Uhura and the Communications Post

[SonicRanger]

It would be hard to show the birth of Kirk without having his mother there.

But they didn't show the birth of Kirk. We only heard it over the coms. Also it'd be too graphic for a PG-13 movie.

Oh for Pete's sake, you're right we didn't have a camera shot of baby Jimmy passing through the birth canal, but we essentially saw and heard the event that was his birth. And when has anyone ever shown an actual "birth" in the history of popular cinema?

 

[Jeri]

To the OP, the analogous role I can think of is Hoshi Sato in ST:ENT. They got some experience in that series showing the nuts and bolts of interspecies communications, which was overdue, IMO. And it's not easy in two hours to give a sense of what that character really does and its value. It took some time over four years to articulate Hoshi's character.

 

[Jeyl]

To the OP, the analogous role I can think of is Hoshi Sato in ST:ENT. They got some experience in that series showing the nuts and bolts of interspecies communications, which was overdue, IMO. And it's not easy in two hours to give a sense of what that character really does and its value. It took some time over four years to articulate Hoshi's character.

I know how to fix this. They could have had Nero's dialogue in Romulan and Uhura translating it. It probably wouldn't have worked, but hey. She said she could understand it so dangit, put that skill to good use!

 

[Jeyl]

Oh for Pete's sake, you're right we didn't have a camera shot of baby Jimmy passing through the birth canal, but we essentially saw and heard the event that was his birth.

Well, since you started I think it's best we give the whole nonsense replying thing a rest.

And when has anyone ever shown an actual "birth" in the history of popular cinema?

Children of Men

 

[Jeri]

To the OP, the analogous role I can think of is Hoshi Sato in ST:ENT. They got some experience in that series showing the nuts and bolts of interspecies communications, which was overdue, IMO. And it's not easy in two hours to give a sense of what that character really does and its value. It took some time over four years to articulate Hoshi's character.

I know how to fix this. They could have had Nero's dialogue in Romulan and Uhura translating it. It probably wouldn't have worked, but hey. She said she could understand it so dangit, put that skill to good use!

Yeah, like I said, not easy in two hours. They did that in ENT, and it was arduous and time-consuming. Interesting; but it eats whole episodes for breakfast.

Oh, yeah; I wanted to mention that the books over the years have shown Uhura's role as a talented linguist and musician -- all aural related pursuits, basically. For readers, this was not a stretch. And after Hoshi, particularly not.

One more thing: Hoshi's character got screen time, because interspecies communications was a developing field in their time; not so much by TOS's time.

 

[Ovation]

So, in the end, what do we have? We have a rant about a tertiary character who, instead of pushing intercom buttons and making the "daily announcements", is presented as a gifted linguist who far more three-dimensional than the original character. However, being a tertiary character, we are unfortunately told about her accomplishments rather than have them happen on screen.

So what? It's not like Uhura is the main character. IF this were a TV series and, after an entire season, we never got to see Uhura use the skills her character is said to have, then a rant might be in order. We got to see Hoshi do it in Enterprise because they had 20+ hours per season--they could afford to give a minor character a few moments.

The important characters are Kirk and Spock, then McCoy--the rest are minor. Anyone who thought this would magically turn into an ensemble story where each character gets important screen time was bound to be disappointed (and they were foolish to think it would be like that). It's a two hour movie, with two characters clearly far more important than the rest--exactly as advertised. Of course there are movies with large casts where each character gets to shine and screen time is more evenly apportioned. They rarely (if at all) have two iconic characters that are far more well-known and loved than the rest, though.

 

[davejames]

I don't know if Hoshi is really a good character to use as a comparison. Yeah she was kind of interesting early on, when we got to see her be nervous and scared, but after that she became just as dull and generic as all the other characters on the ship.

 

[Anticitizen]

In TOS, Uhura was basically a communications technician, hence the reason that she did all the hailing and intra-ship announcements in TOS, not to mention highly technical repairs to the electrical systems of her station.

In the new film, Uhura is an xenolinguist and does things like translate Romulan rather than conduct technical communication system operations.

So the answer is that Uhura basically has a different job in TOS and the new film.

While that seems to be true, I doubt a linguist would have a permanent station on the bridge if someone else is doing all the communications duties.

 

[trevanian]

I gotta disagree, Davejames, at least somewhat. I really think we got to know the original Uhura pretty well - but that's because of the actress who played her, not the largely throw-away lines she was given to say. Nichols really projected a lot of personality despite some mundane material.

She didn't get much, but some of what she got was really meaty. That first exchange with Spock in MAN TRAP ranges from banter to some real anger. Some of that is 'let's introduce the weird guy' but even so, it shows she could handle material back then.

By TMP, though ... she seemed lost. The cutscenes stuff where she is trying to raise Stafleet while the E tries to duck a vger attack is just painfully bad.

 

[SonicRanger]

In TOS, Uhura was basically a communications technician, hence the reason that she did all the hailing and intra-ship announcements in TOS, not to mention highly technical repairs to the electrical systems of her station.

In the new film, Uhura is an xenolinguist and does things like translate Romulan rather than conduct technical communication system operations.

So the answer is that Uhura basically has a different job in TOS and the new film.

While that seems to be true, I doubt a linguist would have a permanent station on the bridge if someone else is doing all the communications duties.

Well, keep in mind that (1) there are many more bridge stations on the nuEnterprise bridge so there could easily been two seats for communications officers, perhaps one for the "switchboard operator" and one for the xenolinguist on duty, and (2) Pike ordered her to take the communications station (or one of them) and no one was ordered to relieve her during an emergency situation while the ship was apparently short-staffed.

 

[trevanian]

In TOS, Uhura was basically a communications technician, hence the reason that she did all the hailing and intra-ship announcements in TOS, not to mention highly technical repairs to the electrical systems of her station.

In the new film, Uhura is an xenolinguist and does things like translate Romulan rather than conduct technical communication system operations.

So the answer is that Uhura basically has a different job in TOS and the new film.

While that seems to be true, I doubt a linguist would have a permanent station on the bridge if someone else is doing all the communications duties.

I think there'd be overlap with these jobs, so they probably would be done from the same place. Look at a genius artist like Walter Murch the sound guy on APOCAYLPSE NOW who has done some of the most remarkable editing jobs of any cutter. There's physical manipulation of the sound, creation of the sound, stuff that requires you to operate a board, and other stuff that just requires your taste and a pair of ears.

If Uhura is the ship's ears and voice, then she pretty much has to be the xenolinguist as well (which is what I thought Nichelle was anyway, perhaps because it is so clear in many novels that Uhura does more than run a switchboard, even as far back as SPOCK MUST DIE, which has her use James Joyce's pseduolanguage of Eurish as a kind of code.)

 

[Anticitizen]

In TOS, Uhura was basically a communications technician, hence the reason that she did all the hailing and intra-ship announcements in TOS, not to mention highly technical repairs to the electrical systems of her station.

In the new film, Uhura is an xenolinguist and does things like translate Romulan rather than conduct technical communication system operations.

So the answer is that Uhura basically has a different job in TOS and the new film.

While that seems to be true, I doubt a linguist would have a permanent station on the bridge if someone else is doing all the communications duties.

Well, keep in mind that (1) there are many more bridge stations on the nuEnterprise bridge so there could easily been two seats for communications officers, perhaps one for the "switchboard operator" and one for the xenolinguist on duty, and (2) Pike ordered her to take the communications station (or one of them) and no one was ordered to relieve her during an emergency situation while the ship was apparently short-staffed.

Sure, but what's that xenolinguist gonna do during all the boring hours of uneventful star-charting?

And what was Uhura doing in Engineering, anyway?

 

[Jeyl]

And what was Uhura doing in Engineering, anyway?

It wasn't engineering. It was the Boiler Room and Spock put her there to be the receptionist. Yes, the boiler room has it's own receptionist.

 

[SonicRanger]

And what was Uhura doing in Engineering, anyway?

It wasn't engineering. It was the Boiler Room and Spock put her there to be the receptionist. Yes, the boiler room has it's own receptionist.

It wasn't necessarily "main engineering" per se, but it seemed to be somewhere in the secondary engineering hull.

In TOS, the dish on the front of the secondary engineering hull was labelled as the "main sensor" rather than a deflector dish. Let's say it had both purposes. It would make sense that the passive "listening" systems would be tied into the sensors, so perhaps she was listening for transmissions from a workstation access point at or near the "listening" system hardware.

Of course, we don't know that she was in the secondary engineering hull because a 700-meter ship would allow for such a space in the saucer-shaped main hull too. Perhaps we saw something of the main computer core or cores, which are often depicted as large cylinders. Then we could expect that she was sitting at a computer core access point.

But, Jeyl, it is still unclear exactly why you're unhappy. Her role in this film was more substantial than at least 3/4th of the TOS episodes and probably all of the films.

 

[seniorsleuth]

So, in the end, what do we have? We have a rant about a tertiary character who, instead of pushing intercom buttons and making the "daily announcements", is presented as a gifted linguist who far more three-dimensional than the original character. However, being a tertiary character, we are unfortunately told about her accomplishments rather than have them happen on screen.

So what? It's not like Uhura is the main character. IF this were a TV series and, after an entire season, we never got to see Uhura use the skills her character is said to have, then a rant might be in order. We got to see Hoshi do it in Enterprise because they had 20+ hours per season--they could afford to give a minor character a few moments.

The important characters are Kirk and Spock, then McCoy--the rest are minor. Anyone who thought this would magically turn into an ensemble story where each character gets important screen time was bound to be disappointed (and they were foolish to think it would be like that). It's a two hour movie, with two characters clearly far more important than the rest--exactly as advertised. Of course there are movies with large casts where each character gets to shine and screen time is more evenly apportioned. They rarely (if at all) have two iconic characters that are far more well-known and loved than the rest, though.

Well, that's just the thing. IMHO the film raised Uhura to (at least) the level of McCoy in importance. She certainly had about the same amount of screen time, and we got to see more of her motivation and personality than we did in the whole first season of TOS's Uhura. Her skills have been either shown or described as being more significant than TOS Uhura's, too.

I think TPTB were specifically shooting for this; note that the main publicity poster features Kirk, Spock, and Uhura. I think that the Kirk, Spock, McCoy thing is just something else that the film has altered. It's Kirk and Spock as primaries, Uhura and McCoy as secondaries now. And that's fine with me.

 

[Jeyl]

Her role in this film was more substantial than at least 3/4th of the TOS episodes and probably all of the films.

Just being a love interest to Spock is not my idea of having a more substantial role than her previous depictions. Especially if that love story is vague, undeveloped and down right out of left field. Those scenes from the original series where she sings along with Spock and teases him into trying to call her a handsome young lady had more genuine feeling to it than anything we saw on screen.

 

[SonicRanger]

Her role in this film was more substantial than at least 3/4th of the TOS episodes and probably all of the films.

Just being a love interest to Spock is not my idea of having a more substantial role than her previous depictions. Especially if that love story is vague, undeveloped and down right out of left field. Those scenes from the original series where she sings along with Spock and teases him into trying to call her a handsome young lady had more genuine feeling to it than anything we saw on screen.

She isn't a "love interest to Spock" -- she and Spock are in a relationship, which people tend to have in real life. On the other hand, in real life, officers don't tend to waltz up to their superior officer, while in command on the bridge of a carrier or submarine, and flirt with them while on duty.

 

[trevanian]

I think TPTB were specifically shooting for this; note that the main publicity poster features Kirk, Spock, and Uhura. I think that the Kirk, Spock, McCoy thing is just something else that the film has altered.

Not necessarily. Kelley bitched lightly about being airbrushed out or otherwise omitted from the posters in favor of Khambatta and Alley, so the studio people have always known that including a female on the poster is advantageous.

If they want a strong woman in these films w/o throwing out the (presumed) successful interaction of Kirk Spock & McCoy, she probably ought to be in command of another ship, maybe as the antagonist, like a Starfleet officer gone bad or throughly disillusioned with the PD ... somebody I could root for. One of the reasons I love BATMAN BEGINS is that I can get behind the Neeson character's motivations completely. Or to bring it back toward TREK, a bit, the antagonist played by John Vernon in THE QUESTOR TAPES, who is probably the most admirable opponent i can recall (though I'm sure that was Gene Coon's doing, not GR's.)

 

[Jeyl]

She isn't a "love interest to Spock" -- she and Spock are in a relationship, which people tend to have in real life.

Well, even if it's a relationship, it's still not a very good one. Where as relationships can be used to add something the characters, it's just a slight detail that doesn't really add to nor serve the story line in any way.

Plus, what good is Uhura in a relationship if she won't stand up to Kirk when he's bad mouthing Spock on the bridge in front of everyone? Some relationship that is.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

1. The ship-wide broadcast scene. You would think that the officer responsible for communications would be the one to do this, but instead it's handed over to the barely intelligible navigation officer Chekov. While Uhura wasn't at her station at the time this took place...

As has no doubt already been pointed out many times, that is not yet Uhura's post. She doesn't have a bridge assignment at that point in the story.

Walter Koenig, in writing about ST:TMP, admitted to being excited about finding out his character had been promoted in rank and then embarrassed at having confused his character's job with his role as an actor. Saldana's Uhura has a big, significant part in this film because of her emotional and character interactions with Kirk and Spock. Star Trek is not a documentary about Starfleet operations, and the importance of various characters in a story doesn't - and shouldn't - have a one-to-one correspondence with their putative jobs aboard the imaginary ship.

There's certainly no reason in the world that Saldana should have preferred being stuck at her make-believe "post" rather than having that elevator scene with Quinto.

Put another way - as Koenig also observed - there have been big Hollywood movies where the stars played Army privates and the Army generals were played by extras.

I mean is there - was there ever - a good excuse for the amount of time that Bones McCoy spent malingering around the ship's bridge? No.