TODAY IN STAR TREK HISTORY : Clarence Williams III Was Born

Image: Paramount.

AUGUST 21, 2023 – Star Trek fans know him as Omet'iklan, the Jem’Hadar commander under Vorta Weyoun in service to the Dominion in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s season four episode, “To the Death.” Almost thirty years prior, while Star Trek: The Original Series was airing its third season, he was debuting in his best known role, as Lincoln “Linc” Hayes in The Mod Squad.

Clarence Williams III was born on today’s date in New York City in 1939.

Williams was the son and grandson of musicians, raised by his paternal grandmother, singer and actress Eva Taylor. He told Terry Gross in 1995 that he discovered acting by accidentally interrupting a rehearsal in a theater at the Harlem YMCA. After the rehearsal was over, the director asked him if he wanted to be an actor, and he said yes in order to placate her as he was attempting to apologize for the interruption. He read some lines and was given a part on the spot. He worked in that production with Cicely Tyson, Roscoe Lee Browne, and Isabel Sanford, all at the beginnings of their careers.

Williams’ grandparents, Clarence Williams and Eva Taylor.

After two years as an Army paratrooper, he appeared on stage, including a Broadway role in The Long Dream, in 1960, and in a breakout role in Slow Dance on the Killing Ground, for which he received a Tony Award nomination. His first film role was in The Cool World, in 1963, and in 1968, he made his television debut in The Mod Squad, which resulted from a recommendation by Bill Cosby, who had seen Williams in Slow Dance on the Killing Ground.

One episode of The Mod Squad joined TOS’s season three episode in featuring an interracial kiss, in this case a friendly one between Linc and Barnes, Peggy Lipton’s character. Producer Aaron Spelling got pushback: 'You can't do that,' I was told. 'You can't have a black man kissing a white girl.' I won and ABC agreed to let it in, but they warned me I'd receive thousands of complaint letters. I didn't get one."

Following a career spanning almost sixty years and in remembering Williams after his death in 2021, critic Matt Zoller Seitz said of him, “Williams went on to become one of the most striking actors in American cinema and TV, so electrifying that when he appeared onscreen in a supporting part opposite such magnetic leading men as Prince, Laurence Fishburne, Roy Scheider, Gary Sinise, Denzel Washington, Forest Whitaker, and the brooding stars of TV’s Miami Vice his scene partners usually ceded focus to Williams, as if realizing that it was foolhardy to try to outshine the sun.”

Please join us in remembering Clarence Williams III on what would have been his 84th birthday.

Solid.