Star Trek: The Original Series

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Star Trek
Image:Enterprise orig.jpg
The original starship Enterprise, as it appeared on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Format Science fiction
Run time 50 minutes per episode
Creator Gene Roddenberry
Starring William Shatner
Leonard Nimoy
DeForest Kelley
Country United States
Network NBC
Original run September 8, 1966 – September 2, 1969
No. of episodes 79

Star Trek is a culturally significant science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry in the 1960s. It spawned a strong fan following - TV Guide rated it number 1 in its list of the "25 Top Cult Shows Ever" - and was followed by five additional television series and ten theatrical movies. The Guinness Book of Records lists it as having the largest number of spinoffs. To distinguish this first series from the sequels which followed, it has acquired the retronym Star Trek: The Original Series (sometimes shortened to ST:TOS or TOS). See Star Trek for a more general overview.

Set in a utopian vision of the 23rd century, Star Trek follows the adventures of the starship Enterprise and her crew. A voiceover at the beginning of each episode states their goal:

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.

Star Trek debuted on NBC on Thursday, September 8, 1966, at 8:30 P.M. Initially, it was not successful; ratings were low and advertising revenue was lackluster. For the show's second season, it was moved to Friday nights at 8:30 P.M. When threats of cancellation loomed in the second season, the show's devoted fanbase conducted an unprecedented campaign, petitioning NBC to keep the show on the air. They succeeded in gaining a third season, but the show was moved from 8:30 P.M. to 10 P.M. on Fridays. This was considered the "death slot," and ratings remained poor. The series was cancelled at the end of its third season. On June 3, 1969, after an absence of several months, the show returned, this time to Tuesday nights at 7:30 P.M. The first episode to air in this new time slot was the last original one of the series, "Turnabout Intruder". NBC's marketing department reportedly soon complained to their superiors that they were premature in cancelling the series since their audience demographic research revealed that the series actually attracted a highly desirable viewership that advertisers wanted. Unfortunately, this revelation came too late to consider reversing the network's decision.

But then the fans got a very lucky break. The show was sold into syndication, and stations were able to air it when they thought fans and potential fans would be able to watch it. Many fans soon joined those who held the campaign which made the series popular, and they created a broad market for the franchise. The first six Star Trek movies were based on the original series (and the seventh included characters from it).

Fans of the original Star Trek series became known as Trekkies, though some fans prefer the term Trekker.

Part of the series on
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TV series
Original Series  · Episode list
Animated Series  · Episode list
Next Generation  · Episode list
Deep Space Nine  · Episode list
Voyager  · Episode list
Enterprise  · Episode list
Films
The Motion Picture
II: Wrath of Khan
III: Search for Spock
IV: Voyage Home
V: Final Frontier
VI: Undiscovered Country
Generations  · First Contact
Insurrection  · Nemesis
Major planetary nations
United Federation of Planets
Romulans  · Klingons  · Tholians
Gorn · Q  · Ferengi  · Borg  · Kazon
Cardassians  · Bajorans  · Hirogen
Dominion  · Breen  · Xindi  · Vidiians
Expanded universe
Novels  · Other storylines
CCG  · RPG  · TOS TrekMUSE
Reference
Timeline  · Physics
Starships classes  · Further reading
Cultural influence
Society and Star Trek  · Trekkies

Contents

Programming history

Star Trek originally aired on NBC. All times shown are Eastern Standard Time.

Creation

In 1964, Roddenberry's concept for Star Trek secured him a three-year development deal with leading independent TV production company Desilu (founded by comedy stars Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz). Roddenberry pitched the series to the major TV networks as a sort of "Wagon Train to the Stars", depicting it as a futuristic version of the westerns (such as Wagon Train and Gunsmoke) which were popular on television at the time. In Roddenberry's original pitch, the protagonist was Captain Robert April of the "S.S. Yorktown". Eventually, this character became Captain Christopher Pike. The first pilot episode, "The Cage", was made in 1964.

Many of Roddenberry's concepts were ahead of their time. He envisaged a multi-racial, multi-species crew, based on the assumption that racial prejudice would not exist in the 23rd century — a decidedly challenging approach at a time when racial segregation was still firmly entrenched in many areas of the United States. He also included recurring characters from other alien races, including Spock, who was half human and half alien.

Other innovative Star Trek features were clever solutions to basic production problems. The idea of the faster-than-light warp drive was not a new concept in science fiction, but it provided the writers with an effective narrative device that allowed the Enterprise to quickly traverse the vast distances of deep space. The matter transporter — which enabled crew members to be instantly "beamed" from place to place — neatly solved the problem of how to move the characters quickly from location to location, since the production team soon realized that filming a spacecraft landing sequence for each episode would be prohibitively expensive.

The Star Trek pilot was first offered to the television network CBS, but they turned it down, opting instead for the more mainstream Irwin Allen production, Lost In Space. Star Trek was then offered to NBC, who initially rejected it as being too cerebral and lacking in action. However, NBC executives were favorably impressed with the concept and they made the highly unusual decision to commission a second pilot — "Where No Man Has Gone Before". Only the character of Spock (played by Leonard Nimoy) remained from the original pilot, and only two of its cast members (Majel Barrett and Nimoy) carried on to the series. It is also notable that the character of the ship's female First Officer was changed to a male for the second pilot. Although the first pilot was never broadcast in its original form until many years later, much of the footage was cleverly recycled in a later episode, "The Menagerie".

It was in the second pilot that almost all of the main characters (and the actors who played them) came into the series: Captain Kirk (William Shatner), chief engineer Lieutenant Commander Scott (James Doohan) and Lieutenant Sulu (George Takei), who was ship's astrophysicist in this episode and helmsman later in the series. Still missing at this point was chief medical officer Dr. Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley) (a Dr. Piper was present on the ship instead) and communications officer Lieutenant Uhura (Nichelle Nichols). Roddenberry's inclusion of the Sulu (and later Uhura) characters was a bold move, given the conservative nature of American TV at the time (and the deep-rooted racism in much of American society).

Takei and Nichols were among the first actors from their respective ethnic backgrounds (Nichols is African-American, Takei is Japanese-American) to have regular featured roles that did not depict their characters as inferior racial stereotypes. Nichols' character is also notable as one of the very first roles in American TV in which a woman held a senior position and worked as an equal with male colleagues. Indeed, according to Nichols her presence in the series was considered such an important advance for the profile of African-Americans that when she told Dr Martin Luther King, Jr that she was considering leaving the series, he personally persuaded her to remain in the cast.

Many aspects of starship life in the series were modeled after the British Royal Navy of the age of sail. Roddenberry had intended to make Christopher Pike (the captain in the original pilot episode) similar to the fictional captain Horatio Hornblower. There is a certain formality among the characters; the series writer's guide points out that sudden emergencies are not to be met with a beautiful crewman rushing into the captain's arms and awaiting certain doom. The Enterprise is one vessel of thousands in Starfleet, which is governed by the United Federation of Planets, consisting of more one hundred and fifty worlds.

Spock and Dr. McCoy are both confidants of the captain, reflecting practice in the 1800s, when a captain often considered the advice of a near-equal outside the chain of command. The connection to traditional naval practice is also reflected in such small details as the three-note "boatswain's whistle" that is heard when the captain arrives on the bridge, as well as the relatively static nature of battles, in which ships fire at each other from a distance. In contrast to the world of Star Wars, no inspiration was drawn from the aircraft carrier of modern naval warfare; no fighter craft are shown in the Original Series. There is one featured briefly in the Next Generation-based film Star Trek: Insurrection.

Two key members of Roddenberry's production staff were art director Matt Jefferies and costume designer William Ware Theiss; the designer of the Enterprise, Jefferies' contributions were so significant that his name was eventually immortalized in the so-called Jefferies Tube, which became a standard part of the (fictional) design of Federation starships. Theiss created the look of the Enterprise uniforms and designed sensuous, risqué costumes for female guest stars. Artist and sculptor Wah Chang, who had worked for Walt Disney, was hired to design and manufacture props; he created the flip-open communicator, the portable sensing-recording-computing tricorder and built the phaser weapons based on a Jefferies design.

In creating the look of Star Trek, Roddenberry and his team went to considerable lengths to create a fully-rounded and believable future world of space travel and high technology that was both visually exciting and meaningfully consistent. The series introduced viewers to many ideas which broke new ground for depictions of science fiction on the screen — warp drive, matter transportation, wireless hand-held communicators and scanners, directed energy weapons, desktop computer terminals, laser surgery and computer speech synthesis. Although these concepts had numerous antecedents in sci-fi literature and film, they had never before been so convincingly integrated into a complete package. Even the ship's automatic doors were a rather novel feature in 1966, and Star Trek is credited as the inspiration for the subsequent real-life development of the now commonplace auto-opening door.

Roddenberry was especially keen to avoid the clichéd designs and primitive effects of earlier sci-fi film and TV productions, and Star Trek was notable for having realistic visual effects for the time. His brief to Jeffries for the design of the starship, now renamed U.S.S. Enterprise, was simply to avoid all the old space-travel cliches — no rockets, no fins, no jet exhausts or smoke trails — although Jeffries had to fight Roddenberry to keep the ship's exterior as simple as possible.

Jeffries' starship concept went through hundreds of changes and a long consultation process before he arrived at a final saucer-and-cylinders design that became a template for all subsequent Star Trek space vehicles. Jeffries also developed the main set for the Enterprise bridge (based on an original design by Pato Guzman) and used his practical experience as a WWII airman and his knowledge of aircraft design to come up with a sleek, functional, ergometric bridge layout.

Characterizations

The characters in the original series, and (to a lesser extent) later series, are a diverse multinational group. It was Roddenberry's intent to show that the future of humankind is a more enlightened time in which national borders do not divide people from working together.

Like Star Wars, Star Trek was notable for the fact that it made stars of its cast of largely unknown actors. Kelley had appeared in many films and TV shows, but mostly in smaller roles. Shatner and Nimoy also had previous TV and film experience but neither was very well-known (although Shatner had starred memorably as the terrified air traveler in the classic Twilight Zone episode "Terror at 20,000 Feet"). But Star Trek's casting certainly contrasted with that of its rival Lost In Space which featured several famous actors including Zorro star Guy Williams and Bill Mumy, who was at the time one of America's leading juvenile actors.

The three main characters in the original series were Captain James Tiberius Kirk, Doctor Leonard "Bones" McCoy, and science officer Spock. These three were a strong group who played well off each other and who were popular with viewers: Kirk was passionate and resourceful, Spock was calm and logical, and McCoy was sardonic and spoke his mind.

The half-human and half-Vulcan Spock, who possessed superhuman intellect and strength, was clearly based on Sherlock Holmes. As the only non-human character starring in the original cast, he was meant to be a dispassionate observer against whom the strengths and flaws of humanity could be seen more clearly. The Spock character was at first rejected by network officials who feared that his vaguely "satanic" appearance (with pointed ears and eyebrows) might prove upsetting to some viewers. Indeed, Roddenberry discovered that the network had airbrushed out Spock's pointed ears and eyebrows from press photos of the character in publicity material sent to network affiliates in the more conservative southern states. But Spock went on to become one of the most popular characters on the show, arguably due to his role as the peaceful and impassive foil to Dr. McCoy's impassioned country-doctor personality. Numerous female fans also felt powerfully drawn to Spock, ostensibly because they fantasized about bringing forth the passionate human side hiding underneath the calm Vulcan exterior.

The series was created during a time of cold war politics, and the plots of its episodes occasionally reflect this. The original series infrequently shows encounters with other advanced spacefaring civilizations, including the Klingons and the Romulans, both of which were involved in separate "cold wars" with the Federation. However, the historical cold war is clearly portrayed as a thing of the past in the series; several human characters bear Russian names.

Episodes

Many episodes of the original series involve encounters with powers much greater than that of the ship and its crew. These powers take many forms: advanced alien races with psychic powers, rogue alien machines, and in one case, a god. Sometimes a member of the ship's crew would acquire godlike powers in some freak accident, almost invariably bringing doom upon themselves or the crew. A cautious attitude towards automation prevails; in many episodes, Captain Kirk frees alien cultures from repression by dictatorial computers.

Most situations of this type are resolved when the power in question comes close to enslaving or destroying the ship and crew, only to be saved by Kirk. His usual strategy is to outwit the antagonist and make impassioned appeals to humanistic values. Episodes usually end with a moral being summarized and a bit of humor to finish on a lighter note.

In terms of its writing, Star Trek is also notable as the first science fiction TV series to utilize the services of leading contemporary science fiction writers, such as Harlan Ellison, as well as established TV writers. Series script editor Dorothy C. Fontana (originally Roddenberry's secretary) was also a vital part of the success of Star Trek — she edited most of the series and wrote around a dozen episodes, although her contributions were greatly underrated at the time. She went on to write several episodes of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but she left the show before the second season and was later critical of the direction of the new series, and Roddenberry's domination of the show and his reputed tendency to take credit for its success.

While most episodes of TOS were self-contained, there were several notable themes throughout the entire series. Arguably, the most important was the exploration of major issues of 1960s America, like sexism, racism, nationalism, and global war. Roddenberry believed that with new perspectives the public would view those issues differently in their own lives, but some critics accused him of peddling left-wing propaganda.

For example, certain Original Series episodes, such as "The Apple" "Who Mourns for Adonais?" and "The Return of the Archons", display subtle yet clearly present anti-religious themes. Episodes such as "Bread and Circuses" and "The Omega Glory" have themes that are more overtly pro-religion and patriotic, but some have suggested that episodes such as these, which also tended to be among the more poorly written and unbelievable of the series, were merely attempts by Roddenberry to pander to traditional, mainstream American sensibilities in fear of being censored. However, it is important to remember that network interference, up to and including wholesale censorship of scripts and film footage, was a regular occurrence in the 1960s and Star Trek suffered from its fair share of tampering. Many scripts had to be revised after vetting by the NBC censor and according to one book about the series, the gaping mouth of the "salt vampire" monster in the episode "The Man Trap" was actually an in-joke which referred to the network censor's persistent habit of cutting love scenes which featured open-mouthed kisses.

Like all long running television series, Star Trek suffered its fair share of weak episodes. The majority of these occurred during the third season, when budget cuts and bad scheduling took their toll on the writers and producers. Among the weakest episodes are "Spock's Brain" (Gene L. Coon), "The Gamesters of Triskelion" (Margaret Armen), "The Alternative Factor" (Don Ingalls), "And the Children Shall Lead" (Edward J. Lasko), "By Any Other Name" (Jerome Bixby) and "Catspaw" (Robert Bloch)

The Original Series is also noted for its sense of humor such as Spock and McCoy's pointed, yet friendly, bickering. Episodes like "The Trouble with Tribbles", "I, Mudd" and "A Piece of the Action" are written and staged as comedies. This humor is much more subdued in following series and movies, with the exception of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

A few episodes have become sources of proverb in American culture for totally unforeseen and unintended reasons. Perhaps the best example is "Plato's Stepchildren", in which Mr. Spock's mind is controlled (through a process resembling telekinesis) by denizens of a planet who have somehow chosen Ancient Greece as a role model; while under their influence, Spock plays a harp and sings a song which includes the words "bitter dregs". As a result, some fans of American sports teams which are having an exceptionally poor season have taken to suggesting (such as by writing a letter to the editor of the sports section of their local newspaper or by getting on the air of a sports talk radio station) that the team should entitle its highlight film for that year "Plato's Stepchildren", because the team has become the "bitter dregs" of the league.

Theme song

The show's theme tune was an instrumental piece written by Alexander Courage. Although lyrics were written for the theme music, they were not used. The lyrics were published in Stephen E. Whitfield's authorised 1968 book The Making of Star Trek:

Beyond the rim of the starlight
My love is wandering in starflight
I know he'll find in star clustered reaches
Love, strange love a star woman teaches
I know his journey ends never
His star trek will go on forever
But tell him while he wanders his starry sea
Remember, remember me.

As reported by Herb Solow and Robert Justman in their 1996 book Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, Gene Roddenberry wrote them without composer Alexander Courage's knowledge, and without intending for them ever to be sung, so that he would nevertheless get a 50% share of the music's performance royalties. (This practice is not new, and is common in the music publishing business, although some consider it ethically dubious.) Although some recordings of the theme with lyrics exist, many have pointed out that the lyrics do not match the melody and are very difficult to sing.

Characters

Regular

Sulu and Uhura were not given first names in this series. In the documentary "William Shatner's Trek Memories" [1], Nichelle Nichols says, in an interview, that she and Roddenberry agreed upon Uhura's first name being Nyota, which means "star" in Swahili, when they got together to brainstorm the character's background. Sulu's first name, Hikaru, is official, and was revealed in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

The relatively young, mop-topped Russian navigator Chekov was added in the second season. A popular urban legend has it that this was in response to an indignant editorial in the Russian newspaper Pravda - an editorial pointing out that the Soviet Union had launched the first man into space. There is, however, no direct evidence that this was the case.(although creator Gene Roddenberry did suggest that this was the case in a television interview.) Studio documentation suggests that the intention was to introduce a character with more appeal to a teenage market, especially the female sector. [2]

Each of the regulars had one or more catchphrases heard on several episodes. These include:

  • Kirk: “Captain’s log: Stardate …”
  • Spock: “Fascinating”, “Highly illogical”
  • McCoy: “He’s dead, Jim”, “In a pig’s eye!”, “Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a …”
  • Scott: “Ma engines canna take any more!”
  • Uhura: “Hailing frequencies open, sir”
  • Sulu: “Warp factor one, sir”
  • Chekov: “It vas invented in Russia”

Semi-regular

Pilot episode

Notable guest roles

In addition, the series is notorious for repeatedly including characters (usually security personnel wearing red uniforms) that 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 indicate the dangerous circumstances for the main characters.

Characters who survive into the Next Generation era

The spin-off series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, when it premiered in 1987, was initially controversial with some fans due to the fact that Roddenberry chose to set the series approximately 100 years after the events of TOS, thereby making it impractical for any TOS characters to be regulars on the new show.

As TNG and its spin-offs progressed, however, several TOS-era characters made appearances:

  • Spock, now a Vulcan ambassador, is said to have gone underground in the Romulan Empire in hopes of fostering peaceful coexistence with the Federation and reunification with Vulcan society ("Unification, Parts I and II").
  • McCoy, now a 137-year-old admiral, inspects the Enterprise-D during her maiden flight in "Encounter at Farpoint".
  • Scotty, who is promoted to captain, is revealed to have spent about 70 years trapped in a transporter buffer before being rescued by the Enterprise-D crew and resuming his life in "Relics".
  • Sarek, Spock's father, continued to be an ambassador for the next century, finally retiring to Vulcan where he passes away during the events of "Unification".
  • Kang, Koloth and Kor, the three Klingons featured in "Day of the Dove", "The Trouble with Tribbles" and "Errand of Mercy", continued to serve the Empire well into the 24th century. They appeared in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Blood Oath" in which Kang and Koloth were killed. Kor later died fighting in the Dominion War. A younger version of Kang, from the era of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, later appeared in the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Flashback".
  • James Kirk disappears in the mid-2290s during the maiden voyage of the Enterprise-B but 75 years later is recovered from an alternate plane of existence by Enterprise-D Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Kirk's emergence in the 24th century is short-lived, however, when he is killed in Star Trek: Generations.

Besides the above examples, there have been numerous non-canon novels and comic books published over the years in which TOS-era crew are depicted in the TNG era, either through time-travel or other means.

Trivia

  • When designing the plans for the Enterprise, toilets were accidentally omitted! This was jokingly acknowledged in TNG, when the chart of the Enterprise-D at the back of the Engineering set featured a toilet located in the middle of the saucer section.
  • The Jeffries tubes, access tunnels which led to every part of the ship, were named after Matt Jeffries, the art director on the show. Jeffries tubes also feature in several later series of Star Trek.
  • TOS is well noted for its forecast of future technological developments, including mobile phones (the communicators) and magnetic resonance imaging (used in tricorders).
  • The TOS Enterprise doesn't have any fixed weapons arrays. When it is seen to be firing weapons, they tend to just fly out of any part of the ship. This criticism of the TOS Enterprise was remedied in the movies, as improved special effects allowed more accurate weapons fire.
  • The arrowhead insignia introduced in TOS was actually exclusively used by the crew of the Enterprise. When the crew encountered other Starfleet vessels, they bore different insignia depending on their ship. It is presumed in canon that the arrowhead insignia was adopted by the whole of Starfleet after the end of TOS, but before Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
  • NBC's cancellation of Star Trek is considered by some to be one of the biggest mistakes in television history. A 2002 TV special marking the 50th anniversary of the network included a tongue-in-cheek retrospective of unsuccessful series and bad ideas spawned by the network over the years, ending with an appearance by William Shatner who chided network executives for cancelling TOS.
  • There are several pipes and tubes in many sets marked with the designation "GNDN". While it is never explained what this designation meant, it was in fact an in-joke from set designers and stood for "Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing".

See also

External links


Star Trek television series and feature films
Series: Films:
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