Star Trek: Pitch & Guide> Guide Part 4–The Rest Of The Crew

In the last installment we looked at the third revision writer’s guide bios on the three Enterprise crewmen who got to be in the opening credits. This time we’ll look at the rest of the cast.

Even Star Trek: The Next Generation had recurring characters in the closing credits. I don’t remember if Guinan ever got to be in the main credits, but if she did I don’t think it was her early appearances. The supporting cast is also important, especially in a show set on a starship that travels around the universe doing science stuff, protecting the worlds and colonies of the Federation, and having adventures at every corner. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy can’t do everything. They aren’t Tom Paris.

While there are only two pages we get five characters with a history. The two men share one page and the three girls the second, due to more info on Scotty and Sulu than on Uhura, Nurse Chapel, and Yeoman Rand. Chapel and Rand I can understand, as there were a lot of episodes where the only reason Majel Barrett had anything to do was that she doubled as the ship’s computer, a benefit of sleeping with the showrunner. Oh shut up, they were married! Grace Lee Whitney could be gone for multiple episodes as she had so little to do. She would later earn a command rank, so we all start somewhere. Admittedly even I was ready to chock it up to Gene’s reported casual sexism, seeing as Uhura was on often enough that she should get as much written about her as Scotty and Sulu, but I don’t know for certain if that’s in play here with her.

If you think that means this will be short, the part with the main three took a page each and by the time I was done was all one article. So I’m betting I can at least fill this one. Let’s get reading.

Yes, that’s supposed to be Uhura and Sulu. In a comic book and record from well after both the live and animated shows aired.

SULU–Ship’s Helmsman, played by actor George Takei. Mixed oriental in ancestry, Japanese predominating. Sulu is contemporary American in speech and manner. In fact, his attitude toward Asians is that they seem rather “inscrubitle”.

Okay, I have to stop mid-paragraph to say…WHAT? I’ve never heard Sulu put down other Asians. (Oriental was still in use back then, and frankly neither word is accurate just because they share an eye socket shape.) Takei himself is full Japanese by ancestry and American by birth, which still led him to spend time in the segregation camps during World War II as a child along with his family, but also led him to have a vocal role in early Godzilla movie dubs (Godzilla Raids Again/Gigantis The Fire Monster if memory serves) that also led to a number of voice acting roles beyond the animated Star Trek, including two different Transformers continuities. He and Nimoy have also done audio shows and audiobooks.

And while I wasn’t expecting to reference Voyager twice in this article, it sounds like they wanted Hikaru Sulu to represent all “Asians/Orientals” in the same way Chakotay tried to represent all Native Americans. Except we never saw that in Sulu while Chakotay became a running gang of which tribe he actually was part of. (Beltran was actually the son of Mexican immigrants. At least Sulu got something right.) We never saw Sulu put down anyone else in that group, so I don’t know what anyone was thinking here, but thankfully the writers thought better.

Sulu fancies himself more of an old-world “D’Artagnan” than anything else. He is a compulsive hobbyist; one week may be fascinated by botany with the intention of that becoming his lifelong avocation, then another week we’ll find he has switched to a determination of acquiring a galaxy-famous collection of alien firearms. And like all “collectors”, he is forever giving his friends a thousand reasons why they, too should take on the same hobby.

Well thank God that never happened. While the “D’Artagnan” part might be reflected in his reaction to the crazy plage from “The Naked Time” and we did see an interest in old Earth firearms in “Shore Leave”, but he didn’t have a new hobby every time we saw him (another tie to Chakotay), nor did he ramble on about it like that guy we knew in high school who wouldn’t stop quoting Spaceballs. Luckily there was more to him than that or he would have been annoying instead of a friend…but still.

Okay, real Sulu and the missing Chekov. Would still love to see if he got an entry in a later revision.

Although these bursts of enthusiasm make him something of a chatterbox, Sulu is a top Officer and one of the most proficient Helmsmen in the Starfleet Service. When the chips are down, he immediately becomes another character, a terse professional, whose every word and deed relate solely to the vessel and its safety. This pleasant and effective “dual personality” results in an Officer of rare equanimity, one whose personal life never intrudes on his job. He has never had to receive the same order from Kirk twice.

Thankfully they stuck to the “other personality”. He was easy to get along with, not a chatterbox, and he was a professional even when joking around with Chekov (who again wasn’t on the show when this guide was written) on the bridge between disasters, and they had good chemistry. Nowadays they’d probably make them date despite Takei himself stating that while he’s gay and an advocate for gay rights, Sulu was straight. One of the fan productions he was part of even introduced his daughter from an alternate timeline (long story) and on the rare occasion we saw him in a romantic pursuit it was with a woman. That didn’t stop the movies despite the protest of the very person they allegedly were paying tribute to. Hollywood is full of idiots.

They also forgot to mention the bad puns. So who do we blame for those?

ENGINEERING OFFICER SCOTT—Montgomery Scott, rank of Lt. Commander, Senior Engineering Officer on the U.S.S. Enterprise. Portrayed by James Doohan, he is known to most as “Scotty”, and with an accent that drips of heather and the Highlands.

Which if you’ve seen him anywhere else was not his actual accent. The only other times he used it was in the sci-fi comedy Homeboys From Outer Space (if you’ve never heard of it, I envy you) and an odd cameo in the reunion movie Knight Rider 2000. To hear his real accent check out Filmation’s Jason Of Star Command, where he played the base commander for the heroes. Why that base was built into the Space Academy because it was a spinoff of Space Academy, which also put Lost In Space‘s Jonathan Harris as the head of the Academy and not with his more famous role’s persona, is a question I’ve never heard explained. Both are proof you can do sci-fi and not be typecast. Doohan would also do numerous voices for Star Trek: The Animated Series, including replacements for actors who didn’t reprise their live-action roles. The man was talented, and his remains were actually sent to space when he passed.

Scotty came up through the ranks and his practical education is as broad as his formal training in Engineering. He has rare mechanical capacity, many claim he can put an engine together with baling wire and glue…and make it run. He regards the U.S.S. Enterprise as his personal vessel and the Engineering Section as his private world where even Captain James Kirk is merely a privileged trespasser.

I’d post the rest of it, but it just goes on and on about his love for the ship so much I expect it to talk about him loving the ship like Frank Miller loves city buildings and loose women. It would be accurate to his portrayals but it just goes too far. Also doesn’t mention anything about his second interest: alcohol. Scotty was a hard drinking man, but he could probably rebuild the entire engine while stinking drunk and have it work as good or better than it had before he started. Of course, we only saw him drunk once as a distraction in a comedic moment, so that’s more on later stories in comics and novels. I also don’t know why they underline “Engineer/Engineering” every time except that last one, talking about the Engineering Section. Were they trying to note a difference?

Next page and it’s on to the ladies.

Someday I should find another picture of her for the media library.

LIEUTENANT UHURA—Communications Officer, played by attractive young actress Nichelle Nichols. Uhura was born in the United States of Africa. Quick and intelligent, she is a highly efficient officer and expert in all ships systems relating to communications. Uhura is also a warm, highly female female off duty.

Sorry to break paragraph again, but “highly female female” just made me laugh for the wrong reasons. The rest of the paragraph talks about her being entertainment in the Recreation Room due to her singing. I don’t know if I’d call those ballads, but what do I know? I only review music as a storytelling tool. Not mentioned is the times she dueted with Spock on his Vulcan harp. I don’t know if Nimoy actually played, but those were some fun scenes with their performances. Nichols of course almost left the show after this, famously convinced to return by Dr. Martin Luther King because she was a black woman on 1960s TV in a position of authority and respect. She and Shatner also famously made the first interracial kiss on TV, though there is the asterisk of Kirk and Uhura being forced into it by a bunch of would-be Greek gods. Not counting the time they met an actual Greek god.

YEOMAN—Played by a succession of young actresses, always lovely. One such character has been well established in the first year, “YEOMAN JANICE RAND”, played by the lovely Grace Lee Whitney. Whether Yeoman Rand or a new character provided by the writer, this female Yeoman serves Kirk as his combination Executive Secretary-Valet=Military Aide. as such, she is always capable, a highly professional career girl. As with all female Crewmen aboard, during duty hours she is treated co-equal with males of the same rank, and the same level of efficient performance is expected. The Yeoman often carries a small over-the-shoulder case, a TRICORDER, about the size of a small handbag, which is also an electronic recorder-camera-sensor combination, immediately available to the Captain should he be away from his Command Console.

Geez, we learned more about the tricorder than we did the character. Yes, there were other yeomen, or at least someone showing up to give Kirk something to sign and that’s it. Rand actually took part in some stories, though usually playing the role of victim. No wonder Whitney never returned with everyone else, though she would make appearances showing her climb up the ladder. Still a shame this is all we get about her. I hope she made Admiral someday. Be a shame if Janeway did and she didn’t. And can I please stop referencing Voyager this installment? Please?

NURSE CHRISTINE CHAPEL—Introduced in an early episode and returning on several other occasions, Nurse Chapel is played by Majel Barrett. She is Dr. McCoy’s Head Nurse, a skilled Surgical Assistant, as near to a professional confidant as the irascible “Bones” McCoy is likely to have. That relationship never transgresses onto the personal and an unspoken bond is the fact that she, too, is in a Starfleet Service because of a tragic romance. Although she herself holds several university degrees in Research Medicine, she has found a measure of contentment in this life as a Starfleet Nurse and wanderer.

If you think being a nurse is a step down from doctor, you are wrong and clearly have never had a lengthy hospital stay. I got more from my nurses during mine than I did the doctors. They are a very important part of the recovery process. We’d actually get to see Chapel’s romantic issues when her old fiance was found in the episode “What Little Girls Are Made Of”, a season one story. It never played into her character again. Instead, she had an unrequited crush on Spock. I haven’t seen Strange New World, the Pike prequel series for the Prime timeline, but skimming her Memory Alpha profile made her sound like a badass because of course she was. She was a woman in a 24th century TV show. I’d expect Rand to have MMA skills and pursuing Uhura.

Yeah, not a lot about the ladies, but Uhura was the only major player among them, even getting to be in command position in both the original and animated series. (She even ran the ship in “The Lorelei Signal”, the obligatory “the men are under a siren’s song so it’s women to the rescue” back when that was interesting instead of social pandering…or at least it was pandering in a way everyone could enjoy the story. Yes, I got political there because this is the 2020s and it’s getting harder not to. At least I didn’t mention Voyager aga…dang it!)]

Next time we leave the story behind for a look at the sets they’ll be using for the show. In the pitch it was about the sets they needed to build. Now it’s the ones they don’t have to build to continue the show.