In 2017, IDW released Star Trek: Deviations, a one-shot that explored what would’ve happened if the Romulans made first contact with Earth instead of the Vulcans. For its next alt-history outing, the Deviations line is focusing on the original Enterprise‘s comms officer and translator, Nyota Uhura.
Written by Stephanie Williams (Nubia & the Amazons) and drawn by Greg Maldonado and Anthony Fowler Jr., the Threads of Destiny one-shot puts a different spin on the Original Series episode “The City on the Edge of Forever.” Instead of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy using the Guardian of Forever to travel through time, it’s Uhura, and it puts her in 1963 during the Civil Rights movement. While looking for a way home, she decides to “join all those fighting for equality and justice and reconnect to why her work as a communications officer is perhaps the most important work of all.”
Why the Civil Rights Movement, other than the immediately obvious reason? It brings things full circle with Uhura and her first actor, the late Nichelle Nichols, who initially planned on leaving the original Star Trek after a single season. It was a discussion with Martin Luther King, Jr. that changed her mind; as a fan of the show, he called her “our image of where we’re going. You’re 300 years from now, and that means that’s where we are and it takes place now. Keep doing what you’re doing, you are our inspiration.” And when she told him about her plans to leave, he told her, “You don’t have a black role. You have an equal role.”
In sticking around, Nichols’ Uhura inspired Black women like Whoopi Goldberg and astronaut Mae Jemison, who would eventually guest star on Star Trek. The character is currently portrayed by Celia Rose Gooding in the Strange New Worlds series, and previously on film by Zoe Saldaña in the reboot trilogy.
Star Trek Deviations: Threads of Destiny will release on February 25, 2026, and you can see two of its covers, one of which is Nichols as Uhura, down below.
[via IGN]
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