Star Trek: The Original Series actor reprises his role nearly 60 years later

The lore around Star Trek's pilot is fascinating, as the one that everyone saw originally was actually the second one filmed. The original was called The Cage and it featured a vastly different array of characters than the one that made it to air. That one is called "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and it succeeded where the original failed.

A major reason for that was the casting. We've talked before about how William Shatner didn't feature as James Kirk in the original pilot, instead having Jeffrey Hunter play Christopher Pike. A change that made the Star Trek series truly take hold in the modern zeitgeist. Yet, one of the other big additions that often gets overlooked is the casting around Shatner.

Namely, the guest stars. In this case, the performance of Gary Lockwood as Gary Mitchell. Lockwood's turn as Mitchell, a friend of Kirk who starts to develop the powers of a god, was one of the biggest factors in the series finding its legs early on. He was truly a presence on screen and made for some rather interesting moments that still haunt us to this very day.

No one could've expected that 60 years after that performance, Lockwood would once again return to the role of Gary Mitchell.

In the newest short film from the Roddenberry Archive, we see an opening shot of Mitchell in space watching the universe unfold around him. It's a brief moment and thanks to digital and practical effects, the person we see looking just like Mitchell isn't some stand-in, the same way iconic Star Wars character actor Sam Witwer stood in for William Shatner as Kirk in the same short film.

No, that isn't it at all. Thanks to some digital effects, some prosthetics, and the like, Lockwood was able to once again reprise his role of a youthful-looking Mitchell. Making it his first Star Trek appearance in decades.

His performance was something special in the original series, and while his biggest role ever may be in 2001: A Space Odyssey, we'll always remember Lockwood for his haunting portrayal of a man who lost his humanity and found godhood in the pilot of Star Trek.