On September 8, 1966, my Dad and I rushed home from the office to see the first episode of the new SF series Star Trek. That first episode, The Man Trap, cold-opened with the USS Enterprise in orbit a.
On September 8, 1966, my Dad and I rushed home from the office to see the first episode of the new SF series Star Trek. That first episode, The Man Trap, cold-opened with the USS Enterprise in orbit around a pastel-red planet, and cut to the Bridge, with Spock in the command chair, a Japanese man with a name from the Philipines at the helm, and an attractive young black woman at the navigator’s station.
Spaceship? Cool. A greenish first officer with pointed ears? Cool! (And how did pointed ears become a trope? It wasn’t just Spock….)
The attractive young black woman was, of course, Nichelle Nichols playing Lieutenant Uhura. Nichelle Nichols died on the 30th of July 2022 — yesterday, as I write this.
I was an 11-year-old in Colorado; I had had Japanese friends since I could remember, and I had only seen one black person I could remember, a classmate at Adams State University.
