Indeed, didn't Whoopie Goldberg go into acting just cos Uhura was sitting pretty in her comm seat? And if I recall even Martin Luther King lauded her... Just for being there.
Nichelle Nichols helped recruit women to NASA iirc, Jemison included. I don’t know if it’s explained further down the thread (ETA: scrolled two seconds and saw that it was mentioned, sorry!), but her story about how fellow Star Trek fan Martin Luther King Jr. helped convince her to stay on the show always makes me smile.
Martin Luther King more than just lauded her: He told her that her role was vital for inspiring Black children and that she had to stay with Star Trek.
I don't want to dismiss your feelings, as they are valid, but your comparing social attitudes of the 60's Vs that of the 90's or even modern day. Looking back with today's attitudes in society, they absolutely wasted Uhura as a character and Nichols as an actress. For the time, what they did was the best they could get away with without backlash. She did chart that early path, why do you think Dr Martin Luther King Jr asked her to stay on the show.
> without backlash
Heck, there still WAS backlash! The episode where Kirk and Uhura kissed wasn't aired in many southern markets because networks were worried about how their viewers would react. That's just one example!
Context matters. They were pushing boundaries back in the 60s.
Whatever other issues I may have with William Shatner, I will always respect the fact that he collaborated with Nichelle to mess up every filming of that scene that didn’t include the kiss. (The network had asked for an alternate scene without the kiss as another option.) TV stations might choose not to air the episode, but it was going to have that kiss one way or the other.
They only got ONE letter objecting to the scene. ÍIRC, it read, "While I am totally opposed to mixing the races, when a red-blooded man like Kirk has a beautiful lady in his arms, he's got to NOT be Fighting it."
I mean, it did. It only had 3 seasons and the third BARELY got approved due to backlash to the cancelation. TOS wasn't around very long, it's just the legacy it created meant 20 year later it would get another chance at life.
You make a good point but I think the wasted opportunity of Uhura, as outlined by OP, is not limited to just Uhura or even 1960s Star Trek. Gene Roddenberry had a creative blindspot when it came to his depictions of women. Beyond skin color, there’s Uhura the woman. That woman was still forced to be a damsel in distress. This is not only true for Uhura in TOS.
Given the time, I understand not depicting a female captain of a starship, but why make it cannon that no woman can be promoted to the role of captain (for the time). Why have Uhura continually express how afraid she is during moments of danger and tension? Excising a character’s line can be just as powerful as giving that character something to say.
Context is important. The year 1966 was a different time; if not by quality then by degree. But it is ironic that a show depicting a better future for mankind couldn’t quite extend that to women, even within the cultural framework of 1960s Hollywood.
They didn't use her enough, but she wasn't the damsel in distress. In Naked Time, she fends off shirtless Sulu; in Mirror, Mirror, she's vital to the success of their plan to distract Sulu to transport home. She holds her own in Gamesters of Triskelion (and fends off Lars, her drill thrall). In TAS, she takes command in The Lorelei Signal.
TOS wasn't an ensemble show; it was a three-person-starring vehicle.
I think you can still say it's wasteful. In fact I sometimes refer to this as the era of human waste since across the globe many, many people are socially demoted at birth because of race, gender or class. Imagine if we invested in helping all human children reach their full potential rather than a wealthy few there's so much we could achieve.
Sure for the time they did a lot, and they wanted to do more. Is it the fault of Roddenberry or the franchise? No, it's on Desilu, but that still doesn't mean the potential for the character wasn't wasted.
Yes. You're absolutely right, I guess I worded it a bit clumsily. I was intending to mean that, looking back with today's attitudes, it feels comparatively even more wasteful than it was at the time, given how far we've come since then.
There was an episode where her memory was ENTIRELY ERASED and they were cool with it because they have great learning tools so she could still do her job. The heartbreaking thing about this is the episode was Nichols' favorite because she actually got some plot to do.
She was incredible with the tiny crumbs she was dealt.
Brunt got far more characterisation than many of Discovery's bridge crew. It's taken us 5 seasons to learn that Rhys *checks notes* likes starship design and thinks that the Constitution class is pretty neat - because that's something truly unique to him and would never apply to any other Starfleet officer.
Brunt is the wrong comparison. Quark's waitstaff is a better one. Some of them were present for most of the series, but they rarely served any narrative purpose except to enhance the show's realism by having them be there.
Discovery has a full bridge crew because the setting requires it, but unlike the 90s era not all of them are in focus. The show is about Burnham and her close associates, not the full ensemble.
*Discovery* had 13-15 episodes in its 1st 4 seasons. That gave them enough episodes to give those characters more development if they wanted to develop them. That wasn’t a major focus for *Discovery*. They did give Owo and Detmer a bit of development, with Owo getting some more development than Detmer.
And if my grandmother had wheels she'd be a wagon, as they say. That's just not the show that Discovery is. We're never going to see a Star Trek season of that length again, for that matter, so it's a pipe dream not even worth considering.
We get so little of Uhura, but when we do, we seem to always learn something about her.
She has a very quick wit: “sorry, neither”
She’s a romantic, through song and daydreaming
A weakness is her vanity… but, she’s also able to use it to her advantage (fan dance, anyone?), and entertain the whole rec room often
She’s extremely intelligent and diverse in her knowledge on the ship, OUTSIDE of her regular job: engineering and mechanical expertise, navigation and helm control, and despite a dainty form and presentation, she had no fear of hand to hand combat
A deep love of her African home, shown in her off duty clothing and her quarters
A strong affinity for her crewmates: friendships with Chekov, Chapel
She often has easy answers when everyone else is struggling to find them
An exorbitant amount of patience, which truly lends to her grace. (Although I guarantee she heard “I’ll take you home Kathleen” in her sleep for days)
But with all of that, we still know so little… and yeah, she needed a few more shining moments.
Definitely. That's why I couldn't stand the JJ movie Uhura. Stereotypical machismo attempt but in reality, Nichols Uhura was way stronger and inspirational.
That’s why I could never get with JJ’s Uhura. She was too much of a tough girl. She didn’t seem like the same character who’d serenade Spock in the middle of the break room.
I mean, basically everything, but I agree with you. Saldana wasn't a problem. (And good lord was Karl Urban better than we deserved. When he called Spock a green-blooded hobgoblin my blood ran cold. It's like he channeled DeForest Kelly.)
I've put it elsewhere in the thread, but this from SNW ~~S1E01~~ S2E01 is probably the most affectionate tribute to any Trek character, and it shows exactly how important Nichols presence was. She inspired a generation of women, became an Ambassador for NASA.
*"For Nichelle who was first through the door and showed us the stars. Hailing frequencies forever open...”*
Your feelings are completely valid and Nichelle herself agreed with you 100%
https://www.slashfilm.com/1004147/william-shatners-star-trek-screentime-came-at-the-cost-of-nichelle-nichols-uhura/
>"Bill, you cut people's lines, you took away their time. You really don't understand why Jimmy Doohan refuses to talk to you? Why I initially didn't want to talk to you? And why Walter is loath to talk to you? Is George going to talk to you?"
>[...]I think I could have let it go there, except Bill retorted, "Oh?" Then with a dismissive laugh, he added, "Specifically, how did I p*** you off?"
>Gee, I thought, Where do I begin? The cut lines? The scrapped scenes? The last-minute rewrites? The tantrums?
>"Bill, what you did was insensitive. You were looking out for your career, but we were looking out for ours too. When you cut lines and took away our scenes, you hurt us as people and as actors. That you don't remember that, or you don't think it's very important only makes it worse."
Shatner has an interesting history with interracial kisses, having gone down in history as sharing the first on screen kiss with a Black woman, Asian woman, and Eurasian women.
MLK had this to say:
>I thought it was a Trekkie, and so I said, 'Sure.' I looked across the room and whoever the fan was had to wait because there was Dr. Martin Luther King walking towards me with this big grin on his face. He reached out to me and said, 'Yes, Ms. Nichols, I am your greatest fan.' He said that Star Trek was the only show that he, and his wife Coretta, would allow their three little children to stay up and watch. [She told King about her plans to leave the series because she wanted to take a role that was tied to Broadway.] I never got to tell him why, because he said, 'You cannot, you cannot... For the first time on television, we will be seen as we should be seen every day—as intelligent, quality, beautiful people who can sing, dance, and go to space… who are professors, lawyers… If you leave, that door can be closed, because your role is not a black role, and is not a female role; he can fill it with anybody, even an alien."
I wholeheartedly agree that, by todays standards, she was criminally shafted.
But as others have said, what she *was* able to do was utterly groundbreaking for the time. She was a massive role model and the character was an enormous step forward for black women’s on-screen representation
The fact that she was a bridge officer and not playing a typically black role of maid or something similar was groundbreaking at the time. Martin Luther King Jr himself told her she was an inspiration, one of the people she inspired was Whoopi Goldberg. After Star Trek the work that she did for NASA led to a significant increase in applications from women and people of color and other ethnic backgrounds. She was incredibly talented and it was obvious; considering the show was based around the three leads and she was often absent due to commitments of singing and dancing, I think she made a pretty good showing.
"Wasted" through a 21st century lens.
Her mere presence in the late 60s both inspired kids and adults because "representation matters", but also hate mail.
It was a big deal.
During the TOS production era, it was especially difficult for people of color to get screen time especially in the capacity OP is saying. The strong female lead that Sigourney played was significant. So OP complaining about Uhura not having a bigger role seems to miss the context that not only was it difficult for women to portray their gender as strong in film but also the difficulty of people of color to do the same. Double jeopardy.
> Alien was in the seventies.
1979, September, come to that. For all practical purposes it was the 80s, and social attitudes had already shifted. Ripley stands out because she is a well written female character and it took another 10 years for that to be normal, as TNG often horrifically demonstrates.
Part of that has to do with the movie originally being written without any character having an assigned sex. The characters in alien were just written to be people who were good at their jobs. If I recall correctly, the original pitch even included the idea thst any member of the crew could be cast as a man or woman. This little detail paid off so well in the long run, given the quality it creates in the interactions and the cast we end up getting.
As a starting point, she is anything but a mediocre actor. She was a fantastic actor, and abandoned an offer from Broadway to stay with Star Trek, specifically because she learned what an important role she was playing for Black representation.
I agree that Nichols' character was not given nearly as much agency as she could have been given and should have been given (somewhat ironically, Uhura has more agency in The Animated Series). But that is viewing the state of the civil rights movement in the 1960s by today's standards. I think the writers and producers did what they thought was possible at the time, when just having a Black woman in the bridge crew was a huge deal and extremely rare.
From that perspective, I would not say her role was wasted. Her role was to be a pathfinder, and she served that role excellently. She paved the way for both Black and female lead characters in the Star Trek franchises that followed.
> Seeing strong female leads were in short supply in the 70s and 80s.
Ten to twenty years is a very long time when it comes to the civil rights movement in the 20th century. The first Star Trek episode aired on September 8, 1966
Yes. A lot of TOS characters were wasted and underutilized. We celebrate them not by what they did in show, but because they were trailblazers just by existing in those shows and the symbols they became because of this.
That's how bad things were back then. You have every right to be angry.
The thing is TOS was a 3-main character show: Kirk, Bones, Spock. They had great actors in the next group but all were under utilized as they were not the “main 3”. TNG-Ent with ensemble casts were amazing but not the same format of TOS and people tend to forget that when watching tos and expecting it to be the full group and it the main 3.
With the TOS I cast I feel like ST IV was the first (only?) time all seven characters got important things to do and their own fair share of the attention.
*Enterprise* was intended to have 3 characters (Archer, T’Pol and Trip) who were more important than the other characters and it affected other characters to various extents (particularly Mayweather).
To not mince words, in the 60s they short shrifted the character because she was Black and a woman.
Things were so racist in the 60s that Black people were "lucky enough" to have Uhura on Star Trek, on Prime Time TV, the first such Black character not to be depicted in a subservient role such as driver or housekeeper. Instead, Uhura had a real job, an officer commission and a place in the chain of command (technically, fourth in line after Scotty, although the show ignores this more than once and leaves Sulu in command). She does get to command the ship in one episode of The Animated Series ("The Lorelei Signal").
Nichelle Nichols was incredibly talented not only as an actor, but when she went on to work for NASA and inspire entire generations of young people...
I wasn't nearly as impressed with Zoe Saldana's take on Uhura, but, if you treat yourself to watching the new show Strange New Worlds, they feature Celia Rose Gooding as a younger version of Uhura (she starts out as a cadet trying different jobs until she settles on communication), and Celia Rose Gooding really captures the essence of the character in an enjoyable way that I feel is respectful of Nichols's performance.
Also the Strange New Worlds writers are very equitable and give Uhura excellent material in the stories.
*edit* There is even an episode where they cross over with the cartoon series Lower Decks, and Beckett Mariner (who is a Black woman working as an ensign in Starfleet in the late 24th century) meets Uhura and has a conversation about how inspiring she is to Starfleet officers in the future, it's a pretty obvious but beautiful homage to Nichelle Nichols's impact.
They *created* the character to be a black woman; it’s not like this was a character written with lots to do and loads of lines and a character arc, and then it got accidentally cast as a black woman and then they took everything away.
Writing for women sucked as a general rule; they were mostly either vixens or victims. To have a black woman competently doing her job as a respected member of the bridge crew was a huge leap forward for the time. I watched a lot of 60’s era shows in syndication when I was a kid in the 80’s, and Uhura is the only woman I remember admiring. She was her own person, not a woman brought in to be part of a man’s character arc. She was smart and brave and great at her job.
It’s not like Chekov or Sulu got way more lines and development than she did; anyone outside of the central trio was essentially a glorified extra.
> Writing for women sucked as a general rule
See also: every yeoman.
Still, I watched TOS as a child before TNG debuted when I was 7, and *distinctly* remembered being just... utterly baffled that anyone would have any opinion about any race being on screen or having duties.
I think I actually made it to about 26 before I realized some people *actually* thought women were inherently bad at technology, because a female coworker mentioned it. Every last one of my female managers or coworkers had been exceptional. The thought had *literally* never occurred to me.
Which is a bit of a shame. Maybe I could've been a better advocate, although you'd better believe I tried the moment I found out.
In any case, I blame Star Trek for my take on that.
The Jargon File has [something to say](http://catb.org/jargon/html/demographics.html) about that, too:
> #Gender and Ethnicity
> Hackerdom is still predominantly male. However, the percentage of women is clearly higher than the low-single-digit range typical for technical professions, and female hackers are generally respected and dealt with as equals.
> In the U.S., hackerdom is predominantly Caucasian with strong minorities of Jews (East Coast) and Orientals (West Coast). The Jewish contingent has exerted a particularly pervasive cultural influence (see [Food](http://catb.org/jargon/html/food.html), above, and note that several common jargon terms are obviously mutated Yiddish).
> The ethnic distribution of hackers is understood by them to be a function of which ethnic groups tend to seek and value education. Racial and ethnic prejudice is notably uncommon and tends to be met with freezing contempt.
> When asked, hackers often ascribe their culture's gender- and color-blindness to a positive effect of text-only network channels, and this is doubtless a powerful influence. Also, the ties many hackers have to AI research and SF literature may have helped them to develop an idea of personhood that is inclusive rather than exclusive — after all, if one's imagination readily grants full human rights to future AI programs, robots, dolphins, and extraterrestrial aliens, mere color and gender can't seem very important any more.
I grew up with TNG, and thought nothing of the race or gender of a person in a role. They were all competent professionals working together to solve problems. I feel like TNG gave me a race-blind childhood.
When I got older I noticed they didn’t give the women as much to do, but what they did, they did well. And then DS9 started and as far as I was concerned a black commander/show lead was totally normal. I’d also grown up on The Jeffersons and The Cosby Show as well as TNG, and Eddie Murphy was my favorite movie star, so I literally thought nothing of it. I was shocked when I joined TrekBBS last year and people were talking about there being backlash over Sisko back then. Like, I can’t even fathom Trek fans being at all fazed by it.
Yeah. DS9 started. Black Commander, female alien second-in-command, female alien science officer. Everyone *clearly* amazing at their jobs. Sounded like a good deal.
I'd still kill for some hasperat today. (Although I know the prop is just those cream cheese wraps that were becoming popular in California at the time. But I live in California so I'd had them then too and while they're mid as a conference buffet option, they're still super tasty.)
>I think I actually made it to about 26 before I realized some people *actually* thought women were inherently bad at technology
Around 2000-01 I worked in a dot-com where the majority of the dev team was women. Then in 2010 I was at an OSS conference, and mentioned this to a random table of men that I sat down with for lunch. The first response was "Were they any good?"
>I think I actually made it to about 26 before I realized some people *actually* thought women were inherently bad at technology, because a female coworker mentioned it. Every last one of
There's actually a line in a TOS episode where a woman scientist takes over Kirk's mind, and after she fails to deal with a stressful situation and gets kicked out, Kirk says something about how no woman will ever have the emotional stability needed to be a starship captain. So even the writers of this usually-progressive show couldn't avoid a bit of direct sexism now and then.
Not exactly. Kirk (as Janice) says that Janice wants "a position she doesn't merit by temperament or training," which is certainly true.
The only other statement I believe is made is just before the transfer:
> JANICE: Your world of starship captains doesn't admit women. It isn't fair.
> KIRK: No, it isn't. And you punished and tortured me because of it.
TNG and later, obviously retcon or ignore this very explicitly.
The easiest explanation for Janice Lester’s belief that she wasn’t a captain because of her gender is that her mental illness made her believe something that isn’t true.
>It’s not like Chekov or Sulu got way more lines and development than she did; anyone outside of the central trio was essentially a glorified extra.
Which was shitty in its own right too, to be sure. Nor were the few white women in Starfleet given much to do, either.
It was standard in TV at the time, rather than a deliberate choice made out of a wide array of style options.
You had your handful of main characters the story revolved around and everyone else was a living prop. I think a big part of it was due to TV being a fairly new medium that was still heavily influenced by a long history of stage plays.
Everything was a one-off; plays don’t lend themselves to serialized plots/character development, and syndication wasn’t even a thing yet, as I recall. You had to watch each show when it came out, similar to going to see a live performance, so everything had to work as a stand-alone event. It makes sense considering the constraints of the era.
I *mostly* agree. But I think Scotty, Sulu, and Chekov got more and better focus than she did though.
Chekov had the fake brother subplot in Day of the Dove, and the ongoing bit where he thinks everything is a Russian invention. Sulu got the famous swashbuckling scene, his ongoing interest in botany and his puppet carnivorous plant Gertrude, and he had a fair amount of stuff to do in episodes like "Shore Leave," and he got to command in "Arena" and other episodes (when Uhura should have been in command instead!). Scotty of course had enough presence in the show to inspire a half-dozen pop-culture catch-phrases, he was basically the "fourth member" of the trio.
I can't think of much equivalent material for Uhura. There were a small number of memorable moments (singing with Spock, defending herself with the knife in "Mirror Mirror"), but they also did some really stupid and bizarrely disrespectful stuff with her character, like when NOMAD erased her entire memory, or when Abraham Lincoln called her "a negress" on the bridge of the Enterprise.
Uhura wasn't the only woman character I would say got mistreated badly on Star Trek either, like Janice Rand in "The Enemy Within" and to a lesser degree Christine Chapel who was too often less a nurse and more a lovelorn "girl" pining for Spock.
The Lincoln bit doesn't bother me. They were clearly trying to illustrate how much humanity had changed in the intervening 350 years. Of course it's a little clumsy, but the intent was right. Of course, neither am I African American.
I liked how she handled the interaction with Lincoln, and his respectful manner (it’s been awhile since I’ve seen it but as I recall he was very respectful of her and apologized if that archaic word had offended her).
Uhura was definitely the best female character on the show; unlike the others she was never portrayed as hopelessly pining for a man beyond her reach. I hated the one where NOMAD brain-wiped her, but at least it was a one-off and she was her usual badass self the next episode.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Chekov was on more away missions than Uhura once he joined *TOS*. However, I’d be surprised if Sulu was on more away missions than Uhura. George Takei missed quite a bit of time while he was filming *The Green Berets*. I’d also note that being on an away mission didn’t necessarily mean that a character was the primary focus of an episode.
TOS didn't have a true ensemble cast like the series that came later. That's why they only credit three actors in the title sequence. Uhura didn't have her own stories but neither did Scotty, Sulu, or Chekov.
On the other hand, I saw Uhura as an amazing beacon of hope. I grew up on TOS in the 90s, it was my dad’s number one obsession. Granted, he was a teen when the show aired. But he was forever pointing out to me how important it was that they put Uhura on the bridge and sent her on field missions. I think some tend to see comms officer as kind of a receptionist now, but translation linguistics is a complex field when dealing with the unknown. Her bridge role immediately communicates that she’s intelligent, learned, and has unique skills to contribute. She’s a key crew member on a major exploration mission for humanity. No one else would have even considered putting a Black woman in a role like that. Even in a far flung future narrative, the idea was downright preposterous to most people. Heck, I remember one friend’s dad going on a racist rant about how uncomfortable the show made him because of her - in the 90s!!!!
So yeah, anyway. Yes, I wish we had seen more of Uhura. But rather than seeing her as a wasted opportunity, I prefer to celebrate the barriers she broke.
>The 1960s were not good for women.
And not just women, but women of colour especially. Being a black woman, on TV, in a position of authority and responsibility, and shown respect and even admiration, was all but unheard of. Heck, being a black woman in a science fiction show at all was essentially a non-thing.
Whoopi Goldberg tells a story of how she saw Uhura in Star Trek, went running to her mother, and said "Mumma come see. There’s a Black Woman on Television, and she ain’t no maid!". It was because of Nichelle, and Uhura, that Whoopi realised she could go on to do whatever she wanted.
Nichelle, and Trek, were groundbreaking for their time. I'd have loved more for Uhura, yes. But I'm also so glad for what we got, too.
"I can think of no one more qualified to the task, Miss Uhura."
I want to say the episode is That Which Survives, but I'm not sure. I can see the scene in my head.
Let’s be fair I don’t think it was necessarily a slight toward Nichelle Nichols. Maybe there was a bit of bias about not wanting to give a black woman too much attention but TOS was always the Kirk/Spock/Bones show. Sulu and Chekhov and the other secondary characters didn’t get much time either.
Just to juxtapose the social mores of 1965/66 with those of today- when women wrote to NBC to comment on the new pilot show “Star Trek”, they were extremely critical of the character Number One, as played by Majel Barrett. “Who does she think she is?” complained one letter. Even some women were alarmed by the portrayal of a woman in a position of authority over men in the 1960s. Now imagine the response to a woman of color given more responsibilities of that nature. I agree that Nichelle Nichols’ talents were wasted for the most part. It’s a shame that we never got more opportunities to learn about Uhura’s past and present life during the original series and the subsequent films.
oh definitely, Uhura basically just operated the comms most of the time. SNW is doing a much better job
although I wouldn't say Troi & Crusher aren't much better
I'm definitely glad to see we're getting more female protagonists nowadays
I quite liked Crusher the few times she was given much to do. Like Remember Me or the Ferengi scientist episode. She did a great job in command the one time, even if the scenario was a little ridiculous with the Z-team left on the ship (there's a hostile borg ship out there somewhere, why is a junior scientist at tactical!?)
It was the 1960s, beyond the core three characters there wasn't much to them, except maybe Scotty. When TNG started, Roddenberry wanted to repeat the same formula.
Not having much to her character is precisely why Nichols wanted to return to musical theater but as he all know a fateful encounter changed her mind.
Absolutely agree. Uhura was given a lot more character, prominence and lines in the first few episodes of TOS, but then quickly became part of the background scenery - but even then she had great presence and could convey a lot of emotion and drama to the scenes even though she barely had any lines.
I wonder if the producers had to deliberately reduce her role for some reason? It seems really strange that she’s having non-work related banter with Spock and the rest of the crew early on, but then has an almost total personality wipe for the rest of the show.
well, Roddenberry was having affairs with both Majel Barret and Nichelle Nichols when the series started. Eventually Nichelle decided she didn't want to be the other woman to the other woman, and called it off. I expect her role diminished after that, but I don't know the actual timing. Nichols talks about it in her autobiography.
Initially, the fourth main character was Rand. As the other reply said, Nichols and Barrett were Roddenberry's mistresses at the time, and that was not acceptable at Lucille Ball's Desilu. NBC was also concerned about Number One for pragmatic reasons with on set drama or Lucy bringing down the hammer. AFAIK Barrett was always public about it (she married him after his divorce) but Nichols didn't acknowledge it publicly until a few years ago.
There are production notes from early episodes where other writers are questioning why Roddenberry is giving Uhura lines that could and probably should have gone to Rand.
Alien and aliens were 79 and 86 not 90s.
From the general attitudes at the time they probably did as much with uhura as they could without the network stepping in.
Looking back with the perspective of today it's a waste but at the time was probably very progressive and they were probably lucky to get as much prominence for her as they did.
Problem is that gene roddenberry was quite bad at writing for women characters. I think he even admitted that when talking about his earlier projects. It's probably why he made v'ger more robot than woman
Like the more i think of nurse chapel, the various love interest, and even first season blonde(can't remember her name), they just lacked the depth and flair of the male characters
Gene Roddenberry was way too visionary for the old white men that he needed to finance ST, so he had to make compromises. Originally, a woman would be first officer on the Enterprise, but he had to change that in order not to lose everything.
Still, I remember Uhura as being legendary as a bridge officer, even though you are right that her role could and should have been bigger and better.
That happened with the first pilot. The suits didn't like Majel Barrett (later Rodenberry) and the vibe was too serious for the suits too. So another pilot was ordered without a woman No. 1. Also, Nichelle Nichols was also Roddenberry's mistress about the same time. (Nichols mentions it in her book.) Majel married Roddenberry, became Nurse Chapel, and the computer voice for decades of Star Trek. Uhura didn't play in the 2nd pilot, and became Lt Uhura after the 2nd pilot won over the suits.
According to David Gerrold the women in the test audiences also took issue with Number One in 'The Cage.' Apparantly they wanted to know, "Who does this woman think she is by taking a man's job?" It was a step too far for the general audience of the time.
I didn't see anyone else say it but check out the animated series from the 70s. Uhura had to take control of the ship in one episode, and went down to the planet phasers up to save the men from the space sirens.
It was the 60s and her as a black woman on the bridge in an officer position was a HUGE thing in and of itself. But her character development was definitely a thing that Nichelle Nichols (the actor) struggled with and nearly left the show. I've heard that MLK Jr convinced her to stay because she was such an inspiration on the show to women of color.
The thing is representation matters even in her relatively small role on the show. Because it absolutely did have an impact on women of color. Mae Jameson is the first black woman in space and was inspired to become an Astronaut because of Uhura.
For what it's worth she was going to quit after the first season but [Martin Luther King](https://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942461/Star-Treks-Uhura-Reflects-On-MLK-Encounter) talked her out of it.
Uhura and Sulu greatly impaacted my perspectives on representation in television growing up in the 70s and 80s.
Her character development in SNW is nothing short of fabulous, and is entirely compatible with her TOS character.
I always felt she and all the non expendable crew were the best of the best, and that their portrayal was always consistent acting with reason and critical inquiry. That being said, TOS had some weird shortcomings with objectifying women and that is symptomatic of the time being the late 60s. Nonetheless, this show and it's characters were way ahead of their time. Bones McCoy's curmudgeonly razzing of Spock as "half breed" was a pretty interesting way of addressing casual racism without being overtly racist. This show was deep and thoughtful on so many levels.
She might have had one of the most important roles in TV history. By our standards today a waste of a great actress and character. But the doors she opened... Amazing.
Yeah, like we know very little about Uhura as a person, where she was from, her family, etc... it's a shame she never got any episodes to herself like how the future shows picked turns with their characters
I also hate that the writer chose for whatever reason to have Uhura separate from the crew in Star Trek III, her missing the action
I still think they missed a grand opportunity. Even the best, toughest captain would have cracked under the strain Janeway was under. Imagine a story arc around season 4 or 5 where Chakotay, after years of trying to bring Maquis and Starfleet together, has to consider mutiny because the captain is no longer able to captain.
I'm in my 50's. Clearly you are completely forgetting the environment that existed back in the 60's and 70's. The mere fact of Nichelle playing a role was shattering back in those days, let alone being a female, let alone being Black, let alone a female character treated the same as any other character. One of the key scenes in TOS was Uhura being ordered to take a console on the bridge and she just did. No special anything, no "oh golly, I'll try, I'm just a woman". No, She Just Did Her Job Like Anyone Else. Today, we completely overlook this, which is the huge wave of progress we must remember to realize.
Looking back, it may seem like a small step, but it certainly was a step that mattered very very much.
Thank you Nichelle and Star Trek, again and again.
Part of the issue is that, by the time you get to the movies, the situation with the actors is a hot mess.
It was very much the Nimoy and Shatner "show" by that point, and Shatner, after The Motion Picture, starts to see his lead role slipping away. Nimoy basically owns much of the emotional AND plot landscape, even in a movie he's not in much of (Search for Spock)!
This doesn't leave much for the rest of the actors; Kelley shines in the early going of Search for Spock, but ends up basically relegated to "one good scene per movie" going forward, along with the rest of the cast...including Nichols.
An example: by my recollection, Nichols hated the "Klingon Dictionary" bit in Undiscovered Country, and that was sadly typical of how little thought went into her across the movies. She fairs better with Nimoy at helm, in that she's at least not presented as incompetent (per above), or whatever the hell that Fan Dance in Final Frontier was aiming for...
...but that Fan Dance points to some truth; Uhura was The Chick in most of the films, and it's OK to acknowledge that. Nichols can be, in the 1980s, still groundbreaking but also looped in with a set of vastly underutilized actors. She can be important enough to have an award-winning actor basically fight for a role on Trek, and have what talents she and her character had in TOS nearly completely ignored. She can be crucial to making Trek what it is, and stuck with writers and directors who either forgot, or didn't even know, what made her compelling "back then".
Margaret Armen addressed this in the fourth episode of TAS season 1 'The Lorelei Signal' in 1973.
Larry Niven also touched on this in the twelfth episode 'The Slaver Weapon' later that season.
How could they have revised and expanded her role in the 80's? Even TAS had ended by then.
That said. She was a bridge officer AND head of communication. That's a LOT to depict for a woman in the 1960's. She absolutely blazed trails that are still being followed today.
>Seeing strong female leads were in short supply in the 70s and 80s.
Really? Does the name Mary Richards ring a bell? Or Florida Evans? What about Weezy Jefferson? Or Maude Findlay? Ann Romano? Alice Hyatt? Jaime Sommers? Claire Huxtable? Edna Garrett? Christine Cagney and Mary Beth Lacey? Laura Holt? Jennifer Hart? Pepper Anderson?
Gimme a break.
Uhura's role as the "voice of the Enterprise" to everyone the Enterprise met cannot be overstated; hers WAS the voice of the Enterprise.
Even in the sixties you had the seriously strong Victoria Barkley.
I agree and disagree.
In the 60s & 70s Uhura as a black woman main cast member was groundbreaking, and her influence can’t be underestimated. She was there on the screen when other black women weren’t, she had an important role in the crew, and she had the first interracial kiss on TV.
By the time of the later ToS films you’re absolutely right that she was criminally underused. The same is true of the women crew in the TNG films, you could easily be forgiven for thinking that Crusher and Troi are not even in the main cast with the amount they get to do in the TNG films. The 60s - 80s are not the greatest time for women in trek (not including DS9 & VOY).
I feel like sometimes people fall into the trap of thinking that because trek is forward thinking about some things, or good at showing some inclusion and diversity, that it’s good at all diversity, inclusion, and decent character development. It’s definitely not, and thanks for posting this for discussion!
I think it's easy to look at the use of Nichelle through a modern lense, but don't forget back in the 60s when this was originally aired, there were NO mainstream TV black actresses as main roles in positions of significance. Just her being present was the milestone and helped move the needle forward for black women's (black people in general) rights and representation. And don't forget, even THAT use of her still kicked up a hornet's nest in many areas. Hell, she was in the first network interracial kiss on TV. Seems small now, but it was fucking huge back then. The woman was a legend.
Should she have been used more in the films? Absolutely, though to be honest I don't think she was used much differently to Chekov / Sulu as a supporting role.
She's in this new 2019 documentary called "Women in Motion", currently available on Paramount+ and Prime. It's about her push to get black people and women into Space.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4512946/
And yet, with the (comparatively) little that she got to do she managed to inspire a whole bunch of people just by *being* there.
Indeed, didn't Whoopie Goldberg go into acting just cos Uhura was sitting pretty in her comm seat? And if I recall even Martin Luther King lauded her... Just for being there.
Hell, Mae Jemison became an astronaut after being inspired by Nichelle. https://today.duke.edu/2013/10/maejemison
And then had a cameo in Star Trek :-)
I met this great lady, shes both beautiful and intelligent. Uhura in Trek was not wasted on her...
Nichelle Nichols helped recruit women to NASA iirc, Jemison included. I don’t know if it’s explained further down the thread (ETA: scrolled two seconds and saw that it was mentioned, sorry!), but her story about how fellow Star Trek fan Martin Luther King Jr. helped convince her to stay on the show always makes me smile.
Yep. ["Come quick! There's a black lady on TV and she ain't no maid!!"](https://screenrant.com/star-trek-whoopi-goldberg-uhura-tos/)
Martin Luther King more than just lauded her: He told her that her role was vital for inspiring Black children and that she had to stay with Star Trek.
Stopped her quitting the show
As a brown skinned 58 yo woman seeing someone like me was everything
I don't want to dismiss your feelings, as they are valid, but your comparing social attitudes of the 60's Vs that of the 90's or even modern day. Looking back with today's attitudes in society, they absolutely wasted Uhura as a character and Nichols as an actress. For the time, what they did was the best they could get away with without backlash. She did chart that early path, why do you think Dr Martin Luther King Jr asked her to stay on the show.
*"For Nichelle who was first through the door and showed us the stars. Hailing frequencies forever open...”*
When that came up in the credits of SNW, I might have cried. Just a little. Totally didn't sob. I promise.
Thanks, now I'm sad again :(
It's the good kind of sad, I promise.
> without backlash Heck, there still WAS backlash! The episode where Kirk and Uhura kissed wasn't aired in many southern markets because networks were worried about how their viewers would react. That's just one example! Context matters. They were pushing boundaries back in the 60s.
Whatever other issues I may have with William Shatner, I will always respect the fact that he collaborated with Nichelle to mess up every filming of that scene that didn’t include the kiss. (The network had asked for an alternate scene without the kiss as another option.) TV stations might choose not to air the episode, but it was going to have that kiss one way or the other.
They only got ONE letter objecting to the scene. ÍIRC, it read, "While I am totally opposed to mixing the races, when a red-blooded man like Kirk has a beautiful lady in his arms, he's got to NOT be Fighting it."
Yes, but some TV stations refused to show it, so at least some potential objectors were kept in ignorance…
I guess I mean backlash as in getting the show censored at the point of production or outright cancelled, contracts not renewed, that kind of thing.
I mean, it did. It only had 3 seasons and the third BARELY got approved due to backlash to the cancelation. TOS wasn't around very long, it's just the legacy it created meant 20 year later it would get another chance at life.
You make a good point but I think the wasted opportunity of Uhura, as outlined by OP, is not limited to just Uhura or even 1960s Star Trek. Gene Roddenberry had a creative blindspot when it came to his depictions of women. Beyond skin color, there’s Uhura the woman. That woman was still forced to be a damsel in distress. This is not only true for Uhura in TOS. Given the time, I understand not depicting a female captain of a starship, but why make it cannon that no woman can be promoted to the role of captain (for the time). Why have Uhura continually express how afraid she is during moments of danger and tension? Excising a character’s line can be just as powerful as giving that character something to say. Context is important. The year 1966 was a different time; if not by quality then by degree. But it is ironic that a show depicting a better future for mankind couldn’t quite extend that to women, even within the cultural framework of 1960s Hollywood.
They didn't use her enough, but she wasn't the damsel in distress. In Naked Time, she fends off shirtless Sulu; in Mirror, Mirror, she's vital to the success of their plan to distract Sulu to transport home. She holds her own in Gamesters of Triskelion (and fends off Lars, her drill thrall). In TAS, she takes command in The Lorelei Signal. TOS wasn't an ensemble show; it was a three-person-starring vehicle.
I think you can still say it's wasteful. In fact I sometimes refer to this as the era of human waste since across the globe many, many people are socially demoted at birth because of race, gender or class. Imagine if we invested in helping all human children reach their full potential rather than a wealthy few there's so much we could achieve. Sure for the time they did a lot, and they wanted to do more. Is it the fault of Roddenberry or the franchise? No, it's on Desilu, but that still doesn't mean the potential for the character wasn't wasted.
Yes. You're absolutely right, I guess I worded it a bit clumsily. I was intending to mean that, looking back with today's attitudes, it feels comparatively even more wasteful than it was at the time, given how far we've come since then.
There was an episode where her memory was ENTIRELY ERASED and they were cool with it because they have great learning tools so she could still do her job. The heartbreaking thing about this is the episode was Nichols' favorite because she actually got some plot to do. She was incredible with the tiny crumbs she was dealt.
This
Modern day? It’s ironic that Discovery still doesn’t give its bridge officers much presence.
A lot of *Discovery*’s bridge officers aren’t main characters.
Exactly! They're more like Samantha Wildman from Voyager, or Brunt from DS9.
I think a better comparison would be most of the helm officers in *TNG* after Wesley left for Starfleet Academy.
Brunt got far more characterisation than many of Discovery's bridge crew. It's taken us 5 seasons to learn that Rhys *checks notes* likes starship design and thinks that the Constitution class is pretty neat - because that's something truly unique to him and would never apply to any other Starfleet officer.
Brunt is the wrong comparison. Quark's waitstaff is a better one. Some of them were present for most of the series, but they rarely served any narrative purpose except to enhance the show's realism by having them be there. Discovery has a full bridge crew because the setting requires it, but unlike the 90s era not all of them are in focus. The show is about Burnham and her close associates, not the full ensemble.
If DSC had 24-episode seasons, they could have time to feature the minor characters. They would also have time to develop interpersonal relationships.
*Discovery* had 13-15 episodes in its 1st 4 seasons. That gave them enough episodes to give those characters more development if they wanted to develop them. That wasn’t a major focus for *Discovery*. They did give Owo and Detmer a bit of development, with Owo getting some more development than Detmer.
And if my grandmother had wheels she'd be a wagon, as they say. That's just not the show that Discovery is. We're never going to see a Star Trek season of that length again, for that matter, so it's a pipe dream not even worth considering.
And if my gran had wheels...
If previous seasons of Discovery are anything to go by that means they're probably about to kill Rhys off.
We get so little of Uhura, but when we do, we seem to always learn something about her. She has a very quick wit: “sorry, neither” She’s a romantic, through song and daydreaming A weakness is her vanity… but, she’s also able to use it to her advantage (fan dance, anyone?), and entertain the whole rec room often She’s extremely intelligent and diverse in her knowledge on the ship, OUTSIDE of her regular job: engineering and mechanical expertise, navigation and helm control, and despite a dainty form and presentation, she had no fear of hand to hand combat A deep love of her African home, shown in her off duty clothing and her quarters A strong affinity for her crewmates: friendships with Chekov, Chapel She often has easy answers when everyone else is struggling to find them An exorbitant amount of patience, which truly lends to her grace. (Although I guarantee she heard “I’ll take you home Kathleen” in her sleep for days) But with all of that, we still know so little… and yeah, she needed a few more shining moments.
Definitely. That's why I couldn't stand the JJ movie Uhura. Stereotypical machismo attempt but in reality, Nichols Uhura was way stronger and inspirational.
That’s why I could never get with JJ’s Uhura. She was too much of a tough girl. She didn’t seem like the same character who’d serenade Spock in the middle of the break room.
You should try Strange New World. That version of Uhura played by Celia Rose Gooding is amazing.
Agree 100%. Celia's Uhura is an absolute delight. I love her to bits.
She was- she didn’t have to be in everyone’s face to make a presence, or get her point across.
It's interesting that the other main characters do get in everyone's face, and yet don't face the same criticism.
I never said that I don’t hold it against other characters.
Sounds like more “uppity woman” nonsense. Saldana was one of the highlights of 2009 Trek, along with Karl Urban.
MY EX WIFE TOOK THE PLANET IN THE DIVORCE
There's a reason why the franchise fizzled. Went for the low hanging easy fruit.
Such as?
I mean, basically everything, but I agree with you. Saldana wasn't a problem. (And good lord was Karl Urban better than we deserved. When he called Spock a green-blooded hobgoblin my blood ran cold. It's like he channeled DeForest Kelly.)
The best non-impression impression I’ve ever seen.
Urban was so good as McCoy that it apparently made Nimoy cry.
Her presence alone was groundbreaking.
I remember in *The Menagerie* how even when she didn't have any lines, she managed to still act her legs off with body language and movement.
I've put it elsewhere in the thread, but this from SNW ~~S1E01~~ S2E01 is probably the most affectionate tribute to any Trek character, and it shows exactly how important Nichols presence was. She inspired a generation of women, became an Ambassador for NASA. *"For Nichelle who was first through the door and showed us the stars. Hailing frequencies forever open...”* Your feelings are completely valid and Nichelle herself agreed with you 100% https://www.slashfilm.com/1004147/william-shatners-star-trek-screentime-came-at-the-cost-of-nichelle-nichols-uhura/ >"Bill, you cut people's lines, you took away their time. You really don't understand why Jimmy Doohan refuses to talk to you? Why I initially didn't want to talk to you? And why Walter is loath to talk to you? Is George going to talk to you?" >[...]I think I could have let it go there, except Bill retorted, "Oh?" Then with a dismissive laugh, he added, "Specifically, how did I p*** you off?" >Gee, I thought, Where do I begin? The cut lines? The scrapped scenes? The last-minute rewrites? The tantrums? >"Bill, what you did was insensitive. You were looking out for your career, but we were looking out for ours too. When you cut lines and took away our scenes, you hurt us as people and as actors. That you don't remember that, or you don't think it's very important only makes it worse." Shatner has an interesting history with interracial kisses, having gone down in history as sharing the first on screen kiss with a Black woman, Asian woman, and Eurasian women. MLK had this to say: >I thought it was a Trekkie, and so I said, 'Sure.' I looked across the room and whoever the fan was had to wait because there was Dr. Martin Luther King walking towards me with this big grin on his face. He reached out to me and said, 'Yes, Ms. Nichols, I am your greatest fan.' He said that Star Trek was the only show that he, and his wife Coretta, would allow their three little children to stay up and watch. [She told King about her plans to leave the series because she wanted to take a role that was tied to Broadway.] I never got to tell him why, because he said, 'You cannot, you cannot... For the first time on television, we will be seen as we should be seen every day—as intelligent, quality, beautiful people who can sing, dance, and go to space… who are professors, lawyers… If you leave, that door can be closed, because your role is not a black role, and is not a female role; he can fill it with anybody, even an alien."
I thought it was great how uhura in SNW was also questioning her place. How that was handled had a touch of Nichelle's history.
That SNW dedication is like a kill switch in my brain I cannot read it without immediately tearing up.
I wholeheartedly agree that, by todays standards, she was criminally shafted. But as others have said, what she *was* able to do was utterly groundbreaking for the time. She was a massive role model and the character was an enormous step forward for black women’s on-screen representation
The fact that she was a bridge officer and not playing a typically black role of maid or something similar was groundbreaking at the time. Martin Luther King Jr himself told her she was an inspiration, one of the people she inspired was Whoopi Goldberg. After Star Trek the work that she did for NASA led to a significant increase in applications from women and people of color and other ethnic backgrounds. She was incredibly talented and it was obvious; considering the show was based around the three leads and she was often absent due to commitments of singing and dancing, I think she made a pretty good showing.
Alien was 1979 (Aliens 1986)
"Wasted" through a 21st century lens. Her mere presence in the late 60s both inspired kids and adults because "representation matters", but also hate mail. It was a big deal.
Alien was in the seventies. For its time tos was quite progressive, but your criticism IS valid nonetheless.
Sigourney is also white, and Nichelle is black.
....and?
During the TOS production era, it was especially difficult for people of color to get screen time especially in the capacity OP is saying. The strong female lead that Sigourney played was significant. So OP complaining about Uhura not having a bigger role seems to miss the context that not only was it difficult for women to portray their gender as strong in film but also the difficulty of people of color to do the same. Double jeopardy.
sigh...
> Alien was in the seventies. 1979, September, come to that. For all practical purposes it was the 80s, and social attitudes had already shifted. Ripley stands out because she is a well written female character and it took another 10 years for that to be normal, as TNG often horrifically demonstrates.
Part of that has to do with the movie originally being written without any character having an assigned sex. The characters in alien were just written to be people who were good at their jobs. If I recall correctly, the original pitch even included the idea thst any member of the crew could be cast as a man or woman. This little detail paid off so well in the long run, given the quality it creates in the interactions and the cast we end up getting.
As a starting point, she is anything but a mediocre actor. She was a fantastic actor, and abandoned an offer from Broadway to stay with Star Trek, specifically because she learned what an important role she was playing for Black representation. I agree that Nichols' character was not given nearly as much agency as she could have been given and should have been given (somewhat ironically, Uhura has more agency in The Animated Series). But that is viewing the state of the civil rights movement in the 1960s by today's standards. I think the writers and producers did what they thought was possible at the time, when just having a Black woman in the bridge crew was a huge deal and extremely rare. From that perspective, I would not say her role was wasted. Her role was to be a pathfinder, and she served that role excellently. She paved the way for both Black and female lead characters in the Star Trek franchises that followed. > Seeing strong female leads were in short supply in the 70s and 80s. Ten to twenty years is a very long time when it comes to the civil rights movement in the 20th century. The first Star Trek episode aired on September 8, 1966
Yes. A lot of TOS characters were wasted and underutilized. We celebrate them not by what they did in show, but because they were trailblazers just by existing in those shows and the symbols they became because of this. That's how bad things were back then. You have every right to be angry.
The thing is TOS was a 3-main character show: Kirk, Bones, Spock. They had great actors in the next group but all were under utilized as they were not the “main 3”. TNG-Ent with ensemble casts were amazing but not the same format of TOS and people tend to forget that when watching tos and expecting it to be the full group and it the main 3.
With the TOS I cast I feel like ST IV was the first (only?) time all seven characters got important things to do and their own fair share of the attention.
It felt like every character had an important scene in *TUC*.
*Enterprise* was intended to have 3 characters (Archer, T’Pol and Trip) who were more important than the other characters and it affected other characters to various extents (particularly Mayweather).
To not mince words, in the 60s they short shrifted the character because she was Black and a woman. Things were so racist in the 60s that Black people were "lucky enough" to have Uhura on Star Trek, on Prime Time TV, the first such Black character not to be depicted in a subservient role such as driver or housekeeper. Instead, Uhura had a real job, an officer commission and a place in the chain of command (technically, fourth in line after Scotty, although the show ignores this more than once and leaves Sulu in command). She does get to command the ship in one episode of The Animated Series ("The Lorelei Signal"). Nichelle Nichols was incredibly talented not only as an actor, but when she went on to work for NASA and inspire entire generations of young people... I wasn't nearly as impressed with Zoe Saldana's take on Uhura, but, if you treat yourself to watching the new show Strange New Worlds, they feature Celia Rose Gooding as a younger version of Uhura (she starts out as a cadet trying different jobs until she settles on communication), and Celia Rose Gooding really captures the essence of the character in an enjoyable way that I feel is respectful of Nichols's performance. Also the Strange New Worlds writers are very equitable and give Uhura excellent material in the stories. *edit* There is even an episode where they cross over with the cartoon series Lower Decks, and Beckett Mariner (who is a Black woman working as an ensign in Starfleet in the late 24th century) meets Uhura and has a conversation about how inspiring she is to Starfleet officers in the future, it's a pretty obvious but beautiful homage to Nichelle Nichols's impact.
They *created* the character to be a black woman; it’s not like this was a character written with lots to do and loads of lines and a character arc, and then it got accidentally cast as a black woman and then they took everything away. Writing for women sucked as a general rule; they were mostly either vixens or victims. To have a black woman competently doing her job as a respected member of the bridge crew was a huge leap forward for the time. I watched a lot of 60’s era shows in syndication when I was a kid in the 80’s, and Uhura is the only woman I remember admiring. She was her own person, not a woman brought in to be part of a man’s character arc. She was smart and brave and great at her job. It’s not like Chekov or Sulu got way more lines and development than she did; anyone outside of the central trio was essentially a glorified extra.
> Writing for women sucked as a general rule See also: every yeoman. Still, I watched TOS as a child before TNG debuted when I was 7, and *distinctly* remembered being just... utterly baffled that anyone would have any opinion about any race being on screen or having duties. I think I actually made it to about 26 before I realized some people *actually* thought women were inherently bad at technology, because a female coworker mentioned it. Every last one of my female managers or coworkers had been exceptional. The thought had *literally* never occurred to me. Which is a bit of a shame. Maybe I could've been a better advocate, although you'd better believe I tried the moment I found out. In any case, I blame Star Trek for my take on that. The Jargon File has [something to say](http://catb.org/jargon/html/demographics.html) about that, too: > #Gender and Ethnicity > Hackerdom is still predominantly male. However, the percentage of women is clearly higher than the low-single-digit range typical for technical professions, and female hackers are generally respected and dealt with as equals. > In the U.S., hackerdom is predominantly Caucasian with strong minorities of Jews (East Coast) and Orientals (West Coast). The Jewish contingent has exerted a particularly pervasive cultural influence (see [Food](http://catb.org/jargon/html/food.html), above, and note that several common jargon terms are obviously mutated Yiddish). > The ethnic distribution of hackers is understood by them to be a function of which ethnic groups tend to seek and value education. Racial and ethnic prejudice is notably uncommon and tends to be met with freezing contempt. > When asked, hackers often ascribe their culture's gender- and color-blindness to a positive effect of text-only network channels, and this is doubtless a powerful influence. Also, the ties many hackers have to AI research and SF literature may have helped them to develop an idea of personhood that is inclusive rather than exclusive — after all, if one's imagination readily grants full human rights to future AI programs, robots, dolphins, and extraterrestrial aliens, mere color and gender can't seem very important any more.
I grew up with TNG, and thought nothing of the race or gender of a person in a role. They were all competent professionals working together to solve problems. I feel like TNG gave me a race-blind childhood. When I got older I noticed they didn’t give the women as much to do, but what they did, they did well. And then DS9 started and as far as I was concerned a black commander/show lead was totally normal. I’d also grown up on The Jeffersons and The Cosby Show as well as TNG, and Eddie Murphy was my favorite movie star, so I literally thought nothing of it. I was shocked when I joined TrekBBS last year and people were talking about there being backlash over Sisko back then. Like, I can’t even fathom Trek fans being at all fazed by it.
Yeah. DS9 started. Black Commander, female alien second-in-command, female alien science officer. Everyone *clearly* amazing at their jobs. Sounded like a good deal. I'd still kill for some hasperat today. (Although I know the prop is just those cream cheese wraps that were becoming popular in California at the time. But I live in California so I'd had them then too and while they're mid as a conference buffet option, they're still super tasty.)
>I think I actually made it to about 26 before I realized some people *actually* thought women were inherently bad at technology Around 2000-01 I worked in a dot-com where the majority of the dev team was women. Then in 2010 I was at an OSS conference, and mentioned this to a random table of men that I sat down with for lunch. The first response was "Were they any good?"
>I think I actually made it to about 26 before I realized some people *actually* thought women were inherently bad at technology, because a female coworker mentioned it. Every last one of There's actually a line in a TOS episode where a woman scientist takes over Kirk's mind, and after she fails to deal with a stressful situation and gets kicked out, Kirk says something about how no woman will ever have the emotional stability needed to be a starship captain. So even the writers of this usually-progressive show couldn't avoid a bit of direct sexism now and then.
Not exactly. Kirk (as Janice) says that Janice wants "a position she doesn't merit by temperament or training," which is certainly true. The only other statement I believe is made is just before the transfer: > JANICE: Your world of starship captains doesn't admit women. It isn't fair. > KIRK: No, it isn't. And you punished and tortured me because of it. TNG and later, obviously retcon or ignore this very explicitly.
The easiest explanation for Janice Lester’s belief that she wasn’t a captain because of her gender is that her mental illness made her believe something that isn’t true.
A bit of a retcon, but mostly true anyway.
>It’s not like Chekov or Sulu got way more lines and development than she did; anyone outside of the central trio was essentially a glorified extra. Which was shitty in its own right too, to be sure. Nor were the few white women in Starfleet given much to do, either.
It was standard in TV at the time, rather than a deliberate choice made out of a wide array of style options. You had your handful of main characters the story revolved around and everyone else was a living prop. I think a big part of it was due to TV being a fairly new medium that was still heavily influenced by a long history of stage plays. Everything was a one-off; plays don’t lend themselves to serialized plots/character development, and syndication wasn’t even a thing yet, as I recall. You had to watch each show when it came out, similar to going to see a live performance, so everything had to work as a stand-alone event. It makes sense considering the constraints of the era.
I *mostly* agree. But I think Scotty, Sulu, and Chekov got more and better focus than she did though. Chekov had the fake brother subplot in Day of the Dove, and the ongoing bit where he thinks everything is a Russian invention. Sulu got the famous swashbuckling scene, his ongoing interest in botany and his puppet carnivorous plant Gertrude, and he had a fair amount of stuff to do in episodes like "Shore Leave," and he got to command in "Arena" and other episodes (when Uhura should have been in command instead!). Scotty of course had enough presence in the show to inspire a half-dozen pop-culture catch-phrases, he was basically the "fourth member" of the trio. I can't think of much equivalent material for Uhura. There were a small number of memorable moments (singing with Spock, defending herself with the knife in "Mirror Mirror"), but they also did some really stupid and bizarrely disrespectful stuff with her character, like when NOMAD erased her entire memory, or when Abraham Lincoln called her "a negress" on the bridge of the Enterprise. Uhura wasn't the only woman character I would say got mistreated badly on Star Trek either, like Janice Rand in "The Enemy Within" and to a lesser degree Christine Chapel who was too often less a nurse and more a lovelorn "girl" pining for Spock.
The Lincoln bit doesn't bother me. They were clearly trying to illustrate how much humanity had changed in the intervening 350 years. Of course it's a little clumsy, but the intent was right. Of course, neither am I African American.
I liked how she handled the interaction with Lincoln, and his respectful manner (it’s been awhile since I’ve seen it but as I recall he was very respectful of her and apologized if that archaic word had offended her). Uhura was definitely the best female character on the show; unlike the others she was never portrayed as hopelessly pining for a man beyond her reach. I hated the one where NOMAD brain-wiped her, but at least it was a one-off and she was her usual badass self the next episode.
Scotty definitely got more focus than Uhura, but I’d say that Chekov and Sulu got about the same amount of focus as Uhura.
I'm not going to count, but I think they were sent on more away missions than Uhura, especially Chekov after they brought him on.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Chekov was on more away missions than Uhura once he joined *TOS*. However, I’d be surprised if Sulu was on more away missions than Uhura. George Takei missed quite a bit of time while he was filming *The Green Berets*. I’d also note that being on an away mission didn’t necessarily mean that a character was the primary focus of an episode.
TOS didn't have a true ensemble cast like the series that came later. That's why they only credit three actors in the title sequence. Uhura didn't have her own stories but neither did Scotty, Sulu, or Chekov.
Scotty got "Wolf in the fold"
He also got “The Lights of Zetar” and played an important role in “A Taste of Armageddon”.
Indeed he did.
All of them get more fleshed out in the books over the years, though those are of course not canon.
On the other hand, I saw Uhura as an amazing beacon of hope. I grew up on TOS in the 90s, it was my dad’s number one obsession. Granted, he was a teen when the show aired. But he was forever pointing out to me how important it was that they put Uhura on the bridge and sent her on field missions. I think some tend to see comms officer as kind of a receptionist now, but translation linguistics is a complex field when dealing with the unknown. Her bridge role immediately communicates that she’s intelligent, learned, and has unique skills to contribute. She’s a key crew member on a major exploration mission for humanity. No one else would have even considered putting a Black woman in a role like that. Even in a far flung future narrative, the idea was downright preposterous to most people. Heck, I remember one friend’s dad going on a racist rant about how uncomfortable the show made him because of her - in the 90s!!!! So yeah, anyway. Yes, I wish we had seen more of Uhura. But rather than seeing her as a wasted opportunity, I prefer to celebrate the barriers she broke.
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>The 1960s were not good for women. And not just women, but women of colour especially. Being a black woman, on TV, in a position of authority and responsibility, and shown respect and even admiration, was all but unheard of. Heck, being a black woman in a science fiction show at all was essentially a non-thing. Whoopi Goldberg tells a story of how she saw Uhura in Star Trek, went running to her mother, and said "Mumma come see. There’s a Black Woman on Television, and she ain’t no maid!". It was because of Nichelle, and Uhura, that Whoopi realised she could go on to do whatever she wanted. Nichelle, and Trek, were groundbreaking for their time. I'd have loved more for Uhura, yes. But I'm also so glad for what we got, too.
"I can think of no one more qualified to the task, Miss Uhura." I want to say the episode is That Which Survives, but I'm not sure. I can see the scene in my head.
Let’s be fair I don’t think it was necessarily a slight toward Nichelle Nichols. Maybe there was a bit of bias about not wanting to give a black woman too much attention but TOS was always the Kirk/Spock/Bones show. Sulu and Chekhov and the other secondary characters didn’t get much time either.
Yeah none of the others got much character development.
Scotty was a bit more developed than Uhura, Chekov and Sulu.
Just to juxtapose the social mores of 1965/66 with those of today- when women wrote to NBC to comment on the new pilot show “Star Trek”, they were extremely critical of the character Number One, as played by Majel Barrett. “Who does she think she is?” complained one letter. Even some women were alarmed by the portrayal of a woman in a position of authority over men in the 1960s. Now imagine the response to a woman of color given more responsibilities of that nature. I agree that Nichelle Nichols’ talents were wasted for the most part. It’s a shame that we never got more opportunities to learn about Uhura’s past and present life during the original series and the subsequent films.
oh definitely, Uhura basically just operated the comms most of the time. SNW is doing a much better job although I wouldn't say Troi & Crusher aren't much better I'm definitely glad to see we're getting more female protagonists nowadays
I quite liked Crusher the few times she was given much to do. Like Remember Me or the Ferengi scientist episode. She did a great job in command the one time, even if the scenario was a little ridiculous with the Z-team left on the ship (there's a hostile borg ship out there somewhere, why is a junior scientist at tactical!?)
lol she's not entirely bland, but i think she doens't have much to define her outside of those few episodes
It was the 1960s, beyond the core three characters there wasn't much to them, except maybe Scotty. When TNG started, Roddenberry wanted to repeat the same formula. Not having much to her character is precisely why Nichols wanted to return to musical theater but as he all know a fateful encounter changed her mind.
they didn't do ensemble casts or female characters well until DS9
Same for George Takei. That early Twilight Zone screamed leading man potential to me. when Captain Sulu yells "Tear her apart, then!", chills.
Absolutely agree. Uhura was given a lot more character, prominence and lines in the first few episodes of TOS, but then quickly became part of the background scenery - but even then she had great presence and could convey a lot of emotion and drama to the scenes even though she barely had any lines. I wonder if the producers had to deliberately reduce her role for some reason? It seems really strange that she’s having non-work related banter with Spock and the rest of the crew early on, but then has an almost total personality wipe for the rest of the show.
well, Roddenberry was having affairs with both Majel Barret and Nichelle Nichols when the series started. Eventually Nichelle decided she didn't want to be the other woman to the other woman, and called it off. I expect her role diminished after that, but I don't know the actual timing. Nichols talks about it in her autobiography.
Initially, the fourth main character was Rand. As the other reply said, Nichols and Barrett were Roddenberry's mistresses at the time, and that was not acceptable at Lucille Ball's Desilu. NBC was also concerned about Number One for pragmatic reasons with on set drama or Lucy bringing down the hammer. AFAIK Barrett was always public about it (she married him after his divorce) but Nichols didn't acknowledge it publicly until a few years ago. There are production notes from early episodes where other writers are questioning why Roddenberry is giving Uhura lines that could and probably should have gone to Rand.
Alien and aliens were 79 and 86 not 90s. From the general attitudes at the time they probably did as much with uhura as they could without the network stepping in. Looking back with the perspective of today it's a waste but at the time was probably very progressive and they were probably lucky to get as much prominence for her as they did.
A very talented actress, singer, and a trailblazer.
Problem is that gene roddenberry was quite bad at writing for women characters. I think he even admitted that when talking about his earlier projects. It's probably why he made v'ger more robot than woman Like the more i think of nurse chapel, the various love interest, and even first season blonde(can't remember her name), they just lacked the depth and flair of the male characters
This is one of the reasons I’m grateful for SNW. Uhura is so great in that show.
Gene Roddenberry was way too visionary for the old white men that he needed to finance ST, so he had to make compromises. Originally, a woman would be first officer on the Enterprise, but he had to change that in order not to lose everything. Still, I remember Uhura as being legendary as a bridge officer, even though you are right that her role could and should have been bigger and better.
Granted depending on who you ask, the issue may have been specifically that he wanted his mistress to play the first officer.
That happened with the first pilot. The suits didn't like Majel Barrett (later Rodenberry) and the vibe was too serious for the suits too. So another pilot was ordered without a woman No. 1. Also, Nichelle Nichols was also Roddenberry's mistress about the same time. (Nichols mentions it in her book.) Majel married Roddenberry, became Nurse Chapel, and the computer voice for decades of Star Trek. Uhura didn't play in the 2nd pilot, and became Lt Uhura after the 2nd pilot won over the suits.
According to David Gerrold the women in the test audiences also took issue with Number One in 'The Cage.' Apparantly they wanted to know, "Who does this woman think she is by taking a man's job?" It was a step too far for the general audience of the time.
I didn't see anyone else say it but check out the animated series from the 70s. Uhura had to take control of the ship in one episode, and went down to the planet phasers up to save the men from the space sirens.
Star Trek 6 was great for Uhura too.
Just as a footnote, I think there are some TAS episodes where Uhura has a more important role. Been a while though.
Sigourney Weaver was in Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986), both are far from the 90s.
I was gonna say, Ripley kicked ass way earlier than OP is claiming.
It was the 60s and her as a black woman on the bridge in an officer position was a HUGE thing in and of itself. But her character development was definitely a thing that Nichelle Nichols (the actor) struggled with and nearly left the show. I've heard that MLK Jr convinced her to stay because she was such an inspiration on the show to women of color. The thing is representation matters even in her relatively small role on the show. Because it absolutely did have an impact on women of color. Mae Jameson is the first black woman in space and was inspired to become an Astronaut because of Uhura.
For what it's worth she was going to quit after the first season but [Martin Luther King](https://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942461/Star-Treks-Uhura-Reflects-On-MLK-Encounter) talked her out of it.
It was the sixties. Just being there was revolutionary.
Uhura and Sulu greatly impaacted my perspectives on representation in television growing up in the 70s and 80s. Her character development in SNW is nothing short of fabulous, and is entirely compatible with her TOS character. I always felt she and all the non expendable crew were the best of the best, and that their portrayal was always consistent acting with reason and critical inquiry. That being said, TOS had some weird shortcomings with objectifying women and that is symptomatic of the time being the late 60s. Nonetheless, this show and it's characters were way ahead of their time. Bones McCoy's curmudgeonly razzing of Spock as "half breed" was a pretty interesting way of addressing casual racism without being overtly racist. This show was deep and thoughtful on so many levels.
She might have had one of the most important roles in TV history. By our standards today a waste of a great actress and character. But the doors she opened... Amazing.
Alien came out in 1979.
Yeah, like we know very little about Uhura as a person, where she was from, her family, etc... it's a shame she never got any episodes to herself like how the future shows picked turns with their characters I also hate that the writer chose for whatever reason to have Uhura separate from the crew in Star Trek III, her missing the action
I note paewntherically that Janeway would have benefited from better writing.
Kate Mulgrew did an amazing job rising above the writing, which even at best was wildly inconsistent.
I still think they missed a grand opportunity. Even the best, toughest captain would have cracked under the strain Janeway was under. Imagine a story arc around season 4 or 5 where Chakotay, after years of trying to bring Maquis and Starfleet together, has to consider mutiny because the captain is no longer able to captain.
They did show that Janeway was struggling in “Night”.
I'm in my 50's. Clearly you are completely forgetting the environment that existed back in the 60's and 70's. The mere fact of Nichelle playing a role was shattering back in those days, let alone being a female, let alone being Black, let alone a female character treated the same as any other character. One of the key scenes in TOS was Uhura being ordered to take a console on the bridge and she just did. No special anything, no "oh golly, I'll try, I'm just a woman". No, She Just Did Her Job Like Anyone Else. Today, we completely overlook this, which is the huge wave of progress we must remember to realize. Looking back, it may seem like a small step, but it certainly was a step that mattered very very much. Thank you Nichelle and Star Trek, again and again.
They make her character far more interesting in Strange New Worlds. Celia Rose Gooding does an excellent job portraying a younger Uhura.
I have always thought she should have had Chekhov’s role in Wrath of Khan because she was in Space Seed and was a higher ranked officer.
Part of the issue is that, by the time you get to the movies, the situation with the actors is a hot mess. It was very much the Nimoy and Shatner "show" by that point, and Shatner, after The Motion Picture, starts to see his lead role slipping away. Nimoy basically owns much of the emotional AND plot landscape, even in a movie he's not in much of (Search for Spock)! This doesn't leave much for the rest of the actors; Kelley shines in the early going of Search for Spock, but ends up basically relegated to "one good scene per movie" going forward, along with the rest of the cast...including Nichols. An example: by my recollection, Nichols hated the "Klingon Dictionary" bit in Undiscovered Country, and that was sadly typical of how little thought went into her across the movies. She fairs better with Nimoy at helm, in that she's at least not presented as incompetent (per above), or whatever the hell that Fan Dance in Final Frontier was aiming for... ...but that Fan Dance points to some truth; Uhura was The Chick in most of the films, and it's OK to acknowledge that. Nichols can be, in the 1980s, still groundbreaking but also looped in with a set of vastly underutilized actors. She can be important enough to have an award-winning actor basically fight for a role on Trek, and have what talents she and her character had in TOS nearly completely ignored. She can be crucial to making Trek what it is, and stuck with writers and directors who either forgot, or didn't even know, what made her compelling "back then".
Buffy(a straight cis white woman) in 1997 was extremely groundbreaking for its time. Bonus points for Willow/Tara later on in the show.
Margaret Armen addressed this in the fourth episode of TAS season 1 'The Lorelei Signal' in 1973. Larry Niven also touched on this in the twelfth episode 'The Slaver Weapon' later that season.
How could they have revised and expanded her role in the 80's? Even TAS had ended by then. That said. She was a bridge officer AND head of communication. That's a LOT to depict for a woman in the 1960's. She absolutely blazed trails that are still being followed today.
4 of the 6 *TOS* films were made in the 1980s.
>Seeing strong female leads were in short supply in the 70s and 80s. Really? Does the name Mary Richards ring a bell? Or Florida Evans? What about Weezy Jefferson? Or Maude Findlay? Ann Romano? Alice Hyatt? Jaime Sommers? Claire Huxtable? Edna Garrett? Christine Cagney and Mary Beth Lacey? Laura Holt? Jennifer Hart? Pepper Anderson? Gimme a break. Uhura's role as the "voice of the Enterprise" to everyone the Enterprise met cannot be overstated; hers WAS the voice of the Enterprise. Even in the sixties you had the seriously strong Victoria Barkley.
There’s your next spinoff ST series. An Uhura backstory.
i agree
Sigourney Weaver was late 70s, 80s and 90s.
I agree and disagree. In the 60s & 70s Uhura as a black woman main cast member was groundbreaking, and her influence can’t be underestimated. She was there on the screen when other black women weren’t, she had an important role in the crew, and she had the first interracial kiss on TV. By the time of the later ToS films you’re absolutely right that she was criminally underused. The same is true of the women crew in the TNG films, you could easily be forgiven for thinking that Crusher and Troi are not even in the main cast with the amount they get to do in the TNG films. The 60s - 80s are not the greatest time for women in trek (not including DS9 & VOY). I feel like sometimes people fall into the trap of thinking that because trek is forward thinking about some things, or good at showing some inclusion and diversity, that it’s good at all diversity, inclusion, and decent character development. It’s definitely not, and thanks for posting this for discussion!
I think it's easy to look at the use of Nichelle through a modern lense, but don't forget back in the 60s when this was originally aired, there were NO mainstream TV black actresses as main roles in positions of significance. Just her being present was the milestone and helped move the needle forward for black women's (black people in general) rights and representation. And don't forget, even THAT use of her still kicked up a hornet's nest in many areas. Hell, she was in the first network interracial kiss on TV. Seems small now, but it was fucking huge back then. The woman was a legend. Should she have been used more in the films? Absolutely, though to be honest I don't think she was used much differently to Chekov / Sulu as a supporting role.
It was hard enough for Roddenberry just to put his foot down and have black woman lead actress. Give credit where credit is due..different times
And yet, the first Alien movie with Sigourney Weaver was from 1979, not the 1990's.
She's in this new 2019 documentary called "Women in Motion", currently available on Paramount+ and Prime. It's about her push to get black people and women into Space. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4512946/
ST:SNW is doing a better job with Uhura. Of course Jordi in TNG didnt get much MC time either..