<P> Astronauts Taylor (Charlton Heston), Landon (Robert Gunner) and Dodge (Jeff Burton) are in deep hibernation when their spaceship crashes in a lake on an unknown planet after a long near - light speed voyage, during which, due to time dilation, the crew ages only 18 months . The ship immediately starts sinking; Taylor finds their fourth astronaut Stewart dead and her body desiccated . The three survivors throw an inflatable raft from the ship and climb down into it; before departing the ship, Taylor notes that the date is November 25, 3978, approximately two millennia after their departure in 1972 . Once ashore, Dodge performs a soil test and pronounces the soil incapable of sustaining life . </P> <P> After abandoning their raft, the astronauts set off through a desolate wasteland in hopes of finding food and water before their provisions run out . Eventually, they encounter plant life . They find an oasis at the edge of the desert and go swimming, ignoring eerie scarecrow - like figures around the edge of the water . While they are swimming, their clothes are stolen . Pursuing the thieves, the astronauts find their clothes torn to shreds, their supplies pillaged and the perpetrators--a group of humans that are apparently so primitive that they cannot even talk and dressed in torn clothes--raiding a cornfield . Taylor is attracted to one of the humans, whom he later names Nova (Linda Harrison). </P> <P> Suddenly, armed and uniformed gorillas on horseback charge through the cornfield, brandishing firearms, snares, and nets . They capture some humans and kill the rest . In the chaos, Dodge is shot in the back of the neck and killed, Landon is wounded and rendered unconscious, and Taylor is shot in the throat and taken prisoner . The gorillas take Taylor to Ape City, where his life is saved after a blood transfusion administered by two chimpanzees: animal psychologist Zira (Kim Hunter) and surgeon Galen (Wright King). While his throat wound is healing, he is unable to speak . Taylor discovers that the various apes, who can talk and are in control, are in a strict caste system: gorillas are police officers, military, hunters and workers; orangutans are administrators, politicians, lawyers and priests; and chimpanzees are intellectuals and scientists . The apes have developed a primitive society based on the beginnings of the human Industrial Era . They ride horses and have carts, rifles, and even primitive photography . Humans, who are believed by the apes to be unable to talk, are considered vermin and are hunted, either killed outright, enslaved, or used in scientific experiments . </P> <P> Zira and her fiancé Cornelius (Roddy McDowall), an archaeologist, take an interest in Taylor, whom Zira calls "Bright Eyes". Taylor attempts to communicate by writing in the dirt, but Nova, who has been following him around, attempts to destroy his writing with her hands, not understanding what the words mean . The letters she doesn't destroy are then obliterated by Zira's and Cornelius's superior, an orangutan named Dr. Zaius (Maurice Evans). Back in his cage, Taylor steals Zira's pencil and notebook and uses them to write the message My name is Taylor . Zira and Cornelius become convinced that Taylor is intelligent, but upon learning of this, Dr. Zaius orders that Taylor be castrated . Before the castration can occur, Taylor escapes . During his desperate flight through Ape City, he passes through a museum, where he finds Dodge's stuffed and eyeless corpse on display . When Taylor is recaptured by gorillas, he overcomes his throat injury and roars: "Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!" </P>

Who played galen in planet of the apes