I am – Hercules!!
Letters of Note on Wednesday posted a memo dated April 13, 1987, discussing actors who were apparently being brought in to read for various roles in “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” which premiered Sept. 26 of that year.
The candidates:
PICARD:
Yaphet Kotto (eight years after “Alien”; six years before “Homicide”)
Roy Thinnes (20 years after “The Invaders”; four years before NBC’s “Dark Shadows” update)
Patrick Bauchau (two years after “A View to a Kill”; 16 years before he'd finally work with Ronald D. Moore on “Carnivale”)
Mitch Ryan (the same year he played General McAllister in “Lethal Weapon”; he went on to play Riker’s pop)
Patrick Stewart (three years after “Dune”; 13 years before “X-Men”)
"RYKER":
Ben Murphy (11 years after “Gemini Man”; one year before “Dirty Dozen: The Series”)
Michael O’Gorman (the same year he made his small-screen debut in “Miami Vice” and his big-screen debut in the great “Ironweed”; his last credit on IMDb is 1991’s “A Woman Named Jackie”)
Gregg Marx (“As The World Turns”)
Jonathan Frakes (two years after his 11 episodes on “Falcon Crest”; note that Billy Campbell is not on this list)
DATA:
Mark Lindsay Chapman (three years before he became Anton Arcane on “Swamp Thing”)
Kelvin Han Yee (21 years before “Crash: The Series”)
Eric Menyuk (the tall fellow who played Wesley’s pal The Traveler in three TNG episodes)
Kevin Peter Hall (one year after “The Misfits of Science” ended; four years before the 7’2” Hall played Harry on the TV version of “Harry and the Hendersons”; I’m reminded that Ruk the android, who battled James Kirk, was super-tall also)
YAR:
Lianne Langland (the same year she played Hilda in “The Squeeze” opposite Michael Keaton)
Julia Nickson (two years after “Rambo”; seven years before she joined “Babylon 5” for three episodes)
Rosalind Chao (three years after she played Klinger’s wife on “AfterMASH”; four years before she was cast as Miles O’Brien’s wife)
Bunty Bailey (the same year she appeared in Empire Pictures’ “Dolls”)
Leah Ayers (Likely Leah Ayres, who had just come off five episodes as Mona Polito on "St. Elsewhere" and went on to replace Maureen McCormick as Marcia for the 1990 sequel drama series "The Bradys")
CRUSHER:
Jenny Agutter (11 years after “Logan’s Run”; six years after “An American Werewolf in London”)
Anne Twomey (one year after “The Imagemaker”; six years before she did five episodes as Linda Salerno on “L.A. Law”; she also played Rita Kearson in the “Seinfeld” episodes “The Virgin” and "The Pilot")
Cheryl McFadden (Gates McFadden was credited as “Cheryl McFadden” in 1984’s “The Muppets Take Manhattan” and a 1987 episode of “The Cosby Show”)
LAFORGE:
Kevin Peter Hall (also up for Data)
Reggie Jackson (the year before “The Naked Gun”??)
Tim Russ (the same year he played a trooper in “Spaceballs”; eight years before Tuvok and “Star Trek Voyager”)
Wesley Snipes (one year after “Wildcats”; two years before “Major League”)
Victor Love (Bigger Thomas in 1986’s “Native Son”; he went on to play a telepath in two 1998 episodes of “Babylon 5”)
Chip McCallister (this likely refers to Chip McAllister, who played young Muhammad Ali in 1977’s “The Greatest”)
Clarence Gilyard Jr. (four years after his 20 episodes on “CHiPs”; two years before his 82 episodes of “Matlock”)
LeVar Burton (10 years after “Roots”; 14 years before MLK in “Ali”; somebody seemed determined to put a blind black man on the Enterprise bridge!)
TROI:
Denise Crosby (five years after “48 HRS.”; two years before “Pet Sematary”)
WESLEY:
J.D. Roth (three years after “Firstborn”; Roth today is executive producer of NBC’s “The Biggest Loser”)
Note that no one seems to be reading for Worf yet.
Find the memo here.
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