Star Trek has a longstanding habit of bringing back past guest stars with the same actor and personality but a slightly different name, for reasons we'll get to down the line.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation:
- Decker and Ilia from the aborted series Star Trek: Phase II (and then incorporated into Star Trek: The Motion Picture) were exported to TNG and became Riker and Troi, while the Vulcan Lt. Xon became the Android Lt. Cmdr. Data.
- Subcommander Taris of Contagion" has become Commander Toreth by the time of the much later episode "Face of the Enemy".
- The official Next Generation interactive VCR board game had Robert O'Reilly playing a Klingon terrorist named Kavok, an Expy of his usual character Gowron.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
- Gul Macet from TNG's "The Wounded" gets a shave and becomes Gul Dukat. The Expanded Universe makes them cousins (and, interestingly, invokes Divergent Character Evolution and makes him a very different character.)
- Interestingly, Quark and the previous two Ferengi played by Armin Shimerman are not a case of this. Letek was a none-too-bright Mook who's got nothing in common with the later captain named Bractor, a more serious character, and neither is anything like Quark. It's just that Ferengi ears and foreheads are a bit more complex than a little nose or ear putty, and when you've gone to the trouble of making expensive and detailed alien Rubber Forehead-ness, it's easier to get the same actor back and put the same stuff back on him again than do it over and over for new actors.
- Star Trek: Voyager:
- The creators wanted to bring back Nicholas Locarno, a character from the Next Generation episode "The First Duty" who was kicked out of Starfleet Academy for conspiring to cover up a cadet's death he was accidentally responsible for. However, the character had been created by the writer of that episode and not by TNG's creators or executive producers (as was the case for recurring characters such as O'Brien or Worf, who could be reused). Because of this, the creators of Voyager thought they'd have to pay royalties to the writer of that episode every time they used the character, and that led them to create a new character similar to Locarno's named Tom Paris with a similar backstory and who would be played by the same actor. note Interestingly, many years later a California court ruled that producers in a similar situation didn't have to pay royalties to a writer who created a character; had the producers of Voyager chosen to take the matter to court, they might have been cleared to use the character Locarno. A similar situation presumably resulted in Taris/Toreth, Macet/Dukat, and a name or two further down this list.
- B'Elanna was supposed to be Ro Laren. Apparently they wanted her to be on Deep Space Nine (later replaced with Kira) and then tried again with Voyager (later replaced with B'Elanna) but the actress Michelle Forbes kept saying no, wanting to focus on her film career.
- Also, The Next Generation's Taurik becomes Voyager's Vorik, and keeps the same actor. The Expanded Universe says they're twins.
- Star Trek: Enterprise: Supposedly, T'Pol was going to be T'Pau until the rights issues made that idea expensive (though obviously, the actor changes, as we're talking a decades-younger version of the character.) The actual T'Pau does appear for a three-parter down the line.
- Star Trek: Picard:
- Cristóbal Rios is basically Han Solo transplanted to the Trek Verse, who once served in Starfleet. He even refers to the wide-eyed, sword-wielding young man who's a passenger on his ship as a kid. He seems to have gone over better than TNG's last attempt at this, Thadiun Okona.
- If you had transported Legolas from Middle-earth to the Trek Verse and turned him into a Space Elf, then you'd get Elnor. Even his name is Sindarin ("Star-Run"); it was showrunner Michael Chabon's idea to call the character (what is essentially) "Star-Trek" in Elvish.
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