10 Greatest TV Extra Performances Ever

8. Hand Crank Guy (Star Trek)

Star Trek The Lights Of Zetar
CBS

The Enterprise is a very busy place, and each member of the crew has an important role to play in keeping the ship running smoothly.

But wait a second, what on earth is this guy doing?!

In Star Trek's season three episode The Lights Of Zetar, there's a quick shot at the 37-minute mark where William Shatner walks past an extra who appears to be cranking an invisible wheel against the wall. At least, that's what it looks like in the lower-resolution GIFs/images of this moment that are scattered across the web.

If we do some cranking of our own though and boost the quality to HD, we can see that this chap is actually turning something - it's just that the material is quite hard to see.

Either way, this extra caught people's attention due to the incredible amount of effort he poured into his cranking task. He definitely had his Weetabix in the morning.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!