Yesterday the death of Nichelle Nichols was announced. Her link to this blog is a bit tangential. She was an actor, singer and model whose iconic acting role ended up being as Lt Uhuru in the original Star Trek series. I was a fan of Star Trek (and still am) from a young age, watching it with my mum, and over the years I've probably watched the episodes of "TOS" (the original series) many times. In fact, I am in the middle or revisiting them all with my 8 year old daughter, and we watched the episode The Return of the Archons together last week.
I don't know if my interest in Star Trek was related to my interest in things sciency in general, or whether it even promoted my interest in science things, but I certainly am not alone in the world of physics being a Star Trek fan, starting from watching TOS with my mum, and then the Next Generation, Deep Space 9 and Voyager.
When watching Star Trek as a child, I had no understanding of the racial politics in the US and how groundbreaking it was to have a black woman in such a major role in a primetime TV show. There's a nice story on her wikipedia entry about how she wanted to leave Star Trek after the first season to take up a role in a play on Broadway, and Martin Luther King Jr asked her to stay in Star Trek, as he recognised the important role model she had become to black people, and so she stayed throughout the whole run of series, and all the spin-off films, too.
RIP Nichelle Nichols 1932-2022
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