10 Great Contributions To Humanity By Star Trek Actors

4. LeVar Burton

James Doohan Scotty Star Trek Generations
CBS

Far from the depths of the USS Enterprise engine room, actor LeVar Burton is also renowned for his work on the long-running childrens' TV series Reading Rainbow.

Originally running from 1983 to 2006, Burton hosted the show for a stunning 21 seasons which made it the third longest running kids series in the world after Sesame Street and Mr Rodgers Neighborhood. Totalling 155 episodes it received over 200 awards during its run and would found a love of book in several generations of kids.

But Burton, as one of the original executive producers and host would continue to work on Reading Rainbow after its 2006 cancellation, looking to develop an app which would become the number one educational app on iTunes within 36 hours and by 2014 would see over 10 million books downloaded.

Furthermore Burton would raise over $6 million in the same year to revive Reading Rainbow in a bid to help raise literacy levels in the US. While the former Enterprise chief engineer would launch RRKidz soon after with that very goal, lawsuits would lead to a rebranding as LeVar Burton Kids, its mission continues to this very day...

But you don't have to take my word for it.

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A Star Trek fan from birth, I love to dive into every aspect of the franchise in front and behind the screen. There's something here that's kept me interested for the best part of four decades! Now I'm getting back into writing and using Star Trek as my first line of literary attack. If I'm not here on WhatCulture then you're more than welcome to come and take a look at my blog, Some Kind of Star Trek at http://SKoST.co.uk or maybe follow me on Twitter as @TheWarpCore. Sometimes I force myself not to talk about Star Trek.