Nyota Uhura is a rare engineering officer in the Enterprise Crew in Star Trek Fleet Command.
Captain’s Ability
Hailing Frequencies Open – When the shield is depleted, Uhura has a 50% chance of delaying the next opponent’s weapon fire by one round.
In terms of captain’s abilities, this isn’t one of my go-to’s. It’s not the worst, but in terms of situations, it’s rather limited. The problem is that the Enterprise Crew is the morale crew, and the best part of the morale crew is Spock‘s shield regeneration. One of the best abilities in the game.
So Uhura’s ability only works if your shields have been depleted, giving you a catch-22, or maybe a Gift of the Magi scenario if you’d prefer.
Lastly, I haven’t tried this, but as I’m writing this now as I haven’t had cause to use it in a while, I’m wondering if this would work on a Sarcophagus, which doesn’t have shields at all. I’ll have to stick a pin in this one and come back to it.
Nyota Uhura Officer Ability
Target That Signal – Uhura increases the Accuracy of the ship she’s in by (40% 50% 60% 70% 80%)
Accuracy is generally not the best attribute for an officer to prop up for PvP. Generally, you want to either reduce damage, so your ship can get off more shots, or increase statistics. But, it’s not the worst thing either, especially when going against mission bosses. If you’re running an Enterprise against an interceptor mission boss, you can throw her on the bridge instead of Spock.
And with Territory Capture coming into the game, you’re now going to have a need for useful officers on your third and fourth ships, so this will make her more valuable.
In general, Uhura is a good complement to your Morale Crew, good against interceptors on explorers.
And being a rare officer, her attack stats will be useful below decks.
Nichelle Nichols Trivia
So I covered Zoe Saldana in the Cadet Uhura article, so today, we’re going to talk about the great Nichelle Nichols – in every way, the originator of the role of Nyota Uhura.
Grace Dell Nichols was born in Robbins, Illinois, just south of Chicago on December 28th, 1932.
She was discovered by the great Duke Ellington in the 1940’s, and toured with him as a singer and dancer.
She made her screen debut in the 1959 Otto Preminger film, Porgy and Bess. The film had an amazing cast, starring Sydney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge, Pearl Bailey, and Sammy Davis, Jr. And in another minor role… Ivan Dixon, who was Kinchloe on Hogan’s Heroes.
It also featured Brock Peters, who Star Trek fans know as Benjamin Sisko’s father, Joseph, on Deep Space Nine, and as Admiral Cartwright from Star Trek IV and VI.
And here’s the trivia that will make your visit here worth the price of admission. Providing the singing voice for Diahann Caroll’s character in Porgy and Bess was Loulie Jean Norman… who I’m guessing you’ve never heard of, but if you’ve ever watched an episode of the Original Series, you’ve heard her voice. She was the vocalist in the opening credits.
Okay, back to Nichols.
Her break came in 1961, appearing in the short-run New York musical Kicks and Co., which was a satire of Playboy, and ironically enough, brought her to the attention of Hugh Hefner. He booked to sing at his Playboy Club in Chicago. I think it’s a safe bet that if Nichols hadn’t chosen an acting career, she could have had a very successful career as a singer.
The Lieutenant
A few years later, she got her first television role – on a mostly forgotten show called, The Lieutenant in 1964. Only the most serious Trek-o-philes will remember that this was the first show created by Gene Roddenberry. (It starred Gary Lockwood, who would later play Gary Mitchell playing the title character, Lieutenant William Tiberius Rice.)
Nichols was cast to play the fiancée of a black Marine, played by Don Marshall (who would later play Lt. Boma in the TOS episode, The Gallileo Seven.)
The episode, To Set It Right, was written by future Star Trek writer Lee Erwin, and dealt with racial prejudice. Two recruits, one black, and one white get into a fight at the beginning of the episode. Lt. Rice tries to get them to settle their differences, first by setting up a boxing match between them and then by forcing them to work together on a march.
The episode never aired, and Roddenbery’s frustration led him to create a science fiction program, where he could tell stories like that, but use allegory, and get them past the censors. Maybe you’ve heard of the program.
Becoming Nyota Uhura
The character of Nyota Uhura didn’t appear in the first Star Trek pilot, The Cage. Most shows don’t get a second pilot. But Star Trek did, Where No Man Has Gone Before, ironically featuring Gary Mitchell from The Lieutenant.
But Uhura wasn’t in that episode either. Neither, by the way, was Dr. McCoy. (Here’s your trivia for the day, Nichelle Nichols and DeForest Kelley both filmed their Star Trek debuts on May 24th, 1966, and their final Trek appearances on July 2nd, 1991.)
Uhura made her first filmed appearance in The Corbomite Maneuver, which was the third episode filmed. But the first season episodes are notorious for being aired out of order, so her first television appearance came in the debut of the series, The Man Trap. (The Man Trap, by the way, was written by Lee Erwin. Remember him?)
Nichols wanted to leave Star Trek after the first season, to focus on her career on Broadway.
“I thought it was a Trekkie, and so I said, ‘Sure.’ I looked across the room, and there was Dr. Martin Luther King walking towards me with this big grin on his face. He reached out to me and said, ‘Yes, Ms. Nichols, I am your greatest fan.’ He said that Star Trek was the only show that he, and his wife Coretta, would allow their three little children to stay up and watch. [She told King about her plans to leave the series.] I never got to tell him why, because he said, ‘You can’t. You’re part of history.’
Nichelle Nichols
Her role was expanded during the second season of The Original Series, beyond that of just crewing a console. It was during the second season of the show that Nichols and William Shatner had the first interracial kiss on American scripted television.
The Animated Series
And I wanted to show you a clip from The Animated Series, which, I’m going to wager that most of you haven’t seen anything of. But aside from the very 70s style of animation (if Scooby-Doo showed up, he wouldn’t look out of place), they’re essentially shorter Star Trek episodes.
And in one of them, The Lorelei Incident, Uhura winds up in command of the ship.
And leads an assault to rescue Spock, Kirk, McCoy and Scotty.
(Aside because I have to mention it, The Animated Series was notoriously done on the cheap, so they’ve only got a few voice actors doing all the parts. And it’s really obvious here that Majel Barrett-Roddenberry is both the voice of Theela and Nurse Chapel in the same scene.
Nichols herself voiced 10 characters other than Uhura on TAS.
Inspiring Others To The Stars
Nichols’s work on Star Trek has been an inspiration to many, among them Guinan actress Whoopi Goldberg, and astronaut Mae Jamison.
In the 1970s, she worked with NASA to create a recruiting program for women and minorties, called Women In Motion, Inc., that’s the subject of a documentary, Woman in Motion. Its focus was to get women into the space program. Sally Ride, the first female astronaut was recruited by the program. So was Guion Bluford, the first African-American astronaut, as well as the late Dr. Judith Resnik and Dr. Ronald McNair – who tragically passed away in the Challenger Disaster in 1986.
And Lastly…
I couldn’t possibly do an article on Uhura, and Nichelle Nichols without including my favorite scene of hers. From Star Trek III, where she deals with “Mr. Adventure.”
From a character who ran the communications console in TOS, we get a fully realized character showing off a huge range in a short scene.