Star Trek: 10 Best Uhura Moments

7. Communicating With Klingons

Uhura Star Trek
Paramount

This may be a slightly controversial moment to pick as Nichelle Nichols herself was not a massive fan of this scene. In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the crew of the Enterprise-A must convince a Klingon border station that they are in fact a small freighter conveying supplies to Rura Penthe. As the universal translator would be detected, they need to speak actual Klingon.

The scene in question is hilarious. Uhura, surrounded by dictionaries, attempts to stall the guards with many errors in her grammar and syntax. Nichols wasn't happy with this, as she felt that Uhura would already be accomplished enough in linguistics to pass this test with flying colours.

It is perhaps for this reason that both Zoe Saldana and Celia Rose Gooding's iterations of Uhura are fluent in spoken languages in their respective appearances. In fact, Star Trek Into Darkness seems to address this head-on, with Uhura communicating with the Klingons in their own language on the surface of Qu'nos.

While this scene may not have been Nichols' favourite, it leaves behind a genuine slice of humour in her final film and was the catalyst for future versions of the character to fly.

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Writer. Reader. Host. I'm Seán, I live in Ireland and I'm the poster child for dangerous obsessions with Star Trek. Check me out on Twitter @seanferrick