an icepick through the keyhole

I acknowledged that my example was simplistic, and hopefully you also read the paragraph about the validity of not being limited to ethno-racial ancestry. While Sulu was not a stereotype, my point is that Sulu was pretty the same as everybody else - aside from the fencing quirk, which was present only in one episode and forgotten about thereafter. Sulu's love of plants? Surfaced once ("The Man Trap"), alluded to very subtly in another ("This Side of Paradise") and forgotten thereafter. His expertise in physics? Only in "Where No Man Has Gone Before."

What distinguished him from any other faceless crewman? There was no multiculturalism or pluralism there. I do acknowledge the difficulty in alloting time to a secondary character as well, and that's why I concentrate the analysis on Spock.