Nichelle Nichols would have left her iconic role as Lt. Uhura after “Star Trek’s” inaugural 1966 season had it not been for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
The story goes that the first African-American woman portraying a ship’s officer on a TV series — sci-fi or otherwise — found herself flooded with offers to appear in theater productions. The singer who worked with Duke Ellington decided to follow her musical roots and told “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry she was leaving the show.
Then she met the Rev. King at an NAACP fundraiser, and he told her he was a Trekkie and “your greatest fan,” Ms. Nichols recounted in the documentary “Trekkie Nation.”
When she told the civil rights leader that she was leaving the show, he said, “You cannot do that. … For the first time, we are being seen the world over as we should be seen.”
Ms. Nichols, 82, who went on to three seasons and six “Star Trek” films as Uhura, will be at the Monroeville Convention Center this weekend for the Steel City Con, the biannual pop culture nostalgia fest in its 25th year.
She is among celebrity attendees whose careers read like a who’s who of TV’s strong, sexy women of the sci-fi/fantasy genre. Joining Ms. Nichols this weekend will be.
• Julie Newmar: Catwoman, “Batman” (1966-68).
• Karan Ashley: Aisha Campell/Yellow Ranger, “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” (1994-96).
• Gigi Edgley: Chiana, “Farscape” (1999-2003; 2004 miniseries).
• Tricia Helfer: Cylon Number 6, “Battlestar Galactica” (2004-09).
Ms. Nichols suffered a mild stroke in early June but has been traveling for a few weeks and confirmed her attendance. She posted a note on the Steel City Con Facebook page last week that said:
“Looking forward to Steel City Con in Pittsburgh, PA Aug 7-9, 2015. I will be there with the wonderful Karan Ashley from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Are you coming? I would love to meet you. Post here and show us what you are bringing us to sign! Who has the rarest items?”
Former Power Ranger Ashley, 39, became friends with Ms. Nichols during mutual appearances on the convention circuit, leading to Ms. Nichols’ appearance on Ms. Ashley’s Web series “Uncensored Talk.”
Ms. Ashley began the segment by admitting, “The one thing that I am jealous of, and I’m not the jealous type, I did not know that President Obama said you were his childhood crush. Who gets that?!”
Ms. Nichols’ role as the chief communications officer of the starship Enterprise also has inspired generations of women of color, including Ms. Ashley.
“People are always coming up to me and saying, ‘I saw you on Power Rangers and you looked like me!’ You did that for me,” she said to the obviously moved Ms. Nichols.
Another fan was Whoopi Goldberg, who became a cast member of the sequel series “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”
Mr. Roddenberry got a call from Ms. Goldberg begging to be cast in the series and he asked her why. The Oscar winner told Ms. Nichols that she answered,“It’s all Nichelle Nichols’ fault. When she first came on the screen, I was 9 years old, and I thought she was the most beautiful thing that ever happened on television or anywhere else. She was a black woman playing in the future, and I knew we had a future."
Ms. Goldberg told Ms. Nichols that she recalled seeing Lt. Uhura for the first time and running through the house screaming, “Come quick, everybody, and look! There’s a black lady on TV, and she ain’t no maid!”
The “Western in space” used science fiction to address current issues, race relations among them. The original “Star Trek” series included television’s first interracial kiss, between William Shatner’s Capt. Kirk and Ms. Nichols’ Uhura.
The show went on to several TV spinoffs and movie series and a rebooted film franchise, with Zoe Saldana as the current Uhura.
After “Star Trek,” the unflappable Ms. Nichols continued her music career, traveling with a dramatic one-woman musical show called “Reflections,” in which she morphed into 12 singing legends.
And now she’s set for takeoff again, this time with NASA.
The actress was employed by NASA as a recruiter in the late 1980s. She recently revealed on Reddit that she is preparing to fly with one of 15 flights planned this year for the SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) mission.
“SOFIA does not, sadly, fly into space,” she wrote in the Reddit Q&A. “It’s an airborne observatory, a massive telescope mounted inside a 747 flying as high as is possible. I was on a similar flight, the first airborne observatory, back in 1977. It’s an amazing experience; you get a totally different perspective than from Earth. I do hope someone gets some great pictures.”
Before Ms. Nichols took her place on the bridge of the starship Enterprise, the first episode of “Batman” featuring Julie Newmar as Catwoman hit the airwaves in March of 1966. The long-legged dancer was a villainous seductress in a skin-tight catsuit.
Ms. Newmar, 81, played the role fewer than a dozen times before Eartha Kitt and Lee Meriwether, but her chemistry with Adam West’s campy Batman made it memorable.
With Mr. West and Burt Ward (Robin), she was at the biggest comic-book convention in the world, Comic-Con International in San Diego, last month. The trio will reunite again in Monroeville and hold a 2 p.m. Q&A panel Saturday at the convention center.
Solo panelists include “Farscape’s” Gigi Edgley (4 p.m. Friday), a guest at Pittsburgh Comicon last year, and “Battlestar Galactica’s” Tricia Helfer (11 a.m. Sunday).
“Farscape” was the flagship TV show that put the Sci Fi Channel (now Syfy) on the map. Australian Edgley, 37, played Chiana, a pixie-ish alien who has learned to survive in a violent world before forming a family with a band of misfits.
Ms. Helfer’s Number Six, a humanoid robot known as a Cylon on the “Battlestar Galactica” reboot, used her sexuality to help the Cylons destroy 12 Earth colonies and pursue the last of humanity as they quest for the fabled 13th colony of Earth.
They are among the actresses taking the art of reaching for the stars into the 21st century.
Sharon Eberson: seberson@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1960. Twitter: SEberson_pg.
First Published: August 6, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
