Cult-TV Theme Watch: Guitars

A guitar is a stringed musical instrument that can be played via strumming or plucking. A guitar may be acoustical, or electric.

And a guitar is also the go-to-instrument for cult-television characters throughout history.

For example, young Will Robinson (Bill Mumy) -- space pioneer -- plays a guitar and sings Greensleeves in an early episode of Lost in Space (1965-1968), “There Were Giants in the Earth.”

One of the most haunting episodes of The Twilight Zone (1959-1964), similarly, involves a folk guitarist, Floyd Burney (Gary Crosby), in “Come Wander with Me.” He becomes trapped in a never ending song with ever more disturbing new verses.

In Space: 1999’s (1975-1977) “Black Sun,” the buttoned-down Main Mission Controller, Paul Morrow (Prentis Hancock) reveals an artistic side when he is seen in his quarters quietly strumming a guitar.  Tanya (Suzanne Rocquette) asks to share the music with him.

A guitar also shows up in the short-lived Otherworld (1985). In this series about an alternate world, a teenagers from a suburban American family, the Sterlings, introduce rock-and-roll to the other world, in “Rock and Roll Suicide.” Trace (Tony O’Dell) is the duo’s guitarist.

One of the twentieth century sleepers awakened in the 25^th century and brought aboard the Enterprise-D in the Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994) episode “The Neutral Zone” is a country-western singer, and thanks to Data (Brent Spiner), ends up with a guitar to pluck.

Charlie Pace (Dominic Monaghan), a band member from Drive Shaft, ends up -- mysteriously – with his guitar while stranded on the island of Lost (2004 – 2011).

Young, doomed Beth (Emily Kinney) on The Walking Dead (2010 - ) is seen to play a guitar on at least one occasion during the AMC series’ run, though a guitar also ends up in Glen (Steven Yeun’s) hands on more than one occasion, early in the series catalog.

Other cult-TV guitar players include Will Marshall (Wesley Eure) in the Land of the Lost (1974-1977), Rupert Giles (Anthony Stewart Head) on Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003), Greg Brady (Barry Williams) on The Brady Bunch (1969-1973) and Keith Partridge (David Cassidy) on The Partridge Family (1971-1974).