“One of the organizers of the event came over to me and said, ‘Ms. Nichols, I hate to bother you just as you’re sitting down to dinner, but there’s someone here who wants very much to meet you. And he said to tell you that he is your biggest fan,’” she recalled. “I said, ‘Oh, certainly,’ I stood up and turned around and who comes walking over towards me from about 10 or 15 feet, smiling that rare smile of his, is Dr. Martin Luther King.” Nichols did not immediately make the connection, and thought, “Whoever that fan is, whoever that Trekkie is, it’ll have to wait because I have to meet Dr. Martin Luther King.” But then King introduced himself saying, “Yes, Ms. Nichols, I am your greatest fan.”
Awestruck as she was, Nichols managed to shock the reverend doctor when she revealed her plans to leave the show. “He said, ‘You cannot,’” Nichols continued. “And so help me, this man practically repeated verbatim what Gene said. He said, ‘Don’t you see what this man is doing, who has written this? This is the future. He has established us as we should be seen. Three-hundred years from now, we are here. We are marching. And this is the first step. When we see you, we see ourselves, and we see ourselves as intelligent and beautiful and proud.’”
Needless to say, Nichols stayed on the show, cementing Uhura as one of the foundations of science fiction, a foundation continued by Zoe Saldaña and Celia Rose Gooding, both of whom played Uhura afterwards. And now it’s the turn of the creative team on Star Trek Deviations: Threads of Destiny, bridging the real world and the fantasy, until our world finally starts to resemble the utopia that Star Trek imagines.
Star Trek Deviations: Threads of Destiny goes on sale on February 25, 2026.
