First Look At Star Trek’s New Uhura In Strange New Worlds
Now the era of Christopher Pike and the Enterprise is getting its own show, and they're bringing along some of the original series characters with them. In particular, they're bringing back Uhura.
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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is CBS’s latest spinoff from Star Trek: Discovery series. It stars Anson Mount as Captain Christopher Pike, a character originally played by Jeffrey Hunter in the original, unaired Star Trek pilot. CBS eventually went a different direction and hired William Shatner to play Captain Kirk, but Pike was always canon as the Enterprise’s captain before James T. Now the era of Christopher Pike and the Enterprise is getting its own show, and they’re bringing along some of the original series characters with them. In particular, they’re bringing back Uhura from Star Trek: The Original Series.
That’s right Lt. Uhura, the Enterprise communications officer under Captain Kirk in Star Trek: The Original Series will also be on the Enterprise under Captain Pike. Celia Rose Gooding has been cast to play Cadet Uhura, the character originally made famous by the great Nichelle Nichols. Here’s Gooding in costume as Uhura on the Enterprise bridge for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds…
For comparison, here’s how Nichelle Nichols looked as Star Trek’s original Uhura…
Gooding was introduced as Uhura as part of Star Trek day, in a special video introducing all the characters of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Here’s the full video, which has a few more big surprises in it…
In addition to Uhura, serious Star Trek fans will immediately be excited to see Nurse Chapel, Dr. McCoy’s right hand in his days on the ship, as part of the show. Nurse Chapel was in numerous episodes of the original series, where she was played by Star Trek legend Majel Barrett. Now she’ll be played by Jess Bush.
In addition to Star Trek: The Original series’ Uhura they’re also bringing in Dr. Mbenga, who was sort of like Leonard McCoy’s backup doctor when Captain Kirk was in command. The character appeared in a few episodes of the original series. Now he’s being played by Babs Olusanmokun.
If you’re wondering how character’s like Star Trek: The Original Series‘ Uhura could be on the ship years before James T. Kirk showed up and whether it all still makes sense, rest assured it does. When we see Uhura on Kirk’s Enterprise, she’s a Lieutenant. That means she’s been serving in Starfleet for awhile, and here she’s a mere Cadet. She would have been hard at work in Starfleet somewhere during this era, it’s not a reach to believe she could have still been on the Enterprise but ranked up to Lieutenant when Kirk took command. The same is true for Chapel and M’Benga.
A little more confusing however is the introduction of a character named La’an Noonien-Singh. Her name is an obvious reference to Khan Noonien-Singh, Star Trek’s greatest villain and James T. Kirk’s ultimate nemesis.
During this time period Khan is frozen and floating around waiting to be discovered in the Botany Bay, so it’s hard to imagine how La’an connects to him. It’s possible she’s some sort of great-great-great granddaughter of the once upon a time superman. Though whey they’d go through the trouble to make her a character in the crew is anyone’s guess, but she’ll be serving right alongside Star Trek’s new Uhura as a member of Starfleet.
