Star Trek's Nichelle Nichols Once Played One Of Spider-Man's Scariest Villains

Premiering in 1966, the original "Star Trek" series launched almost its entire cast into stardom, from William Shatner to George Takei. Many of them continued with long and illustrious careers in front of the camera, but co-star Nichelle Nichols, who played the stalwart communications officer Uhura, took a different route. While she continued to return to the role of Uhura in films, spin-offs, video games, and even fan films, she mostly spent her time on non-TV work, even becoming an ambassador for NASA. 

In the late '90s, though, she did some voiceover work, including a surprising role in "Spider-Man: The Animated Series" that many may have forgotten. Nichols played a character named Miriam in a pair of 1997 episodes, beginning with the Season 4 installment, "The Vampire Queen." In the Marvel Universe (well, the animated one, at least), Miriam is the monarch of all vampires — who also happens to be the mother of the half-vampire assassin, Blade (voiced by James Donald Hall). 

More than a mere vampire, Miriam is the master of them all, with powers that go well beyond the average undead bloodsucker. In that initial episode, she arrives in New York City, dead set on turning the entire population into vampires — and it takes the combined might of Spider-Man, the Black Cat, Morbius, and her own son, Blade, to stop her.

"Spider-Man: The Animated Series" isn't without other "Star Trek" connections that go beyond Nichelle Nichols. Perhaps most prominently, George Takei, who played the role of Lt. Sulu in the original "Star Trek," voiced the character of Wong, assistant to Doctor Strange, in the episode named for the Sorcerer Supreme. But even he isn't the only other "Star Trek" alum to swing into the "Spider-Man" animated series.

Tim Russ, who played the Vulcan officer Tuvok on "Star Trek: Voyager," played Hobie Brown, whose villainous alter ego menaced the webslinger in the episode "The Prowler." But perhaps the most interesting crossover between "Star Trek" and "Spider-Man: The Animated Series" comes in the form of Mary Jane Watson's mother, Anna Watson. She appears in more than a dozen episodes of "Spider-Man" and is voiced by the queen of "Star Trek" herself, Majel Barrett. 

The wife of series creator Gene Roddenberry, Barrett is the First Lady of "Star Trek" who played Nurse Chapel in the original 1966 series. Anna Watson wasn't the first mother role for her, either, as Barrett also played Lwaxana Troi, the mother of Counselor Deanna Troi, on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," while also serving as the "mother" of the Enterprise — the voice of Starfleet's computer system — from the 1960s through the 1990s.