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Nichelle Nichols, Lt. Uhura on 'Star Trek,' dies at 89

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Nichelle Nichols made history for her role as communications officer Lt. Uhura on Star Trek. CBS via Getty Images hide caption

Nichelle Nichols made history for her role as communications officer Lt. Uhura on Star Trek.

Actress and singer Nichelle Nichols, best known as Star Trek 's communications officer Lieutenant Uhura, died Saturday night in Silver City, New Mexico. She was 89 years old.

"I regret to inform you that a great light in the firmament no longer shines for us as it has for so many years," her son Kyle Johnson wrote on the website Uhura.com . "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."

Nichols was one of the first Black women featured in a major television series, and her role as Lt. Nyota Uhura on the original TV series was groundbreaking: an African American woman whose name came from Uhuru, the Swahili word for "freedom."

"Here I was projecting in the 23rd century what should have been quite simple," Nichols told NPR in 2011 . "We're on a starship. I was head communications officer. Fourth in command on a starship. They didn't see this as being, oh, it doesn't happen til the 23rd century. Young people and adults saw it as now."

In 1968, Nichols made headlines when Uhura shared an intimate kiss with Captain James T. Kirk (played by William Shatner) in an episode called "Plato's Stepchildren." Their interracial kiss on the lips was revolutionary, one of the first such moments on TV.

Nichelle Nichols shared one of the first interracial kisses in TV history with William Shatner.

Nichols was born Grace Dell Nichols in a Chicago suburb where her father was the mayor. She grew up singing and dancing, aspiring to star in musical theater. She got her first break in the 1961 musical Kicks and Co ., a thinly veiled satire of Playboy magazine. She was the star of the Chicago stock company production of Carmen Jones, and in New York performed in Porgy and Bess .

'To me, the highlight and the epitome of my life as a singer and actor and a dancer/choreographer was to star on Broadway," she told NPR in 2011, adding that as her popularity on Star Trek grew, she was beginning to get other offers. "I decided I was going to leave, go to New York and make my way on the Broadway stage."

Nichols said she went to Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek , and announced she was quitting. "He was very upset about it. And he said, take the weekend and think about what I am trying to achieve here in this show. You're an integral part and very important to it."

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For mlk day: 'lt. uhura' on how rev. king told her to stay on 'star trek'.

So that weekend, she went to an NAACP fundraiser in Beverly Hills and was asked to meet a man who said he was her number one fan: Martin Luther King, Jr.

"He complimented me on the manner in which I'd created the character. I thanked him, and I think I said something like, 'Dr. King, I wish I could be out there marching with you.' He said, 'no, no, no. No, you don't understand. We don't need you ... to march. You are marching. You are reflecting what we are fighting for.' So, I said to him, 'thank you so much. And I'm going to miss my co-stars.'"

"His face got very, very serious," she recalled. "And he said, 'what are you talking about?' And I said, 'well, I told Gene just yesterday that I'm going to leave the show after the first year because I've been offered... And he stopped me and said: 'You cannot do that.' I was stunned. He said, 'don't you understand what this man has achieved? For the first time, we are being seen the world over as we should be seen. He says, do you understand that this is the only show that my wife Coretta and I will allow our little children to stay up and watch.' I was speechless."

Nichols returned to the series, which lasted until 1969. She also reprised her famous role in six subsequent feature films, including Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , where Uhura was promoted to commander .

Much More Than A 5-Year Mission: 'Star Trek' Turns 50

For years, Nichols also helped diversify the real-life space program, helping to recruit astronauts Sally Ride, Judith Resnik, Guion Bluford, and others. And she had her own science foundation, Women in Motion .

"Many actors become stars, but few stars can move a nation," tweeted actress Lynda Carter, who played Wonder Woman on TV in the 1970s. "Nichelle Nichols showed us the extraordinary power of Black women and paved the way for a better future for all women in media. Thank you, Nichelle. We will miss you."

George Takei, who costarred on Star Trek as helmsman Hikaru Sulu tweeted: "I shall have more to say about the trailblazing, incomparable Nichelle Nichols, who shared the bridge with us as Lt. Uhura of the USS Enterprise," her wrote. "For today, my heart is heavy, my eyes shining like the stars you now rest among, my dearest friend."

He also posted a photo of his longtime friend, both of them flashing the Vulcan greeting, and these words: "We lived long and prospered together."

We lived long and prospered together. pic.twitter.com/MgLjOeZ98X — George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) July 31, 2022

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Nichelle Nichols, who played Lt Uhura in original Star Trek, dies aged 89

Actor achieved worldwide fame and broke ground for Black women while playing Nyota Uhura in the original TV hit

Nichelle Nichols, who played communications officer Lt Nyota Uhura on the original Star Trek series and helped to create a new era for television in the 1960s, has died in New Mexico at the age of 89.

Nichols’ son, Kyle Johnson, announced her death on Sunday via Facebook , saying: “I regret to inform you that a great light in the firmament no longer shines for us as it has for so many years.” Nichols’s death, on Saturday night in Silver City, was later confirmed by her agent.

Johnson said his mother had succumbed to natural causes, seven years after suffered a stroke.

“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.”

Nichols will be remembered chiefly for her role in the sci-fi adventure series, but she began her career as a dancer and nightclub singer.

US president Joe Biden paid tribute to Nichols, saying she “shattered stereotypes”. “Our nation has lost a trailblazer of stage and screen who redefined what is possible for Black Americans and women”.

“Our nation is forever indebted to inspiring artists like Nichelle Nichols, who show us a future where unity, dignity, and respect are cornerstones of every society.”

Co-star George Takei tweeted that his heart was heavy, “my eyes shining like the stars you now rest among, my dearest friend” and he would have more to say soon on the “incomparable” trailblazer.

I shall have more to say about the trailblazing, incomparable Nichelle Nichols, who shared the bridge with us as Lt. Uhura of the USS Enterprise, and who passed today at age 89. For today, my heart is heavy, my eyes shining like the stars you now rest among, my dearest friend. — George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) July 31, 2022

Prominent Georgia Democrat and voting rights organizer Stacey Abrams , who is running again for the state governorship and is a longtime Star Trek fan, tweeted a picture of herself with Nichols.

“One of my most treasured photos – Godspeed to Nichelle Nichols, champion, warrior and tremendous actor. Her kindness and bravery lit the path for many,” she wrote. “May she forever dwell among the stars.”

One of my most treasured photos - Godspeed to Nichelle Nichols, champion, warrior and tremendous actor. Her kindness and bravery lit the path for many. May she forever dwell among the stars. #RIPNichelle #Uhura pic.twitter.com/nFXHif8HEC — Stacey Abrams (@staceyabrams) July 31, 2022

Star Trek brought Nichols enduring recognition and helped to break down some racial barriers in the television business, as they were rampant elsewhere.

She shared one of the first lip-to-lip interracial kisses on television – with co-star William Shatner, aka Captain Kirk. The kiss at the time was considered a forward-looking move on the part of the actors, as well as Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and the network that broadcast the show, NBC.

The episode in question, titled Plato’s Stepchildren, aired in 1968 and was fashioned in a way that gave those involved something of an out from any potential discriminatory backlash: Uhura and Kirk did not choose to kiss but were instead made to do so after being inhabited by aliens.

Roddenberry had reportedly insisted on an integrated crew for Starship Enterprise – a bold move given that interracial marriage was still illegal in 17 US states. Only a year earlier, Variety reported, Sammy Davis Jr had gone no further than kiss Nancy Sinatra on the cheek on Movin’ With Nancy.

The original Star Trek premiered on NBC on 8 September 1966. Its multicultural, multiracial cast was creator Gene Roddenberry’s message to viewers that in the far-off future, the 23rd century, human diversity would be fully accepted.

“I think many people took it into their hearts … that what was being said on TV at that time was a reason to celebrate,” Nichols said in 1992 when a Star Trek exhibit was on view at the Smithsonian Institution.

She often recalled how civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr was a fan of the show and praised her role.

She met him at a civil rights gathering in 1967, at a time when she had decided not to return for the show’s second season.

“When I told him I was going to miss my co-stars and I was leaving the show, he became very serious and said ‘You cannot do that’,” she told The Tulsa World in a 2008 interview.

“‘You’ve changed the face of television forever, and therefore, you’ve changed the minds of people’,” she said the civil rights leader told her.

Nichols said: “That foresight Dr King had was a lightning bolt in my life.”

More recently, she had a recurring role on television’s Heroes, playing the great-aunt of a young boy with mystical powers.

Nichols, trained as a dancer and also worked as a nightclub chanteuse, with the Washington Post reporting that she thought being cast in Star Trek would be a “nice stepping stone” to Broadway stage fame, not realizing that the TV show and her character would be an iconic and enduring smash hit.

Actor Wilson Cruz wrote on Twitter that “representation matters”.

Nichols “modeled it for us. With her very presence and her grace she shone a light on who we as people of color are and inspired us to reach for our potential,” he wrote . “Rest well, glittering diamond in the sky.”

Before we understood how much #RepresentationMatters #NichelleNichols modeled it for us. With her very presence & her grace she shone a light on who we as people of color are & inspired us to reach for our potential. Rest well glittering diamond in the sky https://t.co/DmeLFbg825 — Wilson Cruz (@wcruz73) July 31, 2022

The Smithsonian tweeted a picture of Lt Uhura’s iconic red mini-dress and noted that Nichols made “history for African American women in TV and film. Nichols also volunteered to recruit women and people of color for Nasa.”

Today we remember Nichelle Nichols. She starred as Lieutenant Uhura on "Star Trek" wearing this uniform now in our @NMAAHC , making history for African American women in TV and film. Nichols also volunteered to recruit women and people of color for NASA. #BecauseOfHerStory pic.twitter.com/fZZqfGlomz — Smithsonian (@smithsonian) July 31, 2022

Nichols was born Grace Dell Nichols in Robbins, Illinois, on December 28 1932. According to the National Space Society , she sang as a 16-year-old with jazz great Duke Ellington – her career getting under way at an early age – in a ballet she created, and later joined his band.

Her big break in the 1961 Chicago musical Kicks and Co. Nichols later appeared in the title role in Carmen Jones and in a New York staging of Porgy and Bess as well as in Jean Genet’s The Blacks, and landed small film roles.

Nichols was married and divorced twice, and is survived by her son, Kyle Johnson.

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Appreciation: ‘Star Trek’ underutilized Nichelle Nichols. She was its heart and soul anyway

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The original “Star Trek” may have been canceled in 1969, but it is still with us . That three seasons of a television series could in those days produce 79 episodes led to a healthy life in syndication, which brought the voyagers of the starship Enterprise new generations of viewers and led to the creation of a dedicated fandom, multiple ongoing conventions and the eventual creation of a franchise that continues to pay respect to the original .

As communications officer Lt. Uhura (the first name Nyota was a later addition), Nichelle Nichols, who died Saturday at the age of 89 , was with the show from first to last, including the subsequent “Star Trek: The Animated Series” and six feature films built around the original cast. Nichols was an elegant, poised performer — she was a trained dancer who held herself like one, just sitting at her console, one leg forward, one leg back, one hand to her earpiece — and in a series in which overacting can sometimes seem like the baseline, she never did too much. But Uhura was far more than a character in a television show, just as Nichols was something more than an actor: They were inspirational figures of historical import, both the player and the part, models of dignity who pointed to a better future simply by doing their jobs.

While racism was a recurring theme on “Star Trek,” Earth in the 23rd century is portrayed as having moved beyond prejudice, and so within the context of the series there is nothing extraordinary about a Black woman in a position of responsibility — Nichols has described Uhura as “fourth in command” — which is exactly what made it extraordinary in the context of late-1960s television.

Nichelle Nichols, who played Lt. Uhura on ‘Star Trek,’ dies at 89

Nichols died of heart failure Saturday night at a hospital in Silver City, N.M.

July 31, 2022

“Where I come from, size, shape or color make no difference,” William Shatner’s Kirk tells little person Michael Dunn in “Plato’s Stepchildren,” the third-season episode in which Kirk and Uhura have their famous kiss — not television’s first interracial kiss, it has been pointed out, but as far as I can tell, the first between a Black woman and a white man. The fact that they’re forced into it by telekinetic aliens, robbing them of agency, makes the scene no less groundbreaking, and Uhura’s speech to Kirk just beforehand puts a deeper slant on things: “I’m thinking of all the times on the Enterprise when I was scared to death. And I would see you so busy at your command. And I would hear your voice from all parts of the ship. And my fears would fade. And now [the aliens] are making me tremble. But I’m not afraid.“

Kiss aside, there’s no question Nichols was underused in the series; in the hierarchy of the show, in terms of screen time, there are Kirk and Spock, and then McCoy and Scott, and then Uhura (and Sulu and Chekhov). A lot of dudes. (Majel Barrett’s recurring Nurse Chapel was the only other female element, notwithstanding various guest aliens, often scantily clad.) Uhura rarely joins a landing party. But even when she’s not the focus of a scene, she is regularly onscreen, even if just visible at her post on the bridge, completing the picture, contributing to the emotional tenor. (And when she isn’t there, you notice it.) As the communications officer, everything runs through Uhura: She’s the voice of what’s happening elsewhere on the ship, and what’s happening outside the ship, whether announcing the presence of some other spacecraft or relating what’s up with Planet X. Even reciting lines like “I’m receiving Class Two signals from the Romulan vessel” or “Revised estimate on cloud visual contact 3.7 minutes,” she is the picture of the professional. She builds exposition, asks important questions; wordlessly reacting to some bit of business on the viewing screen, she brings an emotion and energy into the scene different from that of her sometimes blustery male colleagues.

Still, in the series’ first episode, Uhura confesses that she’s “beginning to feel too much a part of that communications console.” And whenever she’s liberated from her post for a minute and allowed to do anything else at all, you notice and remember. Whether she’s in a crawl space rigging up a subspace bypass circuit, or speaking teasingly with Spock (“Why don’t you tell me I’m an attractive young lady or ask me if I’ve ever been in love? Tell me how your planet Vulcan looks on a lazy evening when the moon is full”), or pretending to be an evil mirror-universe version of herself, these excursions leave you wanting more. For all it accomplished, the series missed a few tricks when it came to Nichols.

There was more to her than “Star Trek,” before, after and during. A performer since her teens, Nichols had toured as a dancer (and at least one night as a replacement singer) with Duke Ellington and made her screen debut in the 1959 film of “Porgy and Bess.” She had originally set her sights on a career in musical theater. You get a glimpse of that performer in the series’ second episode, when, as Spock plays on his Vulcan lyre, Uhura begins to mischievously sing and move catlike through the ship’s lounge: “Oh, on the Starship Enterprise / There’s someone who’s in Satan’s guise / Whose devil ears and devil eyes / Could rip your heart from you.” (Nichols got a couple more chances to sing in the series and performed a fan dance in “Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.”) It was to take a part in a Broadway-bound play that Nichols decided to leave the series after its first season, only to be persuaded to stay after an oft-recounted chance meeting with self-professed huge fan Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who, she later recalled, told her: “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 can go to space.”

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Apart from “Star Trek” films, which commenced in 1979, a decade after the series was canceled, Nichols continued sporadically to act, including episodes of “Heroes,” “Downward Dog” and “The Young and the Restless,” and movies of varying budget and quality, including Disney’s “Snow Dogs” and the zombie film “The Supernaturals”; perhaps her least Uhura-esque role is in the 1974 Isaac Hayes blaxploitation film “Truck Turner,” in which she plays an ice-cold, highly profane madam. (In 2008, she’d play another madam, a friendly one, in “Lady Magdalene’s,” a ridiculous low-budget action comedy.) Whatever the vehicle, her work always feels committed and self-assured.

But “Star Trek” remains her legacy, and her gift, and it shaped her life, leading Nichols to work with NASA, recruiting women and people of color to the space program (as recounted in the 2019 documentary “Woman in Motion”). Finally, it was home. In the 2007 feature-length fan film “Star Trek: Of Men and Gods,” directed by “Star Trek: Voyager” actor Tim Russ and also starring Nichols’ old castmate Walter “Chekhov” Koenig, Nichols played Uhura one final time, in a part that — with no Kirk, no Spock in the way — at last brought her to center stage. Currently available on YouTube , the film definitely feels homemade, but it is clearly a labor of love, and Nichols, white-haired and still beautiful, is wonderful in it. And Uhura still lives, in the person of Celia Rose Gooding, who plays the character’s younger self in “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.” These days, “Trek” women get a lot to do. And often they are women of color.

“I believe it was fated,” Nichols said in a Television Academy interview of the encounter with Dr. King that sent her back to “Star Trek.” ”And I’ve never looked back, I never regretted it. Because I understood the universe had somehow, that universal mind had somehow put me there. And we have choices — are we going to walk down this road or are we going to walk down the other? And it was the right road for me.”

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The Untold Truth Of Star Trek's Nyota Uhura

As a member of the original "Star Trek" crew, Lieutenant (and later, Commander) Nyota Uhura is a sci-fi legend. First appearing on television in 1966, Uhura was one of the first Black women to be depicted in a position of authority on American television. Following three seasons of the original "Trek," the character appeared in nine feature films (first portrayed by Nichelle Nichols and later by Zoë Saldana) and is about to make a more substantive return as part of the regular cast of the new streaming series "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds," where she'll be played by Tony Award nominee Celia Rose Gooding.

While Uhura is practically omnipresent on "Star Trek: The Original Series" –  appearing in more episodes than famous colleagues Scotty, Sulu, or Chekov — the "Trek" canon has provided scant few details about her backstory, personal life, or career apart from her decades-long tenure as Chief Communications Officer aboard the USS Enterprise. Thankfully, not only do official "Star Trek" novels and reference materials fill in some of the details, but the behind-the-scenes story of Uhura's evolution and contribution to American television has been very well documented. While we wait for "Strange New Worlds" to open a new chapter in Uhura's story, here's a quick look back at her legacy so far.

Nichelle Nichols gave Uhura her name

Actor Nichelle Nichols did more than perform the role of Lt. Uhura, she also played a substantial part in shaping and inspiring the character. 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 "Star Trek" — whatever that was.

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 actually 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 canon until its use in the 2009 "Star Trek" film.

Uhura's early life is yet to be depicted on screen

Most of Uhura's life before she joined the crew of the USS Enterprise has only been represented in non-canonical novels, which might be retconned by her appearances in the upcoming "Strange New Worlds." According to the novels "The Starless World" and "Catalyst of Sorrows," Uhura was born and raised in Kenya, which in the 23rd Century is part of the United States of Africa. As a teenager, she attends the Institute for Advanced Mathematics prior to being accepted into Starfleet Academy. "Beyond Uhura" explains that Nichelle Nichols and Gene Roddenberry imagined Uhura as Spock's protégé, an association that is supported by their interactions on "The Original Series" and expanded upon in the alternate "Kelvinverse" of 2009's "Star Trek" feature film.

Most non-canonical works depict Uhura's Academy years overlapping with that of her future commanding officer, James T. Kirk, and that may not be contradicted by her appearance on "Strange New Worlds." On the new series, Uhura is a fourth-year Academy cadet on assignment to the USS Enterprise. Since "Strange New Worlds" is set after the second season of "Star Trek: Discovery," it can begin no later than 2258, by which time Kirk would have already been a lieutenant serving aboard the USS Farragut — which doesn't preclude their having met there. What "Strange New Worlds"  does change is that, while Kirk is the name most famously associated with the USS Enterprise, Uhura gets there first.

Uhura's job is actually really important

Lt. Uhura is unquestionably an underserved character on "Star Trek: The Original Series" and the subsequent films featuring the original cast, never getting 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. At a glance, it's easy to see Uhura as the woman reduced to placing Captain Kirk's phone calls — after all, that's most of what she's seen doing in your average episode. 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 basically be the equivalent of the internet going out on the ship.

Dr. Martin Luther King insisted Nichols remain on Star Trek

By the end of the first season of "Star Trek" in 1967, Nichelle Nichols was frustrated with how little her character actually got to do on the show. According to "Beyond Uhura," Nichols suffered a number of 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 civil rights organization 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 interviews such as this one with the Washington Post , King told her that Uhura was an indispensable role model for viewers, particularly for Black children, who 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 (by one of the century's most compelling leaders, no less), Nichols retracted her resignation the following Monday and would remain for the duration of the series.

Uhura and Kirk's kiss made history

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, according to "Beyond Uhura." Episode director David Alexander still insisted on capturing versions of the scene both with and without the kiss, in case NBC affiliates refused to air a kiss between Black and white performers. 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 actually 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. (These two events do, of course, 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.

Uhura finally commands the Enterprise

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. 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 a number of female security officers who one must assume had always been just off-screen somewhere this whole time.

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 in order for her to get her turn. (It should have taken five, tops, which is still pretty damning of the show.) Would it be too much to ask that "Strange New Worlds" find an opportunity to give Cadet Uhura another (by which we mean "previous") turn at the big chair?

The novels detail Uhura's illustrious career

"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 still 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, but still far from, well, command.

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 a period of 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 (concurrent with "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.

Nichelle Nichols changed the real-life space program

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 America around us.

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. 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.

Nichols' efforts for the space program are the center of the documentary "Woman in Motion."

Plans to bring Uhura back fell through

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." (She did appear in the unofficial miniseries  "Star Trek: Of Gods and Men" produced by "Trek" alums in 2007.)

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. The most recent opportunity to bring Nichols back into "Star Trek" was a pitch for an episode of "Short Treks" in which an older Uhura would send a young Jean-Luc Picard on a mission. This episode has yet to be produced.

The movie reboot expands her role

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 actress Nichelle Nichols died in 2022

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 30, 2022, as reported by Variety . Nichols had spent the last few years of her life diagnosed with dementia, per The Los Angeles Times . 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."

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Published Dec 28, 2023

Nyota Uhura’s Most Iconic Star Trek Moments

It’s time to celebrate the Enterprise’s communications officer.

StarTrek.com

Nyota Uhura remains a groundbreaking character even to this day. Originated by Nichelle Nichols, the communications officer of the starship Enterprise was not only a courageous and clever addition to the crew, but represented a better future for viewers. Nichols herself was asked to remain on the show by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. , as he said it was one of the few shows he allowed his children to watch due to its depiction of Black characters as an equal leading character. Nichols also inspired legions of others, such as Sonequa Martin-Green, who blazed a trail as Michael Burnham in Star Trek: Discovery .

In 2009, Zoe Saldana stepped into the role in Star Trek (2009) . She delivered an equally powerful performance, setting the stage for Celia Rose Gooding to play the role in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds . While Gooding’s Uhura is a cadet, she is ready to prove herself and find her place among the cosmos.

To celebrate the beginnings of Uhura’s journey, we collected a few of Uhura’s most iconic moments from across the franchise to highlight her courage, her cleverness, and her leadership.

" Charlie X ," Star Trek: The Original Series

While this episode is full of dated views on gender, it does feature a scene highlighting Uhura’s friendship with the crew, particularly Spock. In the recreation room, Spock plays the Vulcan lute as Uhura sings “Oh, On the Starship Enterprise ” for the delight of the crew. While their performance ends abruptly due to Charlie’s powers, it’s a sweet scene that not only highlights Nichols’ gifted voice but shows that Uhura is a character with multiple sides to her beyond being a gifted officer.

"Mirror, Mirror," Star Trek: The Original Series

What do you do when trapped in an alternate universe? Uhura, along with Kirk, Scotty, and McCoy, finds the answer to that question in “Mirror, Mirror.” Uhura plays a key role in getting everyone home by distracting Sulu long enough for Scotty to divert warp power to the transporters. Even though she’s nervous, Uhura still proves herself to be as capable as the other officers on the mission, and without her bravery, Kirk and his crew would still be trapped in the Mirror Universe.

"The Lorelei Signal," Star Trek: The Animated Series

When Kirk and several male officers have their life forces drained on a planet full of siren-like women, Uhura steps up to take charge. Leading an all-women landing party, she convinces the women to free her captain and crew and to stop luring men to their deaths every 27 years. She even arranges for a ship — crewed only by women Starfleet officers — to come to pick up the women and take them to a more habitable planet. This is one of the few original episodes to allow Uhura to take full command, and of course she more than rises to the occasion, resolving the problem peacefully and without losing a single crewmember.

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

When she has the opportunity to help Spock come back to life, Uhura joins the rest of the crew in taking action. While her role is smaller in the film compared to her colleagues, she still gets one key and memorable scene. Uhura easily disarms and stops a young, brash Starfleet officer who’s guarding the Transporter room. “I’m glad you’re on our side,” McCoy says, and he’s right. Any side with Uhura on it? That’s clearly the winning team.

Star Trek Beyond

In the Kelvin universe, Uhura gets many opportunities to shine, but one key moment is her face-off with Krall in Star Trek Beyond . Uhura never gives up the faith that Kirk and her fellow crew members will save the day, and never displays fear or worry when Krall is threatening her. Once rescued and aboard the Franklin , it’s Uhura who is able to figure out that Krall is actually Captain Edison via the video logs left on the ship. Without her, the mystery behind Krall would have never been solved. She showcases her quick thinking to help save the day.

" Children of the Comet ," Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

"Children of the Comet"

Uhura lands an invitation to dinner at the captain's cabin where the crew gets to learn more about the cadet, with Pike noting how impressive she must be to land one of the few postings aboard the flagship Enterprise . She surprises the crew with her fluency in 37 languages, as well as her belief that she's doesn't consider herself "all that Starfleet."

Knowing Uhura's desire to study alien languages, Pike orders the cadet to join her first landing party as they survey a comet. On the comet's surface, they end up cut off from the ship's comms as they're near a volatile ancient egg-shaped relic. With time against them and a crewmember in critical condition, the away team relies on Uhura's specialty as a linguistics expert to help them out of their current predicament. As this was the first time her life was in danger; Uhura questions her presence there. When she defaults to her trait of humming when distressed, they noticed that the relic and the chamber reacting to Uhura's melody — the comet's form of communicating. As Uhura matches the comet's melodies, it lowers its force field allowing them to beam back aboard the Enterprise to save not only Sam Kirk's life as well as the lives of a neighboring planet in the comet's range.

" Subspace Rhapsody ," Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Keep Us Connected

In another music-based moment, Ensign Uhura truly shines in her solo musical number, "Keep Us Connected," as performed by the Grammy Award-winning Gooding. She details the tragedies of her life — losing her family as well as her friend and mentor, Hemmer — at such a young age, and how that grief is woven into her fabric.

Despite all this, it's her experiences that has guided her here, and towards understanding the subspace anomaly. Armed with her strengths, she inspires the entire crew into a full-blown musical ensemble, " We Are One ," saving not only the Enterprise , but all others in the surrounding area.

What’s your favorite Uhura moment? Let us know on social!

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This article was originally published on May 16, 2022.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds streams exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S., U.K., Australia, Latin America, Brazil, South Korea, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. In addition, the series airs on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel and streams on Crave in Canada and on SkyShowtime in the Nordics, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and Central and Eastern Europe. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

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Nichelle Nichols, the USS Enterprise’s Lt. Uhura, dies at 89

MLK convinced her to return to a groundbreaking role for Black actors

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Nichelle Nichols, best known as the communications officer Lt. Nyota Uhura of the starship Enterprise , died July 30. She was 89. Her groundbreaking performances in Star Trek , corresponding with the Civil Rights movement in the United States, helped set the first standard for diversity and inclusion in mainstream screen entertainment.

As Uhura, Nichols was a core presence during Star Trek ’s original run on NBC from 1966 to 1969. To that point, Black actresses were largely given servile or ancillary roles in television and theater. But Nichols, radiating professionalism and 1960s mod-style sex appeal from her chair on the Enterprise’s bridge, opened a channel to Hollywood for stars like Diahann Carroll, Cicely Tyson, and Pam Grier.

Born Grace Dell Nichols on Dec. 28, 1932 in the Chicago suburb of Robbins, Illinois, she modeled and starred in several stage plays during her 20s and 30s, including James Baldwin’s Blues for Mister Charlie , before her breakthrough on Star Trek .

Despite her success in Star Trek ’s first season, Nichols felt called to Broadway, and tendered her resignation to show creator Gene Roddenberry after receiving several offers for major stage roles. The following weekend, she was a celebrity guest at an NAACP banquet, where she met the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“As a matter of fact, [ Star Trek ] is the only show that my wife Coretta and I will allow our little children to stay up and watch, because it’s on past their bedtime,” King said, according to Nichols’ recollection for the Television Academy Foundation.

“And I got the courage to say, ‘I really am going to miss my co-stars,’ and he said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘I’m leaving Star Trek ,’ and he said, ‘You cannot.’ […] He said, ‘For the first time on television, we will be seen as we should be seen, every day.’”

Nichols withdrew her resignation and continued with the series, culminating in her role in season 3, episode 10, “Plato’s Stepchildren,” where she shared a kiss with William Shatner, the first interracial romance depicted on American television. The scene came one year after a Supreme Court decision nullifying Southern states’ laws against marriage between races.

Though the series’ first run was cancelled in 1969, Nichols remained a singularly identifiable Star Trek figure in the coming decades. She is, along with Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, and Walter Koenig, one of seven officers commanding the Enterprise from its original three-year mission in the 1960s through six feature film appearances from 1979 to 1991.

On Earth, Nichols was an ambassador for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration beginning in 1977, specifically to advocate for the training and assignment of women and minority candidates for spaceflight roles. In 2012, NASA credited Nichols for inspiring the careers of Sally Ride (the first American woman in space) and fellow astronauts Ronald McNair, Frederick Gregory, and Judith Resnik.

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Uhura's most important star trek episodes.

With the recent passing of Nichelle Nichols, now is a good time to look back at the most important episodes of the trailblazing Lieutenant Uhura.

The trail-blazing, multi-talented  Star Trek: The Original Series   actor Nichelle Nichols has passed away but one massive part of her legacy lives on through the character of Lieutenant Uhura. Nichols first brought Uhura to the screen in 1966 and she continued to make appearances in the role for many decades after. Her performance was a pioneering portrayal of a Black woman in a position of power on the TV, which led to later Star Trek  actors such as  Whoopi Goldberg being inspired by Nichols to join the franchise.

Playing Uhura also led to Nichols's life of activism. Martin Luther King Jr once encouraged Nichols to remain on  Star Trek  when she was considering leaving for a career in Broadway, but King recognized what important work she was doing. Later, Nichols worked with NASA to help recruit more minority and female personnel to the agency. Her work with NASA was explored in depth in the 2019 documentary,  Woman in Motion. 

Related:  Star Trek: How Martin Luther King Jr. Saved Uhura

Since Nichols' performance as Lieutenant Uhura, the Chief Communications Officer on the Starship Enterprise, there have been two other major performances of the role; In J.J. Abrams  Star Trek  movies Zoe Saldana played Uhura , and in  Star Trek: Strange New Worlds  Celia Rose Gooding took on the character .  Although these later iterations gave Uhura more screen-time and more character development than she got in  The Original Series,  Nichelle Nichols' Uhura shouldn't be overlooked. There were several episodes in  The Original Series  where Nichols dominated the screen and had a long-lasting impact on the world of TV. Here are Lieutenant Uhura's most important  Star Trek  episodes.

Season 1, Episode 1: The Man Trap

In one of the first episodes of Star Trek , a shape-shifting alien creature boarded the Enterprise. When the creature saw Uhura it shifted into a new form and began talking to her in another language which a young Lieutenant Uhura delightedly recognized as Swahili. Uhura was a multi-lingual Kenyan woman, which was not the kind of representation that was typically seen on-screen in the 60s. Uhura's full name was Nyota Uhura, her surname being a variation of the Swahili word "Uhuru", so the Lieutenant's full name means "star freedom" in Swahili. This episode was about an alien creature was had to change everything about themselves in order to infiltrate a new society, therefore it was extremely powerful to see a character like Uhura, an educated Black woman who was in touch with her cultural heritage and remaining true to her identity.

Season 1, Episode 4: The Naked Time

When the Enterprise crew was intoxicated by a ship-wide contagion, Lieutenant Sulu (George Takei) became a topless swashbuckler. Sulu attempted a romantic display for Uhura by grabbing her and declaring his intention to save the " fair maiden ". In her iconic reply, Uhura exclaimed " sorry, neither! " Uhura's rejection of this antiquated term with racist and misogynistic undertones was extremely important. The passion with which Nichols delivered this line shows that Uhura's value as a character wasn't dependent on the "fairness" of her skin or her status as a "maiden", with its outdated implications of chastity. With this, Uhura proved that women characters were worth more than being reduced to the role of a damsel in distress.

Season 1, Episode 2: Charlie X

In the most captivating moment of this episode, Uhura serenaded her crewmates with her angelic rendition of the song "Oh, On The Starship Enterprise" as Commander Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy , accompanied her on the Vulcan lute. Uhura's musical ability was a recurring character trait throughout the show, as she could often be found humming to herself at any moment. Her singing sometimes got her into trouble, such as in the episode "The Changeling" where an alien wiped her mind to learn more about music. Through her love of music, Lieutenant Uhura was shown to be more than her role as Chief Communications Officer. She was also creative and playful, such as when she teases Spock in her song. Nichols began her career as a dancer and singer and her natural talent in this scene led to unmatched chemistry between Uhura and Spock, which the  Star Trek  movies expands on when  Zachary Quinto's Spock, unlike Nimoy's,  engaged in a romantic relationship with the Lieutenant. A central plot point of this episode was the alien Charlie discovering first love and infatuation, yet Uhura and Spock had the most romantic scene of the episode.

Related:  Why Star Trek 4 Shouldn't Directly Follow Beyond

Season 2, Episode 4: Mirror, Mirror

When Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, and Uhura were sent into a mirror dimension, they encountered alternate versions of their crewmates including a particularly flirtatious Lieutenant Sulu. Uhura was tasked with distracting Sulu while the Captain put his plan into action. Uhura seduced Sulu on her own terms and then confidently rejected him. This was an extremely empowering moment for women on TV who would often have been viewed as the objects of men's sexual advances without room to express their sexualities on their own terms. This was the first of many Star Trek  mirror-dimension episodes in which alternate versions of the crew acted completely opposite to their normal character. Yet, even in this new environment, Uhura was able to stay true to herself.

Season 2, Episode 15: The Trouble With Tribbles

In one of the most iconic  Star Trek  episodes, the Enterprise was overrun by a hoard of cute fluffy alien creatures called Tribbles. Lieutenant Uhura was the one responsible for bringing the infestation on board after she bought the first Tribble in an alien bar. She then handed out more Tribbles to her crewmates who were comforted by the creatures' persistent purr— the fluffy little aliens soothed even Spock's emotions. As annoying as they were with their fast breeding habits, the Tribbles had an almost therapeutic effect on the  Enterprise  crew. Uhura was usually completely professional, even taking on duties outside of her role such as in the non-canonical  Star Trek: The Animated Series  episode when she took control of the ship. But this was one of the few episodes where Uhura was shown to have interests and desires outside of her role as Chief Communications Officer, proving that she was more than just a two-dimensional side character.

Season 3, Episode 10: Plato's Stepchildren

Nichelle Nichols and William Shatner made history together by performing one of the first televised interracial kisses in this episode. Although Kira and Uhura weren't acting under their own willpower at the time, it was Uhura's declaration before the famous kiss that made this such a trailblazing moment. Uhura told Kirk " I am not afraid " implying that she was not afraid of the backlash that  Star Trek: The Original Series   was sure to receive following this moment. Through Uhura, Nichols once again remained true to her own open-minded values and laid the path for future actors to be able to do the same.

Next:  William Shatner's Relationship With Each Of His Star Trek Castmates Explained

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Nichelle Nichols Helped Show America a Different Future

As Lieutenant Uhura in “Star Trek” and an advocate for inclusiveness in the U.S. space program, Nichols made an indelible impact on our collective imagination.

By Stacy Y. China

“She walks in beauty like the night. …”

A grinning Spock greets Lieutenant Uhura with a line of Byron at one point in their decades of shared “Star Trek” adventures. Now, this was way, way back when Leonard Nimoy’s Spock occasionally grinned, but walk with me here:

Even the alien knew a queen when he saw one.

And what a queen. Those boots. That dress. That eye makeup. That glorious voice.

Nichelle Nichols, the woman who brought Uhura to life, died last week at the age of 89. Her contribution to the collective imagination of America — whether on the television screen or in her real life — cannot be overstated.

With not a hair out of place and fabulous earrings dangling, she was Communications Officer, fourth in command of the Federation starship U.S.S. Enterprise in the 23rd century.

She was the embodiment of a declaration splashed across billboards decades later: There Are Black People in the Future.

When “Star Trek” debuted on NBC in September 1966, Uhura’s very presence hit the audience like a thunderbolt. At the time, Black people were in a very literal and ultimately existential fight for autonomy of their bodies and souls. It was the era of marches, freedom rides and sit-ins. Malcolm X was already dead. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was still preaching.

Black people of all abilities and professions were still being relegated to the corners of restaurants, hotels and offices. Black women, if ever mentioned in the larger media, were portrayed as either loud, undignified troublemakers or genial, overweight maids and nannies who supposedly delighted in doting on white folk’s children.

Out of this madness, Uhura appeared.

A vision in red and black. Beautiful, smart as hell and not interested in nobody’s nonsense.

Her name means freedom in Swahili. And for a generation, she symbolized that: the freedom to be seen and appreciated for your talents, rather than being seen as a liability because of your color.

I am too young to have seen “Star Trek” on NBC; I wasn’t born until the 1970s. I came to the franchise when I was in college in Philadelphia in the early 1990s. Philly TV was a Trek haven at the time: “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” were in first-runs, the older episodes of “Next Generation” were already in syndication five nights a week, and the original series was on every Saturday afternoon.

At first, I mainly complained about what Uhura didn’t do. She wasn’t one of the Big 3 (Kirk, Spock and McCoy), so she was rarely in a spotlight role. This was true of women in general in the original series, of course, and that didn’t get thoroughly fixed as a franchise problem until “Star Trek: Discovery,” decades later. (Yes, I know the U.S.S. Voyager had a woman at the helm. And I also know that her command was questioned and challenged far more often than any captain’s of that time. Nobody dared roll up on Jean-Luc Picard like that. Capt. Kathryn Janeway was done wrong.)

As I went into the work force myself, I acquired a healthier appreciation for Uhura. I learned that oftentimes, you just have to show up prepared and do your job and not expect to be the one out front or the one who’s patted on the back. Be prepared to take the helm if you have to, but don’t make a big deal about it. Run your business, not your mouth.

And I thought about what Nichols must have experienced over the years, being feted for being a part of this hopeful, exciting vision of the future yet still having to fight for screen time and inclusion in that 1960s present. (The discrepancy was not lost on her; as she recalled many times, she planned to leave the series after the end of the first season and return to Broadway until “her biggest fan” — a preacher of some renown named Martin Luther King — talked her out of it.)

Once the show ended, Nichols continued to be a catalyst for inclusion. In the 1970s, she went on a nationwide tour of universities and professional organizations, encouraging the country’s top women and people of color who were scientists, engineers and mathematicians to apply for the astronaut program. And they listened.

Charles Bolden, a former Marine Corps Major General who flew on four space shuttle missions and became NASA’s administrator for eight years, credited Nichols’s tour with giving him the idea to apply. Mae Jemison, the first African American female astronaut, often cited Nichols as an inspiration.

As a result of her tour, people like Sally Ride, Judith Resnik, Frederick Gregory and Ronald McNair all became astronauts.

(I may have well tried out too, Ms. Nichols, as I grew up loving stars and planets and nebulae, even though I couldn’t see much from my apartment in Brooklyn. But while the body was ready, the calculus was weak. I had to traverse other roads.)

In a 2011 interview with Nichols, the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said that thanks to her efforts, the space shuttle program was the first American astronaut program that better reflected America.

Yes, the astronauts are the ones who took the tests, trained their bodies, made the sacrifices and flew among the stars. But everything that flies has wind beneath its wings.

Nichols helped provide that wind, first to a television show and a concept that grew into a multimillion-dollar global franchise, and then to the real-life space organization that will maybe, eventually, figure out how to build that fictional Starship Enterprise.

Her presence and her encouragement let us know that we were all there in the future. Don’t worry about not being there. Of course you’re there. Just be ready to work it when it’s your turn.

She shifted what we as a people thought was possible. There is no greater gift a performer can give.

If there is an afterlife, I hope that Nimoy takes a few minutes to regale Nichols with poetry again. And that this time, they both spend some time grinning.

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• Mirror Universe

Nyota Uhura (mirror)

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Nyota Uhura was a Terran female who served in Starfleet in the mid- 23rd century , operating as a communications officer on the ISS Enterprise with the rank of lieutenant . Security Chief Hikaru Sulu was known to be infatuated with her, a feeling that Uhura herself had not returned as of 2267 .

In 2267, while on an away mission with Captain James T. Kirk , Montgomery Scott , and Doctor Leonard McCoy , Uhura was transported to the USS Enterprise and locked into the ship's brig upon Spock 's discovery of her true identity. ( TOS : " Mirror, Mirror ")

Appendices [ ]

Apocrypha [ ].

In the novel The Sorrows of Empire , Uhura, during a clandestine meeting with Scott and McCoy, loudly announced that she was going to try to kill Captain Spock . Almost immediately after this proclamation, Uhura disappeared into thin air , a victim of Spock's captured Tantalus field. She was succeeded as communications officer by the mirror universe counterpart of Lieutenant Palmer .

In DC Comics The Mirror Universe Saga , Uhura continued to serve on the Enterprise under Captain Kirk and participated in the Enterprise 's incursion into the prime universe. Uhura, along with the rest of the Enterprise crew, was eventually captured by Admiral Kirk and the Enterprise crew and placed into stasis aboard the USS Excelsior . Upon escaping from Excelsior , the Enterprise crew, along with Uhura, were killed by another Terran starship as the Empire had been made to believe that Kirk was a traitor to the Empire, not knowing it was Kirk's counterpart posing as Kirk.

External link [ ]

• Nyota Uhura (mirror) at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• 3 Star Trek: Discovery

• Lieutenants
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• Earth Spacedock (23rd Century)
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Nyota Uhura

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Lieutenant Nyota Uhura is a Human Starfleet officer assigned to the U.S.S. Enterprise .

Missions involved [ | ]

External links [ | ]

• Nyota Uhura at Memory Alpha , the Star Trek Wiki.
• Nyota Uhura at Memory Beta , the non-canon Star Trek Wiki.
• 1 List of canon starships
• 3 Playable starship

Uhura’s Abandoned Star Trek: Voyager Cameo Explained By George Takei

• Nichelle Nichols refused to cameo as Uhura in Star Trek: Voyager due to role size concerns, despite urging from George Takei.
• Although disappointing, Nichols' refusal is justified given her status as a Star Trek icon.
• Despite missing Uhura, Voyager successfully incorporated classic TOS characters like Sulu and Janice Rand in the season 3 episode "Flashback."

Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) almost appeared in Star Trek: Voyager , but fellow Star Trek: The Original Series actor George Takei explained why Uhura's cameo was abandoned. Nichols' portrayal of Lt. Uhura on TOS was a landmark representation of Black women on television at a time when Black female characters had very few positive portrayals , especially in science fiction. Although Uhura has gone on to be depicted by other actors in the franchise, Nichols never returned to play her in other projects after her tenure in TOS and the TOS portion of Star Trek 's movie series .

One chance Nichols did have to portray Uhura later on was in Star Trek: Voyager 's season 3 episode "Flashback," a tribute to TOS for Star Trek 's 30th anniversary. "Flashback" featured Lt. Commander Tuvok (Tim Russ) and Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) experiencing Tuvok's time serving on the USS Excelsior under Captain Hikaru Sulu (George Takei) after Tuvok mind-melded with Janeway in an attempt to heal a repressed memory. The Excelsior scenes took place during the events of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country , with Takei reprising Sulu as a special guest star.

How To Watch All Star Trek TV Shows In Timeline Order

George takei explains nichelle nichols’ refusal to play uhura on star trek: voyager, nichols wouldn't do voyager despite takei's urging.

In an interview with The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine , issue 9, around the time of "Flashback's" release, George Takei revealed that he had begged Nichelle Nichols to accept a cameo on Voyager, to no avail. Voyager 's creative team was set on having Nichols appear as Uhura in Tuvok's memories during the episode, but Nichols had objections to the size of the role that ultimately led to her turning it down . Takei clearly wanted to work with Nichols again, but his persuasion wasn't enough to convince her to join "Flashback's" cast. Read Takei's full quote below:

"She would have communicated with me, as Uhura to Tuvok, over the viewscreen. I pleaded with her on the phone to do it because it would have been wonderful to have her back as well. She felt the part did not do her justice, so she passed on doing it."

Despite the disappointment of not seeing Uhura during Voyager 's run, Nichols' refusal of the part shows how much she cared about the character. As the originator of such a legendary role as Uhura, Nichols certainly had the right to choose when and how she returned to Star Trek . Additionally, Takei's role as Sulu in "Flashback" was much more expansive than Nichols' would have been, which hardly seems fair given how important both of them are to Star Trek history . Ultimately, Nichols turning Voyager down shows the strength of character she was known for as a performer and a person.

Voyager’s “Flashback” Still Brought Back Another Important Star Trek: TOS Character

"flashback" still managed to get another tos cast member as a guest star.

Although Uhura didn't appear in "Flashback," Voyager still managed to snag another iconic TOS actor for the episode: Grace Lee Whitney as Janice Rand. Whitney played Captain Kirk's Yeoman during the first season of TOS. Although Janice Rand was tragically fired after TOS season 1 , the character has become just as important as other classic Star Trek characters thanks in part to Whitney's popularity with the fanbase. This resulted in Rand being brought back for several cameos throughout the TOS film series and again, much later, "Flashback."

Rand was in Star Trek VI during the events that "Flashback" covered, so bringing Whitney back to reprise her role only made sense. However, "Flashback" offered the pleasure of seeing Rand in her role as Commander onboard the Excelsior, and her interactions with Tuvok were highly enjoyable. Given the controversy around Whitney's firing from TOS , giving her the chance to portray more of Rand's Starfleet career was certainly deserved . Although Rand and Uhura could have easily been in Star Trek: Voyager together, having at least one other TOS character besides Sulu was still an achievement.

Source: The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine , issue 9

Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: The Original Series are available to stream on Paramount+.

Star Trek: Voyager

The fifth entry in the Star Trek franchise, Star Trek: Voyager, is a sci-fi series that sees the crew of the USS Voyager on a long journey back to their home after finding themselves stranded at the far ends of the Milky Way Galaxy. Led by Captain Kathryn Janeway, the series follows the crew as they embark through truly uncharted areas of space, with new species, friends, foes, and mysteries to solve as they wrestle with the politics of a crew in a situation they've never faced before. 

Cast Jennifer Lien, Garrett Wang, Tim Russ, Robert Duncan McNeill, Roxann Dawson, Robert Beltran, Kate Mulgrew, Jeri Ryan, Ethan Phillips, Robert Picardo

Release Date

Streaming Service(s)

Franchise(s)

Writers Kenneth Biller, Jeri Taylor, Michael Piller, Brannon Braga

Showrunner Kenneth Biller, Jeri Taylor, Michael Piller, Brannon Braga

Where To Watch Paramount+

Star Trek: The Original Series

Star Trek: The Original Series follows the exploits of the crew of the USS Enterprise. On a five-year mission to explore uncharted space, Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) must trust his crew - Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (Forest DeKelley), Montgomery "Scotty" Scott (James Doohan), Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), Chekov (Walter Koenig) and Sulu (George Takei) - with his life. Facing previously undiscovered life forms and civilizations and representing humanity among the stars on behalf of Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets, the Enterprise regularly comes up against impossible odds and diplomatic dilemmas.

Cast Nichelle Nichols, Walter Koenig, William Shatner, George Takei, Leonard Nimoy, Deforest Kelley, James Doohan

Network NBC

Writers Gene Roddenberry

Showrunner Gene Roddenberry

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Nyota Uhura (Kelvin timeline)

• View history
• 1.1 Childhood
• 1.2 Starfleet Academy (2255-2258)
• 1.3.1 Five Year Mission
• 2.1 Starfleet service record
• 2.2 Background
• 2.3 Connections
• 2.4 Background Information
• 2.5 Appearances
• 2.6 External link

Biography [ ]

Childhood [ ].

Uhura grew up in Africa , having been born in Kitui , Kenya , where older members of her family passed down horrible stories about the wars of genocide in Africa's recent history. ( TOS - Starfleet Academy novel : The Gemini Agent , ST video game : Star Trek App , TOS - The Q Gambit comic : " The Q Gambit, Part 1 ") On an occasion when Uhura and her parents were visiting her uncle Raheem off-planet, the four of them were in a shuttle which was severely damaged by an explosion, knocking Uhura's parents unconscious. Raheem, who had been outside the shuttle investigating a malfunction, was blown away into space by the explosion. He contacted Uhura and told her to drag her parents into the shuttle's escape pod , talking her through opening the pod's hatch manually and encouraging her when she thought her parents were too heavy to pull. As Raheem fell into the atmosphere of a nearby planet, he told Uhura how proud he was of her. Uhura never told anyone other than her parents about these events, but later shared them with Spock during a Vulcan mind meld . ( TOS comic : " IDW Star Trek, Issue 18 ")

Uhura attended the Nairobi Girls Academy , where her curriculum included advanced studies of the Earth-Romulus War . She played competitive racquetball in school. ( TOS - Starfleet Academy novel : The Gemini Agent )

In 2255 , she graduated from the Institute for Advanced Mathematics . The same year, Uhura applied to Starfleet Academy ( ST video game : Star Trek App ).

Starfleet Academy (2255-2258) [ ]

By summer 2255 , Uhura was studying xenolinguistics at Starfleet Academy and was a favored pupil of Commander Spock. On Spock's recommendation, Vice Admiral Tullsey and SFPD Homicide Detective Harve Bogenn asked Uhura to analyze two recordings of the serial killer known as the Doctor speaking in an unknown language . While working on the problem, Uhura herself was attacked by one of the swarms of nanites which constituted "the Doctor", but survived. With the help of Dr. Leonard McCoy and several other scientists, Uhura eventually deciphered the Doctor's words and discovered that the Transamerica Pyramid was the being's hideout. At this time Uhura had already established a strong working relationship with Spock and a friendship with Gaila, with whom she had discussed rooming in the future. ( TOS - Starfleet Academy novel : The Delta Anomaly ) Also in 2255, Spock assigned Uhura the task of analyzing combat recordings from the Earth-Romulus War to gain insight into the Romulan mindset. Spock first addressed Uhura by her first name at this time. ( TOS - Starfleet Academy novel : The Gemini Agent )

At one point during her Academy time, she served two quarters aboard the USS Ahriman , in the role of junior communications cadet . ( Star Trek App )

Uhura took a course taught by Spock and had the highest overall score in the class after she finished her thesis a week early. At this point, she formally started a romantic relationship with her former teacher. Spock was not sure their relationship would last a week, but it lasted several months before she opened up about her uncle's death. ( TOS comic : " IDW Star Trek, Issue 18 ")

Aboard Enterprise [ ]

Nyota Uhura in 2258

Uhura was one of the many cadets rushed into service when Vulcan sent a distress call when Nero attacked it. Uhura replaced Hawkins as communications officer, as Hawkins claimed that he would not be able to distinguish the Romulan language from Vulcan . During her time at Starfleet Academy, Uhura had a romantic relationship with one of her teachers and future USS Enterprise shipmate and first officer , Commander Spock. Uhura also did not appreciate her roommate, Gaila (who was an Orion female), bringing male cadets back to the dorm room, most notably James T. Kirk . ( TOS movie , novelization & comic adaptation : Star Trek )

Following Nero's defeat, Uhura continued serving as the Enterprise 's communications officer . When the Enterprise lost communications with the shuttlecraft Galileo , Uhura determined that the shuttle crashed on Taurus II . Uhura was very angry with Spock for placing himself in danger again. When Captain Kirk was forced to make the scheduled rendezvous at Makus III , Uhura stole one of the shuttles. She was able to rescue Spock and the shuttle crew. Despite stealing a shuttle, Uhura was not reprimanded by the captain. Following the mission to Deneva , Uhura expressed her concern to Spock, seeing how he was taking risks without thinking due to him still grieving. ( TOS - The Galileo Seven comics : " Part 1 ", " Part 2 ", TOS comic : " Operation: Annihilate, Part 1 ")

Uhura intercepted a message from a Klingon Bird-of-Prey near Iota Geminorum IV , translating information about a "execution". She helped the landing party defuse a Klingon bomb that was left there. She was able to stop the bomb by saying a command in Klingonese . ( TOS - The Truth About Tribbles comics : " Part 1 ", " Part 2 ")

Circa 2259 , the ship participated in a mission to system Gamma 7A . Uhura's service during this mission earned her a Special Commendation . ( ST video game : Star Trek App )

When the Enterprise was conducting a survey of Phaedus , Uhura and Chekov detected a high-frequency energy field coming from the surface that interfered with their communications. Uhura was then left in command of the Enterprise when Kirk, Spock, Lieutenant Sulu and a landing party went down to the surface to investigate. Uhura was contacted by a female trader named Mudd . Uhura went down to the surface with Mudd where she met with Kirk and Captain April . Uhura accompanied Kirk to rescue Spock, Sulu and Hendorff from the Shadow Phaedans . Uhura and the rest of the crew were locked off from the bridge . After the Enterprise was retaken, Uhura made Spock promise that he would not take any more risks. ( TOS - Countdown to Darkness comics : " Number One ", " Number Two ", " Number Three ", " Number Four ")

Uhura informed Kirk and Spock of the successful reversal of the hacks the Gorn lieutenant was attempting in the shuttlebay in an effort to escape. Later, she was held hostage by Gorn intruders on the bridge who were demanding control of the Enterprise . Kirk rescued her by remotely activating a shuttle and colliding it into the viewscreen , which resulted in depressurization and the Gorn being sucked out into space. Spock held onto Uhura by one arm until Kirk could give the computer the order to "repair the bridge" (sealing over the broken screen with a door.) ( TOS video game : Star Trek )

A month later in 2259 , Uhura was still serving aboard the Enterprise when she participated in a mission with Sulu and Spock to calm a volcano on the planet Nibiru (originally her participation in the Nibiru mission was to study and catalog the native linguistic communications system). As Spock was lowered into the volcano from the shuttlecraft, Uhura became increasingly worried for her boyfriend. Spock's tether broke and he fell onto a solid part of the active volcano. Uhura wanted to attempt a rescue, but Sulu informed her it would be too dangerous so they returned to the Enterprise ( ST video game : Star Trek App , TOS movie & novelization : Star Trek Into Darkness ).

Once back on the Enterprise , Uhura informed Captain Kirk that communication with Spock was patchy but still viable. She heard Spock tell Kirk to leave him in the volcano so the planet's pre-spaceflight natives would not be the victims of a Prime Directive violation. This attitude enraged Uhura because she believed that Spock had given no thought at all to her feelings and had failed to feel anything for her.

Later, on a mission to Qo'noS , Uhura confronted Spock about the issue and Spock told her he had chosen not to feel so that he was not in pain, rather than to feel that pain in his last moments, which Uhura took as an apology. On Qo'noS Uhura was forced to put her knowledge of Klingonese to use when she tried to save the mission from a Klingon patrol, though this negotiation was cut short by the intervention of "John Harrison", who revealed himself as Khan Noonien Singh .

With Khan's intervention came a whole new problem as Admiral Alexander Marcus wanted Khan dead and Kirk had captured him alive. This led to Marcus attacking the Enterprise with the USS Vengeance and causing a great deal of damage, with Uhura aboard the ship. Khan would eventually kill Marcus and flee to Earth , where Uhura was forced to beam down and help Spock capture Khan.

A year later , Uhura was still serving on the Enterprise as it prepared to undertake a five-year mission. ( TOS movie & novelization : Star Trek Into Darkness )

Five Year Mission [ ]

Uhura then accompanied Spock to New Vulcan in order cure him of the Pon farr . She refused to allow Spock's betrothed, T'Pring to touch him. She then listened to Spock as he explains the pon farr to her. She and the rest of the landing party were then forced to leave Spock. Uhura and Kirk then talked with each other about Spock and how they were not angry at was he needed to do. Uhura then went after him when he joined the Sasaud . When he was beamed back aboard the Enterprise, she spoke with him about she first fell in love with him. The two then embraced after he was cured of the pon farr and broke off his obligation to T'Pring. ( TOS - After Darkness comics : " Part 1 ", " Part 2 "; TOS comic : " IDW Star Trek, Issue 18 ")

In 2261 , Uhura then picked up a distress call from the Klingon colony on Khitomer . After Kirk and his landing party were captured, Uhura urged Spock to rescue Kirk from Qo'noS . Uhura then met male counterpart, Nnamdi Uhuro . ( TOS - The Khitomer Conflict comics : " Part 1 ", " Part 2 "; TOS - Parallel Lives comic : " Part 2 ")

In 2263 , Uhura and Spock broke up. Uhura and most of the crew were then captured by Krall and taken to his base on Altamid after the Enterprise was destroyed . She and Sulu then tried to send a distress signal to Starbase Yorktown . However, they were unable to. Uhura was then forced to watch Krall unleash the Abronath on Ensign Syl . ( TOS movie : Beyond )

Uhura and what remained of the crew were then rescued by Captain Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Jaylah and brought to the USS Franklin . Together, they were able to use the Franklin to stop Krall's attack on Starbase Yorktown . It was there that Uhura discovered that Krall was once the Franklin 's Captain Balthazar Edison from ship's databank. At Captain Kirk's birthday, Uhura went with Spock and watched as the USS Enterprise -A was being built. ( TOS movie : Beyond )

Uhura during her sabbatical on New Vulcan

Uhura, along with Spock then took a sabbatical to New Vulcan where they stayed with Ambassador Sarek . She then received a message sample from Kirk and his interim command, the USS Endeavour . Uhura then translated message, which said "Resistance is Futile." ( TOS - Boldly Go comic : " Issue 1 ")

Appendices [ ]

Starfleet service record [ ], background [ ].

In the prime reality , TOS - Legion of Super-Heroes comic : " Issue 3 " referenced Nyota Uhura 's roommate also being an Orion girl. Presuming Uhura's life was approximately parallel to that reality, there is a good possibility that the unnamed roommate referred to was a prime reality counterpart to Gaila.

Connections [ ]

Background information [ ].

• Nyota Uhura was portrayed by American actress Zoë Saldana in Star Trek in 2009 and Star Trek Into Darkness in 2013 . She also voiced Uhura in the TOS video game : Star Trek in 2013.

Appearances [ ]

External link [ ].

• Nyota Uhura (Kelvin timeline) article at Memory Alpha , the wiki for canon Star Trek .
• 1 The Chase
• 2 Preserver (race)
• 3 Ferengi Rules of Acquisition

Technician Uhura

Honor Hall Not in the portal

Technician Uhura is a Legendary [5-star] crew member.

Technician Uhura is a version of Uhura from the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Who Mourns for Adonais?" (2x04) .

Advancement

These items are required by Technician Uhura in order to advance through groups of levels.

Away Team Skills

Ship Ability and Bonuses

• Technician Uhura was added December 6, 2022 as Honor Hall crew.

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Nyota Uhura

• View history

Nyota Uhura was a female human , who served in Starfleet during the 23rd and 24th centuries . A gifted linguist , she was most noted for serving as chief communications officer aboard the USS Enterprise and USS Enterprise -A under James T. Kirk , though her later career saw her become the commanding officer of several starships, and rise to the rank of admiral in Starfleet Intelligence . ( Star Trek: The Original Series ; Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country ; ST novel : Vulcan's Heart ; TLE novel : Catalyst of Sorrows ; Starship Excelsior : " Tomorrow's Excelsior ")

• 1 Early life
• 2.1 Aboard the Enterprise
• 2.2 After the Enterprise
• 2.3 With Starfleet Intelligence
• 3 External links

Early life [ ]

Nyota Penda Uhura was born in 2239 in the United States of Africa on Earth . As a child, she and her parents lived in the city of Mombasa , Kenya , and later in Nairobi . Later in life, she would remember growing up in a village near Lake Simbi Nyaima , which she would consideer her home. She was of Bantu descent.

Starfleet career [ ]

Aboard the enterprise [ ].

Uhura graduated Starfleet Academy circa 2261 . By 2265 , she held the rank of lieutenant , and was assigned as chief communications officer of the USS Enterprise under Captain James T. Kirk , having joined the crew after their return from Delta Vega and the galactic barrier . She would serve in this post throughout the ship's five-year mission . ( TOS : " Where No Man Has Gone Before ", " The Corbomite Maneuver ", " Turnabout Intruder "; Star Trek: The Animated Series ; TOS novel : The Lost Years )

After serving detached duty during the Enterprise' s refit, she returned to her post at communications before the ship's launch during the V'ger incident in 2273 , and remained there for a second five-year mission under Captain Kirk. ( Star Trek: The Motion Picture )

Following the Cetacean Probe crisis, she joined the crew of the USS Enterprise -A , where she served until the ship's decommissioning in 2293 . ( Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home ; Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country )

After the Enterprise [ ]

Uhura served as Captain Spock 's first officer aboard the USS Intrepid II from 2294 to 2296 . When Spock retired to join the diplomatic corps following their mission to Obsidian , Uhura accepted promotion to captain and assumed command of the Intrepid II herself. ( TOS novel : Vulcan's Forge )

When she took command of the Intrepid II , Captain Uhura requested that Lt. Commander Saavik take the post of chief science officer . It was during that era that both officers began working more frequently with Starfleet Intelligence , using the Intrepid' s scientific mission's as cover. ( Star Trek: Pendragon )

Circa 2310 , the Intrepid II was assigned to a classified mission, and Uhura was reunited with Drs. Carol Marcus and Gillian Taylor . The three of them shared memories of James T. Kirk while conducting a survey of an oceanic planet for possible use as a terraforming site for a new Genesis -based project. ( TOS short story : " The Hero of My Own Life ")

With Starfleet Intelligence [ ]

At the Khitomer Conference , Uhura was recruited by Starfleet Intelligence . Throughout the rest of her starship career, even while in command of her own vessel, she would pass on things she heard on subspace channels to SI, though she never spied on any Starfleet officers. ( TLE novel : Catalyst of Sorrows )

Her work with Starfleet Intelligence would eventually take precedence over her starship career, and she eventually rose to the top of the department. She insisted on retaining the rank of captain to maintain a low profile, though her security clearance was higher than most admirals. In 2343 , she was one of the SI agents monitoring the Betreka Nebula incident , and in 2344 , she sent Commander Saavik to retrieve Spock from Romulus . ( TLE novel : The Art of the Impossible ; ST novel : Vulcan's Heart )

Admiral Uhura, circa 2375

By 2360 , she had accepted promotion to Admiral , and at that time, she was the head of Starfleet Intelligence. While she relinquished that title before the end of the decade, she remained with SI at least through 2377 . ( TLE novel : Catalyst of Sorrows ; ST novel : Vulcan's Soul )

External links [ ]

• Nyota Uhura article at Memory Alpha , the canon Star Trek wiki.
• Nyota Uhura article at Memory Beta , the non-canon Star Trek wiki.
• Nyota Uhura article at Star Trek Expanded Universe , the fanon and fanworks Star Trek wiki.
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