Ten strange, unexpected, and interesting Star Trek guest stars

Stephen Hawking

Like The Rock, Stephen Hawking also played himself in Star Trek, which I am sure is not the only thing those two have in common. Though unlike The Rock, Stephen Hawking actually did play himself, making him the only person to play themselves in Star Trek officially. This honor is so unique and fitting for Hawking’s legacy that I really hope he remains the only one (I truly do not want to see an episode in which a cryogenically frozen Elon Musk invents a Deus Ex Machina machine that saves the day à la first season Wesley Crusher. I’m looking at you Discovery, please don’t do this!).

Stephen Hawking appeared as himself, in a holodeck simulation, when Data was trying to determine who’d win a poker game between Hawking, Albert Einstein, and Isaac Newton. Being placed among such luminaries, Hawking’s cameo said more about the Star Trek producer’s admiration for him, than it did about his admiration for the show. Stephen Hawking was one of the most influential scientists of his time; he and Einstein are probably the only two scientists of the 20th century to attain household name status.

But of course, Hawking was a Star Trek fan too, he wrote the forward to Lawrence Krauss’s The Physics of Star Trek. Hawking’s also made many other pop culture appearances, including The Simpsons, Big Bang Theory, and even a couple of Pink Floyd songs, which established him as not just the smart kind of nerd, but a pop-culture nerd too.