Running into the cast of Star Trek shows continues with living in Austin! Nichelle dropped by Dragon’s Lair for a quick signing because it was on the way to another convention in San Antonio with George Takei and Walter Koenig. Lucky Somara, this took place on her birthday too!
She’s a sweet lady who was amazed at the standing ovation she received when walking into the store. Think about it. Outside of fandom, Madame Nichols isn’t instantly remembered by the general public. Yet it was an honor to meet her beyond her role as Lt. Uhura. Although she wasn’t on every episode due to budgetary reasons (secondary cast members often get excluded unless they’re absolutely critical to a story), Nichelle was one of the first Black women on TV to star in a good, recurring role. Sure it was a Sci-Fi show which in the Sixties was just crap for kids but many of us were born after the days when Black Americans, especially women, were often cast as maids, nannies, cooks, comic relief, slaves, etc. Uhura was a member of Captain Kirk’s command staff and she was treated as an equal as per the show’s vision or what Fox today would call Gene Roddenberry’s Marxist-Liberal Future Agenda. Uhura’s job was more than sending messages to and from the Enterprise as Chief Communications Officer (something poked at in Galaxyquest), she was a de facto intelligence officer via the signal corps. Ergo, Uhura was privy to and trusted with key information from HQ shared between her, Kirk and Spock. Dorky I know. The point is, Nichelle was more than a pretty face. Hell, thanks to her, numerous women found their passion for Science, technical fields, the military and a few astronauts! One bright spot I did see in J J Abrams’ dreadful re-imagining, Zoe Saldana’s Uhura has a more prominent spot in the horrible plots.
On to actually meeting/speaking to Nichelle.
I thanked her for “taking one for the team.” Nichelle asked, in what way? I said, you kissed Shatner! She laughed and said, he was a very lucky man. I then told her I also remembered seeing her in a James Garner movie, playing a tough lady running a dice game. Nichelle recalled, neither of us could get the title right. I looked it up, it was Mister Buddwing.
Next up. Righting one wrong many of us feel strongly about at work. When we moved into our new building at Apple, being the Enterprise division, we got dibs on the Star Trek theme. Oddly, the people making the name choices gave the meeting/lab room names to characters. There’s Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Sulu, Chekov, Sarek and Khan. No Uhura or Chapel. Two guest characters have rooms while the two recurring women crewmembers got squat.
Grrrrr! Only a dead man would find this lady unattractive.