How did Martin Luther King Jr. completely change Uhura's future on "Star Trek"?
Keep watching to find out.
Actor Nichelle Nichols did more than perform the role of Lt. Uhura, she also played a substantial
part in shaping and inspiring the character to begin with.
According to her memoir, "Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories," Nichols and future
"Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry first met in 1963 on the set of his previous television
series, "The Lieutenant," after which they began a months-long romantic relationship.
During their time together, Roddenberry would make vague references to a science fiction
project he'd been working on, which he called "Wagon Train to the Stars."
Years later, while Nichols was on tour as a singer in Paris, she received a telegram
from her agent telling her that she had an important audition for an upcoming show now
(very famously) known as "Star Trek."
Nichols was invited to audition for "Star Trek" before any specifics about her character
had been decided.
Since her part had yet to be written, she auditioned by reading scenes written for Spock.
While waiting for her meeting with Roddenberry and his production team, Nichols was immersed
in reading the novel "Uhuru" by Robert Ruark.
"Uhuru" is Swahili for "freedom," and according to the documentary "Woman in Motion," Nichols
suggested that this be repurposed as her character's surname.
Accounts vary as to when the first name of "Nyota" was decided upon, but it first appeared
in the 1982 reference book "Star Trek II: Biographies," and did not become canonical
until its use in the 2009 "Star Trek" film.
Lt. Uhura is unquestionably an underserved character on "Star Trek," and in the feature
films that followed it.
She never gets the same spotlight as Kirk, Spock, McCoy, or even Scotty.
While this is a completely fair criticism of the show, its producers, and its writers,
it has unfortunately led some fans and critics to diminish the character of Uhura herself
and her role on the command staff of the USS Enterprise.
"Captain, I have something to communicate with you.
Boo-boo-boo-boo-boo."
"And she has nails that are way too long for space."
At a glance, it's easy to see Uhura as the woman reduced to placing Captain Kirk's phone calls.
While the underuse of Uhura is a glaring defect of the series, her contributions to the crew
are not unimportant, merely underexposed.
As Chief Communications Officer, Uhura is the nerve center of a crew of over 400.
She's a department head managing the rest of the communications staff, meaning anyone
else you ever see at her post, plus other stations around the ship that we never see.
She handles all inter- and intra-ship communications, including Kirk's orders from Starfleet and
imperatives issued to the rest of the crew.
Since the production of "Star Trek" predates our modern concept of networked computers,
Uhura essentially is the network aboard the Enterprise, manually routing information across
its hundreds of work consoles.
Uhura being away from her station would be the equivalent of the internet going out on the ship.
By the end of the first season of "Star Trek" in 1967, Nichelle Nichols was frustrated with
how little her character got to do on the show.
According to "Beyond Uhura," Nichols suffered several indignities during her time on "Star Trek."
Her lines and subplots were frequently cut from the script, the studio secretly ordered
the mail room not to deliver her fan letters, and studio representatives would make malicious
racist comments directly to her face.
Having had enough, she told Gene Roddenberry that she would be leaving the show to pursue
a role on Broadway.
Roddenberry asked her to take the weekend to think about it.
As fate would have it, Nichols was scheduled to attend a fundraising event for the NAACP
the very next day.
There, Nichols was introduced to "her greatest fan" — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
As recalled in "Beyond Uhura" and in other interviews, King told her that Uhura was an
indispensable role model for viewers, particularly for Black children, who he said needed to
envision themselves in a better future.
Up to this point, she admitted in the documentary "Woman in Motion," Nichols had seen "Star
Trek" as just another acting job.
Now enlightened to the broader impact of her presence on the show, Nichols retracted her
resignation the following Monday and would remain for the duration of the series.
In the "Star Trek" episode "Plato's Stepchildren," Lt. Uhura and Captain Kirk are telekinetically
compelled to kiss for the amusement of bored aliens.
This caused quite a stir on set.
Episode director David Alexander insisted on capturing versions of the scene both with
and without the kiss, in case NBC affiliates refused to air the interracial content.
Nichelle Nichols and William Shatner performed the scene with the kiss first, insisting on
dozens of takes from different angles.
They left time for only one take without the kiss, which Shatner sabotaged by crossing
his eyes directly into the camera.
This assured that the show's producers would have no choice but to use one of the takes
where the pair kisses.
Uhura and Kirk's kiss in "Plato's Stepchildren" is sometimes cited as "the first scripted
interracial kiss on television," though this is an exaggeration.
It's the earliest known kiss between white and Black actors on American TV, but actors
of other differing races had kissed on TV previously, and outside the United States.
Strictly speaking, "Plato's Stepchildren" wasn't even William Shatner's first interracial
kiss on TV, as he and French-Vietnamese actress France Nuyen kissed while performing a scene
from the play "The World of Suzie Wong" on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in 1958.
Of course, these two events do carry different cultural connotations.
The actual earliest known kiss between Black and white actors on TV took place on British
television in 1962.
Nevertheless, Uhura and Kirk's kiss remains an important moment in US television history,
challenging cultural taboos during one of the most tumultuous years of the civil rights movement.
Though high in the command structure of the USS Enterprise, Uhura never gets the chance
to sit in the Captain's chair during "The Original Series" or any of her appearances
in feature films.
"Mr. Spock, sometimes I think if I hear that word frequency once more, I'll cry."
She does, however, get to briefly take the lead in "Star Trek: The Animated Series,"
the brief ink-and-paint revival of "Star Trek" that aired between the cancellation of "The
Original Series" and the launch of the film franchise.
In the 1973 episode "The Lorelei Signal," siren-like aliens from the Taurean system
transfix and incapacitate the entire male population of the Enterprise, leaving the
ship's remaining female officers to rescue them.
Uhura, still voiced by Nichelle Nichols, takes command of the Enterprise and leads an away
team comprised of herself, Nurse Chapel, and several female security officers.
"Due to chief engineering officer Scott's euphoric state of mind, I am assuming command
of the Enterprise."
It's still a sad state of affairs that the storytellers behind "Star Trek: The Animated
Series" felt they needed to arrange such a contrivance to get Uhura her moment in command
as if it would take every single man on the ship to be out of commission for her to get her turn.
"Star Trek" made the leap to the big screen in 1979 with "Star Trek: The Motion Picture,"
in which Uhura still serves as Communications Chief aboard the refitted USS Enterprise.
The classic crew mostly sticks together throughout the six films, which see the gang receive
a string of promotions but remain in their familiar posts with their found family.
Uhura is last seen in "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country" at the rank of Commander.
Thankfully, Uhura's journey continues in print, via the ongoing series of "Star Trek" novels.
In "Vulcan's Forge," Uhura serves as Spock's first officer aboard the USS Intrepid II,
where she later succeeds him as captain.
The short story "The Hero of My Own Life" sees her move on to a new command, the USS
Hermes, where she serves as captain for over a decade.
The novel "Catalyst of Sorrows" reveals that at some time during this command Uhura is
secretly recruited into Starfleet Intelligence, and served concurrently at both posts for decades.
As human lifespans are significantly longer in the future of "Star Trek," Admiral Uhura
is revealed to be alive and well and still working for Intelligence during the Dominion
War, which featured prominently in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine at the age of 138.
A contradictory tale in "The Autobiography of Jean-Luc Picard" mentions that she is elected
President of the United Federation of Planets.
While Lt. Uhura was television's first Black astronaut, actress Nichelle Nichols leveraged
her character's popularity to effect substantive change in the real-life US space program.
Her involvement in real space activism began in 1975 when a NASA presentation at a "Star
Trek" convention impressed upon her the homogeneity of NASA's white, male astronaut pool.
Nichols decided to take it upon herself to create the change that her TV character was
supposed to represent, writing editorials for newspapers and magazines questioning why
the pool of American astronauts was not representative of the true demographics of the United States.
These editorials got the attention of NASA, who invited her to cooperate in revamping
their recruitment efforts for the upcoming class of space shuttle astronauts.
"Oh I said, 'Don't, not me.
They'll laugh at you.'
And they said, 'Not if they hear you speak five minutes.'"
Nichols agreed but wisely did so as an independent contractor rather than as some sort of mascot.
Not only did this preserve her credibility, but it also meant that she could hold NASA
accountable if they didn't hold up their end.
If she lined up the qualified candidates they asked for and NASA still hired only white
men, she'd have the leverage to sue.
Nichols spent the latter half of 1975 traveling the United States spreading her vision of
the space program and personally recruiting much of the NASA Class of 1978, which would
include America's first six female astronauts and first three African American astronauts.
During the "Star Trek" renaissance of the 1980s and '90s, nearly every core member of
"The Original Series" cast returned to make appearances on "Star Trek" offshoots — except
for Nichelle Nichols.
DeForrest Kelley, Leonard Nimoy, and James Doohan each returned as special guests on
"The Next Generation," Doohan joined William Shatner and Walter Koenig in the crossover
film "Star Trek: Generations," George Takei and Grace Lee Whitney returned on an episode
of "Voyager," but Nichols never officially reprised Uhura after 1991's "Star Trek VI."
This isn't to say that Nichols was never invited to return to "Star Trek," but perhaps that
no invitation was particularly enticing.
In 1996, Nichols was offered a cameo in the "Star Trek: Voyager" episode "Flashback,"
which had a far more prominent role for her castmate George Takei as Captain Sulu.
Nichols declined, feeling that her role was not significant enough to warrant her involvement.
In 2009, "Star Trek" was rebooted as a big-budget blockbuster film series featuring new versions
of the original characters, with only Leonard Nimoy returning from the original cast as
a time-displaced older Spock.
Uhura, now portrayed by Zoë Saldana, had a much more prominent role in the new film
series than she had previously.
In addition to being depicted more explicitly as a genius polyglot whose skill with languages
saves the crew on several occasions, she and James T. Kirk cross paths frequently at Starfleet
Academy as Kirk is an infamous ne'er-do-well who also happens to be dating her roommate.
The pair end up serving aboard the USS Enterprise together, where they eventually put aside their differences.
Uhura also gets to participate more in the action-adventure side of "Trek" than her television
counterpart and has a romantic subplot with Spock that runs across all three films.
Zoë Saldana was offered the role of Uhura after already signing on to play Neytiri in
James Cameron's sci-fi behemoth "Avatar."
Saldana was initially hesitant to take on another demanding role with an overlapping
production, prompting a summit between Cameron and "Star Trek" director J.J.
Abrams to ensure that she wouldn't have to miss out on either opportunity.
Saldana joined "Star Trek" with relatively little knowledge of the franchise, which is ironic.
Saldana had previously portrayed a massive "Star Trek" fan in Steven Spielberg's 2004
film "The Terminal."
Uhura will forever be hailed as an icon in the annals of science fiction history, and
the character, no matter who plays her in the future, will surely continue to appear
in future "Star Trek" reboots and spin-offs for as long as the franchise endures.
However, as important as Uhura was to the television landscape, the woman who first
brought her to life, the actor, singer, and activist Nichelle Nichols, was no less iconic.
Sadly, Nichols died on the night of July 30th, 2022.
Nichols had spent the last few years of her life diagnosed with dementia.
She is survived by her son Kyle Johnson, who was the one to reveal the news on her official
Instagram account the morning after her death.
There, Johnson wrote,
"Last night, my mother, Nichelle Nichols, succumbed to natural causes and passed away.
Her light however, like the ancient galaxies now being seen for the first time, will remain
for us and future generations to enjoy, learn from, and draw inspiration."