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How Spock kept the crew together for Star Trek: The Animated Series
The crew that explores space together, stays together!
After Star Trek: The Original Series ended in 1969, fans were eager for more adventures on the USS Enterprise. They were eventually rewarded with the 1973 Filmation show, Star Trek: The Animated Series. The cartoon spin-off was meant to serve as an unofficial season four and pick up where the original series ended.
Most of the cast was set to reprise their roles: William Shatner as Captain Kirk, DeForest Kelley as Doctor McCoy, Majel Barrett as Nurse Chapel, James Doohan as Scotty, and, of course, Leonard Nimoy was returning to play Spock. There were a few glaring omissions in the cast, namely George Takei as Sulu and Nichelle Nichols as Uhura. It was decided that, due to budgetary reasons, the show couldn't afford them as voice actors and instead, Doohan and Barrett would voice Sulu and Uhura.
According to George Takei's autobiography, To the Stars: The Autobiography of George Takei, Leonard Nimoy entered the recording booth and immediately noticed that Takei and Nichols weren't there. "Leonard had learned of our not being included in the cast of this revival of the show and took action," Takei wrote, "Star Trek, (Nimoy) argued with Filmation, was at its core an affirmative vision of our future. That vision was based on the idea of drawing our strength from our diversity."
Nimoy felt that Takei and Nichols were a personification of that commitment to diversity, and if Filmation did not recognize their importance as cast members, then Nimoy would not be part of the animated series. This wasn't just a matter of principle for Nimoy, but a financial one too; many of the cast members had struggled to find work after the cancellation of the original series, and it seemed extra unfair that the only two minority actors would be left out of this new series.
When Spock speaks, producers listen, and luckily, when Nimoy refused to voice Spock, changes were made. "We were horrified at our unintended slight," said producer Lou Scheimer, "Made all the worse because we were the one studio who had been championing diversity in its output." The producers quickly made things right by hiring Nichols and Takei to voice their characters, reuniting the crew of the USS Enterprise for their next animated adventure.
