TO BOLDLY GO

A tribute to Star Trek’s Uhura and the powerful woman who created the iconic role.

The story, as the gifted and recently deceased Nichols often told it, takes her from early triumphs on stage and in films to the interstellar gig—which she was on the verge of quitting after disrespectful treatment and cut scenes until a pep talk from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. convinced her that she had become both a role model for Black children and also a revealing example to “people who don’t look like us.” Dalton retells the episode in the voice of a child representing the Black viewing audience, exclaiming that “we burst with pride seeing someone who looked like us standing as an equal” and freeing fans for the next half-century to “dream…about the places…and spaces…they dare to envision themselves in.” Nearly all of the figures in Semmer’s stylized, screen print–style scenes are people of color, depicted in period (or Federation) dress and hairstyles and a range of skin tones. Nichols’ later and real rather than fictive role in recruiting “women and minoritized astronaut candidates” for NASA is relegated to a smaller-type afterword, though it seems more directly related to the titular achievement. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Well-deserved notice.