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Harris Yulin, who passed away on June 10th at the age of 87, is one of those actors you're bound to have seen at some point if you regularly take in American film and television. I saw him just recently in Night Moves. A lot of people vividly remember him as the ornery judge in Ghostbusters 2. But as illustrious as his film career was, it was on television he indelibly made a mark. He played major characters on Frasier, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The X-Files. He was on Murphy Brown, two iterations of La Femme Nikita, Kojack, Barnaby Jones, Wonder Woman, the list goes on.

For many people, judging from reactions I've been reading, his most impressive performance was on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in the 1993 episode "Duet". It's one of those dream roles for an actor seeking a challenge. He played a character pretending to be another character and the effectiveness and psychological motivation for his deception were both integral to the story. He rose to the occasion and the episode remains fascinating to watch.



Such a ubiquitous actor seems like part of the bedrock of an era in film and television media. His death feels like the end of one, or part of a transition to another.