Star Trek

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Crew of the Enterprise back aboard after visiting a curry house on the Klingon homeworld.

“Who do you think is the better captain, Kirk or Kirk?”

~ William Shatner on Patrick Stewart

A long long time ago, when men were men and women were women and Klingons were – well to be perfectly honest - just basically men as well - Star Trek burst onto the screens of a grateful American nation.

[edit] Origin

Roddenbury's vision was that all other habitable planets would be incredibly bland looking

Gene Roddenbury (Star Trek’s creator) hated the planet Earth after falling off his bike onto it, badly grazing his knee.”The only reason every damn television series is set on this damn planet is because of institutional racism - nothing more, nothing less”, he commented - his words here spoken by an actor in a weak attempt to conceal inebriation at the hands of Klingon Mind Lager. " But it's ridiculous; there's billions of planets out there and only one of them is Earth. Unless of course you count parallel universes, which I do...but that's just a hobby…and to be honest I've lost count."

Roddenbury also much preferred the future to the past as he hadn’t had a nasty bike accident in the future. "The present day is only one day out of about 3000 billion days available to set a television show in." Roddenberry continued, naked as the day he was born and starting to sway wildly, "I wanted to set my television show on one of those other 3000 billion days."

Roddenberry set to work, asking his mother if he was allowed to create a television series not set on Earth and not in the present day. Her answer was apparently ‘yes’, as long as it wasn't set next Wednesday - as that's when she was getting her hair done 'by Betty around the corner'. With next Wednesday ruled out, Roddenberry set the show in the mid twenty-third century - a century that hasn't, even to this day, happened.

[edit] Pitching Star Trek

Roddenberry went to TV Executives at Paramount to discuss his ideas. "I wanted to name the series after my favourite cat 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' but they didn't believe this to be a snappy enough title. We compromised with 'Star Trek' and to be fair, the cat would still answer to that name as long as he knew there was a bit of food in it for him."

On the strength of the pitch, a pilot entitled "The Cage" was commissioned. A dispute over biscuit allocation caused a strike at Paramount and so filming was cancelled in favour of shouting. A year later (the time it takes the Earth to orbit the sun) Roddenberry pitched another story and "Where No Man Has Gone Before" (about a woman - a species no Star Trek fan has yet discovered) was produced. A dispute over on-set masturbation brought the second strike, and Roddenberry was forced to start again, eventually making "The Man Trap", which wasn't very good but had a reasonable gay following.

TV Executive Marcus Howdawg decided to support the show despite low pilot ratings, as he found the show to be a great escape from the demands of his feminist girlfriend - who had only the week before asked him to have a 'conversation'.

[edit] Regular Characters

He's just like you - and he's the captain!

[edit] James T Kirk

To get the nucleus of the character of Kirk, you have to look at his slight paunch. Roddenbury was insistent that the Captain of the Enterprise should be a man who an audience could engage with and as such he insisted Shatner looked like the kind of guy who put away several donuts (space donuts) a day. He would slouch on the captain's chair like he was a fat lad watching a football game.

[edit] Kirk's Penis

Though never seen on-screen, Roddenberry considered Kirk's penis to be at the heart of the show and he would often insist Shatner left it visible for his fellow actors to respond to.

Thanks to Captain Kirk's habit of 'going where no man has gone before', Dr. McCoy was the foremost authority on intergalactic venereal diseases, although he never could figure out exactly what Kirk caught from the green chick. Except a few extra pounds here and there.

And if you've ever wondered why all the aliens in Star Trek look like humans dressed up? Ask Kirk...

Though Vulcans naturally have six fingers, tight budgets meant that Spock's back-story included his middle finger's loss during a miss-timed death-grip. To indicate he had a finger missing Nimoy had to constantly hold his hand in this uncomfortable position.

[edit] Spock

The character of Spock was based on the gender 'women'. The writer's were strongly influenced by their disinterested and disdainful wives who would regard their husbands every action as 'illogical'. "Watching grown men chase a ball around a field?" they would protest.

Plans to have an alien race in the series called Women was overruled by the only member of the production staff not under the influence of some particularly potent Skunk. Instead they settled upon the compromise of having a race in which both genders would act in a similarly irritatingly logical manner.

[edit] Doctor McCoy

Known as 'Bones' because of his fused and individual bones supported and supplemented by ligaments, tendons, muscles and cartilage that go into making his skeleton. Bones has no medical knowledge whatsoever due to technological advances making such skills redundant. He simply follows instructions given to him by moving triangles on the wall of his sick-bay. His pronouncements of "He's dead Jim" given during away missions, are the guess of an amateur or prompted by his special hand held device.

Doohan's two-week spell in solitary confinement proved an extra headache for script-writers.

[edit] Scotty

Convicted murderer James Doohan played the role of Montgomery Scott, the ship's chief engineer. Doohan was considered too dangerous to interact with the other actors and thus all his scenes were filmed in his cell in the West LA Correctional Facilty, decorated to look like the engine room.

[edit] Foreigners

Renowned racist Roddenberry insisted on having ethnic minorities in the Star Trek crew so as to give them nothing of any use to do, thus reinforcing the stereotype of lazy foreigners. So underused were the characters of Sulu and Chechov, they were both replaced by manikins in the third-series. The only line they would ever utter in this final year was the pre-recorded 'Aye Aye Captain'.

Nichelle Nichols broke ground by being the first actress to appear in a sci-fi series with a 'disconnected ear'. Nichelle's right ear was chopped of in a bread slicing accident weeks before filming commenced; this forced her to play the part of Uhuru whilst continuously holding her it in position allowing her to hear her colleague's lines. Unfortunately this meant she was recast from her intended role of lap-dancer to that of Telephone Operator.

1960's serial killers 'The Tennessee Two' are executed by robot probe Nomad.

[edit] Red Jumper Row

Reece Binspoon of Utah, convicted of the old first-degree, was the first man in the USA to be executed for real on a prime-time television drama. An initiative of Roddenberry and the American Government, men from death-row would be executed whilst playing minor characters on away-missions. Such executions were not compulsory; Death Row inmates had to volunteer to have their death recorded as part of a Star Trek episode. "Nobody can forgive these people for the crimes they have committed," Roddenberry said at the time, " but in having their life taken for the entertainment of an American audience, at least they are giving their victims families some comfort."

Amnesty International refused to campaign against this practice stating, "Whilst we understand why some consider this barbaric, the first consideration is how the execution serves the narrative of an episode."

[edit] Special Effects

Series 3 used models to recreate the impressive voyages of the Starship Enterprise.

Without the complex jiggery-pokery of Computer Graphics Innit (CGI), producing a fictional action series set in space was always an expensive and troublesome operation. It meant such programs had to be filmed in space itself. Though a full mock-up of The Enterprise was built, it did not have its own engines and thus had to be pulled around by ropes attached to a Jupiter space rocket.

Gene Roddenberry gave away a few tricks of the trade in an interview with Walter Cronkite - though due to the zero-gravity environment in which the interview took place, all of the letter u's floated away: "Obviosly, in the corse of the series, The Enterprise visits a nmber of alien worlds. With the limited range of the Jpiter rocket, we cold only really get to the moon, and though we toyed with the idea of the Enterprise continally discovering the Moon every episode, we finally conceded this would be fcking appalling. Ths we jst painted the moon different colors to represent different planets visited. Granted the moon is only a third of the size of Earth, but painting it did take a considerable amont of time and indeed paint, especially in near weightless conditions".

By the third season of Star Trek, Lenard Nimoy's insistence that his prosthetic ears be made entirely out of gold meant that budget cuts had to be found elsewhere. This forced the production team to abandon out in space filming and use models. "It wasn't ideal", William Shatner commented from his own mouth by the dexterity of his tongue,, "but we just had to work around it and only use half of it. It's sad in a way - but so was the death of Princess Diana and the end of the movie E.T"

FAN FACT: The automatic doors in the Enterprise were opened and closed by invisible dogs.

[edit] Language

The first series was performed entirely in the original Klingon with no subtitles in an attempt to appeal to the fictional alien species. The experiment proved unsuccessful and later series used the language spoken by the Queen of England.

Star Trek covered such themes as space congestion

[edit] Narrative Devices to Allow Deep Space Travel

You have to travel pretty fast to travel around outer-space and Roddenberry knew this. He came up with a measurement called Warp Speed whilst ice skating in Belgium. "I decided to make Warp 1 equal to 100mph." Roddenberry explained, "I know this sounds fast for, what is effectively the Enterprise’s first gear, but I don't think you should misunderestimate the size of outer-space. It's many times larger than earth. It’s bigger than America for god’s sake!"

Warp 2 became 200mph and then up in 100 mph chunks with warp 9 being 900mph. "Warp 10 was 2000mph instead of 1000mph because I felt that it should be an out-there kind of figure." Roddenberry continued, "Twice the speed of Concorde - in effect - the enterprise travelling at full-whack could get you from London to Sydney in just two hours!!"

[edit] Star Trek’s Politics

The less-than-subtle sign of Communism in Star Trek

Continuous drunken accusations that Star Trek has connections to communism have dogged the show rather like a dog would. Money abolished - in Star Trek's universe absolutely. And if that wasn't enough it is argued, the left of left helter-skelter ran to treating women and blacks with respect. Of course religion is no match for technology in this red spockosphere. Gregorian calendar? Not a chance - we're working with Tsar-dates here. If a five year mission sounds like a long time, a five year plan most certainly does not.

[edit] On Set Relationships

Much has been written about the frosty atmosphere present on set between Shatner and his co-stars. ”Personally I’ve never had a problem with the fat prick, dammit”, DeForest Kelly said in an interview published in the July 1991 edition of Efficient Baking , “ But it did grow slightly tiring when Bill would constantly insist on improvising rather than following the script. His off the cuff remark that he had to go call his wife totally ruined the tension of my removal of Spock’s brain. Kirk didn’t even have a wife dammit.”

”I said at the time and I’ll say it again” Kirk has since responded, ”This is sci-fi man, it’s out of space…you guys ever heard of time-travel?’

[edit] See Also

• Star Trek: Series Guide