Star Trek: Strange New Worlds [SPOILERS]

Black doctor "from the original series?" This character...?



"Biodun" is a Nigerian name, apparently. So could be. The character doesn't seem old enough in TOS to be in his 40s for SNW.

As for the diversity casting, I have little problem with it as such. I do eyeroll a bit at the female security chief and female combat vet just because they feel like they're past their sell date as innovations go.

No shit. They also could have gone with Colt. Like I said, they already an easy setup, but for some reason are choosing not to use that setup.

Yeah, especially with security chief as it touches on the "male proxy" problem. combat vet is a little less annoying in a future setting, but likewise agree it shouldn't be a unique nor defining character trait.

he's only 37 in this pic. If it is him, gonna need to do some ret-conning

Looking more into the character... M'Benga is written as Ugandan.
BG vis a vis Memory ALpha

This character was actually created by Darlene Hartman, in her purchased (but never produced) TOS script entitled "Shol". The notes for that script give Dr. M'Benga's first name as "Joseph", and note that he was originally a native of Uganda. His brother, Commander Simon M'Benga, was the first officer of USS Hope, a Federation hospital ship, in the planned-but-never-developed Star Trek spinoff Hopeship. [1]

Oh, I bet it's THIS guy...Commodore Stone from "Court Martial."



He didn't strike me as particularly African (in the sense of being a native of an African nation rather than, say, a black American) but he's the right age and sorta fits the description.

The only other black character who would've been about the right age in TOS that I can think of is Dr. Daystrom, but (1) he doesn't seem to be a medical doctor and (2) there doesn't seem to be any connection between him and Spock.

yeah... it'd make sense he's jsut a wholly original character that gosh darn, we simply haven't seen in the what? 12 years between the cage and WNMHGB.

sidenote: as I've mentioned, the casting really reflects Toronto. We have a fairly substantial Afro-Caribbean population entering a second to third generation and there's a cultural ambition to medicine/health services that 20-30 years ago would have been ascribed to Asians/Indians.

They should just make him an original character. I can't imagine why it would be important--other than just gratuitous fan service--to connect him to TOS.

I'm racking my brain but I can't come up with anyone else in TOS who would be significant.

Black + male + doctor + TOS + 40ish a decade before TOS =/= a lot of possibilities.

I guess it has to be M'Benga, but, if so, they do have the age messed up.

As I recall TNG era history, Africa was unified continent by first contact which may or may not imply a significant Black migration between say the Eugenics Wars and United Earth? It just seems a lot of Black characters have African birthplaces... I'm kind of struggling to think of a main one other than Sisko who wasn't, come to think of it. Where's the love for mi yardie bredren?

Well, it's a TV show, so we can't really know anything because none of it's real! But I always assumed black characters with names like Stone, Daystrom, Cartwright, etc. were "non-African" blacks, and that those with African names like Uhura, M'Benga, Boma(?), etc. were from Africa.

Sisko's an American (from Louisiana). I thought Geordie La Forge was an American (or Canadian), but Memory Alpha says he's from...Somalia?!? Well, maybe people moved around a lot, 'cause he doesn't look very Somali to me!

Don't know where Terrell (TWOK) is from, but seems American. So does Emory Erickson (transporter inventor, ENT). Yamato Captain Donald Varley also seems American (I note with sadness that the actor who played him died just a couple of years after his episode of TNG aired).

Eh, I seem to recall folks thinking that Pine was the wrong age to play Kirk when he was announced. Personally, I think that the national identification in Trek is a little silly. I have a feeling that if we ever get out there and explore the galaxy, Earth will be a united planet and national identities won't be that big of a deal. That one TOS episode where Chekov says that the Garden of Eden was just outside of Moscow and Kirk responds with, "Is all your history so distorted?" always struck me as being wrong. Even when I was a little kid.

you realize that constantly railing against "virtue signalling" is, in fact...


signally a (presumed) virtue.

Physician heal thyself.

It's hard to imagine a more perfectly constructed self-refuting claim.

The whole idea that there's even such a thing as a "SJW" and that being an SJW is by definition objectionable is...well...

Well not only that but the thesis that "I am absolutely NOT a Nazi, it is just a coincidence that I use the same terminology they do and and pissed off by most of the same things they bitch about and that people keep mistakenly thinking I sound like I nazi - but I know for a fact I'm not a Nazi" doesn't really come off as the compelling rebuttal it's intended to be.

I mean, rationally at some point in time you take a moment for self reflection and ask "why is it every last person I interact with mistake me for something I'm not?" Is it likely that they are ALL wrong?

maybe it's his dad?

One of the reasons that I wish they'd gone with Colt is because there exists a perfect actress for the part

if they want to represent something we haven't seen before...have we had a Caribbean black actor yet? Cuban/Jamaican/Dominican? Not that the announced name has any Latin to it but it's an angle

where are we getting that the doc will have a TOS connection?

Only a person who lives in a left wing echo chamber thinks like this. Again, there’s plenty of Trek fans who aren’t “Nazis” who don’t agree wyou. You’re just so used to calling anyone who you don’t agree with Nazis or racists for so long, you think it’s normal. Spoiler alert, it’s not. You’re in the minority.

I wanna guess Lt. Oway, but how would we know, there’s been little character development for anyone else other than Burnham even though the secondary characters are more interesting.

The worst an "SJW", is ever gonna do is ask that the medieval sex workers in a teenage boy's video games have some character depth and agency instead of being fuck-puppets.

An anti-SJW will run you over with a fucking truck.

Hold me at gunpoint to choose, I'll hang out with the SJW.
Matter of fact, you don't need the fucking gun.

Madge Sinclair, who is Jamaican, was in TNG as Geordi's "mom" in Interface.

And your buddies in Youtube comments sections aren't among them.

Owo is short for "Owosekun," which would seem to be an African name. Presumably, the character is also from Africa. The actress who portrays her is Nigerian.

Second picture doesn't show, so we're all left in suspense as to who the perfect Yeoman Colt would be.

yup, but her character isn't...

like I'm asking, where's mi yardies at?

I mean, we technically don't know about Silvia LaForge. We know Geordi was born in the African Confederation, and we know Silvia speaks with Madge's Jamaican accent. The character herself could be 100 percent a Jamaican.

Wait. So they’re not using established characters from a 54 year old unaired television episode of Star Trek? No beloved Dr. Boyce? And what about Jose? Without these characters I just don’t see how anyone will connect to it today? Millennials and Gen Zers will need a pretty good reason why their favorite background characters from a two part clip show are being shown such disrespect.

It ain't Star Trek without Jose Tyler.