‘Star Trek’ Turns 50

Thanks to William Shatner’s toupees and George Takei’s apparent agelessness, it’s easy to forget how long it’s been since “Man Trap,” the first episode of “Star Trek,” aired. It was 50 years ago exactly — on Sept. 8, 1966.

“Star Trek” has a cultural footprint rivaling that of “Star Wars”: There are 13 movies, six TV series comprising 726 episodes, dozens of video games, and hundreds of books.

Roddenberry believed nothing but imagination need limit mankind’s potential.

It’s also easy to forget how close the series came to being only a historical footnote: “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry’s first pilot, “The Cage,” was filmed by NBC in 1964, but then rejected and not aired. Roddenberry dumped all but one of the original characters and talked NBC into an unusual second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before.”

The series’ ratings were less than stellar and NBC announced it would cancel “Star Trek” after the first two seasons — but an unprecedented fan letter-writing campaign convinced the network to invest in one more season. Even then, the show seemed destined for TV trivia obscurity until it went into syndication starting in 1969, where it developed a cult following that outgrew its original fan base.

As “Star Trek” celebrates its golden anniversary of boldly going where no one has gone before, here are a few of the lesser-known facts about the sci-fi behemoth.

Gene Roddenberry had a thing for plane crashes.
During World War II, “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry was an Army Air Corps pilot stationed in Hawaii and Vanuatu. While taking off from Espiritu Santo in 1943, Roddenberry overshot the runway and crashed, killing two other men. He spent the rest of his military career as a crash investigator — which didn’t stop him from being in another crash a few years later, this time as a passenger.

After the war, Roddenberry served as a pilot with Pan Am and was in yet another crash in 1947, this one as third officer on a flight from Istanbul to New York that crashed in the desert after losing its engines. Despite broken ribs, Roddenberry helped 22 passengers escape the burning plane, then hiked to a Syrian military outpost for help.

Having won the Distinguished Air Cross and Air Medal, Roddenberry decided he’d pushed his luck far enough and left Pan Am in 1948 to pursue writing.

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The show is a lot funnier than you might think.
Given its premise of a semi-utopian future, “Star Trek” can be painfully earnest. But that didn’t stop its production crew from having some fun anyway. Say what you will about the breed of rabid fans who can rattle off Mr. Spock’s Starfleet serial number from memory (S179-276SP), they notice things no one else ever would.

Despite innumerable wisecracks to the contrary, for instance, there are toilets on the Starship Enterprise. In “The Next Generation” series, for instance, there’s a door labeled “Head” at the end of a passage just to the left of the bridge elevators. (As Cracked.com writer JM McNab pointed out, knowing this makes it a lot more fun to watch reruns and see who’s ducking into the bathroom during Borg attacks).

Other eagle-eyed viewers make it a hobby — a career, maybe — to note every detail on Enterprise computer monitors and screens in the TV series, movies, stage sets in the concert tour, and so on. They’ve harvested goodies such as a public pay phone, “Slippery When Wet” signs, a Porsche parked in the shuttlecraft hanger, and the secret behind the warp drive: a hamster wheel in the engine room.

Then, of course, there are the No Smoking signs visible in the bridge and transporter rooms, both in the original series and the first round of movies. “1. No Smoking. 2. Keep feet in center of pad. 3. Keep extremities within transporter field,” read the transporter room signs. Maybe transported smoke is even more dangerous than secondhand smoke.

Related: Old TV Isn’t Dead Yet

‘Star Trek’ shared its cast with ‘Batman’ and ‘The Addams Family.’
“Star Trek” shared airtime with other iconic TV series in the ’60s, such as “Batman” and “The Addams Family.” All three series were short-lived, becoming juggernauts in syndication. They also traded a surprising number of cast members.

Two of Batman’s three Catwomen, for instance (Julie Newmar and Lee Meriwether), also starred in “Star Trek” episodes (“Friday’s Child” and “That Which Survives”). Batgirl (Yvonne Craig) also made an appearance as a quintessential green slave girl in “Whom Gods Destroy.” Both actors who played the Riddler — Frank Gorshin and John Astin — appeared in “Star Trek” as well, Gorshin in “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” and Astin, uncredited, in “The Conscience of the King.”

Astin, of course, is far better known for his role as “Addams Family” patriarch Gomez Addams. And “Star Trek” boasted another iconic “Addams Family” cast member: The towering Lurch, played by 6’9″ character actor Ted Cassidy, also appeared in Star Trek’s “The Corbomite Maneuver” and as the voice of the alien Gorn in “Arena.”

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Gene Roddenberry’s writing career may have been conceived in the ashes of three plane wrecks, but he rose above that ignominious start in a literal sense — not just with “Star Trek,” but also by being one of the first people whose ashes were carried into orbit.

Roddenberry believed nothing but imagination need limit mankind’s potential, and that message, naïve as it sounds today, still resonates: A seventh Star Trek series, “Star Trek: Discovery,” is slated to premiere in January 2017 on CBS All Access.

May it live long and prosper.