Star Trek
Star
Trek is an American
science fiction entertainment series and media franchise. The Star Trek
fictional universe created by Gene Roddenberry is the setting of six television
series including the original 1966 Star Trek, in addition to ten feature films (with
an eleventh in post-production), dozens of computer and video games, hundreds
of novels and other fan stories, as well as a themed attraction in Las Vegas.
The original TV series alone is one of the biggest cult phenomena of modern
times.
Setting
The USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) is the main setting of the 1966-69
series, on a mission to discover civilisation, life, and "to boldly go
where no man has gone before". Here, it is depicted in the third season
episode "Is There in Truth No Beauty?".
In the Star Trek universe,
humanity developed faster-than-light space travel, using a form of propulsion
referred to as "warp drive", following nuclear war and a
post-apocalyptic period in the mid-21st century. According to the story time
line, the first warp flight happened on April 5th, 2063. Later, humans united
with other sentient species of the galaxy to form the United Federation of
Planets. As a result of the intervention and scientific teachings of the Vulcans, an advanced telepathic alien race, humanity
largely overcame many Earth-bound frailties and vices by the twenty-third
century. Star Trek stories usually depict the adventures of human and alien
beings who serve in the Federation's Starfleet.
The protagonists are
essentially altruists whose ideals are sometimes only imperfectly applied to
the dilemmas presented in the series. The conflicts and political dimensions of
Star Trek form allegories for contemporary cultural realities; Star Trek: The
Original Series addressed issues of the 1960s, just as later spin-offs have
reflected issues of their respective eras. Issues depicted in the various
series include war and peace, authoritarianism, imperialism, class warfare,
economics, racism, human rights, sexism and feminism, and the role of technology.
Gene Roddenberry has stated that by creating "a new world with new rules,
I could make statements about sex, religion,
Television Series
Star Trek originated as a
television series in 1966, although it had been in the planning stages for at
least six years prior to that. Although The Original Series was cancelled after
its third season due to low ratings, it has served as the foundation for five
additional Star Trek television series. Altogether, the six series comprise a
total of 726 episodes and ten theatrical films (with an 11th in the works)
across twenty-two different television seasons (twenty-nine, if one separately
counts seasons running concurrently), making it the second most prolific
science-fiction franchise in history after Doctor Who. See Lengths of science
fiction film and television series for more on comparative series lengths.
The Original Series (1966 - 1969)
Star Trek debuted in the
The Animated Series (1973 - 1974)
Star Trek: The Animated Series
was produced by Filmation and ran for two seasons
from 1973 to 1974. Most of the original cast performed the voices of their
characters from The Original Series, and many of the original series' writers,
such as D. C. Fontana, David Gerrold and Paul
Schneider wrote for the series. While the animated format allowed larger and
more exotic alien landscapes and lifeforms, animation
and soundtrack quality, the liberal reuse of shots (pioneered by Jonnie 'Roy'
White) and musical cues as well as occasional animation errors has detracted
from the reputation of the series.[9] Although
originally sanctioned by Paramount (who became the owners of the Star Trek
franchise following its acquisition of Desilu in
1967), Roddenberry forced Paramount to stop considering the series canon. Even
so, elements of the animated series have been used by writers in later
live-action series and movies (e.g. Kirk's middle name, Tiberius, first used in
Bem was made official in Star Trek VI: The
Undiscovered Country, and elements of Spock's childhood from Yesteryear,
referenced in the TNG episode Unification, Part 1) while the holodeck makes its first appearance in the TAS episode The
Practical Joker. TAS won Star Trek's first Emmy Award on May 15 1975.[10][11]
The TAS series briefly returned to television in the mid-1980s when it was
rebroadcast on the children's cable network Nickelodeon and in the early 1990s
on cable network Sci-Fi Channel. It was released to DVD in 2006.
Phase
II
Star Trek: Phase II was set to air in 1978 as the flagship
series of a proposed Paramount television network, and 12 episode scripts were
written before production was due to begin. The series would have put most of
the original crew back aboard the
The Next Generation (1987 - 1994)
Star Trek: The Next Generation (Also known as "TNG", The
Next Generation) is set about 85 years after The Original Series. It features a
new starship, the Enterprise-D, and a new crew led by Captain Jean-Luc Picard, played by Patrick Stewart. It also features the
first Klingon in Starfleet, Worf,
played by Michael Dorn. The show premiered on September 28, 1987 and ran for
seven seasons, ending on May 23, 1994. Unlike the previous television outings,
the program was syndicated instead of airing on network television. It had the
highest ratings of any of the Star Trek series and was the #1 syndicated show during the last few years of its original run. It was
nominated for an Emmy for Best Dramatic Series during its final season. It also
received a Peabody Award for Outstanding Television Programming. The series
currently airs on HRT in Croatia, AXN Sci-Fi in Bulgaria and Poland, TV6 in
Sweden, Viasat 4 in Norway, SBS NET in Denmark, ETV
in Estonia, Virgin 1 in the UK, Sci Fi in Australia, Mexico, Argentina and in Brazil, SIC
Radical in Portugal, and Space in Canada.
Deep Space Nine (1993 - 1999)
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is set during the same time frame as
The Next Generation and went on for seven seasons, debuting in 1993. Like Star Trek: The Next Generation, it aired
in syndication in the
Voyager (1995 - 2001)
Star Trek: Voyager was produced for seven seasons from
1995 to 2001, launching a new Paramount-owned television network UPN. It
features a new commanding officer, Captain Kathryn Janeway,
played by Kate Mulgrew, who's the first woman
commanding officer in a Star Trek series. Voyager takes place at about the same
time as Deep Space Nine. The series' pilot shows the USS Voyager and its crew
stranded in the Delta Quadrant, 75,000 light years from Earth. Faced with a
75-year voyage to Earth, the crew must avoid conflict and defeat challenges on
its long and perilous journey home. Like Deep Space Nine, early seasons of
Voyager feature greater conflict between its crew than is seen in later shows,
as a large contingent of the crew is made up of Maquis
fugitives forced by circumstance to cooperate with Starfleet regulations
instead of doing things the Maqui way. Eventually,
though, they settle their differences, after which it becomes more reminiscent
of The Original Series. Voyager is originally isolated from many of the
familiar aspects and races of the Star Trek franchise, barring those few
represented on the crew. This allowed for the creation of new races and
original plot lines within the series. Later seasons, however, brought an
influx of characters and races from prior shows, such as the Borg, Q, the Ferengi, Romulans, Klingons, Cardassians and even
multiple instances where members of the Next Generation crew appear in the
series. The series is currently airing on Space in
Enterprise
Star Trek: Enterprise (originally titled as
"Enterprise" prior to season 3), produced from 2001 to 2005, was a
prequel to the other Star Trek series, beginning over one hundred years before
the original Star Trek series. The series is set aboard Earth's first warp-five
capable starship, the
For the first two seasons,
Feature Films
Paramount Pictures has
produced ten Star Trek feature films, with an eleventh film currently in
production, set for release on May 8, 2009. The first six films continue the
adventures of the The Original Series cast, the
seventh was an amalgam of "The Original Series" and "Next
Generation" casts, and the next three were exclusively Next Generation's
cast. Although North American and
Some fans consider the
even-numbered Star Trek films to be superior to the odd-numbered Star Trek
films (the so-called "Star Trek movie curse"); the second, fourth,
sixth, and eighth films are considered fan favorites, whereas the first, third,
fifth, seventh, and ninth are often considered the weaker films.
Cultural
Impact
Prototype space shuttle Enterprise named after the fictional
eponymous starship with Star Trek television cast members and creator Gene
Roddenberry
The Star Trek franchise is a
multi-billion dollar industry, currently owned by CBS. Gene Roddenberry sold
Star Trek to NBC as a classic adventure drama; he pitched the show as
"Wagon Train to the stars" and as Horatio Hornblower
in space. Though set on a fictional starship, Roddenberry wanted to tell more
sophisticated stories using futuristic situations as analogies to current
problems on Earth and rectifying them through humanism and optimism. The opening line, "to boldly go where no
man has gone before," was taken almost verbatim from a US White House
booklet on space produced after the Sputnik flight in 1957.The central trio of
Kirk, Spock and McCoy was modeled on classical mythological storytelling.
Roddenberry explicitly
intended the show to have a political agenda, as can be heard in phrases like
"Those who hate and fight must stop themselves, otherwise it is not
stopped." (Spock in 'Armageddon'). Harking of
human diversity and contemporaneous political circumstances, Roddenberry
included a multi-ethnic crew. Star Trek showed mankind what it might develop
into, if only it would learn from the lessons of the past, most specifically by
ending violence. An extreme example are the Vulcans, who had a very violent past but learned to control
their emotions.
Star Trek and its spin-offs
have proved highly popular in television repeats and are currently shown on TV stations
worldwide. The show’s cultural impact
goes far beyond its longevity and profitability. Star Trek conventions have
become popular, though now are often merged with conventions of other genres
and series, and fans have coined the term "Trekkie"
to describe themselves. Others, however, prefer the term "Trekkers".
Fans of Deep Space Nine are better known as "Niners".
An entire subculture has grown up around the show which was documented in the
film Trekkies.
The Star Trek franchise is
believed to have motivated the design of many current technologies, including
the Tablet PC, the PDA, mobile phones and the MRI (based on Dr. McCoy's
diagnostic table). It has also brought
to popular attention the concept of teleportation with its depiction of
"matter-energy transport." Phrases such as "Beam me up,
Scotty" have entered the public vernacular. In 1976, following a
letter-writing campaign, NASA named its prototype space shuttle Enterprise, after
the fictional starship.
The city of
An unincorporated area near
the Las Vegas Strip contains a residential street named "
A limited number of Famous
Players theatres in
Constitution class replica in Vulcan
The town of
Parodies of Star Trek include
the internet-based cartoon series Stone Trek, the song Star Trekkin'
by The Firm and the feature film Galaxy Quest.
In the SeaQuest
episode "Hide and Seek", William Shatner
(Captain Kirk) appears as a dictator named Milos Tezlov. When Calling the SeaQuest,
Shatner's vidcom locater in
the lower right hand of the screen is listed as NCC1701. NCC-1701 was the Hull
Serial Number of the
Current Status and Future
After Star Trek:
In 2006, CBS Paramount
Domestic Television began syndicating an enhanced version of the original 79
Star Trek episodes. State-of-the-art visual effects replaced those in the
series (created in-house by CBS), the original theme music has been rerecorded,
and the show was transferred from the original negatives in high definition.
The show is currently syndicated in HD.
Also in 2006, it was announced
that there was a pitch in the works for a new animated series that would, if
produced, be released as several 6-minute episodes, available online (similar
to The Animatrix and Star Wars: Clone Wars). The
series is to be set 150 years after the Star Trek: The Next Generation time
line, during an era of upheaval and strife in the Federation. The Romulans have used several "Omega Particle"
explosions to render much of Federation space impassable by traditional
Federation vessels. Many Federation worlds have been isolated and some races,
including the Vulcans, have withdrawn from the
Federation altogether. The series is, as yet, untitled and there has been no
full confirmation.
On January 19, 2007, CBS
announced that its newly-formed home entertainment unit would begin releasing
the remastered episodes on HD DVD before the end of
2007. Though the remastered first season was released
on DVD/HD-DVD hybrid discs, the latter two seasons will instead be released on
DVD only on the wake of CBS's decision (and that of the industry) to abandon
the high-definition format.
Perpetual Entertainment was
also developing a MMOG based on Star Trek called Star Trek Online,
the licence has been sold to Cryptic Studios. IDW
Publishing have also bought the rights to the comic
book. The original series' characters
are also featured in two volumes of manga by
publishers Tokyopop.
A new movie, a prequel to the
original series simply titled Star Trek, was initially slated for a Christmas
2008 release. In order to take advantage of the summer movie season, however,
Major Villains
The first major villains to be
introduced into the Star Trek storyline come from The Original Series, a
multitude of episodes revolving around the ongoing cold war between the The Federation and the Klingons,
a war like race known for their aggression and (in later series' and all films)
their cranial ridges. Only the Romulans were of the
same level of villainy as the Klingons, and beyond
that villains were often individuals or groups over entire races. The Klingons were also the primary villain in many of the Star
Trek films, most notably The Search for Spock, The Voyage Home, The Final
Frontier and The Undiscovered Country, where a peace is finally brokered
resulting in the Khitomer Accords. During The Next
Generation, the threat of the Klingons was decreased
due to this uneasy truce and a stronger alliance later formed, as a result, the
threat of the Romulans increased along with the
introduction of the Cardassians and the Borg, with
the latter remaining the key villains through the later seasons of Star Trek
Voyager. To a lesser extent, the Ferengi and the Q
were also villains, however they would later be used
for a more comedic, less threatening effect.
During Deep Space Nine, which
itself was partly launched from a story-arc involving the Borg, new villains
were introduced, with The Dominion being the main villains, along with the Cardassians and a brief resurgence of hostility with the Klingons, who later return as a result of the Dominion
threat as strong allies. During Voyager, the writers of Star Trek wished to
take the story away from villains who had by now been in the storylines for
over thirty years. Seeing the title ship flung to the far side of the galaxy,
this enabled shows producers to introduce new villains. Initially, these were
the Kazon, however with the success of Borg
storylines and the popularity of Star Trek: First Contact the Borg were
introduced to Voyager as the ship passed through Borg space, and they remained
the principal villain and the center of a number of storylines, a central
character (Seven of Nine) and the final episode.
Following Star Trek Voyager,
Star Trek Enterprise, a prequel, capitalized on the use of well-known villains
including the Klingons. It did, however, introduce
new villains known as the Xindi and the Suliban, as well as showing darker sides to previously
friendly races including the Vulcans and Andorians.
Both the Original Series, Deep Space Nine and
