10 MORE Star Trek Moments You Never Knew Were Improvised
5. Comedy With Kahless
"[Kahless] just wanted to be a stand-up," joked Sam Witwer to Seán Ferrick in an interview for the TrekCulture podcast in November last year. Instead, the original warrior got himself wrapped up in all those thorn (and other) murders. Savage is the curtain for any prospective comedian. That's more room, at least, for Ronald B. Moore!
One of the funniest lines of the fifth season of Star Trek: Lower Decks involved one of the Unforgettables. Trapped beneath his own collection of brush devil bones at the end of A Farewell to Farms, Malor, brother of Ma'ah, cries out, "I can see Kahless, the first one, the original one, the one that did impressions".
That line wasn't originally in the script, however, but was "an ad lib that I was partially in on," Witwer, voice of Malor, added to Seán on the podcast. During recording, Witwer began simply with "I see Kahless". He then wondered out loud if "we were ever going to deal with the fact that there's a clone," i.e., that one from Rightful Heir. To that, one of the producers suggested the rest of the line, a callback to the Excalbian copy of Kahless who had a penchant for impersonation.