10 Star Trek Characters You Totally Forgot Existed

3. Dr M’Benga

Star Trek
Paramount

Appearing in just two episodes of The Original Series, Dr M'Benga is a character that Star Trek fans today will place in the new Strange New Worlds series premiering in 2022.

Played in that by Babs Olusanmokun, the character first stepped onscreen in 1967's A Private Little War and 1969's That Which Survives. Intended purely to act as a backup Chief Medical Officer when Dr McCoy was unavailable, Booker Bradshaw created a role that has now transcended 50 years of the franchise to appear aboard Captain Pike's NCC-1701.

M'Benga is definitely a forgotten and significant part of The Original Series with his expertise in Vulcan physiology coming in handy during his tenure on the Enterprise. A tenure we can now add that looks likely to have lasted a lot longer than we have previously known since it has now been confirmed that he served under Christopher Pike before the famous five year mission. He has been utilised in fan series such as Star Trek Continues and tie in novels. Thanks to the Vanguard series he managed to acquire a first name which has been revealed as Jabilo.

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A Star Trek fan from birth, I love to dive into every aspect of the franchise in front and behind the screen. There's something here that's kept me interested for the best part of four decades! Now I'm getting back into writing and using Star Trek as my first line of literary attack. If I'm not here on WhatCulture then you're more than welcome to come and take a look at my blog, Some Kind of Star Trek at http://SKoST.co.uk or maybe follow me on Twitter as @TheWarpCore. Sometimes I force myself not to talk about Star Trek.