Nichelle Nichols

  • Truck Turner (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) I’ve mentioned it before, but while most Blaxploitation film recommendations go to the early defining examples, my own viewing preference goes to the middle-period films of the subgenre – more technically proficient, they also better understood the tone that these films were going for. Truck Turner, featuring no less than Isaac Hayes, Yaphet Kotto and Nichelle Nichols, couldn’t be more blaxploitation if it tried – the protagonist is a bounty hunter who has to deal with unforeseen consequences after the death of a pimp. Hayes (who also composed the soundtrack) has a good screen presence as the protagonist, but it’s Nichols and her spectacular outfits that clearly steal the show. If you’re in-tune with Blaxploitation’s gritty lower-budgeted characteristics, you’ll find a lot to like here. It even ends on a somewhat unusually hopeful note. Truck Turner may not be that polished or sophisticated, but it moves its genre elements with some assurance, and includes a few amusing sequences in the mix (even if some of them, such as when our protagonist frames his girlfriend as a shoplifter to get her into custody and out of danger from their pursuers, may be a hard sell to modern audiences). Truck Turner delivers when people think “Blaxploitation” – it’s an honest example of the genre, and it will fit the bill if that’s what you’re looking for.

  • Woman in Motion (2019)

    Woman in Motion (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) As someone who started watching Star Trek as a kid, I’ve had a crush on Nichelle Nichols for decades now, and Woman in Motion is merely fuelling it even more. Aiming for a retrospective of her life that wisely spends more time on her STEM outreach than her Trek role, director Todd Thompson brings together interview clips from her entire career, plenty of archival footage, interviews with friends and admirers (including such diverse notables as John Lewis, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Al Sharpton, Pharrell Williams and Vivica A. Fox) and some on-screen text to make a simple case: Beyond her role on Star Trek, Nichols’ biggest influence has been in her outreach to new audiences in diversifying the American astronaut roster. As Woman in Motion explains, the NASA effort to recruit Shuttle astronauts in 1977 was not reaching audiences beyond the white males who had been, until then, the face of the space program. Reaching for a well-known spokesperson, NASA recruited Nichols, who then spent a few hectic weeks convincing diverse audiences that they, too, could become astronauts. The effort paid off, and numerous former astronauts appear on-screen to testify about it. Nichol’s life and Trek career are given some time (including a gripping retelling of the famous encounter between her and Martin Luther King Jr. that convinced her to remain with the show), but the refreshing focus here is on her impact on the course of the American space program, and the debt that many people jostle to acknowledge here. It’s all quite entertaining, effective, and at times even emotional — it’s hard to listen to the much-missed John Lewis pay tribute to Nichols without getting caught up in the significance of it. Even in a crowded field of documentaries about Star Trek, Woman in Motion stands out by paying tribute to something that has had real significance well outside the realm of entertainment. Don’t stop watching once the end credits roll — Nichols then gets to sign “Fly me to the Moon” in a very charming coda.