Across the globe, and propaply elsewhere in the universe as well, Star Trek fans are in mourning following the passing of actress Nichelle Nichols, who played the USS Enterprise’s communications officer Lieutenant Uhura.
Meanwhile fans of the cult BBC Alba sci-fi show Staran Trek were saddened to hear of the death of Nichols’ island cousin, Niseach-elle Nicolsonroad, who played the role of communications officer Lieutenant Uheorna in the long running series.
Niseach-elle Nicolsonroad was born Niseachina Dell Morrison in Skigersta in 1932. Soon after her birth, the family changed their surname to Nicolsonroad because they were angling for one of the new council houses in town.
A talented singer as well as an actress, Nicolsonroad got her early break in the Stornoway Thespians’ musical “Ticks & Co” (1961), a thinly veiled satire of “Prayboy” magazine (a popular publication to which many a sophisticated minister-about-town subscribed for the articles on scripture – see our January 2018 obituary for its proprietor Uisdean “Pew” Heifer). She also toured the village halls and danns a’ rathaids as a singer with the Duke Wellington and Lional Hamnaway melodeon big bands, and gained high praise for her performance in Jamesstreet Baldwin’s acclaimed play “Brues for Mister CharlieBarley”.
But Nicolsonroad rose to island-wide fame in the late 1960’s, when BBC Alba agreed to commission a sci-fi series written by Gene Rodelbury about the five year voyages of a Mitchell’s bus, going ‘where no maw has gone before’ to ‘seek out new bus routes’.
The ostensible star of the show was Uilleam Shader, who played Captain Seamus ‘Free’ Kirk, the gallant bus driver and part time lay preacher. However several of the other characters caught the public imagination and soon became very popular in their own right, including Nicolsonroad’s glamorous Lt Uheorna, Dr ‘Bones’ MacKay, the cantankerous medical advisor, Mr Spàg the relentlessly logical science officer from planet Ulpan, Mr Sulusgeir the helmsman, and Chief Mechanic Scottroad.
In the show, Uheorna was the glamorous, no nonsense ‘clippie’, collecting the fares and chucking drunk passengers off the bus and into passing ditches. Uheorna was also responsible for ensuring the bus could pick up Isles FM on the radio at all times. Uheorna was also a firm favourite with male viewers for her scandalously short tweed dress, with the hem barely covering her ankles.
In one episode, “Pluto’s Stepwegailyonwego”, Uheorna and Kirk shared the first ever interdenominational screen kiss on BBC Alba (Kirk was Free Church and Uheorna was FP). This would have been a red rag to many hard line viewers in both Free and Free Presbyterian churches, but the episode was screened on a Sunday so none of them saw it and complaints were therefore few and far between.
Every week the crew and their trusty bus, called the Staranship Western Isles Enterprise, encountered a new adventure on a distant Lewis village. The bus travelled along at a good pace thanks to the discovery of the Warp Drive in Sticky’s Mill.
Alien villages included;
Ulpans: a village seeped in logic, grammar, correct pronunciation and speaking Gaelic in everyday situations.
The Kling-Tongs, a barbarous and warlike empire with a guttural language and few civilising graces, as likely to fall upon each other over the spoils of war as they are to attack others.
The Rubhamulans: cousins of the Ulpans
The Arnol-dorians: Aggressive azure humanoids with antennae stinking out of their heads…although they might actually have been rams with too much blue paint on them.
As Captain Kirk said ‘These are the voyages of the Staranship Western Isles Enterprise, on its five year mission to Highlands and Islands Development Boardly go where no maw has gone before.’
After Staran Trek, Niseach-elle went on to work as a consultant for NASA, the Ness Automotive and Spares Administration, to try and encourage more maws to become bus drivers.
Editor’s Note: Any resemblance between this article and our tribute to Lional Nimoy from March 2015 is entirely coincidental, and not due to us having chust copied it and changed the name at the top at all at all, oh no.