Star Trek: The Original Series

Creation

In 1964, Roddenberry's concept for Star Trek secured him a three-year development deal with leading independent TV production company Desilu (founded by comedy stars Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz). Roddenberry pitched the series to the major TV networks as a sort of "Wagon Train to the Stars", depicting it as a futuristic version of the westerns (such as Wagon Train and Gunsmoke) which were popular on television at the time. In Roddenberry's original pitch, the protagonist was Captain Robert April of the "S.S. Yorktown". Eventually, this character became Captain Christopher Pike. The first pilot episode, "The Cage", was made in 1964.

Related Topics:
1964 - Desilu - Lucille Ball - Desi Arnaz - Wagon Train - Westerns - Gunsmoke - Robert April - Christopher Pike - The Cage - 1964

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Many of Roddenberry's concepts were ahead of their time. He envisaged a multi-racial, multi-species crew, based on the assumption that racial prejudice would not exist in the 23rd century — a decidedly challenging approach at a time when racial segregation was still firmly entrenched in many areas of the United States. He also included recurring characters from other alien races, including Spock, who was half human and half alien.

Related Topics:
Racial segregation - Spock

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Other innovative Star Trek features were clever solutions to basic production problems. The idea of the faster-than-light warp drive was not a new concept in science fiction, but it provided the writers with an effective narrative device that allowed the Enterprise to quickly traverse the vast distances of deep space. The matter transporter — which enabled crew members to be instantly "beamed" from place to place — neatly solved the problem of how to move the characters quickly from location to location, since the production team soon realized that filming a spacecraft landing sequence for each episode would be prohibitively expensive.

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The Star Trek pilot was first offered to the television network CBS, but they turned it down, opting instead for the more mainstream Irwin Allen production, Lost In Space. Star Trek was then offered to NBC, who initially rejected it as being too cerebral and lacking in action. However, NBC executives were favorably impressed with the concept and they made the highly unusual decision to commission a second pilot — "Where No Man Has Gone Before". Only the character of Spock (played by Leonard Nimoy) remained from the original pilot, and only two of its cast members (Majel Barrett and Nimoy) carried on to the series. It is also notable that the character of the ship's female First Officer was changed to a male for the second pilot. Although the first pilot was never broadcast in its original form until many years later, much of the footage was cleverly recycled in a later episode.

Related Topics:
CBS - Irwin Allen - Lost In Space - NBC - Where No Man Has Gone Before - Spock - Leonard Nimoy - Majel Barrett

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It was in the second pilot that almost all of the main characters (and the actors who played them) came into the series: Captain Kirk (William Shatner), chief engineer Lieutenant Commander Scott (James Doohan) and Lieutenant Sulu (George Takei), who was ship's astrophysicist in this episode and helmsman later in the series. Still missing at this point was chief medical officer Dr. Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley) (a Dr. Piper was present on the ship instead) and communications officer Lieutenant Uhura (Nichelle Nichols). Roddenberry's inclusion of the Sulu (and later Uhura) characters was a bold move, given the conservative nature of American TV at the time (and the deep-rooted racism in much of American society).

Related Topics:
William Shatner - Scott - James Doohan - Sulu - George Takei - Leonard McCoy - DeForest Kelley - Uhura - Nichelle Nichols - Racism

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Takei and Nichols were among the first actors from their respective ethnic backgrounds (Nichols is African-American, Takei is Japanese-American) to have regular featured roles that did not depict their characters as inferior racial stereotypes. Nichols' character is also notable as one of the very first roles in American TV in which a woman held a senior position and worked as an equal with male colleagues. Indeed, according to Nichols her presence in the series was considered such an important advance for the profile of African-Americans that when she told Dr Martin Luther King, Jr that she was considering leaving the series, he personally persuaded her to remain in the cast.

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Many aspects of starship life in the series were modeled after the British Royal Navy of the age of sail. Roddenberry had intended to make Christopher Pike (the captain in the original pilot episode) similar to the fictional captain Horatio Hornblower. There is a certain formality among the characters; the series writer's guide points out that sudden emergencies are not to be met with a beautiful crewman rushing into the captain's arms and awaiting certain doom. The Enterprise is one vessel of thousands in Starfleet, which is governed by the United Federation of Planets, consisting of more one hundred and fifty worlds.

Related Topics:
Royal Navy - Age of sail - Horatio Hornblower - Starfleet - United Federation of Planets

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Spock and Dr. McCoy are both confidants of the captain, reflecting practice in the 1800s, when a captain often considered the advice of a near-equal outside the chain of command. The connection to traditional naval practice is also reflected in such small details as the three-note "boatswain's whistle" that is heard when the captain arrives on the bridge, as well as the relatively static nature of battles, in which ships fire at each other from a distance. In contrast to the world of Star Wars, no inspiration was drawn from the aircraft carrier of modern naval warfare; no fighter craft are shown in the Original Series. There is one featured briefly in the -based film '.

Related Topics:
1800s - Boatswain - Star Wars - Aircraft carrier

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Two key members of Roddenberry's production staff were art director Matt Jefferies and costume designer William Ware Theiss; the designer of the Enterprise, Jefferies' contributions were so significant that his name was eventually immortalized in the so-called Jefferies Tube, which became a standard part of the (fictional) design of Federation starships. Theiss created the look of the Enterprise uniforms and designed sensuous, risqué costumes for female guest stars. Artist and sculptor Wah Chang, who had worked for Walt Disney, was hired to design and manufacture props; he created the flip-open communicator, the portable sensing-recording-computing tricorder and built the phaser weapons based on a Jefferies design.

Related Topics:
Matt Jefferies - William Ware Theiss - Wah Chang

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In creating the look of Star Trek, Roddenberry and his team went to considerable lengths to create a fully-rounded and believable future world of space travel and high technology that was both visually exciting and meaningfully consistent. The series introduced viewers to many ideas which broke new ground for depictions of science fiction on the screen — warp drive, matter transportation, wireless hand-held communicators and scanners, directed energy weapons, desktop computer terminals, laser surgery and computer speech synthesis. Although these concepts had numerous antecedents in sci-fi literature and film, they had never before been so convincingly integrated into a complete package. Even the ship's automatic doors were a rather novel feature in 1966, and Star Trek is credited as the inspiration for the subsequent real-life development of the now commonplace auto-opening door.

Related Topics:
Warp drive - Directed energy weapons - 1966

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Roddenberry was especially keen to avoid the clichéd designs and primitive effects of earlier sci-fi film and TV productions, and Star Trek was notable for having realistic visual effects for the time. His brief to Jeffries for the design of the starship, now renamed U.S.S. Enterprise, was simply to avoid all the old space-travel cliches — no rockets, no fins, no jet exhausts or smoke trails — although Jeffries had to fight Roddenberry to keep the ship's exterior as simple as possible.

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Jeffries' starship concept went through hundreds of changes and a long consultation process before he arrived at a final saucer-and-cylinders design that became a template for all subsequent Star Trek space vehicles. Jeffries also developed the main set for the Enterprise bridge (based on an original design by Pato Guzman) and used his practical experience as a WWII airman and his knowledge of aircraft design to come up with a sleek, functional, ergometric bridge layout.

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