Connor Trinneer engineers sci-fi success after Star Trek
By Mike Poteet
A TV guest star career bookended by angels
Connor Trinneer wasn’t a complete stranger to science fictional and fantastic realities before Enterprise.
In 1998, he guest starred in the feel-good fantasy Touched by an Angel as well as in the dimension-hopping drama Sliders.
After Enterprise was drydocked, he landed another genre guest turn as a sheriff in a 2009 episode of the short-lived (but first-rate) Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
More recently, in 2017, Trinneer returned to his angelic television roots. He played Samael in five episodes of Tello Films’ urban fantasy crime drama Riley Parra, based on novels by Geonn Cannon.
The title character, played by Marem Hassler, is a police detective who discovers her beat’s even tougher than she thought. It’s a literal battleground for angels and demons.
You can watch Trinneer’s Samael fill Riley in at around forty seconds into the trailer at the top of this slide.
In much ancient angelic tradition, Samael is a rebellious, fallen angel, given to tempting and destroying mere mortals.
Is Trinneer “on the side of the angels” with this version of the character? You’ll have to watch the show to find out!
But Trinneer also made major contributions to a sci-fi franchise whose scope, lore, and passionate fan base give Star Trek a fair run for its credits—or Naquadah, if you like.