RIP Don Marshall, Longtime Genre TV Performer
Don Marshall, an actor-turned-producer who starred in many genre productions in the 60s and 70s, passed away Sunday at the age of 80.
A former engineering student, Marshall started his acting career on the stage before moving onto television. A stint on Gene Roddenberry’s early venture The Lieutenant (1963) led eventually to his 1967 role in the Star Trek episode “The Galileo Seven”, where he played the astrophysicist Boma. Interestingly, he and Nichelle “Lt. Uhura” Nichols had previously worked together on The Lieutenant.
The other chief genre project for which he is remembered is Land of the Giants, an Irwen Allen series about an Earth spaceship that crash lands on a world exactly like ours, only everything’s twelve times as large. Don played Dan Erickson, co-pilot of the spaceship. There were only two seasons produced between 1968 and 1970, but the series is well-remembered in sci-fi circles, and over the years has gained a cult following.
He also did a lot of one-off performances in other genre television including The Bionic Woman, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and The Incredible Hulk, where he appeared three times. He also appeared as Dr. Fred Williams in The Thing With Two Heads (1972), an exploitation film about a racist doctor who winds up with his head grafted to a black man.
Around about the eighties, he moved behind the camera to concentrate on his own production company. He specialized in commercials and documentaries.
He is survived by his son and daughter, and his twin brother Doug.
(Kelly Luck thinks his crowning moment was his role on “Rescue from Gilligan’s Island”, but she’s weird that way. Her other SciFi4Me work can be read here.)
