Even the most ardent fans of Star Trek would concede that the brand had become
a cultural joke, consigned to the black hole where exhausted franchises go
to die. Yet, by some fiendish reverse engineering worthy of the great
Scotty, a revitalised USS Enterprise has reemerged in a blaze of glory and
people are falling in love with the series all over again.
Film critics have declared almost unanimously that Star Trek, to be released
in the UK on May 8, is “set to stun” with a rollicking space adventure that
captures the spirit of the original template made 43 years ago. Its
resurrection proves how a popular work can create a subculture of its own,
immortalised by the public and not by the marketeers responsible for its
spin-offs and merchandising.
Much of the credit goes to J J Abrams, the director, who brings the
blockbuster skills of his film Mission: Impossible III to an epic conflict.
Cannily, he has opted for a prequel that recounts how Captain James T Kirk
(played by Chris Pine) forged his lifelong friendship with Mr Spock (Zachary
Quinto), the conflicted half-Vulcan, half-human science officer, and how the
crew of the Enterprise came together to avert a threat from the future.
Crucially, the traits of the original actors are preserved – the swagger of
William Shatner’s Kirk and the intellectual arrogance of Leonard Nimoy’s
Spock. The central trio was completed by DeForest Kelley as Dr Leonard
“Bones” McCoy.
Why is it striking such a chord now? “I have no belief that Star Trek depicts
the actual future, it depicts us now, things we need to understand,” said
Gene Roddenberry, creator of the original series. By which he meant a slew
of issues in the 1960s, ranging from racism and sexual inequality to the
cold war and Vietnam. In Roddenberry’s galaxy, the United Federation of
Planets was the “West” and the Klingon empire was the “East”. Roddenberry
recalled: “We were sending messages and fortunately they all got by the
network.”
Star Trek had a vein of ironical racism running through it, even though the
crew of the Enterprise was racially mixed, representing all mankind, and
Kirk had the first multiracial kiss on US television with Lieutenant Uhura,
his communications officer. Scathing comments were routinely directed at
Spock, whose pointed ears, green blood and devotion to pure logic set him
apart.
Although many of the preoccupations of the 1960s have receded, Star Trek’s
longevity suggests these social issues have simply mutated.
It was this upbeat approach that persuaded Abrams to overcome his aversion to
directing the picture. “There are so many postapocalyptic movies that
there’s a sense of hopelessness,” he told The Sunday Times recently.
“There’s an optimism about Star Trek that’s very appealing.” His message to
purists is: “Don’t see the the movie. Just get angry.”
Some reviewers have noted the new film taps into the optimism of President
Barack Obama – although it was conceived before his rise – in contrast to
the bleak presidency of George W Bush. A surer bet is that escapism is a
precious commodity in a recession.
Yet the movie retains a deliberate 1960s flavour, evident in the female crew’s
mini-skirts, strange aliens in bars and even an appearance by Nimoy as old
Spock. (Shatner, to his chagrin, was not invited to make an appearance.)
Many science fiction writers in Britain, where Star Trek’s success eclipsed
their efforts, disliked the series. “It wasn’t my kind of thing,” said Brian
Aldiss. “I remember having an argument with the writer James Blish, who
thought Star Trek had good liberal values. I thought it was about America
putting other worlds to rights. But I wish the film good luck and hope it
might have some philosophical strings to it.”
In retrospect, 1966 was a strange moment to launch what became the most
influential science fiction television series of all time. “I think science
fiction effectively died by the end of the 1960s,” the late JG Ballard told
The Sunday Times last year.
“People were disappointed when the first American astronauts landed on the
moon. They had seen it all before in SF. I thought SF should be going in a
different direction, into what I called inner space. This was the
psychological space of [Franz] Kafka’s novels.” Most of Star Trek’s dramas
occurred within the confines of the Enterprise’s bridge where issues of good
and evil, courage and self-sacrifice were thrashed out between the logical
Spock, the compassionate McCoy and the intuitive Kirk. This also kept down
costs: even the expense of landing craft was deftly avoided by the use of a
matter “transporter”. (Sadly, no one in the series said, “Beam me up,
Scotty”, although the phrase entered the language.)
Yet for all its plywood and Styrofoam sets, the show was groundbreaking
television. There had been previous successful science fiction television
series such as The Twilight Zone. “But Star Trek was the first television
series aimed at adults to tell sophisticated morality tales and to depict a
paramilitary crew on a peaceful mission to explore the galaxy,” according to
Dwayne Day, author of the essay Star Trek as a Cultural Phenomenon.
“The show’s special effects were superior to anything else then depicted on
TV, its stories were often written by highly regarded science fiction
writers . . . it effectively raised the bar.”
In the beginning were the words – “Space, the final frontier. These are the
voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore
strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations, to boldly go
where no man has gone before.” The world’s most popular split infinitive was
taken almost word for word from a White House booklet on space released
after the 1957 Sputnik satellite flight.
Roddenberry, a former bomber pilot, airline pilot, serving motorcycle
policeman and television writer, conceived Star Trek in the early 1960s.
According to Shatner’s memoir, Star Trek Memories, one day Roddenberry rode
his motorbike into a bar popular with agents and, having attracted attention
with his uniform, flashing lights and blazing sirens, handed a script to a
top agent. “This is for you,” he said. “Better read it.”
He sold the idea to Desilu Studios as a classic adventure drama, calling it
“Wagon Train to the Stars” and “Horatio Hornblower in Space”. In reality he
was thinking along the lines of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and wanted to
tell sophisticated stories, using futuristic situations as analogies for
current Earth problems.
The original pilot, which borrowed heavily from Forbidden Planet, the classic
1956 SF movie, featured Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike. When it
was rejected by NBC, Shatner was drafted in as a replacement. Nimoy objected
to wearing Spock’s pointed ears and tolerated then only on condition that he
could have them written out of the script if he was still unhappy after 13
episodes.
Star Trek never attracted a large audience and the network was dissuaded from
cancelling the second series only by a letter-writing campaign organised by
fans. The third – and final – series was broadcast at such an unpopular
viewing hour that Roddenberry offered to demote himself to the role of line
producer in an effort to secure a better time slot. When this offer was
turned down, he resigned and took a staff job with MGM.
In her autobiography Beyond Uhura, Nichelle Nichols, the actress, claimed that
she had an affair with Roddenberry and credited his influence for her
landing the role of Uhura. Susan Sackett, his close associate for many
years, detailed in her book Inside Trek his addiction to cocaine, his
impotence and his mental decline.
The series had invented terms that have become commonplace, such as “dilithium
crystals”, “warp drive” and “mind meld”. Its flip-up, hand-held telephones
are said to have anticipated mobile phones; and its “phaser” guns inspired
the US military to develop a laser beam that stuns.
With 79 episodes completed, Star Trek was axed – and soon developed a strange
afterlife. At a convention where the original actors had agreed to speak,
organisers who had expected only a few hundred to attend were astonished
when thousands showed up. This was the beginning of the “Trekkies”, or
“Trekkers”, as some fans prefer to be known. Their mecca is Las Vegas, where
official conventions are held and fans can have their own Star Trek weddings.
Repeats of the series on local US television stations reached a bigger
audience than they had on NBC, by some accounts. Spurred on by this fan
base, Roddenberry tried without success to launch a second television
series, but in 1979 he succeeded in releasing a movie, Star Trek: The Motion
Picture, which grossed more than $80m (about £54m today).
Then came a television series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, which ran from
1987 to 1994 and starred Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard, captain of a
new starship, the EnterpriseD. There were another three series, notably Star
Trek: Voyager (1995-2001), starring Kate Mulgrew as Captain Kathryn Janeway.
Roddenberry died in 1991, aged 70.
The Star Trek franchise became one of the most lucrative in entertainment
history, grossing about $4 billion in merchandising, while the 10 Star Trek
films have made a combined $1.1 billion worldwide. True phenomena are never
planned. The network wanted it strangled at birth. The public knew better.
