Time & Perspective Quote by Persis Khambatta

There is a particular kind of swagger that only comes from genre immortality, and Persis Khambatta nails it with a mix of pride and relief: "I'm going down in history with Star Trek. It's a great feeling". On its face, it reads like a simple career brag. Underneath, it's an actress naming the deal Hollywood rarely admits out loud: your "serious" work can vanish, but a global franchise can fossilize you into collective memory.

Khambatta, best known to Trek audiences as Ilia in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, is talking about legacy in the most pragmatic way possible. Not awards, not critical reappraisal, not the shifting moods of the industry. History, here, is fandom, reruns, conventions, VHS-to-streaming afterlives. She's acknowledging that Star Trek doesn't just employ actors; it archives them. The line lands because it frames a pop-cultural machine as a personal victory: she isn't being swallowed by it, she's hitching a ride.

There's also a subtext about visibility and permanence for someone who, as an Indian actress working in a predominantly white Hollywood ecosystem, could easily be treated as a footnote. Star Trek, famously idealistic about the future, offers her something the present often withholds: a secured place in the story people keep retelling. "It's a great feeling" is deceptively plain language for something sharper: not everyone gets remembered, and she knows exactly which doorway to posterity she's walked through.