Star Trek and History

by Reagin, Nancy

  Lt. Uhura’s significance as an African American character arose from the United States’ peculiar history of socially constructed (but nonetheless real) definitions of race. Because of the legacy of slavery, for many years, even decades after slavery’s abolition, people with any African ancestry in the United States were defined as African American. As a result, although Nichols has described her own heritage as “a blend of Races that includes Egyptian, Ethiopian, Moor, Spanish, Welsh, Cherokee Indian and a ‘blond, blue-eyed ancestor or two,’” the historic realities of American racial definitions eclipsed such complexity. Star Trek viewers in the 1960s saw Lt. Uhura as an African American. Even within the narrative of the Star Trek universe, Uhura served in Starfleet as a representative of the United States of Africa, a futuristic vision of a unified African continent, asserted but never really explored by the show.4

  Uhura’s character appeared on television amid the historic struggles of several American postwar social movements, including the “second wave” women’s movement, the civil rights movement, the anti–Vietnam War movement, and the first stages of the gay liberation movement. The show first aired during the same year in which the National Organization for Women was founded. In 1966, Jim Crow laws still prescribed racial segregation in the American South, redlining was still common (defining neighborhoods as “whites only” through restrictive lending and real estate sales), and other de jure and de facto segregation kept African Americans from full citizenship and civic participation. On television and in films, African American actors appeared most often in stereotypical roles: as chauffeurs, maids, or servants. As the civil rights movement used marches, sit-ins, demonstrations, and legislation to dismantle segregation in the 1950s and 1960s, Roddenberry’s creation of Lt. Uhura challenged convention.

  Despite being an officer, Lt. Uhura remained a limited character. Clad in a miniskirted Starfleet uniform, Lt. Uhura sat at a console on the bridge, wearing a communications link device in her ear. Daniel Bernardi’s assessment of race in Star Trek concludes that Roddenberry’s vision of racial integration had limits: Uhura (and the other nonwhite actors) served as “background color” for the white leads. Uhura remained a supporting character, both on television and in the movies.5

  Nichols herself sometimes chafed at her character’s peripheral role in the Enterprise’s business. Although Lt. Uhura opened most communications (often with her famous line “Hailing frequencies open, Captain”), she did not lead negotiations, nor did she always participate in the action. Her character usually remained with the ship, off screen and out of sight, when the action took the major characters elsewhere. When asked in 1977 to name her favorite original series episode, Nichols replied, “It was called anytime Lt. Uhura got to get off the bridge.”6 In reaction to the role’s limitations and in pursuit of her musical theater dreams, Nichols decided to leave Star Trek after the first season—and inadvertently discovered Lt. Uhura’s power.

  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. himself persuaded Nichols to remain on the show.7 Nichols recalled that she gave Roddenberry her letter of resignation near the end of the first season. “[I] thanked him profusely for the opportunity, et cetera, but I was bored. As an artist. I was recognizing how much this genius man was bringing, and I didn’t want to get entrapped in it.” She wanted to return to musical theater, to grow artistically. “All I remember, it was a Friday. He [Roddenberry] said, ‘Take the weekend and think about this, Nichelle. If you feel the same way on Monday morning, you can go with my blessings.’” The next evening, she appeared at a fund-raiser for the historic civil rights organization, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). “And one of the producers comes and says, ‘Excuse me, Miss Nichols,’ and he kind of had a little smirk on his face, ‘I hate to bother you, but there is someone here who says he’s your biggest fan and would like to meet you if you don’t mind.’” It was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.8

  When Nichols revealed that she was leaving the program, Dr. King reacted. “And he said, ‘You cannot do that. . . . This show is changing the way people see us, and see themselves. And the manner in which they’re seeing the world.’” King confided that Star Trek’s racial integration made it one of the few programs that he and Coretta let their children watch. Nichols remembered that Dr. King argued, “You’re showing them [racial integration]. The manner in which you have created your role is essential to that change.” Dr. King said to Nichols, “Besides, you’re the chief communications officer; you’re fourth in command. . . . This is not a Black role; this is not a female role. Anybody can change that. If you leave, it will erase everything that you’ve done.” The extraordinary timing surprised Nichols. “It was bizarre; it was so unreal: the juxtaposition, one day to the next.” After the encounter, Nichols remained for the show’s full run.9

  Her decision had long-lasting reverberations. Nichols recalled, “I later found out that there were dozens, I guess hundreds, of young white kids in the South who were not allowed to watch that show. And families. And who came together and watched it anyway.” Some of those fans probably reacted differently to racial integration because of what they saw. And some of them later helped to create the conventions that revived the franchise in the 1970s. Roddenberry’s casting even affected the real U.S. space program.10

  “The Next Einstein Might Have a Black Face”

  When the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) began recruiting mission specialist astronauts in the mid-1970s, agency leaders assumed that women and members of racial minorities would apply, allowing the space shuttle astronaut corps to be more diverse, a goal of the Space Shuttle Program. After all, the recruiting pool for mission specialists—researchers and scientists—was much more likely to contain women or racial minorities than the pilot astronaut pool, which solicited applicants whose background included “high performance jet aircraft experience.” Because women were banned from flying military aircraft from 1944 until the early 1970s, the same period in which jet aircraft first came into use, virtually no women were jet test pilots. Likewise, the racial integration of the military services that began in 1948 took a long time to penetrate elite assignments, such as jet test piloting. But many historically black colleges and universities had strong engineering and science programs, and, beginning in the 1960s, the number of women with PhDs also rose. The pool of applicants therefore could have included more female and minority applicants.11

  And yet, by February 1977, only months before the proposed astronaut selection, of the 1,500 applications submitted, only “approximately 30 were identifiable as minorities and only 75 were women.” NASA needed to address the legacy of its perceived discrimination. Remarkably, when the space agency wanted to illustrate a racially integrated, mixed-sex, international space crew, Star Trek offered an excellent example.12

  NASA’s desire to have a more diverse astronaut corps for these vehicles reflected how the American workplace was transformed by legislation and social activists in the 1960s and 1970s. The 1964 Civil Rights Act required more equality for African Americans and also outlawed sex discrimination. The Equal Employment Opportunity Act was passed in 1972. But by 1966, NASA already had a sweeping antidiscrimination policy including not only race, gender, and creed (among other factors) but also physical handicap (discrimination against which did not become illegal until the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1992). Of course, implementation—the agency’s policy enforcement across various NASA centers as well as the individual workers who were the first or second woman or person of color in an office—also had a complex history. But when asked in 1986 about visiting NASA headquarters in 1975, Nichols recalled, “I saw women, blacks, browns, and yellows working in every level of the agency, from maintenance to management. Except for astronauts.”13

  Nichols visited NASA because she had become fascinated by spaceflight. In 1975, she heard one of NASA’s German rocket engineers, Jesco von Puttkamer, talk at a Star Trek convention in Chicago. “The moment I heard him
speak, I was hooked.” Soon, Nichols was speaking publicly about both spaceflight and Star Trek. When she became a National Space Society board member, she gave a speech titled, “New Opportunities for the Humanization of Space, or Space: What’s in It for Me?” In it, she challenged NASA to “come down from your ivory tower of intellectual pursuit, because the next Einstein might have a Black face—and she’s female.” The audience chuckled in recognition. Unbeknownst to her, “the top people [at NASA], the Administrator, James Fletcher at that time, and the head of the astronaut corps . . . were in the audience and heard me take NASA to task.”14

  To fix the recruitment problem before the new candidates were announced, Fletcher invited Nichols to conduct a public relations campaign encouraging qualified women and people of color to apply. Nichols remembered that she only agreed to assist if the agency was serious about real integration. “So, I said, if I take this on, and this becomes [real], I’ll be your worst nightmare. . . . I intend to speak before Congress for this, and to all the newspapers and all the television [stations]. . . . I’m going after PhDs in physics, chemical engineering. . . . And these people, I will not insult by trying to convince them of something that is not possible.” She told the NASA administrator that if she recruited talented candidates and then the new class did not contain real diversity, she would go to Congress to protest. “And Dr. Fletcher stood up, having listened to me, . . . and said, ‘And we’ll go with you.’” She agreed to help.15

  Nichols donned a NASA jumpsuit to visit organizations and campuses across the country, recruiting mission specialists through personal appearances and public service announcements. As per her NASA contract, the agency paid all expenses while she donated her time. Nichols’s close identification with the Lt. Uhura role drove the media coverage. Major news organizations, popular magazines, and supermarket gossip pages all called her Uhura when covering the recruiting campaign. To support the effort, NASA even made a Star Trek publicity photograph available, showing Nichols as Lt. Uhura in the 1960s. Years later, when she was promoting the Star Trek films, news articles about Nichols still mentioned her work with NASA.16

  As she campaigned, Nichols battled NASA’s legacy of perceived discrimination. Suspicions of NASA’s intentions ran deep; simply opening up the selection process was not sufficient. When Nichols appeared at colleges and universities, students confronted her with the idea that NASA was using her. She often replied, “I know. And I’m using NASA, too. But if you don’t apply, then they are right. If you qualify and you really wanted to [apply] and you don’t apply, then they are right.”17

  Ultimately, Nichols’s campaign changed perceptions and helped to change the face of NASA’s astronaut corps. Several prominent mission specialists, including Dr. Judith Resnik and Dr. Mae Jemison, the first African American woman astronaut, credited their astronaut careers to Nichols’s campaign. In a nod to that connection, Jemison later appeared in a Next Generation episode as a transporter operator. Of all of the original series characters who left their marks on American popular culture, only Lt. Uhura also shaped real space history.18

  “Be Careful What You Wish For”

  When the cast reunited for Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), Nichelle Nichols reprised her role as Lt. Uhura. The opportunity to make six movies in eleven years allowed Nichols to revisit the character repeatedly—and solidified Uhura’s place in Star Trek fandom. Ultimately, however, Lt. Uhura was never more than a supporting character.

  For the first three films, Uhura’s role initially remained as limited—if not more so—as it had been in the 1960s. She did not have any featured scenes, remarkable interactions, or memorable lines. When Captain Kirk gathers the Enterprise crew to brief them on Earth’s new threat in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, all of the named cast members join him on the stage, except Uhura, who stands off to the side, in front of the general crew, but not with the command team. In the sequel, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), Uhura continues her role as the switchboard operator for the ship’s communications. At one point, however, she is rendered virtually mute. When the Enterprise’s away team boards the decimated space station Regula 1, Uhura’s image appears on a silent space station monitor, mouthing unheard, inaudible entreaties. She barely appears in the film afterward.

  Similarly, Lt. Uhura is absent from most of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984). She participates in the crew’s rebellious attempt to rescue Spock but, in doing so, she vanishes from most of the movie. Acting in cahoots with the rest of the crew, Uhura commandeers a transporter, locking an adventure-hungry technician in a closet at phaser point with the memorable line, “Be careful what you wish for.” She then beams Kirk, McCoy, Sulu, and Scotty aboard the Enterprise, agreeing to meet them later. The movie’s central adventure proceeds with only the male cast members and the female Vulcan, Saavik. In the film’s final scenes, Uhura reappears on Vulcan.

  While the motion pictures were being produced, the character of Lt. Uhura also developed through Star Trek novels. Beginning in 1967, Paramount allowed publishing houses, including first Bantam Books and later Ballantine Books, to develop novels based on the Star Trek original series and the animated series. The novels sometimes developed plots and characters in ways different from canonical Star Trek. In particular, Uhura’s Song (1985) by Janet Kagan, part of the Star Trek book series developed by Pocket Books after 1979, explored Uhura’s complexity, giving her a central role in the book’s action. When a planet of feline aliens suffers from a fatal AIDS-like illness, Uhura’s close friendship with one of them provides the key to helping them. The friends bond over their shared love of music, communicated thanks to Uhura’s fluency in the alien language. The character traits suggested in Kagan’s novel shaped depictions of the character in later novels and films.19

  The fourth motion picture, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), showed some of that development: Lt. Uhura finally exhibited more complex skills. When the Enterprise crew approaches Earth, Uhura picks up “multiphasic communications, overlapping; it’s almost a gibberish.” Among the signals, she detects the distress call outlining the threat: an alien probe unwittingly disabling starships and damaging the planet with transmissions directed into Earth’s oceans. Uhura modifies the transmissions, revealing how they would sound underwater: whale songs. Although the character remains underused throughout the whale’s rescue, Uhura does accompany Chekov on a mission to steal nuclear materials from the twentieth-century aircraft carrier USS Enterprise.

  The development of Uhura as a supporting character was not a linear progression toward a fully rationalized role, however. Although ideas from the Star Trek tie-in novels appeared in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), the overall portrayal of Lt. Uhura was mixed. In this movie, viewers saw the first on-screen suggestions of a romantic relationship between Uhura and chief engineer Montgomery Scott. When Uhura joins Scotty on the bridge as he repairs the Enterprise-A, she delivers his dinner with an intimate caress of his cheek. But the relationship was not developed in the movie, and there was only one other subsequent hint of their romance. Uhura’s leadership opportunities were also spotty. Uhura answers Starfleet’s calls and reassembles the crew from shore leave to rescue the hostages taken on Nimbus III. But a subsequent scene contains an odd mix of Uhura’s talents and sexuality. As a distraction, once on the planet, Uhura acts as a siren, singing from a ridgetop while performing a fan dance. Uhura is the center of the action, although in an entirely physical, sexualized context. In the aftermath, Uhura is once again out of the action as the male leads engage in a firefight. Throughout the film, the character’s portrayal continues this mix of skills and weakness. Although Uhura pilots one of the shuttlecraft to the surface during the hostage rescue attempt, she also falls under the spell of Sybok, the empathic Vulcan Svengali hijacking the Enterprise. By the film’s conclusion, the character is once again in the background, out of the action.

  As the real-life United States confronted the Cold War’s end—and the Soviet U
nion’s demise—the Star Trek crew faced the end of the Klingon Empire in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). Uhura’s supporting role continued to be limited, although with flashes of more developed talents. When the crew gets called into a classified briefing about the Klingons’ plight, Uhura offers a hint of how her offscreen responsibilities had grown, complaining, “This had better be good. I’m supposed to be chairing a seminar at the Academy.” But for the rest of the film, other than a comical scene in which the crew pores through thick texts to communicate in Klingon, Uhura is relegated to the sidelines once again. The fullest development of the character would come when the franchise was revived in 2009.

  “Was I Not One of Your Top Students?”

  When J.J. Abrams’s film reinvigorated Star Trek in 2009, Lt. Uhura (as portrayed by Zoe Saldana) took on the traits suggested in the novelizations and motion pictures. Although inspired by the original Star Trek series, rather than remaining in the background (or on the Enterprise) opening and closing communications, Lt. Uhura in the 2009 film serves as a central character, appearing throughout the film, participating in key plot developments, and facilitating the emotional development of the other main characters. After her introduction in the bar, Lt. Uhura’s physical attractiveness initially seems to be a central trait. As Kirk hides out under the bed of Uhura’s amorous Orion roommate in her Starfleet Academy dorm room, Uhura unknowingly begins to undress in front of him. But the scene ultimately serves not only to highlight Uhura’s body but also to reveal that she had just detected an anomalous transmission from a Klingon prison planet. That transmission would prove to be essential to unraveling the mystery at the center of the film’s plot. Uhura appears as a dedicated and talented officer, spending extra time at her post, ultimately to the benefit of all on board the Enterprise.