Here’s something that’s been nagging me for years now — why was James Doohan’s missing finger always obscured on TOS? Vanity on Doohan’s part? Or were missing digits just too taboo to show on 1960s television?
Handicaps and injuries weren’t really talked about much in a positive or at least non-negative way until the 1980s, generally. Just look at how TOS treats Captain Pike.