS Defiant from the original series episode "The Tholian Web" pops into an alternate timeline, complete with a Barrett-Roddenberry-voiced computer.)

Barrett-Roddenberry also had notable onscreen appearances in Next Gen and Deep Space Nine as Lwaxana Troi, the bombastic and impertinent telepathic ambassador from the planet Betazed and mother of Counselor Deanna Troi. Moreover, if you really want to stretch Barrett-Roddenberry's Trek credentials, you could mention she also lent her voice to the short-lived animated Star Trek series from the early 1970s, in which she portrayed not only the aforementioned nurse Chapel, but also a Caitian communications officer named M'Ress.

As if all this doesn't make Barrett-Roddenberry the ultimate science-fiction convention guest, she also popped up in other sci-fi TV franchises. As Gene Roddenberry's widow, Majel inherited the rights to most of his unproduced properties, turning two of them into the syndicated television shows Earth: Final Conflict and Andromeda. In the former show, she appeared as Dr. Julianne Belman.

Barrett-Roddenberry even crossed the aisle to a rival sci-fi TV franchise, appearing in the Babylon 5 episode "Point of No Return" as the psychic fortuneteller Lady Morella. That's not just an exhaustive science-fiction filmography�that's some genre-spanning Geek Trivia.

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The Quibble of the Week

If you uncover a questionable fact or debatable aspect of this week's Geek Trivia, just post it in the discussion area of the article. Every week, yours truly will choose the best post from the assembled masses and discuss it in the next edition of Geek Trivia.

This week's quibble comes from the February 14 edition of Geek Trivia, "Mother of invention." TechRepublic member ckaufman disputed the claim that ENIAC was the first programmable electronic digital computer.

"That title rightfully belongs to the Atanasoff-Berry Computer, built by John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry at Iowa State University during 1937[to] 1942. On Oct. 19, 1973, U.S. Federal Judge Earl R. Larson declared the ENIAC patent of Mauchly and Eckert invalid and named Atanasoff the inventor of the electronic digital computer�the Atanasoff-Berry Computer.

"As a graduate of Iowa State University majoring in computer engineering, it annoys me to see that particular bit of misinformation still being presented as 'fact' over 30 years after it was decisively proven wrong. Admittedly, the ENIAC was a more influential computer, but it was not the first electronic digital computer."

The key word missing here is programmable. While the ENIAC was mildly programmable, the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) wasn't�especially beyond linear equations. Both later added enhancements to improve their adaptability, but the other major lack in ABC was that the ENIAC was Turing complete, while ABC was not (though I didn't have space in the article to address these facts).

That's not to say that the ABC wasn't a major milestone in the development of modern computing, or that the invalidation of the ENIAC patents by ABC's prior art was invalid. It's all great trivia�and great quibbles�so keep 'em coming.

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The Trivia Geek, also known as Jay Garmon, is a former advertising copywriter and Web developer who's duped TechRepublic into underwriting his affinity for movies, sci-fi, comic books, technology, and all things geekish or subcultural.

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