Actually she's a command officer with engineering training. She did tell Spock she hadn't had to jury rig a subspace bypass since the academy.
You said "people don't look things up by books any more." I still do. Basic logic means that I am not a person. See also, joke, sarcasm. Red vs. Blue reference added for no extra charge.
I'll be surprised if SNW doesn't directly contradict the ridiculous book scene in TUC, because it was so ridiculous the way it made a joke at Uhura's expense.
Ah, then my joke should have been "I am barely a person." Which is definitely how I feel on Mondays at staff meetings.
Uhura does get her memory wiped at one point in TOS and has to relearn English so perhaps she never relearned Klingon. Saying that, I’m happy to ignore the TUC scene too. One thing that does bother me about JJ Uhura and SNW Uhura is that her language abilities feel so over the top. No one Uhura’s age is going to speak 37 languages, unless they are being very loose with what can be counted as “speak” (e.g. have a basic conversation vs fully fluent). If you’re a native English speaker possible to get to a reasonable level in an Asian language in a year with dedicated study and the more languages you start with, the easier it will be to pick up more. But 37 languages, including non-Earth languages, when Uhura is still a cadet is ridiculous, even if Uhura is supposed to be gifted. Not only for the time to learn each language but the daily maintenance to not forget one. In the beta canon, McCoy is able to learn Vulcan quickly using implants but if such rapid language learning technology exists in the alpha canon then no one would be impressed with her language abilities. I know The Enterprise is the flagship and so everyone is top of their class but it still needs to have a level of realism.
Where did the Klingon/English dictionary come from? Was it a standard part of a ship's inventory, or did someone just have a hard copy around?
yes also sexism, but the race part was worse since even christine chapel, we knew something personal about her,,. she had a fiancée. Uhura just got nothing. although as fate had it, the little of few she got, she became a stand out and became maybe the most iconic female character in TOS.
I think there was more than one book, and they looked larger than Mark Okrands' "Klingon Dictionary" book (either edition), so they were probably Klingon encyclopedias from someone elses hobby, that Uhura frantically had brought to the bridge! Joke aside, the scene was stupid!
One might say Majel may have gotten that role because of her boyfriend at the time. As it was, Gene was also involved with Nichelle at some point. But the bias would have still been present from other studio people.
I don’t know if this was filmed as well, but in the novelization Valeris actually erases all record of the Klingon language from the UT, forcing Uhura to switch to books as a backup. In any case, Uhura’s sketchy grasp of Klingon actually works to their advantage. They weren’t just pretending to be smugglers, they were pretending to be incompetent smugglers, so amateurish and sloppy they couldn’t possibly be a threat. Notice how the Klingon guard laughs and says “don’t catch any bugs?” That is smuggler lingo for “don’t get caught”. And the guard’s tone suggests that he fully expected them to get caught..
We hear directors complaining all the time now about studios overruling them in franchise films. We know nichelle objected to the klingon book scene. I would've liked those meddling studios to have backed up the actress and tell the director meyer to shove it in this instance
Considering the studio turned to Nick Meyer specifically because they needed him to work another TWOK style miracle after Harve Bennett's Starfleet Academy movie was shelved, they weren't in a position to tell Meyer to shove anything.
There is that autodidact cleaner in Washington D.C. who knows 24 languages. Anyway, she is clearly being treated as extraordinary - amidst a group which itself is already extraordinary.