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STAR TREK
U.S. Science Fiction
With the premiere of Star Trek on NBC in September 1966, few could have
imagined that this ambitious yet often uneven science-fiction series would go
on to become one of the most actively celebrated and financially lucrative
narrative franchises in television history. Although the original series
enjoyed only a modest run of three season and 79 episodes, the story world
created by that series eventually led to a library of popular novelizations
and comic books, a cycle of motion-pictures, an international fan community,
and a number of spin-off series that made the Star Trek universe a bedrock
property for Paramount Studios in the 1980s and 1990s.
Star Trek followed the adventures of the U.S.S. Enterprise, a flagship in a
23rd-Century interplanetary alliance known as "the Federation." The ship's
five year mission was "to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly
go where no man has gone before," a mandate that series creator and
philosophical wellspring Gene Roddenberry described as "Wagon Train in
space." Each episode brought the crew of the Enterprise in contact with new
alien races or baffling wonders of the universe. When not exploring the
galaxy, the crew of the Enterprise often scrapped with the two main threats
to the Federation's benevolent democratization of space, the Hun-like
Klingons and the more cerebral yet equally menacing Romulans.
The program's main protagonists, Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner), Mr.
Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and Dr. Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelly) remain three of
the most familiar (and most parodied) characters in television memory. As
commander of the Enterprise, the hyper-masculine Kirk engaged in equal
amounts of fisticuffs and intergalactic romance, and was known for his nerves
of steel in negotiating the difficulties and dangers presented by the ship's
mission. McCoy was the ship's cantankerous chief medical officer who, when
not saving patients, gave the other two leads frequent personal and
professional advice. Perhaps most complex and popular of the characters was
Spock. Half-human and half-Vulcan, Spock struggled to maintain the absolute
emotional control demanded by his Vulcan heritage, and yet occasionally fell
prey to the foibles of a more human existence. In addition to the three
leads, Star Trek featured a stable of secondary characters who also became
central to the show's identity. These included the ship's chief engineer,
Scotty (James Doohan), and an ethnically diverse supporting cast featuring
Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), Chekov (Walter Koening), Sulu (George Takei),
Yeoman Rand (Grace Lee Whitney), and Nurse Chapel (Majel Barrett).
Scripts for the original series varied greatly in quality, ranging from the
literate time-travel tragedy of Harlan Ellison's "City on the Edge of
Forever" and the Sophoclean conflict of Theodore Sturgeon's "Amok Time," to
less inspired stock adventure plots, such as Kirk's battle to the death with
a giant lizard creature in "Arena." With varying degree of success, many
episodes addressed the social and political climate of late-sixties America,
including the Vietnam allegory, "A Private Little War," a rather heavy-handed
treatment of racism in "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," an even an
encounter with space hippies in "The Way to Eden."
NBC threatened to cancel Star Trek after its second season, but persuaded in
some degree by a large letter-writing campaign by fans to save the show, the
network picked up the series for a third and final year. Canceled in 1969,
Star Trek went on to a new life in syndication where it found an even larger
audience and quickly became a major phenomenon within popular culture.
Beginning with a network of memorabilia collectors, fans of the show became
increasingly organized, gathering at Star Trek conventions to trade
merchandise, meet stars from the show, and watch old episodes. Such fans came
to be known as "trekkies," and were noted (and often ridiculed) for their
extreme devotion to the show and their encyclopedic knowledge of every
episode. Through this explosion of interest, many elements of the Star Trek
universe made their way into the larger lexicon of popular culture, including
the oft heard line, "Beam me up, Scotty" (a reference to the ship's
teleportation device), as well as Spock's signature commentary on the
"illogic" of human culture. Along with Spock's distinctively pointed ears,
other aspects of Vulcan culture also became widely popularized as television
lore, including the Vulcan "mind-meld" and the Vulcan salute, "live long and
prosper."
As "trekkie" culture continued to grow around the show during the seventies,
a central topic of conversation among fans concerned rumors that the series
might one day return to the airwaves. There was talk that the series might
return with the original cast, with a new cast, or in a new sequel format.
Such rumors were often fueled by a general sense among fans that the show had
been unjustly canceled in the first place, and thus deserved a second run.
Initially, Paramount did not seem convinced of the commercial potential of
resurrecting the story world in any form, but by the late seventies, the
studio announced that a motion picture version of the series featuring the
original cast was under development. Star Trek: The Motion Picture premiered
in 1979, and though it was a very clumsy translation of the series into the
language of big-budget, big-screen science-fiction, it proved to be such a
hit that Paramount developed a chain of sequels, including Star Trek II: The
Wrath of Kahn (1982), Star Trek III: The Search of Spock (1984), and Star
Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986).
By the mid-1980s, the Star Trek mythos had proven so commercially viable that
Paramount announced plans for a new Star Trek series for television. Once
again supervised by Roddenberry, Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted in
first-run syndication in 1987 and went on to become one of the highest rated
syndicated shows in history. Set in the 24th century, this series followed
the adventures of a new crew on a new Enterprise (earlier versions of the
ship having been destroyed in the movie series). The series was extremely
successful at establishing a new story world that still maintained a
continuity with the premise, spirit, and history of the original series. On
the new Enterprise, the command functions were divided between a more
cultured Captain, Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), and his younger, more
headstrong "number one," Commander William Riker (Jonathan Frakes). Spock's
character functions were distributed across a number of new crew members,
including ship's counselor and Betazoid telepath, Deanna Troi (Marina
Sirtis), the highly advanced android, Lt. Commander Data (Brent Spiner), who
provided the show with "logical" commentary as ironic counter-point to the
peculiarities of human culture, and finally, Lieutenant Worf (Michael Dorn),
a Klingon raised by a human family who struggled to reconcile his warrior
heritage with the demands of the Federation. Other important characters
included Lt. Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton), the ship's blind engineer whose
"vision" was processed by a high-tech visor, Dr. Beverly Crusher (Gates
McFadden), the ship's medical officer and implicit romantic foil for Picard,
and Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton), the doctor's precocious son.
Running for 178 episodes, Star Trek: The Next Generation was able to develop
its characters and storylines in much more detail than the original series.
As with many other hour-long dramas its era, the series abandoned a wholly
episodic format in favor of more serialized narratives that better showcased
the expanded ensemble cast. Continuing over the run of the series were
recurring encounters with Q, a seemingly omnipotent yet extremely petulant
entity, the Borg, a menacing race of mechanized beings, and Lars, Data's
"evil" android brother. Other continuing stories included intrigue and civil
war in the Klingon empire, Data's ongoing quest to become more fully human,
and often volatile political difficulties with the Romulans. This change in
the narrative structure of the series from wholly episodic to a more
serialized form can be attributed in some part to the activities of the
original series' enormous fan following. A central part of fan culture in the
1970s and 1980s involved fans writing their own Star Trek based stories,
often filling in blanks left by the original series and elaborating incidents
only briefly mentioned in a given episode. Star Trek: The Next Generation
greatly expanded the potential for such creative elaboration by presenting a
more complex storyworld, one that actively encouraged the audience to think
of the series as a foundation for imagining a larger textual universe.
Despite the show's continuing success, Paramount canceled Star Trek: The Next
Generation after seven seasons to turn the series into a film property and
make room for new television spin-offs, thus beginning a careful
orchestration of the studio's Star Trek interests in both film and
television. The cast of the original series returned to the theater for Star
Treks 5 and 6, leading finally to Star Trek: Generations, in which the
original cast turned over the cinematic baton to the crew of Next Generation.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine premiered in January of 1993 as the eventual
replacement for Next Generation on television. In contrast to the usually
optimistic and highly mobile structure of the first two series, Deep Space
Nine was a much more claustrophobic reading of the Star Trek universe. Set
aboard an aging space-station in orbit around a recently liberated planet,
Bajor, the series generated its storylines from the aftermath of the war over
Bajor and from a nearby "wormhole" that brought diverse travelers to the
station from across the galaxy.
Hoping to compete with Fox and Warner Brothers in creating new broadcast
networks, Paramount developed a fourth Star Trek series as the anchor for
their United Paramount Network. Star Trek: Voyager inaugurated UPN in January
1995, serving as he network's first broadcast. Responding perhaps to the
stagebound qualities and tepid reception of Deep Space Nine, Voyager opted
for a premise that maximized the crew's ability to travel and encounter new
adventures. Stranded in a distant part of the galaxy after a freak plasma
storm, the U.S.S. Voyager finds itself seventy-five years away from earth and
faced with the arduous mission of returning home.
Both Deep Space Nine and Voyager attracted the core fans of Star Trek, as
expected, but neither series was as popular with the public at large as the
programs they were designed to replace. Despite this, at century's end, there
would seem to be every indication that the world of Star Trek will survive
into the new millennium.
-Jeffrey Sconce
CAST
Captain James T. Kirk ...........................William Shatner
Mr. Spock.............................................. Leonard Nimoy
Dr. Leonard McCoy ...............................DeForest Kelley
Yeoman Janice Rand (1966-1967)..... Grace Lee Whitney
Sulu .........................................................George Takei
Uhura................................................... Nichelle Nichols
Engineer Montgomery Scott..................... James Doohan
Nurse Christine Chapel............................... Majel Barrett
Ensign Pavel Chekov (1967-1969)............. Walter Koenig
PRODUCERS Gene Roddenberry, John Meredyth Lucas, Gene L. Coon, Fred
Freiberger
PROGRAMMING HISTORY 79 Episodes
NBC
September 1966-August 1967 Thursday 8:30-9:30
September 1967-August 1968 Friday 8:30-9:30
September 1968-April 1969 Friday 10:00-11:00
June 1969-September 1969 Tuesday 7:30-8:30
FURTHER READING
Alexander, David, and Ray Bradbury. Star Trek Creator: The Authorized
Biography of Gene Roddenberry. New York: Roc, 1994.
Asherman, Allan. The Star Trek Compendium. New York: Pocket, 1989.
Dillard, J. M., and Susan Sackett. Star Trek, Where No One Has Gone Before: A
History in Pictures. New York: Pocket, 1994.
Gerrold, David. The World of Star Trek. New York, Ballantine, 1974.
Gibberman, Susan R. Star Trek: An Annotated Guide to Resources On The
Development, The Phenomenon, The People, The Television Series, The Films,
The Novels, and The Recordings. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1991.
Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture.
New York: Routledge, 1992.
Nemecek, Larry. The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion. New York:
Pocket, 1992.
Okuda, Michael, Denise Okuda, Debbie Mirek, and Doug Drexler. The Star Trek
Encyclopedia: A Reference Guide to The Future. New York: Pocket, 1994.
Shatner, William, with Chris Kreski. Star Trek Memories. New York: Harper
Collins, 1993.
Trimble, Bjo. The Star Trek Concordance. New York: Ballantine, 1976.
Tulloch, John, and Jenkins, Henry. Science Fiction Audiences: Watching Doctor
Who and Star Trek. London; New York: Routledge, 1995.
Van Hise, James, and Hal Schuster. Trek, The Unauthorized Story Of The
Movies. Las Vegas, Nevada: Pioneer Books, 1995.
Whitfield, Stephen E., and Gene Roddenberry. The Making Of Star Trek. New
York, Ballantine, 1968.
See also Roddenberry, Gene; Science-fiction Programs
http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/R/htmlR/roddenberry/roddenberry.htm
http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/S/htmlS/scienceficti/scienceficti.htm
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