application: entranceway

Name: Froda
DW username: froda_baggins
E-Mail: frodabaggins [at] gmail [dot] com
IM: frodabaggins03
Plurk: frodabaggins

Other Characters: N/A

Character Name: Lieutenant Nyota Uhura
Series: Star Trek AOS
Timeline: Post-Into Darkness
Canon Resource Link: Uhura @ Memory Alpha and Uhura @ Memory Beta

Character History: Nyota Uhura was born in 2233 in Nairobi, Kenya, to Alhamisi and M'Umbha Uhura. Her interest in languages began at an early age, growing up in a bilingual household (Swahili and English) and demonstrating a good ear and a quick tongue right from the beginning. She was also an excellent student at the Nairobi Girls' Academy, and well-rounded to boot (she sang and played competitive raquetball). Her childhood was relatively stable and happy, though marred by Africa's recent history, namely, the genocide wars of the late 22nd century, stories of which were passed down to her by her relatives. This helped instill in her an abhorrence of violence and a respect for sentient life which she brought with her into Starfleet.

Another traumatic event shaped her as a young person - as a teenager, Uhura and her parents were visiting her uncle Raheem off-planet when a shuttle they were in was damaged. In attempting to repair it, there was an explosion which knocked her parents unconscious and threw Raheem out into space. Showing exceptional courage for such a young person, Raheem talked Uhura through getting her parents to safety, and in his final moments, told her how proud of her he was. The only people she's ever told this story to are her parents and Spock - for her, this was a deeply personal experience.

In 2255, Uhura graduated with honors from the Institute of Advanced Mathematics, and entered Starfleet Academy in the Xenolinguistics program. She quickly became a star pupil of Commander Spock, and he recommended her to help with a murder investigation in San Francisco that summer - to help decipher an audio message left by the murderer in an unknown language. Her work on this case helped solve it, and it was through this case that she first met and worked with Leonard McCoy.

It was around this time that Uhura also met notorious genius-slacker-womanizer James Kirk - and soundly rebuffed his advances. Frankly, the hard-working Uhura did not like Kirk one bit, and made her contempt very clear. She didn't like Kirk's attitude, his apparent inability to take things seriously, his recklessness and arrogance.

Uhura's track record at Starfleet Academy was nothing short of stellar - with particular success at handling subspace transmissions, as well as specializations in Romulan and Klingon dialects and cultures, she was more than qualified for placement on the new flagship, Enterprise - but almost wasn't, because Spock, with whom she had developed a romantic relationship, didn't want to seem as if he was practicing favoritism. She convinced him to reverse his decision, however, by pointing out that she had earned the right to the posting and that penalizing her for her personal relationship with him was just as unfair as the supposed "favoritism" he was so worried about. In essence, she out-logiced a vulcan.

Her relationship with Spock was a long time coming - being her instructor, of course, there were protocols which both parties were hesitant to violate, but Uhura, a passionate young woman as much as she was a hard worker, wasn't going to let a little thing like the ethical code of conduct get in the way of her feelings for Spock. Still, they took care to keep everything quiet while she was still a student in the Academy.

It was a message which Uhura intercepted and translated just before the Vulcan distress signal was received which proved key to warning the Enterprise of what awaited it in Vulcan space - a Klingon prison ship destroyed by a huge, unknown vessel, in roughly the same quadrant of space where the attack which had destroyed the USS Kelvin on the day of James Kirk's birth took place. Kirk recalled Uhura talking about the message, put the pieces together and, based on Uhura's translation, alerted Captain Pike that this was not a natural seismic event taking place on Vulcan, but an attack.

Uhura, based on this event and her ability to understand all three Romulan dialects, quickly replaced the lead Communications officer on the bridge, a position which she held through Nero's attacks and the destruction of Vulcan.

Uhura did her best to comfort Spock in the wake of his planet's destruction, but what can you do when your boyfriend's mother and billions of his people are just gone in an instant? There's really no comfort to be had, so she watched rather helplessly as Spock seemed to go a bit off the deep end, ending in an all-out fight between him and Kirk on the bridge, in front of everyone. Spock nearly killed the other man before regaining control of himself, and subsequently relinquished command of the Enterprise. Pissed that Kirk had provoked Spock so mercilessly, Uhura questioned his judgment, but accepted his command nonetheless - Earth was in danger now, after all.



Abilities/Special Powers: Uhura is a baseline human, so she has no special, magical, super or supernatural powers to speak of. However, she is a highly skilled Starfleet communications officer, with expertise in xenolinguistics, as well as a lot of technical know-how when it comes to the equipment she uses, living and working in the military, and basic combat skills (hand-to-hand and firearms training).

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