I woke up ridiculously early this morning (thanks, jet lag!) and learned of the passing of Nichelle Nichols.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I remembered hearing Nichols describing her early experiences on Star Trek, talking about planning to leave the show and being convinced to stay on by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. [*<\/a>] <\/p>\n\n\n\n It brought to mind a picture, taken years ago at a Star Trek exhibit at the Seattle Science Fiction Museum, of the epigram “Spock told me it was okay to be smart.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a young fan – watching Star Trek long after its initial debut – Uhura’s presence on the bridge, and on away teams, didn’t seem extraordinary. It seemed totally normal. The “diversity” of the crew was just … the way it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before “you can’t be what you can’t see” entered the zeitgeist, Nichols (and Roddenberry) were showing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nichelle showed young women of color, and young women broadly, that it was okay to be them. That they could be a critical part of a crew, and be treated as equals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That they could boldly go … just about anywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Godspeed, Ms. Nichols.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I woke up ridiculously early this morning (thanks, jet lag!) and learned of the passing of Nichelle Nichols. I remembered hearing Nichols describing her early experiences on Star Trek, talking about planning to leave the show and being convinced to stay on by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. [*] It brought to mind a picture, … Continue reading “To Boldly Go…”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-the-universe-and-everything"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1082"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1095,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082\/revisions\/1095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}