I see this story on TV.com was posted a while back, but I missed it – Nichelle Nichols, beloved to generations of science fiction fans for her portrayal of Lt Uhura in the original Star Trek – is joining the cast of the second series of Heroes, where she is rumoured to be playing the grandmother of a new character. Nichelle joins a cast which already boasts her fellow classic Trek colleague George Takei who plays Hiro’s father, while in further Trek convergence Dominic Keating from Enterprise will also appear in the second series. The traffic isn’t all one way, though, since Heroe’s Zachary Quinto (who plays the villainous Sylar) will be playing the young Spock in J J Abram’s forthcoming Trek movie.
Nichelle once considering leaving her iconic Trek role because she was given so few decent lines back in the 60s, only to be told by no less a figure than Martin Luther King that her mere presence as a woman – and a coloured woman at that – on primetime TV each week made her an inspiration during the turbulent Civil Rights era and so she had to stay on. Funny, we discuss the portrayal of gender in comics and science fiction (and the imbalance in female to male creators) quite often and it is easy to forget that women like Nichelle quietly helped to pave the way for improvements in that sphere decades ago (and boy do we have a ways to go yet, but we’ve also come on a good bit too). See – we Trek fans always said it was far more than just another show… How lovely to see Nichelle coming back to our screens again.
0 Comments For This Post
2 Trackbacks For This Post
September 24th, 2007 at 10:06 am
[...] IVC2 reports that JJ Abrams has cast another role for his upcoming Star Trek movie, set in the early days of the characters from the original series while they were still at Starfleet Academy (as many Trek fans will no doubt know the idea of a series set at the Academy was floated as a successor to Voyager a few years back but Paramount eventually went for Enterprise). Actress Zoe Saldana – who will also be seen in James Cameron’s new film Avatar – has been cast to play the young Uhura, joining Heroes’ Zachary (Sylar) Quinto who will play the younger version of Spock, while the one and only Leonard Nimoy will don the famous pointed ears one more time to play the adult Spock for the film. The original Uhura, Nichelle Nichols, will be appearing in Heroes during the second season, joining her classic Trek colleague George Takei who has already appeared several times as Hiro’s father, along with an appearance from Enterprise’s Dominic Keating. You just can’t keep that Trek legacy down, can you? Not that we’d have it any other way. [...]
October 2nd, 2007 at 9:49 am
[...] Following news that Nichelle Nichols would be joining fellow classic Star Trek actor George Takei in the hit show Heroes, NBC has released a picture of the actress in her new role as Nana Dawson in the episode “Fight or Flight”. [...]