One of the great strengths of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is the way that it adds further depth to characters from Star Trek: The Original Series like Lieutenant Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols.) Celia Rose Gooding plays a younger version of Uhura in Strange New Worlds, and her Cadet Uhura has received more character development than her predecessor in season 1. Despite the positive representation of a young Black woman aboard the Starship Enterprise, Uhura as a character often had very little to do in TOS, to Nichelle Nichols' disappointment.
Famously, Dr. Martin Luther King convinced Nichelle Nichols to stay on Star Trek because she was such a positive role model for Black people, especially girls. In the years following Star Trek, Nichelle Nichols went on to work with NASA to increase the diversity of the institution's prospective astronauts. In fact, the real-life story of Nichelle Nichols was often much more interesting and exciting than that of Nyota Uhura in Star Trek, an oversight that Strange New Worlds is finally fixing.
