Nichelle Nichols, the actress revered by StarTrek fans everywhere for her role as Lieutenant Uhura, the communications officer on the starship USS Enterprise, died on Saturday in Silver City, New Mexico.
She was 89. The cause was heart failure, said Sky Conway, a writer and a film producer.
Nichols had a long career as an entertainer, beginning as a teenage supper-club singer and dancer in Chicago, her hometown, and later appearing on television. But she will forever be best remembered for her work on Star Trek, the cult-inspiring space adventure series that aired from 1966 to 1969 and starred William Shatner as Captain Kirk, the heroic leader of the starship crew; Leonard Nimoy (who died in 2015) as his science officer and adviser, Spock, an ultralogical humanoid from the planet Vulcan; and DeForestKelley (who died in 1999) as Dr McCoy, aka Bones, the ship’s physician.
Nichols provided a frisson of sexiness on the bridge of the Enterprise. She was generally clad in a snug red doublet and black tights; Ebony magazine called her the “most heavenly body in Star Trek”.
