Which series was more racially diverse?
- Thread starter Warped9
- Start date
L
Lord Garth
Guest
Voyager
Female captain.
South American Indian first officer, played by a Hispanic actor.
Latina/Klingon engineer, played by a Hispanic actress.
Asian operations officer.
Black Vulcan security/tactical officer.
Major points for having more than just the token Asian and token black. TNG and DS9 didn't even have Asians as main characters.
EDIT: Also, Seven of Nine's character had the role of Outsider which, up until that point, had always been given to a male.
Female captain.
South American Indian first officer, played by a Hispanic actor.
Latina/Klingon engineer, played by a Hispanic actress.
Asian operations officer.
Black Vulcan security/tactical officer.
Major points for having more than just the token Asian and token black. TNG and DS9 didn't even have Asians as main characters.
EDIT: Also, Seven of Nine's character had the role of Outsider which, up until that point, had always been given to a male.
If we're talking about the characters (within the universe), then DS9 would probably be the most diverse. The only human characters amongst the main cast were Sisko, Jake, O'Brien and Bashir. And none of them were white American men - you had cultural/racial diversity. The rest of the major cast were alien - a Bajoran, a Trill, a Shapeshifter, a Ferengi and a Klingon. The majority of the supporting characters were aliens (Gul Dukat, Rom) or non-white humans (Keiko, Kasidy).
Slight nitpick, but Bashir is supposed to be of South Asian-English descent (even though Siddig is of African descent).
But I do like the points you bring up with Voyager. As the Doctor pointed out, the crew even counts Tom Paris
As for DS9, to me that show probably came closest to portraying a true multi-cultural Federation, but it comes as something of a cheat compared to Voyager. It's one thing to have a large supporting cast and dozens of recurring characters that could be afforded on a starbase and/or a serialized show, but it's another one entirely to have that cast cover almost all the major races in the franchise. They even managed to touch upon the Augments!
DS9
TOS
L
Lord Garth
Guest
No, but...
And then Warped9 asked:
So I gave my answer based on more than one criterion, despite what the thread title asked.
Yeah, DS9 wins. As mentioned above, no white American male characters. Interestingly, though, TOS was pretty darn diverse for its day. Only 3 of the 7 lead characters were Americans (Kirk, McCoy, and Sulu, and for all we knew, Sulu was *from* Asia, not of Asian origin), and the ensemble of actors sported two Canadians (Shatner and Doohan), a woman, three Jewish folks (Shatner, Nimoy, and Koenig), an Asian-American, and an African-American female. And possibly just as radical as Uhura's race and gender (and Spock's species!) was Chekov's nationality, what with that pesky Cold War and all.
On the other hand, Keiko probably had more character development than Harry Kim ever did.
What about all those illegal aliens I hear about on the talk box?
I think Molly might have him beat also.
I'd go for DS9 too. Voyager did have a female captain sure but both Kira and Jadzia captained a fair few times too. Hell the command structure on DS9 was Sisko, Kira and Dax until Worf showed up.
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