New Star Trek Comic Echoes Real-Life MLK Connection

One of the primary appeals of Star Trek has been the utopian world that Gene Roddenberry imagined, a future in which humanity has overcome sexism, racism, and capitalism to work together as they explore the stars. That vision has made earned the franchise some famous fans, including none other than Martin Luther King Jr. So inspired by the show was King, that when Nichelle Nichols told him that she planned to resign from playing Lieutenant Uhura and focusing on Broadway, he urged her to stay aboard.

A new Star Trek one-shot from IDW pays homage that that famous incident. Star Trek Deviations: Threads of Destiny, written by Stephanie Williams and illustrated by Greg Maldonado and Anthony Fowler Jr. The story will draw from the classic TOS episode “City on the Edge of Forever” to send Uhura back in time to 1963, where she will participate in the Civil Rights movement.

Of course, Star Trek is no stranger to the Civil Rights movement, having aired the first interracial kiss on television in the episode “Plato’s Stepchildren” and explicitly called out racism in “Balance of Terror.” But Threads of Destiny feels particularly special, given Nichols’ connection to King.

The star, who passed in 2022 at the age of 89, described her interaction with King in a 2010 interview with StarTrek.com. According to Nichols, the two met in the same weekend in which she gave Roddenberry her resignation letter. Instead of accepting immediately, Roddenberry asked her to think about it over the weekend, during which she happened to be attending a NAACP event.

“One of the organizers of the event came over to me and said, ‘Ms. Nichols, I hate to bother you just as you’re sitting down to dinner, but there’s someone here who wants very much to meet you. And he said to tell you that he is your biggest fan,'” she recalled. “I said, ‘Oh, certainly,’ I stood up and turned around and who comes walking over towards me from about 10 or 15 feet, smiling that rare smile of his, is Dr. Martin Luther King.” Nichols did not immediately make the connection, and thought, “Whoever that fan is, whoever that Trekkie is, it’ll have to wait because I have to meet Dr. Martin Luther King.” But then King introduced himself saying, “Yes, Ms. Nichols, I am your greatest fan.”

Awestruck as she was, Nichols managed to shock the reverend doctor when she revealed her plans to leave the show. “He said, ‘You cannot,'” Nichols continued. “And so help me, this man practically repeated verbatim what Gene said. He said, ‘Don’t you see what this man is doing, who has written this? This is the future. He has established us as we should be seen. Three-hundred years from now, we are here. We are marching. And this is the first step. When we see you, we see ourselves, and we see ourselves as intelligent and beautiful and proud.'”

Needless to say, Nichols stayed on the show, cementing Uhura as one of the foundations of science fiction, a foundation continued by Zoe Saldaña and Celia Rose Gooding, both of whom played Uhura afterwards. And now it’s the turn of the creative team on Star Trek Deviations: Threads of Destiny, bridging the real world and the fantasy, until our world finally starts to resemble the utopia that Star Trek imagines.

Star Trek Deviations: Threads of Destiny goes on sale on February 25, 2026.