Star Trek: The Next Generation certainly saw its share of guest stars during its 7-season run. Many child actors also cut their professional teeth on the show, including Kirsten Dunst, who went on to massive success in movies like Interview With the Vampire and Fargo.
When it comes to child actors who guest-starred on the show, however, few have had such a diverse career as Joshua Harris. Harris appeared as Timothy on Star Trek: The Next Generation in the episode “Hero Worship” (S05E11), a young lone survivor of a lost ship who begins to emulate Data to process the loss of his parents, who were on board. Harris gave a fine performance, but did you know that his career afterward is one of the most diverse post-Trek? Let’s take a look!
After his turn on Next Generation, Harris appeared in several TV movies in the 1990s, including Go Toward the Light (1998), in which his character faced a prolonged death after contracting AIDS. He also continued in his education and began to play baseball for his high school team.
After graduating from high school, Harris left the acting world behind for higher education, and to set his sights on professional baseball! He played for the University of San Diego while he worked on earning a bachelor’s degree in business.
After college, Harris would unknowingly make a connection to another Star Trek franchise—Deep Space Nine, where Captain Sisko was an avid baseball fan and took his crew to holosuite game outings on the station. That’s right! Joshua Harris would play in the minors on a team called the Lansing Lugnuts, a Chicago Cubs affiliate organization! While it wasn’t the major league of Captain Sisko’s dreams, it’s an interesting connection between the lives of Star Trek guest stars and the franchise itself!
These days, Joshua Harris is back in the land of television, only on the production side of the field with his company, 4th Wall Entertainment. It’s almost as though he’s come full circle and experienced everything that California and Hollywood had to offer, with a little bit of Midwest in between! It’s a career worthy of a story Jake Sisko might tell.
You can watch “Hero Worship" now, along with the rest of The Next Generation and many more series from the franchise, all streaming now on Paramount+
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