Notorious playboy Captain James T. Kirk shared not only the first prime-time interracial kiss but the first televised interracial kiss in American history with Lieutenant Uhura. Given his history of bopping alien babes at every planet they beamed down to, it seems by today’s standards like kising a black chick would be ho hum. It was actually quite controversial at the time and they had to be being mind-controlled by powerful alien telepaths who love Plato to do it. Both actor William Shatner and actress Nichelle Nichols were bombarded with mail after this. Most was positive, but the content of the Plato’s Stepchildren episode was considered an explosive thing to have done on the show.

She nearly quit the show prior to the kiss. She felt that the studio was treating her in a racist manner by withholding her fan mail and other things they would not do to the white actors. Martin Luther King Jr. personally persuading her to stay on Star Trek because he felt that her role was instrumental in promoting multiculturalism and a color blind society. Dr. Mae Jemison, the first black female astronaut, says she was inspired by Uhura. Nichelle Nichols was also the first black actor to have handprints in front of Mann’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. The entire crew from ST: TOS is immortalized there.

Uhura means freedom in Swahili.

I was very young when I watched the original Star Trek series on a small television which was cool because it was a color television. I would have been too young in 1969 when the original series concluded, so I suppose I must have seen reruns. Star Trek is one of the most successful shows from a syndication perspective in the history of television. In fact ST:TOS (Star Trek The Original Series for the unitiated) was slated to be scrapped after its first season and fans of the show successfully staged the first serious write-in campaign on behalf of a show. Scifi fans are still more likely than any other group to petition TV stations to play what they want to see and to keep shows which networks might otherwise have assumed were unpopular. Perhaps this is because science fiction and other fantastical genres work well in a television medium, but most fans are also readers so it is natural for them to write to express themselves. Whatever the reason, sci fi fen are more likely than any other television demographic to launch a letter campaign. But I digress.

It used to really bother me that I felt like I was supposed to be attracted to Captain James T. Kirk. But I wasn’t. Not at all. Later in life, I realized that this was because, even as a young girl, I could tell when a man was a player. I have always been more interested in a real emotional connection than a random passionate clinch. Captain Kirk was just so prototypically emotionally unavailable that I could never figure out what green women saw in him. Now that I am older and hopefully more sophisticated, I understand that sometimes green girls just want to have fun too.

Those sexy aliens could tell that Kirk was narcissistic enough to make every effort to be amazing in bed and he was going to be light years away before they had to have any uncomfortable relationship conversations. Of course, sometimes women forget the distance they initially intended once they have had a really great orgasm, but Kirk was a safe choice for such foolish women too. Because he was guaranteed to turn down any offers to rule their planet, their bedroom, etc.