I found out about this only today. And I feel horrible about why I hadn't been paying much attention for the last few days.
Ms. Nichols didn't just act. She helped develop the part of Uhura when Roddenberry was still working on "that Wagon Train to the Stars idea".
And act she did. Kirk would order her to take the helm, apropos of nothing (I think that was in Balance of Terror, wasn't it?). As if he expected she was qualified to do it, and could do it, with zero warning. And Uhura went and did do it, without great fanfare.
Or she would literally stick her head between the circuit boards of some busted piece of equipment and make repairs.
In an era when either would have been remarkable for a woman on television, she made it work, as a woman of color.
Yes, Dr. King had to convince her to stay on. But at the end of the day, she did the staying on.
And in all her performances (that I can recall), she never played Uhura like she was engaging her superpowers when doing the "unwomanly" things like repairing an actual (in plot) starship, or driving that same ship through space.
She played Uhura as a qualified, competent, and confident bridge officer of the flagship of the fleet. And one who did an important job, too - when Uhura spoke, everyone on that bridge would listen.
Because that wasn't enough, she spent the decades after Star Trek working with NASA to recruit women and minorities into the space program. Successfully.
Really, the fact that it took half a week for me to find out about it is a bit upsetting.
And while Captain Kirk had a hint of a sixpack going, it wasn't nearly as chiselled as Lt. Uhura (check the HD remaster of Mirror, Mirror, where she rocks that bare midriff). She didn't just use what nature gave her. She took some more!
