10 Things You Never Knew About Star Trek: The Animated Series

3. First Female Command

Star Trek has always looked to break down barriers and promote diversity and inclusion. For the first time in Trek, the Animated Series would see a female in command of the Enterprise.

In the episode, “The Lorelei Signal”, Enterprise is investigating a part of space where ships often go missing. They are lured to a specific planet by a mysterious frequency that affects only male officers.

Kirk takes an all-male away team to the surface, and they become trapped by the female led population, while back on the Enterprise, Scotty has also succumbed to the siren’s song. Uhura relieves him and takes command of the ship.

Spock signals the Enterprise and requests an all-female away team to interject. Uhura also leads an away team to the surface and rescues them.

The writer of the episode, Margaret Armen, was hesitant about writing it but realised that Uhura is a qualified officer and more than capable of taking command.

And not to be done in isolation, the episode “BEM”, also has Uhura take command. In this episode, with Kirk, Spock, Sulu and Scotty on the away team, Uhura was the ranking officer on the bridge and thus, was in command.

When Kirk and Spock go missing, Scotty wants to continue the search. However, these were not Kirk’s orders. We see Uhura superseding Scotty’s wishes, bringing Scotty and Sulu back to the Enterprise.