original star trek facts

20 Enterprising Facts About Star Trek

By bryan reesman | sep 8, 2021, 4:00 pm edt.

NBC Television, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

On September 8, 1966, Gene Roddenberry's galaxy spanning Star Trek saga debuted on NBC and helped transform sci-fi television from tired stereotypes into a genre rich with multi-layered drama, ethnically diverse characters, and real world issues. While it wasn't a big hit at the time, Star Trek eventually developed a loyal following that continued through an animated series, the long-running film franchise, and other live-action television series from the late 1980s onward. The show sometimes hired iconic sci-fi writers including Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch, Theodore Sturgeon, and Harlan Ellison (who won a Hugo Award for his episode, " City On The Edge Of Forever "), while Isaac Asimov developed a friendship with Roddenberry.

To commemorate this momentous occasion, let's look back at the groundbreaking series, during which the crew of the Enterprise journeyed on far-flung peacekeeping and rescue missions, answered distress calls on distant planets, and faced confrontations with warmongering aliens. There has been plenty written about this iconic show, but there always seems to be something new to learn.

1. Captain Pike preceded Captain Kirk.

The unaired pilot “The Cage” (which finally debuted on home video in 1986) featured an almost entirely different cast and crew, with Mr. Spock being the lone holdover on the bridge when the classic team appeared in the first official episode. Jeffrey Hunter ( The Searchers ) starred as Captain Christopher Pike, who gets abducted by telepathic aliens for psychological experiments involving a human woman. The original pilot was actually pretty good, but the cast lacked the same warmth and diversity that would ultimately emerge. When the studio rejected the original pilot—allegedly for being too cerebral and lacking in action—creator Gene Roddenberry sought to make another, but Hunter chose to move on to other projects. In the end, it was good that NBC rejected the original pilot, because the show was revamped into something much stronger.

2. Captain Pike returned for two episodes and the Star Trek movie reboot.

Several episodes in, the producers of Star Trek created a two-part episode called “The Menagerie” that utilized much of the original pilot. Mr. Spock was taking a now battle-scarred and disfigured Captain Pike back to the planet Talos IV (which was off limits to Federation vessels) for unknown reasons, and he would not reveal why until he seized control of the Enterprise and faced a court-martial. It was a clever and cost-effective way to reuse the unaired material and craft a new storyline. In J.J. Abrams' 2009 movie reboot, writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman brought back Pike (played by Bruce Greenwood) as Kirk’s superior officer and mentor on his first mission in space. It was a nice nod to the original series.

3. Star Trek ’s original number one was a woman.

In the original pilot, Gene Roddenberry’s girlfriend and future wife, Majel Barrett, was Kirk’s first officer (who still had to deal with the Captain’s presumptions about women on the bridge). Test audiences allegedly did not like her character because they thought she was too pushy and tried to be like the men, but modern audiences would not think of any of those things. When Pike was kidnapped, she led a mission to the planet to rescue him and proved herself to be a capable leader, but this was about a year before the women's liberation movement began gestating in America. The Star Trek universe finally got its first female captain with Captain Kathryn Janeway in Star Trek: Voyager , which aired between 1995 and 2001.

4. Majel Barrett Roddenberry worked on every Star Trek series.

Majel Barrett Roddenberry returned in many episodes of the original series to play Nurse Christine Chapel, who had unrequited romantic feelings toward Mr. Spock. She played a more nurturing character, but did not have the command duties of her original role. Following that, Barrett Roddenberry—who has been called “The First Lady Of Star Trek ”—had roles in every Star Trek series, playing Nurse Chapel, Lt. M'Ress, and other characters on Star Trek: The Animated Series ; Lwaxana Troi and the voice of the Enterprise Computer on Star Trek: The Next Generation ; and the computer voices on Deep Space Nine , Voyager , and Enterprise . She also appeared as Dr. Chapel in Star Trek: The Motion Picture and as Commander Chapel in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home , and she provided voice work to other films (including the 2009 reboot) and various video games. After her husband died in 1991, Barrett Roddenberry served as executive producer on two series he had created: Earth: Final Conflict (1997-1999) and Andromeda (2000-2005). She passed away in 2008, but not before recording—you guessed it—the Starfleet Computer voice for J.J. Abrams's 2009 movie reboot.

5. Kirk had a dark past before Star Trek.

Prior to venturing into space and encountering all sorts of intergalactic nemeses like the Romulans, Klingons, and the superhuman Khan, William Shatner appeared in a variety of dark film and television projects. In Roger Corman’s underrated film The Intruder , he played a racist agitator in a Southern town who pushes things too far. In Incubus , a film shot entirely in the Esperanto language , he played a good-hearted man with whom a succubus falls in love, angering her sister and setting about retribution. His appearance as a man terrified of a gremlin on the wing of a plane in an episode of The Twilight Zone is famous, but he also made a turn in possibly the best horror TV episode ever, “The Grim Reaper” on Thriller , as a man who warns his aunt that the previous owners of the portrait of the titular character, which she now owns, have died violently.

6. Star Trek ’s Spock has greenish skin, but it was originally meant to be red.

While Spock’s skin has a slight green tint to it, the original plan was to give him red skin. But back in the mid- to late 1960s, a majority of households still had black and white televisions, so his skin would appear very dark when viewed on their sets. In one early episode, however, Spock looked really green. Someone messed up the color palette that day. One wonders if the chance to see the shows in color during their subsequent syndicated runs helped lure new viewers and give excited longtime fans the chance to re-watch the episodes in a way they had never seen them before.

7. William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy both got tinnitus on the set of Star Trek .

After an explosion on the set of one of the Star Trek films, both stars developed tinnitus, a ringing or buzzing in the ears than is often permanent and can be debilitating for some sufferers. After seeking help all across the country, Shatner learned to deal with it through habituation by wearing a hearing device for a time that produced white noise to help him cope. He has helped others as well. "I’ve talked people down from suicide," Shatner told me in an interview for The Aquarian . "A famous musician got a hold of me cold. I didn’t know him. He knew I got it because I was the official spokesman for tinnitus at one period, and I talked him down and encouraged him to do habituation, you know, the white sound, because when I was asked when I first got it how it affected my life from 1 to 10, it was 9 1/2. Now I don’t hear it except when you and I are talking about it."

8. A lot of Star Trek technology became reality.

If one looks at the original series, much of the technology being used ultimately became real. The communicators are like modern cell phones, the earpieces worn by Uhura and Spock are basically Bluetooth devices, the Universal Translators are echoed by the use of modern voice recognition software, tricorders have become the LOCAD-PTS , a portable biological lab used by NASA, and the use of interactive video screens (telepresence) is akin to current video conferencing. While Enterprise crew members recorded audio on hard-cased cassette tapes, they looked like soon-to-be modern floppy discs, which are now outdated in our digital era.

9. There have been more than 125 Star Trek -related video games.

Since 1971, more than 125 video games based on or inspired by the Star Trek series have been created, beginning with a text game written in BASIC in 1971, a standup arcade game in 1972, and later early computer and gaming systems like the Commodore 64 and Atari 5200 through to modern PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles. Many of the titles are quite colorful, like The Kobayashi Alternative , Klingon Honor Guard , and Delta Vega: Meltdown on the Ice Planet . It would probably be hard to collect them all at this point—or to be able to play them, unless one owns all the various video game platforms required—but perhaps someone has.

10. Star Trek ’s Vulcan salute is actually a Hebrew blessing.

Leonard Nimoy did not create the Vulcan salute that means "Live Long and Prosper" out of thin air for the season two opener "Amok Time," which was the first time we got to see Spock among his people on Vulcan. It was actually borrowed from something he had witnessed as a child when he was attending a service at an Orthodox Jewish synagogue with his family.

"Five or six guys get up on the bimah, the stage, facing the congregation," Nimoy told the Yiddish Book Center in 2014. "They get their tallits over their heads, and they start this chanting—I think it's called duchening —and my father said to me, 'Don’t look.' So everyone’s got their eyes covered with their hands or they've got their tallit down over their faces ... And I hear this strange sound coming from them. They’re not singers, they were shouters. And dissonant. It was all discordant … it was chilling. I thought, 'Whoa, something major is happening here.' So I peeked. And I saw them with their hands stuck out from beneath the tallit like this [ does salute with both hands ] towards the congregation. Wow. Something really got hold of me. I had no idea what was going on, but the sound of it and the look of it was magical.”

The hand gesture represents the Hebrew letter Shin, which represents the word Shaddai , a name for God. It looks like a lot of people have been blessing each other without knowing it.

11. Star Trek ’s Kirk/Spock connection continued in real life.

The bond that Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock enjoyed throughout their long onscreen association was also echoed by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy's off-camera relationship. It's interesting to note that while Spock seemed like the more isolated member of the crew who needed that human connection with Kirk, in real life Nimoy was an important person for his co-star. In a 2016 interview with The Aquarian , Shatner admitted that he never had had a close, intimate friendship with anyone before then. "I had that with Leonard, and that was the only time I had it," he confessed. "I envied it for the longest time, achieved it, then the book [ Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship with a Remarkable Man ] continues on. It’s a very interesting aspect of life, developing a friendship. Not the 'Let’s go get a beer' friendship, but deep, deep down, 'Here’s my problem, I need your help.'"

12. In a way, Star Trek was the original Buffy The Vampire Slayer .

Despite not really having many ass-kicking women on the original show, Star Trek was the predecessor to Buffy the Vampire Slayer , Angel , and like-minded shows that were not ratings toppers, but which hit a key demographic effectively every week. When Roddenberry's show was canceled after just three seasons, the advertising people at NBC allegedly complained to programming executives because, while the show was not highly rated, they were reaching the target audience they wanted. That statement is supported by the success that the series experienced in off-network syndication, especially since the show's three seasons (1966-1969) were one shy of what was generally required for daily syndication, and the emergence of the first Star Trek convention in January 1972. Today, a show like Star Trek would have likely lasted at least twice as long.

13. One of Bones's signature Star Trek lines was taken from a 1933 movie.

"I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer!" Bones was always making a variation on that gripe when asked to ascertain or do something outside of his medical expertise, and it is one of many Star Trek lines that has become a permanent part of pop culture lexicon. However, the idea originated with a 1933 film called The Kennel Murder Case , which starred William Powell and Mary Astor. In the film, the character of Dr. Doremus utters these quips: "I'm a doctor, not a magician." "I'm a doctor, not a detective." "I'm the city butcher, not a detective." Bones McCoy had many variations to offer throughout the Star Trek TV and film series, and he certainly made the gag his own.

14. Star Trek has a connection to Stanley Kubrick.

Before he appeared as an astronaut on the Jupiter mission sequence of Stanley Kubrick’s classic sci-fi film 2001: A Space Odyssey , Gary Lockwood appeared in the episode " Where No Man Has Gone Before ," which was the third episode of season one. His character attained godlike powers that made him drunk with power and posed a grave threat not just to the Enterprise , but to the galaxy itself.

15. Star Trek strived for ethnic and gender diversity, but the women still had to look sexy.

While Gene Roddenberry strived to push boundaries as much as he could, women were still sexed up for the show. Consider that Lieutenant Uhura, Yeoman Rand, Nurse Chapel, Dr. Helen Noel, and other female members of the Enterprise crew all wore mini-dresses. Further, close-ups of the female crewmembers were given a slightly softer focus to make them look dreamier, which was a common Hollywood trick at that time. While some of the female characters were strong, others—like Lt. Marla McGivers in the "Space Seed" episode—were rather frail when it came to men. Things got better for women in later Star Trek series, but then they came about in more enlightened times.

16. Many of the effects in the original Star Trek series were upgraded for HD broadcast and release in 2006.

When Star Trek: The Original Series was being prepared for its initial HD broadcast (and subsequent HD-DVD release) for the fall of 2006, Paramount decided to take a chance and upgrade all of the sequences involving the Enterprise flying and any background shots of space or environmental matte paintings. While some fans (and Leonard Nimoy , at least at first) thought this was heresy, visual effects producer Michael Okuda—who had been involved with the franchise since Star Trek V: The Final Frontier —made sure that the new CGI sequences and backgrounds were integrated smoothly with the old footage.

17. Mark Lenard was a Romulan, a Klingon, and a Vulcan on Star Trek .

Actor Mark Lenard had a dramatic visage that lent itself well to space opera, and he was the first actor in the franchise’s history to have played members of three different alien races. In the season one episode "Balance Of Terror," he played the Captain of an ultimately doomed Romulan vessel that has invaded Federation territory. In the opening to Star Trek: The Motion Picture , he plays a Klingon commander on a doomed ship caught in the path of the mysterious cloud that is wiping out anything in its path. But his biggest role in the franchise was portraying Spock’s father, Sarek, in the second season episode "Journey To Babel," the Animated Series episode "Yesteryear," and in the third, fourth, and sixth Star Trek films.

18. Malcolm McDowell received death threats after killing Captain Kirk onscreen.

McDowell played the charmingly misanthropic droog Alex DeLarge in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange , but he was on the receiving end of Star Trek fans’ wrath when his character, Dr. Tolian Soran, killed Captain Kirk in Star Trek: Generations— the first film born from the Star Trek: The Next Generation series that bridged the two series onscreen. In 2010, McDowell admitted that he was shocked at the vitriol of devout Trekkies—and that he actually received death threats.

"I didn’t take it seriously," McDowell told me . "The studio took it seriously. I suppose they had to because they didn’t want a lawsuit. They assigned two detectives to come with me to New York to do the press. It was a complete waste of time and quite funny. I kept telling the guys to go home, and they were going to stay outside my room the whole night at the Carlyle Hotel. I went for a walk, and they came with me. I literally came out of the Carlyle at 10 o’clock at night. I looked this way and that way, and there wasn’t one person on the street. Not one. I went, 'Wow, this is some death threat.' I said, 'I feel embarrassed that nobody’s tried to kill me, for Christ’s sake! I feel like I’m letting the detectives down.'"

19. Star Trek ’s episodes are not in chronological order.

If one lists the stardates for each episode, it is soon apparent that the series is not told in order—not that it was intended that way, since the episodes of the original series were not always broadcast in production order, leaving some fans to scratch their heads. Roddenberry improvised an explanation that worked at the time. "I came up with the statement that 'this time system adjusts for shifts in relative time which occur due to the vessel's speed and space warp capability. It has little relationship to Earth's time as we know it. One hour aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise at different times may equal as little as three Earth hours. The star dates specified in the log entry must be computed against the speed of the vessel, the space warp, and its position within our galaxy, in order to give a meaningful reading,'" he told The Making Of Star Trek author Stephen E. Whitfield. "Therefore stardate would be one thing at one point in the galaxy and something else again at another point in the galaxy. I'm not quite sure what I meant by that explanation, but a lot of people have indicated it makes sense. If so, I've been lucky again, and I'd just as soon forget the whole thing before I'm asked any further questions about it."

20. William Shatner pissed off Star Trek fans when he hosted Saturday Night Live .

While the thespian with the famously quirky cadence has embraced his Star Trek legacy, he has not let it define his life since he has become known for other roles in other shows as well, most notably T.J. Hooker and Boston Legal . But back in the 1980s, when the movie franchise was a hit and conventions kept growing, the befuddled star decided to make a statement about the ardent fandom that he had not yet understood by doing a skit when he hosted Saturday Night Live on December 20, 1986.

In the sketch (which you can watch above), Shatner played himself attending a convention of newly renamed "Trekkers" and, once he started getting ultra nerdy questions, he literally told the crowd to get a life. "You're turned an enjoyable little job that I did as a lark for a few years into a colossal waste of time," he griped. "I mean, how old are you people? What have you done with yourselves?" Some fans did not appreciate the joke. In 1999, Shatner penned a book called Get A Life! , which examined the cult of Star Trek fandom, and was turned into a documentary in 2011. It seems like Kirk decided to appreciate his followers after all.

A version of this story ran in 2018; it has been updated for 2021.

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8 Ways the Original ‘Star Trek’ Made History

By: Sarah Pruitt

Updated: November 2, 2021 | Original: September 8, 2016

When "Star Trek" premiered on NBC in the fall of 1966, it promised "To boldly go where no man has gone before." More than half a century later, it has done just that. The original "Star Trek"—which lasted for only three seasons—birthed some 20 spinoff series and films; a universe of games, toys, comics and conventions; and influenced decades of science-fiction. Here are eight ways the show broke new ground. 

The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek premieres Friday, November 5 at 10/9c on The HISTORY ®  Channel

1. A veteran of World War II, Gene Roddenberry created a show about fighting another world war—this time in space.

After piloting a B-17 bomber in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II , Roddenberry served in the Los Angeles Police Department before he began writing for TV. He created the short-lived series “The Lieutenant” before Desilu Studios (founded by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz) picked up “Star Trek” in 1966. In an era before man set foot on the moon, the show introduced us to a 23rd-century world where interplanetary travel was an established fact: Captain Kirk and the crew of the starship Enterprise (named for the real-life ship that turned the tide toward the Allies in the Battle of Midway) roamed the galaxy, clashing with alien enemies like the Klingons, Excalbians and Romulans.

2. The show’s multicultural, multiracial cast put it well ahead of its time.

In addition to the half-Vulcan Spock, the crew of the Enterprise in “Star Trek”’s debut season included Lt. Nyota Uhura (played by the African American actress Nichelle Nichols) and Lt. Hikaru Sulu (played by the Japanese American actor George Takei). In an era of mounting racial tensions, “Star Trek” presented a positive image of people of different races, genders and cultures (not to mention aliens and humans!) working together cooperatively—a somewhat utopian vision, perhaps, but a heartening one. Nichols later said that she was reportedly thinking of leaving the show after the first season, but was convinced to stay on by none other than Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. , whom she met at a NAACP fundraiser. The civil rights leader, who admitted to being a devoted fan of the show, told Nichols that she was breaking new ground in the role of Uhura, and showing African Americans what was possible for them.

3. The original 'Star Trek' referred repeatedly to the ongoing, escalating conflict in Vietnam.

Though marketed as a classic adventure drama (Roddenberry based the character of Captain Kirk on Horatio Hornblower from C.S. Forester’s classic naval adventure series), “Star Trek” didn’t shy away from tackling moral and social issues such as war, racism and discrimination. The first season episode “Taste for Armageddon” was one of TV’s first allegories for the Vietnam War , an issue the show would return to most famously in the second season’s “A Private Little War.” In that episode, the Klingons are providing weapons to a primitive planet, and Capt. Kirk decides to do the same in order to preserve the “balance of power” on both sides. One of the most controversial plot lines of that season, the story was clearly analogous to the escalating nature of American involvement in Vietnam.

4. But it offered a positive vision for the future in the midst of Cold War tensions.

In the show’s second season, a new navigator named Pavel Andreievich Chekov showed up on the bridge of the starship Enterprise. As Roddenberry recounted in The Fifty-Year Mission , a two-volume oral history of “Star Trek” published in 2016, the character was added after the Russian newspaper Pravda pointed out that the show ignored the Soviet Union ’s pioneering contributions to space travel. But Walter Koenig, the actor who played Chekov, said the Pravda explanation was made up for publicity: The show’s producers wanted a character to appeal to a younger demographic, and just decided to make him Russian. Though a long-running theory held that the Klingons and the Federation represented the Soviet Union and the United States, two ideologically opposed superpowers, another interpretation argues that “Star Trek” functions as a critique of Cold War -era politics, by offering an optimistic vision of the future at a very uncertain moment in history.

5. It was the beneficiary of one of the most successful fan-organized letter-writing campaigns in TV history.

By late 1967, the original “Star Trek” series was struggling, and rumors flew that NBC was planning to cancel the series after only two seasons. Spurred into action, more than 100,000 fans—known as “Trekkers” or “Trekkies”—wrote letters in support of the show. In the largest of numerous protests on college campuses, 200 Caltech students marched to NBC’s Burbank, California studio wielding signs with slogans like “Draft Spock” and “Vulcan Power.” NBC eventually acknowledged the success of the fans’ campaign, announcing that the show would return for another season.

6. The show featured one of the first interracial kisses on TV.

After being “saved” by the fans, the third season of the original “Star Trek” largely bombed, but one particular moment stands out: In the episode “Plato’s Stepchildren,” Capt. Kirk kisses his communications officer, Lt. Uhura, in what is thought to be the first scripted interracial kiss on American television. Though NBC executives worried how the kiss would play on television in 1968 (especially in the South), they eventually decided to leave it in the episode, earning the show enduring fame for the barrier-breaking moment. (Though Kirk and Uhura’s liplock is often cited as the first interracial kiss on TV, a kiss between actors on the British soap opera “Emergency Ward 10” predated “Plato’s Stepchildren” by several years.)

7. It enjoyed record-breaking success in syndication post-cancellation.

Despite its cancellation after only three seasons (and 79 episodes), “Star Trek” gained new life through syndication, as the devotion of its growing fan base increased from the late 1960s and throughout the ‘70s. By 1986, nearly two decades after it entered syndication, A.C. Nielsen Co. listed “Star Trek: The Original Series” as the No. 1 syndicated show. That same year, Roddenberry launched a second TV series, “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” which was immediately syndicated and became a ratings hit. Meanwhile, “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” had grossed more than $80 million in 1979, leading to several more movies in the ‘80s and ‘90s, followed by a 21st-century “reboot” of the series starting in 2009. Trekkie enthusiasm fueled the success of comic books, cartoons, novels, action figures and other merchandise based on the series, as well as Star Trek-themed conventions attended by thousands at hotels and other venues around the world.

8. Thanks to 'Star Trek' fans, America’s first space shuttle orbiter was christened Enterprise.

In 1976, hundreds of thousands of Trekkies wrote impassioned letters to NASA arguing that the first space shuttle orbiter should be named after the starship Enterprise. Though he never mentioned the letter campaign, President Gerald R. Ford expressed his preference for the name “Enterprise,” with its hallowed Navy history, and the space administration’s officials ended up dropping their original choice, Constitution. Roddenberry and many original “Star Trek” cast members were on hand to greet the shuttle when it rolled out of the manufacturing facilities in Palmdale, California for its dedication ceremony in September 1976. Though Enterprise was used in a number of flight tests, it was never launched into space, and spent much of its life in storage.

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16 Surprising Behind-The-Scenes Facts About The Original Star Trek

Even fluent Klingon speakers don't know everything about Star Trek: The Original Series. You might know the title sequence narration by heart but did you know that the theme song has official lyrics? Or that the words “Beam me up, Scotty” are never actually said on the show?

These history of  Star Trek: The Original Series is riddled with myths and misunderstandings. But the show has a rich history including a small, but significant role in the Civil Rights movement, and struggle to make it onto the air, and a defining role in building the foundation for modern fandom.

Even if The Original Series isn’t your favorite Star Trek , or even if sci-fi isn't your thing, there’s no denying that Star Trek was and remains one of the most important and groundbreaking shows in television history. Its cast, crew, and creator were committed to boldy going where no one had gone before. By doing so, they have left a lasting impact on the galaxy.

So grab some synthale or a cup of tea, Earl Grey, hot, and check out these Star Trek facts.

It Wasn’t The First Show To Feature An Interracial Kiss – But It Was Still Important

Although Star Trek is often erroneously credited as the first series to feature an interracial kiss on television, Captain Kirk was actually beat to the punch (kiss?) by  British series  Hot Summer Night . It should also be noted that the kiss between Kirk and Uhura was not exactly consenual; the crew members were telekinetically forced to kiss one another by an alien race called the Platonians.

That said, the moment is an important part of television history and one that almost didn’t happen. The network wanted the crew to film two versions of the scene – one with a kiss and one without. According to the cast, Nichelle Nichols and William Shatner deliberately flubbed the takes without the kiss so that the network would have to use the ones with the kiss. Very smooth, Captain.

As recounted in These are the Voyages: Season Three , producer Fred Freiberger recalled:

“The network at that time was very nervous; they thought we'd lose the whole Southern audience, and all of that stuff. They said, ‘Why can’t it be Nimoy who kisses her instead of Shatner?’ I said, ‘For the very reason you want it to be – because he’s a Vulcan and it’s going to be acceptable to everybody that the black girl is kissed by a Vulcan. I want it to be Shatner; it’s got to be him.’ ...It was really a very big thing, and I wanted Star Trek to do that.”

Nichols recalled:

So now I'm pissed on a whole other level, and to a whole new degree…. Somehow, I guess, they found it more acceptable for a Vulcan to kiss me, for this alien to kiss this black woman, than for two humans with different coloring to do the same thing. It was ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous…

The Original "Number One" Was A Woman

In the original pilot, “The Cage,” the first officer was a woman –  an unnamed Number One played by Majel Barrett, who later married Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. Apparently, test audiences did not like the character and viewers complained that the character was too “pushy” and “annoying.”

Although Barrett didn't stay on as the first officer, she did secure a role in the series as Nurse Chapel. She also supplied the voice for most of the onboard computers throughout the series.  

Martin Luther King Jr. Convinced Uhura To Stay On The Show

Although Nichols did not face discrimination on set, the actress did endure a great deal of it in other parts of the studio. Nichols wasn’t allowed to enter the studio through the same gate as the rest of the cast and crew. Not only that, but some of the studio guards would allegedly harass her, telling her that the show had replaced her with a “blue-eyed blonde.” After dealing with this treatment for a year, Nichols told Roddenberry that she wanted to leave the show.

Fortunately, shortly after talking to Roddenberry, Nichols ran into a man who would change her mind: Martin Luther King Jr. THe civil rights leader, a big Trekkie, approached Nichols at an NAACP fundraiser and gave the communications officer some words of encouragement. Nichols recounts the conversation: “He said I had the first non-stereotypical role, I had a role with honor, dignity and intelligence. He said, 'You simply cannot abdicate, this is an important role. This is why we are marching. We never thought we'd see this on TV.’”

Years later, Astronaut Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman in space, would cite Uhura as inspiring her to pursue a career at NASA – a clear and concrete example of why representation matters.

The Vulcan Salute Is Actually A Jewish Blessing

One of the many things Nimoy contributed to the show was the “live long and prosper” symbol. Although many people believe it to be a variation of the peace sign, it’s really a variation of a gesture made during a Jewish ritual.

Being Jewish himself, Nimoy witnessed the gesture when he was younger and chose to use it as a Vulcan greeting. He has said of the salute: "People don't realize they're blessing each other with this. It's great.” No, you're great, Mr. Nimoy. 

The Theme Song Has Lyrics

Every time a theme song is played on air or through a streaming service, the composer of the song is paid royalties. Roddenberry decided he wanted a 50% piece of that delicious royalties pie. He wrote lyrics to accompany Alexander Courage’s song, solely for the payout, saying “Hey, I have to get some money somewhere. I'm sure not going to get it out of the profits of Star Trek ."

The lyrics were so ridiculously bad (intentionally so) that they never were used. Here’s a snippet to feed the poet within: “My love is wand'ring in star-flight / I know / He'll find in star-clustered reaches / Love, / Strange love a star woman teaches.” Hey, no one ever said he was a lyricist. 

The Costumes Were Made In A Sweatshop

Star Trek was filmed on an incredibly low budget – $193,000 per episode, or about $1.3 million in today’s currency. To put that into perspective, a modern one-hour drama can cost roughly $3 million per episode.

To make ends meet, the studio had a non-union sweatshop create all the costumes for the show and then had them secretly smuggled onto the set. Guess that replicator didn't work for real, huh?

Its Fandom Popularized Fanfiction

In the 1960s, back before sites like Archive of Our Own and fanfiction.net existed, fans circulated their fanfiction by hand or through popular Star Trek fanzines such as  Spockanalia . Some of the most popular fanfiction went right to the sex, featuring Spock experiencing pon farr, a Vulcan mating ritual.

One of the popular romantic pairings in these fanfics was (and still is) Kirk/Spock. Equally interesting is the fact that the term “Mary Sue” was coined by Trekkies. They used it to describe a “too perfect” female character in a fan fiction called “Trekkie’s Tale.” 

Nobody Ever Says "Beam Me Up, Scotty"

Although it’s one of the most popular catchphrases from the show, no one on the show ever says the words “Beam me up, Scotty” in The Original Series . Like the phrase “Elementary, my dear Watson,” or "Luke, I am you father," it’s one of those signature phrases that never actually appeared in the source material. 

Lucille Ball Helped Get ‘Star Trek’ On The Air

NBC executives rejected the first Star Trek pilot on grounds that the show was “too cerebral.” Luckily, Lucille Ball,  I Love Lucy star and head of Desilu productions, took a liking to the show and used her influence to encourage NBC to make another pilot.

The second pilot, which featured an entirely new crew (with the exception of Leonard Nimoy), secured a time slot, and went on to air for three seasons. One more reason to love Lucy.

Leonard Nimoy Fought For Equal Pay For The Cast

There is a reason Roddenberry called Leonard Nimoy the conscience of Star Trek . According to co-star Walter Koenig (the original Pavel Chekov), when Nimoy learned that Nichelle Nichols was not being paid as much as George Takei and Koenig, he spoke to the higher-ups and had Nichols’s pay adjusted to match that of her co-stars.

Nimoy also stepped in when Nichols and Takei weren’t brought on to voice their characters in the Star Trek animated series while the rest of the primary cast was. Nimoy refused to voice Spock until the two actors were hired, saying, “ Star Trek is about diversity, and the two people who represent diversity most are Nichelle and George, and if they can’t be a part of this project, then you don’t want me.”

The Episodes Aren’t In Chronological Order

If you pay close attention to the stardates at the beginning of each episode, you’ll notice that the dates jump back and forward in time rather drastically. For example, the events of the first episode take place on stardate 1312.4. The next episode takes place on startdate 1512.2, and the one after that takes place 1329.1.

This continuity error is partly caused by the fact that the episodes were not aired in the same order they were produced. Also, the method for calculating a stardate was basically arbitrary. Here’s how the show’s bible told its writers to determine the stardate for an episode: “Pick any combination of four numbers plus a percentage point [ed. note: tenths digit], use it as your story's stardate.”

The Famous Interracial Kiss Was Supposed To Be Between Spock And Uhura

According to Nichelle Nichols, the interracial kiss in the episode “Plato’s Stepchildren” was originally supposed to occur between Spock and Uhura. Apparently after reading the script, Shatner said, “No you will not! If anyone's going to be part of the first interracial kiss in television history, it's going to be me!” The rest is television history. 

The Enterprise Almost Flew Upside Down

In the wide open exapnse of space, there is no up or down, but that might not be true in fictionalized TV space. According to Matt Jefferies, the man who designed the Enterprise , Roddenberry saw an early model of the ship and wanted the saucer and nacelles to be the bottom of the ship, the opposite of the way it was presented in the series. Ultimately, it was decided that this would be too disorienting for audiences.    

There’s No Chest Hair In Space

According to the book These Are the Voyages , Roddenberry believed that men of the future would have “little or no chest hair,” which is why Shatner had his chest shaved whenever he appeared topless on the show. Given Shatner's rugged nature, clearing the captain was a time consuming affair. 

Although Roddenberry believed men would have little chest hair in the future, that prediction didn’t extend to male aliens, as Spock can be seen sporting a healthy coat of Vulcan hair. 

Leonard Nimoy Improvised The Vulcan Nerve Pinch

Not only did Nimoy come up with the Vulcan salute, but he also improvised the Vulcan nerve pinch. In the episode “The Enemy Within,” the script called for Spock to knockout Captain Kirk with a punch to the face. Nimoy thought that type of violence was too undignified for Spock, saying, “It seemed more appropriate for the Old West than the 23rd century."

When it came time to film the scene, Nimoy shared his idea about the nerve pinch to Shatner who caught on immediately. He credited part of the pinch’s success to Shatner’s “talent for fainting on cue." 

Spock Was Originally Meant To Have Red Skin

In addition to the pointed ears, Spock was also supposed to have red skin. While the makeup looked okay in person, the colors didn’t test well on the camera. Most families owned black and white television sets at the time, and in that format, it appeared like Nimoy was wearing blackface, which would have sent a message incongruent with the series' message of diversity. The show’s makeup artist eventually settled on a greenish-yellow makeup that gave the Vulcan a slightly different and unusual tint.

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19 Things You Never Knew About 'Star Trek: The Original Series'

The original Star Trek turns 50 in 2016 – let's celebrate with some obscure facts

Star Trek: The Original Series aired 50 years ago, Thursday. (Actually, that’s a bit of a cheat: The series originally aired Sept. 6, 1966 … in Canada, so you know, it doesn’t count.)

The show never achieved high ratings during its original run of three seasons, but as it went into syndication throughout the 1970s, it became the cult classic it is today, with 13 feature films and five additional television series following. In honor of its 50th anniversary, we’re rounding up some facts you might not have known about the series that boldly went where no other show had gone before.

1. Some of the ship’s equipment was a little too honest

View post on imgur.com

//s.imgur.com/min/embed.js Labels reading “GNDN” on the Enterprise ‘s hallway tubing stood for “goes nowhere, does nothing.”

2. It brought the Old West to space

Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry threw a number of influences into his initial pitch for Star Trek . He’d gotten his start in television writing shows about the Old West, and deliberately characterized Star Trek as “a Wagon Train concept” show.

3. But also brought the high seas to space

However, a conscious character model for Captain James Tiberius Kirk was Horatio Hornblower , the protagonist of C.S. Forrester’s novels of the same name.

4. Captain Kirk wasn’t even in the show’s pilot

The show’s pilot, “The Cage,” didn’t feature Kirk, but rather a Captain Pike. Spock, however, was featured. NBC actually turned down the first pilot of the show, but commissioned a second, which introduced Kirk, Scotty and Sulu.

5. The character of Uhura broke racial barriers on television

Star Trek aired right in the thick of the civil rights movement, and Nichelle Nichols’ character, Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, was one of the first black women with a prominent role in a televised series. “There were parts of the South that wouldn’t show Star Trek because this was an African-American woman in a powerful position,” Nichols told the Huffington Post in 2012 , “and she wasn’t a maid or tap dancer.” Though she said she didn’t face discrimination on set, other parts of the studio weren’t as kind – she wasn’t allowed to enter the studio through the same gate as the white actors on the show.

6. Lucille Ball held the fate of the show in her hands at one point

Star Trek was financed by Desilu Productions , the company co-owned by Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball (get it, Desi-Lu?). But the company had jumped in over its head, going from producing just the half-hour Lucy Show to financing chunks of the hour-long Star Trek and Mission Impossible . They nearly axed the former, until Ball was convinced the show could be a success.

7. The show was an early example of the power of a fan campaign

Low ratings during the show’s first season threatened Star Trek , though NBC received 29,000 letters of support from fans during the first season. When rumors of cancellation started spreading during the second season, Roddenberry enlisted the help of Bjo and John Trimble, two enthusiastic sci-fi fans, to start a letter-writing campaign. Various other writers joined in, and between December 1967 and March 1968, NBC received more than 1 million pieces of mail related to the program . One of them came from then-New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller.

8. The show also set records in syndication

First of all, Star Trek broke convention because most shows require at least four seasons to be syndicated. By 1986, almost 20 years after it was cancelled, the original run of Star Trek episodes were making Paramount $750,000 per airing.

9. Roddenberry wrote a set of lyrics to show’s theme solely for the royalties

Roddenberry pressured the theme’s composer, Alexander Courage (via a “handshake deal”), to give him the option to write lyrics to the show’s theme. Roddenberry exercised the option, and though the lyrics were never recorded, released or used for the show, his “contribution” entitled him to 50 percent of the royalties from Courage’s work. Courage called him on it, and Roddenberry supposedly replied , “Hey, I have to get some money somewhere.”

10. Nichelle Nichols recorded a disco version of the theme

The album Out of This World , includes cuts like “Star Rock” and “Rock the World.”

11. And she wasn’t the only member of the cast with musical aspirations

I am legally obligated to include this video, from 1967, in literally anything I write about Star Trek . I have a handshake agreement with Gene Roddenberry.

12. The town of Riverside, Iowa, has a ‘future birthplace’ dedicated to Kirk Riverside councilman Steve Miller (no relation to the musician) read in Gene Roddenberry’s book Making of Star Trek that Kirk was born in a small town in Iowa. In 1985, at a town council meeting, he proposed that Riverside be declared the “Future Birthplace of James T. Kirk.” In 2009, that fact was made canon by J.J. Abrams’ reboot of the film. Coincidentally, Kirk’s birthday, March 22, is also William Shatner’s date of birth.

13. People used to write into Nimoy-as-Spock with questions

Teenagers quizzed the logical Vulcan about LSD and the war in Vietnam , while one girl, herself biracial, asked Spock for advice on how to deal with the prejudices she was facing, he being a “half-breed” himself. “[Spock] said to himself: ‘Not everyone will like me,’ ” Nimoy answered her in a fan magazine . “But there will be those who will accept me just for who I am.”

14. A man created a $25-million scam named after McCoy

Howard Leventhal plead guilty to a swath of fraud charges in 2013 after bilking investors out of $25 million he wanted for his “McCoy Home Health Tablet,” which could “instantaneously and effectively” deliver patient data to doctors. In other words, it was basically the series’ “Tricorder,” an all-purpose futuristic device Dr. McCoy would use to diagnose all kinds of space maladies.

15. Sulu never had a first name

Being that the premise of Star Trek is that the world is in harmony – thus why man is looking to the stars – Roddenberry had this notion of Sulu representing the entirety of Asia . He didn’t want a last name tied to a specific Asian nation, so he saw the Sulu Sea, which he thought had a nice vague sound. Sulu’s first name, Hikaru , wasn’t even canon until Star Trek VI , though it was introduced in 1981 in a Star Trek novel called The Entropy Effect . (Incidentally, the same book that gives Uhura her first name.)

16. The show holds a number of Guinness Records

Including “most widely spoken fictional language” (Klingon) and “most expensive kidney stone” ($25,000, William Shatner’s.)

17. Chekov was based on member of the Monkees … maybe

There’s a persistent urban legend that states Roddenberry created the character of Ensign Chekov after an editorial in a Russian newspaper criticized the lack of Russians aboard the Enterprise – after all, Yuri Gregarin was the first man in space. Star Trek , however, was not broadcast in the U.S.S.R., so the veracity of such an editorial is suspect. Rather, Roddenberry was looking for a “young, irreverent, English-accent ‘Beatle’-type to try on the show,” per a 1966 memo. “Like the smallish fellow who looks to be a hit on The Monkees ,” he added. Apparently, though, Roddenberry was somewhat embarrassed by the lack of a Russian on the Enterprise and did write a letter to the editor of Pravda informing them of the addition of Chekov to the cast. Anyway, Snopes is confused, so we guess we are as well .

18. Some of the show’s costumes inspired a theory about televised nudity

The show’s costume designer, William Ware Theiss, designed such improbably gravity-defying outfits for the various women on the show that the Theiss Titillation Theory , which states, “The sexiness of an outfit is directly proportional to the possibility that a vital piece of it might fall off,” is named after him.

19. Leonard Nimoy’s father owned a barbershop And, perhaps apocryphally , young men would come in during the height of the show’s popularity and ask for “a Spock,” having no idea they were getting it from the character’s real-life dad.

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ARTS & CULTURE

An oral history of “star trek”.

The trail-blazing sci-fi series debuted 50 years ago and has taken countless fans where none had gone before

Interviews by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman

It was the most wildly successful failure in television history. First shown on NBC 50 years ago this September, the original “Star Trek” lasted just three seasons before it was canceled—only to be resuscitated in syndication and grow into a global entertainment mega-phenomenon. Four live-action TV sequels, with another digital-platform spinoff planned by CBS to launch next year. A dozen movies, beginning with 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture and resuming this July with the director Justin Lin’s Star Trek Beyond . It finds Capt. Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto) in deep space, where they are attacked by aliens and stranded on a distant planet—a plot that may make some viewers glad that at least the special effects are new. Over the decades “Star Trek” merchandise alone (because who does not need a Dr. McCoy bobblehead?) has reportedly brought in some $5 billion.

This is quite an outpouring for a concept that its creator, the Los Angeles police officer-turned-TV-writer Gene Roddenberry, pitched to producers as a “space western” and once described as a “‘Wagon Train’ to the Stars.” There’s much, much more to the appeal of the original “Star Trek” than gunplay in the wilderness, of course, as countless articles and dissertations have tried to explain, but in one key respect Roddenberry’s notion was right on target: People everywhere, especially Americans, are fascinated by the frontier, whether final or not. And fans are still intrigued that Roddenberry, a World War II veteran, set his 23rd-century multiracial epic in a universe that seemed to be moving beyond bigotry and petty conflict, a cold war-era imagining of the future that was reassuringly counter-dystopian. Plus, you’ve got to love the gadgets—mobile communicators, videoconferencing, diagnostic scanners, talking computers—which have had an uncanny habit of turning up in real life lately, a tribute to the wit and ingenuity of not only Roddenberry but also the show’s designers and writers.

The richness and persistence of the original vision are what make an extensive oral history of “Star Trek” so compelling. (The same cannot be said of “ The Newlywed Game ,” for instance, another TV show that debuted in 1966.)      

For more than 30 years, Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman have made it their mission to document the creative process underlying “Star Trek” in all its iterations. In tens of thousands of hours of interviews conducted everywhere from Gene Roddenberry’s Bel Air mansion to movie set camper trailers, the writers recorded virtually anyone who put his or her stamp on this pop culture monument. The result is The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek : The First 25 Years , excerpted here. (Volume 2 is in the works.) “What I loved about the oral history format,” says Altman, “was that it was like getting 500 people in a room and telling the story in a linear fashion.” It was, adds Gross, a “genuine labor of love.”

The Fifty-Year Mission: The First 25 Years

"The Fifty-Year Mission" by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman. Copyright (c) 2016 by the authors and reprinted by permission of Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press, LLC.

Gene Roddenberry (creator and executive producer, “Star Trek”) I remember myself as an asthmatic child, having great difficulties at 7, 8 and 9 years old, falling totally in love with  Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle  and dreaming of having his strength to leap into trees and throw mighty lions to the ground.

There was a boy in my class who life had treated badly. He limped, he wheezed. He was a charming, intelligent person. Because of being unable to do many of the things that others were able to do, he had sort of gone into his own world of fantasy and science fiction. He had been collecting the wonderful old  Amazing  and  Astounding  magazines, and he introduced me to science fiction. I then discovered in our neighborhood, living above a garage, an ex-con who had come into science fiction when he was in prison. He introduced me to John Carter and those wonderful Burroughs things. By the time I was 12 or 13 I had been very much into the whole science fiction field.

In World War II, Roddenberry served in the U. S. Army Air Corps as a B-17 pilot. He joined the Los Angeles Police Department in 1949, and wrote speeches for Chief William Parker as well as articles for the LAPD newsletter,  The Beat.  Resigning in 1956, Roddenberry provided scripts to the screenwriter Sam Rolfe, for “Have Gun Will Travel,” the TV western starring Richard Boone. Roddenberry had his first pilot produced by MGM in 1963, for the short-lived NBC series “The Lieutenant.” The studio turned down his pitch for a new series called “Star Trek .”  But his agents contacted Desilu Studios, which was looking to produce more dramas after years of success in comedy. 

Gene Roddenberry I was tired of writing for shows where there was always a shoot-out in the last act and somebody was killed. “Star Trek” was formulated to change that. I had been a freelance writer for about a dozen years and was chafing at the commercial censorship on television. You really couldn’t talk about anything you cared to talk about. It seemed to me that perhaps if I wanted to talk about sex, religion, politics, make some comments against Vietnam, and so on, that if I had similar situations involving these subjects happening on other planets to little green people, indeed it might get by, and it did. 

Dorothy “D.C.” Fontana (writer, “Star Trek” story editor) Gene asked me to read the very first proposal for “Star Trek” in 1964. I said, “I have only one question: Who’s going to play Mr. Spock?” He pushed a picture of Leonard Nimoy across the table.

Gene Roddenberry Leonard Nimoy was the one actor I definitely had in mind—we had worked together previously. I was struck at the time with his high Slavic cheekbones and interesting face, and I said to myself, “If I ever do this science fiction thing, he would make a great alien. And with those cheekbones some sort of pointed ear might go well.” To cast Mr. Spock I made a phone call to Leonard and he came in. That was it.

Leonard Nimoy (actor, “Mr. Spock”) I went in to see Gene at Desilu Studios and he told me that he was preparing a pilot for a science fiction series to be called “Star Trek,” that he had in mind for me to play an alien character. I figured all I had to do was keep my mouth shut and I might end up with a good job here. Gene told me that he was determined to have at least one extraterrestrial prominent on his starship. He’d like to have more, but making human actors into other life-forms was too expensive for television in those days. Pointed ears, skin color, plus some changes in eyebrows and hair style were all he felt he could afford, but he was certain that his Mr. Spock idea, properly handled and properly acted, could establish that we were in the 23rd century and that interplanetary travel was an established fact.

Marc Cushman   (author, “ These Are the Voyages ” ) Desilu came into existence because Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz owned “I Love Lucy.” It was the first time someone owned the rerun rights to a show. Seems like a no-brainer today, but back then no one had done it. Eventually CBS bought the rerun rights back from Lucy and Desi for a million dollars, a lot of money back then. Lucy and Desi take that money and buy RKO and turn it into Desilu Studios. The company grows, but then the marriage falls apart and Lucy ends up running the studio and by this point, they don’t have many shows. Lucy says, “We need to get more shows on the air,” and “Star Trek” was the one she took on, because she thought it was different.

Herbert F. Solow (executive in charge of production, “Star Trek”) I had so many people at the studio, so many old-timers trying to talk me out of it. “You’re going to bankrupt us, you can’t do this. NBC doesn’t want us anyway, who cares about guys flying around in outer space?” The optical guy said it was impossible to do.

Marc Cushman Desi wasn’t there anymore. So Lucy is asking herself, “What would Desi do?” because she really loved and respected him. “Desi would get more shows on the air that we own, not just that we’re producing for other companies.” That was her reasoning to do “Star Trek”—and she felt that this show could, if it caught on, rerun for years like “I Love Lucy.” And guess what? Those two shows—“I Love Lucy” and “Star Trek”—are two shows that have been rerunning ever since they originally aired.

In the teleplay for the first pilot, “The Cage,” starring Jeffrey Hunter as Capt. Christopher Pike, Roddenberry described the establishing shot in detail: “Obviously not a primitive ‘rocket ship’ but rather a true space vessel, suggesting unique arrangements and exciting capabilities. As CAMERA ZOOMS IN we first see tiny lettering ‘NCC 1701- U.S.S.  ENTERPRISE . ’”

Walter M. “Matt” Jefferies (production designer, “Star Trek”) I had collected a huge amount of design material from NASA and the defense industry which was used as an example of designs to avoid. We pinned all that material up on the wall and said, “That we will not do.” And also everything we could find on “Buck Rogers” and “Flash Gordon” and said, “That we will not do.” Through a process of elimination, we came to the final design of the  Enterprise .

Gene Roddenberry I’d been an Army bomber pilot and fascinated by the Navy and particularly the story of the  Enterprise , which at Midway really turned the tide in the whole war in our favor. I’d always been proud of that ship and wanted to use the name.

Roddenberry’s attention to detail even extended to the ship’s computer at a time when computers were punch card–operated behemoths that filled entire rooms. In a memo on July 24, 1964, to production designer Pato Guzman, Roddenberry suggested, “More and more I see the need for some sort of interesting electronic computing machine designed into the USS  Enterprise , perhaps on the bridge itself. It will be an information device out of which the crew can quickly extract information on the registry of other space vessels, spaceflight plans for other ships, information on individuals and planets and civilizations.”

Gene Roddenberry The ship’s transporters—which let the crew “beam” from place to place—really came out of a production need. I realized with this huge spaceship, I would blow the whole budget of the show just in landing the thing on a planet. And secondly, it would take a long time to get into our stories, so the transporter idea was conceived so we could get our people down to the planet fast and easy, and get our story going by Page 2.

Howard A. Anderson (visual effects artist, “Star Trek”) For the transporter effect, we added another element: a glitter effect in the dematerialization and rematerialization. We used aluminum dust falling through a beam of high-intensity light.

Though the network had warned the studio not to make the pilot too esoteric— “ Be   certain there are enough explanations on the planet, the people, their ways and abilities so that even someone who is not a science fiction aficionado can clearly understand and follow the story,” a 1964 memo said—the network wasn’t satisfied. NBC commissioned another pilot—a rare second chance at being picked up for a series. 

Gene Roddenberry The reason they turned the pilot down was that it was too cerebral and there wasn’t enough action and adventure. “The Cage” didn’t end with a chase and a right cross to the jaw, the way all manly films were supposed to end. There were no female leads then—women in those days were just set dressing. So, another thing they felt was wrong was that we had Majel as a female second-in-command of the vessel.

Majel Barrett (actress, "Number One,""Nurse Christine Chapel") NBC felt that my position as Number One would have to be cut because no one would believe that a woman could hold the position of second-in-command.

Gene Roddenberry Number One was originally the one with the cold, calculating, computerlike mind. When we had to eliminate a feminine Number One—I was told you could cast a woman in a secretary’s role or that of a housewife, but not in a position of command over men on even a 23rd-century spaceship—I combined the two roles into one. Spock became the second-in-command, still the science officer but also the computerlike, logical mind never displaying emotion.

Leonard Nimoy Vulcan unemotionalism and logic came into being.Gene felt the format badly needed the alien Spock, even if the price was acceptance of 1960s-style sexual inequality.

The network’s objections to Roddenberry’s Spock included taking exception to the character’s pointed ears, perceived as imparting a vaguely sinister Satanic appearance. 

Gene Roddenberry The idea of dropping Spock became a major issue. I felt that was the one fight I  had  to win, so I wouldn’t do the show unless we left him in. They said, “Fine, leave him in, but keep him in the background, will you?” And then when they put out the sales brochure when we eventually went to series, they carefully rounded Spock’s ears and made him look human so he wouldn’t scare off potential advertisers.

Work on the second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” began in 1965. The show aired on September 22, 1966, and featured William Shatner as Capt. James T. Kirk, replacing actor Jeffrey Hunter.

Gene Roddenberry At that time, TV was full of antiheroes, and I had a feeling that the public likes heroes. People with goals in mind, with honesty and dedication, so I decided to go with the straight heroic roles, and it paid off. My model for Kirk was Horatio Hornblower from the C.S. Forester sea stories. Shatner was open-minded about science fiction, and a marvelous choice.

William Shatner (actor, “James T. Kirk”) I talked to Gene Roddenberry about the objectives we hoped to achieve, and one was serious drama as well as science fiction. I felt confident that “Star Trek” would keep those serious objectives for the most part, and it did.

Scott Mantz (film critic, “Access Hollywood”) I’d follow Kirk in a second. Shatner’s performance as Kirk is the reason I became a “Trek” fan.

Leonard Nimoy Bill Shatner’s broader acting style created a new chemistry between the captain and Spock.

William Shatner Captain Kirk and I melded. It may have been only out of the technical necessity; the thrust of doing a television show every week is such that you can’t hide behind too many disguises. You’re so tired that you can’t stop to try other interpretations of a line, you can only hope that this take is good, because you’ve got five more pages to shoot. You have to rely on the hope that what you’re doing as yourself will be acceptable. Captain Kirk is me. I don’t know about the other way around. 

James Doohan   (actor, “Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott”) [A few days] before they were actually going to shoot the second “Star Trek” pilot, the director, Jim Goldstone, called me and said, “Jimmy, would you come in and do some of your accents for these ‘Star Trek’ people?” I had no idea who they were, but I did that on a Saturday morning. They handed me a piece of paper—there was no part there for an engineer, it was just some lines, but every three lines or so I changed my accent and ended up doing eight or nine accents for that reading. At the end, Gene Roddenberry said, “Which one do you like?” I said, “To me, if you want an engineer, he’d better be a Scotsman,” because those were the only engineers I had read anything about—all the ships they had built and so forth. Gene said, “Well, we rather like that, too.”

George Takei (actor, “Hikaru Sulu”) The first time I talked to Gene about “Star Trek,” it was for the second pilot and it was an exhilarating prospect, because almost every other opportunity was either inconsequential or defamatory, and here was something that was a breakthrough for a Japanese-American actor. Until then any regular series roles for an Asian or an Asian-American character were either servants, buffoons or villains.

Alexander Courage (composer, “Star Trek”) When Lucille Ball bought Desilu, Wilbur Hatch came in as head of music. When “Star Trek” came on the scene, Wilbur suggested me to Roddenberry and I turned out a theme. Roddenberry liked it and that was it. He said, “I don’t want any space music. I want adventure music.”

The second pilot became a monumental achievement: It persuaded NBC to greenlight the series. 

Gene Roddenberry The biggest factor in selling the second pilot was that it ended up in a hell of a fistfight with the villain suffering a painful death. Then, once we got “Star Trek” on the air, we began infiltrating a few of our ideas, the ideas the fans have all celebrated.

Robert H. Justman (associate producer, “Star Trek”) On the last day of production when we were a day over, we did two days’ work in one day. That’s the day that Lucy came on the stage, because we were supposed to have an end-of-picture party and we were still shooting, so in between setups she helped Herb Solow and me sweep out the stage. I think she just did that for effect, because she wanted to get the party started.

On March 6, 1966, Roddenberry dispatched a Western Union telegram to Shatner at the Hotel Richmond in Madrid: “Dear Bill. Good news. Official pickup today. Our Five Year Mission. Best Regards, Gene Roddenberry.”

Not long after “Star Trek” was launched, the audience embraced Leonard Nimoy’s Spock, and the stoic Vulcan science officer soon threatened to eclipse Captain Kirk. Nimoy came up with a list of demands that resulted in the possibility that the character would be replaced. In the end, Nimoy’s demands were met, and the scripts began focusing on Kirk and Spock as a team. But the sense of competition continued.

Marc Cushman They almost didn’t have Spock for the second season of “Star Trek.” The fan mail got so intense during the first year, sacks and sacks of mail every day. His agent said, “He’s getting only $1,250 a week and he needs a raise.” But Desilu is losing money on the show and the board of directors was thinking of canceling it, even if NBC wanted to continue, because it was bankrupting the studio. The one that broke the stalemate was the one that didn’t want Spock in the first place: NBC. “You are not doing the show without that guy. Pay him whatever you need to pay him.”

David Gerrold (writer, “The Trouble With Tribbles”) The problems with Shatner and Nimoy really began during the first season when  Saturday Review  did this article about “Trek” which stated that Spock was much more interesting than Kirk, and that Spock should be captain. Well,  nobody  was near Shatner for days. He was  furious . All of a sudden, the writers are writing all this great stuff for Spock, and Spock, who’s supposed to be a subordinate character, suddenly starts becoming the equal of Kirk.

Ande Richardson (assistant to writer Gene L. Coon) Shatner would take every line that wasn’t nailed down. “This should be the captain’s line!” He was very insecure. 

Herbert F. Solow The last thing we wanted was to have the network, the sponsors or the television audience feel that it was not a wonderful, marvelous family on “Star Trek.” We didn’t want anybody to see a crack in this dam that we built.

If push came to shove, and we had to recast both characters, it would have been easier to recast Bill’s part than Leonard’s, so you tell me: Who’s the star of the show?

William Shatner Occasionally, I’ll hear something from an ardent fan of mine who’ll say, “So and so said this about you.” And it bewilders me because I have had no trouble with them. We have done our job and gone on and I have never had bad words with anyone. 

On August 17, 1967, Roddenberry addressed an ultimatum to Shatner and Nimoy, with DeForest Kelley (Dr. McCoy) thrown in for good measure:

“Toss these pages in the air if you like, stomp off and be angry, it doesn’t mean that much since you’ve driven me to the edge of not giving a damn,” Roddenberry wrote in that letter, excerpted here for the first time: “No, William, I’m not really writing this to Leonard and just including you as a matter of psychology. I’m talking to you directly and with an angry honesty you haven’t heard before. And Leonard, you’d be very wrong if you think I’m really teeing off at Shatner and only pretending to include you. The same letter to both; you’ve pretty well divided up the market on selfishness and egocentricity.

“ Star Trek began as one of the TV productions in town where actors, as fellow professionals, were not only listened to but actually invited to bring their script and series comments to the production office. When small problems and pettiness begins to happen as it happens on all shows, I instructed our people that it should be overlooked where possible because we should all understand the enormous physical and emotional task of your job .... The result of Gene Roddenberry’s policy of happy partnership? Star Trek is going down the drain.

“. . . I want you to realize fully where your fight for absolute screen dominance is taking you. It’s already affecting the image of Captain Kirk on   the screen. We’re heading for an arrogant, loud, half-assed Queeg character who is so blatantly insecure upon that screen that he can’t afford to let anyone else have an idea, give an order, or solve a problem. You can’t hide things like that from an audience.

“And now, Leonard. I must say that if I were Shatner, I’d be nervous and edgy about you by now, too. For a man who makes no secret of his own sensitivity, you show a strange lack of understanding of it in your fellow actors.

“For as long as I stay with the show, starting Monday,” Roddenberry decreed, “there will be no more line switches from one to anothe r .  No more of the long discussions about scenes which lose us approximately a half day of production a show—the director will permit it only when there is a valid dramatic story or interpretation point at stake which he believes makes it necessary. The director will be told he is also replaceable and failure to stay on top and in charge of the set will be grounds for his dismissal.

“All right, my three former friends and ‘unique professionals,’ that’s it. In straight talk.”

David Gerrold All the episodes hold together because Shatner holds it together. Spock is only good when he has someone to play off of. Spock working with Kirk has the magic and it plays very well, and people give all of the credit to Nimoy, not to Shatner. 

Leonard Nimoy During the series we had a failure—I experienced it as a failure—in an episode called “The Galileo Seven.” The Spock character had been so successful that somebody said, “Let’s do a show where Spock takes command of a vessel.” We had this shuttlecraft mission where Spock was in charge. I really appreciated the loss of the Kirk character for me to play against. The Bill Shatner Kirk performance was the energetic, driving performance, and Spock could kind of slipstream along and offer advice, give another point of view. Put into the position of being the driving force, the central character, was very tough for me.

Thomas Doherty (professor of American studies, Brandeis University) At the core of “Star Trek” is something profound, which is teamwork and adventure and tolerance. That’s why it’s a World War II motif in the space age. It really is a team; you’re making a heroic contribution by doing your bit. 

At the beginning of the second season, several changes greeted viewers. Not only was DeForest Kelley’s name now added to the opening credits, there was a new face at the helm: Navigator Pavel Andreievich Chekov, played by Walter Koenig. 

Gene Roddenberry The Russians were responsible for the Chekov character. They put in  Pravda  that, “Ah, the ugly Americans are at it again. They do a space show, and they forget to include the people who were in space first.” And I said, “My God, they’re right.”

Walter Koenig   (actor, “Pavel Chekov”) They were looking for someone who would appeal to the bubblegum set. All that stuff about  Pravda , that’s all nonsense. That was all just publicity. They wanted somebody who would appeal to 8- to 14-year-olds and the decision was to make him Russian. My fan mail came from 8- to 14-year-olds who weren’t that aware of the cold war. Getting fan mail was so novel to me that I read every single letter I got. I was getting about 700 letters a week. 

Robert H. Justman We had another problem in the second season. We were cut down on how much we could spend per show by a sizable amount of money. 

Marc Cushman Lucille Ball lost her studio because of “Star Trek.” She had gambled on the show, and you can read the memos where her board of directors is saying, “Don’t do this show, it’s going to kill us.” But she believed in it. She moved forward with it, and during the second season she had to sell Desilu to Paramount Pictures. Lucille Ball gave up the studio that she and her husband built, it’s all she had left of her marriage, and she sacrificed that for “Star Trek.”

Ralph Senensky (director, “Metamorphosis”) Desilu was like a family. Herb Solow [the production head] used to come down and talk with you on the soundstage. Herb went out of his way to help you. Can you imagine a studio working like that? When Paramount bought it, a kind of corporate mentality took over. That’s why I resent Paramount having such a hit in “Star Trek.” If they had their way, they would have killed it off. It survived in  spite  of them. Now they have this bonanza making them all of this money.

Marc Cushman Lucy’s instincts were right about “Star Trek,” that it would become one of the biggest shows in syndication ever. The problem was that her pockets weren’t deep enough. They were losing $15,000 an episode, which would be like $500,000 per episode today. You know, if she could have hung on just six months longer, it  would  have worked out, because by the end of the second season, once they had enough episodes,  “ Star Trek” was playing in, I believe, 60 different countries around the world. And all of that money is flowing in. 

She had no choice but to sell. She actually took off and went to Miami. She ran away because it was so heartbreaking to sign the contract. They had to track her down to get her to do it. There’s a picture of her cutting the ribbon after they’ve torn down the wall between Paramount and Desilu, and she’s standing next to the CEO of Gulf and Western, which owns both studios now, and she’s trying to fake this smile for the camera, and you know it’s just killing her. 

Among the now-classic episodes in Season 2 of the original are “Amok Time,” in which Spock is driven to return to Vulcan to mate or die and finds himself in a battle to the death with Kirk.

Joseph Pevney (director, “Amok Time”) What made the fight in “Amok Time” dramatically interesting is that it took place between Kirk and Spock. During this episode, Leonard Nimoy and I also worked out the Vulcan salute and the statement “live long and prosper” together.

Gene Roddenberry Leonard Nimoycame into my office and said, “I feel the need for a Vulcan salutation, Gene,” and he showed it to me. Then he told me a story about when he was a kid in synagogue. The rabbis said, “Don’t look or you’ll be struck dead or blind,” but Leonard looked and, of course, the rabbis were making that Vulcan sign. The idea of my Southern kinfolk walking around giving each other a Jewish blessing so pleased me that I said, “Go!”

Joseph Pevney “The Trouble With Tribbles” was a delightful show. I had a lot of fun with it, went out and shopped for the tribbles. My biggest contribution was getting the show produced, because there was a feeling that we had no business doing an outright comedy. Bill Shatner had the opportunity to do the little comic bits he loves. 

Season 2 also featured visits to a number of Earthlike planets, including one where the society mirrored the Roman Empire. 

Ralph Senensky Gene Roddenberry is a very creative man. When we did “Bread and Circuses,” we were doing the Roman arena in modern times with television. We didn’t want to tip that we were doing a Christ story from the word go. Originally when they were talking about the sun, you knew right away that they were talking about the son of God.

Dorothy “D.C.” Fontana Certainly there was a nice philosophy going on there with the worshiping of the “sun,” and then the indication that it was the son of God, that Jesus or the concept had appeared on other planets.

The series was not a ratings powerhouse. Indeed, it seemed that Season 2 could very well be the show’s last. The future was in the hands of the fans.

Bjo & John Trimble (longtime fans) Cancellation was certain at the end of the second season. We wrote up a preliminary letter, ran it off on our ancient little mimeograph machine, and mailed it out to about 150 science fiction fans. We didn’t have enough money to have a letter printed, so we used the Rule of Ten: Ask ten people to write a letter and they ask ten people to write a letter, and each of those ten asks ten people to write a letter.

NBC was convinced that “Star Trek” was watched only by drooling idiot 12-year-olds. They managed to ignore the fact that people such as Isaac Asimov and a multitude of other intellectuals enjoyed the show. So, of course, the suits were always looking for reasons to cancel shows they didn’t trust to be a raging success.

Elyse Rosenstein (early organizer of “Star Trek” conventions) Do you realize how many pieces of mail NBC eventually received on “Star Trek”? They usually got about 50,000 for the year on everything, but the “Star Trek” campaign generated one million letters. They were handling the mail with shovels—they didn’t know what to do with it. So they made an unprecedented on-air announcement that they were not canceling the show and that it would be back in the fall.

Gene Roddenberry The letter-writing campaign surprised me. What particularly gratified me was not the fact that there was a large number of people who did that, but I got to meet and know “Star Trek” fans, and they range from children to presidents of universities.

John Meredyth Lucas (producer; writer, “Patterns of Force”) Some of the most fanatic support came from Caltech.

Gene Roddenberry We won the fight when the show got picked up for a third season. NBC was certain I was behind every fan, paying them off. And they finally called me up and said, “Listen, we know you’re behind it.” And I said, “That’s very flattering, because if I could start demonstrations around the country from this desk, I’d get the hell out of science fiction and into politics.”

“Star Trek” concluded its second season on a high note, with NBC essentially acknowledging the success of the fans’ letter-writing campaign by announcing that the series would be returning. 

Gene Roddenberry I told NBC that if they would put us on the air as they were promising—on a weeknight at a decent time slot, 7:30 or 8 o’clock—I would commit myself to produce “Star Trek” for the third year. Personally produce the show as I had done at the beginning. About ten days or two weeks later, I received a phone call at breakfast, and the network executive said, “Hello, Gene, baby . . .” I knew I was in trouble right then. He said, “We have had a group of statistical experts researching your audience, and we don’t want you on a weeknight at an early time. We have picked the best youth spot that there is. All our research confirms this and it’s great for the kids and that time is 10 o’clock on Friday nights.” I said, “No doubt this is why you had the great kiddie show ‘The Bell Telephone Hour’ on there last year.” As a result, the only gun I then had was to stand by my original commitment, that I would not personally produce the show unless they returned us to the weeknight time they promised. 

David Gerrold Roddenberry, rather than try and do the very best show possible, walked away and picked Fred Freiberger [as the producer]. I wish Roddenberry had been there in the third season to take care of his baby.

Marc Cushman NBC didn’t like Gene Roddenberry, and they didn’t like the type of shows that “Star Trek” was airing. It was too controversial and too sexy, and they couldn’t get Roddenberry to tone it down. So they move it to Friday night—they didn’t even want to pick it up, but there was the letter-writing campaign that made them cry uncle. They put it in the death slot. And they knew when they picked it up that they were determined that Season 3 would be the last year.

Robert H. Justman If your audience is high-school kids and college-age people and young married people, they’re not home Friday nights. They’re out, and the old folks weren’t watching. So our audience was gone.

Margaret Armen (writer, “The Paradise Syndrome”) Working with Gene was marvelous, because he  was  “Star Trek” and he related to the writers. Fred came in and to him “Star Trek” was “tits in space.” And that’s a direct quote. Fred had been signed to produce and was being briefed. He watched an episode with me, smoking a big cigar, and said, “Oh, I get it. Tits in space.” You can imagine how a real “Star Trek” buff like myself reacted to  that .

Fred Freiberger (producer, “Star Trek,” Season 3) Our problem was to broaden the viewer base. To do a science fiction show, but get enough additional viewers to keep the series on the air. I tried to do stories that had a more conventional story line within the science fiction frame.

Marc Cushman You had some of the most talented people from  “ Star Trek” that were leaving. You didn’t have Gene Coon, Gene Roddenberry or Dorothy Fontana finessing the scripts. It’s like having the Beatles and taking away John Lennon and Paul McCartney. “OK, we still have George and Ringo. We’re still the Beatles.” No, you’re not. You’re still good, but not  as  good.

James Doohan Fred Freiberger had no inventiveness in him at all. Paramount bought Desilu and here was this damn space show as part of the package and they couldn’t care less about it.

William Shatner There was a feeling that a number of Fred Freiberger’s shows weren’t as good as the first and second season, and maybe that’s true. But he did have some wonderfully brilliant shows and his contribution has never been acknowledged.

Bjo & John Trimble The third season ground down, show after show being worse than the last, until even the authors of the scripts were having their names removed or using pseudonyms. To be fair, there were a few good scripts in the third season, but in the main those few seemed to be almost mistakes that slipped by.

While the third year of  “ Star Trek”   has largely been dismissed as a creative failure, several notable episodes were produced. “Spectre of the Gun” is a surrealistic western in which Kirk, Spock and McCoy find themselves reliving the shootout at the O.K. Corral. “Day of the Dove” focuses on an energy force that feeds on hatred. In “Plato’s Stepchildren,” aliens with telekinetic abilities torture  Enterprise  crewmen for their amusement—and Kirk and Uhura share television’s first interracial kiss.

Bjo & John Trimble The last third-season episode, “Turnabout Intruder,” was very good; it might have won an Emmy for William Shatner. But all TV shows got rescheduled for President Eisenhower’s funeral coverage. So the episode missed the Emmy-nomination deadline.

Scott Mantz That’s how production ended. There is something somewhat apropos about the last words of the last episode, “Turnabout Intruder”: “Her life could have been as rich as any woman’s. If only...If only.” And then Kirk walks off.  

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Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman | READ MORE

Both considered "Treksperts" with years of experience writing about Star Trek, Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman are the authors of The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek: The First 25 Years .

Screen Rant

Star trek: the original series cast & character guide.

Star Trek: The Original Series features some of the most iconic characters in all of science fiction with the crew of the original USS Enterprise.

• Star Trek: The Original Series debuted in 1966 and immediately developed a devoted following, eventually becoming a cultural sensation.
• The show featured iconic characters such as Captain James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock, who have endured for nearly 60 years.
• While the show has some aspects that haven't aged well, like outdated special effects and misogynistic undertones, the original cast remains intoxicating and capable of bringing passion and intrigue to even the thinnest of plots.

Star Trek: The Original Series - originally known simply as Star Trek - features some of the most iconic characters in all of science fiction with the crew of the original USS Enterprise. After its initial pilot episode was rejected by network NBC, Star Trek was massively overhauled with a largely new cast and a more adventurous tone. Star Trek debuted in 1966, and while it was never a ratings champion, the show immediately attracted a devoted following. Star Trek would go on to become a cultural sensation in syndication in the 1970s and was eventually revived as a hit film franchise as well as a series of successful television spinoffs that continues to this day.

There are aspects of Star Trek: The Original Series that have not aged especially well; the special effects are quaint at best, and the misogynistic undertones of many episodes are hard to ignore when viewed in the 21st century. That said, the original Star Trek cast remains intoxicating , a fantastic group of actors who could imbue even the thinnest of plots with passion and intrigue. There's a reason these characters have endured for nearly 60 years.

10 Best Star Trek: The Original Series Episodes To Hook New Fans

10 william shatner as captain james t. kirk, captain of the uss enterprise.

After Jeffrey Hunter declined to reprise his role as Christopher Pike from Star Trek' s initial failed pilot, "The Cage," he was replaced by William Shatner's Captain James T. Kirk . Where Hunter's Pike had been an introverted and weary man, Shatner's Kirk was a swashbuckling charmer , as likely to get into a fistfight with a Klingon as he was to seduce an Orion slave girl. Kirk was largely defined by his decades-long friendship with his Vulcan First Officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy), with Kirk's dynamic bravado bouncing off Spock's measured logic resulting in one of the most fascinating relationships in all of pop culture. For many, James T. Kirk remains the gold standard for Starfleet Captains.

Paul Wesley plays the younger Lieutenant James T. Kirk in Star Trek: Strange New Words.

9 Leonard Nimoy As Mr. Spock

Science officer and first officer of the uss enterprise.

Arguably the most important character in all of Star Trek , Spock was the only character to be held over from the show's original pilot ,"The Cage," though the character was reworked to be far less outwardly emotional. A product of a human mother and Vulcan father, Mr. Spock was constantly torn between his two cultures; Spock chose to live his life as a Vulcan, though he most often surrounded himself with humans. Spock's unbreakable bond with Captain Kirk and his chaotic, tempestuous friendship with Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (DeForest Kelley) formed the central trio of Star Trek: The Original Series . No Star Trek character has had a greater cultural impact.

Ethan Peck plays the younger Lieutenant Spock in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

8 DeForest Kelley As Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy

Chief medical officer of the uss enterprise.

The USS Enterprise's resident curmudgeon, Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy was not only the ship's brilliant physician, he was among Captain Kirk's closest and most trusted confidants. McCoy routinely went on away missions or sat in on important meetings that a ship's primary doctor wouldn't necessarily take part in generally, but "Bones" was part of Kirk's inner circle, and the Captain valued his opinion. McCoy often clashed with his friend and consistent irritant Spock , as the passionate country doctor and the cold, emotionless Vulcan could not have viewed the universe any more differently. Still, they deeply respected each other, even if they'd be loath to admit it.

7 James Doohan As Montgomery "Scotty" Scott

Chief engineer of the uss enterprise.

Known to all as Scotty, Commander Montgomery Scott (James Doohan) wore many hats on the USS Enterprise, overseeing the transporters and serving as Second Officer. However, Scotty was primarily known as the ship's Chief Engineer, able to seemingly pull off technological miracles whenever Captain Kirk needed them . A proud Scotsman, Scotty enjoyed playing the bagpipes and drinking his scotch - perhaps a little too much. Scotty was skeptical of new, untested technology, preferring to work on machines he knew well. Prone to outbursts of righteous anger, Scotty still remained one of Captain Kirk's most trusted officers, able to get the Enterprise out of virtually any jam.

Martin Quinn plays the younger Lt. Montogomery Scott in Star Trek: Strange New World s.

6 George Takei As Hikaru Sulu

Uss enterprise's helmsman.

Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu (George Takei) was the USS Enterprise's primary helmsman under Captain Kirk's command. Generally a reserved, genial officer, Sulu quietly contained multitudes . When a virus drove much of the ship's crew mad in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Naked Time," Sulu was seen bouncing around the ship shirtless with a foil in hand. He displayed considerable bravery more than once, which eventually paid off for his career. By the time of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country , Sulu had been promoted to Captain of the USS Excelsior, beginning what would go on to become a Starfleet career just as revered as Captain Kirk's.

5 Nichelle Nichols As Nyota Uhura

Uss enterprise's communications officer.

Lieutenant Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) was the Communications Officer on the bridge of the USS Enterprise. One of the few female characters and virtually the only Black character in a position of authority on Star Trek: The Original Series , Uhura was a revolutionary presence at the time the show was produced. Uhura was often relegated to being a background character, but she always shined when given the opportunity, whether it be flirting with Spock on the bridge or entertaining the crew with a song. Modern Star Trek has been much kinder to Uhura than TOS , but Nichols' immortal version is still deserving of praise.

Celia Rose Gooding plays the younger Ensign Uhura on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

4 Walter Koenig As Pavel Chekov

Uss enterprise's navigator.

Introduced in Star Trek: The Original Series season 2 when George Takei was unavailable while shooting a movie, Ensign Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig) was a wide-eyed young Russian officer. Mr. Chekov was introduced not only due to Takei's absence, but also to acknowledge the Russians' at the time advanced progress in the 1960s space race. Chekov brought an innocent, youthful energy to the show, with a truly unforgettable Russian accent. Chekov was rarely the at the center of the action on TOS , but he was a character who was easy to like, and would eventually get to do some heavier lifting in the TOS film franchise.

3 Majel Barrett As Nurse Christine Chapel

Key member of uss enterprise's medical team.

Christine Chapel (Majel Barrett-Roddenberry) was Dr. McCoy's top nurse aboard the USS Enterprise. Chapel had an unrequited love for Spock , often seen pining for the Vulcan who could never give her the emotional connection she so desired. Chapel was a victim of Star Trek: The Original Series ' subpar writing for women characters in general, though things took a turn for the better by the time of the movie franchise, where it was revealed Chapel became a doctor and a full Starfleet officer. Chapel would get a much-needed reworking for the Paramount+ series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds .

Jess Bush plays the younger Nurse Christine Chapel on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

2 Mark Lenard As Sarek

Vulcan ambassador and spock's father.

Introduced in the Star Trek: The Original Series season 2 episode "Journey To Babel," Sarek (Mark Lenard) was the Vulcan ambassador to Earth, as well as Spock's estranged father . Sarek disapproved of his son's decision to enter Starfleet Academy, preferring him to live his life among Vulcans. The relationship between Sarek and Spock was deeply complicated ; while Sarek may have disagreed often with his son, he and Kirk risked everything dear to them to revive Spock in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock . Spock's fraught relationship with Sarek is one of the most enduring aspects of Star Trek: The Original Series .

James Frain played the younger Ambassador Sarek i n Star Trek: Discovery, which revealed that Sarek adopted Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) as a child and raised him as Spock's sister.

1 Grace Lee Whitney As Yeoman Janice Rand

Captain kirk's yeoman in star trek: the original series season 1.

Janice Rand (Grace Lee Whitney) appeared in 8 episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series as Captain Kirk's Yeoman. Set up as a potential love interest for Kirk, Rand's role was severely reduced during production , often relegating Janice to bringing her Captain coffee and pining for the oddly resentful Kirk. The reason Whitney was fired from Star Trek was later revealed by the actress in her autobiography to be because she was assaulted by a network executive. However, Janice Rand did return in the Star Trek: The Original Series movies, and Grace Lee Whitney also played Commander Janice Rand in an episode of Star Trek: Voyager.

Star Trek: The Original Series is available to stream on Paramount+.

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100 Interesting Facts About Star Trek

1 Majel Barrett

Shortly before she died, Majel Barrett recorded an entire library of phonetic sounds, allowing her voice to be used in future products outside of Star Trek and, quite possibly, as the computer voice in Star Trek: Discovery. Thus, she could live on as the voice of Starfleet possibly for all time.

2. A professional linguist in Native American languages was asked to invent Klingon for Star Trek. He speaks Klingon but notes that others have attained greater fluency

3. Galaxy Quest, a satire of Star Trek and fandom, is so popular with the latter's fans that it was named the 7th best Star Trek film at the 2013 Star Trek Convention. Actors of TOS, TNG, Voyager, and DS9 also have expressed admiration for the film.

4. The first black-white interracial kiss on American television was on an episode of Star Trek. However, the producers were worried about the show being banned in the South because of it and tried to shoot alternate versions of the shot. The actors intentionally flubbed those shots.

5. Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan features cinema's first entirely computer-generated sequence: the demonstration of the effects of the Genesis Device on a barren planet.

Latest FactRepublic Video: 15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History

6 Patrick Stewart

Patrick Stewart signed a 6-year contract for "Star Trek: The Next Generation" because he, his agent, and others with whom Stewart consulted all believed that the new TV show would quickly fail, and he would return to his Shakespearean career after making some money.

7. The first Space Shuttle was to be named "Constitution", but after a major letter-writing campaign by Star Trek fans, its name was affectionately changed to "Enterprise".

8. The King of Jordan, Abdullah bin al-Hussein was an extra on Star Trek: Voyager

9. Jason Alexander of Seinfeld fame is a Star Trek fanatic and can quote every line of dialogue (from all characters) from the original series.

10. We ain't found sh*t! a trooper from Spaceballs is Tim Russ, who also played Tuvok in Star Trek Voyager.

11 Gene Roddenberry

Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, was once in a plane crash in the desert in Syria. With two broken ribs, he repeatedly went back into the burning plane to evacuate passengers, then organized search teams to look for civilization.

12. Mae Jemison, the first female African-American astronaut, was inspired to apply to NASA by the Star Trek character, Lieutenant Uhura. Jemison later went on to make a cameo appearance in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

13. The visor Geordi La Forge wore to give him a vision in Star Trek: TNG made his actor Levar Burton 90% blind while filming.

14. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry served in World War 2 with a pilot named Kim Noonien Singh and lost contact with him following the war's end. Roddenberry named the villain Khan Noonien Singh after his comrade in hopes that Singh would notice and contact him.

15. E.T., Blade Runner, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Poltergeist, and The Thing were all released on the same month and competed with each other at the box office.

16 First pilot of Star Trek

After NBC rejected the first pilot of Star Trek, Lucille Ball of I Love Lucy Fame used her clout to convince NBC to give Gene Roddenberry a second chance.

17. There is only one syndicated program to ever receive a Best Series Emmy nomination: Star Trek The Next Generation

18. Stark Trek’s star Spock (Leonard Nimoy) fought to get pay equity for Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) on Star Trek in the 1960s.

19. DeForest Kelley disliked repeating Dr. McCoy's catchphrase "He's dead, Jim", which appears 20 times in the original Star Trek series. It became so famous, however, that he joked that the line would appear on his tombstone. It did appear in the first sentence of Kelley's obituary.

20. When the studio behind 'Star Trek' received a letter from a builder asking how to make automatic sliding doors that opened and closed as fast as on the Enterprise, their reply explained that the doors were manually operated by an offstage crewman. If too late, the cast would hit unopened doors.

21 Patrick Stewart's baldness

Gene Roddenberry was asked by a reporter about casting Patrick Stewart in Star Trek: TNG. "Surely by the 24th century, they would have found a cure for male pattern baldness." And Gene Roddenberry responded, "No, by the 24th century, no one will care."

22. Some of the male background characters in 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' can be seen wearing skirts. This was explained as "a logical development, given the total equality of the sexes presumed to exist in the 24th century."

23. When Florence Henderson arrived to do her Brady Bunch screen test, there was no one on staff to do her make-up. She went over to the adjoining studio where Star Trek was filmed and ended up in a make-up chair surrounded by William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and "six or eight space monsters".

24. James Doohan, "Scotty" on Star Trek, was shot by 6 bullets storming Juno Beach on D-Day: four in his leg, one in the chest, and one through his right middle finger

25. There are exactly 1,547 Lens Flares J.J. Abrams' Star Trek Movies

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Great stuff Great stuff Great stuff

One day, we will build a spacecraft and we will name it the U.S.S. William Shatner A well deserved accolade.

#94 is BS. Lucille Ball could not have prevented the cancellation of STTOS in 1964 as the series did not premier until 1966! What she did in 1964 was, when the network didn’t like the first pilot for the series “The Cage,” she used her clout to get NBC to go along with a second pilot, which aired as the episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” NBC liked the second pilot and picked up the series. It premiered in September 1966.

#46 – The movie title is correct (The Undiscovered Country), the sequence number is not. It’s Star Trek VI, not IV.

The ‘Hypospray’ may have been fictional, because it was self contained, but the method of using high pressure to force medication through your skin was already in use prior to Star Trek. The Army was using it in 1959, and school kids were being immunized with it, in the early 60’s. The only difference was an air hose powered the piston that did the injections. This allowed a production line process, as hundreds of people walk past workers who cleaned the injection site, and another who did the injection. The process was not only faster, but the injector was more accurate that individual syringes since the injector was self metering. All Star Trek was replace the air hose with a compressed gas cartridge. That was only possible, because it would only do a few limited shots without being reloaded.

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620 Star Trek: Original Series Trivia Questions, Answers, and Fun Facts

Answer: Turnabout Intruder This is one of the awful ones, sorry. Although the premise, mind-body exchange, is interesting, the episode is hopelessly chauvinistic, and the last line reflects it. A sad way for the Original Series' final aired episode to end on June 3, 1969.

  From Quiz: "Star Trek" (Original Series): Famous Last Lines

Answer: Salt The Salt Monster was analogized in this episode to the Buffalo, the Passenger Pigeon, and the Chameleon. Although her frightening "true form" was never revealed until the very end, she took on many false appearances, chiefly Old Nancy Crater, but also, in order: Young Nancy Crater, Wrigley's Planet girl, crewman Green, Uhura's Swahili fantasy man, and finally Dr. McCoy himself! "The creature leading you a merry chase, Mister Sulu?"

  From Quiz: "Star Trek", Original Series, Monster of the Week

Answer: Jane Wyatt Nothing had really been mentioned about Mr. Spock's parents to this point in the series. It came as quite a shock to find he has a human mother. If you had shown me a police lineup with ten women and asked me to pick the one I thought was Spock's mother, I am sure Jane Wyatt would've been the last one I would have chosen. Her most well-known TV role was as Margaret Anderson, the mother on "Father Knows Best". (Does that make Betty, Bud and Kathy Spock's step-siblings?)

  From Quiz: "Star Trek TOS" - The Women in Spock's Life

Answer: NCC-1701 The letter "A" is later added to the registry number so that it could be distinguished from later models.

  From Quiz: Star Trek The Original Series

Answer: launches a nuclear bomb The Romulans had attacked Federation outposts along the Neutral Zone. The Enterprise investigates and a game of cat and mouse develops with both sides getting hits on the other. Kirk tries playing dead to lure the Romulans closer. The trap works and the Romulans are left with the desperation move.

  From Quiz: "Star Trek:: The Original Series" Quiz #2

Answer: Metamorphosis Chronologically, the events of this episode take place after "Star Trek: First Contact".

  From Quiz: "Star Trek: The Original Series" Quiz #1

Answer: USS Enterprise USS Excelsior is first seen in "Star Trek: The Search for Spock" and becomes Sulu's ship in "Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country". The USS Saratoga is seen in the movie "Star Trek: The Voyage Home" and the USS Farragut is mentioned a few times during the series.

  From Quiz: Basic "Star Trek" Trivia

Answer: Pavel Andreievich Pavel Andreievich Chekov is a young, slightly rebellious ensign on the Enterprise.

  From Quiz: All About Chekov

Answer: his heart is where his liver should be The quote is actually "Lucky his heart is where his liver should be or he'd be dead now", from the episode "A Private Little War" in season two. Spock is shot in the chest with one of the rifles sold to the population of the planet by... by... well if you don't know that, you haven't watched nearly enough 'Star Trek'.

  From Quiz: More "Star Trek: TOS" Mix 'n Match Questions

Answer: The Romulans We first come across the Romulans in the first series episode "The Balance of Terror" in which the Enterprise comes up against the first Romulan ship to have crossed over the Neutral Zone in a hundred years. Their resemblance to Spock causes the science officer a few problems onboard the Enterprise! The Neutral Zone is also a central element in the episode "The Enterprise Incident" in series 3, where Kirk and Spock deliberately enter it in order to steal the cloaking device that makes the Romulans so difficult to defeat.

  From Quiz: "Star Trek" TOS - Mix & Match

Answer: Tiberius In the episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before", Captain Kirk's name was referred to as James R. Kirk but later was changed to James Tiberius Kirk.

  From Quiz: Basic "Star Trek"

Answer: Fame in the peace movement This is a well-written story by Harlan Ellison.

  From Quiz: Adventures of Kirk and Spock

Answer: 3 September 8, 1966 to June 3, 1969.

  From Quiz: "Star Trek: TOS" Super Quiz

Answer: Lenore Karidian In "Conscience Of The King" (Ep. 13), Lenore Karidian (portrayed wonderfully by the beautiful Barbara Anderson) is the daughter of Anton Karidian, the leader of a traveling theater troupe. Lenore tries to kill (in one case, successfully) survivors of a massacre on Tarsus IV. Her motive... to protect her father from being exposed as Kodos "The Executioner" who initiated said massacre. Yeoman Third Class Tina Lawton is the pretty young blond that "Charlie X" rudely blows off after Janice Rand introduces the two. Areel Shaw is Kirk's old flame and also the prosecuting attorney in "Court-Martial." Dr. Janet Wallace is another of Kirk's old flames, and appears in "The Deadly Years."

  From Quiz: The Lovely Ladies Of "Star Trek: TOS"

Answer: Canada Quadrotriticale was a four-lobed hybrid grain, derived from wheat and rye. It was also the only grain that could be grown on Sherman's Planet, which both the Federation and the Klingons were trying to claim. The origins of the grain came from triticale, which was discovered in Canada in the 20th Century. FAST FACT: Triticale does exist. The first successful fertile crossing of wheat and rye occured in the 1930s. In 1953, the University of Manitoba began an active triticale breeding program, which continues to this day.

  From Quiz: History According to Chekov

Answer: Pavel Ensign Pavel Chekov joined the crew of the Enterprise at the beginning of Season 2 of "TOS". Rumors he was put there because the Russians complained were actually initiated by a PR stunt done by Gene Roddenberry himself. Played by Walter Koenig, Chekov was put on the bridge of the Enterprise because NBC wanted to attract a younger audience to the show by putting a youthful, slightly rebellious "Davey Jones" type character on the show. But, because he had just cut his hair before getting the job, Koenig had to wear a wig for his first few episodes!

  From Quiz: The First Names of "Star Trek"

Answer: Operating the Transporter At the beginning of the episode, as Scotty is preparing to beam up Capt. Kirk, there is a close-up of Scotty's hands working the transporter controls. You can see his right hand at the sliders; he tries to hide it with his thumb, but you plainly see one finger on the sliders, and two behind the thumb. There are other occasions in other episodes in which you see a similar (or even the same) shot. Later, as Scotty reaches out to grab the "evil" animal so that Spock can anethsetize it, you can make out the gap where his finger should be.

  From Quiz: Scotty's Missing Finger

Answer: 'Space Seed' The crew of the USS Enterprise encountered the Botany Bay, a DY-100 class vessel carrying close to 80 genetically enhanced men and women in suspended animation. They fled Earth in the 1990s to escape the Eugenics Wars that devastated humanity.

  From Quiz: 'Star Trek' Word Association

Answer: Omicron Ceti III This planet was inhabited by colonists for about three years. It was believed that they had all died due to constant exposure to Berthold radiation, but mysterious spores prevented their deaths.

  From Quiz: "TOS" Planets

Answer: NCC 1701 NX-1 is the original Enterprise under the command of Jonathan Archer.

  From Quiz: 'Star Trek' - Original Series

Answer: Deforest Kelley

  From Quiz: 'Star Trek TOS' No.1

Answer: Purple Majel Barret also played Number One, before she played Nurse Chapel.

  From Quiz: Tough 'Star Trek TOS' Quiz

Answer: Rojan

  From Quiz: The Original 'Star Trek'

Answer: Tiberius The 'T' in James T. Kirk's name stood for Tiberius, a name which was inspired by the Roman emperor Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus. Creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry chose the name as a symbol of the character's intellectual side, as well as his potential to be a great ruler. Kirk's full name was first mentioned in the Season 2 episode, "The Trouble with Tribbles", and was later confirmed in the Season 2 episode, "Bread and Circuses". The character of James T. Kirk, played by William Shatner, became an iconic figure in pop culture, admired for his bold leadership, wit, and courage. The character has appeared in multiple Star Trek television series and films over the past 50 years, cementing his place as one of the most beloved characters in science fiction history.

  From Quiz: Some Tough 'Star Trek' Trivia

Answer: The City on the Edge of Forever Kirk had been forced by the time stream to sacrifice a woman he had fallen in love with to save the Enterprise from nonexistence. His choice was clear, but not easy. He wanted nothing more to do with the time Guardian.

Answer: Matter/antimatter reactor A matter/antimatter reaction allows warp speed, which is faster than light.

Answer: James R. Kirk The Enterprise had traveled through a barrier at the edge of the galaxy. Gary Mitchell and Dr. Elizabeth Dehner are knocked unconscious. When they wake up, they begin to develop powerful mental abilities. When their powers reach frightening heights, it leads to a final confrontation. (This was the only time that the "R" was seen as Kirk's middle initial.)

Answer: James T. Kirk James R. Kirk is what appears on his tombstone in the episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before" - the rest I made up.

Answer: The salt vampire was impersonating him. Green and another security officer were dispatched to search for the missing Nancy Crater. The salt vampire, who had been impersonating Mrs. Crater, killed both security men and impersonated Green so it could go up to the Enterprise. Kirk and Spock later find Green's body on the planet's surface, but by then the salt vampire has abandoned Green's appearance. Crewman Green can be seen in "The Man Trap."

  From Quiz: He's dead, Jim!

Answer: 2245 2237 is Uhura's birth year, 2236 is Sulu's birth year, and 2233 is Kirk's birth year.

Answer: a peaceful silicon-based lifeform that feeds on rocks The episode is "Devil in the Dark" from series one. The Horta is a silicon based lifeform that lives on mining planet Janus VI and terrifies the miners by attacking them and... melting them into a heap of smoking goo. Kirk and his lot beam down, have a nosey and with the help of Spock's mind-meld strategy, work out that the Horta is attacking people because they are destroying its eggs during their mining. The episode ends with the crew of the Enterprise again managing to find a win-win situation for all parties. The Horta digs the tunnels, the miners mine, and everyone respects the other's space.

Answer: they eliminate the crew's sense of fear by injecting them with tranquillisers The alien feeds off people's fear, usually women's (because women are more afraid of men, of course...). When the alien tries to terrify the Enterprise crew by threatening to kill them, our team come up with the idea of injecting everyone with a tranquilliser to kill their fear. Kirk comments: "Well, Mr. Spock for the next five or six hours we're going to have the happiest crew in space... of course, we won't get much work done." Unfortunately, it also means he will have no-one to beam back down to the brothel with. Life is hard sometimes.

Answer: Vulcan and Human Spock's mother was a Human and his father was a Vulcan. Although Spock was half Human, he rarely ever showed his Human side.

Answer: Kirk goes alone to a different time Kirk ends up alone while Spock and McCoy end up in an ice age environment.

Answer: S. S. Antares Captain Ramart contacts Kirk to warn him about Charlie, but Charlie destroys his ship with his psionic powers.

Answer: "By Any Other Name" Yeah... in "By Any Other Name" (Second Season, Ep. 50), Kirk's ship has been hijacked by the Kelvans for a 300-year journey, he and his crew's lives have been threatened, all but four of his crew have been reduced to inanimate dodecahedrons, and the same fate for the rest of the crew is imminent... but hey... Kirk always can find some time for a little "wubba-wubba, ah-ooooooo-gah, gitchy-gitchy"... in fact, it's the only way to save the ship! Kelvan hijacker Kelinda is played terrifically by Barbara Bouchet. The other three choices were from the third season. In "Wink Of An Eye", Kirk undoubtedly slept with Deela. In "The Paradise Syndrome", Kirk actually marries Miramanee. In "That Which Survives", the crew is confronted by the beautiful, but deadly projection, Losira.

Answer: just outside Moscow In "The Apple", the landing party marveled at the beauty of the planet Gamma Trianguli VI, comparing it to the legendary Garden of Eden. This led Chekov to claim its location was near Moscow. FAST FACT: During news coverage of Second Gulf War in 2003, I learned that the Garden of Eden was reputed to be near the city of Basrah, Iraq.

Answer: 892-IV Planet 892-IV was so similar to Earth, the only difference was the shapes of the continental land masses! The inhabitants of this planet were very human-like and their society was a modern-day version of ancient Rome.

Answer: Because he looked like David Jones Walter Koenig's character was created to appeal to young teenage girls, because of his similar appearance to David Jones from 'the Monkees.' To confirm this answer, please check out 'Inside Star Trek The Real Story' by Solow and Justman Page 343. It is rumored that Roddenberry wanted a Russian on the bridge crew due to criticism the show received from Pravda (the official Soviet Newspaper.)

Answer: Freedom

Things You Might Not Know About The Star Trek Franchise

12 minute read

By Nick Steinberg (@Nick_Steinberg)

Star Trek has consistently been one of the most innovative and inspiring properties in science-fiction for more than 50 years now. There are many excellent movies, TV shows, games, and books out there bearing the Star Trek brand and given the franchise’s longevity, it’s hardly surprising that there is also no shortage of fascinating behind-the-scenes stories revolving around it as well. Whether you’re a devoted Trekkie or a newcomer who has enjoyed the rebooted movie franchise so far, you’re sure to get a kick out of the following Star Trek facts.

In honor of Sir Patrick Stewart’s birthday, here are 25 lesser-known facts about the Star Trek franchise. Enjoy!

25. Nichelle Nichols Originally Quit After The First Season

Nichelle Nichols (Lieutenant Uhura) left her post on the U.S.S. Enterprise after the first season of Star Trek ended. Although Nichols’s role on the show is credited as the first black female character on television that wasn’t a stereotype, the actress wanted to leave to pursue a career as a Broadway singer. Fortunately, she was convinced to stay by none other than Martin Luther King. As Nichols revealed in a 2015 Reddit AMA , King basically told her that she had become a symbol for the black community and that if she left, the show’s producers would just replace her with a blonde, white actress. It looks like everything worked out for the best, as Nichols admits that she still “got to do a lot of singing after the series ended.”

24. Star Trek Featured The First Interracial Kiss On US Television

Star Trek has always been a franchise known for espousing progressive ideas, with one of its most envelope-pushing moments coming in original series’ season three episode “Plato’s Stepchildren.” The episode, which first aired in 1968, features the first scripted interracial kiss in US television history, as Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and Lt. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) end up locking lips. A white man kissing a black woman was still very taboo at the time, with the script actually calling for takes with and without the kiss. Shatner and Nichols reportedly flubbed every take that didn’t feature the kiss so that none of them could be used.

23. An Episode of ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ Was Banned In Ireland

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The High Ground,” Data mentions that Ireland was unified by terrorism in the year 2024. Seeing as how trouble was still very much brewing in Northern Ireland in 1990, the year the episode first aired, the BBC cut the line. Ireland’s RTE channel went even further, banning the episode altogether.

22. Ship Facts

The USS Enterprise owes its registry number NCC-1701 to Matt Jeffries, the art director for Star Trek: The Original Series , who was inspired by his service as a bomber pilot during WWII. “NCC” refers to twentieth-century aircraft registration codes, with the “N” representing an aircraft registered in the United States and the first “C” representing a civil aircraft (Jeffries added the second “C” because he thought it looked “neat”).

In the Star Trek universe, NCC stands for Naval Construct Contract, while USS is United State Ship. Jeffries’ reasoning behind the NCC designation was that in the future, any major space projects would likely be a combined international effort. As for the number 1701, it was chosen for two reasons: the first (01) ship of a 17th federation cruiser design, and the fact that the digits were unlikely to be misread like a 6 or 9.

21. Vulcan Anatomy

The most obvious differences between Vulcans and humans are the pointy ears and superior physical strength, but there are a number of other anatomical variations that separate Spock’s people from homo sapiens. First off, they have different teeth, such as anterior tricuspids. Their eyes also have built-in UV defense in the form of inner eyelids, which offer protection from the intensity of Vulcan’s sun. Speaking of heat, Vulcans can also survive days without water, an adaptation necessitated by their planet’s hot, arid climate. Additionally, the Vulcan heart is located where a human liver would normally be and also beats hundreds of times a minute. Oh and Vulcans don’t have an appendix.

20. Wrong Dates

Each episode of the original Star Trek starts with Captain Kirk recording an entry in his captain’s log, but what you may not have realized is that the dates he lists off aren’t based on our current Gregorian calendar. In fact, most of the stardates Kirk mentions were just arbitrary, created as window dressing to emphasize that the series was set in the future. That being said, later Star Trek series has made a point to be more consistent with stardates.

19. Not So Progressive After All

Star Trek is recognized for being a forward-thinking series, depicting a Utopian vision of humanity in which technology has helped improve all facets of society. Unfortunately, the original series was produced in the 1960s, so it was still subject to the same prejudices as everything else at that time. A good example of this is the fact that Gene Roddenberry initially cast his then-girlfriend (and later wife) Majel Barrett as Captain Pike’s first officer in the Star Trek pilot. However, NBC executives demanded that Barrett’s character be cut, as they felt that viewers would be unable to relate to such a powerful female character.

Judging by the fact that the newest series, Star Trek: Discovery , is led by such a woman in the form of Sonequa Martin-Green’s Star Fleet officer Michael Burnham, it’s clear that TV executives would have a difficult time getting away with such bold-faced sexism nowadays.

Another interesting fact about Majel Barrett Roddenberry is that at the time of her death in December 2008, she was the only actor to appear in every Star Trek incarnation up to that point, including the animated series. She even completed work on Star Trek (2009) before her death (she plays the voice of the Enterprise’s computer). Of course, Barrett Roddenberry doesn’t appear in Star Trek: Discovery but considering that series premiered nearly a decade after her death, that can hardly be helped.

17. Spock Can’t Do The Vulcan Salute

It may seem hard to believe, but it turns out that Zachary Quinto, who currently plays Spock in the rebooted film series, can’t do the Vulcan salute. Quinto discovered this during the filming of the first Star Trek (2009), which prompted director J.J. Abrams to glue Quinto’s fingers together so that he could do it correctly (after all, Spock just isn’t Spock without the salute!).

Funnily enough, it turns out that William Shatner couldn’t do it either. Every time he had to do the salute,  fishing line was tied to Shatner’s fingers to help him perform the gesture.

16. Teleportation Was Used To Cover Budget Constraints

Teleportation is integral to Star Trek as we know it, but it turns out that Gene Roddenberry and company didn’t include it because it looked cool; it was to hide the fact that the show’s budget couldn’t cover shots of the Enterprise landing on planets! For the record: teleportation is definitely cool, and more efficient than landing a ship anyway.

15. Eddie Murphy Was Almost Cast In ‘Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home’

Leonard Nimoy’s 1995 autobiography, I Am Spock , details the interesting story of how Eddie Murphy was almost cast in 1986’s Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home . Murphy was offered $1 million to take the job and a number of possible roles were developed for him. A few of the ones Nimoy mentions include a college professor studying whales, a con artist, and a “psychic investigator” TV host who tries to prove aliens are walking around on Earth. If you can’t imagine Eddie Murphy in any of these roles, that’s okay because neither could he. Murphy passed and made The Golden Child instead, but would later voice regrets over not taking the Star Trek job. – Source

14. Patrick Stewart Thought ‘The Next Generation’ Would Flop

Patrick Stewart, aka Captain Jean-Luc Picard, had every reason to expect that Star Trek: The Next Generation wouldn’t last long. After all, the original TV series was cancelled after only three seasons and many thought that the idea of reinventing the franchise with an entirely new cast was madness. “I really didn’t want this job,” Stewart told The Toronto Star back in 2013. “I was very clear about what to expect. Star Trek: The Next Generation was going to be an utter failure and I would be on my way back to England within a few months. I could make some money for the first time in my life, get a suntan and go home.” Seven seasons and almost as many movies later, it’s safe to say that Sir Patrick probably regrets having had those early reservations.

13. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan’s CGI Connection

1982’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is widely regarded as the greatest motion picture in the franchise’s history, but one of its lesser known distinctions is that it’s the first movie to feature a sequence that’s entirely computer generated. The sequence in question is the Genesis Device demonstration video, but what’s even more interesting is that the studio that put the scene together would later come to be known as Pixar. Yes, that Pixar .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52XlyMbxxh8

12. There are 721 Lens Flares In Star Trek (2009)

J.J. Abrams is quite infamous for his use of lens flare in his movies and although he’s shown much more restraint as of late, his 2009 Star Trek reboot is just riddled with lens flares — 721 to be exact. If your eyes can handle it, this video compiles every single one of them, because why not?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYgG9MhV5Q0

11. ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ Features Men With Skirts

Although the main male cast members opt out, you can spot some male crew members sporting skirts in the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation (they’re usually in the background). This is actually part of the show’s lore , as “a logical development, given the total equality of the sexes presumed to exist in the 24th century.” Well, we’ll know for sure in about 300 years or so.

10. Kirk Never Actually Says “Beam Me Up Scotty”

Although it’s one of the most well-recognized Star Trek quotes of all time, Kirk never actually says the words “Beam me up Scotty” in the entirety of the original Star Trek . However, he does come close several times , which probably explains why the quote has become so popular regardless. In the 1969 episode “The Savage Curtain,” Kirk says, “Scotty, beam us up fast!” and came even closer in the 1967 episode “This Side of Paradise” with “beam me up.” The closest Kirk ever came to saying the phrase was in Star Trek IV: The Journey Home , in which he says, “Scotty, beam me up.”

9. Malcolm McDowell Received Death Threats From Fans For Killing Kirk

Malcolm McDowell is arguably best known for his work in the Kubrick classic A Clockwork Orange , but Trekkies know him better as the man who killed Kirk … and some of them have never been able to forgive him for that, apparently. In the 1994 film Star Trek: Generations , McDowell played the villain Dr. Soran and during a confrontation with Kirk, the good captain ends up falling to his death from a metal catwalk. It’s a pretty lame death for such a legendary character, which seems to be part of the reason why McDowell has received so much venom. According to McDowell, he’s “ made his peace with the Trekkies ,” having shared “jeers and cheers” with them at various conventions.

8. The Enterprise Has A Bowling Alley

According to Star Trek Blueprints , the U.S.S. Enterprise has a full six-lane bowling alley on board; on Deck 21 to be exact. It even comes fully equipped with a “Refreshments Area” and a “Food and Beverages Preparation Facility.” Do you think Spock has ever bowled a perfect game?

7. Uhura’s First Name Wasn’t Revealed On Screen Until Star Trek (2009)

Before 2009, one may have understandably assumed that Lt. Uhura had no first name, as none had ever been given to her before that point. Finally, in the 2009 reboot, it was revealed that Uhura’s first name is Nyota, although the more dedicated fans out there likely already knew this thanks to DC Comics’ “Who’s Who in Star Trek,” which was released in 1987.

6. The Future Requires No Manscaping

One of the more entertaining bits of Star Trek lore is that men no longer have chest hair in the 23rd century. Creator Gene Roddenberry reportedly believed that there would be no chest hair in the future, which meant that William Shatner had to have his chest shaved by a studio barber every time he needed to appear shirtless on set.

Ironically, Vulcans were initially designed to have no chest hair, but Leonard Nimoy refused to shave. “They told me to shave my chest, that Vulcans didn’t have chest hair,” he explained, according to Trek Today . “Well, this Vulcan has chest hair. So they called Roddenberry. Gene was a big man, a former cop. He talked down to you like he was about to give you a citation. But I still refused, so they called my agent. They worked it out, but by then everyone hates me and Gene won’t talk to me.”

5. It Would Take You Two Weeks To Watch All Of Star Trek

If you’ve reached this point in your life without having seen much Star Trek, you’ll have quite a Herculean task in front of you if you’re looking to get caught up. If you were to sit down and watch every Star Trek episode, spin-off, and film, it would take you over two weeks to watch everything, without taking breaks. 336 hours of watching Star Trek … well, there are worse ways to spend two weeks!

4. Leonard Nimoy Invented The Vulcan Nerve Pinch

Leonard Nimoy is credited with bringing one of the most beloved characters in sci-fi to life in the original Star Trek series, but it turns out that the actor was also responsible for coming up with many of Spock’s traits himself. One such creation was the iconic Vulcan Pinch move, which Nimoy came up with while filming a scene that called for him to sneak up on an enemy and hit him over the head with a phaser. Recognizing that this didn’t really suit Spock’s style, Nimoy settled on the neck pinch, which would quickly become the character’s signature move.

3. The’ I Love Lucy’ Connection

A science fiction TV series such as  Star Trek was a risky venture in the 1960s that few production companies would take a chance on, but fortunately for Gene Roddenberry, his show had an unlikely believer in its corner. Lucille Balle, the star of I Love Lucy , had formed a production company called Desilu in 1950 with her estranged husband Desi Arnaz, and Star Trek was one of the pitches that would eventually find its way in front of her. Despite demands from other Desilu executives to pass on the series, Lucy took a chance on Star Trek because she recognized its potential. She made the call for a pilot and in November of 1964, production began. Unfortunately, Desilu was sold off a few years later to Paramount and the show was canceled, but it’s fair to say that Star Trek owes a significant debt to I Love Lucy of all places.

2. Chekov Was Inspired By The Monkees

If you were to put a young Davy Jones and Walter Koenig side-by-side, it may be hard to tell the two apart, which was what Star Trek’s producers were banking on when they cast Koenig as Pavel Chekov in the show’s second season. Jones was a member of the supremely popular band The Monkees at the time and Star Trek producers were hoping to capitalize on the enormous popularity of the band and their TV show by casting the mop-topped Koenig since he looked like a member of the band himself.

1. Shatner Was A Menace

It’s not exactly a startling revelation that William Shatner was a hard man to work with on the Star Trek set, but you may not know the specifics of why he was a bit of a nightmare to work with. Shatner has basically alienated every actor he worked with on the show, especially George Takei (Sulu). Shatner would frequently poach Takei’s lines and demand that Sulu’s screen time be cut down in favor of focusing more on himself and Leonard Nimoy’s Spock. He also managed to work a clause into his contract that ensured that he always had the most lines and that his name would be 10% bigger than anyone else’s in the opening credits. Oh, and Shatner has gone on record admitting that he’s never watched a single episode of the series … or anything he’s ever made, for that matter. A truly inspiring captain, indeed.

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Nick Steinberg (@Nick_Steinberg)

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20 Things You Didn't Know About Star Trek⁠: The Motion Picture (1979)

Deleted scenes, unused scripts, studio politics, and more tidbits about the first Star Trek movie.

More than forty years after its theatrical debut, Star Trek—The Motion Picture remains a divisive installment of the long-running franchise.

Harlan Ellison offered this assessment in 1980: "The saddening reality is simply that it is a dull film: an often boring film, a stultifyingly predictable film, a tragically average film."

Other reviewers have dismissed the movie with less eloquent descriptions than Ellison, calling it “The Slow-Motion Picture,” “The Motionless Picture, “The Motion Sickness,” and “Where Nomad Has Gone Before” (a reference to the original Star Trek episode “The Changeling,” the plot of which bares some resemblance to the film).

However, despite lukewarm reviews and a mixed response from fans, the movie was a box office smash. According to an analysis in Daily Variety, of the 103 million movie tickets purchased at the U.S. box office in December 1979, nearly one in four was for Star Trek—The Motion Picture.

In the years and decades since its initial release, there has also been a reassessment of the film’s merits in some circles. Mark A. Altman, author of many books about the franchise, recently called it “the most cinematic of the Star Trek films.” Bryan Fuller, co-creator of Star Trek: Discovery, has proclaimed it “a flawed masterpiece.” A search for “Star Trek—The Motion Picture Appreciation” will bring up multiple groups and forums online dedicated to the movie, each with thousands of members.

And yet, despite the decades of reviews, criticism, and reassessment (including a recut “Director’s Edition” of the film that was released on DVD in 2001), there are still many things most people don’t know about the making of the first Star Trek movie.

20. A Star Trek Theatrical Release Was Considered As Early As 1965

Following Star Trek’s cancellation in 1969, rumors and hopes of a motion picture or television revival immediately begin swirling, but talk of a theatrical Star Trek release can be traced back much earlier than the fan phenomenon it became in the 1970s.

After NBC rejected the first Star Trek pilot (“The Menagerie”) in 1965, Gene Roddenberry wrote to its star, Jeffrey Hunter, to propose bringing him back for a couple of days to expand the episode to theatrical length:

You will recall I mentioned to you during shooting that I felt there were things more important to both of us than budget. One result of this is we have an enormous investment in a project which can now be recouped in only one of two ways: (1) expansion of current footage via stock and long cutting into an "acceptable" motion picture, or (2) one day or two of shooting an additional action opening which can result in a fast, tightly cut, exciting film release.

An episode of Roddenberry’s previous television series, The Lieutenant, had been released in this manner internationally as “To Kill A Man” in 1964. Indeed, American television episodes were re-edited (sometimes with new footage) into “movies” for shows including Mission: Impossible, Custer, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Disneyland (specifically, Davy Crockett), Ramar of the Jungle, and The Untouchables.

These compilation films were mostly released overseas, but they were sometimes shown in the United States, too. Every actor on Star Trek had a “theatrical rate” built into their contract in case this happened—typically SAG minimum, although actors like William Shatner negotiated for more.

When NBC ordered a second pilot and Hunter decided not to continue with Star Trek, this idea appears to have been abandoned, but it was reconsidered later on. On June 20, 1967, Roddenberry wrote to Robert Coulson (an American science fiction writer and editor of the fanzine Yandro) about renewed possibilities following the sale of Desilu to Gulf+Western (owners of Paramount):

With Desilu now merging with Paramount Pictures there is some talk of releasing ["The Menagerie"] overseas as a motion picture and so it appears there is some chance that we may some day [sic] break even on the unusual costs involved in making two pilots.

In the same letter, Roddenberry offered budgetary aspirations that would be achieved more than forty times over when Star Trek—The Motion Picture was finally realized twelve years later:

All of us here would someday like to have the greater latitude permitted [by a] motion picture. The idea of having a million or more dollars in the budget is terribly appealing. Maybe someday.

Baseless rumors circulated during the run of the television series, too. On May 4, 1967, Science Fiction Times editor James Ashe sent a letter to Roddenberry asking about a rumored Star Trek movie. Apparently, author James Blish had mentioned the possibility at a recent convention, and Ashe wanted to know if the scoop was true. It certainly wouldn’t be the last time a fan queried Roddenberry for news about a Star Trek movie.

Michael is one of the founders of FACT TREK (www.facttrek.com), a project dedicated to untangling 50+ years of mythology about the original Star Trek and its place in TV history. He currently is the Director of Sales and Digital Commerce at Shout! Factory, where he has worked since 2014. From 2013-2018, he ran the popular Star Trek Fact Check blog (www.startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com).

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Star Trek: The Original Series facts for kids

Star Trek is a science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry that aired from September 8, 1966 to September 2, 1969. Though the original series was just called Star Trek , it got the nickname Star Trek: The Original Series ( ST:TOS or TOS ) to make it different from the spinoffs , and from the Star Trek universe or franchise they take up. Set in the 23rd century , the first Star Trek follows the adventures of the starship USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) and its crew, led by Captain James T. Kirk ( William Shatner ), his First Officer Mr. Spock ( Leonard Nimoy ), and his Chief Medical Officer Leonard McCoy ( DeForest Kelley ). William Shatner's voice-over introduction during each episode's opening credits stated the starship's purpose:

Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise . Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before.

Early Years

Related pages, images for kids.

When Star Trek first came on NBC in 1966, it was not successful to begin; ratings were low and advertising revenue was very little. Even at the end of the first season of Star Trek , there were already calls in the network to cancel the series due to its low Nielsen ratings . Bay Area Creature Features host John Stanley in his memoir I Was a TV Horror Host relates how Desilu head Lucille Ball at that time "single handedly" kept Star Trek from being removed from the NBC-TV lineup."

Close to the end of the second season the show was still in danger of being canceled. Its fans succeeded in giving it a third season; but NBC moved the show to the "Friday night death slot" at 10 PM. Star Trek was finally canceled at the end of the third season, making 79 episodes in total. However, this was enough for the show to be stripped in syndication, allowing it to become very popular and gather a large cult following during the 1970s. After the success of the program, five additional television series and eleven movies, including the newest movie Star Trek , which came out in May 2009. Guinness World Records lists the original Star Trek as having more spin-offs than any other television show in history .

James T. Kirk

Leonard McCoy

Montgomery Scott

Pavel Chekov

Christine Chapel

Janice Rand

While still casting the roles, Gene Roddenberry did not mandate Bones McCoy and Spock be male. According to Nichelle Nichols, "They gave me a three-page script to read from that had three characters named Bones, Kirk and somebody called Spock, and they asked me if I would read for the role of Spock. When I looked at this great text, I said to myself, 'I'll take any one of these roles,' but I found the Spock character to be very interesting, and I asked them to tell me what she [Spock] was like."

It was intended that Sulu's role be expanded in the second season, but owing to Takei's part in John Wayne's The Green Berets , he appeared in only half the season, his role being filled by Walter Koenig as the relatively young, mop-topped Russian navigator Ensign Pavel Chekov . When Takei returned, the two had to share a dressing room. The two appeared together at the Enterprise helm for the remainder of the series. There may be some truth to the unofficial story that the Soviet Union 's newspaper Pravda complained that among the culturally diverse characters there were no Russians, seen as a personal slight to that country since the Soviet Russian Yuri Gagarin had been the first man to make a spaceflight. Gene Roddenberry said in response that "The Chekov thing was a major error on our part, and I'm still embarrassed by the fact we didn't include a Russian right from the beginning." However, documentation from Desilu suggests that the intention was to introduce a character into Star Trek with more appeal to teenaged girls. Walter Koenig noted in the 2006 40th anniversary special of Star Trek: The Original Series that he doubted the rumor about Pravda , since Star Trek had never been shown on Soviet television. It has also been claimed that the former member of The Monkees , Davy Jones , was the model for Mr. Chekov.

In addition, the series frequently included characters (usually security personnel wearing red uniforms) who are killed or injured soon after their introduction. So prevalent was this plot device that it inspired the term "redshirt" to denote a stock character whose sole purpose is to die violently in order to show the danger facing the main characters.

Nathan Jung was a stuntman in this series.

• Star Trek: The Next Generation
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
• Star Trek: Voyager

The original starship Enterprise

William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk in action, from the episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before", 1966

Title used for the first season

Spock , Kirk and the Enterprise , 1968.

"Spock's Brain" was the first episode of the third season.

Promotional photo of the cast of Star Trek during the third season (1968–1969). From left to right: James Doohan , Walter Koenig , DeForest Kelley , Majel Barrett , William Shatner , Nichelle Nichols , Leonard Nimoy , and George Takei .

The Captains, together in London at Destination Star Trek

• This page was last modified on 18 December 2023, at 13:01. Suggest an edit .

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19 facts about star trek.

Written by Jill Matheson

Modified & Updated: 06 Mar 2024

Reviewed by Jessica Corbett

Star Trek, a groundbreaking science fiction franchise, has captured the imaginations of audiences worldwide for over five decades. From its humble beginnings on television to its expansion into films, spin-offs, and a dedicated fanbase, Star Trek has left an indelible mark on popular culture. The franchise, created by Gene Roddenberry, is renowned for its futuristic vision, compelling characters, and thought-provoking exploration of societal issues. As we delve into 19 fascinating facts about Star Trek, we'll uncover the intricate web of creativity, innovation, and influence that has propelled this iconic series to the forefront of the sci-fi genre. Join us on a journey through the cosmos of Star Trek, where we'll encounter remarkable trivia, behind-the-scenes anecdotes, and a deep dive into the enduring legacy of this beloved universe. Boldly go where no one has gone before as we uncover the captivating secrets and enduring appeal of Star Trek.

Key Takeaways:

• Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry, has inspired real-world technology and a passionate fan community, showcasing the enduring impact of its visionary storytelling and diverse characters.
• With its timeless message of unity and exploration, Star Trek continues to inspire hope for a better future, transcending generations and inviting viewers of all ages to boldly explore the frontiers of imagination.

Star Trek was created by Gene Roddenberry.

Gene Roddenberry, a visionary writer and producer, conceived the groundbreaking science fiction series, Star Trek. His innovative approach to storytelling and his aspiration for a utopian future resonated with audiences worldwide. The show's exploration of social issues through the lens of space exploration captivated viewers and left an indelible mark on popular culture.

The first episode of Star Trek aired on September 8, 1966.

Titled "The Man Trap," the inaugural episode of Star Trek introduced audiences to the iconic characters of Captain James T. Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy. The show's debut marked the beginning of a cultural phenomenon that continues to thrive to this day.

The USS Enterprise is a central element of the Star Trek franchise.

The USS Enterprise, NCC-1701, served as the primary setting for the original Star Trek series. This starship, under the command of Captain Kirk, embarked on numerous interstellar adventures, solidifying its status as an enduring symbol of exploration and discovery.

The Klingon language was developed for Star Trek.

Marc Okrand, a linguist, created the Klingon language, known as "tlhIngan Hol," for the Star Trek films. This constructed language has gained a dedicated following, with enthusiasts worldwide learning to speak and write in Klingon.

Leonard Nimoy's iconic portrayal of Mr. Spock popularized the Vulcan salute.

Leonard Nimoy's portrayal of the logical and stoic Mr. Spock endeared him to fans, and his use of the Vulcan salute, accompanied by the phrase "Live long and prosper," became a beloved symbol of the Star Trek franchise.

Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered in 1987.

This sequel series introduced a new generation of characters and continued to explore the vast reaches of space, garnering a dedicated fan base and expanding the Star Trek universe.

The Star Trek film franchise has produced numerous blockbuster movies.

Since the release of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" in 1979, the film franchise has captivated audiences with its epic storytelling, dazzling visual effects, and enduring themes of unity and exploration.

The Star Trek fandom is known for its passionate and dedicated community.

Trekkies, as Star Trek enthusiasts are affectionately called, have formed a vibrant and inclusive community, celebrating the franchise through conventions, fan fiction, and charitable activities.

Star Trek has inspired real-world technological advancements.

The series' futuristic technology, including communicators, tricorders, and replicators, has influenced the development of modern devices such as smartphones, medical scanners, and 3D printers, showcasing the impact of science fiction on real-world innovation.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine broke new ground with its serialized storytelling.

This spin-off series diverged from the episodic format of its predecessors, embracing long-form storytelling and complex character arcs, setting a new standard for narrative depth within the Star Trek universe.

Star Trek: Voyager featured the first female lead character in a Star Trek series.

Captain Kathryn Janeway, portrayed by Kate Mulgrew, became a trailblazing figure in the franchise, embodying strength, intelligence, and compassion as she led her crew through uncharted territories in the Delta Quadrant.

The Borg, a cybernetic alien species, made their memorable debut in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

This formidable adversary, known for their catchphrase "Resistance is futile," left an indelible mark on the Star Trek mythos, embodying the relentless pursuit of technological perfection at the cost of individuality.

Star Trek: Enterprise delved into the early history of space exploration.

Set before the formation of the United Federation of Planets, this series chronicled humanity's first ventures into deep space, laying the groundwork for the future alliances and conflicts depicted in the original Star Trek series.

Star Trek: Discovery introduced a diverse and compelling cast of characters.

With its emphasis on inclusivity and representation, Star Trek: Discovery showcased a diverse ensemble, reflecting the franchise's commitment to portraying a multitude of perspectives and experiences.

The Star Trek reboot films brought a fresh perspective to the franchise.

Directed by J.J. Abrams, the reboot films revitalized the Star Trek universe for a new generation, blending action-packed sequences with the enduring camaraderie of the iconic characters.

Star Trek: Picard marked the return of the legendary Jean-Luc Picard.

Sir Patrick Stewart reprised his role as Jean-Luc Picard in this series, offering fans a poignant exploration of the beloved character's later years and his continued dedication to the principles of Starfleet.

Star Trek continues to inspire hope for a better future.

Through its enduring themes of unity, exploration, and the triumph of the human spirit, Star Trek remains a source of optimism and inspiration, reminding audiences of the boundless potential for progress and understanding in the cosmos.

The Star Trek legacy extends across multiple mediums.

From television and film to literature, video games, and beyond, the Star Trek franchise continues to expand its narrative tapestry, inviting audiences to embark on voyages of imagination and discovery across various storytelling platforms.

Star Trek's impact transcends generations.

With its timeless message of embracing diversity, fostering empathy, and striving for a harmonious future, Star Trek has left an indelible legacy that resonates across generations, inviting viewers of all ages to boldly explore the frontiers of imagination and possibility.

In conclusion, the "19 Facts About Star Trek" showcase the enduring legacy and cultural impact of this iconic franchise, which continues to inspire and captivate audiences with its boundless spirit of exploration and its unwavering commitment to envisioning a future where humanity's potential knows no bounds.

In conclusion, Star Trek has left an indelible mark on popular culture, captivating audiences with its visionary storytelling, compelling characters, and thought-provoking themes. The franchise's enduring legacy is a testament to its ability to inspire imagination and foster a sense of unity among fans worldwide. As we continue to explore the final frontier alongside the iconic crew of the USS Enterprise, the impact of Star Trek on the realms of science fiction and beyond remains unparalleled.

What is the significance of the USS Enterprise in Star Trek? The USS Enterprise serves as a central element in the Star Trek franchise, symbolizing exploration, discovery, and the boundless potential of humanity's future in space. As the flagship vessel of Starfleet, it embodies the spirit of adventure and represents the enduring optimism of the series.

How has Star Trek influenced science fiction and popular culture? Star Trek has profoundly influenced the science fiction genre and popular culture as a whole, introducing groundbreaking concepts such as warp drive, universal translators, and diverse representation in media. Its impact extends to inspiring real-world technological advancements and fostering a global community of devoted fans.

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Our commitment to delivering trustworthy and engaging content is at the heart of what we do. Each fact on our site is contributed by real users like you, bringing a wealth of diverse insights and information. To ensure the highest standards of accuracy and reliability, our dedicated editors meticulously review each submission. This process guarantees that the facts we share are not only fascinating but also credible. Trust in our commitment to quality and authenticity as you explore and learn with us.

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Published Apr 10, 2024

A Brief History of the Progenitors in Star Trek

They designed life itself!

SPOILER WARNING: This article contains story details and plot points for Star Trek: Discovery 's "Red Directive ."

StarTrek.com

Captain Burnham's top-secret mission in the final season of Star Trek: Discovery has finally been revealed. But this time, the Discovery crew isn’t stopping a future-destroying A.I., or a lethal, extra-galactic force. Instead, they’re investigating the basic mysteries of why most species in the Star Trek universe look vaguely human.

As revealed in " Red Directive ," the search for technology used by ancient "Progenitors" sets-up a massive treasure hunt for the season. But, who are the Progenitors? What did Jean-Luc Picard know about the secrets of inter-species alien DNA? And how does all of this fit in with Gene Roddenberry’s earliest ideas for Star Trek ?

Here’s a brief history of the Progenitors, from the early 1960s, to the 24th Century, all the way to 2024, and the 31st Century.

The Real World-Origins of the Progenitors

"The Cage"

When the U.S.S. Enterprise first set out to seek out "new life and new civilizations," a huge swath of those alien lifeforms turned out to look a lot like human beings. And the primary reason for that, at least behind-the-scenes, was two-fold.

First, human actors are more affordable, and second, Gene Roddenberry wanted the classic Star Trek to avoid the sci-fi trope of "Bug-Eyed Monsters." And so, in one of the original 1964 pitch documents for Star Trek , Roddenberry floated the idea of "The Parallel Worlds" concept . The idea was that the format of Star Trek — from a writing and production standpoint — would generally deal with "...plant and animal life, plus people, quite similar to Earth. Social evolution will also have interesting points of similarity with ours."

Unlike a huge swath of science fiction on TV at the time, the promise of strange, new worlds, that were, in fact, populated by people , is something that set Star Trek apart, and was the cornerstone of what gave the series its humanist angle. But, the side effect of course, was an in-universe question — why were so many aliens humanoid?

The Old Ones, Sargon, and The Preservers

"The Paradise Syndrome"

The first two seasons of The Original Series are sprinkled with hints that, in the distant past, the galaxy was visited by super-powered aliens with technology far more advanced than anything in the Federation.

In " What Are Little Girls Made Of? ," we meet Ruk, an android built by "The Old Ones," an alien race capable of creating humanoid androids that were basically immortal. In " Return to Tomorrow ," the disembodied soul of Sargon, refers to humanity as "my children." While Dr. Muhuall says this idea flies in the face of evolutionary theory, Spock mentions the idea that aliens seeded life would "explain certain elements of Vulcan pre-history."

Then in Season 3, in " The Paradise Syndrome ," Bones and Spock tackle the question head-on. When they realize an ancient race of "Preservers" helped various humanoid species throughout the galaxy, the idea of an ancient alien race guiding and "seeding" a ton of humanoid species became less of a myth and more of a working theory. "I’ve always wondered why there were so many humanoids scattered through the galaxy," Bones says. To which Spock replies, "So have I. Apparently, the Preservers account for a number of them."

And then, the questions about an ancient humanoid species went answered. At least, until The Next Generation . 

"The Chase"

Directed by Jonathan Frakes and written by Ronald D. Moore and Joe Menosky, " The Chase " was a sixth-season episode of The Next Generation , which, according to The Next Generation Companion , was considered in the writers' room the most "Roddenberryesque" episode of TNG at that time. The story itself took cues from Carl Sagan's novel Contact , and posited that yes, ancient aliens not only seeded most of the humanoid species, but also hid a message in the DNA of all those species.

Captain Picard's interest in archeology comes in handy during the quest to locate all the DNA strands and reveal the message, which was also represented metaphorically by the ancient artifact known as the Kurlan naiskos .

At the end of the episode, representatives from the Klingon Empire, the Romulan Empire, the Cardassian Union, and the Federation, all witness the truth — an ancient Progenitor (played by Salome Jens) makes it clear that all the humanoid species in the galaxy don’t exist out of pure hubris, but instead, out of a kind of desire for legacy. "You are a monument, not to our greatness, but to our existence…. Remember us."

Ronald D. Moore pointed out that there's no reason to believe that the Progenitors from "The Chase" and the Preservers from TOS aren't one in the same. Though not explicitly stated in the script, he said, "But this could be them, and be internally consistent."

Discovery Brings It All Home

"Red Directive"

While The Next Generation established a canonical fact that TOS only danced around, that only answered the question of why . With Discovery Season 5, a stranger, and more complex question is getting broached — how ?

"The Chase" told us why there are so many humanoid species in the galaxy, but we had no idea how the Progenitors specifically pushed life to evolve on various planets toward the exact form of life we’re all so familiar with. As the crew of Discovery — and other forces — are in pursuit of this ancient tech, Star Trek is boldly speculating on one of the biggest questions of all time.

If there was a supreme intelligence behind the creation of life, what was their method? While these kinds of questions are somewhat mind-boggling in real life, what Discovery is doing now is what Star Trek has done all along: Ask provocative questions that are beyond what we know now, so that maybe, in the future, we’ll be better prepared.

We don’t know that the Progenitors exist in real science, but the "panspermia hypothesis," is a very real scientific concept. A friendly alien may not have consciously sparked life on Earth eons ago, but, in reality, it is possible that some building blocks for life itself may have come from the stars.

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Ryan Britt is the author of the nonfiction books Phasers on Stun! How the Making and Remaking of Star Trek Changed the World (2022), The Spice Must Flow: The Journey of Dune from Cult Novels to Visionary Sci-Fi Movies (2023), and the essay collection Luke Skywalker Can’t Read (2015). He is a longtime contributor to Star Trek.com and his writing regularly appears with Inverse, Den of Geek!, Esquire and elsewhere. He lives in Portland, Maine with his family.

Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-4 are streaming exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S., the UK, Canada, Switzerland, South Korea, Latin America, Germany, France, Italy, Australia and Austria. Seasons 2 and 3 also are available on the Pluto TV “Star Trek” channel in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. The series streams on Super Drama in Japan, TVNZ in New Zealand, and SkyShowtime in Spain, Portugal, Poland, The Nordics, The Netherlands, and Central and Eastern Europe and also airs on Cosmote TV in Greece. The series is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

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The Long-Lost Original Star Trek Enterprise Model Is Heading Home

After going missing from gene roddenberry's collection half a century ago, the very first model of the starship enterprise is back in his family's hands..

It was our first look at the vision of Star Trek ’s future: the original ship model of the USS Enterprise that zoomed across screens in the show’s opening credits. But after being loaned out during the making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture , it had gone missing... until now.

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After, bizarrely, it randomly turned up on eBay last fall—the first time it had been seen publicly since it had gone missing —the original model of the Enterprise made for the Star Trek pilot “The Cage” and shooting its opening titles sequences is now back in the hands of the Roddenberry estate. After the eBay seller quickly learned just what they had their hands on, the model was handed over to Heritage Auctions for authentication, and when it was confirmed to be the long-lost Trek icon , held in storage until it could be handed over to Rod Roddenberry this past weekend. “After five decades, I’m thrilled that someone happened upon this historic model of the USS Enterprise . I remember how it used to adorn my dad’s desk,” Roddenberry said in a statement provided over email. “I am tremendously grateful to Heritage Auctions for facilitating the return of this iconic piece of Star Trek history to my family.”

The original model served as the prototype for what would become the primary original 11-foot shooting model of the Enterprise , which has had a similarly long and winding history on display at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum —it was damaged, then tweaked in an a restoration that was ultimately undone to restore it to its original glory just in time for Trek ’s 50th anniversary back in 2014. Like its successor, the newly recovered model will find a life outside of a private collection: Roddenberry Entertainment intends to put it on public display.

“I can’t wait to figure out how we are going to share it with my extended family, Star Trek fans around the world,” Roddenberry’s statement concluded. “We look forward to making that announcement.”

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel , Star Wars , and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV , and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who .

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Star Trek: 10 Facts About Spock You Probably Didn’t Know (Or Forgot)

E ver since the original series debuted in the '60s, Star Trek has been one of the most beloved and passionately followed sci-fi franchises in the world. It's come a long way since its humble roots and has burgeoned into a full-out media franchise encompassing movies, animated shows, comics, toys and all kinds of other merchandise.

Over its history, the franchise has featured a stunning array of characters, including everything from humans to robots, androids, and a wide range of fascinating alien races. Among those races, Vulcans are particularly close to the hearts of Trekkies everywhere, and it's obvious why.

As the most famous among them, Spock has been a fan-favorite since the beginning, and remains one of the most recognizable and beloved characters from it. His appeal comes from his inherently fascinating attributes and character arcs.

Throughout Spock's history on Star Trek , there are many weird and wonderful facts about him that added to his overall allure. While hardcore Trekkies might know some of these, here are 10 facts about Spock that aren't that well known by most people.

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Spock Was Almost Cut From the Pilot

Release Date 1966-09-08

Cast Majel Barrett, Nichelle Nichols, Walter Koenig, William Shatner, George Takei, Leonard Nimoy, Deforest Kelley, James Doohan

Main Genre Action

Genres Sci-Fi, Action, Adventure

Created by Gene Roddenberry back in 1966, when the original and now iconic Star Trek TV series first aired, it was uncertain how all the legendary characters were going to be received by audiences. Back then, when the TV industry and society in general were a lot more conservative, NBC executives were afraid Spock's pointy ears, unique eyebrows, and overall strange appearance made him look too satanic .

A Close Shave

Thankfully, the show's producer, Oscar Katz, helped convince them to keep the character, as envisioned, with his satanic ears and all. Despite allowing it, early publicity shots for the show airbrushed his pointed ears and weirdly shaped eyebrows out just to be on the safe side. Now that the character is so well-loved, it's hard to imagine that he almost wasn't included at all.

Spock Almost Lost His Ears

Star trek: the animated series.

Release Date 1973-09-08

Cast Majel Barrett, Nichelle Nichols, William Shatner, George Takei, Leonard Nimoy, Deforest Kelley, James Doohan

Main Genre Animation

Genres Animation, Sci-Fi

Those same ears that were so contentious became iconic, although Leonard Nimoy himself, who immortalized the role for decades, wasn't thrilled about them. He reportedly didn't like having to sit through the process of attaching them each time, a process that took a lot longer back then, since prosthetics weren't as advanced as they are now and CGI was far from being a thing.

Related: Star Trek 4: Plot, Cast, Release Date, and Everything Else We Know

Leonard Nimoy Almost Chose to Get Rid of the Ears

The story goes that since Nimoy hated the process so much in the beginning, one of the producers told him if he still didn't like them after a while, by episode 10 or 12, they could write it into the script that Spock gets an 'ear job.' If it happened, Dr. McCoy would have performed surgery on Spock to have them removed. Again, thankfully, this never happened, and the character and Nimoy eventually became iconic for those distinctive ears .

Leonard Nimoy Was Responsible for the Vulcan Salute

Star trek: the motion picture.

Release Date 1979-12-07

Director Robert Wise

Cast Majel Barrett, William Shatner, George Takei, Leonard Nimoy, Deforest Kelley, James Doohan

Genres Mystery, Sci-Fi, Adventure

The now famous Vulcan salute that Spock first used in season two of the original show has become a mainstay of the franchise, frequently used with the famous catchphrase, "Live long and prosper." Now also a Trekkie salute, it's become a ritual among fans, and has had a huge cultural impact on the franchise. What you may not know is that Leonard Nimoy himself was responsible for its inclusion in the show.

A "Hand-Oriented" People

The salute's popularity has seen it being used across the series, other shows, and films, and is notoriously hard to do, given that not everyone has the same manual dexterity. Nimoy, of course, does it perfectly, and it was he who first devised the idea for the character, stating in a 1968 interview with the New York Times that he wanted the Vulcans to be "hand-oriented people."

The Salute is Jewish

Star trek 2: the wrath of khan.

Release Date 1982-06-04

Director Nicholas Meyer

Cast Walter Koenig, William Shatner, George Takei, Leonard Nimoy, Deforest Kelley, James Doohan

While the salute went on to become synonymous with Star Trek and Spock, it wasn't a fictional gesture and actually has Jewish roots . Leonard Nimoy, who himself was Jewish, would go on to confirm that he got the idea from a time when he once witnessed it during a type of benediction done by a Jewish Kohanim (Hebrew Priest), and represents the Hebrew letter 'Shin' (ש) .

An International Symbol

Despite its religious underpinnings, thanks to Nimoy, it's now also an international symbol for Star Trek fans everywhere too. It's become iconic, with ardent Trekkies considering it an almost shameful thing to not be able to do it properly. Here's a clip of Nimoy himself retelling the story of its origin:

Spock Was Originally Supposed to Look Very Different

Star trek iii: the search for spock.

Release Date 1984-06-01

Director Leonard Nimoy

Genres Sci-Fi, Thriller, Action, Adventure

We've already mentioned how close Spock came to not being included in the show. Since his physical appearance became such a contentious issue, there were initially various iterations of the character that did the rounds during the creative processes that went into his design. Had one of the others made the final cut, it would have resulted in a very different Spock than we know now.

Spock With Red Skin and a Tail

Gene Roddenberry knew that Spock was going to be an alien, but also insisted that he have a distinctive appearance as well. The idea for the look went through various stages, and while the classic Spock look won the day, in one version, he was originally supposed to have red skin , which would have made for a vastly different character than the one we know.

As MeTv explains , he was also supposed to have other features like a tail (even more Satanic than the ears), and to speak very differently too:

Additionally, this devil-Spock was designed to have a heavy brow, and speak with a British accent. At one point, Roddenberry flirted with the idea of casting a little person in the role, to "make him stand out." The devil idea was eventually ditched as the network feared the look would not go over well with religious viewers.

Nimoy Was Far From the First Choice

Star trek iv: the voyage home.

Release Date 1986-11-26

Genres Sci-Fi, Adventure

Leonard Nimoy's death in 2015 saddened fans of Star Trek everywhere. He had become so iconic for the role of Spock that his passing was a huge loss for the franchise and fans of sci-fi in general.

Having epitomized the character for so long, despite Zachary Quinto proving to be a very able and likable recasting choice when the films were rebooted, it felt like Nimoy had been born for the role. That was why it may surprise people to know that he wasn't the first choice to play the character.

Batman Was Almost Spock

The original choice to play Spock was actually DeForest Kelley , who played the original Dr. McCoy instead. In fact, Nimoy wasn't even the second, since Roddenberry considered the 1960s Batman, Adam West , for the role, and even, Nichelle Nichols (Nyota Uhura). In the end, it went to Nimoy — and the rest is sci-fi history.

Spock Almost Had Emotions

Star trek v: the final frontier.

Release Date 1989-06-09

Director William Shatner

Cast Nichelle Nichols, Walter Koenig, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Deforest Kelley, James Doohan

Spock has become famous for the fact that he's a Vulcan, and so, has been bred to place logic above emotion. Of course, we also now that he's half human, and famously does often show snippets of emotion in some very poignant ways.

A Smiling and Emotional Spock

Despite the most famous part of Vulcan nature being their cold logic and lack of emotion, the character was originally envisioned to be very different. In fact, he was originally supposed to have emotions.

In the original pilot titled "The Cage," Spock had very human-like emotions , and even smiled a lot. The image change became a culturally significant part of the character's persona , with his lack of emotion famously being the main reason why the famous character Sheldon Coooper from The Big Bang Theory, adored the Spock so much.

Release Date 2009-05-06

Director J.J. Abrams

Cast Eric Bana, Bruce Greenwood, Zachary Quinto, Leonard Nimoy, Chris Pine, Karl Urban

Rating PG-13

Spock's full Vulcan name has been revealed to be S'chn T'gai Spock . However, in an episode of the show titled "The Side of Paradise," he mentions that humans can't pronounce it. While there's been debate around the name provided, the unpronounceable surname has never been conclusively confirmed on-screen.

"Xtmprsqzntwlfd"

Despite all the mystery and fascination around Spock's surname, writer and story editor D.C. Fontana, who worked on the original show, revealed to a Star Trek fan magazine that it was meant to be "Xtmprsqzntwlfd." If you can't pronounce it, that's by design — according to Fontana, it was created to deliberately be something we can't pronounce.

Spock Was a Ladies Man

Star trek beyond.

Release Date 2016-07-07

Director Justin Lin

Cast Sofia Boutella, Zoe Saldana, Chris Pine, Simon Pegg, Idris Elba, Shohreh Aghdashloo

While audiences of today may not realize it, William Shatner was once a sex symbol, and the original Star Trek show envisioned his character being the focal point to attract female viewers. However, in an unexpected twist, the original show wound up seeing that honor go to Spock instead.

Related: Star Trek: The Next Generation Writer Fought TNG Producer’s Idiotic Rule in Order to Mention Mr. Spock’s Name

He Received Thirst Mail

Despite his unusual appearance as the character, the original viewing audience for the show were mostly interested in Spock , especially among women. According to Leonard Nimoy, he would actually get tons of thirst mail from female fans of Spock ever since the show first began broadcasting.

Spock Once Defeated Wolverine

Star trek: strange new worlds.

Release Date 2022-05-05

Cast Ethan Peck, Rebecca Romijn, Christina Chong, Anson Mount

Studio CBS Television, Roddenberry Entertainment, Secret Hideout, Paramount+

Given the amount of crossover events between famous comic characters and other franchises, it was only a matter of time before Star Trek crossed paths with famous Marvel or DC characters. When that happened, it made for two epic moments when Marvel's X-Men tussled with two different Enterprise crews from Star Trek — Captain Kirk's, and Captain Picard's.

Wolverine Got Nerve-Pinched

In the comic event when the X-Men encounter Captain Kirk's crew, Wolverine and the other X-Men manage to get aboard the Enterprise , and the famous mutant gets into a fight with Spock. Despite all his superior strength and speed, Wolverine was no match for the Vulcan. In a somewhat hilarious moment, Spock disabled Wolverine by using his famous Vulcan nerve pinch on him.

The moment was just one of the many iconic ones the character has experienced over his long and storied history in the franchise. While Leonard Nimoy was the original and will always be the most beloved, Zachary Quinto has grown his own set of fans, and will likely return in the upcoming fourth film of the so-called "Kelvin Timeline."

On the other hand, Ethan Peck has proven to be another worthy actor to pick up the mantle since he began portraying Spock in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

Despite how many actors play him, it is the character himself who remains immortal, a true legend of the franchise, and one who will always be a fan-favorite.

Here are some stills depicting the various renditions of the character across film and TV so far:

• April 18, 2024 | Recap/Review: ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Gets The Timing Right In “Face The Strange”
• April 17, 2024 | Watch: Things Get “Odd” In ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Trailer And Clip From “Face The Strange”
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• April 16, 2024 | See The Organians Return In Preview Of ‘Star Trek’ #19

Paramount Pictures Officially Confirms Star Trek Origin Movie For Its Upcoming Film Slate

| April 11, 2024 | By: Anthony Pascale 238 comments so far

Today, the road to the next Star Trek feature film took a small but significant step towards becoming reality.

Paramount makes it official

Earlier this year, it was reported that Paramount Pictures was developing a new Star Trek feature film in parallel development to the “Star Trek 4” sequel to 2016’s Star Trek Beyond . Today the studio made the reports official as they announced their slate of films for 2025 and 2026, an official list which includes what Paramount is now calling “Untitled Star Trek Origin Story.” The studio also confirms the previously reported details: The film is “set decades before the original 2009 Star Trek film.” Toby Haynes ( Andor , Black Mirror “USS Callister”) is directing based on a screenplay by Seth Grahame-Smith ( The Lego Batman Movie ), with J.J. Abrams returning as producer.

The Star Trek movie was just one of many the studio confirmed as part of their 2025/2026 slate at their CinemaCon presentation today. Paramount Pictures CEO Brian Robbins led the studio’s presentation at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. This is the first time Star Trek has been part of the studio’s annual CinemaCon event since Robbins took over in 2021.

The “Star Trek 4” sequel to Beyond was not part of today’s CinemaCon presentation, presumably because with the recent hiring of a new screenwriter , that film would not be ready for theaters by 2026. It has also been reported that the origin story movie is set to start filming by the end of the year. There are no details yet on the plot, specific time setting, or cast. If Paramount can move fast enough they could get the origin movie into theaters by 2026—in time for Star Trek’s 60th anniversary.

Find more news and analysis on  upcoming Star Trek feature films .

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Fool me once … ( also I want a movie but until someone gets a set built I’m not holding my breath )

I’m not pre-ordering my tickets…..

You would need a title and a premiere date to order tickets. This film has neither.

I’d wait to believe it until you actually see a movie trailer for it. Noah Hawley was in the casting stage when they cancelled his Trek movie. They might have even started on the sets.

The film is on Noah’s IMDB Credits list…

Yep. I heard ferries exist too!

Car ferries?

Even now, it potentially doesn’t matter. They could pull a Zaslav and shelve the film after it was all but released.

I won’t believe it until my butt is in the theater seat and the film starts playing.

We don’t need the origin story. We have it already. It was called “Enterprise”.

I didn’t realize there was such a large interest in a Star Trek origin movie. It’s their money to burn.

I still believe this is their way of rebooting the “prime” universe from the beginning and remaking it in a new image. I see no other point of doing an origin movie. First Contact and Star trek: Enterprise were origin enough IMO.

I don’t quite get it either. We already got that with First Contact and Enterprise. What else is there that could interest the general public.

Yeah, and for me, the period between First Contact and Enterprise just doesn’t seem that exciting. The period between Enterprise and the Nero incursion would be more interesting, I guess.

They wrote that the origin film would be “set decades before the original 2009 Star Trek film”. That film (in-universe) is set in 2233 (Nero incursion) and 2258 (main plot) respectively. So “decades before” would be after Enterprise, probably after the formation of the Federation, most probably before the Nero incursion, maybe around the turn of the century.

It’s just odd they are calling it an “origin” movie if it happens after Enterprise.

I’m curious what they mean by “origin”. The origin of Starfleet would be before Enterprise and the origin of the Federation would be after.

Also, the origin of Star Trek would have to be before the events of First Contact.

…assuming there is a concern about canon whatsoever, of course.

Many assumptions to be made at this point for sure.

Assuming this announcement doesn’t get added to the pile of previous unmade-movie announcements.

They’re calling it an origin movie to appeal to newcomers and casual fans.

Maybe we’ll see the founding of the Federation?

We already saw that in the infamous final episode of Enterprise. If they revisit that, they’d have to include the NX-01 crew and do a *lot* of deaging. 😉

They could show the first year of the Federation or something.

The obvious way to go is just do the Romulan war which leads into the founding of the Federation and what Enterprise was supposed to do.

That’s really the only thing fans actually want to see in terms of a prequel story.

Which was already scripted for Berman nearly 20 years ago by the band of brothers screenwriter.

Yep. I heard that’s what they were considering doing until the Kelvin movie got greenlit instead.

Overall the Kelvin movie was probably the better choice in terms of box office but I probably would’ve preferred the Romulan war idea because it did sound more original and different.

Couldn’t they just carry on from the end instead of squeezing more new shows in between what we already have?

For how little Trek lore has fleshed out that imaginary bit of history, do we really need to be putting some detail to how we went from post-apocalyptic hellhole to utopian paradise in fifty years? Maybe some enterprising human stole a replicator off a Vulcan ship and reverse engineered it? Seeing the sausage being made may not be a great on screen adventure…

Eastern Europe isn’t the best example – while they’ve done okay extricating themselves from the communist wasteland, it was (and is) without its setbacks.

that’s what makes me so crazy. Discovery was the chance to reboot the “prime” universe but they have stubbornly stuck to this quisling versio

Not only that, they already did a Star Trek origin movie. Star TRek 2009. But sure lets put more money in it, have it fail, and then blame the box office on why we will never get more trek. Thats a great idea!

That was really a Kirk and Spock origin story. There’s a century of Federation/Starfleet before them that we know almost nothing about. Plenty of room for a good one-off story. Maybe a story 20-ish years before Discovery , with Captain April and Lt. Commander Pike? Could have a young Sarek, too.

First off do we even know what they mean by “origin”?

Could be about the founding of the federation, the Romulan War, or the early days of starfleet pre-Enterprise.

It may have nothing to do with Kirk and Spock, the Enterprise, might not be any kind of reboot or reset.

My gut says it’s set in the Kelvin timeline and it takes place post USS Kelvin but pre-2009 Trek. And I’m fine with that.

They already said it will be based in the prime universe, not the Kelvin. I don’t know why they framed that press release that way but I guess since the Kelvin movies are the current movies they wanted to make clear to people this movie is before all of that I guess.

And obviously will have nothing to do with Kirk and Spock because it will be before they were even born.

These announcements feel like Groundhog Day, don’t they? Maybe that’s the story they should tell.

A feature length version of Cause and Effect…

I’m guessing Romulan Star Empire Wars era setting.

Yeah, maybe it’s the concept Rick Berman pitched: a Romulan War film where the NX-01 is off vacationing at Risa.

How about Star Trek: Federation . Founding of the Federation, which is immediately followed by a crisis requiring the urgent launch of USS Federation (NCC-01). Scott Bakula has a cameo appearance as President Archer.

Here we go! :D

Star Trek Origins: The Future Begins

Yeah but it’s not as exciting when we literally have a thousand years of that future now.

This is why prequels bore so many people when we already know so much about the future it’s setting up.

At least with the Kelvin movies they were smart to not make it a traditional prequel and people still hated those too.

I will never understand the obsession of going backwards when you have a fanbase that is constantly begging to go forward and prequels don’t attract new fans at all because they are made for oddly old fans in mind. You only cared about how Anakin became Vader in the prequels if you watched the OT.

We really know almost nothing (in canon) about the entire century that elapses between Enterprise and Discovery , though. I would have preferred Kelvin Movie 4 or even a post-TNG original movie (maybe with Patrick Stewart making a cameo) but I could get behind a canon treatment about the first years of the Federation.

If it’s really something good or interesting fine. If it’s just ‘this is how the Federation was formed” we already got that already.

Now if it’s the Romulan war or something then that’s at least something people can get excited about. But yeah we already know how it ends so maybe that won’t be it either.

I just can’t really get to excited about a prequel movie.

Yeah, I think the Romulan war would be a great premise for a movie, BUT according to TOS the battles were fought with “primitive atomic weapons and in primitive space vessels which allowed no quarter, no captives, nor was there even ship-to-ship visual communication; therefore, no human, Romulan or ally has ever seen the other.”

In other words canon would have to be completely ignored – we all know Enterprise completely disregarded the TOS take of the war as the NX-01 had visual comms, phase cannons and photonic torpedoes. If the story is a good one, I am totally good with ignoring canon, but of course others are not.

Yeah that’s always the issue with the Romulan War thing, it’s really hard to make a compelling story about it when you are fighting it without directly engaging the enemy.

That said I’m 100% convinced they will just ignore that and do what they want or just find an excuse to change ot. Look at SNW, this the show that has shown the Gorn years before they were supposed to be seen and completely changed Khan’s original timeline using TCW as the reason..

Discovery had an entire Klingon War when that didn’t remotely exist in canon.

So yeah it probably won’t matter that much end of the day. They will just make what they want and then will use some excuse to do it. That’s been the case since Enterprise as you said.

Exactly! Very well put!! I just wish someone from TPTB would listen already!

Think about it prequels are easy to make because most of the writing is done for you. You don’t have to come up with where these characters will go.

Only if they are old characters though. But this sounds like Enterprise and not SNW and it will be all new characters.

So, it would be set after Enterprise and before the Kelvin fiasco. Awesome.

Probably the Romulan Wars. And with no Enterprise. Not excited

If only I could insert the Will Farrel “I don’t believe you!” GIF.

Whatever this turns out to be, hopefully it will be interesting. More likely it will turn out to be just another dead Trek movie project.

So many of these stories do seem to go absolutely nowhere! However, I am not as negative about an origin story as some fans are. At this point, I am more neutral on the movie. I can see that under the right circumstances it could be quite interesting. Although prequels can be a tough sell to Star Trek fans. Ultimately the fact that’s a movie could work in its favor though. Less storylines to produce over the years might help keep the story focused! Though I am not sure it would be a box office draw.

I’ll believe it when I’ve seen it in theaters, listened to TrekMovie’s review, and have the blu-ray on my shelf 4 months later.

Where to place the Blu-ray tho?

Before ST09 or after Beyond? …or.. Before TOS?

They go in order of release, for me. But could this be the first Trek film I don’t purchase on disc? Time may tell…

It’s an origin story taking place in the prime universe so it will go either before or after Enterprise basically.

I’ll believe it when it actually happens. Also, Seth Grahame-Smith is not a good writer, so that doesn’t bode well.

My thoughts exactly.

I liked the book Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, but not the movie.

I absolutely loved the Lego Batman movie, though. If he is able to incorporate Trek lore with as much care as he did for Batman, it could turn out to be a very good movie after all.

I’ll believe it when I’m sat i theatre turning off my phone with my Star Trek Origins screensaver and eating popcorn out my STO popcorn bucket (the lid in shape of the Starfleet A insignia )

He co wrote The Flash right? I really liked that , I could imagine something similar happening with Nero as happened with Zod in that (going back to 1st film via timetravel)

This is what’s over at Box Office Mojo: Untitled Star Trek: Beyond Sequel (????)

Grain of salt, anyone?

There are apparently two movies planned. Origin and Trek 4…

Actually there are three now including one that we all thought was DOA two minutes after it was announced.

Three movies in development from a studio who has cancelled four of them for 8 years now. And this will be the fourth new script for the next Kelvin movie.

That’s why everyone is very very confident this one is happening for sure. 🙄

The only thing we can take to the bank is we will see Section 31, starring Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh!!

Pretty much.

And a studio that is broke and in debt with junk status. None of these will likely be made or just the super cheapy origin movie if they can keep the budget low.

My thoughts exactly as well.

I’m pretty sure you got your facts wrong.

Sigh. Why do the powers that be always want to go backward in the ST timeline and do origin stories and such?

Lack of confidence in new ideas and to make it as cheaply as possible, are two things that come to mind right away.

It’s simple. They don’t want all that trek nerd baggage. They want a movie anyone would go to see and understand.

How’s that working for them?

You don’t get it.

I don’t get it either? It’s not like the prequel stuff has been huge home runs or big money makers.

The Star Wars prequels made a lot of money. That’s what Paramount still looks at, even though they have yet to duplicate that financial success.

Yes but that’s STAR WARS! It’s going to make a lot of money period. And those prequels came out when it was just the OT and nothing else for literally decades. There was a lot of hype just returning to those stories.

This is not the same thing, especially when we already had so many prequels in Trek now and with mixed results. That said I’m not saying it can’t be successful but I don’t see any huge hype around it either because most fans just seem to want to go forward and not backwards.

All the negativity over this ‘announcement’ is well deserved. Just make a fcking movie already Paramount, Jesus.

But I suspect IF this one is real it’s probably a much cheaper movie being new actors and maybe something with a lot less explosions and FX. I suspect it will probably be around $100 million.

It’s certainly doesn’t sound like something they are pushing to make a billion dollars or anything. Only people who cares about a prequel will be mostly old fans and even they aren’t exactly excited about yet another prequel judging by all the reactions so far. Maybe they will attract an A list star or a well respected one to bring more hype to it.

But same time I been pushing to just do something NEW with new characters and setting forever now. Stop trouting out Kirk and Picard, take a real chance with the franchise for a change. I was hoping it would be Post Nemesis but I should be happy I finally got half of what I wanted lol.

But I’ll believe it when I see it. I have literally been saying this line for six years now and I’m really tired of saying it. 🙄

Yup, exactly. Assuming it even happens, the premise sounds weak. Not surprised.

Yep. Unless it’s something truly mind blowing it’s not going to elicit a lot of excitement. Sure we’ll all go lol but I don’t see this thing having any real pull beyond the true believers.

It probably got the greenlight because its really cheap and it’s becoming embarrassing how long this franchise has languished.

I really only go to movie theaters to see Trek films (much prefer the comforts of home to see movies), so yup I’ll be going, good or bad. And yes, it is really pathetic the way this franchise has been treated on the big screen for the past 20 years. Disgraceful.

Ummm… what premise?? The only thing we know is that it is an origin movie. Nothing else. There IS no premise yet…

I think he means just another origin story itself feels a bit tired. But yes we don’t specifically know what that means yet but anything before TOS at this point just doesn’t really get a lot of fans all that hot and bother.

Whatever it ends up being it’s just filling in to more history we already know.

I get it. But no matter what era they make a movie in, there will be complaints. We have done prequels – some fans hate that. We have done same era as TNGish – fans complained. Likewise, we have had a show set in the future (soon to be another) – fans complained. There aren’t many options left.

Before TOS: Enterprise, JJ movies, Discovery, SNW just after TNG era: Picard, Prodigy, Lower Decks Future: Discovery, Starfleet Academy

Do they just make things in the era of TNG, DS9 and Voyager? No matter what is produced, there will always be a fan base that is unhappy.

Most people seem to really want the Legacy show though. I think for the majority of fans they may not agree with everything but there is definitely a sense they rather go forwards than backwards and why 4 of the 5 shows are post Nemesis shows.

And if you gave the option between a Legacy movie or this prequel idea, it wouldn’t be close.

I just don’t think making a prequel movie is the best idea out there. And I don’t think new audiences will remotely care one way or the other.

I’m going to start reporting you now. One guy got the boot for being an obsessive troll and like you was already banned before anyway.

Leave me alone from this point on. I mean it.

What a total disappointment. I wanted to see the Kelvin crew return. It’s going to be 10 years between films.

Please be Kirk and Spock at least.

Check the first paragraph of the article out again. This one is presumably being developed ‘in parallel’ to the Kelvin crew sequel.

Recast Kirk and Spock, I presume?

I wouldn’t be surprised if the main character is Kirk’s great grandfather, Tiberius something or other.

And not surprised there was no announcement of the next JJ verse movie. I predicted a few weeks ago that one wouldn’t get made by 2026 or the 60th anniversary. Frankly I don’t even know why they are even bothering with it anymore? Whenever it’s supposed to come out it’s already going to be the last one and over 10 years since the last one came out.

What’s even the point? They are clearly moving on from it.

As far as the origin movie why not just make it for the 60th anniversary? Why rush it? It’s already been nearly a decade, what’s one more year at this point and you can Marley it better in an anniversary year.

Its the reverse of ST 6, here we getting the prequel movie instead of the final cast film (for the anniversary)

Someone on another board said we are probably getting the sequel to First Contact so it would make sense to have it for the 6Oth anniversary 30 years apart lol.

“[S]et decades before the original 2009 Star Trek film?”

Gimme Archer & T’Pol, or else…

Neither actor has any interest in returning to Star Trek, so that won’t happen.

I’ve only heard Bakula say that about Quantum Leap , not Enterprise . And this is a feature film, a lot harder for an actor to turn down. I agree with his decision to ignore the QL reboot (that series didn’t capture the heart and soul of the original at all) but if Paramount approached him with “we want you to play President Archer for a few scenes in this movie” I doubt he’d say no.

No, no no. You’ve got it all wrong. It’s a story about a little design firm vying for the chance to design the Enterprise. It’s a story about a plucky band of mechanical engineers and physicists who come together to do the best pitch of their lives in a bidding war with three other firms. So, an origin story…from a certain point of view. ;)

I would watch,THAT!

I would write that!

I would direct that! (If I was Christopher Nolan)

No, I want Nolan doing ThePrisoner! He’s already got a script from the guy who wrote 12 Monkeys and the best stuff in Blade Runner, from over a decade back.

You probably meant it as a joke, but I’m also intrigued by this idea :D

Charlie Kaufmann does star trek.

Sure, you can store anti-matter in a glass jar. What could possibly go wrong?

Y’know, I know this is said partly in jest, but I wouldn’t mind that kind of movie if it was sort of a space race / WWII / Cold War drama, kind of a mix of Oppenheimer and The Right Stuff.

There’s a geo (spatio?) political angle (firm up the borders of the Federation, mitigate threats, and establish new allies while keeping up the exploration / first contact initiatives), the pressure on the engineering team to deliver groundbreaking new tech (and probably the cost of failed experiments, accidents, etc.), and then recruiting and training a new kind of crew – a starship crew (as Captain Merrick described them in ‘Bread and Circuses’.)

In essence, the origin of Starfleet as we know it – the first long-duration missions, the best of the best crewmembers, cross-trained, multidisciplinary, and for the first time, widely multi-species, etc.

Glad you all like. Paramount, you can send the check to: bmar, care of….

I’m thinking there’s going to be peace in the Middle East and nuclear fusion power is going to be a reality before they ever get back to the theaters.

Once upon a time I enjoyed Star Trek. Since the Nu Trek era began. I havent enjoyed any of the story arcs. They are just too aweful. There is a multitude of reasons why throught the web. Strange New Worlds S1 corrected course, however S2 not so. There are forces at work at Paramount. They are hell bent to destroy Star Trek. If Kurtzman and crew are in charge of the new movie. Get ready for more fantasy drama nonsense, and less plausable sci-fi.

Same here. I can’t get into NuTrek much at all. It feels like a shell of the golden era. For me that will always be 1966-2005.

But if others like it and getting new fans I’m very happy for them.

Same here. I’ve found a few gems in SNW S1, PIC S3, and S1 of Prodigy, but otherwise have been very disappointed in “NuTrek.” Of course I wish the franchise the best, but so far it’s been more misses than hits for me.

Yes I truly love Picard season 3! The best thing to come out of NuTrek so far. I don’t hate SNW but it railroads canon too much for my taste but it does feel like Star Trek again.

I haven’t seen Prodigy yet but I plan to watch it when season 2 begins and will watch season 1 before that one. Everyone kept saying it’s for kids and I’m far from a kid these days lol. But others here convinced me it’s a show for adults too so will give it a go

Wow, hell-bent on destroying Trek. Hell-bent, you say!! Just a tough melodramatic, are you?

Really don’t care about prequels and just want to keep going forward. Why not a movie in the 25th or 26th century with new crew and characters?

I may care more if Archer is involved or something. But I suspect this movie will bomb like the last one did. Only fans cares about prequels. New fans won’t care at all.

At least it’s in the prime universe again I guess.

But 25th or 26th century would still be a prequel to Discovery’s 32nd century :D

That doesn’t bother me because we don’t know anything about those time periods. We already know plenty about everything before TOS because it’s all been said or told now

Yeah I said this to another member the other day discussing any post Picard stories and that it will be completely new stories in a period we don’t know so it’s not the same thing. When you’re doing something like a TOS prequel you only have so much room and while it can certainly be interesting and creative it basically just like filling in to more stuff we already know.

That said the Section 31 movie time period is at least more interesting because it covers a much wider time period and they can be a lot more freer with the technology, etc so looking forward to that at least.

Yes I will admit although I’m not a big fan of the Space Nazi the time period of the movie intrigues me more. I always been curious of this period and the lead up to TNG, mostly because we know very little about it.

Discovery (in my view) kind of ruined everything in the Trek timelime. Just my opinion. Anyone who wants to just forget it happened, I’m in. Kidding, not kidding.

Agreed! I also don’t think it will be allegorical science fiction or be anything thought provoking. It will be a fast paced action adventure story that’s empty of depth and soul. Modern Star Trek is more interested in spectacle than compelling stories.

I’d guess that it means “origin of the TOS crew,” but that’s kind of weird, because we saw that in 2009.

Maybe this time they’ll start when they’re toddlers. (I kid, but not really). :)

They are going to re-do ‘A night in Sickbay’ like they did with Wrath of Khan/Into Darkness. It’ll be the same but different…..

Could this be their way of doing a George Kirk movie?

I would want to watch that, colour me intrigued…

“set decades before the original 2009 Star Trek film.”

Original 2009 Sta Trek film Sounds so wrong.

there is only two star trek origin stories i want to see the formation of the federation and it’s first few years if they have to adapt the rise of the federation novels for the movie and the origins of the borg they could adapt the plot ffor thet from the star trek destiny novels for a movie

Spot on, on both points!

2025? I hope it works out…

First we hear we are getting a Star Fleet Space Academy series that no one wants. The idea was mentioned in the 1980’s and shot down by fans. Now a retake on a Star Trek Origins films. Is any one currently running the Star Trek franchise in TV/streaming or film even listening to what the fans both old and new are saying?

It would seem not, sadly. How about establishing the time period between TUC and TNG, there’s a literal ton of stories to tell there? How the possibilities for storytelling within the franchise have been squandered over the years makes me frustrated, and frankly confused. SO many missed opportunities.

The upcoming section 31 movie will be set during that time frame as we know a young Rachel Garrett who later in life will be the captain of the enterprise c and defend the Klingon colony of narendra 3 will be in the movie maybe we will get to see the ent-b also again

Pointless movie as no audience will come see it at best it will make half its budget back. I mean they spent $250M on the 2009 movie and it showed on screen….you already know they are not spending that level otherwise it would be a Kelvin cast sequel!

I believe they spent just under 160 mil on the 09 (not counting the interest payments for holding the finished film for six months to get a summer release, or prints/advertising.) You’re probably thinking of BEYOND with the 250 number.

I still can’t see the money on screen in the 09, shooting in the damn brewery was Corman-level cheap.

The Numbers have the 09 costs 140 and BO Mojo sez 150, so yeah, way under the 250m you mention.

Can the ethos of Trek be distilled by JJ? Bob orci was bad for trek.

Kurtzman seemed to fall into trap w/discovery season 1.

Season 2, Picard, Lower Decks and SNW definitely sealed my thinking that Trek was in right hands.

Is section 31 and Rachel Garrett the right pivot for Trek? I thought 24th/25th century had plenty of stories to still tell.

Enterprise C, and possibly Tasha Yar/Sela after the events of Yesterday’s Enterprise! This should reboot TNG/Picard if ST: Legacy doesn’t happen.

Lower Decks makes me laugh Picard made me cry (good) SNW made me feel like Kurtzman should be trusted 💯

Great. Abrams ruined Star Wars and he’s finishing of Star Trek.

JJ had a planed out story plot for what he wanted to happen in the sequels but rian johnson chose to deviate from what jj had payed out so when jj returned for episode 9 he had to try and make the best of it and make his original story plot work but with the changes Johnson had made altering it so he had to come up with another evil sith mastermind and chose palpatine and he did course correct Rey’s lineage though it was different from who he had initially planned it to be and with Carrie fishers untimely passing he had to rewrite more and he had Luke show up as a force ghost to help rey when she returned to ach-to as apparently he was never going to have Luke die until the the final battle

I hope it has nudity

….and “Invincible” level action. It’ll be a hard R Quinton Tarentino could love.

Yes, we are on the same page.

CinemaCon basically works like a network upfront. You see clips and hear a lot of announcements. When there’s no cast or start date for announced projects, there’s maybe a 50/50 chance that the project will actually move forward (I was with a former employer for over 8 years and we announced a lot of stuff that generated a lot of buzz but then never materialized).

I think Brian Robbins will be gone within the next 12 months and if Robbins is pushed out this film is dead in the water.

This is probably the right answer.

I have next to no faith this will actually happen but they only have themselves to blame lol.

I remember a former poster kept saying ‘well this a new regime ‘ they aren’t the old guys’. Uh huh. It just shows end of the day they might be different but they still answer to the same shareholders and they know another Trek film is risky. Maybe this will finally get beyond a script this time but no one will be convinced until they start shooting the thing.

Rehashing old fandom letter campaign complaints from 40 years ago, don’t equate to the modern sci-fi fan, let alone the majority of Star Trek fans of 2024. The majority of complaints in the article comments are that there isn’t enough new future timeline Star Trek, so why would people NOT want a Star Fleet Academy series – new stories, new characters, new ships, new alien species/planets etc? An Origin movie is a vague enough description that it’s probably likely that the fandom can’t come anywhere close to a correct theory on when in the Trek timeline, this movie could be set.

I agreed with a commenter earlier, a George Kirk prequel movie would satisfy a lot of the fans, and hopefully generate enough interest for new and casual Star Trek moviegoers to warrant their going to a cinema complex. As to want the hardcore Star Trek fandom really want? There is too much dissent and bitter recriminations gone by, for any serious agreement by the fandom of their requirements, to stick for any longer than the next Trek major media article to be issued. And even if a majority agreement could be achieved – then we have the Mount Everest of EP Alex Kurtzman / Secret Hideout control of Trek production, to climb. A movie or series could have a billion-dollar budget, stellar A-list cast and crew, critical media acclaim for the story / screenplay. A favourable release timing and viral marketing, but fall at the last hurdle – the box office, due to the mountain of hate piled up against Paramount, Kurzman and his associates.

Now, as to the overall custodianship of the Trek franchise and its operation as a business, in general by Paramount, and its contracted creatives? Well, that’s a whole Hollywood chapter in itself. And is any of that even relevant in the long term, with the behind-the-scenes Harry Potter Wizard chess moves that are going on at the studio ownership, and network controlling interest levels? Apologies for the extended and extensive reply.

The first thing to do in order make a successful Star Trek movie is to ignore Star Trek fans.

God, please, no origin stories.

Star Trek: The Beginning, Part 1 — A Final Frontier Origin Story

Star Trek has always been a production dealing with many human issues pushing open the veils of awkwardness, embarrassment, and unaddressed behaviors that represent our culture planet wide. Thank You Star Trek. The one thing Paramount+ did that was just totally in bad taste was cancel Prodigy, bunch of morons.

Every fan’s preferences are different, but over the years I’ve ended up streamlining various ‘franchises’ I enjoy to my own liking when it comes to a re-watch – and these days my own limited Star Trek ‘canon’ purely consists of kicking things off with ‘The Cage’ pilot storyline….followed by my specific favourite TOS episodes in ‘production order’ (starting with ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’, and skipping ‘The Menagerie’ two-part storyline)….followed by all the TOS movie storylines….and ending the Kirk crew’s adventures with ‘The Undiscovered Country’ as my preferred send-off for them all….then skip the antics of the ‘Generations’ movie, and instead continue on with my specific favourite TNG episodes (starting with the ‘Encounter At Farpoint’ introduction to Picard and his crew)….and then conclude the entire thing with the ‘First Contact’ movie’s storyline – which covers the development of ‘warp drive’, bringing everything full circle, and giving me all the ‘origin’ specifics I need..

All other ‘Trek-related shows and movies since then remain firmly on my ‘one-watch-only’ list, but I’m more than content with what I’ve outlined above.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get a ‘Star Trek’ movie which goes much deeper than glossy ‘pew-pew’ action and explosions in the future, but I remain hopeful.there might be a storyline that I really like again.

In the meantime, for my latest ‘alien contact’ fix, I’ve just finished up enjoying the excellent ‘Three-Body’ show’s inventive storyline and characters – the subtitled, 30-episode one produced by Tencent, which is currently available on YouTube and Amazon Prime (not the muddled 8-episode ‘3 Body Problem’ version by Netflix) – So much so, that I’m intending to buy the actual trilogy of books by the Chinese author, as I can’t wait for the next season to be made to find out what happens next. Some big ideas to come by all accounts, and I’m there for a bit more of that. .

The Netflix series is Superior

You’re welcome to your own preference of course.

But I far preferred the slow burn of the mystery and character build-ups in the Tencent version compared to the condensed and altered Netflix adaption. I just happen to find it a more satisfying and riveting version overall – and I will always prefer the way the ‘Judgment Day’ tanker got ‘nano-spliced’ in the Tencent version. Such an awesome sequence from start to finish!

Anyway, if the Netflix version actually gets a second season, I’ll certainly check it out too….but I am definitely looking forward to the next season of the Tencent show, which has been greenlit already.

The Tencent version is just boring to me and you can feel the Party’s hands all over it. Glad you liked it though.

I did indeed like it. A lot. I hadn’t read the books as I said, so didn’t know what to expect. Having read up on a few things since watching both shows, it seems that that there’s plenty of others that much prefer the slower build-up of the Tencent version too.

While it doesn’t include the likes of the brutal Netflix show’s opening, the hardship that the main female character endured was covered sufficiently for me throughout the show, and I’m just glad that I got to know her story by watching this version first.

And I sure didn’t miss the amount of unnecessary swearing that the Netflix version included either, which gave the Tencent version additional points. I don’t appreciate it my ‘Star Trek’ viewing, and I didn’t need it in the telling of this memorable sci-fi tale either.

And just to add, that even better for me is the fact that there’s now been a 26-episode ‘Anniversary Edition’ version of the Tencent show released, which has been re-edited by the director.

It seemingly cuts down on some ‘filler’ run-time that was added for the sake of the show’s producers initially, so that things will follow the original book’s contents even more closely now, and improve on the pacing of the show overall. I’m very pleased about that.

Whats so bad about swearing? The human race has been swearing since language was invented and we’ll be swearing 10,000 years from now.

Again, it’s just a personal preference thing.

There’s plenty of hard-edged movies and shows that contain wall-to-wall swearing which I can watch if I’m in the mood for them. But other times I’m equally inclined to watch something with less harsh language throughout.

I really disliked the F-bombs which the ‘Picard’ show included for instance, and didn’t think the ‘Star Trek’ franchise was the better for it. And I doubt that I would have enjoyed the Tencent ‘Three-Body’ adaption any better if it had contained bad language too.

Anyway, back to this supposed ‘Star Trek origin movie. I’d like to think it won’t be littered with F-bombs either.

PG13 are allowed 1 f bomb (like Guardians 3 I finally saw other night). And Trek is very comfortable to f bombs in Picard etc so safe to say we’ll be getting Treks first movie f bomb next film :)

Data said “Oh $hit” in Generations.

Which was very mild compared to what we heard in ‘Picard” Not that I would wish to show my younger family members the ‘Picard’ show anyway, considering it turned out to be so dire overall.

However, Data’s reaction was hilarious in that scene’s context I recall. Just a pity the rest of the movie was such a dud, and not part of my own ‘Star Trek’ canon anymore.

I’ll always wonder what the Tarantino script would have given us….

we don’t need origin stories for everything! in media res is the way to go – almost always – TOS just dumps you right in the middle of events without even the clunky intros of TNG Encounter at Farpoint.

If this movie does well will IT get an origin story? We’re going to end up at the pool of goo at the dawn of humankind waiting for Picard and Q to show up…

im happy with any good trek news… even if they made a direct sequel to the final frontier… but how many origin stories do we need? i’d be happy if someone forged a path forward and created new things…

So this one is set in the five-minute period between Enterprise and Discovery? Or the as-yet unexplored time between April 5th 2063 and Enterprise where it’s “stone knives and bear skins” and no Trek tech to speak of? Enterprise was the prequel! How’d that one work out?

If the movie is made ,I will judge it then.

I wanted the 4th Kelvin, do they know who their audience is? Nobody i know, Star Trek fan or general audience bothered to go see Beyond. It was like Nemesis all over again. The trailer was terrible, the movie was kind of meh to be honest. So in the intervening years since the 2009 somewhere they lost the audience. Star Trek 2009 was an event movie, and 2015 Force Awakens was as well. Good job letting JJ go to Disney so Star Trek died as a film series.

I’m guessing the fourth movie is still too costly to risk making another one at least right now.

Someone threw out an an interesting theory on the last thread discussing this for the 47th time that they suggested Paramount have no plans to actually make another Kelvin movie but just as a rouse for the next company that buys the studio.

It really makes sense at this point, they can dangle the idea the movie is in ‘development’ and then when someone actually buys it they can just decide to make it or cancel it.

I mean it doesn’t sound crazy considering where we are. It’s a movie that is working with their fourth new writer but there is still no director or even a starting date of any kind within the the next two years.

Them you have this origin movie that was just announced a few months ago and that’s already scheduled to come out next year. My guess is it will probably cost half of what another Kelvin movie would be. But yeah who knows if that will get made either, but it has a better chance than a Kelvin movie.

Ikr, Beyond totally killed interest the series , the Fast Furious teaser trailer was bad, the second trailer gave away the twist, the audience (who cared about that stuff) knew JJ had crossed over to SW (which gave the behemoth of SW7 even more publicity, making ST feel less an event), there was no hook for fans or even general moviegoers like there was for ST09/ID (like if Shatner had returned or the Borg being the villain again) and nothing ‘big’ happening in the canon like the previous ones (Orcis ST3 had the timeline under threat of being wiped out, which would’ve been a huge deal) the eventual movie was kind of meh as you say and was just abit nerdy and Insurrection looking (like it was for hard core fans only).

At the time i had some friends (some who were casual Trek fans, and some even disliked Trek) who thought 09/ID were awesome and they didn’t even bother to see Beyond bc of the trailers and the general vibe (its like it felt like abit of a turkey, like other big sequels/remakes that summer, Ghostbusters, Independence Day 2 etc, )

I actually agree with all of this and I personally think Beyond was the best of the three.

But you’re right, there was really no hook for the movie and that first trailer was just awful. It almost kept me away from watching it.

But the biggest problem is the new fans just lost interest by then. I always bring up the fact I had three friends who had never seen Star Trek before went to go see the first film and generally loved it. I thought it was truly bad but fine for a brainless action movie.

But by the time Beyond showed up all three had zero interest in the franchise by that point. They just stopped caring. I remember asking one of them that saw the first two movies in the theater if he planned to watch Beyond and his response was no because now Star Wars was back and he rather just watch that. And he thought it looked boring.

That’s the entire problem trying to get new fans onboard and a lot of them were like my friends who just saw these movies as another summer action movie but nothing beyond that. They never cared about the franchise itself and so it was very easy to move on when the next shiny toy showed up.

That’s exactly why I don’t see another one doing all that well because to newbies it’s still Star Trek and it’s not cool enough to fully get into and will probably bomb again unless the budget is just super low.

I watched Guardians Vol 3 the other night on dvd and it (and previous 2) kind of felt the same as Beyond abit , the look, the vibe, the action, set pieces, the humour, the rock songs etc . so really with Guardians (that Beyond tried to ape), along with the return of SW, Trek 3 had no chance with casual movie goers who would just consider it Guardians/SW lite , (between the generational event of SW7 and the next GOTG vol 2) .. Even more reason to have gone with Orci’s more ‘star trek’ version of ST3 featuring Shatner

I can’t name anyone who actually wants an origin movie. By the way, didn’t we get that one with First Contact already anyway?

It’s not up to you or anyone you pretend to know.

Another prequel? This is getting ridiculous now. Remember when Star Trek used to go forwards? Enough already!

Kurtzman said he didn’t have the authority to greenlight legacy. I wonder if that will be like Bennet’s academy years and never happen.

18 months is not enough time for a movie of this size unless this is ready to shoot in july.

The JJ-verse is an aberration no one is particularly a fan of. There is no one who wants to how that mess started. It’s done nothing but foul everything that went before, leaving ST-ENT, of all things, as the only remaining official classic canon. Bugger that.

I need Star Trek that is hopeful, aspirational, and inspirational. 15 yrs later neither Bad Robot or Secret Hideout has done anything close to that. Sec 31 and Starfleet Academy aren’t anything viewers want. I wish they’d just stop.

lol,if you say so…

EXCLUSIVE: Former Anonymous writer of Trek 4 shares his experience

Interviewer: Hello, we are here today to talk to a former writer for the very very very (like really very) long delayed fourth Kelvin movie. With the announcement of a prequel movie being released instead and yet ANOTHER new set of writers for the next Kelvin movie, we reached out to the only person who returned our calls; a former writer from the 2023 project.

To give us an honest insight into his experience he wishes to remain anonymous. For the sake of this interview he will be simply referred to as ‘GotohellParamount’. Thank you for meeting with me today.”

GotohellParamount’: “You’re welcome.”

Interviewer: “It sounds like your experience working on the last movie didn’t end too well. How is your relationship with the studio today?”

GotohellParamount: “Bleep them in their bleeping bleepholes. I hope they all die from bleeping Ebola.”

Interviewer: ‘That’s some pretty colorful metaphors. Can I ask what happened?”

GotohellParamount: “Their bleeps that’s what. We spent a year working on that movie. We lost the director to go work for Marvel because these bleepholes kept bleeping us around. I got so frustrated I finally texted the Head Studio Guy and said ‘will you people stop bleeping around!? Get off your bleeps and let’s make a movie already!!’

Three weeks went by and I finally got a response from them. It simply read ‘K’. Bleepholes!!! By the way you’re not going to ‘bleep’ any of these words out are you?”

Interviewer: “Um…of course not. Can you tell us a little about what the movie was about?”

GotohellParamount: “The gist was a huge black ship comes from the 25th century to the 23rd century wiping out solar systems in the Federation. It was a new villain who wanted…wait for it…vengeance. That bleep was going to be bleeping awesome!!”

Interviewer: “So who was going to be the villain?”

GotohellParamount: “That’s the greatest part of it all. He was going to call himself…you ready: Kaos. JJ Abrams himself came up with that name. But then the true reveal was that he was indeed Kirk’s great great great great great great great great great great grandson from the future and came to stop Kirk from destroying his planet so he had to destroy the Federation first. We were even thinking Chris Pine can play both parts but Paramount was worried he would demand twice the salary.”

Interviewer: “I interviewed Chris Pine a few months ago and he was hoping there would be more scenes of him riding another motorcycle. Did you include that in the script?”

GotohellParamount: “Do you remember the ending of Mission Impossible 2 with the motorcycle duel? Pretty much the same ending with our movie with Kirk versus his evil grandson; except it was going to take place either on Romulus or in San Francisco. We were still figuring it out. There was even talk of it happening on a lava planet… but that would’ve ballooned the budget.

Interviewer: “Sounds very exciting. How was he going to wipe out the solar systems?”

GotohellParamount: “The ship he was on had the power to destroy stars by breaking down their fusion reactions. The FX was going to be bleeping sick.”

Interviewer: “Wait so the ship was a…Star destroyer?”

GotohellParamount: “Yep but to get around copyright issues JJ wanted to call it a Destroyer of Stars. The man is a bleeping genius I tell you.”

Interviewer: “It’s definitely a name.”

GotohellParamount: “We were so proud of the script. We gave it to JJ to read it. After he put it down, he took off his glasses put his hand on my shoulders and said ‘this is the most original Star Trek story I’ve ever read and I’ve read three of them.’ You have no idea how much that meant coming from such a visionary like him.”

Interviewer: “I’m sure you were. Was there any casting possibilities before it was shut down?”

GotohellParamount: “Was there?? We reached out to some incredible actors! Robert Downey Jr, Florence Pugh, Emily Blunt, Cillian Murphy and Matt Damon. We wanted him to actually play Kirk’s evil grandson.

Interviewer: “Wait… weren’t all of them in Oppenheimer?’

GotohellParamount: “(Hard shrug)! I don’t know I haven’t seen it yet. Unfortunately Matt Damon’s agent was the only one who bothered to call us back. Apparently he always wanted to work with John Cho. Go figure? Too late now unfortunately.”

Interviewer: “Well that’s all the time we have. Thank you for your incredible and honest insight. Any thoughts on the new movie announcement or the chances either one will actually get made?”

GotohellParamount: (Laughs for three minutes). That’s it.”

Interviewer: “Thank you.’

I laugh every.single.time! 😂

Well done per usual.

Nice. Don’t forget to throw the Beastie Boys in there someplace…wouldn’t be a Kelvin film without them…

Haha correct. How I let that one slide you got me. Having an off day I guess!

This was indeed hilarious! 😂

I love how you parody JJ Abrams. He doesn’t seem to have an original bone in his body looking at both his Star Trek and Star Wars movies.

Lol nope! I still remember watching Honest Trailer for Star Trek Into Dumbness and they even showed how much that movie copied the first one lol.

The fact both movies ended back at San Francisco when your series takes place in the freaking galaxy should tell you everything wrong with these movies.

that actually sounds like a legit potential Kelvin ST4 – Kirks evil great great grandson Kaos (Matt Damon) comes back to 23rd century to kill Kirk in his big star destroyer (sorry ‘destroyer of stars’) ship! Brilliant!!

That’s the insane part, this idea could actually pass for a Kelvin movie lol.

Thank you! 😁

Coming out of my lurker mode to say this is brilliant. I laughed my bleep off!

So glad you enjoyed it my friend! 😄

I bleeping love making them lol.

Another prequel? Why can’t they come up with new material?

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When you have William Shatner , aka Captain James T. Kirk, on your show, you get to ask the Star Trek questions you’ve always wanted answered.

That’s what Bill Maher managed to do on Friday’s Real Time , as he probed one of pop culture’s most interesting moments — the interracial kiss between Captain Kirk and Lt. Uhura.

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Maher also marveled how far Shatner fell from grace after the first run of Star Trek was canceled after three seasons. Shatner talked about watching the actual moon landing from a pasture while in his truck, his base of operations after a divorce and a lull in work.

How did you fall so fast? Maher asked. “With great precision,” Shatner joked, adding that it was just “circumstances of life.”

Of course, those days are gone for Shatner. He is the subject of the new documentary,  You Can Call Me Bill, and the artist behind the upcoming digital album, So Fragile, So Blue, which he recorded live with the National Symphony Orchestra.

He’s also planning a trip to Antarctica, another of his efforts to explore and spotlight his efforts in climate change.

Of the latter, “There’s no way out except through technology,” Shatner said. “There’s a wave coming.” It’s one reason he may consider once again going into space, he said, as a way to “promulgate the idea that there’s so much going on by science and scientists to correct global warming.” He added, “There’s an element of hope I will cling to.”

Maher wrapped up the segment with a mention of Shatner’s age (93) and compliments on how well he looks.

“I don’t mind when you say my age,” Shatner said. “But when they clap…”

After Shatner, Maher had a panel discussion with Piers Morgan ,  New York Post  columnist and host of the YouTube channel’s P iers Morgan Uncensored , and  Gillian Tett , provost of King’s College, Cambridge, and columnist at the  Financial Times .

They also talked about a protest in Dearborn Michigan that featured chants of “Death to America.” Maher pushed back on those at the protest who said, “The entire system has to go.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Maher countered. “I like our system. I’ve always liked America and thought death to it was bad.”

In Maher’s “New Rules” editorial, he pointed out the falsehoods about Canada and some progressive European countries where the idyllic myth doesn’t jibe with reality, resulting in what Maher termed “zombie lies.”

Maher pointed out several ways that these countries are faring worse in housing, health care, and on immigration issues

“I need to cite you as a cautionary tale: yes, you can move too far left, and you push others to the extreme right,” he said. “Calling something racist doesn’t solve the problem,” Maher said. That opens the door to someone conservative who will act, and “Who I promise, you’re not going to like.”

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Or, they try to. And okay, it turns out the gratuitous beaming was for good reason, story-wise, because in the instant that the pair attempt to beam back to the bridge, Discovery plunges through time, and only their mid-transport timing protects them from the ship’s time-hopping. Everyone else aboard Discovery is experiencing “regular” time travel, as it were, unaware of their movement and remaining “of the time” they jump to.

Everyone, that is, except for Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp), who thanks to his tardigrade DNA infusion all the way back in Season 1, the scientist is bouncing through time like the rest of the crew — but he’s mentally aware of the jumping remains “himself” like Burnham and Rayner.

Like “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad,” this is another episode about time shenanigans centering on Stamets and Burnham (and now also Rayner), but it doesn’t feel like a repeat of the same story so much as a deliberate permutation on a theme. Discovery , the show, is revisiting its past just the same way Burnham revisits her past self here; in both cases, the future versions have grown and changed in ways their past selves could never have imagined.

Who could have guessed, watching the series’ seventh episode, that original showrunner and creator Bryan Fuller would leave after just one season and a majority of the show would end up taking place in 32nd century? Not me, that’s for sure.

(As a side note, I was hoping one of the pasts they visited would be the “Magic” situation, just because come on, who doesn’t want to see what a time loop within a time loop looks like?)

It takes them all a few time jumps to figure out what’s going on, and a few more after that for all three of them to rendezvous. The second jump takes them back to Discovery mid-construction, sitting in dry dock at the San Francisco Fleet Yards, the Golden Gate Bridge framed nicely in a missing bulkhead section. (Both Star Trek and The Room have one rule: If you’re in San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge must be visible at all times!)

Next jump is to the Season 2-ending battle with Control, and finally with three jumps there’s enough of a pattern visible for Rayner to identify what’s going on and what, exactly, is causing it. First, each time they jump Burnham and Rayner always return to the ready room – the place where they beamed themselves out of time — and second, that little mechanical spider that’s been crawling around the ship since it first detached itself from Adira’s uniform is a Krenim chronophage (yes, those Krenim ) left over from more lawless times  when paralyzing a ship by having it randomly cycle through time was a thing that apparently people did.

After a few more jumps, including one where a past version of Jett Reno (Tig Notaro) happens to save Rayner’s hide, he and Burnham land on an empty, dusty Discovery , abandoned by everyone except the one person who can’t leave: Zora (Annabelle Wallace). Listening to “Que Sera, Sera” and convinced that she’s dreaming, Zora explains that in this future, Discovery remained stuck in its time paralysis long enough for the Breen to get their hands on the Progenitor’s technology.

It’s a bleak future to visit, but it’s also very fortuitous that they did, because Zora is able to quickly do the math necessary for Stamets — who they finally meet up with in the next time jump –to figure out how to get them out of this. Just build a chroniton stabilizer and squish the bug with it, easy peasy!

And all Burnham has to do is get a component for it from her quarters without being seen. Not so easy as it turns out, as she runs into Book (David Ajala) who is very much in love with Burnham during this time period — and keen to show it. And she, as we all probably suspected, is still very much in love with him and gives herself a brief moment to indulge in that fact.

In their final final jump — this time to early in Lorca’s captaincy — Burnham runs into her much angrier and more jaded younger self; a Michael Burnham who is so barely out of prison that she still doesn’t even have a combadge and who flat-out does not believe this woman in a strange red uniform who claims to be her. Why? Because there’s no way anyone would ever make Michael Burnham a captain .

After a fight in a thankfully empty corridor, our Burnham ends up victorious and heads to the bridge… where she needs to convince everyone that they should listen to her and do something you never really want to do with a warp engine going at maximum speed: intentionally break the warp bubble and slam yourself back into the effects of general relativity.

Flashbacks are a tried and true way for shows to bring back departed characters, so the choice to include Airiam (Hanna Spear) on the bridge makes sense and is nice for audience members who miss her. What doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense to me is how her presence is used (which is a bit of an unfortunate parallel to her death for me – or at least the impact it was supposed to have).

Burnham knows she needs to convince the crew that she really is herself and that she really is from the future, but instead of, I don’t know, showing them her combadge which is full of 32nd century bells and whistles and exotic alloys that haven’t been invented yet she… convinces Airiam that they know each other because Burnham knows Airiam would sacrifice her life to save the ship? Then someone blurts out a “No she wouldn’t!” like that’s not the first thing any appropriately heroic Starfleet officer would do?

This scene is the one fumble in an otherwise great episode. Two minutes after this weird “I know you and here’s a generic hypothetical that applies to most people in Starfleet to prove it,” Airiam sees Burnham’s fancy holographic combadge and openly gawks at it. See, easily convinced! That would have worked and it wouldn’t have required the show to reexamine the hollowness of Airiam’s death without correcting its mistake.

The fact that Burnham doesn’t have anything better or more personal to say to or about Airiam except “You died, sorry that happened,” underscores just how undeveloped she was as a character. Why bring that up again? But hey, Burnham’s tactic works, and I suppose that’s what really matters here.

Meanwhile, past-Burnham and her era’s Rhys (Patrick Kwok-Choon) show up in engineering, phasers drawn, to try and stop Stamets and this weird guy they’ve never seen before from doing whatever it is that they’re trying to do to the ship. Rayner, solidifying himself as a solid gold example of a favorite character trope of mine — Grumpy Guy who’s a Secret Softie — defuses the situation by being brave as hell (he walks right into Burnham’s drawn phaser) but also emotionally astute.

He doesn’t just tell Burnham personal facts he couldn’t have known if he were really a stranger, he tells her with conviction that she really does deserve to be here on Discovery…  something that sinks to the core of who she is and what she’s battling in this moment in time.

The plan succeeds: the time bug is proverbially squished, and Discovery and her crew are all right back where they belong, minus the six hours they lost during all the jumping. Unfortunately, those six hours were long enough for Moll and L’ak to catch up with them and leave again. Did they find anything, or did they get sick of looking at seemingly empty space and leave? We don’t know yet, so tune in next week.

Which brings us to the beginning of “Face the Strange” — see, I can jump through time too! — when we see Moll (Eve Harlow) and L’ak (Elias Toufexis) acquiring the bug in the first place. While the Progenitors’ technology is enormous in its power and implications and Moll and L’ak are willing to do just about anything to find it, their motivations seem strictly personal.

Sure, if the way Moll takes revenge on the guy who sells her the chronophage is any indication, they’ll get some personal satisfaction out of seeing the Federation burn, but more than anything they’re in it for their freedom. Freedom from someone or something, certainly – though who or what we still don’t know – but, given the themes in “Face the Strange”, I’d guess freedom from their pasts might be the real goal.

OBSERVATION LOUNGE

• “Face the Strange” is a reference to the David Bowie classic “Changes.”
• This episode is a spiritual sequel to Star Trek: Voyager’s “Shattered,” a similar final-season tale which saw Chakotay bouncing through different eras of Voyager adventures.
• Discovery’s time jumps include visits to the ship’s transit through the Red Angel wormhole (leading to the ship’s crash-landing in “Far From Home” ), a time when the starship was under construction in the San Francisco Fleet Yards, the battle with Control ( “Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2” ), Stardate 865422.4 (during Osyyra’s takover in “There Is A Tide…” ), an unknown date nearly 30 years into the future, a period in early Season 2 (shortly after Jett Reno’s rescue in “Brother” ), a point ahead of the Season 4 premiere after Burnham was promoted to captai), and the encounter with past-Burnham which takes place just ahead of “The Butcher’s Knife Cares Not for the Lamb’s Cry” (denoted by the reference to a still-alive Ellen Landry ).

• Retrofit into corridor after Season 2’s set updates, the passage to the left-rear of Discovery’s command chair returns to its Season 1 “blue blinkies” configuration.
• Captain Pike’s broken wood-and-glass conference table returns to the ready room set during the first time jump, a good touch from the set decoration department.
• We’ve seen the San Francisco bay many times in Star Trek history… so just where in the heck was Discovery’s dry dock located?
• A Krenim chronophage — or “time bug” — snared Discovery in a time bubble, from the species behind Star Trek: Voyager’s “Year of Hell.”
• Season 3-era Reno’s drink of choice is a Vesper martini, served ice cold — and she tells Rayner that he can buy her a drink “at Red’s,” the onboard bar and lounge set added to Discovery during its 32nd century upgrades (though not introduced until Season 4).
• While the ready room set was not built for Discovery until Season 2, the second time jump confirms the room existed as part of the ship’s original construction… but in a continuity goof, the 32nd century version of the Starfleet emblem remains on the Discovery ready room floor in each different time period, instead of the old version seen in Seasons 1 and 2.

• Burnham gives a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nostalgic smile when Stamets hands her a 23rd century Starfleet communicator, retired after the crew upgraded to 32nd tricombadges in Season 3’s “Scavengers.”
• Saurian officer Linus (David Benjamin Tomlinson) appears in the Season 1 time period, indicating he boarded Discovery long before his first actual appearance in Season 2’s “Brothers.”
• Former Discovery cast members Hannah Cheesman and Ronnie Rowe, Jr. return as Airiam and Bryce, Julianne Grossman returns as the original voice of Discovery’s computer. (While Cheesman portrayed Airiam in Season 2, the role was actually portrayed by Sara Mitich in Discovery’s first season.)
• I forgot just how much Airiam moves like C-3PO. Might have toned down that arm placement there in that wide shot if it were me, yikes.
• Discovery’s viewscreen may be an open window to space, but it features blast doors which can be closed as necessary.
• The future time period Burnham and Rayner visit is reminiscent of the alternate future setting in “Calypso,” where Zora and Discovery sat abandoned for nearly 1000 years. Zora even believes she’s having “another dream” when the officers arrive, perhaps hinting that the events of “Calypso” may have been one of Zora’s dreams — as the “Zora-point-of-view” shots mirror moments from that  Short Trek  tale.

• This episode marks the first time we’ve seen Discovery’s original hull and nacelle configuration since its big 32nd century upgrade in “Scavengers.”
• Even living “outside of time,” it’s curious that Stamets can jump back to a time period before his tardigrade DNA injection occurred.
• Stamets’ tactics for clearing engineering get less and less sophisticated as the episode proceeds — going from making up specific problems with the spore drive containment field to just shouting “I’m grumpy!” It works.
• “Hey Paul, let’s show ‘em how a couple of old dogs still know the best tricks!” Whoever gave Rayner a used copy of a dictionary of idioms from 1962, I thank you for your service.
• Rayner’s hand gets the “Timescape” treatment, aging uncomfortably fast while he squashes the time bug — though thankfully avoiding those awful long fingernails.
• Rayner surmises that Burnham must be the first person in Starfleet to captain a ship she first boarded as a prisoner. He’s probably right, but if we allow for a few technicalities I’d put Seven of Nine in that rare club as well: she’s imprisoned very quickly after boarding Voyager , and while she doesn’t hold a Starfleet rank at the time, she does command that vessel for over a month during the events of “One”.

Even with all the time jumping and the temporal-relativity-heavy plot, “Face the Strange” is a straightforward hour of television that confidently knows exactly what it wants to do – both in terms of the story and the characters. There are almost no extraneous moments, but the episode doesn’t feel rushed or overly full. The pacing is great: quick enough that we get to jump through a lot of different time periods, but relaxed enough that there’s room for smaller moments of comedy and character work.

The pacing and placement of the more emotional moments is especially effective, with characters examining and confronting their past and present selves in a way that’s emotionally resonant but also truly moves the story forward both at the episode and season levels.

A frequent frustration I have with Discovery is that the emotional beats and plot beats feel like they’re competing with each other for the same space, but with “Face the Strange” it feels like the show has finally figured out a way to have them work together and compliment one another.

Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 returns with “Mirrors” on Thursday, April 25.

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'Star Trek: Discovery' Season 5's Captain Rayner Ran His Ship Like a Pirate

Callum Keith Rennie also discusses coming into 'Discovery's final season, getting into prosthetics, and how much he has in common with Rayner.

The Big Picture

• Callum Keith Rennie's Captain Rayner brings conflict and depth to Star Trek: Discovery 's final season.
• Rennie discusses his experience on Star Trek: Discovery , praising the supportive cast and crew, despite the initial challenges of joining an established series for its last season.
• In Season 5, Episode 4 "Face the Strange," Burnham and Rayner must work together within a time bubble to save the universe.

As Captain Michael Burnham ( Sonequa Martin-Green ) embarks on one last adventure with her crew, Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 is bringing a few new characters along for the ride. Chief among those newcomers is the blunt, war-worn Captain Rayner. Played by Battlestar Galactica alum Callum Keith Rennie , Rayner is Burnham's new second in command on the Discovery , taking over after Saru ( Doug Jones ) took a different position at Starfleet.

Having lived through The Burn, Rayner doesn't have time for niceties and butts heads with Burnham almost immediately — so naturally, she takes it upon herself to give him a second chance when Starfleet is ready to cut him loose. Last week's episode saw him, rightfully, put in his place a bit as Tilly ( Mary Wiseman ) attempted to help him connect with the crew, much to his chagrin. In Season 5 Episode 4, "Face the Strange," Rayner and Burnham are thrown into a time bubble, forcing them to work together if they ever want to get back to the correct timeline and prevent the universe from being destroyed.

Ahead of the episode, I sat down with Rennie to dig into Rayner's backstory, what we can expect from him in the rest of the season, and what it will take for Rayner to truly connect with the crew of Discovery . During our conversation, we also discussed Rennie's history with sci-fi, what it was like joining Discovery for the show's final season, and what he's taking away from the whole experience.

Star Trek: Discovery

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Taking place almost a decade before Captain Kirk's Enterprise, the USS Discovery charts a course to uncover new worlds and life forms.

Rennie is no stranger to science fiction, having had roles in such series as The Umbrella Academy , Jessica Jones, and Battlestar Galactica. As Battlestar Galactica was the series that turned me into a sci-fi fan, and perhaps Rennie's most recognizable role, I had to ask him about being a part of such massive and beloved franchises within the genre. "It's amazing," he said. For Rennie, even though Battlestar was also a reboot of a classic series , the show's success was a lot less predictable than the mainstay that is Star Trek . He explained, "Like, say Battlestar , when I started on that I had no idea where that one was gonna go. Discovery was already very established , but I actually didn't let any of that into my [head], because I went, “That's not gonna help.” So, I didn’t. Now, I'm feeling the world of it. Now, I'm sensing what the world of Discovery is and how many people love it, and how it fits. "

Discovery also isn't his first experience with Star Trek , "I watched the original. That was my thing, and that was it," Rennie told me. While he may have missed some of the series' in between, saying, "There's big chunks of time where I just didn't watch a lot of TV, so I missed all of the other stuff," he'll always make time for The Original Series when he comes across it, "even if the old Star Trek comes on, I'll still watch it because that was my Star Trek . Jim Kirk, and all of that. "

While we've gotten a pretty good sense of who Rayner is in these first four episodes, most of his backstory remains a mystery. Rennie revealed that "some backstory comes up in a few episodes." Part of his gruff exterior will be explained as we'll "get a sense of why he's maybe got a chip on his shoulder and has some unprocessed resentments about a bunch of things that maybe have played out in his work in a negative way."

Rennie Calls 'Star Trek: Discovery's Latest Episode "Amazing"

"Face the Strange," is such a classic Star Trek episode, employing the ever-entertaining sci-fi trope of sticking our main characters in a time loop, both to put an obstacle in their path as well as to bring them face to face with some of their own demons. For Rennie, the episode really put the science in science fiction. "It was like, 'Whoa! What's happening? I don't get it.' There's just so much science stuff and talk, so much jumping about to places and history and stuff." But he had high praise for his fellow castmates as well as the crew behind the camera." Lee [Rose] being the director, you're in great hands. Being in scenes with Sonequa, you know that you're gonna be in it , and it was great. I watched it again last night, and there’s just an amazing amount of stuff in there. It was just an amazing episode. "

In this episode, Burnham and Rayner are tossed back in time to the first season of Discovery , bringing them both face to face with the version of Burnham who's fresh off her own demotion in Starfleet . Throughout the episode, it becomes quite clear that Burnham and Rayner have a lot more in common than either of them might have realized. When asked if this experience might put them more on equal footing, Rennie confirmed that "he's learned an understanding of the crew." He went on to point out that we haven't seen the relationship that Rayner had with his own crew.

He explained: "We're not on the Antares talking about his crew, which I think is an important part that we missed, where you go, 'How did I see my people on my particular ship? And how well did I know them?' No one's asking me how well I knew everybody because I did, but if I've only been there a brief time, you're only gonna have facts." He admits that it is important for Rayner to connect past the surface level. "Through that particular episode, you learn and go, 'Yes, it is good to know what people are up to and where they're from,' because in that particular instance, it saved us. So, I learned a thing, and I give a, 'Yes. Got it. Thank you.'"

Rayner Will Have to Shorten the Distance Between Himself and the Discovery Crew

While it doesn't sound like we'll be getting any flashbacks to Rayner's time on the Antares Rennie believes that he'd spent a similar amount of time with that crew as Michael has with hers. "We didn't get to inhabit that, I get to make it up in my own mind," he said. "But for me, it was more like a pirate ship that I had. " While Rayner comes off as the more stubborn, stick-to-the-mission Captain between him and Burnham, Rennie doesn't think he was quite so strict on his own ship. He said:

"That's the way I perceived it. It wasn't some rigid, completely stoic, boss fest, but a little bit of a wild card ship. We're gonna go into things that nobody else wants to go into, or knows how to deal with, but we would. "

While the walls around Rayner are still pretty high, Rennie explained that we will see him "shorten the distance" he's put between himself and the crew of the Discovery. "There's a great bit, there's an episode where Burnham leaves me again to take control of the ship. There's an interaction with everybody in a certain way because they don't like me yet. [Laughs] And I need some help a little bit, but I've created a distance, and I have to shorten that distance between everybody." He went on to say there are plenty of "fun dynamics" to look forward to and Rayner's insistence on keeping everyone at arm's length will likely come back to bite him.

Star Trek has quite a long list of original alien species created for the franchise, and Rayner just happens to be a Kellerun, a race that hasn't been seen since Deep Space Nine . In classic Trek fashion, Kelleruns appear mostly human with the most visible difference being the shape of the ears. As he follows in the footsteps of the likes of Leonard Nimoy and any actor who has ever played a Vulcan or a Romulan, I asked Rennie about getting into prosthetics for the role. "Those guys are great. Rocky [Faulkner] was great, Nicola [Bendrey] was great." While it was certainly an extra step the process was brief enough that it didn't bother him to come to set a bit earlier than usual. "That was probably an hour, and I really didn't think about that enough to go, 'Oh, that's right. I have to get up earlier.' But I think we got it down to an hour and a bit for just the ears because there’s a lot of stuff on them."

Despite the agonizing wait of sitting in front of a mirror for an hour, Rennie noted that Faulkner and Bendrey made the make-up experience as fun as it could possibly have been. He said: "I don't love just sitting there looking at myself for an hour, but there's music and great company and coffee, and it became a really sweet part of the day, and then another sweet part of the day where I download. " It wasn't his first time getting into prosthetics, but his previous experience had been brief. After playing Rayner across an entire season, Rennie admitted by the end, removing the glue actually started to feel like you'd expect pulling costume glue off your ears to feel. "There was a point near the end where the glue-on, glue-off became quite painful for a while."

The Support of the Cast and the Fans Are Highlights of Rennie's 'Star Trek' Experience

While this is Rennie's first season on the show, it's the final bow for Star Trek: Discovery . When asked what he'd be taking away from this experience, he had nothing but high praise for the cast and crew. As a newcomer on a well-established show, jumping into the fifth season had a bit of a learning curve. "I found that coming into the show was difficult for me because it was unlike a show that I'd been on before. It was already very well established." He went on to say:

"I pat myself on the back because I made it through, and there was this wonderful group energy that helped me do that. The good naturedness of the show was something that I maybe haven't worked on. There was a wholehearted goodness about it, which was quite nice, which overlapped into how people treated each other and mutual respect. Also, I kind of blocked out all Star Treks in my mind, so I'm there not thinking of Star Trek history. I'm just doing scene-to-scene and working on this stuff, and then it finishes, and then I forget that there's an incredible vast following of the show that somehow you are now part of it like that. All of that, this is all relatively new to me."

As a new addition to an already established group, I pointed out that it seemed as though Rennie's experience mirrored that of his characters, and he agreed. "I'm excited for people to see the season. And then, coming into it playing, “I don't want to be liked. It doesn't matter if I'm liked. I'm there to do my job, like Rayner, and I'm doing it. And then there's the after-effect of an incredible fan base that seems to be very supportive ."

You can watch our full conversation in the player above, and catch the latest episode of Star Trek: Discovery now on Paramount+.

'Star Trek: Discovery' Season 5 Review: One Hell of a Final Ride

Watch on Paramount+