What Lura Thok From Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Looks Like In Real Life

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"Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" co-stars British comedian Gina Yashere as Lura Thok, the cadet master at the titular school for aspiring Starfleet officers. Lura Thok is half Klingon and half Jem'Hadar, and she is in charge of Starfleet Academy's "War College," speaking to the young students as a drill instructor might to aspiring Marines. She is also the first officer on board the U.S.S. Athena, the central training vessel for cadets and a spaceship that periodically leaves Earth to go on brief missions of diplomacy. Lura Thok is assertive, forthright, and doesn't suffer fools gladly. Indeed, she's an aggressive counterpoint to some of the other professors at the Academy. Unlike the Doctor (Robert Picardo), for example, Lura Thok is not trying to get cadets to join an opera club.

Fans of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" might be a little startled to see a half-Jem'Hadar character on "Starfleet Academy." On that show, the Jam'Hadar were a race of genetically engineered soldiers that were employed by the Dominion to assert their dominance over a quarter of the galaxy and were all engineered to be male, meaning they could not reproduce on their own. On top of that, they were engineered to be addicted to Ketracel-white, a narcotic that the Dominion used to control them. That being said, "Starfleet Academy" notably takes place over 800 years after the events of "Deep Space Nine," so it seems some medical advances have been made since then.

Outside of "Star Trek," Yashere has done a lot of comedy work, having performed standup since the mid-1990s. She is particularly known for her blunt comedy and has had an extensive career on television, having previously co-created the sitcom "Bob Hearts Abishola" (which she played a supporting role on, too).

Gina Yashere first appeared on screen while co-hosting "Blouse and Skirt," a comedy chat show based in her native England, in 1996. She and Curtis Walker would interview other Black comedians and offer an analysis of the Black experience in the modern British comedy scene. In 1999, she briefly wrote for "The Richard Blackwood Show," an interview program, and in 2004, she turned up on the revival of "The Lenny Henry Show," a sketch comedy series. Yashere also performed on "Last Comic Standing" in 2007 and was the first Brit to perform on "Def Comedy Jam" in 2008. Having made a splash in the U.S., she would go on to secure a few standup performances on the American late-night talk show circuit, performing on "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" and that weird, short-lived "The Jay Leno Show" thing.

Overall, Yashere had enjoyed a steady and persistent comedy career, having performed at the Just For Laughs festival, on "Live at the Apollo," and even on the Chris Hardwicke series "@midnight." Moreover, one of her highest-profile gigs in the U.S. was her stint as a commentator on "The Daily Show with Trevor Noah," where she appeared on four episodes from 2017 to 2018.

While all this was going on, Yashere continued to tear it up on British television. She lent her voice to the 2005 animated series "Bromwell High" and hosted "Gina's Laughing Gear," a wonderful program where Yashere would cull British TV for notable and perhaps unheralded comedy, presenting them as a comedic Elvira-like host. As her career thrived, Yashere continued to advocate for the comedy scene to grow as well and pushed for the medium to become all the more inclusive.

As mentioned above, Yashere played a role on "Bromwell High," but it's one of only a handful of scripted performances she has given, as she's typically appeared as herself. In terms of her other acting, she did voice a character in Aardman Animations's underrated 2018 movie "Early Man" and had a tiny part in the micro-budget 2001 comedy film "Kiss Kiss (Bang Bang)" (which is not to be confused with the cult 2005 crime comedy "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" starring Val Kilmer and Robert Downey Jr.). In fact, "Early Man" and "Kiss Kiss (Bang Bang)" are Yashere's only feature film credits outside of her standup specials.

On TV, however, Yashere has done a lot of voice acting, having lent her vocals to the character Gareth in the children's show "The Rubbish World of Dave Spud." She similarly worked on 12 episodes of the puppet series "The Barbarian and the Troll" and, as mentioned earlier, co-created "Bob Hearts Abishola," a live-action sitcom in which she played the character Oluwakemi "Kemi" Adeyemi for 82 episodes.

Most recently, Yashere played an interior designer on the CBS sitcom "The Neighborhood" and, the reason we're all here, Lura Thok on "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy." She is, by coincidence, one of two lesbian stand-up comedians on "Starfleet Academy," as she shares the screen occasionally with comedian Tig Notaro. One can visit her website to see where she might be touring, although it seems that her TV work is keeping her busy. You can also buy a copy of her memoir "Cack-Handed" wherever fine books are sold. She encourages you to buy her merch, as Yashere and her wife, now Los Angeles residents, lost their house in the California fires of 2025.