Don Mitchell

Don Mitchell plays Mark Sanger on Ironside, the second pair of hands after a sniper’s bullet sends Robert Ironside back to crime-fighting from a wheelchair with a handpicked team and zero patience for pity. Raymond Burr’s second iconic lawman — post-Perry Mason — as a long-running NBC franchise. Mitchell is crew voltage: eight seasons of San Francisco cases, a Sanger who makes the van feel like a partnership.

Ironside ran on NBC from 1967–1975. Post-Perry Mason franchise. Don Mitchell holds Mark Sanger through that window without treating the credit as scenery.

One-hour test: s01e01. Message from Beyond opens the post-Perry assignment: Robert Ironside back at crime-fighting from a wheelchair, pity not invited. If Mark Sanger only flickers, you are in the wrong seat; s04e01 should lock it. A Killing Will Occur is a season-four door with a title that already sounds like the team's weekly clock. s05e01 is calendar, not a required climax.

The lead is the chair; the show is the team. On TV Flash Mitchell is 1960s crime craft: Mark as the reason the hour photographs as a unit, still the aide who made a franchise look staffed instead of solitary. Finite run, specific seat: his Ironside file starts at s01e01. Don remains legible in a single sitting if you give him a real hour. The NBC years are the file; no borrowed biography required. His temperature is why a rewatch still has a hole without him. The magazine keeps the credit honest: Mark Sanger on Ironside, 1967–1975. Ironside still needs Mark Sanger to look like a job, not a footnote.