Twilight Zone Day makes for great Star Trek stargazing
By Mike Poteet
Is there a Star Trek doctor in the Zone?
DeForest Kelley never appeared on The Twilight Zone—the only one of the original series’ four main stars (himself, Shatner, Nimoy, and James Doohan) never to do so. (Doohan appears in the fourth season’s “Valley of the Shadow.”) But both of his two predecessors in the Enterprise’s sickbay did.
Paul Fix played Dr. Mark Piper in “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” the second Star Trek pilot.
Fix was a character actor who specialized in Westerns. Outside Trek fandom, he’s best known for playing Marshal Micah Torrance in The Rifleman and for being John Wayne’s acting coach. He appeared in 26 of Wayne’s movies.
In the fifth season Zone episode “I Am the Night–Color Me Black” (March 27, 1964), Fix plays small-town newspaper editor Colbey.
Colbey’s “very selective” coverage of a murder case, along with false testimony at trial from the sheriff and his deputy, have contributed to a man’s death sentence. On the morning the man, Jagger, is to be hanged, the sun never rises—an unusually unsubtle allegory about the power of hate and evil from Rod Serling.
You’ll recognize Fix looking sorrowful in the clip from the episode at the top of this page. He’s the man with the tear-stained face in the mob’s front row and the one who turns on the radio to hear about the darkness spreading around the world.
John Hoyt played Dr. Phil Boyce, Captain Pike’s “doctor bartender” in “The Cage,” the first Star Trek pilot.
Though Hoyt was also no stranger to Westerns, his credits range widely and include several forays into science fiction—some more respectable (for example, When Worlds Collide) than others (for example, Attack of the Puppet People).
Hoyt appears in two second-season Twilight Zone episodes.
Most memorably, he is the three-armed title character in “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?” (May 26, 1961). Not unlike the Talosians, Hoyt’s character is adept at illusion. He’s the advance scout for a Martian invasion force—yet he’s outwitted by a three-eyed Venusian soda jerk.
In “The Lateness of the Hour” (December 2, 1960), Hoyt plays Dr. William Loren, a brilliant, reclusive scientist who builds androids. (Trek fans know something about those, don’t we?) Loren’s daughter Jana vehemently hates the robots—which makes the episode’s twist ending inevitable.
In The Twilight Zone Companion, Marc Scott Zicree praises Hoyt’s performance, calling him “one of that small band of character actors who infuse individuality into every role they play” (p. 170).
Certainly, Star Trek fans who fondly remember Dr. Boyce from Hoyt’s one and only appearance in the role would agree.