What Star Trek's Dukat Looks Like In Real Life

The best villains aren't always bad guys. "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" introduced Trekkies to Gul Dukat (Marc Alaimo), a Cardassian with ambitions that never quite aligned with those of Starfleet. Sometimes, he served as an ally to Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks); other times, he served only himself. A delightfully duplicitous and multilayered character, Dukat is considered one of the greatest villains in "Star Trek" history, and that's no mean feat for an actor buried beneath prosthetic makeup.

Alaimo first joined the "Star Trek" franchise back in "Star Trek: The Next Generation," where he played a string of prosthetic-laden supporting characters, including Macet — the first Cardassian. But that isn't the only way that Alaimo influenced the fictional race. According to "Star Trek: Aliens & Artifacts," a compendium of trivia written by Michael Westmore, Alan Sims, Bradley M. Look, and William J. Birnes, the Cardassian species was designed to match Alaimo's memorable physique.

"Marc has an extremely long neck. I was asked to come up with a concept for the Cardassians at a time when nobody really had any ideas about what they should look like. I knew what Marc Alaimo looked like, and I already had a cast of him," said Westmore (via StarTrekStuff). "The Cardassian had to be humanoid looking ... With Marc's long neck, it screamed at me to do something with it. That's where I began. I extended his look, which was a natural feature, almost into the look of a king cobra."

Outside of "Star Trek," though, how has Alaimo's unique appearance shaped his career?

Call it typecasting, especially in light of Hollywood's track record of othering certain demographics based on visual differences, but Marc Alaimo was almost always the villain. "Starsky & Hutch," "Knight Rider," "Quantum Leap," and even "The A-Team" cast him as either the big bad or the big bad's crony. If those shows feel a little old, well, that's because they are. Alaimo's career began in 1970, almost 50 years ago, and for three solid decades, he made a name for himself as the industry's resident baddie. Alaimo didn't seem to mind playing darker characters, either. In fact, he loved their potential for emotional depth. 

In a sadly poetic sort of way, "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" was his swan song. Only three credits follow his run as Gul Dukat, and the last one — a brief voice role on "Family Guy" — was released in 2010. But Alaimo's still around; he's just not acting anymore. In 2013, the official "Star Trek" Twitter confirmed that he'd stepped away from the set. Instead, the former actor is now enjoying the convention circuit, where he gets to reminisce about the good old days and sign Trekkie swag. In 2019, he took part in "What We Left Behind: Looking Back at Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," a documentary that provided Alaimo another venue to reminisce about the good old days and to tease his old coworkers.

In 2015, Alaimo attended a "Star Trek" convention where he stated that he would happily return to acting if only he were more familiar with the machinations of modern Hollywood. However, he seems perfectly at peace regaling conventiongoers with tales of Gul Dukat. The conventiongoers seem perfectly at peace too, because, again, he's Gul Dukat.