Star Trek: The First & Only Person To Play Themselves In The Franchise

Throughout its many permutations, the "Star Trek" franchise has made room to include great and not-so-great historical figures on episodes of various series, allowing characters on those shows to interact with the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Leonardo da Vinci, Genghis Khan, and even Surak of Vulcan (okay, so he's not a real person, as far as we know). But only one important person in history has actually appeared on the show in real life as themselves: renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking.

Hawking, author of "A Brief History of Time" and one of the most brilliant scientists of his era, was visiting the Paramount Studios lot — where Star Trek: The Next Generation" was filming at the time — in 1991 to shoot a commercial. Like many great scientists and thinkers, Hawking was also a "Star Trek" fan and was invited to tour the set. He told executive producer Rick Berman during his tour that he'd be interesting in making a cameo on the show.

Flash forward to 1993, when Hawking got his wish, appearing in the teaser for the "TNG" sixth season finale, "Descent – Part 1." In the sequence, Data (Brent Spiner) has created avatars of Hawking, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein on the holodeck, where the four of them are engaged in a poker game. Hawking — one of many celebrities who appeared on "Star Trek" — was of course the only one to play himself.

Stephen Hawking returned to visit the sets of both "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" at later dates, yet only acted on "TNG" that one time. He also famously quipped, while passing the ship's warp core on the engineering set, "I'm working on that," and said another time that he was never able to get Paramount to pay out on the chips he won in the poker scene.

But Hawking's on-screen career was not limited strictly to "Star Trek." In addition to participating in documentaries about "Doctor Who" and "Red Dwarf," the physicist — who did pioneering work on determining the nature of black holes and the fabric of space and time — also played or voiced himself on "The Simpsons," "Futurama," and "The Big Bang Theory."

What's remarkable is that Hawking did all this while confined to a wheelchair by Lou Gehrig's disease, with which he was diagnosed at the age of 22. Rendered unable to speak by the illness, he used a sophisticated voice-synthesizing device to communicate, operating it through the muscles in his cheek. Hawking died in March 2018 at the age of 76, but his unparalleled contributions to science – and his cameo with a franchise that inspired many scientists like him – will remain with us until the end of time.