Spoiler Warning: Beware of minor spoilers for Strange New Worlds Seasons 2-3.
Happy Star Trek Day, friends!
The 8th of September – i.e. today – was the date in 1966 when the very first episode of Star Trek premiered in the United States, and in recent years, it’s been celebrated within the fan community as “Star Trek Day.” Next year’s going to be the milestone 60th anniversary, but I thought we could take stock of where Star Trek finds itself, reflect on the importance of the franchise, and just geek out a little bit today, since it’s a special occasion.
Though it was the first episode to be broadcast, The Man Trap wasn’t the first episode to be produced. After The Cage didn’t make the cut, Gene Roddenberry and co. were given a rare second chance to make a pilot, and they settled on Where No Man Has Gone Before. However, although the network liked this episode more than The Cage, it wasn’t considered as straightforward a story when it came to deciding on the broadcast schedule. Basically, by process of elimination, The Man Trap won out against the few other completed episodes in September 1966. And just the other day, I got to meet Budd Albright – one of the actors who was in The Man Trap. Being able to say I’ve met one of the performers who was in the first ever Star Trek episode is, without a doubt, one of the coolest things I can add to my resume as a Trekkie!
When you look back with 59 years of hindsight, having seen how Star Trek attracted a fandom and expanded into a massive franchise, it’s easy to fall into the trap of saying its success was always a sure thing. But if you read up on the early production history of Star Trek, what amazes me is how it could’ve either been completely different… or might never have made it off the ground at all. Even today, if a television pilot gets rejected, being offered a second chance by a broadcaster is something that very rarely happens. In the mid-1960s, with sci-fi still a relatively new and untested genre on television – and an expensive one, thanks to sets, costumes, props, prosthetics, and special effects – it’s genuinely stunning to think that the higher-ups at the network were willing to give Gene Roddenberry that all-important second chance.
There were several key decisions taken early in the production of The Original Series that I genuinely believe took a great concept and turned it into something that became a phenomenon. The first was the avoidance of product placement; Gene Roddenberry was keen to avoid Kirk and Spock turning to the camera, cigarette in hand, and plugging brands like Lucky Strike. The second, and probably most important, was that The Original Series was filmed and broadcast in colour, at a time when colour TV was only just getting started. Doctor Who, one of Star Trek’s contemporaries in the ’60s, didn’t broadcast in colour until 1970, and American shows around the same time – like The Addams Family, The Twilight Zone, and The Fugitive – were all still airing in black-and-white.
Star Trek was cancelled in 1969 due to low ratings – but those ratings massively improved when the series was rebroadcast in the early 1970s – and I firmly believe that if it had been in black-and-white, not colour, it would’ve been more difficult for Star Trek to have garnered the level of support that led to the creation of The Animated Series and, eventually, The Motion Picture. I don’t know if colour was always the plan, and for a while, I remember reading that the only full cut of The Cage that existed was in black-and-white, though I’m not sure if that was just a pre-internet rumour! In any case, being filmed and broadcast in full colour definitely gave Star Trek a much-needed boost as colour TV was just about to take off.
At the core of Star Trek, though, were great characters and fun stories – often, but not always, with morals and messages that reflected the world in which they were written in different ways. I said a few years ago that The Man Trap is more than just an “alien monster” story; what makes the episode so poignant and powerful are the reflections Kirk, Spock, McCoy and others have when they consider the implications that the Salt Vampire may have been the last of its kind… and they killed it in self-defence. Star Trek has always trusted its audience to think, and encouraged viewers to consider the implications and possibilities of its stories. Star Trek episodes are designed to be dwelt upon after the credits have rolled – which, I think, explains why there’s such a vocal and passionate fan community!
After The Cage was rejected, Gene Roddenberry and the team re-worked most of its characters. “Number One” was originally intended to be the stoic and logical one, but that role was reassigned to the new incarnation of Spock. Captain Pike was out, replaced with Captain Kirk. Dr Boyce became Dr McCoy, but retained a similar role as an older confidant of the captain. Characters like Sulu and Uhura were created, and the stage was set for the show we’re all familiar with.
If you’d told the cast and crew then, in 1966, that new episodes featuring Spock, Scotty, Uhura, and Nurse Chapel would still be airing 59 years later… well, I doubt anyone would have believed you!
But I think it says a lot about those characters, and the way The Original Series was written, that Strange New Worlds came to exist at all – let alone that it’s the best thing Star Trek has done in a long time. Those characters, their personalities, and the way they’d conduct themselves in their roles… it’s a huge part of what made Star Trek into the franchise it would become. We’re still watching episodes starring these same characters, alebit in an updated format, all these years later.
I didn’t come to Star Trek via The Original Series. It was The Next Generation that first made me a Trekkie in the early 1990s. I’ve said this before, but Season 2’s The Royale is the first episode I can remember watching all the way through (though I think I’d seen at least parts of episodes before that, as well as having seen some action figures and props that my uncle had at the time.) In any case, I date my entry into the Trekkie community to 1991, when The Royale aired for the first time here in the UK. I went back to watch The Original Series here and there, when it was on TV and when I could afford to rent video tapes!
But as I progressed my journey into the Trekkie community through the 1990s, including attending my first-ever fan meetup and going to visit the Star Trek Exhibition around the time of the 30th anniversary, I came to watch The Original Series episodes and films. I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you what the first TOS episode I watched was; that memory is lost in the recesses of an addled brain! But I soon fell in love with Kirk, Spock, Dr McCoy, and the rest of the crew – just as the first generation of Trekkies had done a quarter of a century earlier. I don’t think I knew that The Man Trap had been the first episode to air until I got online around the turn of the millennium and started talking to other Star Trek fans; there was a debate, for a time, about which episode “technically counts” as the first one – should we go in broadcast order or production order? Broadcast seems to have won that argument, by the way!
Some people have gone so far as to suggest that, without Star Trek, there’d be no sci-fi on our screens today. I don’t agree with that assessment, I’m afraid. By 1966, when The Man Trap aired, Kuberick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey was in production. Other sci-fi and sci-fi-adjacent shows, like The Outer Limits, My Favorite Martian, and The Twilight Zone were already airing, and with the space race in full swing, there was a growing amount of attention on the genre. But without Star Trek, the sci-fi landscape would’ve been very different. Even back then, there was a lot of “doomerism” floating around. Star Trek is one of the very few entertainment properties – then or now – to present an optimistic vision of the future, where technology cures problems rather than causes them, where humanity has overcome its violent impulses rather than surrendered to them, and where the future is bright, not dark.
That’s what appealed to a lot of people about Star Trek: the core fundamentals of its setting. Technology could cure diseases. There was still an economy and private property, but humanity had moved to become a “post-scarcity society,” where an abundance of energy and resources meant we could dedicate our time to science, exploration, and other pursuits instead of being tied to a desk or working in a factory. Those elements of escapism appeal just as much today as they did 59 years ago – and they probably always will.
As someone who’s had health issues going back decades, I can say with certainty that one of the most appealing things about Star Trek’s vision of the future is the potential to cure diseases, and how it depicts an inclusive, friendly society that’s largely free from discrimination and hate. Technologies like the hypospray and medical tricorder are seen diagnosing and treating all manner of ailments and conditions. Some episodes suggested that limbs could be regenerated, scar tissue covered up, and even the ageing process itself could be reversed (in some stories, at least!) Dr McCoy (and later the likes of Dr Crusher, Dr Pulaski, and Dr Bashir) would be seen treating patients in state-of-the-art medical facilities, with bio-beds, computer monitoring, and research labs to develop brand-new cures.
Star Trek “predicted” technology that we take for granted today. What is the Enterprise’s viewscreen if not an early take on video-calling and FaceTime? Communicators seem an awful lot like mobile phones. Combadges? Bluetooth microphones and speakers. There are laser weapons in use by militaries around the world, and proposals for things like nuclear fusion reactors, ion thrusters, and even a “warp drive” concept of sorts – many of which are at least partly inspired by Star Trek. And there are countless individuals who have cited Star Trek as a reason for their interest in medical, scientific, or engineering fields.
So if that’s Star Trek’s legacy and early history… what’s next? What may lie in store for Star Trek as we pass its 59th birthday?
This is where, I’m afraid, things start to look a little less rosy. In my view, Skydance – Star Trek’s new corporate overlords – are not as interested in making new television shows as the previous incarnations of Paramount and CBS had been. I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that Discovery, Lower Decks, Prodigy, and Strange New Worlds were all cancelled after Paramount took the decision to go ahead with the Skydance merger. David Ellison, the CEO of Skydance and, by extension, the man with the final say over new Star Trek productions, does seem interested in some kind of feature film adaptation – and as luck would have it, there are supposedly at least two such projects currently being worked on. But with Paramount+ struggling, and not every recent Star Trek project being particularly well-received… I will not be at all surprised if the final episodes of Strange New Worlds and Starfleet Academy will bring an end to this era of Star Trek on TV.
With that being said, as depressing as it may sound, it isn’t always a bad thing for a franchise to take a break, get shaken up, and come back after some time has passed! It worked for Doctor Who in the mid-2000s, it arguably worked for Star Trek after Enterprise’s cancellation, and it’s at least possible to think that future Star Trek productions may benefit from learning the lessons of this era of streaming TV… as well as from having a bit of a hiatus.
I don’t have any “insider information,” by the way. But based on what’s been said publicly about potentially merging Paramount+ with Peacock (or some other streaming platform), David Ellison’s apparent preference for films over streaming TV, and the cancellation announcement for Strange New Worlds coming before Season 3 had even aired… that’s my gut feeling. No new Star Trek has been greenlit for a while, and one of the shows that had been announced – Tawny Newsome’s “workplace comedy” series – now seems to not be going ahead. So I think we have to contend with the possibility, as we pass the 59th anniversary, that Star Trek may once again be heading for a fallow period.
But there will be time to talk about that in more detail on another occasion!
Today, I want to raise a glass and toast to Star Trek’s success. Not many other entertainment properties from the mid-1960s are still around, still being worked on, and still so beloved as Star Trek. Very few franchises get anywhere near the 1,000-story mark – yet Star Trek, at time of writing, is just about 40 episodes shy of that incredible milestone. If Strange New Worlds and Starfleet Academy proceed as planned, as well as the films which are supposedly being worked on… hitting that 1,000-story mark seems within reach in the next few years.
On a personal note, though I’ve dealt with burnout and felt the franchise had been over-saturated in the early 2020s, I’m still a huge Trekkie. I’ve been keeping up with Strange New Worlds this season, and I regularly go back to watch my favourites from The Next Generation era in particular. Being a Trekkie has been part of my identity, in a way, since I was a pre-teen, and now I’m in my forties! Nothing else in the entertainment world compares to Star Trek, for me, and even when I’m not actively watching the latest film or episode, Star Trek is still on my mind, its philosophy and vision of the future are still things I take into account, and my love for this franchise remains. The way I express that may fluctuate, sure, but I am still a Trekkie – and I daresay I always will be.
So happy Star Trek Day! Wherever you are in the world, whatever you’re doing, and regardless of whether you plan to watch The Man Trap (or any other episode) to mark the occasion, thank you for checking in, and I hope you have a wonderful Star Trek Day. This incredible franchise brought us together, today, 59 years on from that first episode – and I think that’s something pretty darn special.
Live Long and Prosper.
The Star Trek franchise – including all episodes and properties discussed above – is the copyright of Skydance/Paramount. Most Star Trek shows and films can be streamed on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the platform is available, or purchased on DVD and Blu-ray. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Trekking with Dennis 