History of Star Trek
2 Dec 2003 It was 39 years ago today
Roddenberry taught the band to play
They’ve been going in and out of style
But they’re guaranteed to raise a smile…
It was 39 years ago today that cameras began to roll for the first time on Star Trek. It was the first pilot, on December 12, 1964, that began at the Desilu Studios. The pilot, “The Cage” starring Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Pike was seen 2 years later inside a later, 2-part episode called “Menagerie”. The pilot also featured a female “Number One” and an excitable pointed-ear “Martian” named Mr. Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy.
The NBC executives asked for some changes and called for a second pilot. This second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, starred William Shatner as Captain Kirk. The network said, “Get rid of the woman and the guy with the pointed ears”. So he married the woman, Majel Barret, and kept the guy with the pointed ears. Leonard Nimoy would not have had it the other way around. The woman dyed her hair blond and waited in her husband’s reception office so that when he walked in even he didn’t recognize her. She became Nurse Chappel. The guy with the pointed ears, this “Martian”, became less emotional, more logical, and Vulcan green rather than Martian red (which wouldn’t photograph correctly).
The series lasted for 3 of the “5 year mission” of the Starship Enterprise, a victim of poor ratings. Ironically, the following year, demographics were used and it was discovered that Star Trek was appealing to exactly the kind of audience that advertisers wanted!
The show remained incredibly popular in syndication, spawning 19 years later another TV series, “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, and again in “ST: Deep Space Nine”, “ST: Voyager”, and now “Enterprise” (which is in it’s 3rd season.)
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Categories : Science Fiction
