Uhura's History
Lieutenant Nyota Uhura was a Starfleet communications officer serving in the 23rd century. As requested by Captain Christopher Pike, Uhura relieved Hawkins, the chief communications officer of the USS Enterprise, shortly before the destruction of Vulcan. She served under Captain Pike, acting captain Spock, and then her classmate at Starfleet Academy, Captain James T. Kirk.
In 2255, while at the bar near the Riverside Shipyard in Iowa, Uhura met an inebriated Jim Kirk, who began flirting with her. Although annoyed by Kirk's advances, Uhura was surprised that Kirk knew what was involved in the study of xenolinguistics. This exchange led to a bar fight as four male cadets were displeased at the attention Kirk was giving Uhura.
During her time at Starfleet Academy, Uhura specialized in xenolinguistics with tracking toward a communications officer. Commander Spock served as one of Cadet Uhura's instructors and judged her performance to be consistently exemplary.
In 2258, Uhura was able to detect and translate a message from within Klingon territory indicating that a fleet of 47 Klingon vessels around the Klingon prison planet had been engaged and destroyed by an unknown Romulan ship. She returned home early that night, interrupting her roommate, at the time an Orion cadet named Gaila, and Kirk, who had been under the bed when she shared the information with Gaila.
At Kirk's request, Uhura was present as communications officer during Kirk's third re-take of the Kobayashi Maru test scenario the following day. After Kirk corrected her, she called him "captain" sarcastically. At a subsequent hearing on Kirk's actions, seated in a row that Commander Spock, the programmer of the Kobayashi Maru test, had vacated and two seats over from an upset Gaila, Uhura was in attendance in the Academy Council chambers when Kirk was accused of cheating.
Spock was in charge of the starship deployment assignments for the cadets of Uhura's graduating class, and had initially assigned Lieutenant Uhura to the USS Farragut, in spite of Uhura's stated desire to serve aboard the USS Enterprise, the new flagship, in order to avoid any appearance of favoritism. Uhura confronted him about this choice, noting that she was more than qualified to serve aboard the Enterprise and that it was unfair to deny her an opportunity she would have gained had they not been romantically involved. Spock relented and assigned her to the Enterprise.
Aboard the Enterprise, Uhura was approached by Kirk, who had deduced the attack on Vulcan was Romulan in nature, following Pavel Chekov's description of an anomaly described as a "lightning storm in space" that had preceded the attack on the day of Kirk's birth. She accompanied him to the bridge, where she verified his claims by mentioning that she was the person who had translated and intercepted the report of a similar Romulan vessel in Klingon space.
Captain Christopher Pike promoted Uhura to communications officer because Lieutenant Hawkins, the ship's prior communications officer, was not certain that he could distinguish transmissions in Romulan from transmissions in Vulcan. Uhura, by contrast, was fluent in all three Romulan dialects.
In an attempt to gain control of the Enterprise so he could attempt to defeat Nero, Kirk emotionally compromised Spock, causing him to relinquish command. After he left, Nyota approached Kirk and told him that she hoped he knew what he was doing. Again, she called him "captain"; this time, she was hurt, but hopeful.
Before Kirk and Spock beamed to Nero's ship, Uhura shared a tender goodbye kiss with Spock, who referred to her using her first name, and thus revealed their relationship to Kirk and Montgomery Scott. Kirk, who had repeatedly attempted to learn Uhura's first name to no avail throughout the years, asked Spock if "Nyota" was her first name. Spock responded, "I have no comment on the matter."
Although keeping her distance, she came to respect Kirk as captain of the Enterprise. After he gave her a command on the bridge, she turned to him, smiling, and answered, “Aye, Captain." This time, she called him "captain" sincerely.
A year later, Uhura accompanied Spock to Nibiru before he was rappelled from a shuttle into a volcano, to prevent it from wiping out the Nibirans. Ash from the volcano damaged the shuttle and snapped the wire, forcing Uhura and Sulu to leave him. Uhura swam back to the Enterprise, which was hidden underwater. She was distraught to learn ash from the volcano would prevent the Enterprise from transporting Spock back aboard, and to hear Spock explain he would prefer to die activating the cold fusion device than violate the Prime Directive. Kirk rose the Enterprise from the sea to beam him up, violating the Prime Directive but saving his life.
Later, when the Enterprise was tasked with hunting down terrorist John Harrison, Uhura expressed to Kirk in the turbolift that she and Spock were having relationship troubles. While on a K'normian trading ship to Qo'noS, where Harrison was hiding, Uhura and Spock got into an argument, in which she accused of him of being too ready to sacrifice himself for a mission and not caring how she would feel if he died. Spock acknowledged that, since his mother's death, he had been closing himself to such thoughts about how she would feel since he had experienced those feelings, specifically because he did care.
Suddenly, the ship was attacked by Klingons. Kirk tried to lose them but the away team's K'normian vessel was surrounded and forced to land. Uhura counseled Captain Kirk that she be allowed to perform her role as communications officer, rather than try to fight their way out of a situation they could not win. She went out of the ship to negotiate in Klingonese, requesting the Klingons' aid in finding Harrison. The leader of the Klingons she spoke to grabbed her by the throat, and pulled out a knife, prompting Spock and Kirk to go on the offensive. After Harrison showed up and violently began causing a distraction, Uhura grabbed the Klingon's knife and stabbed him with it, causing him to drop her. Once Harrison dispatched the Klingons and surrendered himself into Kirk's custody, Uhura and Spock shared a reconciliatory kiss.
After Harrison revealed he was Khan Noonien Singh, Spock asked Uhura to contact his older parallel universe counterpart on New Vulcan for information. Uhura managed to make contact although the ship was outside of normal range of communication with his location.
As the old Spock warned he would do, Khan betrayed them. When the damaged Enterprise fell to Earth, Kirk reactivated the warp core to prevent it crashing, at the cost of radiation poisoning himself. Uhura came and she, Spock and Scott wept.
Uhura encouraged Spock to beam down to execute Khan, who had crashed the USS Vengeance into San Francisco. However, Doctor Leonard McCoy discovered a blood transfusion from Khan could heal Kirk, so Uhura beamed down and fired several shots to stun Khan, saving Spock from having his head crushed by Khan. Spock used the opportunity to gain the advantage in the fight and was set to kill him. Uhura was able to stop Spock by informing him they needed Khan alive to save Kirk. Spock then knocked him out instead and took him to sickbay.
When Kirk awoke to his friends Spock and McCoy in a hospital, he acknowledged Spock saving him, whereupon McCoy reminded Kirk that he and Uhura had also helped.
Almost a year later, in 2260, Uhura attended a memorial service for the victims of the conspiracy, which was presided over by Kirk, who was now healthy again. She continued serving on the repaired Enterprise as it embarked on a five-year mission.
In 2263, Spock and Uhura had ended their relationship after Spock began considering leaving Starfleet to help his endangered species. Though he intended to discuss it further with Uhura on Yorktown, the news of the death of Spock Prime stopped him. During their relationship, Spock gave Uhura a necklace that once belonged to his mother as a gift and Uhura attempted to return it. Spock refused however.
When Kalara arrives on Starbase Yorktown for help, Uhura accompanies the Enterprise into the Necro Cloud to Altamid. To the crew's shock, they are attacked by Swarm ships, crippling the Enterprise. Uhura remains on the bridge for most of the battle but realizes that Kirk must be in trouble due to the amount of time he is taking to perform a saucer separation. Uhura travels to Engineering where Kirk is fighting Krall and finishes the saucer separation herself. However, Uhura is trapped in the secondary hull with Krall and is captured by him.
Uhura was taken to Krall's base where she refused to back down in the face of Krall, telling him that his actions were an act of war against the Federation and Kirk would show no mercy when he came for Krall. Krall was unafraid, stating that he looked forward to Kirk coming after him. Uhura then witnessed him drain two Enterprise crewmembers. Uhura and Sulu briefly escaped, discovering that Krall used a captured Magellan probe to hack Starbase Yorktown and gain access to its archives. Uhura attempted to send a distress call, but Krall recaptured the two and altered the coordinates of the distress call.
Krall was later able to force Ensign Syl to turn over the Abronath by threatening Sulu and Uhura. She then witnessed Krall test the weapon on Syl. As Krall dragged Uhura to his ship, Kirk attacked on a motorcycle as part of a rescue plan, creating enough of a diversion for Uhura to escape his grasp. Uhura saved Spock who was able to use the necklace he gave her to track the crew down from a Swarm drone and they were beamed safely to the USS Franklin.
On the Franklin, the crew repaired the ship to go after Krall, dropping the Franklin off a cliff to achieve terminal velocity and liftoff. Arriving at Yorktown, the crew found it under attack, and Uhura warned Kirk that she's detecting distress calls from Yorktown on all frequencies. When Spock suggested that the Swarm had a cyberpathic connection that helped them coordinate their movements, Uhura helped him explain this to the rest of the crew and come up with a plan. She then aided Scotty and Jaylah in hooking up the Franklin's music player to the communications console and warned Kirk that they have to get very close to the Swarm for the disruption signal to work. Once they were close enough, Uhura broadcast the signal which destroys most of the Swarm. On Kirk's orders, Uhura sent the signal to Yorktown which also broadcasted the signal, destroying the Swarm.
After the destruction of the Swarm, the crew chased Krall through Yorktown, using the Franklin to intercept Krall's three remaining ships. Uhura checked out one of the hull breaches with Kirk and spotted a victim of Krall's energy transference. As the two crossed through the ruined mess hall, Uhura saw a recording of the original Franklin crew and recognized Captain Balthazar Edison as Krall. Uhura watched the footage with Kirk and Scotty as they determine the history of Edison/Krall and rushed to the bridge to warn Yorktown to turn off their atmospheric processor until the situation was over.
After Krall's defeat, Uhura attended Kirk's thirtieth birthday party where she rekindled her relationship with Spock. Like the rest of the Enterprise crew, she was reassigned to the brand-new USS Enterprise-A to continue their five year mission in a new ship.
