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This Star Trek creature also happened to be the Brady boys' football coach
There were also secretly two Lincolns in ''The Savage Curtain''!
The late-season-three Star Trek episode "The Savage Curtain" is best known as "the one with Abraham Lincoln." There are some interesting tales to be told about the President in that episode — more on that below — but another nifty little tidbit about this adventure tickles us.
In addition to the Great Emancipator and Ghengis Khan, Kirk and Spock encounter a craggy alien named Yarnek. The Excalbian creature, who looks a bit like a cross between the Lost in Space robot and a well-done meatball, pits "good" and "evil" against one another in the story. Janos Prohaska, the Hungarian stuntman who played a gorilla on Gilligan's Island and a giant bird on Lost in Space, was the performer in the costume.
But Prohaska did not voice Yarnek. The Excalbian's lines were handled by Bart LaRue.
LaRue's richly textured voice can be heard in a handful of Star Trek episodes. He's the announcer in "Bread and Circuses" and Trelane's Father in "The Squire of Gothos," to name a couple. Like Prohaska, he also frequently worked with Irwin Allen, voicing computers on The Time Tunnel, pirates on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and machines on Lost in Space.
Wonder what he looks like? Tune in to The Brady Bunch. LaRue turns up twice as the Brady boys' football coach. He introduces NFL defensive star Deacon Jones to Peter in "The Drummer Boy." He gives Greg a starting position on the squad a season later in "Click." (Watch the scene at the top of this post.)
LaRue brings a Los Angeles Rams starter to kids' practice in ''Click.''Back to Lincoln in "The Savage Curtain" for a moment.
Bergere as Lincoln and Billy HerndonLee Bergere played the 16th President in that episode. Oddly, in 1976, he would appear in the NBC miniseries Lincoln (1974–76), only he played Billy Herndon, the friend of Lincoln (Hal Holbrook).
Meanwhile, Barry Atwater, who portrayed the Vulcan philosopher Surak in "The Savage Curtain," did play Abraham Lincoln elsewhere on television! He was Honest Abe in "The Day the World Wept – The Lincoln Story," a 1960 installment of One Step Beyond.
Barry Atwater as Surak and LincolnTwo Lincoln and a Westdale High School coach on one planet! It could only happen on Star Trek.
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William Herndon was in fact Lincoln’s law partner in Springfield, IL, not his “friend.”
