Diagnosis: Murder

Plot

Episodes

Cast

Main

• Dr. Mark Sloan, Former army doctor and Chief of Internal Medicine at Community General Hospital, and protagonist of the series. Son of a police officer and father of another, in whose cases he often gets involved. He is a medical consultant to the LAPD. Dick Van Dyke was considered for the lead role after the positive reviews he received from his dramatic role in the 1990 movie Dick Tracy. In the pilot, the character had interests in tap dance and clarinet playing; however, these were considered distracting and were toned down and eventually removed from the character as the series developed.
• Lieutenant Detective Steve Sloan, a detective sergeant in the Robbery/Homicide Division of the LAPD and Dr. Mark Sloan's son. After an earthquake destroyed his apartment, he lived in a separate apartment in his father's beach house in Malibu, California. Steve often uses his "patented" dive to apprehend criminals.
• Dr. Amanda Bentley, later Bentley-Livingston, resident Pathology at Community General Hospital and assistant County Medical Examiner, who is also Dr. Mark Sloan's double act and medical partner, involving in each of Mark's & Steve's cases, after the accident. As a favorable character of the show, she also dated Jack and was later Jesse's best friend. During the series, she married a military man named Colin Livingston, and they had one son named C.J. She named her only biological child Colin Jesse Livingston after his father and Dr. Jesse Travis, who delivered the baby alone in the back of his beloved VW convertible, with Mark assisting over cell phone. Her husband was overseas at the time and unfortunately unreachable. Depending on the episode, she later divorced her husband or he was killed in an airplane crash. Later in the series, she adopted another boy, Deon.
• Dr. Jack Stewart, a doctor at Community General Hospital and Steve's best friend, who he often helped in his cases. He left to open his own family medicine in Colorado. Jack Stewart does reappear in a couple of Lee Goldberg's Diagnosis Murder books, The Silent Partner and The Last Word. In the first three TV Movies, a similar character named Jack Parker, played by Stephen Caffrey, filled Stewart's position.
• Dr. Jesse Travis, a residency and handsome student at Community General Hospital who Mark took under his wing and who became best friends with Amanda. He later went into business with Steve as partners in a barbecue restaurant. Another favorable/list of breakout characters of the series, he often got involved in Mark and Steve's cases, with good intentions but not always good results. In the crossover double episode "Murder Two", he himself became the prime suspect of a rival doctor's killing, hence he badgered Mark to call his old friend Ben Matlock for help. The hospital staff thought he wrote the tell-all book "Big City Hospital" as Dr. Anonymous but later found out it was written by someone else. Jason Tucker was a character in the book who sounded exactly like Jesse, which is why the hospital staff thought it was him.
• Norman Briggs, business administration at Community General Hospital and a close friend of Dr. Mark Sloan, even though he is often exasperated by him.
• Delores Mitchell, Dr. Sloan's lively secretary.

  Notable guest stars

• Rob Petrie features in a cameo in the episode "Obsession, Part 2" where Dr. Sloan is in a radio station, and walks past a studio where, Rob is trying his hand at radio Disc jockey. The footage of Rob as a DJ is taken from the Dick Van Dyke Show episode "One Hundred Terrible Hours". This scene moves Diagnosis: Murder into the realm of fantasy as Petrie is shown in black and white, after which Sloan breaks the fourth wall and looks at the audience before the story continues.
• Mike Connors reprised his titular character of Mannix in the season 4 episode "Hard-Boiled Murder." The episode's story was a sequel to the Mannix episode "Little Girl Lost."
• Andy Griffith reprised his titular role of Ben Matlock from Dean Hargrove's Matlock series in Season 4 two-parter "Murder Two". In a sense, this brought Diagnosis: Murder full circle, as its parent series, Jake and the Fatman, was inspired by a Season 1 episode of Matlock in 1986.
• Barbara Bain reprised her role of Cinnamon Carter of Mission: Impossible in season 5 episode "Discards."
• Peter Graves, who starred alongside Barbara Bain on Mission: Impossible as Jim Phelps did not return as his character, but did make a very brief cameo in "Must Kill TV" and the same scene is seen in part 1 of the Series 6 episode Trash TV Part 1 as "Dr. Sloane" in a Mission: Impossible-style illusion of his first TV pilot of "Doctor Danger," later replaced during the show.
• Robert Culp also guest starred in the episode "Discards" as Dane Travis, a retired espionage, tennis professional, and Dr. Travis' father. The character was similar to his Kelly Robinson character from I Spy, though Travis was said to have worked with the Impossible Missions Force.
• "Discards" also featured appearances by former TV spies Patrick Macnee, Robert Vaughn and Phil Morris, though they did not play their original characters.
• Jack Klugman also guest starred in season 4 episode "Physician, Murder Thyself," as a character very similar to his famous role on Quincy, M.E.. He guest-starred again, in season 6 episode "Voices Carry" as police detective Harry Trumble, the former fiance of Dr. Mark Sloan's late wife. Trumble reappeared in Lee Goldberg's Diagnosis Murder novel "The Past Tense."
• George Takei, Walter Koenig, Majel Barrett, Wil Wheaton, and Grace Lee Whitney, as well as Bill Mumy, were guest stars in "Alienated!" one sixth season episode, which involved an apparent extraterrestrial life alien abduction and coverup.
• The episode "Drill for Death" included appearances by several actors associated with the M*A*S*H franchise: Elliott Gould and Sally Kellerman from the original movie; Jamie Farr, Loretta Swit and William Christopher from the television series; and Christopher Norris from the sequel series Trapper John, M.D..
• Randolph Mantooth and Robert Fuller, who worked together on NBC's Emergency! appeared together in a 1997 episode about the Malibu, California brushfires.
• The episode "Must Kill TV" features a number of small cameos by television personalities such as Erik Estrada and Dr. Joyce Brothers playing themselves and a larger one from Stephen J. Cannell as an over-the-top producer of action TV. The role is reprised in the two-parter "Trash TV."
• The episode "Food Fight" features Erin Moran, Pat Morita, Don Most, David Lander, Leslie Easterbrook and Conrad Janis. All of these actors starred alongside Scott Baio in Happy Days or its spin-offs, Laverne & Shirley, Joanie Loves Chachi and Mork & Mindy.
• The episode "Promises to Keep" features characters introduced in the Promised Land episode "Total Security" crossover into the show.
• A somewhat special case is the appearance of Jennifer Ringley in the 1998's episode "Rear Windows '98", where she played a fictionalized version of herself who is killed in the first minute.
• Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford skewered their image as friendly daytime TV talk show hosts on the 1998 episode, "Talked to Death."
• In "Death in the Daytime", Lauralee Bell, Eric Braeden, Jeanne Cooper, Doug Davidson, Kristoff St. John, Melody Thomas Scott, and Heather Tom make guest appearances from The Young and the Restless.

• Dick Van Dyke and son Barry Van Dyke in the lead roles.
• Dick's brother, Jerry Van Dyke.
• One of Dick's daughters, Stacy Van Dyke.
• Barry's children: Carey Van Dyke, Shane Van Dyke, Wes Van Dyke and Taryn Van Dyke.