Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Hugh Culber
Doctor of many talents, actor of many firsts, Hugh Culber and Wilson Cruz changed the game.
The doctor character has defined Star Trek from the outset. The first episode of the franchise to be broadcast — The Man Trap — was essentially a McCoy episode, and the trinity of Kirk, Spock, and Bones grew to be the stuff of legend. Aside from a brief interlude, Doctor Crusher took over the hyposprays in The Next Generation, and proved how kickass she was in Picard. Voyager's Doctor fought for holographic rights; Phlox set the tone for bedside manner with a smile; and Doctor Bashir grew from manchild to man of the hour. Plus, let's not forget Phil Boyce, Joseph M'Benga, Caitian creative curser T'Ana, and Doctor Chapel.
As doctor aboard the USS Discovery, Hugh Culber, and actor Wilson Cruz, added his own uniquely essential component to the already weighty Trek medkit. He was one half of the electric toothbrush power couple with husband, and I-hope-you-like-mushrooms-in-every-dish, Paul Stamets — the first openly gay characters in Trek's then 50-some year history.
Culber quickly became a popular character — his affable, caring, and charmingly sarcastic personality playing a much-needed foil to the naturally more mean-spirited mirror universe Lorca — and fans were not pleased when death, if not a trope, befell him. In true Trek fashion, he was not dead for long, and his resurrection offered up a series of new challenges.
With season five set to be Discovery's last, it's time we took a closer look at the ship's pioneering physician.
10. Pathways To Medicine
When we met Doctor Hugh Culber for the first time in the second most lengthily titled episode in Star Trek history, The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry, he was fixing his husband's broken face. Counterposing Stamets' somewhat more 'prickly' nature, Culber's sense of humour and boundless compassion were immediately apparent. By the time it came to the pyjama toothbrush scene in Choose Your Pain, fans were hooked on the character.
Clearly a skilled physician, Culber had a rather distinctive reason for getting into medicine. At just 16 years old, he was hiking the cliffs of Cabo Rojo in Puerto Rico alone when the path beneath him gave way, causing him to fall 15 metres. He would have died from a shoulder wound had it not been for the intervention of one Doctor Kashkooli who risked her life to save his. This heroic act inspired the young Culber to go to medical school, and to keep the ("sexy," to quote his husband) scar as a reminder.
In an interview for TrekMovie, Culber actor Wilson Cruz spoke about the equally perilous road the wartime doctor would have to walk during Discovery's first season. He pointed to previous Trek doctors — McCoy and Crusher in particular — as providing a path to find the "heart" for his character.