“There’s a black lady on television, and she ain’t no maid!” —Whoopi Goldberg, circa 1966

It’s probably the most famous quote about her, because it sums up her place in civil rights history. She wanted to quit, even actually submitted her resignation to Gene Roddenberry. Among other things, it turns out the studio was keeping back her fan mail, which is pretty low. Then, at an NAACP fundraiser, she was told a fan wanted to meet her. And, um, we in the US will be celebrating that fan’s birthday as a national holiday tomorrow. When Martin Luther King, Jr., told her what a difference she was making just by being on the show, she agreed to suck it up and go back to work.

That must have been an incredibly painful decision, if you think about it. To be told that she needed to eat her rage and frustration, accept being treated as Less Than even than the studio, because she was helping future generations? She could have said no. She could have kept working in the theatre, maybe done other TV and movie work, and had an easier time of it. Instead, she agreed and stayed on, becoming an icon. I don’t know if she’ll ever really be able to say if it was worth it at the time or as only become worth it in the years since.

She might have had a very different career. Almost everything she’s done has been either Star Trek or else calling in on the nostalgia of Star Trek. (She is, uncredited, a dancer in Porgy and Bess, and an uncredited nurse on two episodes of Peyton Place. One hardly feels this counts.) It’s not because she’s a bad actress, and it’s certainly not because she’s an unattractive woman. It’s because the basic legacy of Star Trek is never being able to escape Star Trek.

If Tawney Madison of Galaxy Quest was intended to denigrate Uhura’s job on the Enterprise, it is essentially the only misfire of the movie’s parody. (Tawney in many ways reads like a combination of most of the women of Trek, and she is explicitly as useless as Counselor Troi.) Uhura as communications specialist was as vital in her own quiet way to the ship’s mission as Spock, and it’s a bit disheartening that her job was eliminated by the Next Gen era. Indeed, Nichols herself objected to the idea that, by Star Trek VI, she wouldn’t be able to speak fluent Klingon. She was overruled, of course.

But there is more to Uhura as just Black Person Who Isn’t a Servant—she is a black woman, after all. Famously, the idea of a female second-in-command was rejected, but Uhura served no coffee and pined after no male colleagues. Presumably Nurse Chapel was competent at her job, but what people remember about her is that she’s played by Gene Roddenberry’s wife and that she has a thing for Spock. Uhura does her job, and even her famous kiss with Kirk was under the influence of mind control. Okay, so she didn’t get any romance that I remember, which is too far in the other direction, but she isn’t defined by the men in her life.

Science fiction still isn’t exactly a bastion of feminist influence, but both Benjamin Sisko and Kira Nerys of Deep Space Nine have Uhura in their DNA. Outside of Trek, there is Zoe of Firefly. Nichelle Nichols influenced quite a lot of people as a competent woman in science fiction, even if she had to wear that stupid outfit all through the TV show.