In Remembrance and Honor of Nichelle Nichols
"Nichelle Nichols was The First. She was a trailblazer who navigated a very challenging trail with grit, grace, and a gorgeous fire we are not likely to see again." - Kate Mulgrew (Captain Janeway)
This edition of First Contact Day Newsletter is dedicated to Nichelle Nichols.
Paramount+ To Honor ‘Star Trek’ Actor Nichelle Nichols With Video Tribute
Paramount+ will remember trailblazing Star Trek actor Nichelle Nichols during its Star Trek Day event next month.
The event will feature a “special video to honor the impact and influence” of Nichols, who portrayed translator communications officer Lt. Nyota Uhura on the original Star Trek series. Nichols, who died July 31 at 89, broke barriers with her portrayal of Uhura in the series and later in its film franchise.
As one of the principal players on the Star Trek original series, Nichols shared one of the first interracial kisses in television history with costar William Shatner. Nichols voiced Uhura on Star Trek: The Animated Series and appeared in the first six Star Trek films. She became a lieutenant commander in Star Trek: The Motion Picture and then a full commander in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Throughout, she was a powerful symbol for African Americans and a fan favorite in the various projects.
Help Star Trek’s Lieutenant Uhura Overcome Astronomical Odds
In honor of the actor and activist Nichelle Nichols, this month’s puzzle imagines a Star Trek adventure in which her character, Lieutenant Uhura, faces a life-and-death conundrum.
Star Trek News & Updates
You're Invited to a Special Global 'Star Trek Day' Celebration on September 8
Join Paramount+ and fans from around the world for a global live-streamed Star Trek Day celebration on Thursday, Sept. 8 (12:00 PM, PT/3:00 PM, ET*). Live from the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, Calif., Star Trek Day will feature back-to-back, in-person conversations with cast members from the Star Trek universe, along with exciting announcements and reveals throughout.
Star Trek: Picard's Final Season Almost Featured A Well-Known Voyager Character
Star Trek: Picard’s final season is due out in 2023, and the pressure is on for co-showrunner Terry Matalas and the crew. Season 3 will bring back much of the cast of the beloved series The Next Generation, and tell a story that could put a cap on many of those characters' journeys in the universe. There’s also some obligation to try and offer fans surprises and unexpected events, and it seemed like Matalas nearly did so when he tried to incorporate a well-known Voyager character into the story. [...]
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will “make a big moment’ of Kirk meeting Spock
Kirk and Spock are one of the most iconic duos in pop culture. Between The Original Series, the movie franchise, and numerous spinoffs in different media, the two have shared many big moments. And Star Trek fans will see them meet for the first time in the second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
Speaking with TVLine during the Hollywood Critics Association’s TV Awards this past weekend, co-showrunner Henry Alonso Myers says that the writing team think about the first meeting between Kirk and Spock “every day.” [...]
Star Trek Fun Fact
Nichelle Nichols (“Lt. Uhura”) resigned from Star Trek after the first season, but reconsidered after a conversation with a big Star Trek fan. The fan was Martin Luther King, Jr.
From Star Trek:
First Contact Day "A holiday celebrated in the Federation on April 5, marking the anniversaries of the flight of the Phoenix and of first contact between Humans and Vulcans in 2063."
The Phoenix was a Human spaceship launched in 2063. Constructed from an old Titan V nuclear ICBM, the Phoenix was designed by Zefram Cochrane, and was the first vessel in Earth history to travel at warp speed (having reached a speed of warp 1.1).
The Vulcans are a humanoid species native to the planet Vulcan. They are one of the founding species of the United Federation of Planets and made First Contact with humans upon learning of their achievement of warp speed.
Visit the Merch Store to get the the one and only Official Planning Committee shirts for First Contact Day!
Science & Technology News & Achievements
Oak Ridge National Lab officials view new innovation push as modern day ‘Manhattan Project’
The U.S. government has perhaps its best chance in recent decades to drive technological innovation, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) officials told leaders of the departments of Defense and Energy on Wednesday, with some likening it to the push for new capabilities during the World War II era. That Tennessee-based lab has roots that trace back to massive investments during the 1940s supporting the Manhattan Project that led to America’s development of the atomic bomb — a feat of research, development and engineering that changed the world and gave the United States a major strategic asset in its competition with advanced adversaries. Now, U.S. leaders say, the nation needs new innovations to compete with China and address other challenges of the modern era. [...]
Existential physics: What is happening “now” is relative
The fact that the passage of time isn’t universal is pretty mind-bending already, but there’s more. Because the speed of light is very fast but finite, it takes time for light to reach us, so, strictly speaking, we always see things as they looked a little bit earlier. Again, though, we don’t normally notice this in everyday life. Light travels so fast that it doesn’t matter on the short distances we see on Earth. For example, if you look up and watch the clouds, you actually see the clouds the way they looked a millionth of a second ago. That doesn’t really make a big difference, does it? We see the Sun as it looked eight minutes ago, but because the Sun doesn’t normally change all that much in a few minutes, light’s travel time doesn’t make a big difference. If you look at the North Star, you see it as it looked 434 years ago. But, yeah, you may say, so what? [...]
Astronomers Have Detected One of the Biggest Black Hole Jets
Astronomers at Western Sydney University have discovered one of the biggest black hole jets in the sky. Spanning more than a million light years from end to end, the jet shoots away from a black hole with enormous energy, and at almost the speed of light. But in the vast expanses of space between galaxies, it doesn’t always get its own way. [...]
Technological determinism is wrong
Technology is often seen as the engine of social change. But this ignores the cultural forces and changes that enable technological shifts, as well as the fact that technology is often used to preserve the status quo, rather than usher in change, argues Lelia Green. We have just experienced one of the most significant social upheavals in living memory. The COVID-19 pandemic made us review everything we took for granted: personal freedoms, community engagement, work, leisure, shopping, travel. It struck at the heart of consumer society, and it demanded to be taken seriously. And we changed: quickly, and dramatically. [...]
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