You Look Familiar / Star Trek

Rutherford: He looks like Tom Paris.
Boimler: I don't see it.
[...]
Rutherford: They have, like, the same face. They're identical!
Boimler: No, I just don't see it.

— On Nick Locarno, Robert Duncan McNeill's original Trek role, Star Trek: Lower Decks, "Old Friends, New Planets"

Star Trek is particularly guilty (although perhaps somewhat understandable, with over 700 episodes and 13 movies across the various incarnations). Alien makeup helps them get away with this, and using the same actors is actually advantageous. After all, if they've made a Ferengi prosthetic for you before, they don't have to go to quite as much effort to do so again...

The Original Series

• Mark Lenard had speaking roles as a Romulan in "Balance of Terror", a Vulcan (Spock's father, Sarek, starting in "Journey to Babel"), and a Klingon in The Motion Picture. Most notably, he was the first Romulan to show his face on-screen, and he was one of the first Klingons with forehead ridges—thus appearing as a member of three of the major galactic powers of the era. ^note some sources say he was considered for Lincoln in "The Savage Curtain".
• Lawrence Montaigne also played a Romulan in "Balance of Terror". He later played the Vulcan, Stonn, in "Amok Time".
• Morgan Woodward guest-starred twice, as Dr. Simon Van Gelder in Dagger of the Mind" and as Captain Ronald Tracey in "The Omega Glory".
• Bruce Mars featured as Finnegan the Irish bully in "Shore Leave" and also appeared as a New York officer in 1968 in "Assignment: Earth".
• Craig Hundley appeared as Kirk's nephew Peter in "Operation: Annihilate!" before featuring as Tommy Starnes in "And the Children Shall Lead".
• Skip Homeier played the main antagonist in both "Patterns of Force" and "The Way to Eden".
• Minor Red Shirt extras, often played by stuntmen, were often killed off and continued to appear in the background in later episodes with different names. David L. Ross played both Lt. Galloway and Lt. Johnson.
• Eddie Paskey played a variety of characters in at least 51 episodes of The Original Series. They include his main character Mr. Leslie, a technician named "Conners", a bridge crewman named "Ryan", a citizen of the planet Eminiar 7, and a resistance fighter on the Nazi planet Ekos. He has been an unnamed member of the bridge crew, Security, Engineering, a helmsman/weapons officer, navigator, and transporter chief. Though unseen, he even drove the truck that killed Kirk's true love Edith Keeler. Mr. Leslie actually died in the episode "Obsession" but he continued appearing afterward (including in the same episode).
• William Campbell was best known for playing the Klingon Koloth in both TOS and DS9, but his first Trek role was that of the god-child Trelane in "The Squire of Gothos".
• Averted in "The Conscience Of The King". Bruce Hyde, who had played Lieutenant Kevin Riley in "The Naked Time" was cast as Lieutenant Robert Daiken, a witness to a massacre. But when producers realized the actor had appeared previously, they decided to have the character be Kevin Riley rather than have Hyde play a different character.

Actors who appear both in The Original Series and the TNG/Kelvin timelines

• A quirk of production: Malachi Throne provided the voice (but not the face) for the Talosian Keeper in the unaired Trek pilot, "The Cage". Almost two years later, Throne was cast as Commodore Mendez for "The Menagerie" two-parter, which recycles footage from first pilot. His voice for The Keeper had to be electronically altered so the audience wouldn't recognize it as the same guy. Years later, he would play a Romulan double agent in TNG's "Reunification" two-parter.
• Diana Muldaur, who played Dr. Ann Mulhall in TOS episode "Return to Tomorrow" and Dr. Jones in "Is There in Truth No Beauty", later played Dr. Katherine Pulaski in TNG's second season.
• David Warner appeared as Federation ambassador St. John Talbot in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, as Klingon Chancellor Gorkon in the very next movie, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and a year later as the Cardassian Gul Madred in Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Chain of Command".
• Leon Russom played the unnamed Starfleet CinC in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and Vice Admiral Toddman in the DS9 episode "The Die is Cast".
• Charles Cooper played the drunken and disgraced Klingon General Korrd in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Later, he got to play the much more dignified Chancellor K'mpec in "Sins of the Father" and " Reunion".^note This has led to speculation that Korrd and K'mpec were intended to be related.
• Brock Peters played Joseph Sisko in DS9, and Admiral Cartwright in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
• Kurtwood Smith, Annorax from "Year of Hell", had previously been the Federation President in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and played the Cardassian predecessor to Odo in a flashback episode of Deep Space Nine. He would later go on to voice Clar, who was rescued by the crew of the Cerritos in an episode of Lower Decks.
• In a rare double-YLF, both Merritt Butrick and Judson Scott appeared in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and the Next Generation episode "Symbiosis.". Scott later appeared as Rekar in the Voyager episode "Message In A Bottle".
• W. Morgan Sheppard is a name which may be familiar to you: Star Trek, Babylon 5, seaQuest, and even Doctor Who. He's first seen here in "The Schizoid Man" as Data's 'uncle'. You can also watch him as the Klingon Commandant of Rura Penthe in Star Trek VI and the Ahab-like alien Qatai in VOY's "Bliss". Most recently, he was the Vulcan High Council chairman who got told off by Zachary Quinto's Spock in Star Trek (2009).
• Robin Curtis appears as Vulcan/Romulan Saavik in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and as the Vulcan Tallera in "Gambit".
• Madge Sinclair played the captain of the USS Saratoga in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (also the first female captain seen onscreen in Star Trek), and also played Geordi La Forge's mother, Capt. Silva La Forge, in the TNG episode "Interface".
• John Vargas played Jedda in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Tau in the Voyager episode "Concerning Flight".

The Next Generation

• Noley Thornton played a major child guest role in TNG as Clara Sutter in "Imaginary Friend" and in DS9 as Taya in "Shadowplay". Ironically, she didn't have a mother in TNG and her mother was missing in DS9.
• When Wesley takes the Academy admission test, one of his fellow students is a blue vaguely catfish-like alien with a special apparatus to supplement his air. Some time later, another member of this race boards the Enterprise, played by the same actor, and Wesley mistakes him for the other. This is given the Hand Wave that the species has very similar bone structures and are hard to tell apart.
• Carolyn Seymour plays the Romulan Subcommander Taris in "Contagion", an alien scientist who chooses to leave her people in "First Contact" and and another, Commander Toreth in "Face of the Enemy" (amusingly, the writers had forgotten that Taris had survived "Contagion").
• ‘Some day I’m going to be a Starship Captain!’ says Rene Picard, which is almost a portent of the future since David Tristan Birkin would go on to play Baby!Picard in "Rascals".
• Christopher Collins, AKA Chris Latta played a Klingon Captain in "A Matter Of Honor" and later plays a Pakled in "Samaritan Snare". Might be more of a case of You Sound Familiar.
• Michelle Forbes played a small role in season 4's "Half a Life" before coming back in Season 5 as the Bajoran Ensign Ro Laren.

Discovery

• Kenneth Mitchell plays four different characters over the first three seasons, three of them Klingons: General Kol in Season 1, Kol's father, Kol-Sha, in 2x03, "Point of Light", and Tenavik, a Timekeeper and L'Rell and Voq's son, in 2x12, "Through the Valley of Shadows." In Season 3, he plays Aurelio, a human scientist working for the the Emerald Chain who was confined to a wheelchair due to a genetic condition.^note Mitchell himself was confined to a wheelchair in real life due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, aka Lou Gehrig's Disease since late 2019. The role of Aurelio was created for Mitchell to allow him to incorporate his needing to use a wheelchair.
• Riley Gilchrist has played four Andorians in Discovery, starting with mirror universe Anti-Terran Empire resistance fighter Shukar in "The Wolf Inside", prime universe Starfleet Admiral Shukar in the two-part finale of Season 1, another (unnamed) Andorian Admiral in Season 2's "If Memory Serves", and an Andorian regulator of the Emerald Chain in Season 3.
• If Gilchrist is Discovery's resident Andorian then Harry Judge is their resident Tellarite, playing MU resistance fighter Gorch in "The Wolf Inside", prime universe Admiral Gorch, bounty hunter Tevrin Krit in Short Treks "The Escape Artist", and another (unnamed) Tellarite Admiral in "If Memory Serves", the latter being one of few Tellarites to appear with no facial hair.

Actors who appear in two different Star Trek series

• Most jarring of all is James Cromwell as the leader of a potential new Federation alliance world in "The Hunted"; he later played Zefram Cochrane in Star Trek: First Contact. He also played Zaglom Shrek in "Birthright", and Hanok in DS9's "Starship Down", though you can't see his face in those.
• Marc Alaimo appeared as a minor Rubber-Forehead Alien in Season 1's "Lonely Among Us"; Romulan Commander Tebok later that season in "The Neutral Zone"; a 19th century gambler in Season 5's "Time's Arrow"; and most notably, he played the first-ever Cardassian in Star Trek, Gul Macet in "The Wounded". Marc Alaimo would become, in Deep Space Nine, Gul Dukat, the main adversary of Captain Sisko.
  • In another Expanded Universe Lampshade Hanging, similar to Peter David's Morgan Primus, the Deep Space Nine novels reveal that Gul Macet, the first Cardassian to appear in TNG was Dukat's cousin. The novels further reveal that due to his resemblance to his more infamous cousin people tended to distrust him until they learned Macet was a very different man than his cousin. Due to these ongoing issues Macet grew a beard to distinguish himself from Dukat.
• Max Grodenchik as the very typical conniving, treacherous Ferengi Sovak in "Captain's Holiday"; better known for his later role as the very atypical (and somewhat dim) Rom from DS9.
• Armin Shimerman played both Letek, one of the first Ferengi ever shown onscreen in " The Last Outpost", another Ferengi, Bractor in " Peak Performance", and the better known Quark — from Deep Space Nine. He also briefly appeared in "Haven" as the Betazoid Gift Box, though it's a bit hard to recognize that one. (it's the voice that gives it away)
• Expelled Starfleet cadet Nick Locarno in "The First Duty" looks exactly like Tom Paris from Voyager, who began the series in prison for having joined the Maquis after earlier having been expelled from Starfleet. The Voyager creators originally wanted Nicholas Lorcano but when they discovered that the "The First Duty" writer would be entitled to royalties for every single Voyager episode, they gave the character a quick rewrite and ended up with the similar-but-legally-different-enough Tom Paris. This is actually commented on in the Star Trek: Lower Decks episode "Old Friends, New Planets" as Locarno makes his return and Rutherford recognizes his face to be Paris' but Boimler, a major Paris fanboy, just doesn't see it.
• Margot Rose played Picard's wife in "The Inner Light" and also showed up in Deep Space Nine's "Hard Time". Interestingly, both episodes involve a character getting put through a lifetime's experiences in a matter of hours.
• Jonathan Del Arco played Hugh in TNG's "I, Borg" and "Descent, Part 2" as well as reprising the role on Star Trek: Picard. He also appeared on in the Voyager episode "The Void" as Fantone.
• The penultimate episode of Star Trek: Enterprise featured Peter Weller as a xenophobic miner who creates a superweapon and is willing to kill anyone (even his own) to achieve his agenda. Star Trek Into Darkness features Peter Weller as a xenophobic Starfleet Admiral who creates a superweapon and is willing to kill anyone (even his own) to achieve his agenda.
• Andreas Katsulas (also known as G'Kar in Babylon 5) is known for playing the sneaky Romulan Commander Tomalak in TNG (as well as a hologram of him in "Future Imperfect"). He also plays a good-natured civilian ship captain (with different facial prosthetics) in the Enterprise episode "Cogenitor".
• Roy Brocksmith had one-shot appearances here and in DS9: As a Zakdorn in "Peak Performance" and a Bajoran smuggler in DS9's "Indiscretion". His most famous role, however, is Dr. Edgemar in Total Recall (1990).
• Martha Hackett (Seska) had two appearances as T'Rul, a friendly (well, sort of) Romulan attache who entrusts Sisko with the Defiant's cloaking device (DS9). Her performance was strong enough to earn her notice from upstairs, and she was greenlighted for a role on VOY.
• Last we saw Soval, he was teaching Kes to put out a candle with her mind.
• The last time we met L'Vas, he was staging a coup at Starfleet HQ ("Homefront", DS9). Now he's staging a coup on the Vulcan High Council. It's always something with that guy.
• Greg Ellis played Ekoor, a Cardassian freedom fighter in the Grand Finale of Deep Space Nine, and Chief Engineer Olson, Scotty's ill-fated predecessor in Star Trek (2009).
• Annie Wersching made her TV debut as Liana in the Enterprise Season 1 episode "Oasis". Twenty years later, she played the recurring role of the Borg Queen in Season 2 of Picard.
• Anna Katarina, who played Valeda in the TNG season 1 episode "Haven", later played a member of the Vulcan High Council in Star Trek (2009).
• Todd Stashwick played Talok in the Enterprise episode "Kir'Shara" and later starred as Captain Shaw during season 3 of Star Trek: Picard.

Hat trick! Actors who appeared in three or more Trek series

• Robert O'Reilly was best-known for playing Gowron in TNG and DS9, but also had small roles as a holographic gangster in TNG's "Manhunt" and DS9's "Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang", a bounty hunter on Enterprise, and the bad guy in the board game spin-off A Klingon Challenge.
• Majel Barrett played 'Number One' in the original Star Trek: The Original Series pilot, Nurse Chapel during the series, and Lwaxana Troi in Star Trek: The Next Generation, plus as the voice of various starship computers from The Original Series up until a posthumous role in J. J. Abrams' Star Trek (2009) movie. Nobody seems to notice their voices are essentially identical, including Commander Data. Barrett's dual-role as computer voice and Mrs. Troi was referenced tongue-in-cheek in one episode when Mrs. Troi, an apparent technical Luddite, frustratingly accesses the holodeck computer, and argues with it.
  • Plus she played 13 different characters during the Animated Series. This was because she and James Doohan pretty much voiced all the minor roles so the studio didn't have to hire more actors.
  • A non-canon pre-Original series novel (The Rift by Peter David) involves Barrett's character "Number One," who is a computer engineer, recording her voice as a template for a new voice-interactive computer interface, which would explain her appearance as the ship's computer voice in TOS as well as later series.
  • Lampshaded in the book series New Frontier which introduced the character Morgan Primus, an immortal woman that author Peter David suggested had actually been Number One, changed identities to Christine Chapel, and was Robin Lefler's mother. Looking like Lwaxana Troi was a coincidence...though Morgan does send Lwaxana a letter at one point, and calls her a "niece," in quotation marks, suggesting they were close but not actually related. Nevertheless, both Captain Picard and Montgomery Scott were astounded when they met her in "the present". And then she was subsumed into the Excalibur computer, which meant the crew took a while to catch on.
• Hey, that Ferengi doctor in "Ménage à Troi" sure sounds a lot like Neelix... At one point on Voyager ("False Profits"), Neelix is forced to get makeup and surgery so that he looks like the Grand Nagus of the Ferengi, and the actor pulls it off again with great aplomb. Said actor would go on to be one of the 'first' Ferengi ever (chronologically), in the ENT episode "Acquisition".
  • Also, keep an eye out for Phillips in Star Trek: First Contact. He is the holographic maître d' who tries to boot the Borg out of his club, saying they aren't dressed properly.
• Patricia Tallman, known for playing Lyta the telepath on B5, has a Memory Alpha entry as long as Patrick Stewart himself. Before she got her break, she was a stunt double◊ for the female leads on TNG (barring Whoopi), along with a few on DS9. She also has uncredited roles as a petty officer ("Power Play"), a Klingon (Generations), and a space siren in Star Trek: Voyager ("Fortunate Son").
  
  She only had two speaking roles in Star Trek: one of the hijackers "Starship Mine", and the fake Romulan in "Timescape."
• Character actor James Horan appeared in at least five different roles across The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise. His two TNG roles were somewhat related, as both characters interacted with Dr. Crusher and involved the same experimental shield technology.
• Suzie Plakson also has four different Trek roles: most notably as K'Ehleyr, Worf's brief love interest and mother of Alexander, and as a traitorous Andorian in ENT's "Cease Fire". She also played the Vulcan doctor Selar and Q (but not that Q).
• With the aid of makeup, Jeffrey Combs had recurring roles as Weyoun and Brunt on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (once playing both in the same episode although unfortunately the characters didn't share any scenes), Shran on Enterprise, and several characters in single episodes of various Star Treks. Total count (including a cameo in the Deep Space Nine finale): nine — one Andorian, one Vorta, two Ferengi, two humans, an AI, and two characters of (different) unnamed species.
  • And things get really complicated when you remember that there was actually a series of Weyouns (clones with pre-loaded personalities). One episode featured two Weyoun clones interacting, albeit through a viewscreen.
• Vaughn Armstrong is probably the record-holder here. He played 9 alien roles (mostly Klingons) all across TNG, DS9 VOY, and ENT. Armstrong also doubles as a Kreetassan captain in two episodes. Yep, that's him chewing out Archer in "A Night in Sickbay". His biggest role yet is that of Admiral Maxwell Forest, the man in charge of the NX project. Nice to be free of all that latex, eh?
• J.G. Hertzler is another repeat Star Trek performer. He played several roles on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise. Most well-known among DS9 aficionados for playing Martok, also played Sisko's soon-to-be-dead commanding officer, the Vulcan captain of the U.S.S. Saratoga in the pilot. When he made a one-off appearance as an unrelated character between appearances in this role, he was credited as Garman Hertzler.
  • He played a Klingon Lawyer in Enterprise making it a YLF in full Klingon make-up.
  • He also later played changeling Laas in Season 7's "Chimera". This earned him the distinction of playing two Changelings in the show: Several times in the guise of Martok (before we meet the genuine, one-eyed one), and again as Laas. This also meant that he died twice, and possibly a third time after Laas contracted Section 31's virus.
  • Hertzler returned again in Lower Decks, voicing the Drookmani captain in "Terminal Provocations".
• Stuntman Tom Morga has appeared in every Star Trek program since the last of the original series movies, playing everything from Borg to Cardassians to Romulans, not to mention quite few Redshirt humans. He's developed a small following, despite having almost no spoken dialogue.
• Tony Todd played Worf's brother Kurn in TNG, an elderly Jake Sisko in Deep Space Nine, and the Hirogen Alpha in Voyager's "Prey".
  • Fan film, Prelude To Axanar makes use of Tony Todd (Kurn from TNG and DS9) as Admiral Ramirez and J.G. Hertzler (Martok on DS9) as Captain/Admiral Travis.
• Rene Auberjonois, known as Odo on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, may have looked familiar to viewers if his role as the villainous human, Colonel West, in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country,, hadn't ended up on the cutting room floor. His scenes were later restored in the extended edition of the film. Auberjonois would also later appear in the Enterprise episode "Oasis", which has the exact same plot as the Odo-heavy Deep Space Nine episode "Shadowplay", something he is said to have noted on set.
• Susanna Thompson played the Borg Queen (taking over for an unavailable Alice Krige) in four episodes of Star Trek: Voyager and also played Jadzia Dax's one-off love interest Dr Lenara Kahn in the episode "Rejoined" of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. In addition, she portrayed a Romulan and a Tilonian in (different episodes of) The Next Generation.
• Joseph Ruskin has had "only" six roles, but he is the only actor other than Majel Barrett to act with all five casts (appearing with the Next Generation crew in Star Trek: Insurrection).
• John Fleck, instantly recognizable by his smarmy aristocratic elocutions, played both a Cardassian and an alien from the Gamma Quadrant on DS9, two different Romulans on both TNG and DS9, an alien Used Car Salesman on VOY, and finally semi-Big Bad Silik on ENT.
• Another actor who played a large number of roles (particularly notable as these were usually without make-up and thus make him readily identifiable) is Tim Russ, who played an Enterprise-B crewmember in Star Trek: Generations, a criminal in the "Starship Mine" episode of The Next Generation, and a Klingon named T'kar in Deep Space Nine's "Invasive Procedures," and finally became a primary cast member as Tuvok on Voyager - a role ironically requiring make-up, although to a very minor degree. Made somewhat more ironic in that, in VOY's "Live Fast and Prosper", a Tuvok impostor would appear portrayed by yet another recurring actor.
  • He also played a human bridge crewman on the Excelsior in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the same ship, and at the same time, which an episode of Voyager revealed Tuvok to have served on during a brief time in Star Fleet in his youth, before he chose to resign shortly after that mission. (He came around to wanting a career in Star Fleet only much later in life.)
• Harry Groener played the Betazoid Tam Elbrun in TNG, an alien magistrate in Voyager, and the high-ranking Earth official Nathan Samuels in Enterprise.
• Norman Large played in TNG episodes Neral in "Unification" (both parts) and Maques in "Dark Page", Viterian in DS9 episodes "Duet" and "Second Skin", and an Ocampa man in the VOY episode "Cold Fire".
• James Sloyan is an authoritative actor who has played four aliens, usually with some sort of dark secret attached. He also died often: Admiral Jerok in "The Defector" (suicide), Future!Alexander in "Firstborn" (erased from history), and Jetrel in the eponymous VOY episode (terminal disease). He also had a recurring role on DS9 as Odo's "father", Dr. Mora.
• Eric Pierpoint had guest roles in all four spinoffs: a shape-shifter who attempted to try it on with Picard (" Liaisons"), a Starfleet Captain in "For the Uniform" (DS9), the Klingons' answer to Charon the ferryman in "Barge of the Dead" (VOY), a big game hunter in "Rogue Planet" (ENT), and a Section 31 honcho during the Terra Prime arc (ENT). He is probably best known for his role as Det. Francisco in the cult show Alien Nation.
• John Vickery had a good hit rate: Going from a (mute) Betazed in "Night Terrors", to a Cardassian Gul in four episodes of DS9, to Klingon prosecutor in an ENT episode, "Judgement". Babylon 5 aficionados know him as Neroon.
• Cyia Batten, who played the first Tora Ziyal (before they decided to go older), later pops up as a race car driver in Voyager's "Drive" and shakes her money-maker as an Orion slave girl in the Enterprise episode "Bound".
• Clint Howard has appeared in five different series over a span of 56 years. He played Balok in the TOS episode "The Corbomite Maneuver" as a child, then as a adult, played Grady in the DS9 episode "Past Tense: Part II", Muk in the Enterprise episode "Acquisition", the "Creepy Orion" in the Discovery episode "Will You Take My Hand?", and Commander Buck Martinez in the Strange New Worlds episode "Under the Cloak of War".

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