Is there any episode in which Uhura has an important contral role?

I watched like 1/3d of TOS and still had not found one...

 

Gamesters of Triskelion and Plato's Stepchildren. Probably not the most lines she had in any episodes, but IMHO fairly high in importance for the character.

 

In general, Nichelle Nichols did a lot with very little. There are no episodes focusing on Uhura, but she gets more screen time in some eps more than others: "Mirror, Mirror," "Charlie X," "Plato's Step-Children," "The Trouble with Tribbles."

It's worth remembering that TOS was never meant to be an "ensemble" show like the later Trek shows. That's more of a modern-day thing. Kirk and Spock (and, to a lesser degree, McCoy) were the stars and everybody else was just backup, which was the way tv shows worked back then.

One of the great things about the new movie is that Uhura finally got to be the female lead in a Trek movie, instead of playing second fiddle to Lt. Ilia, Saavik, Gillian Armstrong, etc.

 

My vote would go to Mirror, Mirror.

 

No.

 

The Lorelei Signal

She takes over the damn ship.

 

Too bad its the cartoon.

 

^^^
This is probably the only one where we see her being pivital in areas relating to the story (Communicating Star Fleet orders, distracting Sulu from the security console, disarming Marlana, et. al.) It's probably the most we saw her character do in a single episode.

 

She had some nice character moments in The Changeling, especially when they're re-educating her after Nomad wiped her memory.

 

I agree that Mirror Mirror is probably her best episode. In Gamesters of Triskelion she was more window dressing. In CotEoF, Uhura gets security detail but they leave her on the planet instead of letting her get into the thick of it.

I'm not sure that I agree that the show was never intended to be an ensemble show. Admittedly, it was not going to be a show where a 'secondary' character like Uhura would be the main protagonist like in the modern shows but I think it was intended to be more of an ensemble than it ended up being.

In season one only Shatner and Nimoy were signed to appear in every episode with Kelley and Whitney expected to appear in most episodes. If you look at the first half of season one and the first few episodes of the second half, you can see that the supporting cast did sometimes get to contribute quite a bit. A lot of Uhura's best lines are in the first half of Season one.

They realised that McCoy's dynamic with the two leads was a lot of fun and he ended up appearing in all the episodes except one. On the other hand, they rushed into expressing Kirk and Rand's mutual admiration for each other and (despite removing Rand from Dagger of the Mind and replacing her with Helen Noel) they found that they'd painted the characters into a corner. Kirk couldn't be with her but if he went with other women it would be like he was cheating on her so they decided that poor Rand had to go.

In some respects, Rand's loss was Uhura's gain as Nichelle occasionally picked up landing party duty (such as CotEoF) that might originally have gone to Rand. On the other hand, leaving Rand in place might have led to more scenes when the women soclialised together like in Charlie X, which could have led to Uhura being a more rounded character. I wish they'd been able to find a compromise and keep Rand for a couple of guest slots each season.

 

You're forgetting "The Trouble With Tribbles" - the reason the Tribbles ate Kirk's chicken sandwich and coffee is because Uhura brought one aboard the ship. Their overrunning the ship is All Her Fault.

Gillian who? The character's name is Gillian Taylor.

 

Also "Once Upon a Planet".

Uhura gets kidnapped by the planet's master computer, and the eps is then all about retrieving her. And then she gets several good scenes between herself and the computer, explaining humanity and machines and sentience and who serves whom and such.

But it's "the cartoon" so I guess it doesn't count.

 

Oops!

(Gillian Armstrong was the director of Little Women and Death Defying Acts, among other films.)

 

There's a movie.

 

Actually, they found the actress was a drug addict who couldn't be relied upon. Grace Lee Whitney has confirmed this in later years after she got clean. The "we didn't want Kirk to be tied to one woman" excuse was yet another invention of the fertile mind of Gene Roddenberry.

 

There were many factors that contributed to the actress leaving (including a sexual assault by an executive) but she recently did an interview for StarTrek.com which sheds some additional light. She was addicted to diet pills at the time but I've never seen that cited as the main reason for her departure. In terms of Uhura, it's hard to say what Rand staying would have meant. I don't think we'd have seen much less of Uhura though since she only gets to go on landing parties occasionally even without Rand. We might not have got the infamous interracial kiss though.

 

I didn't forget it really, my list just wasn't meant to be all-inclusive.

 

I never felt any onscreen chemistry between Kirk and Rand, even when it was forced upon us (Rand's playful scolding of Kirk while she's trying to give him his salad in Corbomite Maneuver, or the whole "no beach to walk on" lamentation from Kirk as he reaches to touch her checkerboard patterned hair but then withdraws without her ever having known it at the end of Naked Time). I just couldn't buy that either of these characters could be in to each other at all. Rand to me always came off as frigid or totally uninterested in any of the men on the ship including Kirk.

 

I agree that their attraction was forced on us in the few episodes in which it featured, but frigid? Were we watching the same character? She had none of Uhura's deliberate sensuousness but in fairness to Grace, that wig was really heavy so her poise and apparent uptightness could have been partly due to that. I viewed Janice as playful, flirtatious, a bit mischievous, but keen to do her job professionally. In Charlie X you could see that Uhura could feed into her dynamic and we might have seen a more playful Uhura as a result if they'd been given more scenes together. I actually think Rand's prickly relationship with Spock was more fun and the way she encourages Uhura to tease him was cool.

NuUhura's apparent lack of a playful sense of humour is the least appealing thing about her so far.

On the Uhura front, let's not forget her role in Star Trek III. While she's absent for the action, she gets a great scene early on in the movie. In the novelisation, the importance of her role is made more clear: she stays behind to try and scramble Starfleet's emergency response to the theft. She has only limited time before she knows security will track the interference to her transporter station and she literally has to run and seek asylum at the Vulcan Embassy. It would have been really cool if they'd showed a resourceful Uhura running rings around the Stafleet Security officers on screen.

 

Rand's playfulness in Charlie X seemed forced and awkward, Uhura totally rocked that scene. Rand's role in that particular scene would have had the same effect had it been played by an extra.

I think that blaming a costuming prop for Whitney's poor execution of the character is a poor excuse...sorry

As far as NuUhura is concerned (goodness some of you folks are really hard on this movie and new cast), if she seems to lack the playfulness of Nichols, well that might have to do with the fact that she is playing the character when she is much younger,very concerned with being taken seriously, and maybe isn't as confident about herself as she would later be when Nichols plays her. In other words, in TOS we see a more experienced, calmer, cooler officer who can let her harid down a little; and in the evil Abrams movie we see a less secure, younger Uhura who is more preoccupied with showing what she can do and proving herself.

It makes sense, people tend to mellow out more at work as they become more confident about their abilities and more comfortable in their work environment.