Zorak sure loves Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s Gowran.
On this edition of Flashback Friday we’re taking a look at the time Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s Gowran made a cameo on Space Ghost: Coach to Coast. Sort of. In the 42 episodes of the series, entitled “Switcheroo ’97”, Moltar and Zorak go to a science fiction convention without Space Ghost.
This prompts Space Ghost to throw his own science fiction convention and ends up landing Mark Hamil as a guest on his show to help celebrate the event. During the course of the conversation with Hamil, Zorak, Space Ghosts’ prisoner and late-night band leader, dresses up as the lovable Gowran from Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine.
Zorak does a pretty spot-on impersonation of Gowran to boot, even if the mask he’s wearing gives us nightmare fuel for months on end. The episode is filled with great references to things like Babalyon 5, who the real Darth Vader is, and of course cameos including Hamil, who played Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars series, and Bill Mumy, who played Will Robinson in Lost in Space.
Below is a clip from the episode, it’s not great but it’s the only one we can find.
What was Space Ghost: Coast to Coast and where can you watch it?
Streaming has really killed ingenuity, hasn’t it? Back when cable was big business and Cartoon Network was a juggernaut, they decided to make a low-budget, cost-effective late-night talk show. Their host was the iconic 1960s superhero Space Ghost, and his crew was band-member leader Zorak and his director Moltar.
Nearly all of the animation used in the series were just clips or segments from past episodes of the 1960s cartoon, overlayed on a static background. The celebrities they got to do the show would show up in Atlanta and would be interviewed by a man wearing a Space Ghost costume, and then those interviews would be aired alongside the animations and voice work for each episode.
It was a great idea for a series and was a lot of fun to watch. The series can now be viewed on HBO Max or on Adult Swim.com