Jack Kelly writer
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STAR TREK’S SLOW START
(AmericanHeritage.com 9/7/06)
“Captain's log, stardate 1513.1. Our position, orbiting
planet M-113. Onboard the Enterprise, Mr. Spock,
temporarily in command. On the planet, the ruins of an
ancient and long dead civilization. Ship’s surgeon McCoy
and myself are now beaming down to the planet’s surface.”
With these words, a new television series made its debut
40 earth years ago this week. It was a flop.
The show featured the crew of the Starship Enterprise,
whose mission was “to explore strange new worlds.” It was
canceled after three seasons. Yet despite that failure, Star
Trek was destined to go where no television series had
gone before. It would become one of the most far-reaching
of all entertainment franchises and evolve into an ever-
present cultural landmark.
Early television had seen a few science fiction series,
including Captain Video and Space Rangers, but the
genre didn’t seem well suited to the small screen.
Production costs were high, and the stories were often
weird. Studios liked simple, inexpensive sets; viewers liked
familiarity.
Gene Roddenberry, a journeyman television writer who
had worked on Westerns like Have Gun, Will Travel,
conceived Star Trek as a way to overcome these limits. It
would be “Wagon Train to the stars,” he declared. Weekly
plots drawn from all over the galaxy would play out mainly
within the confines of the Enterprise, so the sets could be
used over and over. The stories would revolve around a
regular cast, Capt. James T. Kirk and the rest of the ship’s
crew. Still, the show would be expensive, and Roddenberry
was lucky to sell the concept to Lucille Ball’s Desilu studio,
which induced NBC to broadcast it.
Star Trek appealed to a loyal but limited audience. Most
TV viewers in the 1960s weren’t impressed by hokey
scenery, ray guns, and cornball deep-space melodrama.
So after two money-losing seasons, NBC decided to cancel
the show. However, a fan letter-writing campaign,
orchestrated by Roddenberry himself, won a stay of
execution for another year. The series went off the air in
1969, two months before the Apollo XI astronauts landed
on the moon.
The look of the original series, which became a template
for later Star Trek incarnations, melded Roddenberry’s
imagination with the realities of limited budgets. The
fanciful costumes were derived from the pulp sci-fi
magazines he had enjoyed as a youth. The transporter
unit, which gave birth to the catchphrase “Beam me up,
Scotty,” was a practical solution to a production problem.
To show the Enterprise landing on a different planet in
each episode would be far too costly; the transporter
allowed the characters to visit planets while the ship
remained in orbit.
Just getting to those far-flung worlds was a conceptual
challenge. The show’s writers, who often included
seasoned science fiction authors, came up with the notion
of the “warp drive” engine, which could power the ship
through a space warp and thereby travel faster than the
speed of light. A “universal translator” conveniently allowed
the crew to communicate with alien races in English.
In the 1970s television became an expanding universe, as
proliferating cable channels fueled demand for
programming, and Star Trek began to appear regularly in
reruns. As Spock said in one of the early episodes,
“Random chance seems to have operated in our favor.” “In
plain, non-Vulcan English,” Doctor McCoy explained,
“we've been lucky.”
Lucky indeed. In syndication the series acquired a swelling
cohort of fans. Roddenberry took the concept to Hollywood
in 1979, creating the first of a string of feature films. With
the success of the movies, television executives pushed
for a new series. Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted
in 1987 and proved the adaptability of the concept. A new
set of cast members won new fans, with the
Shakespearean actor Patrick Stewart’s restrained and
formal Captain Jean-Luc Picard filling Kirk’s role. That
series enjoyed a successful seven-year run.
Four more television series, ten movies, and countless
novels, comic books, websites, and Ph.D. dissertations
have turned Star Trek into a universe in itself. The edifice
was built on a fan base of legendary devotion. For 40
years fans have charted every plot development,
catalogued the hundreds of planets visited by starships,
and studied the science and speculation that made up the
Star Trek technical world. They meet regularly in local
clubs and international conventions. They attend camps to
become fluent in the Klingon language.
The show’s influence has been ubiquitous. NASA scientists
named the first space shuttle Enterprise following yet
another letter-writing campaign by fans. When Mae
Jemison became the first African-American woman to fly in
space in 1992, she cited as a role model Lieutenant
Uhura, the communications officer in the original Star Trek.
Martin Cooper, Motorola’s chief engineer, was impressed
by the flip-open personal communicators used on Star
Trek long before the design was incorporated in cellular
telephones.
The reason for the success of any entertainment venture
can be hard to pin down. Some critics scoffed at William
Shatner’s vein-popping overacting as Captain Kirk, and
studio honchos were nervous about the satanic look of his
Vulcan sidekick, the highly logical Mr. Spock (Leonard
Nimoy). Yet the pair endure as two of the most distinctive
and memorable characters in all of television.
The human drama of Star Trek was a big part of its
appeal, but Roddenberry’s optimistic vision of the future
also contributed to the series’ enduring popularity. In his
twenty-third century, mankind has left behind tribal hatreds
to unite in a “Federation” of planets. This was an inviting
idea at a time when dystopia was the norm in science
fiction and advancing technology seemed to be doing little
to free the world of war and discord. The Enterprise
ventured forth not to conquer but to explore. Its crew came
in peace and used phasers to kill only in extremis.
Many fans have also responded to the overt tolerance that
reigned aboard the Enterprise. Though multiethnic casting
is common today, 1960s television was an almost
exclusively white medium. “Leave any bigotry in your
quarters, mister,” Captain Kirk tells a crew member. “There’
s no room for it on the bridge.” Roddenberry fought with
censors to include the first interracial kiss ever shown on
television, between Kirk and Uhura, who was played by
Nichelle Nichols. And Star Trek broke ground in gender
equality, culminating in the series Voyager, which featured
a female ship captain.
In the spring of 2005, the final Star Trek television series
went off the air, marking the first time since the Reagan
administration that an original version of the program hadn’
t been on. The most recent movie, Star Trek: Nemesis,
was a box-office bust in 2002. Manned space flight has lost
much of its promise. Tolerance is sneered at as “political
correctness.” Is this the end of the trek?
Don’t count on it. The movie Star Trek XI is on the planning
boards, and the rumor mills have the actor Matt Damon
reprising the role of Captain Kirk. As Kirk himself once
said, “Some people think the future means the end of
history. They’re wrong. We haven’t run out of history quite
yet.”
# # #
(AmericanHeritage.com 9/7/06)
“Captain's log, stardate 1513.1. Our position, orbiting
planet M-113. Onboard the Enterprise, Mr. Spock,
temporarily in command. On the planet, the ruins of an
ancient and long dead civilization. Ship’s surgeon McCoy
and myself are now beaming down to the planet’s surface.”
With these words, a new television series made its debut
40 earth years ago this week. It was a flop.
The show featured the crew of the Starship Enterprise,
whose mission was “to explore strange new worlds.” It was
canceled after three seasons. Yet despite that failure, Star
Trek was destined to go where no television series had
gone before. It would become one of the most far-reaching
of all entertainment franchises and evolve into an ever-
present cultural landmark.
Early television had seen a few science fiction series,
including Captain Video and Space Rangers, but the
genre didn’t seem well suited to the small screen.
Production costs were high, and the stories were often
weird. Studios liked simple, inexpensive sets; viewers liked
familiarity.
Gene Roddenberry, a journeyman television writer who
had worked on Westerns like Have Gun, Will Travel,
conceived Star Trek as a way to overcome these limits. It
would be “Wagon Train to the stars,” he declared. Weekly
plots drawn from all over the galaxy would play out mainly
within the confines of the Enterprise, so the sets could be
used over and over. The stories would revolve around a
regular cast, Capt. James T. Kirk and the rest of the ship’s
crew. Still, the show would be expensive, and Roddenberry
was lucky to sell the concept to Lucille Ball’s Desilu studio,
which induced NBC to broadcast it.
Star Trek appealed to a loyal but limited audience. Most
TV viewers in the 1960s weren’t impressed by hokey
scenery, ray guns, and cornball deep-space melodrama.
So after two money-losing seasons, NBC decided to cancel
the show. However, a fan letter-writing campaign,
orchestrated by Roddenberry himself, won a stay of
execution for another year. The series went off the air in
1969, two months before the Apollo XI astronauts landed
on the moon.
The look of the original series, which became a template
for later Star Trek incarnations, melded Roddenberry’s
imagination with the realities of limited budgets. The
fanciful costumes were derived from the pulp sci-fi
magazines he had enjoyed as a youth. The transporter
unit, which gave birth to the catchphrase “Beam me up,
Scotty,” was a practical solution to a production problem.
To show the Enterprise landing on a different planet in
each episode would be far too costly; the transporter
allowed the characters to visit planets while the ship
remained in orbit.
Just getting to those far-flung worlds was a conceptual
challenge. The show’s writers, who often included
seasoned science fiction authors, came up with the notion
of the “warp drive” engine, which could power the ship
through a space warp and thereby travel faster than the
speed of light. A “universal translator” conveniently allowed
the crew to communicate with alien races in English.
In the 1970s television became an expanding universe, as
proliferating cable channels fueled demand for
programming, and Star Trek began to appear regularly in
reruns. As Spock said in one of the early episodes,
“Random chance seems to have operated in our favor.” “In
plain, non-Vulcan English,” Doctor McCoy explained,
“we've been lucky.”
Lucky indeed. In syndication the series acquired a swelling
cohort of fans. Roddenberry took the concept to Hollywood
in 1979, creating the first of a string of feature films. With
the success of the movies, television executives pushed
for a new series. Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted
in 1987 and proved the adaptability of the concept. A new
set of cast members won new fans, with the
Shakespearean actor Patrick Stewart’s restrained and
formal Captain Jean-Luc Picard filling Kirk’s role. That
series enjoyed a successful seven-year run.
Four more television series, ten movies, and countless
novels, comic books, websites, and Ph.D. dissertations
have turned Star Trek into a universe in itself. The edifice
was built on a fan base of legendary devotion. For 40
years fans have charted every plot development,
catalogued the hundreds of planets visited by starships,
and studied the science and speculation that made up the
Star Trek technical world. They meet regularly in local
clubs and international conventions. They attend camps to
become fluent in the Klingon language.
The show’s influence has been ubiquitous. NASA scientists
named the first space shuttle Enterprise following yet
another letter-writing campaign by fans. When Mae
Jemison became the first African-American woman to fly in
space in 1992, she cited as a role model Lieutenant
Uhura, the communications officer in the original Star Trek.
Martin Cooper, Motorola’s chief engineer, was impressed
by the flip-open personal communicators used on Star
Trek long before the design was incorporated in cellular
telephones.
The reason for the success of any entertainment venture
can be hard to pin down. Some critics scoffed at William
Shatner’s vein-popping overacting as Captain Kirk, and
studio honchos were nervous about the satanic look of his
Vulcan sidekick, the highly logical Mr. Spock (Leonard
Nimoy). Yet the pair endure as two of the most distinctive
and memorable characters in all of television.
The human drama of Star Trek was a big part of its
appeal, but Roddenberry’s optimistic vision of the future
also contributed to the series’ enduring popularity. In his
twenty-third century, mankind has left behind tribal hatreds
to unite in a “Federation” of planets. This was an inviting
idea at a time when dystopia was the norm in science
fiction and advancing technology seemed to be doing little
to free the world of war and discord. The Enterprise
ventured forth not to conquer but to explore. Its crew came
in peace and used phasers to kill only in extremis.
Many fans have also responded to the overt tolerance that
reigned aboard the Enterprise. Though multiethnic casting
is common today, 1960s television was an almost
exclusively white medium. “Leave any bigotry in your
quarters, mister,” Captain Kirk tells a crew member. “There’
s no room for it on the bridge.” Roddenberry fought with
censors to include the first interracial kiss ever shown on
television, between Kirk and Uhura, who was played by
Nichelle Nichols. And Star Trek broke ground in gender
equality, culminating in the series Voyager, which featured
a female ship captain.
In the spring of 2005, the final Star Trek television series
went off the air, marking the first time since the Reagan
administration that an original version of the program hadn’
t been on. The most recent movie, Star Trek: Nemesis,
was a box-office bust in 2002. Manned space flight has lost
much of its promise. Tolerance is sneered at as “political
correctness.” Is this the end of the trek?
Don’t count on it. The movie Star Trek XI is on the planning
boards, and the rumor mills have the actor Matt Damon
reprising the role of Captain Kirk. As Kirk himself once
said, “Some people think the future means the end of
history. They’re wrong. We haven’t run out of history quite
yet.”
# # #