Star Trek
Star Trek is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the series of the same name and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon. Since its creation, the franchise has expanded into various films, television series, video games, novels, and comic books, and it has become one of the most recognizable and highest-grossing media franchises of all time.
The franchise began with Star Trek, which premiered on September 6, 1966, on Canada's CTV network. In the United States, it debuted on September 8, 1966, on NBC. The series followed the voyages of the crew of the starship USS Enterprise, a space exploration vessel built by the United Federation of Planets in the 23rd century, on a mission "to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before". In creating Star Trek, Roddenberry was inspired by C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower series of novels, Jonathan Swift 1726 novel Gulliver's Travels, the 1956 film Forbidden Planet, and television westerns such as Wagon Train.
The Star Trek canon includes The Original Series, several subsequent television series, and a film franchise; further adaptations also exist in expanded media. After the conclusion of The Original Series, the adventures of its characters continued in The Animated Series, and six feature films. A television revival beginning in the late 1980s and concluding in the mid 2000s saw four spinoff series: The Next Generation, following the crew of a new starship Enterprise a century after the original series; Deep Space Nine and Voyager, both set in the same era as the Next Generation; and Enterprise, set a century before the original series in the early days of human interstellar travel. The adventures of the Next Generation crew continued in four additional feature films. In 2009, the film franchise underwent a reboot, creating an alternate continuity known as the Kelvin timeline; three films have been set in this continuity. The most recent Star Trek revival began streaming on digital platforms in 2017 with series set at various points in the original continuity: Discovery and Strange New Worlds set before The Original Series; anthology series Short Treks; Picard, Lower Decks and Prodigy set during or after the Next Generation era; and Discovery and Starfleet Academy set in the 32nd century.
Star Trek has been a cult phenomenon for decades. Fans of the franchise are called "Trekkies" or "Trekkers". The franchise spans a wide range of spin-offs including games, figurines, novels, toys, and comics. From 1998 to 2008, there was a Star Trek–themed attraction in Las Vegas. At least two museum exhibits of props travel the world. The constructed language Klingon was created for the franchise. Several Star Trek parodies have been made, and viewers have produced several fan productions.
Star Trek is noted for its cultural influence beyond works of science fiction. The franchise is also notable for its progressive stances on civil rights. The Original Series included one of the first multiracial casts on American television.
Conception and setting
As early as 1964, Gene Roddenberry drafted a proposal for the science fiction series that would become Star Trek. Although he publicly marketed it as a Western in outer space—a so-called "Wagon Train to the stars"—he privately told friends that he was modeling it on Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, intending each episode to act on two levels: as a suspenseful adventure story and as a morality tale.Most Star Trek stories depict the adventures of humans and aliens who serve in Starfleet, the space-borne humanitarian and peacekeeping armada of the United Federation of Planets. The protagonists have altruistic values, and must apply these ideals to difficult dilemmas.Many of the conflicts and political dimensions of Star Trek are allegories of contemporary cultural realities. The Original Series addressed issues of the 1960s, just as later spin-offs have tackled issues of their respective decades. Issues depicted in the various series include war and peace, the value of personal loyalty, authoritarianism, imperialism, class warfare, economics, racism, religion, human rights, sexism, feminism, and the role of technology. Roddenberry stated: " a new world with new rules, I could make statements about sex, religion, Vietnam, politics, and intercontinental missiles. Indeed, we did make them on Star Trek: we were sending messages and fortunately they all got by the network. If you talked about purple people on a far off planet, they never really caught on. They were more concerned about cleavage. They actually would send a censor down to the set to measure a woman's cleavage to make sure too much of her breast wasn't showing."
Roddenberry intended the show to have a progressive political agenda reflective of the emerging counter-culture of the youth movement, though he was not fully forthcoming to the networks about this. He wanted Star Trek to show what humanity might develop into, if it would learn from the lessons of the past, most specifically by ending violence. An extreme example is the alien species known as the Vulcans, who had a violent past but learned to control their emotions. Roddenberry also gave Star Trek an anti-war message and depicted the United Federation of Planets as an ideal, optimistic version of the United Nations. His efforts were opposed by the network because of concerns over marketability, e.g., they opposed Roddenberry's insistence that Enterprise have a racially diverse crew.
History and production
Timeline
The ''Original Series'' era (1965–1969)
In early 1964, Roddenberry presented a brief treatment for a television series to Desilu Productions, calling it "a Wagon Train to the stars". Desilu studio head Lucille Ball was instrumental in approving production of the series. The studio worked with Roddenberry to develop the treatment into a script, which was then pitched to NBC.NBC paid to make a pilot, "The Cage", starring Jeffrey Hunter as Enterprise Captain Christopher Pike. NBC rejected "The Cage", but the executives were still impressed with the concept, and made the unusual decision to commission a second pilot: "Where No Man Has Gone Before".
While the show initially enjoyed high ratings, the average rating of the show at the end of its first season dropped to 52nd out of 94 programs. Unhappy with the show's ratings, NBC threatened to cancel the show during its second season. The show's fan base, led by Bjo Trimble, conducted an unprecedented letter-writing campaign, petitioning the network to keep the show on the air. NBC renewed the show, but moved it from primetime to the "Friday night death slot", and substantially reduced its budget. In protest, Roddenberry resigned as producer and reduced his direct involvement in Star Trek, which led to Fred Freiberger becoming producer for the show's third and final season. Despite another letter-writing campaign, NBC canceled the series after three seasons and 79 episodes.
Post–''Original Series'' rebirth (1969–1991)
After the original series was canceled, Desilu, which by then had been renamed Paramount Television, licensed the broadcast syndication rights to help recoup the production losses. Reruns began in late 1969, and by the late 1970s the series aired in over 150 domestic and 60 international markets. This helped Star Trek develop a cult following among Trekkies greater than during its original run; by 1976, the cast described Star Trek as "the most popular series in the world".One sign of the series' growing popularity was the first Star Trek convention, which occurred on January 21–23, 1972 in New York City. Although the original expectation was that a few hundred fans would attend, several thousand turned up. Fans continue to attend similar conventions worldwide.
The series' newfound success led to the idea of reviving the franchise. Filmation with Paramount Television produced the first post–original series show, Star Trek: The Animated Series, featuring the cast of the original series reprising their roles. It ran on NBC for 22 half-hour episodes over two seasons on Saturday mornings from 1973 to 1974. Although short-lived, typical for animated productions in that time slot during that period, the series garnered the franchise's only Emmy Award in a "Best Series" category—specifically Outstanding Entertainment Children's Series; later Emmy awards for the franchise would be in technical categories. Paramount Pictures and Roddenberry began developing a new series, Star Trek: Phase II, in May 1975 in response to the franchise's newfound popularity. Work on the series ended when the proposed Paramount Television Service folded.
Following the success of the science fiction movies Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Paramount adapted the planned pilot episode of Phase II into the feature film Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The film opened in North America on December 7, 1979, with mixed reviews from critics. The film earned $139 million worldwide, below expectations but enough for Paramount to create a sequel. The studio forced Roddenberry to relinquish creative control of future sequels.
The success of the sequel, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, reversed the fortunes of the franchise. While the sequel grossed less than the first movie, The Wrath of Khans lower production costs made it net more profit. Paramount produced six Star Trek feature films between 1979 and 1991, each featuring the Original Series cast in their original roles.
By 1983 Paramount saw Star Trek as a media franchise that it could use across mediums beyond television and film, such as books through its publisher Simon & Schuster, and video games through its video game studio Sega. In 1987 it brought the franchise back to television with Star Trek: The Next Generation. Paramount chose to distribute the new series as a first-run syndication show rather than a network program. The series was set a century after the original, following the adventures of a new starship Enterprise with a new crew.