Original Star Trek & Twilight Zone Director Dies At 102

Ralph Senensky, director of both Star Trek and The Twilight Zone, passed away on November 1, 2025, in a hospital in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. He was 102 years old. Confirming the event to The Hollywood Reporter, his niece, costume designer Lisa Lupa-Silvas, said, “He was 100 percent sharp until the end. He may have been 102, but he had a mind like he was 30.” 

Star Trek fans praised Senensky for directing some of the best episodes of the entire series, with “This Side of Paradise” lauded as one of the greatest episodes featuring Leonard Nimoy’s Spock. We also have him to thank for the iconic silver suits from 1968’s “The Tholian Web” (the suits that would eventually lead to his dismissal from the show). Senensky said that “Metamorphosis” from season two was his personal favorite of the episodes he had a hand in. He went on to direct one iconic episode of The Twilight Zone, “Printer’s Devil”—the episode that would end up being Burgess Meredith’s fourth and final Twilight Zone appearance.

Read Next

3 Things Star Trek: The Original Series Did Better Than Any Other Star Trek Show

A Director With An Incredible Legacy

Senensky’s lengthy career began early in the 1960s with the show Dr. Kildare. He directed numerous other projects, including The Fugitive and Hart to Hart. He also directed the initial three-part pilot for the hit series Dynasty in 1981. Other shows with episodes to his credit are Naked City, 12 O’Clock High, The F.B.I., Ironside, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, Dan August, Nanny and the Professor, The Partridge Family, Barnaby Jones, Insight and The Paper Chase. He also handled one of the earliest sympathetic on-screen LGBT storylines in the show Breaking Point. “I think that was a historic moment in television,” Senensky later wrote.

“I hear many friends in my age bracket commenting, ‘Where has the time gone? It just seems to have flown by.’ I don’t feel that way. I look back, and I see a long, long road, the one it has taken me a long, long time to traverse,” Ralph said when talking about the indie movie titled The Right Regrets, his first film project in more than two decades. Judy Norton, who played the eldest daughter, Mary-Ellen, on The Waltons, wrote on Facebook, “He had a tremendous career that impacted so many shows. His is the end of an era we will likely never see again. Goodnight, Ralph.”

Tell us your favorite Senensky-era Star Trek episode in the comments below.