I referred to Chapel as a “semi-regular”. She only appears in 25 episodes. Uhura, meanwhile, appears in 65 episodes. The other character to whom you compared her (Sulu) appears in 52 episodes.

I readily acknowledge that she is more developed as a character than Sulu, but I’m not so sure I would say that about her in comparison to Uhura. While Uhura doesn’t get an episode where the plot is built upon her backstory (as Christine does in “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”), we actually get numerous glimpses of insight into her well-rounded life and personality throughout the series.
In fact, I think the notion that she is merely there to “answer the phone” in TOS is a misconception. She is an avid collector of art and cultural artifacts, a singer, ana an athlete. She also possesses skills beyond the range of what is necessary to be a communications officer, could be relied upon by her superiors in critical situations, and was sometimes deemed an asset on landing parties.

“You’re the only one who can do it.”—Kirk to Uhura (”Mirror, Mirror”)

“Lieutenant, I can think of no one better equipped to handle the repairs.”—Spock to Uhura (”Who Mourns For Adonais?”)

There are other moments in which she “shines”.

In “Bread And Circuses”, she is the one who sets the Captain, First Officer, and Chief Medical Officer straight on their misconceptions about the spreading religious teachings on Planet 892-IV.

In “Space Seed”, she demonstrates tremendous loyalty and courage with that memorably defiant scowl directed toward Khan’s henchman.

Chapel, at least in TOS, is almost completely driven by her pursuits of unattainable men. After all, even her decision to join Starfleet was based upon the chance that she might run into Korby.

With all due respect to the lovable Nurse Chapel, I think Uhura is a far more developed character as a whole.

IMHO, movies CANNOT have dozens of secondary characters with elaborately detailed backstories & long story-arcs.That resides within the province of a TV series that has 50, or, 100 episodes to develop detailed,secondary characters.Movies have to maintain a fast pace & an epic scale in their story-telling.

BTW,that would mitigate against an exploration story-in-movie format;unless it was an outrageously fascinating story of a planetary culture with a historical tale to tell,on an “Indiana Jones” scale of story-telling.

I think the “5-year mission of exploration” should await the inevitable TV series that will follow a sucessful trilogy of fantastic STAR TREK movies, by JJ & Co.

#276. Loved Dr. M’Benga. Unfortunately, adding another character to sickbay doesn’t really keep them vital unless the movie revolves around something medical. You’ll note in the films, we rarely saw sickbay the way we saw it in TOS which is partly why we saw little of Chapel. What’s needed is someone who who will be around from film to film, either on the bridge or holding down engineering while Scotty takes command or is on a landing party (why Scotty ever went anywhere of a non-technical is beyond me), or a head of security or weapons. Besides, I think there is little avoiding Chapel considering we’ve already heard her name called (or perhaps that will be the joke – we never see her).

Hopefully Abrams & Co. will be up to the challenge of creating another couple of new, diverse, regular iconic characters as vital and memorable as as the originals.

I would argue, except for the films, Chapel was more of an integrated character than Uhura and Sulu.

She had a whole episode devoted to her.

I think folks tend to rely to much on the films for their TOS info.

I’ve been trying to get away to the Alamo Drafthouse to see it a 4th time (overall) over food and beers. It just hasn’t happened yet.

“That Which Survives”.