Nana Visitor, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s Kira Nerys, explores how the series has portrayed and influenced women. Interviews-with the stars, writers, producers, and audience members from all walks of life, including a politician and an astronaut-highlight the struggles and triumphs of women both behind and in front of the camera throughout the sixty-year history of Star Trek, and how they have mirrored the experiences of women everywhere. The groundbreaking casting of Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhura in 1966 was a paradigm shift for women and people of color. Pioneering is no picnic, and she planned to leave the show until none other than the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. contextualized her appearance in people’s living rooms across America as a way for people of color to know they were indeed an important part of the future. Since then, each Star Trek show has both reflected the values of its time and imagined a future of equality. In her first book, Open a Channel: A Woman’s Trek, Nana Visitor sets out to discover both how Star Trek led the way for women, and how each show was trapped in its own era. For Visitor, this is more than a book about Star Trek. It’s also about how society and the stories we tell have evolved in the last sixty years, and how the role of women has changed in that time.
