Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, May 29, 1993                   TAG: 9305290715
SECTION: SPECTATOR                    PAGE: 13   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MARCIA DUNN ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA.                                LENGTH: Medium

FIRST BLACK WOMAN IN SPACE MAKES ACTING DEBUT ON `STAR TREK'

Jemison makes her acting debut on this week's episode of the syndicated series "Star Trek: The Next Generation" (at 7 p.m. on WSET-Channel 13) - her favorite show. She plays a transporter operator, Lt. Palmer.

"I have a tiny, tiny, tiny, walk-in extra role," with perhaps one line, a giggling Jemison said in a phone interview. "I did wonderfully, of course."

Last September, Jemison made her first and only real space flight, aboard the shuttle Endeavor. It was an eight-day, U.S.-Japanese science research mission that also featured the first married couple in space.

Now, she had an opportunity to portray a space traveler - albeit one in the far-distant future, on a craft that bears little resemblance to the shuttle. Was this a weird experience?

"It's sort of as though there is a place where fantasy and reality meet. It's sort of a nice mind game to play with yourself," she said.

"As a child, `Star Trek' was one of the ways that many people lived their imagination of traveling to the stars and going into space. And some of us held on. . . . It's just a nice circle to have been in, and it's sort of fun. I guess I was the only person who had really been in space on this set."

Spokesmen for Paramount Network Television, which produces the show, said it is indeed the first time an astronaut has guest-starred on the program or on the original "Star Trek" series.

Jemison was invited early this year to appear on the show by series regular LeVar Burton, whom she had met once before. Burton, who plays Lt. Cmdr. Geordi La Forge, directed the episode in which Jemison appears; the scenes were filmed in late March at Paramount's studios in Los Angeles.

Jemison, 36, a general practitioner who grew up in Chicago and speaks four languages, had left NASA in early March and started a company in Houston to improve communications and health care in West Africa.

She was the first, and only, African-American woman to become an astronaut when chosen by NASA in 1987. She quickly became NASA's most sought-after astronaut for public speaking engagements.

Flying in space had been Jemison's lifelong dream; she was inspired in part by the original "Star Trek" character Lt. Uhura, played by a black actress, Nichelle Nichols. The two women are now friends.

"It was time to go," Jemison explained. "You have to sort of evaluate what things are there on the horizon. I had projects. I had some goals that I needed to achieve. Looking at when I was liable to fly again, I didn't have another flight assignment at the time."

Acting was not - and is not - one of Jemison's goals, even though "I generally don't try to say what I'll never do."

Her part, she said, was made easier by the friendliness of the cast, and by her training in jazz and modern dance.

That's not to say acting is easier than flying in space, or vice versa.

"It depends on your talents and your skills. I wouldn't necessarily want to see a program made up with all astronauts acting in it," she said, laughing.

Jemison isn't sure she'll watch the show, entitled "Second Chances." In it, the Enterprise crew discovers a duplicate of Cmdr. William Riker, played by Jonathan Frakes, trapped on another planet after a transporter mishap.

"I'm not sure if I really want to see it, actually," Jemison said. "Maybe I'll just not watch the part I'm in and watch the rest of it, because it's going to be a very good episode."