Newer versions of Uhura seem partly inspired by a Star Trek: Enterprise character

When I first saw the 2009 Star Trek, I was struck by the linguistic superpowers of that film's Nyota Uhura (Zoe Saldana). They were familiar to me. It wasn't simply that this ability often arises in science fiction and fantasy. It's that there was another prominent character in Star Trek who had this ability. I am speaking, of course, of Hoshi Sato (Linda Park).

I was a bit irked by this at the time, as I was 13 and thus easily irked. I got over it. When 2022's Star Trek: Strange New Worlds premiered, however, and introduced us to a linguistically gifted Cadet Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) who wasn't quite sure if she belonged on the Enterprise, I found myself asking again, "Are they turning Uhura into Hoshi?"

To be clear, there is absolutey nothing wrong with being Hoshi Sato. As a fan of linguistics and general word nerd myself, Hoshi is maybe my favorite character from Enterprise. Her arc of finding confidence and embracing her place aboard the ship is also a nice change from the usual excitement most characters have for space exploration. Hoshi was somewhat novel as a main character in Trek.

This novelty is part of why it is odd to have Uhura adopt various characteristics from Hoshi. It makes it feel like a pre-existing, iconic character is somehow stealing the thunder of a later character who is often forgotten by fans.

In The Original Series, Lt. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) is a warm, confident, and capable communications officer. While she is established as being able to at least speak two languages—Swahili and English—there is no indication that she is a polyglot who can pick up languages quickly. Rather than learning and translating new languages, Uhura's job seems to mostly be working the communications array.

In fact, in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, there is a scene in which Uhura, along with Scotty and others, frantically flipps through dictionaries to hold a simple communication in Klingon without Universal Translator. Surely, someone with a high level of language proficiency would have learned some Klingon.

Conversely, the Saldana version of Uhura is a xenolinguist, like Hoshi Sato, and her duties appear to mostly be about translation and arguing with her crewmates. (Arguing with one's crewmates is a duty for basically all of the characters in the 2009 Star Trek and its sequels.) Personality-wise, this Uhura is not reminiscent of Hoshi Sato, but her job is more similar.

With Gooding as Uhura, we see many more of the parallels to Hoshi. There is the linguistic gift, but there is also the uncertainty about her place, and her arc appears to largely be about coming into her own, like Hoshi's was. Sure, that may be the standard story for a "newbie" character, but it has been done before in Star Trek and with a communications officer, no less.

Now, one could argue that the parallels between newer Uhuras and Hoshi Sato are just coincidences. At the same time, however, the Strange New Worlds episode "Those Old Scientists" shows Uhura gushing about what an inspiration Hoshi was to her, suggesting that Hoshi may have been an inspiration to the writers as well.

Characters change in stories, and when a character has existed for nearly 60 years, we're bound to see some revision and evolution. In many ways, incorporating elements of Hoshi gives Uhura more to do than she had in The Original Series. A more unique set of skills and talents could have made her feel less derivative.

For instance, Uhura could have been depicted as being extremely technologically talented. This is actually hinted at in TOS a few times and would mean that Uhura's skills are in areas like Fourier transforms, computer engineering, and the technical side of the Universal Translator. This could also explain the shift from Hoshi's Science Blue to Uhura's Operations Red.

That said, there is one other interesting commonality between the Nyota Uhura and Hoshi Sato: Their given names both mean "star," in Swahili and Japanese, respectively. Perhaps, then, the two really should have more in common. If so, maybe it's okay that Uhura has evolved this way.