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Notes -
In fact, it does come up in one episode, the one with Space Lincoln; "The Savage Curtain":
There are a couple of fleeting references, as in "The Naked Time" where Sulu thinks he's d'Artagnan and refers to Uhura with "I'll protect you, fair maiden" and she replies "Sorry, neither".
Or the quoting from Byron's poem "She walks in beauty, like the night" in "Is There In Truth No Beauty?"
About women in general serving on spaceships of the future, from "Tomorrow Is Yesterday":
But yeah, the main lecture episode about this was the one with the black and white faces.
EDIT: And I think you're right about the wrong way to do it; the TNG episode with Riker and the alien who wants to be a woman, but on their planet everybody is non-binary or gender-neutral or androgynous or hermaphrodite or something, it's not made clear because this was back in the 90s and at that time it was An Obvious Allegory About Gayness but today it would be An Obvious Allegory About Transness. The episode is called The Outcast:
The actress playing the character is, well, an actress. A cis female. Which is a choice for several reasons, but I think one large reason would be that if they had cast an actor in the part of the alien having a romantic relationship with Riker it would have been Too Gay, ironically for the episode, and wouldn't have got past the network censors. (As an aside, Riker? Of all people? Nothing against Jonathan Frakes but I never found the character of Will Riker interesting or attractive in any sense right from the start - I did like when Picard slapped him down on the bridge in the first episode - and every time they tried to develop his character by giving him quirks or hobbies it made me want to shove that bloody trombone right up his - okay, what was I talking about, again?)
The second example of handling it badly is from DS9 and again, it's An Obvious Allegory About Gayness (Lesbian Version) in an episode called Rejoined, except all it did for me was convince me the Trill were right about the dangers of re-association and who cares about if it's two women or two men or one of each, the Trill don't as hosts are all genders and the Dax symbiote has been in male and female hosts. I think most people remember it for the lesbian kiss scene:
Hah, I like how Uhura doesn't even take offense there.
These all feel like really good examples of doing it right, honestly. Yes, if you're pulling a character in from ancient times, they're going to have some confusion about a black woman serving on board the bridge, of course they are! But that doesn't need to be the thing the episode is about, and in fact probably shouldn't be. Allegory, not sledgehammer.
. . . also that's a pretty funny line in response to Sulu.
It's a great line, it's almost like an ad-lib, and it isn't a big point but they did manage to sneak in that, uh, Uhura isn't married and is sexually active, which would have been a Big Deal in the 60s for family TV show viewing.
Also the inter-racial kiss from what is a not-great episode (good idea, execution is a bit ropey, honestly the fanfiction of it is a lot better, it's a season three episode which explains a lot as the show was pretty much being wound down) Plato's Stepchildren which really was a Big Deal.
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