- The original marketing concept for Star Trek, put forward by its creator Gene Roddenberry, was as a Western in outer space, or Wagon Train to the Stars. He based it on Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, and wanted each episode to be a morality tale as well as an adventure story. The central trio of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy were based on mythological storytelling archetypes.
- Since then, on TV we've seen The Original Series, an animated series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise and Discovery; and 13 feature films. So far. Of the TV shows, The Next Generation has had the highest ratings.
- You may know that the first scripted interracial kiss on US television was on Star Trek, between Captain Kirk and Uhura. You might not know that the kiss was originally planned to be between Uhura and Spock, but William Shatner protested, saying it should be Kirk who kissed her. Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura, later said that Shatner insisted on lots of rehearsals to make sure they got it right. (sounds like he had a bit of a crush on her!) You also might not know that the producers wanted to film an alternative scene without the kiss. However, Shatner and Nichols deliberately messed up every take without the kiss, so that they could not be used.
- While NBC allowed an interracial kiss to be aired, they pulled the plug on an early pilot called The Cage, in which the First Officer was a woman played by Majel Barrett. They didn't like the idea of a woman in a powerful role.
- Teleportation was used in the original series because it was too expensive to film shots of models of shuttle crafts landing. The original transporter special effect was created by turning a slow-motion camera upside down and photographing backlit shiny grains of aluminium powder being dropped between the camera and a black background. Nowadays, it's done with computers. While on this subject, the popular catchphrase, “Beam me up, Scotty” was never said in any episode. It actually comes from a bumper sticker: “Beam me up, Scotty; there’s no intelligent life on this planet.”
- Talking of Scotty, it was the actor who played him, James Doohan, who came up with the Klingon language.
- Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock, came up with the idea for the Vulcan “Live long and prosper” salute. It was based on a gesture used as a blessing in Judaism. Neither William Shatner nor Zachary Quinto could do the salute. Shatner used to tie his fingers together with fishing wire and Quinto had to have his fingers glued together.
- Spock was originally going to be a red-skinned alien who didn't eat but absorbed energy from a plate in his stomach. However, back in the 1960s, few people had colour televisions and the red face paint didn't work so well in black and white. In one early episode, Spock was scripted as clubbing someone over the head, but Nimoy refused to do that, on the grounds it wasn't consistent with his character – so he invented the Vulcan neck pinch instead.
- Stardates, mentioned at the beginning of each episode, were originally no more than a string of random numbers. However, they didn't reckon on the intelligence and fussiness or many of their fans, who noticed the dates didn't add up. On Star Trek: The Next Generation, they fixed the problem with a formula to determine the stardate.
- Stephen Hawking appeared as a guest in an episode of Star Trek, as himself, playing a game of poker with Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton and Data. While on set, Hawking paused in front of the warp core set piece and remarked, “I’m working on that”. While he may not have invented an actual Star Trek warp drive, some technology from the series has found its way into the real world, such as original flip phone which was inspired from the communicator used in the series, and tablet computers. There's an app which works like a universal translator (although it can only do Earth languages so far), and there are scientists working on teleportation and tractor beams.
More details about my books. Follow this link if you like Superheroes, Psychics and/or quirky short stories.
I've listed the themes each novel touches on here for easy reference.
Like my author page on Facebook for news on new books and blog posts.
Check out my Writing blog
No comments:
Post a Comment