The role of Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, a beautiful and talented bridge crew-person of African descent was originally played by the iconic Nichelle Nichols in Star Trek. She’s made countless appearances in the franchise as the character.
It’s hard to imagine that Lt Uhura could be portrayed as a Caucasian woman but here we have it. Wrap your heads around it. It also seems that the role of Sulu is depicted as a Black or perhaps South Asian.
In 1975, Peter Pan, a long-time children’s record publisher, created eleven Star Trek stories. These took the form of both 7 and 12 inch vinyl records and often with a read along comic book.
Presumably, a Black voice actor was not hired to play Uhura. Rather than have a White voice actor perform a Black character, they simply depicted the character as White instead. The ethnicity of the voice actor playing Sulu, however, is unclear. None of the original TV series actors did voices for these recordings. With these unexpected changes, it get’s a bit uncanny. You might think we’ve been zapped over to an alternate universe.
The story on the actual record is charming or course. We won’t spoil it for you.
If you liked this episode, check out the CHDanhauser YouTube Channel . They uploaded several of these about two years ago. I’ve checked out a few and they are all pretty good. I can only assume that none of these are considered official cannon.
But who is FREAKING OUT about this? Well nobody. That was just a click-bait headline. Nobody should be freaked out by this.
FunHouse Radio 