Yeah I think it’s really easy to brush aside how big of a statement the very existence of Uhura was. This was the 1960s and a black woman is being portrayed in a position of leadership on a space ship and it’s not a thing in the canon. Her gender, race, and country of origin are irrelevant to the star fleet, she’s an expert of communication, and so the enterprise is glad to have her. Then you’ve got Sulu who is canonically an Asian American played by a Japanese American who had been interred during the world war not all that long ago.
In a time of political, racial, and gender unrest this series pointed to a future where those fights for equality and liberation not only were past and won, but so far so that it would be strange for any of the protagonists to imagine the other side. A world where anyone could become a starship captain like Kirk.
Next apartheid Clyde is gonna say he’s been a lifetime fan of the twilight zone…
Wow, that’s some pretty weird language I’m not familiar with. But OK I’ll agree to that. In fact I’m from Denmark, and I never knew it was a thing until the Internet became a thing. It always seemed perfectly natural to me that she was communications officer.
Yeah I’m a millennial so it was never weird to me either, but this was a show that Martin Luther King Jr was watching. It had the first ever interracial kiss on television. Race relations in America in the 1960s were really bad. I didn’t understand the significance until I learned about why they so consciously had a multiracial cast and why they specifically put women in roles of leadership.
Yeah I think it’s really easy to brush aside how big of a statement the very existence of Uhura was. This was the 1960s and a black woman is being portrayed in a position of leadership on a space ship and it’s not a thing in the canon. Her gender, race, and country of origin are irrelevant to the star fleet, she’s an expert of communication, and so the enterprise is glad to have her. Then you’ve got Sulu who is canonically an Asian American played by a Japanese American who had been interred during the world war not all that long ago.
In a time of political, racial, and gender unrest this series pointed to a future where those fights for equality and liberation not only were past and won, but so far so that it would be strange for any of the protagonists to imagine the other side. A world where anyone could become a starship captain like Kirk.
Next apartheid Clyde is gonna say he’s been a lifetime fan of the twilight zone…
Nichelle Nichols, who played Lt. Uhura, would have left the show because she didn’t see the importance. Martin Luther King convinced her of the importance of her role
How is Uhura not canon? The show defines canon by definition, by what other source do you define it?
Sorry, not a thing as in no big deal, not as in not present
Wow, that’s some pretty weird language I’m not familiar with. But OK I’ll agree to that. In fact I’m from Denmark, and I never knew it was a thing until the Internet became a thing. It always seemed perfectly natural to me that she was communications officer.
Yeah I’m a millennial so it was never weird to me either, but this was a show that Martin Luther King Jr was watching. It had the first ever interracial kiss on television. Race relations in America in the 1960s were really bad. I didn’t understand the significance until I learned about why they so consciously had a multiracial cast and why they specifically put women in roles of leadership.