Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and MediaNichelle Nichols, the trailblazing star of “Star Trek” who died on Saturday at age 89, was a model of unruffled professionalism as Lieutenant Uhura, never breaking a sweat as she manned the communications desk of the Starship Enterprise.But for Nicholas Meyer, the director and screenwriter of “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn” and “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country,” his favorite on-screen memory of Nichols’ is a rare moment where Uhura is at a loss for words.
In the sixth installment, our heroes are trying to infiltrate Klingon airspace without the use of a universal translator, which would give them away.
That leaves Uhura and the rest of the crew poring through Klingon dictionaries in a desperate attempt to hold up a conversation with the crew of another ship. “Nichelle is just responding in the most appalling Klingon [dialect], and her face looks so pained and at one point one of them makes a joke in Klingon,” Meyer remembers. “She doesn’t understand, but gets that she’s supposed to find it amusing, so she just gives this hearty laugh and then abruptly cuts off the connection.
It was just brilliant.”Nichols broke barriers as one of the first Black women to have a major role on network television. And Nichols understood the impact that kind of representation had on audiences and used her celebrities to increase opportunities for others by working with NASA to recruit diverse astronauts.Meyer, who spoke with Variety after news broke that Nichols had died, sees parallels between her work and that of Bill Russell, the NBA legend and Civil Rights advocate, who died on Sunday.My experience with writing and directing “The Wrath of Kahn” was chaotic in many ways.
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