If nature abhors a vacuum, then so did the late Gene Roddenberry, creator of the original “Star Trek” TV series. Every week for three seasons and 78 episodes, the show’s opening credits rolled over footage of the U.S.S. Enterprise whooshing at warp velocity–a scientific impossibility, because in space, no one can hear you speed.
An ex-Los Angeles police officer, Roddenberry had no problem breaking the laws of science. The “whoosh” sound effect, he reasoned, added more zip to the title sequence.
If Roddenberry took artistic license with the credits, Trekkies (or, if you prefer, Trekkers) have hardly balked in protest since. To the contrary, the universe Roddenberry created took on a life of its own.
“Star Trek,” first aired by NBC with “The Man Trap” episode on Sept. 8, 1966, turns 30 years old next week. Original cast members, including William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, will reunite Saturday and Sunday in Huntsville, Ala., for an anniversary celebration, “Star Trek 30: One Weekend on Earth.” Closer to home, WPWR-Ch. 50 will air four back-to-back episodes of “Star Trek” from 5 to 9 p.m. Sunday.
As cast and fans look back, some of those special effects might look a bit cheesy three decades later. But the science fiction of “Star Trek”–both on a literary and visual level–promises to endure into the next millennium.
So far, Trek has spawned three spinoff series and seven motion pictures, with an eighth, “Star Trek: First Contact,” due this Thanksgiving. The latest film stars the cast of the TV show “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”
All this is the progeny of a man who had penned but one science fiction script before “Classic Trek,” as the ’60s series has been nicknamed by followers.
“Gene didn’t know anything about technology, but the imagination was there,” said Majel Barrett, Roddenberry’s wife and the actress who played Nurse Christine Chapel on the show. “He was a great visionary.”
With “Star Trek,” Roddenberry (who died in 1991) crafted the first science fiction series that featured weekly doses of special effects. From the transporter sequences to animated phaser blasts, Trek fans saw the future portrayed as never before. An array of clever props reinforced the fantasy of 23rd Century innovation, from the hand-held medical scanner (the “tricorder”) to flip-open communicators (which seem to have influenced some cellular phone designers).
The earpiece worn by Lt. Uhura suggested a day when communications workers would be freed from bulky headsets, and the Enterprise’s “sensors”–which collected data on strange planets while the ship was in orbit–became a reality with NASA’s Viking and Voyager space probes.
“There’s some small evidence that the devices depicted on `Star Trek’ led fans to try to invent the things they saw,” said John Trimble, half of the husband-wife team that saved “Star Trek” from cancellation through a letter-writing campaign during its second season. “The little things Mr. Spock sticks into his computer screen look exactly like diskettes.”
If Trimble sounds like an overzealous Trekkie, then compute this: Roddenberry’s consultants for the show included scientists from the Rand Corp. think tank, according to an early “Star Trek” promotional booklet.
A Canadian company, Vital Technologies Corporation of Bolton, Ontario, unveiled its own version of the “tricorder” last week, complete with computer interface and sensors that measure weather conditions, electromagnetic fields and light intesity.
Roddenberry’s unflinching eye for detail extended to even the mundane trappings of space life. Three-dimensional chess, automatic sliding doors and automated food galleys that process a meal on command–all these extra touches made life on the Enterprise exotic and absorbing to the home-bound viewing audience.
Science fiction for adults
The nation’s best science fiction writers, including Isaac Asimov, praised “Star Trek” and described themselves as fans. Sci-fi authors including Jerome Bixby, Robert Bloch (author of the book “Psycho” that became the Alfred Hitchcock movie), Harlan Ellison and Theodore Sturgeon wrote scripts for the show. The science fiction intelligentsia now had a creative outlet on television.
“It was adult science fiction,” Trimble said. “The human interactions and relationships were so much more mature on `Star Trek’ than they were on, say, `Lost In Space.’ “
Yet to some Trekkies, it seems the ultimate indignity that the CBS show “Lost in Space,” which pre-dated Trek by a year, did better in the ratings. Their ship, for crying out loud, looked like a flying saucer; the robot (“Danger, Will Robinson!”) resembled a vacuum cleaner. But it was, after all, created by Irwin Allen, who later gave the world “The Towering Inferno” and “The Poseidon Adventure.”
“With Irwin Allen, if you didn’t have an explosion every 20 seconds, you didn’t have a show,” said Jeff Berkwits, editor of Asterism, a journal of science fiction, fantasy and space music.
How welcome was “Star Trek” to the science fiction connoisseur? Consider that only a decade before Mr. Spock, Leonard Nimoy appeared in a movie typical of most 1950s sci-fi: “Zombies of the Stratosphere.”
” `Star Trek’ wasn’t completely whacked out, with aliens coming in and destroying the Earth, which was popular in the ’50s with the Cold War,” Berkwits said. “What you got was black and white, American and Russian, working together. And it was in the future, distant enough so that people weren’t put off by it. In that way, they were able to deal with some pretty serious issues.”
Of course, the episodes that tackled war, racism and evil would have been much less fun to watch had they not been wrapped in some eye-popping visuals.
Some very special effects
“When Gene Roddenberry started to do this, it was far and away the best stuff that was done,” said Ed Morris, chair of the television department at Columbia College. “The only thing that seems to exceed it is the computer-driven work you see today.”
Not in all cases. In the second-season episode “The Immunity Syndrome,” the Enterprise encounters a huge, strikingly realistic one-celled life form that resembles a giant amoeba.
“They did that amoeba with oil on glass, lit it from the back and filmed it from the front,” Trimble said. “No one has been able to beat that with computer animation.”
Animation accounts for the blue and red beams of light emitted from the crew’s hand weapons, or “phasers.” The transporter sequence, a longtime favorite with fans, employed silver glitter swirled in a bowl of water, with animated glows and flashes. And those sliding doors on the Enterprise bridge that opened whenever Capt. Kirk walked through were actually operated by hand, using pulleys and off-camera stage crew.
“Back in the early days of TV, it was considered an astounding achievement that a series would have special effects on a weekly basis,” said Dave Hutchison, science editor and special effects writer for Star Log, a monthly science fiction media magazine based in New York. “They took months to produce, so to have them on a weekly basis seemed almost impossible.”
How did “Star Trek” do it? “A whole new generation of special effects artists was coming into the business, and trying to develop economical methods,” Hutchison said. “They came of age just as `Star Trek’ was going into production. . . . Roddenberry was always looking for people who were young and bright and full of imagination–people who would go off and do things because they didn’t know they were impossible.”
Hutchison can dissect just about any “Star Trek” sleight-of-hand, though to this day a few of the show’s artistic tricks defy his attempts to explain them. The glowing, pulsating tips of the Enterprise’s two engine pods particularly fascinate him.
“That’s one effect that has never been duplicated,” Hutchison said. “I think it’s done with a revolving fan blade that strobed while being filmed against a (red) light. They tried to do it with `The Next Generation,’ but they couldn’t find a way to reproduce it.”
There were some props, however, that even “Star Trek” devotees find laughable today. They point to “K-7,” the space station that appeared in “The Trouble With Tribbles” episode (“tribbles” were those little furry hairballs that multiplied by the minute). K-7 was the rest stop where Capt. Kirk had his hands full protecting a grain shipment and dealing with Klingons, but on the “Star Trek” set, the K-7 model had less-than-stellar beginnings.
“It looks like a bunch of Jell-O molds and toilet paper rolls hanging from a screen, and that’s exactly what it was,” Trimble said.
To be sure, the impact of “Star Trek” and its science fiction can hardly be measured in ratings points. The series performed so dismally that, as Barrett put it, “We were a flop show, there were no two ways about it. We didn’t think we were doing anything special at the time.”
It took time for the rest of the world to catch up to what “Star Trek” foreshadowed. Just as fans had persuaded NBC to give the show one more year, they also convinced NASA that “Enterprise” was a name worthy of the first space shuttle (no doubt, some marketing push from Paramount Pictures helped). Life may imitate art, but it could be light-years before another science fiction show captures such a laurel.
” `Star Trek is like 20th Century mythology,” Barrett said. “It’s written up in encyclopedias, dictionaries. They teach `Star Trek’ philosophy in school. And many of the (inventions) we started with on the show have actually come to pass. Science and science fiction have come together so beautifully.”
STAR TREK’S PARALLEL UNIVERSE
Gene Roddenberry crafted several earlier versions of “Star Trek” before Kirk, Spock, Dr. McCoy and company were invented. This is how Roddenberry envisioned the “U.S.S. Yorktown” crew in 1964:
Robert T. April: “The `skipper,’ about 34 . . . a colorfully complex personality, capable of action and decision which can verge on the heroic. . . . His primary weakness is a predilection for action.”
The executive officer: “Never referred to as anything but `Number One,’ this officer is mysteriously female–slim and dark in a Nile Valley way. . . . An extraordinarily efficient officer, `Number One’ enjoys playing it expressionless, cool.”
The navigator: “Jose Ortegas, born in South America, is tall, handsome, about 25, and brilliant, but still in the process of maturing. He is both full of humor and Latin temperament.”
Ship’s doctor: “Phillip Boyce, an unlikely space traveler. At the age of 51, he’s worldly, humorously cynical, makes it a point to thoroughly enjoy his own weaknesses. . . . Measures each new landing in terms of relative annoyance rather than excitement.”
The first lieutenant: “His name is `Mr. Spock.’ . . . Probably half-Martian, he has a slightly reddish complexion and semipointed ears. . . . His primary weakness is an almost catlike curiosity over anything the slightest bit `alien.’ “
Source: “The Star Trek Compendium” by Allan Asherman
STAR TREK: 2 YEARS SHORT OF A 5-YEAR MISSION
Though it has spawned seven motion pictures (and a new one due this fall), three spinoff series, an animated cartoon, inspired the name of a NASA space shuttle and enjoyed massive syndication success, NBC’s original “Star Trek” series was a ratings flop–finishing in 52nd place after its first season, 1966-67.
“Star Trek” almost failed to make the small screen. An initial pilot, “The Cage,” starring Jeffrey Hunter as Capt. Christopher Pike, was rejected by NBC in February, 1965. The footage resurfaced in a 1966 “Star Trek” episode, “The Menagerie.”
After a second season in the ratings cellar, “Star Trek” was headed for certain cancellation. A letter-writing campaign– NBC received 116,000 Trek fan letters, 52,000 in February 1968 alone– saved the show
Ultimately, a bad time slot sealed the show’s demise. Despite protests from Gene Roddenberry, NBC ran the third and final season of “Star Trek” at 10 p.m. Fridays, where it had no chance to attract younger viewers.
— Lou Carlozo.
