Sci-Fi Bulletin: Exploring the Universes of SF, Fantasy, Horror and Spy-fi!

Actor Michael Ansara has died at the age of 91 following a 55-year career in film and television. He’s best known to television viewers as Star Trek‘s Klingon Kang, appearing in three episodes of the series from the original 1960s show through to instalments of Deep Space Nine and Voyager.

Syrian-born Ansara was often cast in “exotic” roles as Mexicans, Native Americans, Arabs, and aliens. He appeared in several movies in the 1950s, all in small roles, and made his first impact as Cochise in the TV Western Broken Arrow (1956-58) and as an Native American turned lawman in Law of the Plainsman (1959-60), a spin-off from The Rifleman. During the 1960s he was a frequent guest star on episodic TV series, including Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and three appearances opposite his then-wife Barbara Eden in the fantasy sitcom I Dream of Jeannie.

Ansara played Klingon warrior and diplomat Kang in 1968’s third season Star Trek episode ‘The Day of the Dove’. It was almost 30 years later when he reprised the part in the 1994 ‘Blood Oath’ episode of spin-off series Deep Space Nine and again in the 1996 celebratory anniversary instalment of Voyager, ‘Flashback’.

He appeared in several 1970s fantasy movies, including Larry Cohen’s It’s Alive (1974) and The Manitou (1977). Ansara returned to science fiction television as the villain Kane in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. In the 1990s he voiced Mr Freeze in Batman: The Animated Series and several spin-offs, and appeared as a Technomage in ‘The Geometry of Shadows’, a 1994 episode of Babylon 5.