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 civilizations...to boldly go where no man has gone before... Cue the iconic theme composed by Alexander Courage. During the 70s, one of the things I looked forward to were summer vacations from school. My family and I would head out to Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, NY, get together with my cousins and stay over for a few days. One of the shows my cousins used to watch on TV back then was a little 60s scifi show called Star Trek. I forgot which episodes I saw with them, but by the end of our stay, I ended up liking the show so much, it ended up becoming part of my daily routine during the following school year...each day, I would come home from school, do my homework, turn on the TV, watch whatever cartoons were on, and looked forward to 6:00 on WPIX channel 11...thats when Star Trek comes on...back then, the show came on everyday at that very hour, except maybe for Sunday, if memory serves. Star Trek is the creation of Gene Roddenberry. There were two pilots produced for NBC. The first one was called The Cage, starring Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike and Leonard Nimoy as Spock...the NBC execs didnt like it, saying it was too cerebral...there wasnt enough action, I guess. A second pilot was ordered, titled Where No Man Has Gone Before...this one starred William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk and Leonard Nimoy as Spock, and yes, this one had action in the form of a fistfight between Kirk and bridge officer Gary Mitchell (Gary Lockwood), who turned bad after acquiring god-like powers...this was enough for NBC to turn Star Trek into a series. The Cage ended up being re-edited as a two-part episode called The Menagerie during the shows first season. As a series on network televison, Star Trek struggled in the ratings department...in the end, Star Trek just couldnt work...the series originally aired on NBC from 1966 to 1969, cancelling after three seasons due to low ratings. However, the series produced enough episodes for syndication, and that is where Star Trek really took off...it offered the show to a new and larger audience...for us New Yorkers, WPIX-11 purchased the rights to air the show, and that is when I started watching it religiously as a kid. Based on the intro, Star Trek is a show set in the future, focusing on a group of space explorers, on a starship called the Enterprise, commanded by Captain James T. Kirk...his closest friends are First Officer/Science Officer Mr. Spock and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Leonard McCoy aka Bones (DeForest Kelley)...his loyal bridge officers are Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott aka Scotty (James Doohan), Helmsman Hikaru Sulu (George Takei), Navigator Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig), and Communications Officer Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols)...other notable officers are the captains Yeoman Janice Rand (Grace Lee Whitney) and Nurse Christine Chapel (Majel Barrett, who will later become the real-life wife of Mr. Roddenberry). There are close to eighty episodes for the three seasons aired. The first season was the best, which includes the aforementioned Where No Man Has Gone Before and The Menagerie...standouts from this season include Balance Of Terror and Space Seed, where we first meet genetic superman Khan Noonien-Singh (Ricardo Montalban), which includes a fight between Kirk and Khan towards the end of the episode and it serves as a starting point for Star Trek II-The Wrath Of Khan (1982)...other memorable episodes from this season include The Corbomite Maneuver, Arena, The Man Trap, The Naked Time, The Conscience Of The King, Tomorrow Is Yesterday, Errand Of Mercy, The Enemy Within, This Side Of Paradise (guest-starring Jill Ireland), and The City On The Edge Of Forever (guest-starring Joan Collins). The second season was a mixed bag...excellent episodes from this season include Amok Time, The Trouble With Tribbles, The Ultimate Computer, Wolf In The Fold, The Doomsday Machine, Mirror, Mirror, Obsession, The Immunity Syndrome, and Journey To Babel, where we get to meet Spocks parents Sarek (Mark Lenard) and Amanda (Jane Wyatt). The third season had mostly bad episodes, with a couple of good ones, which include The Tholian Web, The Enterprise Incident, Day Of The Dove, and Elaan Of Troyius, where we finally get to see a Klingon cruiser in action, constantly firing their weaponry on the Enterprise. I have seen them all...I know them all. I have two personal favorites: Balance Of Terror from the first season and The Doomsday Machine from the second season. Balance Of Terror pits the Enterprise against the Romulan Bird-Of-Prey, a ship equipped with a cloaking device that renders it invisible to the naked eye...its reminiscent of submarine warfare except in this case, its two starships going at it...we also see how Captain Kirk and the Romulan Commander (Mark Lenard, who would later play Sarek in the second season episode Journey To Babel and the Klingon Commander in 1979s Star Trek-The Motion Picture) counter each others moves, playing cat-and-mouse constantly throughout the episode. In The Doomsday Machine, the Starship Enterprise comes into contact with its sister Starship Constellation, which has been heavily-damaged by a huge log-like alien robot ship from another galaxy...its determined that this alien robot ship is fully automated and its only mission is to destroy planets and digest its rubble for fuel...Kirk and crew must find a way to stop this planet-killer before it gets to eat the more densely populated areas of our galaxy, which sounds eerily like the Borg...we also see Kirk and crew deal with Commodore Matt Decker (William Windom), the sole survivor of the Constellation who has been terrorized and traumatized by the planet-killer...the highlight of this episode is the score composed by Sol Kaplan, with a repeating two-note cue thats reminiscent of John Williams Theme From Jaws (1975). Star Trek ended two years short of its proposed five-year mission, but it thrived, becoming a worldwide phenomenon...it gave rise to theatrical presentations, starting with 1979s Star Trek-The Motion Picture...eleven more Star Trek movies came afterwards...the latest one, Star Trek Into Darkness, was released in 2013...there is another movie in the planning stages, hoping to be released in 2016 for the series 50th anniversary. There have also been four spinoff series: Star Trek-The Next Generation (1987-1994), Star Trek-Deep Space Nine (1993-1999), Star Trek-Voyager (1995-2001), and Star Trek-Enterprise (2001-2005). As a kid, I got thrills watching the ships in action, the beaming effects, the gadgets, such as the phaser, the communicator and the tricorder. Klingons, Romulans, and Vulcans, became part of my role-playing games with friends from the hood. I even got Star Trek collectibles, such as figurines of Kirk, Spock, and Scotty, and the Enterprise bridge gift-set, which includes a little section for the transporter room. I also got the original AMT model replicas of the Enterprise and the Klingon ship. As I grew up and continued to watch the series, I got to see messages implanted in those episodes. First and foremost, Gene Roddenberry showed a future of hope, where we as humans live in peace and get along with just about anyone. Mr. Roddenberry gave us that image of racial harmony on the bridge of the Enterprise, where we have a Scotsman for an engineer, a female African-American as a communications officer, a Russian navigator, an Asian Helmsman, and a Vulcan First Officer. These days, I just wait for the next Star Trek adventure, whether its on the big screen or on home television. Closing in on the original series 50th anniversary, Star Trek continues to live long and prosper... youtube/watch?v=hdjL8WXjlGI
Posted on: Thu, 03 Apr 2014 17:24:34 +0000
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