re: #259 mmmirele
Well, think about it this way: one of the characters was obviously Japanese, and we’d only finished up a war with Japan in 1945. Another character was obviously Russian, and we had the Cold War going on. Lt. Uhura was African-American and a woman! Yeah, of course the captain was supposed to be a white male, but Roddenberry knew what he was doing. And as a kid watching ST:TOS, I couldn’t help but absorb that the future world could be a better place. We’re still trying to get there.
Takei was, of course, a literal survivor of the Japanese internment camps.