No trailer as of yet, but the cast of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds had some big announcements to make for Star Trek Day… including some familiar (now recast) faces.
Strange New Worlds is a show meant to cover the period of time that Captain Christopher Pike was in command of the USS Enterprise, before Kirk’s legendary tenure. Basically, it’s the show that Trek’s first pilot episode “The Cage” might have produced had the network not demanded extensive changes to the lineup.
But there were plenty of familiar faces on board the Enterprise at that time, and two prominent recasts have been announced: Jess Bush in the role of Nurse Christine Chapel and Celia Rose Gooding… who will take on the role of Cadet Nyota Uhura. Gooding was on hand to personally announce how “thrilled and honored” she was to take up the role made famous by the unforgettable Nichelle Nichols. There’s a brief glimpse of her from the show in the video above.
Babs Olusanmokun will play Doctor M’Benga, who appeared in Original Series episodes “A Private Little War”‘ and “That Which Survives.” There are new faces as well: Bruce Horak will play Hemmer, Melissa Navia will play Erica Ortegas, and Christina Chong will play La’an Noonien-Singh. And if that last name sounds familiar, that would be because it is a last name shared by one of Star Trek most infamous villains: Khan.
These new crew members will join Anson Mount’s Captain Pike and Ethan Peck’s Mr. Spock. Rebecca Romijn had already taken over the role of the previously elusive Number One, but now her once-fanon name has been canonized: Una Chin-Riley. Romijn talked of how enjoyable it was to finally flesh out a character first brought to life by Majel Barrett Roddenberry, and promised audiences that the character was far more complex than anyone knew.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has no premiere date as of yet… but here’s hoping it will grace our screens soon.
I’m down. I’m kinda sad that everything in Star Trek is now about referencing old things in Star Trek, but I like the cast here and if they do a good job with the legacy characters then this could be a fun show.
Um, for La’an Noonien-Singh, are they treating the personal name (Noonien) and the gendernym (Singh) as a surname (Noonien-Singh)? And i hope I’m wrong but they didn’t just cast an East Asian actress as a South Asian character, as if we are all alike…
M’Benga isn’t in “The Cage”. He is in two other episodes: “That Which Survives” and “A Private Little War.”
Correction: Dr. M’Benga was not in “The Cage,” but was introduced in TOS: “A Private Little War” in season 2 and returned in “That Which Survives” in season 3, to fill the Doctor role on the Enterprise while McCoy was on the landing party. There were no non-white actors in “The Cage” aside from an Asian extra in the transporter (or “materializer”) room. That was part of the reason the network rejected it, because Roddenberry had promised them an ethnically diverse cast and failed to deliver.
Including Cadet Uhura seems reasonable to me, and isn’t necessarily inconsistent with my TOS novels, where I’ve established that Uhura was in Pike’s crew before Kirk took command, staying deliberately vague about how long she was with that crew (since I suspected this might happen). But including M’Benga and Chapel is surprising. Did we need so many returning characters as opposed to new ones? Also, how will this fit with Chapel’s backstory that she joined Starfleet to search for her fiance Roger Korby? That implied that she joined relatively late compared to a lifer like Uhura. But Majel Barrett and Nichelle Nichols were both born in the same year.
Also, it’s kind of freaking me out that this cast includes two Majel Barrett characters at the same time. Three if you count the computer voice.
Number One’s name “Una” was canonized in the Short Treks episode “Q & A,” though only on a text screen. “Chin-Riley” debuted in the book The Autobiography of Mr. Spock by Una McCormack. I wonder if she’s supposed to be related to Kevin Riley. Also, Rebecca Romijn has no Chinese ancestry, so the “Chin” leaves me wondering. Well, maybe it’s her married name?
Speaking of names, a character named “Noonien-Singh” raises many questions. For one thing, if she’s a Sikh woman, her surname should be Kaur; Singh is for Sikh men.
Erica Ortegas is a deep cut. Peter Duryea’s character in “The Cage,” Jose Tyler, was named Jose Ortegas in the original series proposal. He was supposed to be Latino, though the actor very much wasn’t, and his name was never actually spoken onscreen.
This is all very wonderful casting news!
There’s no reason Uhura and Chapel couldn’t have been aboard the Enterprise pre-Kirk so it’s great to see these familiar characters are coming back here and presumably given a lot more agency (and dialogue) than their counterparts did on the TOS.
Dr. M’Benga was in “The Cage”? Correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s not accurate and he was featured later on in TOS. I presume he will be the CMO in this era of Pike’s captaincy and Dr. Boyce has since moved on.
I’m assuming Lt. Tyler and Yeoman Colt, also from “The Cage”, won’t be prominent characters on this series since they aren’t part of the main cast.
Is La’an Noonien-Singh supposed to be an Augment like Khan Noonien-Singh was? As I recall, that group of supreme and women weren’t “discovered” until “Space Seed” or is she related to the Augments featured in the final season of Enterprise?
This is a wonderfully diverse cast! I think it’s most notable for being the first ever majority female cast on a Star Trek series, 5 women to 4 men. I’ve always felt it was lame how every previous Star Trek series stuck to a majority male cast so this is very nice overdue shakeup of that tired formula. And after having three white leads in this cast, it was important to add some “color”with actors of Asian, Black, and Hispanic descent.
Also, we have our first ever blind actor in a Star Trek main cast which is awesome. And very cool that this character is an Aenar! So we’ve got our other primary alien on the show aside from Spock.
No footage revealed but some quick shots from the sets as well as yet another costume redesign of the uniforms from TOS and from what we saw of the Enterprise uniform look on Discovery. I like this redesign though as the previous look with the prominent black asymmetrical collars was pretty unattractive to me. These less obtrusive black undershirts seem more appealing and sensible.
Oh, and I like how this series will feature both Una and Chapel as main characters, as both were played by the very same actress, Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, on TOS.
Looking forward to the series debut in 2022!
@2/Sundrop: “And i hope I’m wrong but they didn’t just cast an East Asian actress as a South Asian character, as if we are all alike…”
For what it’s worth, the name “Khan Noonien Singh” was a complete ethnic hodgepodge to begin with — a given name that’s usually a Muslim surname, a middle name that was allegedly the name of a Chinese friend of Gene Roddenberry’s but that I’ve never been able to find a precedent for, and a Sikh surname that Roddenberry only added on the advice of Kellam DeForest research after they pointed out that “Sibahl Khan Noonien” wasn’t even close to a Sikh name (but he ignored their full suggestion of “Govind Bahadur Singh”). And he’s been played by a white Mexican actor and a white English actor. Since he was the product of a genetic engineering program, he might have had forebears of multiple ethnicities blended together, or perhaps been raised and named by people who weren’t his biological parents. Not to mention that Sikhism is a religion with members of many ethnicities, rather than a single ethnic group.
So there’s no real way to define what Khan’s “true” ethnicity was supposed to be. And someone sharing his name two and a half centuries later? There’s no telling how much ethnic blending or marriage or adoption might have come into play in intervening generations. If she’s even descended from Khan at all rather than just adopting his names for some reason.
@5/garreth: Oh, I hadn’t realized Hemmer was an Aenar. That’s interesting. So Spock won’t be the only telepath in the main cast. Hopefully Hemmer will carry the bulk of the telepath action so that the show doesn’t violate TOS’s assertion that Spock had never mind-melded with a human until “Dagger of the Mind.”
@6. ChristopherLBennett:
In the final draft script of Space Seed, Khan’s name was noted to be pronounced, “KAWN”. He was described as “an extremely handsome, well-built man. His face reflects the sun-darkened Aryian blood of the Northern India Sikh people, suggesting just a trace of the Oriental blood often found too. The features are intelligent, extremely strong, almost arrogantly so.” Source: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Khan_Noonien_Singh
His mother was Doctor Sarina Kaur, the director of the Chrysalis Project. (TOS novel: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh, Volume 1). Source: https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Khan_Noonien_Singh
I’ve always subscribed that Khan was his title, and Noonien Singh his name. Trust me when i say that “Noonien” would not be out of place in a rural Sikh village, (source: my family).
Less we talk about the travesty that is Khan John Harrison, the better.
My biggest gripe is having someone named Noonien-Singh on the Enterprise before Space Seed.
Also, how and when did Noonien-Singh acquire the hyphen?
The first name “Una” was actually canonized in Discovery‘s second season finale, when Pike spoke the name out loud.
I’m honestly of two minds about including Uhura and Chapel. (I have no problem with including M’Benga, since he’s a blank slate.) Honestly, Chapel is the most problematic one, as she was established as only signing on to Starfleet and to the Enterprise to find her husband, as Christopher said.
But I do love there being two Majel Barrett characters……..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I had really high hopes that this show wouldn’t lean on the nostalgia button this hard. Even with the first reveal of Uhura showing up, I was ok – but when we get to M’Benga and Nurse Chapel, I just felt like it was way too much. And then to hit us with what seems to be a reference to Khan …
It didn’t help that In the interview panel, Goldsman spent a lot of time talking about how the show would be about connections that were suspected by his 12-year-old self watching the original series.
T
@7/Sundrop: “In the final draft script of Space Seed”
Yes, Khan was intended to be South Asian, but both his portrayers were white, so the execution failed to live up to the intention. But we can rationalize those problems by considering that Khan doesn’t strictly have to be a certain ethnicity, because Sikhism is a religion rather than an ethnic group, and because the product of a genetic engineering program could be ethnically mixed or adopted.
“His mother was Doctor Sarina Kaur”
Only in my friend Greg Cox’s novels, not canon. Tie-ins are to canon what historical fiction is to history — conjectures of what might have happened in between the events we know. They aren’t the “true” version of events, which is why Picard has contradicted most of the continuity the novels have been building since Nemesis came out. I expect the Uhura backstory I established in my recent novel Living Memory will get overwritten by SNW sooner or later.
“I’ve always subscribed that Khan was his title, and Noonien Singh his name.”
Doesn’t work. In both Prime and Kelvin, he explicitly said that his name was Khan. And he was always referred to as “Khan,” not “the Khan.” It was never used as a title, only as a personal name.
“Trust me when i say that “Noonien” would not be out of place in a rural Sikh village, (source: my family).”
Ah, that’s good to know. Thanks. The odd thing, though, is that it was reportedly the name of a Chinese wartime friend of Roddenberry’s that he was trying to catch the attention of by naming characters after him (hence Noonien Soong in TNG). The same name being both Chinese and Sikh seems odd, but maybe what we know about Roddenberry’s friend is muddled.
“Also, how and when did Noonien-Singh acquire the hyphen?”
Which is why I wonder if she’s not actually a descendant so much as someone who adopted that name in his honor or something. Well, that and the fact that an actual Sikh woman would probably go by Kaur instead of Singh.
OH! YAY! If they had to pull in characters we knew, I’m glad they picked those three. They all deserved more than they were originally given. Also, an Andorian! I learned to love them with Enterprise, so I can’t wait to learn more about them. This whole show looks promising to me.
I take it she’s the opposite of Rey. She grew up in a big family, discovered her grandfather was good, then chose the name Noonien-Singh to spite them all.
Punk. Rock. Baby.
This looks closer to the original series than anything we’ve seen in fifty years. I’m excited.
My main reaction to the Strange New Worlds panel was to Avika Goldsman’s pronouncement that Spock’s emotionality in “The Cage” would be part of Spock’s character in SNW.
In the first pilot, Roddenberry hadn’t yet solidified who he wanted Vulcans to be, and the “unemotional” one was Number One. In the second pilot, with Number One gone, that relationship to emotions was assigned to Vulcans. We were never supposed to SEE the first pilot; it was pressed into service as part of “The Menagerie” only because production had fallen behind, and they needed to buy themselves some time.
So Spock’s emotionalism in “The Cage” was NOT supposed to be part of canon. The Spock we know from TOS is a man who is very determinedly Vulcan and who finds his human ancestry an embarrassment and an annoyance, and it was only the events of the movies that made Spock more comfortable with his emotions.
Making SNW Spock into an emotional person will drastically change the meaning of the character and will undo some of what Spock has meant for the past 55 years!
I’m really very worried the SNW is going to ruin TOS Spock, a character who has meant so much to so many.
#14. Come on, you know they’re going to have Spock be a little more emotional in this series, then they’ll have something happen to him that turns him into the TOS Spock we all know and love. That’s the little game these prequels play. Always.
@15 And having Spock undergo some sort of trauma or whatever that causes him to suppress his emotions will change the meaning of the character. I have a right to be upset about that!
@12/Wishbone: It occurs to me that, per “Space Seed,” Khan ruled a quarter of the Earth’s population across much of Asia for at least 4 years. So it could be that many families within his realm adopted his name, like how Vietnamese families have often adopted their emperors’ names as a show of loyalty. Or maybe he had many concubines.
@14/Corylea: “In the first pilot, Roddenberry hadn’t yet solidified who he wanted Vulcans to be”
Indeed, the species wasn’t even named until “Mudd’s Women,” and they were initially Vulcanians, with Vulcan being the planet.
“We were never supposed to SEE the first pilot; it was pressed into service as part of “The Menagerie” only because production had fallen behind, and they needed to buy themselves some time.”
I don’t think the first part of that is right. Roddenberry did explore the option of shooting new footage to expand the pilot to feature length for theatrical release.
“So Spock’s emotionalism in “The Cage” was NOT supposed to be part of canon.”
Nobody back then worried about “canon” or was as obsessed with continuity as we are today. After all, reruns were less common and there was no home video to let you catch an episode you missed, so the emphasis was on making each individual episode work as an independent whole, and continuity between episodes was a secondary consideration. There’s a ton of stuff in early TOS that shifts and changes as ideas were refined on the go; the Enterprise was originally an Earth ship working for the United Earth Space Probe Agency, with Starfleet and the Federation being retconned in later. I already mentioned Vulcanians vs. Vulcans. “The Conscience of the King” implied that Vulcan had been conquered, perhaps by Earth. There were all sorts of weirdnesses and inconsistencies that just got shrugged off because it was par for the course for episodic series storytelling, and because audiences didn’t have the kind of modern resources that let us keep track of every little niggly detail of continuity. So there would’ve been no gatekeepers censoring “wrong” information like you’re suggesting. If that had been the case, most of the first season would’ve been yanked from circulation.
#16. Why would it have to be a trauma? It could just as well be some “fascinating” experience that causes him to readjust the way he sees himself. Or it could be from some Vulcan ritual or rite of passage. Or it could be something as simple as emulating Una while under her mentorship. Any number of ways they do it.
@6/ChristopherLBennett: I’m puzzled about the source for the claim that NBC rejected “The Cage” because it lacked a sufficiently diverse cast; if anything, I thought the NBC executives wanted more conventional choices (prominently, they disliked the female first officer). That is, I was never under the impression that the Network was pressing for a cast that looked more like our planet.
@19/Sarek: My understanding is that the rejection of the female first officer had more to do with the fact that she was being played by Roddenberry’s significant other than by an objection to the concept of a woman being second in command. Roddenberry created a lot of mythology around the rejection of the first pilot that tended to paint him in a positive light and the suits as racist and misogynist
@19/Sarek: “I’m puzzled about the source for the claim that NBC rejected “The Cage” because it lacked a sufficiently diverse cast; if anything, I thought the NBC executives wanted more conventional choices (prominently, they disliked the female first officer). That is, I was never under the impression that the Network was pressing for a cast that looked more like our planet.”
That’s the line Roddenberry sold to make himself sound like the hero and NBC the villain, like twels said. But it was debunked by the book Inside Star Trek by Herb Solow and Bob Justman. In fact, networks and advertisers at the time had discovered the economic power of women and minorities and were eager to cater to them by diversifying their shows’ casts. They loved the idea a female XO and an ethnically diverse crew. But Roddenberry fell short of his promises and gave them an all-white cast, and he cast his mistress as the female lead instead of a more prominent and less potentially scandalous actress. (I’ve heard that future TOS guests Lee Meriwether and Jeanne Bal were among the candidates. Meriwether would’ve been a great choice.)
Also, that was just one of the considerations behind the rejection of the pilot. Part of it is just that the pilot characters were pretty bland and not very engaging. A large part of it, though, was simply that the production was too elaborate to represent the cost and logistical requirements of a typical weekly episode, which is part of what pilots are supposed to do. Desilu at the time produced only a single sitcom and survived by leasing out its facilities to other productions. So they had to prove they were capable of mounting an elaborate science fiction production, and so they pulled out all the stops on “The Cage” to make it feature-quality, and they basically did too good a job. So Desilu’s Oscar Katz recognized that and gave them a second chance to deliver a more typical pilot episode. And along the way, they got the chance to address problems with the casting and characters and such. (In a way, “The Cage” was a pilot/demo for Desilu itself and “Where No Man…” was a pilot for Star Trek.)
That Hemmer character is an Aenar, yes? Did the Aenar on Enterprise have the facial prosthetics? I can’t remember.
@21: I’d never heard about Lee Meriwether as a potential Number One, but agree that she’s have been great in the role.
I’ve always felt a little bad for Majel Barrett, in that the Christine Chapel role was so much less dynamic than Number One would have been. Really, it’s a total one-note role – she loves Spock and he doesn’t / can’t love her back. Part of me wonders whether they won’t retcon in a romance between Chapel and Spock that somehow predates her marriage to Roger Korby.
It’s also, I think, going to be a little weird to have Uhura and Chapel in what I presume will be much more well-define roles than those they held on the original series.
@22/bgsu98: The ENT Aenar had enlarged foreheads to represent their big telepathic brains. Hemmer seems to be based more on Glenn Hetrick’s Andorian makeup design for Discovery. The Andorians, like the Klingons and Tellarites, have been redesigned by every new makeup artist that’s tackled them.
@23/twels: Chapel was Korby’s fiancee, not his wife. And I just did the math and belatedly figured out that if the interval in-story since the end of DSC season 2 (set in 2258 and aired in April 2019) is the same as the real-time interval, then that would put this show in about 2260-61, which is, in fact, just about right for Korby’s disappearance some 5 years before TOS season 1.
And a romance with Spock is highly unlikely, given that her feelings for him in TOS were completely unrequited. The new shows may bend canon here and there, but they generally don’t violate it that drastically.
Indeed, I hadn’t realized this would put Chapel and Spock together years before “The Naked Time.” That is kind of odd.
“It’s also, I think, going to be a little weird to have Uhura and Chapel in what I presume will be much more well-define roles than those they held on the original series.”
They both had somewhat more prominence in the animated series, as did Sulu.
Incidentally, we can add Christina Chong to the list of actors who’ve done both Star Trek and Doctor Who. She was Lorna Bucket in DW: “A Good Man Goes to War.”
I have not seen Discovery, but I went and looked up an image of their Andorians, and they still have blue skin. This character’s white skin makes me think he’s an Aenar, but the prosthetics would match the look of the Discovery Andorians. Weren’t Andorians and Aenar established as being the same species, and the Aenar’s white skin came from them living under the ice and out of sunlight. I can’t remember, but weren’t the Aenar on Enterprise also blind, or at least have poor eyesight from living in the dark? I’ve only seen the Andorian/Aenar trilogy on Enterprise once, so I might not be remembering correctly
Any thoughts on a possible link between La’an Noonien-Singh and Dr. Noonian Soong and even Lal? I realize the spelling differences but perhaps she is an android? I agree with 10) and Dr Soong’s name seems to acknowledge this as well.
@26. Uhura and Chapel were more prominent in the Animated Series – but I wouldn’t say that characterization was that show’s strongest suit.
I guess we can hope that this is a “Better Call Saul” situation rather than the blatant fan service that it is starting to feel like
@27/bgsu98: Yes, the Aenar are a blind, albinistic subspecies of Andorians. Hemmer’s portrayer, Bruce Horak, is legally blind, and presumably his Aenar character will be as well.
@29/twels: Please explain “a “Better Call Saul” situation” for those of us unfamiliar with that show.
@27: The Hemmer character is supposed to be an Aenar, a sub-species of Andorian, telepathic, and blind. The actor playing the character is blind as well.
@28: I think the spelling of the character “Noonien-Singh” is intentionally meant to reference Khan from TOS/TWOK and not the distinctly different but similarly sounding “Noonian Soong” introduced in TNG for Data’s creator. The similar names are just because Gene Roddenberry was trying to get in touch with his long lost war buddy who also had a similar sounding name.
@30. “Better Call Saul” is a prequel to the show “Breaking Bad,” which centers on the shifty, conniving lawyer that helped the two central characters on “Breaking Bad” to launder their meth money and generally stay out of jail. The thing that makes the show great is that Saul doesn’t just start out as the character we met before. There’s a lot of things that are genuinely surprising reveals about his backstory that entirely make sense in the context of “Breaking Bad” without one having to actually have seen “Breaking Bad” to follow along.
If they do that with SNW, fantastic. If, however, we get the kind of “ticking the boxes” approach of something like “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” which seemed to be more about giving answers to fan questions than actually telling a compelling story, that’s not something that is going to have a lasting appeal for me.
@32/twels: I share your view that adding meaningfully to the continuity is better than just checking off boxes. But I’d say that, other than Spock, this show is built mostly around characters who don’t really have a lot established about them. We know nothing about Pike between DSC season 2 and “The Menagerie.” We didn’t even know Number One’s name before, let alone anything about her as a person. Uhura was the least developed of the core seven in TOS. All we know about Chapel besides her Roger Korby backstory is her crush on Spock. And all we know about M’Benga is that he’s an expert in Vulcan medicine. So they’re not far from being blank slates. I’m not sure there are really that many boxes to check or fan questions to answer here, Spock aside.
Heck, just having both Number One and Chapel together, with different surnames and non-identical appearances, debunks two or three fan theories right off the bat.
I sure hope it’s like Better Call Saul, but Vince Gilligan’s restraint seems to be a rarity these days.
@@@@@21/ChristpherLBennett: For what it’s worth, in the intergalactic stories from the early Forties by A.E. Van Vogt that probably inspired Roddenberry, both the captain and first officer were women. (These stories were later collected as Mission to the Stars.)
I would not swear to this, but I think it was William Shatner in Star Trek Memories who said that it was the preview audience, especially the women, that put the kibosh on the woman first officer. Of course, Shatner may merely have been repeating what Roddenberry told him.
Getting back to the new series, I’m not entirely clear on one point. Will the Aenar character be played by an Aenar actor?
@10. ChristopherLBennett:
I am pretty sure Sikhs are an ethnoreligious group, like Jewish and Amish people. The script itself states ‘oriental’, by which they mean non-occident, instead of East Asian, as well as tanned Aryan stock (which while disproven today, clearly was meant to refer to the peoples of North India). I accept your opinion that as a genetically-engineered person, Khan could easily be of mixed descent.
While the Cox novels are not canon, so long as there is nothing explicit in canon to repudiate it, I accept it. (Even the Khan comic set after STiD questions Khan John Harrison’s appearance, as Khan was noted to be from New Delhi, which was formerly part of the Sikh Empire. The racial stock is the same).
As for Khan being a title, I imagine an arrogant former ruler may privately smirk that his enemies refer to him by his esteemed rank. This is my own personal headcanon.
I had great-grandparents named Jona and Nico. Rural naming conventions are odd. My own grandfather had a Muslim name, despite not being one. India has always had a history of hodge-podging. In fact, Sikhism itself is a product of Abrahamic (Islam) and Dharmic (Hindu) fusion, although religious Sikhs will heavily dispute this.
“Which is why I wonder if she’s not actually a descendant so much as someone who adopted that name in his honor or something.”
This is a great answer. I hope this ends up being the case.
@35: What is an “Aenar actor”? I keep up with the news daily but maybe I missed the blurb about the Aenar walking amongst us.
Quoth Sundrop: “Rural naming conventions are odd.”
Not just rural ones. I’m Italian-American on both sides of my family, and my mother decided to name me “Keith” because she liked the name. Never mind that it’s a Gaelic name and one that Italians can’t pronounce (there’s no TH in Italian)…..
(My Italian relatives and friends refer to me as “Keet.” For that matter, there’s no TH in Japanese, so my black belt, which has my name inscribed in Japanese on it, says “Kiisu.”)
—Kiisu R.A. DeCandido
@36/Sundrop: “I am pretty sure Sikhs are an ethnoreligious group, like Jewish and Amish people.”
Yes, but there is nothing preventing people of any ethnic group from converting to Sikhism, or being adopted and raised by Sikh parents.
“The script itself states ‘oriental’,”
See comment 10. It’s not about the script, it’s about how we can rationalize the casting of a white actor in the final episode (and movie). Scripts are not holy writ. They’re just starting points, and the things written in them get changed and abandoned and reinterpreted in the final work all the time.
“While the Cox novels are not canon, so long as there is nothing explicit in canon to repudiate it, I accept it.”
We’re not in court. There is no “right” answer, no competition between alternative imaginary possibilities. I’m simply saying that it’s possible to imagine an alternative explanation that justifies Khan being played by white actors. That’s what fiction is — imagining possibilities. No work of fiction claims to be “true,” it just tells a story. I know from experience that Greg would be the first to agree that his stories are just one possibility and that it doesn’t matter if different interpretations of a fictional universe contradict each other.
@38. krad:
Where I’m from, most people would pronounce your name as Keet or Cur (without the -r) It.
@39. ChristopherLBennett:
Whoa there buddy. You’re veering dangerously close to the realm of promoting whitewashing of ethnic minority characters. For e.g. in the much loathed Last Airbender movie, we can “rationalise casting white actors” into roles look, sound and project a myriad of Asian cultures, but no one wants that now, do we?
Also, the vast majority of Sikhs belong to the same ethnic background. Sure, nothing prohibits “people of any ethnic group from converting to Sikhism, or being adopted and raised by Sikh parents”, but isn’t that also rationalising whitewashing a role after the fact?
Truth is, most Sikhs that I know loved Montalban as Khan and loathed Cumberbatch as Khan. The former is slightly more Sikh-like than the latter, and it’s something to hold on to.
My apologies if this has spun out a bit. I’m not questioning your experience and knowledge, which is self evidently vast on Trek and on writing.
I guess I just really liked that we had Khan Noonien Singh, and not just Haji from Johnny Quest or something.
Just a reminder to keep the discussion civil and constructive–Khan/casting/whitewashing conversations always end up being fraught, so let’s maintain a calm and respectful tone in replying to one another.
@41/Sundrop: Last word on the subject: Trying to fix a mistake made in the past is not saying it’s okay to do it again. We can’t change what was done in the past, but we absolutely can and should improve on it going forward. Those are two different conversations entirely.
One thing I am surprised no one really had talked about is the new uniforms. At first, I was really thrown by the lack of a collar, but then I thought about how it more closely resembled the old turtlenecks they wore in the first pilot and I was more ok with it – though I still thought them to be a little ugly compared to the ones the Enterprise crew wore on Discovery. Also, the tiny bits of the bridge we saw seemed over-lit
@44: I mentioned the new uniforms earlier and how I think they were an improvement on the DSC season 2 design.
@sundrop: I’d recommend registering your account. That way other posters can send you messages…
@33/Christopher L. Bennett said:
“I’m not sure there are really that many boxes to check or fan questions to answer here, Spock aside.“
Spock really is the most problematic character for this show in some ways – given that there is so much continuity extending across multiple movies and series. I recently read the Marvel “Star Trek: Early Voyages” series that deals with Captain Pike and crew and it is surprising how little of the series deals with Spock in any meaningful way. Granted, the writers seemed to really want to establish the other crew members as characters and may not have gotten around to doing a true Spock story before the series was abruptly canceled. Still, it felt strange to have a character so important to the overall story of the Trek universe pushed that far to the side. I suspect, however, that continuity watchdogs probably had a lot to say about what kinds of stories COULD be told with Spock in that series, given that it had to match what came both before and after
I don’t think it’s necessarily about answering specific fan questions that’s the danger here; it’s whether they have the restraint to keep young James Kirk and every other iconic character, alien, ship, and glowy thing from TOS from dropping by the series for a cup of sugar.
Or a… SNW cone? Heh? Heh? ;-) …I apologize.
Anyway, Better Call Saul has wisely kept its shoutouts to Breaking Bad’s future canon few and far between. Can SNW do the same? The current crop of Star Trek suggests not, but I’ll always hold on to hope they can actually boldly go into original science fiction adventures, rather than falling back to the safety of cashing established IP royalty checks, making the fan goobers and meme addicts go wild when a big event in the season is needed (looking at you too, Mandalorian).
Really the only way to make this iteration of Spock interesting given that so much about him is already established, is to play him up as more emotional, perhaps out of rebellion to his father. The writers and Ethan Peck can have fun with playing up a more emotional Spock who is embracing his human side but perhaps through a series of tragic or upsetting events starts to repress those emotions again and becomes the more familiar Spock of TOS and beyond.
As far as potential romances for Spock goes, I know that Chapel is still pining away for Korby at this point but that doesn’t mean she can’t still subtly flirt or express an attraction to Spock as well. She’s only human after all. And if we lean into what JJ-verse Trek did, we could also get the hints of a romance blossoming between Spock and Uhura. I did really enjoy the chemistry between Spock and Una in the “Q & A” short but perhaps that is best left as just a professional respect and friendship between the two characters.
I am curious who will be the token queer character on the show although I do suspect it will be Erica Ortegas. There’s no reason that there can’t be more than one LGBT main character though. Even the more familiar characters are essentially blank slates and that goes for Pike too. I’m sure it would blow some minds if it turns out he was bisexual and had attractions to other men. Of course, I can see a lot of people having a problem with that like when Seven was revealed to be into Raffi.
@48. That’s one of the things that’s kept me from enjoying Lower Decks – the sense that every episode is just a way to cram in a bunch of references to previous Treks. One of the best things that TNG did (after “The Naked Now”) was to limit the references to the Original Series. It had the effect of giving TNG its own identity. A Captain Pike show was already going to struggle on that account. Having this many TOS characters on it makes it that much more difficult for the show to establish an identity separate from being TOS 0.5
This might be interesting to do, though I don’t know how the fans would take it. Anything we “know” from TOS because we were told about it, rather than seeing it ourselves, could be revealed as more ambiguous than we thought; or even that what we thought was the true story was actually a cover-up. It’s how Neil Gaiman adapted Beowulf: the uncorroborated part of the story is revealed to be a fiction.
About the casting, I’m a little uneasy about this genealogical approach. For me, Benedict Cumberbatch was wrong for the role of Khan because he didn’t look the part, not because of his ancestry per se.
In the Godfather saga, Don Vito Corleone is played by Marlon Brando, who did not have a scintilla of Italian ancestry. (The name was originally Brandau.) His grandson and eventual successor, Vincent, is played by Cuban-American actor Andy Garcia.
@43. ChristopherLBennett:
Thank you for the interesting conversation.
46. Sunspear:
I took your advice.
I’m sorry, but isn’t SNW taking place 8-10 years before TOS? I just don’t buy Uhura, Chapel or M’Benga being on board that long ago, especially Dr M’Benga didn’t appear until Season 2 of TOS ( I know some one will bring up Chekov in Wrath of Khan, but that is another nit I pick with that other wise excellent movie), I have no problem with adding more POC to the cast, but why not just create more new characters than trying to show horn in “Legacy” characters? I’ve only seen Discovery once thru, must of missed the bit at the end of season 2 where Pike called No 1 “Una”, that makes me cringe, couldn’t the writers come up with a better name than that? Well its not as bad as some of the fan suggestions I thing one was she came from a planet and she the best of her kind and was designated “No. 1”, they could have called “Nancy Smith” for all I care. I also don’t buy having a Cadet (Uhura or otherwise) on the bridge
@54: I believe SNW takes place about 5 years before TOS so it’s perfectly plausible M’Benga, Chapel, and Uhura are all aboard the Enterprise and gives plenty of time for Uhura to go from cadet to lieutenant.
Regarding Chekov in TWOK, there’s no reason he couldn’t have been just a junior/non-bridge officer during the first season of TOS so that he wasn’t seen but was still around and would have known who Khan was so that he’d recognize him in TWOK.
@51/taras: “This might be interesting to do, though I don’t know how the fans would take it. Anything we “know” from TOS because we were told about it, rather than seeing it ourselves, could be revealed as more ambiguous than we thought; or even that what we thought was the true story was actually a cover-up.”
Roddenberry himself was known to suggest (e.g. in the preface to his Star Trek: The Motion Picture novelization) that TOS was just a dramatization after the fact of Kirk’s “real” adventures. I suspect he was influenced by his first TV job, writing up real police cases to be dramatized by Dragnet. But he used the idea to explain TOS’s flaws and bad ideas as the result of dramatic license or adaptation error, e.g. suggesting that Klingons had always had ridges and TOS just hadn’t depicted them correctly. I find it’s a handy way to deal with things in the modern shows too, like DSC’s insane giant turboshaft interiors.
@54/kaw211: If the in-story interval since Discovery season 2 matches the real-time interval, then SNW should be set in 2260-1, only 5-6 years before TOS season 1. Chapel’s presence suggests ’61, since she joined Starfleet after Roger Korby disappeared in that year.
““Una”, that makes me cringe, couldn’t the writers come up with a better name than that?”
The writers of the Star Trek: Legacies novel trilogy gave Number One that name in honor of their fellow Trek novelist Una McCormack. It was then adopted by the show itself.
I like the explanation in one of the Greg Cox books that (SPOILER)…
…Chekov was head of the security detachment that settled Khan on Ceti Alpha V. So he really was the last Starfleet face he saw. A neat way to bookend his lovely stay there.
@57/Wishbone: In DC Comics’s Who’s Who in Star Trek, Allan Asherman proposed that Chekov had worked in engineering at the time and had led the resistance against Khan’s takeover, hence Khan remembering him. I borrowed that explanation in my first novel Ex Machina, and our editor Marco Palmieri suggested to Greg that he allude to it in To Reign in Hell so we’d be consistent. Though Greg also added Chekov being there for the resettlement.
@58. Oh cool, I like that extra layer. Chekov sure was busy that day, haha.
@59/Wishbone: I’m sure it took more than a day to get to Ceti Alpha. Kirk just said “our heading takes us near” that system — that could mean it was weeks away, for all we know. Maybe it was just the first suitable planet reasonably close to the ship’s heading. Alpha Ceti (as it’s correctly called) is actually pretty far from Earth, almost too far for a sublight sleeper ship to have reached in 270 years. It would make more sense if it were some distance away at warp.
It’s just an expression…
@56 said: If the in-story interval since Discovery season 2 matches the real-time interval, then SNW should be set in 2260-1, only 5-6 years before TOS season 1. Chapel’s presence suggests ’61, since she joined Starfleet after Roger Korby disappeared in that year.
That kind of makes we wonder if the overall arc of SNW has Pike realizing he’s nearing the point of his vision on Boreth and looking to “stock up” the Enterprise crew with the best and brightest in Starfleet for “the next guy.” At least that would provide a solid context for all the TOS characters aside from Spock.
@63/twels: Five years isn’t that close, and I’m not sure his vision specified when it would happen anyway.
Really, the last thing I want is for them to dwell on Pike’s future vision. Enough with the callbacks to old stories. Tell us stuff about Christopher Pike we haven’t known for 55 years already!
It occurs to me that, once upon a time, fans of the Arthurian cycle had arguments just like this ….
@64: I’d say the revelation that Pike knew that he was going to be so severely injured is a pretty big shift in our understanding of who Pike is. I actually think Discovery did a great job of showing us the growth of Captain Pike from the time period of the Cage – and I’m hoping that SNW continues that arc
@64/CLB: I don’t think the show needs to have Pike dwelling on his specific vision, as you said. However, learning you are going to die or be permanently maimed does change a person like anyone who is diagnosed with a terminally fatal disease or a condition like becoming a quadriplegic. Therefore, the show has to rightfully show how Pike has now changed as a person including his outlook on life.
@67/garreth: Fine, but don’t build his entire personality around that. There should be more to the show than just nostalgia and revisiting past plots. It’s literally called Strange New Worlds. Let it earn that title.
@68/CLB: I think with so many new/blank slate fascinating characters, and the shift back to an episodic format, that the premise of “new” and “strange” should be easily lived up to.
While there’s no reason a young Uhura, Chapel and M’Benga can’t be on the Enterprise it’s seems quite unecessary that they should be.
@69/garreth: Which doesn’t mean it would be a good idea to build Pike’s whole character around the fact that he knows his future. I mean, come on, is that really such a shocking proposal, that there might actually be more about the guy worth learning than just that one plot point? I mean, he’s a whole person. He has a whole life behind him. There has to be more worth knowing about the guy than stuff that grows out of “The Menagerie.” Okay, acknowledge that part, but don’t obsess over it.
@71: I agree that there needs to be more than just what came out of The Cage/Menagerie. That said, they’re really the foundational pieces for Christopher Pike. An example of the successful ways the writerswere able to build on that foundation was in the Discovery episode where we learn that Pike’s father taught Comparative Religion. We learn where the hellish “fable you were once told as a child” likely comes from – and also that Pike’s relationship with his father was difficult.
@70 I agree with Chapel and Uhuru (though I bet they’re not gonna resist tweaking the “romance” strings with Spock).
But Dr. M’Benga? He’s the sort of character that I think would be ideal to have—virutal blank slate but definitely a part of TOS.
While it’s interesting the writers decided to jettison the characters of Dr. Boyce, Yeoman Colt, and Jose Tyler, it makes sense when you realize they would have been stuck with a mostly white male cast. Swapping out those former characters for respectively, Dr. M’Benga, Cadet Uhura, and Erica Ortega was surely the right way to go as well as tying directly into TOS nostalgia for a couple of those characters.
I read on another site that Ortega is possibly a security officer (perhaps just based on the red shirt). If so, I’m getting Macha Hernandez vibes which was actually the original template for Tasha Yar (and based off of the character, Private Vasquez, from Aliens which inspired Gene Roddenberry to do the Macha Hernandez/Tasha Yar character). On a related tangent, I only just discovered that Private Vasquez was played by a white woman, Jenette Goldstein, and painted in brown face. Mind blown!
@74/garreth: “While it’s interesting the writers decided to jettison the characters of Dr. Boyce, Yeoman Colt, and Jose Tyler, it makes sense when you realize they would have been stuck with a mostly white male cast.”
Also, the time frame might be as much as 7-8 years after “The Cage,” so it stands to reason there’d be some crew turnaround.
Besides, we already got more Boyce and Colt, just under the names McCoy and Rand. And the guy we know as “Jose Tyler” was, within the final episode itself, just some unnamed blond guy whose lines are mostly exposition.
“I read on another site that Ortega is possibly a security officer (perhaps just based on the red shirt).”
It’s also for engineering and operations, so that would be jumping to a conclusion. Still, Ortegas does have kind of a “military” look.
“I only just discovered that Private Vasquez was played by a white woman, Jenette Goldstein, and painted in brown face.”
Goldstein played the Enterprise-B science officer in GEN and voiced the Enterprise computer in Short Treks: “Q&A” and “Ephraim and Dot.” I wonder if she’ll reprise the role in SNW.
@75/CLB: I knew that Goldstein was in Generations which was a very nice circle considering that it was her character in Aliens which inspired Tasha Yar. But before you commented on it, I also just read how she voiced the Enterprise computer in a couple of Short Treks. I also think it would be cool if she cemented that role on a permanent basis on SNW.
Military personnel do move around, no reason why Boyce, Tyler and Colt should still be assigned to the Enterprise. Boyce may have retired, Colt has good reason to request reassignment and Tyler could have been transferred or promoted off ship. But I still don’t see why they have to be replaced by Uhura, Chapel and M’Benga. What’s wrong with original characters?
@78/roxana: On the one hand, I would’ve liked more original characters too. On the other hand, it’s fair to say that Uhura got the least development of any of the core TOS cast, never even getting a subplot focused on her, so I can see the value of trying to make up for that. Also, underdeveloped characters like her and the other two have plenty of room for further exploration, just as Pike and Number One do. M’Benga in particular was only in two episodes, so he’s practically a blank slate.
Come to think of it, it just occurred to me… M’Benga is an expert in Vulcan medicine, which Spock probably appreciated and benefitted from during their service together. And then Kirk brings in this “old country doctor” who acts like he’s never seen a Vulcan before and is constantly complaining about Spock’s weird alien anatomy. Could that be the reason Spock clashed so much with McCoy and showed so little respect for his talents? Because he displaced the doctor that Spock liked better?
@@@@@79/ChristopherLBennett: Bones as a “human supremacist” — I like it!
Africa is a very big place, with a vast number of peoples and languages. Did they ever figure out what part of Africa Uhura is from? (Just don’t tell me it’s Wakanda …)
@80/taras: Uhura speaks Swahili which is most commonly spoken in East Africa.
@80/taras: Uhura’s birthplace was never canonically specified, but she’s usually assumed to be Kenyan. Alan Dean Foster’s Star Trek Log Ten posited Kitui, Kenya as her birthplace, while William Rotsler’s Star Trek II Biographies — the source of “Nyota” as her first name — posited Nairobi, and Margaret Wander Bonanno’s Catalyst of Sorrows said that she lived in Mombasa as a child.
As for languages, we know from “The Man Trap” and “The Changeling” that Swahili is her native tongue, which is consistent with her name. She’s often been described as Bantu, though that hardly narrows her origins down geographically.
According to Wikipedia, Swahili is a lingua franca with a lot of Arab loan words, which developed to facilitate trade between Arabs and locals speaking various Bantu languages. It’s spoken as a first language by only a few people, and a second or third language by many
… by many people in a dozen countries. Of course, over 200 years, that may have changed. But it doesn’t seem to do much to narrow down Uhura’s background. I mean, we know Kirk comes from Iowa, not just North America.
P.S.: I accidentally posted the first half of this prematurely. There doesn’t seem to be any way to fix that.
CLB, Come to think of it, it just occurred to me… M’Benga is an expert in Vulcan medicine,
That’s a slight continuity snarl right there, M’Benga, the Vulcan medical specialist is first seen after Amok Time and Journey to Babel have underlined the need for such a specialist. If he’s already aboard where is he during those episodes? Of course M’Benga could have transferred off the Enterprise at any time over the eleven intervening episodes and they come back. I do hope they don’t have Chapel mooning over Spock, she’s supposed to be mooning over Roger Corby.
@83/taras: That same Wikipedia article does say that Kiswahili is the first language for many Tanzanians, and that there have been efforts in Kenya to integrate it as a national language and require it in schools.
And so what if it has a lot of Arabic loan words? That just means it has a history. English is a hybrid of Anglo-Saxon, French, and Norse vocabulary, among others.
M’Benga could easily have transferred off Enterprise some time prior to Kirk taking over, and then Spock requested that he be reassigned after McCoy’s incompetence nearly got him and his father killed in “Journey to Babel.”
—-Keith R.A. DeCandido
@85: In my experience with the human race, individuals in relationships still flirt with others, have crushes, cheat, have affairs, and then there’s the whole polyamory thing. There’s no reason that Chapel, a human, couldn’t be having romantic or lustful thoughts about Spock as well as expressing them, all the while still pining for Korby.
Anyhoo, I strongly believe we’ll see some Spock/Uhura romancing to echo the Kelvin-timeline films and some Spock/Uhura musical numbers à la “Charlie X.”
@86/ChristopherLBennett: Interesting. Perhaps we should place Uhura in what is now Tanzania. (Where there are actually poets writing in Swahili, it sez here.)
On the other hand, the articles on the languages of Tanzania and Kenya indicate that English and Swahili are used for intergroup communication, while people speak their “mother tongues” back home; i.e., within their ethnic group.
I think it would be nice if Star Trek acknowledged that Africa is not a country, but a continent containing many countries, each of which contains a wide variety of ethnic groups speaking an astonishing variety of languages. Uhura might mention, offhand, that she speaks Kikuyu or Maasai when she goes home.
@87/krad said:
M’Benga could easily have transferred off Enterprise some time prior to Kirk taking over, and then Spock requested that he be reassigned after McCoy’s incompetence nearly got him and his father killed in “Journey to Babel.”
—-Keith R.A. DeCandido
Conversely, McCoy might’ve asked him back when he realized that a Vulcan anatomy specialist might be needed due to Kirk constantly bringing Spock in missions where he gets shot and blasted by poisonous flowers ..
@18 – Wishbone: Maybe Spock, being a rebel, decided to follow some offshoot Vulcan sect that experimented with being more emotional, in order to fit in better with other species in Starfleet.
@38 – krad: People here pronunce Keith (Richards) as “Kate”, and it drives me crazy.
And naming conventions have gone out the window pretty much everywhere. Chuck Norris is as white anglo as they come, yet his father named him Carlos after a good friend. In my country, you will find hundreds of people that do not fill the “white” stereotype for many, yet are named Walter González, Jonathan Pérez, or Michael Rámirez (and creative spellings like Yonatan, Maicol, etc).
@49 – garreth: I also suspect Ortegas is intended to be LGBTQ, and I thought it’s a bit of a trope to have the short-haired Hispanic as being Lesbian or Bisexual (even remove the Hispanic). It would be bolder (and you can have several queer characters) to have Pike be bi/pan, or Uhura.
@50 – twels: I disagree. Yes, Lower Decks is chockful of references, but the references are on top of an actual plot and character development (however slowly), and their own themes.
@51 – taras: There is a lot more distance between an East Asian and a caucasian, than between an Italian and Hispanic person.
@74 – garreth: I’m so glad they never got to use the name MACHA, it’s effing ridiculous, particularly for what would have probably been a tomboyish security officer. Scratch that, it would have been stupid for anyone.
Studying the cast list from IMDB, there are some interesting things:
1) There’s a child actress listed as “Rukiya” for three episodes, so she’ll probably have some kind of storyline.
2) There is a child actress listed as “Young La’an” (Noonien-Singh), so she will probably get some sort of flashback sequence (as long as it’s not a deaging situation).
No computer voice listed, though. I suspect they will use the same actress as on Disco.
@93/costumer: “200 years from now Africa may be one country.”
Geordi’s bio screen in TNG: “Cause and Effect” establishes that he’s from the African Confederation. Non-canonically, the TOS bible says that Uhura is a citizen of the United States of Africa.
All true, but either of those designations, and the name could have changed from Uhura’s time to Geordi’s, could still be provinces to a world government. And they could be intended as the Earth having a United Nations type arrangement, but with a lot more authority than the current United Nations have.
I think most independent countries would like not like a “United Nations,” that could dictate to them, which is why I favor that Africa et al are closer to states or provinces of a single nation. But either, or something entirely different, could be the case.
@87, Or Bones put in for a Vulcan specialist so as not to be caught out like that again. Of course Bones also points out in JtB that Spock is very much a one off, different from a Vulcan baseline as well as Human. Maybe he figures that he and a Vulcan specialist between them should be able to cope with Spock’s weird physiology.