No! Not Lt. Uhura!


nichelle-nichols

Nichelle Nichols is hospitalized with a stroke. This is absurd. Don’t they know they could just use the transporter, subtract the clot from the buffer, and fix the problem?

Also, she’s 82, which is unpossible. I’m sure there’s also a maneuver, an appropriate slingshot around the sun, for instance, that would rewind time.

Comments

  1. rq says

    Aren’t these people supposed to live forever??
    Hoping for all the best and a ‘miracle’ of modern medicine. 82 still leaves her with another potential couple of decades.
    *thumbs held*

  2. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    This is SAD news. *sighs* Nichols was truly a revolutionary feminist. Willing to resign from the part that was, at first, just a black woman fielding radio calls. She even told MLK she was about to do it, and he told her NO!, that, even in the background, it was vital for all the audience to see a competent, black, woman, as a member of the bridge crew (of the shows flagship). Still hesitating, Nimoy flew into Roddenberry and demanded she be paid equal to all of them or they would all walk out, kaboom.
    I reiterate these stories to chide myself. As a child when I watched the show, I always dismissed Uhura as a “token”, and the role was just a “secretary”, inconsequential, etc, etc. The famous “kiss with Shatner”, I just dismissed as “so what? He was _forced_ to kiss her against his will.” I was too young for all the racist outrage of the adults of the time.
    Zoe Saldana, as the “new” Uhura, while doing a fine job, has not been written up to match Nichols’ performance.
    .
    if only Dr. McCoy were real, he’d fix her right up.

  3. Amphiox says

    Don’t they know they could just use the transporter, subtract the clot from the buffer, and fix the problem?

    It always struck me that the Trek writers seriously underplayed the medical potential for their transporter tech. That episode where Picard needed open heart surgery should never have been necessary.

    Frankly, the they could have had functional immortality (store your 20 ish year old, or whatever age you prefer, body in the buffer, and when you’re 80, swap your current brain pattern in the buffer into your stored young body, repeat as necessary, and done.

    And all the red shirts should be storing weekly backups of themselves, for reconstitution as needed….

  4. Nepos says

    Just this week I discovered that Star Trek Online, the ST massively multiplayer game, has numerous memorials in key locations dedicated to pretty much anyone who ever worked on some iteration of ST and then passed away. They are quite lovely, but I do hope they won’t have to add a name any time soon.

    [On one of the memorials they had notable quotes from the actors–for Leonard Nimoy they used his last tweet, “A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP.”

    Rarely does twitter so justify itself.]

  5. Matrim says

    @4

    Koenig and Takei both have reasonable shots at living longer. They’re both younger than Shatner and are in good health (as far as I know). I don’t know much about their hobbies, but I do know that Shatner is an avid horseback rider, which carries a certain risk especially at his age.

  6. moarscienceplz says

    It always struck me that the Trek writers seriously underplayed the medical potential for their transporter tech. That episode where Picard needed open heart surgery should never have been necessary.

    I once read an article that claimed that even if you solved the matter/energy conversion problems the transporter would still be impossible due to the computing power needed to scan, store, and process the pattern of all the energy states of a human body. Being able to identify structures that needed modification just makes the problem that much worse.
    After all, we have been able to transmit TV images for about 80 years, but only in the last handful of years did we have the computing power to add a visible scrimmage line to a live football game, for instance.

    (More on topic)
    Uhura.com has an email address for questions for Nichelle. I don’t know if anyone is maintaining it, but I left a little get well message there. I hope she gets it.

  7. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    [transporter as surgeon] would still be impossible due to the computing power needed to scan, store, and process the pattern of all the energy states of a human body.

    but, but, but, sputter, Didn’t they, one time, note the transporter removes all the serious infectious microbes from the transportees, so planetary quarantine was never required? And didn’t DS9 once use it to “transplant” a fetus from one woman into another? cough cough
    This is just one difficulty of trying to create a consistent “magic” technology (one beyond plausibility). First, one posits a rule that it can’t “do this”, then (when the plot requires), it is capable of doing that. Because nobody knows how this thing works, one can get away with it being able to do whatever the story needs (like splitting Kirk into good&evil Kirk).
    Aside from this jab at the writers; the medical potential of a transporter-like device for surgical extraction cases, is profoundly conceivable, when we get a round tuit.

  8. rq says

    slithey tove
    They probably just tweaked the technology in between episodes. “Oh, this, it’s actually Version 3.2.5 and yes, it can do that!”

  9. Amphiox says

    Being able to identify structures that needed modification just makes the problem that much worse.

    See, the thing is, you don’t have to need to do that. All you need is have prestored healthy baseline (say from the last time that individual used the transporter), and then cut and past. (current brain to preserve memory and personality, old body or body part- your heart from yesterday will work in your body today just fine). And since we already know the transporter has enough memory to transport multiple people at once, we know it has more than enough memory to do this.

    Individuals could even “buy” (whatever the post scarcity trek world equivalent) and keep their own backups on their own storage media privately, if ship’so memory is at a premium for day to day operations.

  10. Amphiox says

    When it comes to redshirt restoration, you don’t even need to cut and paste. Store their pattern when they beam down, keep in memory for duration of mission (if memory is limited, you can delete after they are safely back on the ship). If they should meet an untimely demise, just reassemble from the stored backup, using whatever the store of matter you are using for your replicators, or even that person’s recovered remains if available, as the raw material. The individual will just have lost all memory of the mission that led to their demise. It’ll be no worse for them than a concussion with retrograde amnesia.

  11. Nepos says

    I’m with Dr. McCoy, no way would I ever step in a transporter, since it kills you and then replicates you. Sure, you’re replica might have all your memories*, but you’d still be very dead.

    * Actually, it wouldn’t. Mapping all of the particles in the body and reproducing them correctly is impossible given the uncertainty principle and quantum mechanics–you might get a rough semblance of a human, maybe, but probably just “ye liveliest awfulness”, to mix genres for a moment.

  12. says

    Oh, I hope she will be alright. I’ve had an ongoing crush on Ms. Nichols for a very long time. The inspiration she provided for generations of young women is one hell of a legacy, and I hope she’s around for a long time yet.

  13. sonderval says

    @Nepos #15
    Nope, that’s what the Heisenberg compensators are for, after all. (And nobody ever bothered to explain it.)
    Wikipedia relates:

    When asked “How does the Heisenberg compensator work?” by Time magazine, Star Trek technical adviser Michael Okuda responded: “It works very well, thank you.

    BTW, on DS9 they were much more focused on the storyline, less on the techno-babble (leading to Holo-Vic-Fontain just dismissing Kiras question how he as a holodeck program could just switch to another holosuite…)

  14. David Marjanović says

    I just dismissed as “so what? He was _forced_ to kiss her against his will.”

    Or her will for that matter.

    Zoe Saldana, as the “new” Uhura, while doing a fine job, has not been written up to match Nichols’ performance.

    What exactly do you mean? What immediately comes to mind is the scene where she meets Kirk for the first time. He promptly tries to pick her up; I sighed, rolled my eyes and thought “it’s over, he Gets The Girl”. He does not Get The Girl. She’s immune to the pickup lines and the creepy “charm” of the greatest *eyeroll* seductor in the galaxy. Instead she’s with Spock – and plays a very active part in that relationship; she’s no more Spock’s background decoration than she is Kirk’s.

    It always struck me that the Trek writers seriously underplayed the medical potential for their transporter tech.

    “It is generally accepted among non‐Trekkie SF fans that Star Trek ‘transporters’, hereinafter abbreviated to TPs, are an insanely gross piece of quasiscience best kept decently offstage. Unfortunately, the Trekkies have trouble grasping this, and insist on plots that focus on infeasible TP phenomena. My suspension‐of‐disbelief glands can’t take very much more of this, so in the hope of scaring scriptwriters into avoiding the subject I am obliged to go into the awful details.”

    Goes on about “society-smashing practical implications”. :-)

  15. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    I’m not disparaging Zoe as an actress, but the role they’ve warped [pun intended] Uhura into. Instead of a competent, contributing crewmember, they’ve warped her into Spock’s reluctant lovetoy. Just my impression, maybe a misperception, but I’ll still blame the writers for making it so easy to miss-perceive the “real” Uhura.

  16. kc9oq says

    Yeah, I always wanted to write me some fanfic featuring transporter medicine.

    The transporter biofilter definitely was mentioned on the show, if not TOS, certainly TNG. Makes me wonder, though — would biofilter settings be something the transporter tech is responsible for? What about that streptococcus-novi in “Way to Eden”?

    What would happen if the wrong symbiotic bacteria were filtered out? A case of transporter-induced agita? Maybe McCoy’s aversion to transportation was grounded in some medical basis.

  17. David Marjanović says

    they’ve warped her into Spock’s reluctant lovetoy

    What? All the initiative in that relationship is hers.

    In the original series, in contrast, she hardly ever gets to say anything other than “Hailing frequences open”.

  18. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    re 23:
    David, I’m tempted to start debating you about Uhura’s depiction in Into Darkness. I’ll just try to clarify my statement, “Spock’s reluctant lovetoy”. I agree that was poorly phrased. The attempt was to phrase it that the reluctance was Spock’s, not Uhura’s. While she initiated the contacts, he accepted them with no serious objection, just physical reluctance. The fact that they made the faux relationship such a significant part of the story is what I’m objecting to. While TOS did not write her role very well, at least they left her as a person, contributing a significant role on the bridge. In my not so humble opinion, the writers were simply reducing her to a romantic role, diminishing the character as a person. ST should keep exploring the roles of the characters as PEOPLE, and not just always addressing stereotypes. [looking at Chekov always claiming things as Russian in origin]. Part of the role of exploring them as people could occasionally have them confronting the issue of being stereotyped, but leave it as incidentals, not the sole focus of the character.
    sheesh. longwinded me, this not my blog, not my thread. I’ll stop now.

  19. caseloweraz says

    Nepos: Mapping all of the particles in the body and reproducing them correctly is impossible given the uncertainty principle and quantum mechanics–you might get a rough semblance of a human, maybe, but probably just “ye liveliest awfulness”, to mix genres for a moment.

    Yes, barring some scientific breakthrough. Also, the engineering requirements are formidable, as someone pointed out above. Lawrence Krauss did a good job of explaining this in his book The Physics of Star Trek.