Tuesday, September 8th. A popular cultural phenomenon began this week 43 years ago — as millions of American television viewers began a journey to “Where no man has gone before.” “Star Trek” introduced Captain James T. Kirk, Mister Spock, Scotty, Dr. McCoy and other crew members into their living rooms. The original series lasted for 79 shows, but led to many spin-off programs and feature motion pictures that continue the journey to this day. When “Star Trek” first appeared, it was nearly three years before the first humans walked on the surface of the moon. Now, exploration of space and missions of the space shuttle are almost taken for granted. This year, NASA will spend about $6 billion on space operations.
via PR Newswire
There’s always been things to enjoy about Star Trek. One of those things was it’s color-blindness. I saw the 1986 Roddenberry documentary about that strange first few episodes. He was told, “You can’t put a black lady at the controls; some stations just won’t carry it!” America was still a little stigmatized by the Civil War back then.
But the thing I love the most is that through all the seasons of all the iterations of the story, not one complaint was received about racisim, per Roddenberry himself. America isn’t the bad place we perceive it to be; remember we are the only superpower to rescue the world from fascism, twice, without taking a square foot of land, other than that to bury our dead.
France, Phonetia, Spain, Britain, no other superpower has ever done that.
While the show is woven into American hopes for our mutual futures, it’s just a pretty dream, but it’s some four decades of good TV.
Voyager and especially Enterprise were pretty crappy efforts. And I was especially disappointed with the new movie, especially because of the hype.
But yea, overall, that original series was pretty groundbreaking; especially the movies that directly spawned from it.
If memory serves, McCoy did not show up for several weeks. There was an old guy playing the Doctor, just not playing Bones.
lol Brian Fahrlander yeah the civil war… a hundred years earlier.
Also don’t forget the US helping to overthrow democratically elected governments in other countries – if some people hate you its not because you are free, its because your army was in their countries.
I use to produce Star Trek Conventions nationwide called Trek-o-ramas. When they quit making new episodes of the Next Generation I went from having my best year then going out of business next year. If the others…Voyager, Deep Space 9 & Enterpise were just a 1/4th as good as Next Gen….trek would be alive and well on Tv today as a new tv series. Maybe the new Movie will get the Trek franchise going again.
I’ll skip the traditional paens and maybe iconoclastically point out that the old Star Trek, incredibly enough unlike ( given the loosenimng of censorship standards after 1972 or so,) unlike its many children, had sex – out the wazoo. It wasn’t just Uhura – there wasn’t an alien queen or sinister female android in any galaxy anywhere any level of ” historical development” who wasn’t dressed to kill, sometimes literally. Besides it being the heydey of the miniskirt, God bless it, the costumes were both imaginative and sexy – in marked contrast to the blah, unisex official uniforms, which all the later Star Treks retained without the obvious ( and almost mandatory ) sci-fi fantasy homage to ( macho, double-standard!) sexuality which is probably what made sci-fi a going concern with 12-30 year old males in the first place, and eventually a bankable commodity without which Hollywood would be in a lot more trouble than it is. ( If you’re talking about Trekkies, I guess it would be 12 to nursing home … ) Anyway, Star Trek may have used a lot more pseudoscience and impressive-sounding gibberish than the later shows, but in their over-scrupulous stickling for accuracy they overlooked what made Star Trek great entertainment in the first place.
Been a Trek fan all my life. Original, STNG, and Enterprise was my favorites. All time favorite episodes “Doomsday Machine” and Best Of Both Worlds Part 1 and 2 (the cliffhanger is my all time favorite cliffhanger of ANY television show).
I loved STNG but just wished the characters would have loosened up some, bit too hoidi toudi..
I love the attitude and sense of adventure of Enterprise. The opening theme song was awesome.