Clint Howard has a whopping 250 acting credits listed on IMDb. Intriguingly, his long list of appearances includes five Star Trek episodes across four different series, playing various characters spanning over five decades. The franchise created by Gene Roddenberry 60 years ago has a habit of reusing actors, particularly those who appear as guest characters. Some, like Jeffery Combs or Vaughn Wallace, have played dozens of characters. Clint Howard, who acted as a child with his brother, actor and director Ron Howard, has a unique distinction among the alumni of actors who boldly went where few have gone before.
Most impressively, there’s a 57-year stint of time between Clint Howard’s first guest-starring part in the franchise to his most recent one, earning him the honor of being the only actor to appear in Star Trek: The Original Series, the second wave of series and the modern shows, specifically Star Trek: Discovery and Strange New Worlds. Howard has a habit of taking on unusual roles, and his performances within the Star Trek universe are no different. Here’s a breakdown of his tenure in the universe from the 1960s to the 2020s.
Updated March 27, 2024, by Joshua M. Patton: Clint Howard shares a quality with many actors involved in something timeless at an early age. As he continued his career, he resented being identified with his role in the original Star Trek, partly because he was a child whose voice was dubbed over by an older actor. This chip on his shoulder may have cost Clint Howard the role of Luke Skywalker. Yet, in the years that followed, along with his other appearances in the universe, the actor has a new appreciation for Star Trek fans who appreciate his work. This article has been updated to add his appearance in Season 2 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and comport to CBR’s current formatting standards.
Howard also appeared on Star Trek: Enterprise as a dim-witted Ferengi pirate named Muk in the Season 1 episode “Acquisition.” Muk and his cohorts rendered the crew of the Enterprise unconscious and pillaged their goods, but eventually succumbed to their greed when T’Pol managed to convince Muk that one of his comrades would double-cross and rob him of his share of the profits. After Tucker leads the Ferengi through a maze of corridors to an alleged vault on board the Enterprise, T’Pol gets the drop on the pirates and ambushes them. Later, Muk and the other Ferengi returned the stolen items and left.
This episode featured Howard with other actors who previously appeared on various Star Trek series. Krem was played by Jeffery Combs, who played multiple roles on Deep Space Nine and Voyager and played the Andorrian Commander Shran on Enterprise. Ethan Phillips played Ulis, but he was best known as Neelix on Star Trek: Voyager. The fourth Ferengi, Grish, was played by Matt Malloy in his first role for the franchise, but at the same time he was working as a voice actor on the game Star Trek: Elite Force II as Omag, a Ferengi arms trader. (William Bastiani played the character in Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 5.)
