Who Was Star Trek’s Nyota Uhura? A Personnel File Report
Nyota Uhura- A Star Trek personnel file report
"And Uhura, whose name means 'freedom'. She walks in beauty, like the night."
– Ambassador Kollos
Nyota Uhura was a Human Starfleet officer in the 23rd century. She served as a communications officer aboard the USS Enterprise and USS Enterprise-A under the command of Captain James T. Kirk.
Early Life
"Uhura" comes from the Swahili word uhuru, meaning "freedom" and “Nyota” means “star”. This meant her name meant “Star Freedom”. Her ancestors were of the Bantu people. Uhura was born January 19, 2233 in the Kitui Province of Kenya to Alhamisi and M'Umbha Uhura. During her childhood she enjoyed several after-school classes, such as music and dance, swimming, gymnastics, track, and many languages including becoming fluent in Swahili. She ran the hundred-meter dash and set records. She excelled in mathematics, which lead her to attend the Institute for Advanced Mathematics.
She entered Starfleet Academy in 2257 and graduated in 2261. During her time there she won the Jovian Triathlon
Starfleet career
Uhura was assigned to the Saladin-class destroyer, USS Ahriman, as junior communications officer. While on a mission to Wynet V later that year, the Ahrimans commanding officer was killed. Shortly after, Uhura was promoted to lieutenant junior grade.
Enterprise
Uhura transferred aboard the USS Enterprise in 2262 as the Chief Communications Officer, under the command of Captain Christopher Pike, and like many of the crew of the Enterprise, she became fiercely loyal to the Captain.
When James T. Kirk assumed command in 2264, she and the crew were wary of their new Captain but came to have the same respect and loyalty to him as they did Captain Pike.
In 2266, the now Lieutenant Uhura became part of the command division staff officer and the department head of the communications section.
In 2267, while the Enterprise shuttlecraft Galileo was studying the Murasaki 312 quasar, it became lost and subsequently crashed on Taurus II uncharted planet. Because Spock was the commander of that mission and was not on the Enterprise, Uhura took lead in the search for the missing Galileo. She became the primary at the bridge's science station, while also assisting at communications. Uhura discovered the planet that the Galileo had crashed on. After Spock and the four other surviving crew members were found and rescued, Uhura was all too happy to restore the science station to Spock and return to her communication's station.
Uhura was part of the landing party that beamed down to the Guardian of Forever planet to find Dr. Leonard McCoy, who was in a state of confusion and distress due to an accidental overdose of cordrazine. She was the first to notice that they had lost contact with the Enterprise. This had happened because Dr. McCoy had run into the Guardian of Forever's portal, altering the timeline and erasing the Enterprise and everything the landing party knew from existence. She expressed being absolutely frightened of being on a planet with no past and no future.
In another mission that year, the entity calling himself Apollo interferes with and disables all communication frequencies between the Enterprise and the Landing Party. Uhura attempted the delicate task of rewiring the entire communications system to break through the interference. Paired with Sulu's rigging of all transmission circuits for maximum power generation, Uhura successfully connected the bypass circuit, a task she had not done in several years. Spock praised her work and could think of "no one better equipped" to handle the necessary repairs.
Near the end of 2267, on a resupply to the planet Gamma Hydra IV and delivery of personnel to Starbase 10 leads to near disaster for the crew of the Enterprise.
The planet, which had a recent brush with a strange comet, was affecting the scientists that lived there, and then the crew of the Enterprise with rapid aging which was affecting them in debilitating ways leaving Commodore Stocker to take over for a severely aged Kirk after he orders Uhura to contact Starfleet using code 2 about the situation. When Uhura reminded her Captain that the Romulans had already broken code 2, (Kirk in his aged state, had become confused and had forgotten this) he amends his orders to code 3 which was unbroken.
Following this near disaster of breach with the Romulans, a hearing is called to see if the Captain is fit for duty given his state. At the hearing she reluctantly relayed the issues with the code to Starfleet and Kirk is relieved of duty.
Stocker, now in command, commits a near fatal error. In his haste to get to Starbase 10, he violates the Romulan Neutral Zone border and is immediately attacked. Doctor McCoy finds the cure and a revived Kirk re-takes command and tricks the Romulans by using code 2 to signal that he was about to self-destruct the Enterprise with a ruse about corbomite. They move off to keep from being destroyed along with the Enterprise and Kirk goes to warp to escape them.
Stocker, a man who had worked at a Starfleet desk all his life and now seeing the value in in Kirks trick states what a starship can do "with the right man at the helm”.
Uhura plays a strategic part in helping the escape of her crew members after a transporter accident leaves them in a parallel universe where Terrans are not the benevolent beings they had become in their own universe, and in fact had an Empire instead of Starfleet. The alternate reality’s Sulu is distracted by Uhura from apprehending her crew members as they worked to get them back home. She teases him by flirting and then spurning him, repeatedly, keeping him well distracted. Her crew members are successful, and they eventually escape back to their own universe.
In 2268, while researching the planet 892-IV, the Enterprise discovers a Roman like society. Spock finds it odd that they are “sun worshipers” as Romans did not worship the sun. Uhura had been monitoring the planet’s radio signals and figures out that they actually worship a “Son of God”. This planet, reflecting Earth, also had a “Caesar” and a “Christ” but the religion starts in a reflection of the 1960s on Earth.
The Enterprise is hijacked by Norman, who is discovered not to be a new crewman but an android from the planet Mudd. Harry Mudd had sent him to take over a starship. He had been stranded on this previously undiscovered planet and was now it's ruler. The planet was populated by androids, originally from the Andromeda Galaxy, who wished to use the Enterprise to visit other planets and planned to strand the Enterprise crew there. The androids, taken with Uhura, tempt her with long life and to never grow old by having her consciousness transferred to an android body, offering her virtual immortality. The crew of the Enterprise use this offer as a ruse. The crew then launches their plan to overload the androids causing them to shut down and then resume their original programming. They leave Mudd on the planet with 500 copies of his wife Stella, programed to annoy him.
After the 5 year mission
Uhura spent time teaching communications at Starfleet Academy before being promoted to Lieutenant Commander. She went on to serve under Captain Will Decker in the now refitted Enterprise. She was rejoined by Rear Admiral Kirk during the V’Ger crisis. Voyager 6 was intercepted by an alien race that reprogramed it to fully fulfill its mission to collect information and send it back to Earth. During the trip, the computer became sentient.
The ancient programing of the probe meshed with this sentient artificial life now part of the crewperson Ilia, doesn’t find its signal being accepted or contacted back by it’s “Creator” (which was NASA). Kirk tells V’Ger that humans are the creator. Assisted by Uhura, who has retrieved the code frequency, they transmit the signal to the probe that will order it to transmit its data. V’Ger fearing the completion of its mission without meeting the Creator in person, burns out its transmitter to stop it. Spock reports that V’Ger has reached the edge of what it can learn and is needing a human spirit to evolve. Decker decides to be that human and offers to join with V’Ger/Ilia. He fixes the wiring to finish transmitting the code. A light surrounds Decker as Illia moves to him. The merge together, their bodies disappear, and a new lifeform has emerged.
Uhura returns to teaching until 2285 when she serves under the now Captain Spock, again as the Communications officer of the Enterprise. While on a training mission with new cadets, Uhura receives a distress call sent from the Regula I space station. Starfleet orders the Enterprise (as well as Rear Admiral Kirk who has taken command of the Enterprise) to Regula I to render assistance where The Enterprise becomes embroiled with The Project called Genesis. While trying to protect it, The Enterprise faces its greatest enemy, Khan Noonien Singh, who is attempting to steal Genesis, the fight to protect it leads to the death of Spock and his torpedo casket landing on the newly formed planet via the Genesis device.
After finding that Spock had left part of himself with Doctor McCoy, and that he is alive thanks to the rejuvenating radiation of Genesis, the plan to rescue him is made. Starfleet won’t allow a rescue, but that doesn’t stop the crew. Uhura takes a very lowly position in a transporter room to beam the crew over to the Enterprise. She traps the junior officer on duty there and tells Kirk "all my hopes" are with them and that she will meet them at the rendezvous point. The rescue of Spock takes a tragic turn when a rogue Klingon crew captures Spock and Kirk’s son David Marcus along with a Vulcan Starfleet officer Saavik. The Klingons demand to know the secrets of Genesis or they will kill their captives. Marcus is killed during a scuffle to save Spock and Saavik. Kirk is distraught and surrenders his ship. It’s a trick however to kill most of the Klingons who have boarded the Enterprise. Kirk destroys the Enterprise, and safely on the surface with the rest of the crew, they are able, by more trickery, to get on the Klingon Bird of Prey and escape before the planet, which had been destabilizing, exploded. They return Spock to Vulcan, the rendezvous point, meeting Uhura, and are successful in restoring his mind.
After restoring Spock and returning to Earth they find that it is being attacked by a ship, a probe, that is using whale song to try to communicate. It is discovered with Uhurah’s keen experience, that whales have been extinct since the 21st century. Spock quickly acts to create a time warp maneuver that sends the Bird of Prey, now called the Bounty (after the famous ship that had a mutiny) and the crew back to 1986. Uhura and Chekov are tasked with getting fuel for the Enterprise to return to their time while Kirk and Spock retrieve 2 whales. Ultimately successful, and the whales now back on Earth sing to the probe and it ceases its destructive effects on the planet. After their return to the 23rd century, the crew, charged with the theft of the Enterprise, have all charges against them dropped because they had also saved the planet. Uhura was reassigned to communications aboard the new USS Enterprise-A.
In 2287, the Enterprise was sent to resolve a hostage situation on Nimbus III, the Planet of Galactic Peace. Uhura, under the telepathic influence of the rebel leader Sybok, along with many other crew members, cooperated to divert the Enterprise to the galactic core. There, Sybok convinced them they would find the mythical Sha Ka Ree (a location in pagan Vulcan mythology from which all of creation was said to have originated). Uhura played a vital part in the initial attack on the rebel-held Paradise City, by performing an erotic, moonlit fan dance on a sand dune to distract a lookout party of rebels. By her dance, she seduced the entire rebel party and they were captured by Kirk and his team in order to steal their horses which they used to enter Paradise City.
Uhura was three months from standing down as the communications officer of the Enterprise-A in 2293. She had expected to chair a seminar at Starfleet Academy. The Enterprise was sent on a secret mission to the Khitomer conference which became a crisis when several high command Klingons seeking peace, in a meeting that Spock had arranged, were assassinated. The crew, with Kirk as their Captain, were framed for their murders.
During the crisis, The Enterprise crew, and Uhura, were successful in uncovering the truth of the conspiracy that sought to sabotage the peace process between the Klingons and the Federation.
Uhura continued to serve in Starfleet, becoming a Captain of the USS Hermes, and part of Starfleet Intelligence after the events of Khitomer....quietly listening to the universe on subspace frequencies.