That’s her job and always has been. Sitting on her butt and saying “hailing frequencys open” or maybe in the modern time say “these folks are speaking Romlan”. But she isn’t needed for much else. Bones is.
I base what I said on the fact that there is an action scene and one of the three “important characters” is missing and replaced with a minor character. Her sex and race have nothing to do with it. She is the communication’s chick, and in this version “Spock’s secret side piece”. Uhurah’s job has ALWASYS been to be the senior communications officer, ( and for real life film making purpose to have a chick on the payroll) Sure she is in the line to command…but after almost all other suitable officers have been eliminated. She is JUST the commuications person. Just as in our navy, I had the same role as an Asset Collections management officer for a while. I wasn’t getting command if things went down ahead of like 4 lesser ranked command officers. SHe’s just the chick with the radio.
As for the race and sex thing: Great role model. Listen up women and black people. If you bang your teacher, you can practicaluy black mail him into giving you a position that you weren’t entitiled to, especialy if you remind him of your BJ skills. Give me a break. We have a women secty of state in the real world, and a black president. They are breaking no grounds by includeing a black women here. Especialy not one that sleeps her way into a job. It’s better to have the story arc inclide the superior character of Mcoy than to try to right some wrong from my dad’s childhood, that society fixed years ago. It’s not worth looesing Bones over Zoe’s legs. Star trek is about those three characters and legs and skirts in the background to support thier story. Not legs and skirts up front and let important characters make cameos.
Star Trek is about Kirk. Spock and Mcoy are his best friends and give him moral and scientific sides of arguments. They are the back bone of that is Trek. Take that away and it’s not Trek. The others 4 ( love them, I really do) are all side characters that aren’t really that important. You can have TOS Trek with or without any of them. Movies were not about them. Many episodes only had three of the four.
It’s a terrible waste to not use that great character and Urban’s excellent portyal as much in favor of a 7 in the looks and a 5 in the acting and a 4 in the character department , Uhurah. ( and I like Zoe Saldana MUCH better than I like Nichele Nicoles) I like this Uhurah…she did what she was supposed to do in the last movie. Now dial her back to comms chick and have spock and mcoy duke it out for kirk’s love and make a good bro-mance story! 