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Through the amazing world of cable television, connections between Zorro, a masked avenger from Spanish California, and televised science fiction have come startlingly into focus.

Disney has been running colorized versions of its highly successful but short-lived 1950s series Zorro for quite some time, but I only recently tuned in, when it moved from 1 a.m. on the schedule to midnight.

But now I have seen all 78 of the episodes, a number not all that far removed from Star Trek’s 79. Of course, Zorro did his work in two seasons, while Trek required three to reach that number.

Two of the 1958 Zorro episodes were written by Gene L. Coon, who almost a decade later found greater notoriety as the producer for Trek.

One of the biggest connections is Zorro himself, Guy Williams. A decade after he doffed his cape, he took up the mantle of John Robinson, head of the family that got Lost in Space.

Making the transition with him was Jonathan Harris, who guest-starred for two episodes of Zorro as an ill-tempered California don, and then received "special guest star" billing for all three seasons of Lost as the persnickety Dr. Smith.

Other Zorro guest stars who would go on to quasi-sci-fi series included Richard Anderson, better known as Oscar Goldman from The Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman series; Neil Hamilton and Cesar Romero, as the commissioner and the Joker of Batman; and Robert Vaughn, who then became the debonair Napoleon Solo of The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

There were other connections between his two series that Guy Williams probably wasn’t so excited about. First, and more frivolously, the viewing audience for both tended to consist of children, who thought kissing was yucky, so the edict from on high for both series was: no kissing.

A bevy of extremely attractive young women paraded past Zorro, and Guy only got to smooch with one of them. The kiss took two hours to film, lasted five seconds on screen, and still drew cries of outrage from the young audience.

And even though John Robinson was married on Lost in Space, the producers didn’t want kids getting grossed out, so John had to settle for meaningful looks from wife Maureen, played by June Lockhart.

The second connection was that Guy, along with his castmates, left the set of both shows at the end of a season fully expecting to return, only to be told later that the show was being cancelled.

Zorro continued to climb in popularity, but ABC didn’t want to produce it anymore, and the network didn’t want anyone else airing it. The upshot was four one-hour specials, and Guy was held on contract by Disney for two more years, but nothing else came of it.

Lost in Space completed three years, and cast members were expecting a fourth when CBS pulled the plug. Guy probably wasn’t as broken-hearted about this demise: he felt he was losing all the story lines to Dr. Smith, son Will and the Robot. (Which he was.)

In fact, while filming "The Great Vegetable Rebellion" – an episode ranked 76th by TV Guide on the all-time great sci-fi episodes list, while Trek’s "City on the Edge of Forever" came in 92nd – Guy and June giggled so hard through the filming that angry producer Irwin Allen wrote them out of the next two episodes.

Guy found happiness in Argentina, where he was still a hero for his Zorro reruns, and he moved to Buenos Aires. Sadly, he died at home alone in 1989, of a heart attack or aneurysm, and no one realized he was missing for several days.

Prior to that, he had one final crack at Zorro, when he was offered a part in the comedy Zorro and Son in 1983. He flew to LA to read for the part of an older Zorro whose son must now take up the family tradition of fighting corruption and injustice, but Guy wisely decided the scripts were too idiotic.

The part instead went to Henry Darrow, who appeared in all five episodes that aired – and this after doing the voice for an animated Zorro in 1981.

Henry got a third and better chance at the California legend when he was hired to replace Efrem Zimbalist Jr. as Zorro’s father in the second of New World’s four seasons of Zorro, which starred Duncan Regehr as The Fox and aired weekly on the Family Channel in the early ‘90s.

Henry, now experienced at playing the paternal figure, then went on to make a few appearances as Chakotay’s deceased father on Star Trek: Voyager.

Of course, Billy Mumy, who played Guy’s son Will Robinson on Lost in Space, dropped the ‘y’ from his first name and put in five seasons as Lennier on Babylon 5. He has said that he decided to become an actor while watching Disney’s Zorro.

As a bonus factoid, the music for Lost in Space was composed by Johnny Williams, who also dropped the ‘y’ from his name and went on to score (get it?) really big as the composer of something like six of the top 10-grossing movies of all time (Star Wars, Close Encounters, E.T., stuff like that).

And June Lockhart, Will’s mom on Lost, made a guest appearance on B5 as a doctor using the alien healing device in "Quality of Mercy."

Most recently, when Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas attempted to resurrect the Fox in the movie The Mask of Zorro we learned the word "zocalo," which is used in Mexico and on Babylon 5 for the marketplace.

In Spanish, "Zorro" means "Fox," which also happens to be Mulder’s first name on The X-Files.

Coincidences all? You be the judge.

Cool factoids provided by www.lostinspacetv.com and www.billcotter.com/zorro, and an actual book, The Encyclopedia of TV Shows. If you want to take this to an extreme, you might check out the Zorro-B5 fan fiction at www.neontiger.net/gwol.

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