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If there’s one actor out there for the Holy Order of Qapla’ to worship, Tony Todd should be that actor – and many of you likely have no idea who he is.

He’s never been a regular cast member of a sci-fi series, which may be why his name is not the household one it deserves to be among sci-fi viewers.

To begin with, he’s black (or African-American, or African, or Afro-American, or, as Avery Brooks would have you put it, brown), which pretty much leaves him with the "token supporting player who gets few lines and none of the fun scenes" role that shows up once in each series (Uhura, Tuvok, Dr. Franklin, Jake Sisko, the doctor on Crusade; of course, Ben Sisko and Worf skew my thesis a bit, but it’s still reasonably sound).

And, if he got a regular role, the paychecks might be more steady, but he could never manage the dominance of the genre he enjoys now.

Todd so far is the only one to pull off a trifecta: he has appeared in three of the four Trek series. (He may not even have been around for the original, and if he was, he was undergoing his formative years in Connecticut.)

He has played Kurn, brother of Worf, son of Mogh, in three episodes of The Next Generation as well as one of Deep Space Nine. He made a second DS9 appearance as an adult Jake Sisko in the acclaimed episode "The Visitor."

You had to look hard to find him on Voyager, but there he was, under tons of latex as one of the Alpha-Hirogen, giant lizards with whom the ship did battle in three or four episodes last season. Todd only had to wear the lizard suit once, in "Hunters."

He was much more visible in the Babylon 5-Crusade transition movie "A Call to Arms," when he played Capt. Anderson, who teamed up with President Sheridan to test out the two experimental ships.

He also appeared as August Cole, a Vietnam vet who projected his consciousness, in the X Files episode "Sleepless," and he has gone to New Zealand, which apparently looks like ancient Greece, for roles in two fantasy/myth series.

He has been Cecrops in "The Lost Mariner" episode of Xena: Warrior Princess, and Gladius in both "Gladiator" and "Faith" on The Legendary Adventures of Hercules.

He was also, as a note of interest for those viewing the Sean Connery Series, Capt. Darrow in the dreadful movie The Rock.

Tony Todd was born in Washington, D.C. (just like our own Lucy High!), but moved to Hartford, Conn., to live with his Aunt Clara when he was three.

He swam in high school, where he reached his final height of 6-foot-5, and then attended UConn for two years, until he won a scholarship to the Eugene O’Neill National Theater Institute.

In addition to his acting, he has taught playwriting to high school students in Hartford, and he is a founder of the Free Me Truth Troupe, which works with problem children (or juvenile delinquents or whatever we’re calling them these days).

For more on Tony Todd, you have to do a bit of hunting, but there are a few websites, including alwheaties.simplenet.com/Tony_Todd.html.

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