Michael Forest Dies: Actor In Roger Corman B-Movies, ‘Star Trek’s Apollo Was 97
Michael Forest played Apollo on Star Trek, a man pretending to be a god who kidnapped the Enterprise crew to demand their worship. He was 97 when he died, so the actor who faked immortality in one of our most watched space stories actually hung around for nearly a century. There's something quietly funny in that, and something poignant too.
He spent his working life inside Corman's cheap B-movies, in voice booths for anime, and on endless TV sets. That whole world was built on cardboard sets and spray paint, but it convinced generations that the future and the paranormal were just around the corner. Forest was never the headline, he was the texture that made those imaginary worlds feel solid. I'd want to know what he thought about real science catching up to those fantasies. The James Webb telescope has shown us galaxies his Apollo never glanced at, and the people who grew up on his shows are the ones funding and building that stuff now.
I don't think acting makes science happen, but fiction gives it a shape people can care about. A mythological god on a spaceship might have done as much for cosmic curiosity as any textbook. That thought feels worth holding onto.