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Today Marks The 50th Anniversary of 'Star Trek' (ew.com)
Dave Knott writes: Today marks the 50th anniversary of the first television broadcast of Star Trek. The first episode of the science fiction series was aired on September 8, 1966. From its humble beginnings, Star Trek has gone on to become one of the best-loved and most successful television concepts of all time, an enduring pop culture touchstone that changed science fiction forever and spawned multiple series and movies that continue to this day. What does Star Trek mean to you? Are you a trekkie/trekker? What are your best memories of the series, and how has it affected your life?
Before the reboot it was awesome.
I even have books that most trekkers don't know about like "Spock Must Die".
After the reboot, having kirk and spock looking longingly at each other and Uhura emerging as a the true power in the ship just makes me hope that trek passes away.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Some of my earliest and fondest television memories were watching TOS re-runs. Spock was my 1st TV hero.
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KKKHHHHHAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!
Okay, for the benefit of Slashdot's ironically named lameness filte - you have to understand that some things just require yelling.
#DeleteChrome
The Next Generation was amazing, DS9 is still my favorite, but the original series broke so much ground it is mind boggling. One of my favorite stories is of Ohura and Kirk kissing. The producers didn't want to do it, so Shatner convinced them to film both scenes, the kissing first. He then proceeded to screw up every take without the kiss until they were running low on film, which was quite expensive. The producers were forced to take that step forward in history.
Kate Mulgrew was the best Kirk.
COME AT ME
You are welcome on my lawn.
Back when the iTunes Store first started selling TV shows, you could get each entire season from TOS for about $12 each. At the time, they weren't on Netflix or anywhere else I could locate; so even though money was tight right then - I bought all three (and immediately stripped out the DRM).
The price jumped dramatically just a Week or two later... but I'm still amazed the seasons were ever that cheap.
#DeleteChrome
TOS set the technology up with some really good plot hooks. Things like:
You can't beam someone onboard while the shields are up.
You can go to distant planets, but it still takes considerable time.
The transporters are sensitive, finicky things that tend to break.
All of these make great places to hang plot from, such as:
So item #1 makes for a tense situation when you're in a shuttlecraft (or on the planet) while the ship is facing off an enemy.
Item #2 means you might not get there in time (KIRK: Make a challenge. Warn that ship off. UHURA: Trying to, sir. They don't acknowledge.)
Item #3 means you might get stranded on the ship after you've set it to blow up.
Compare with the modern reboot movies, where you can beam from Earth to another planet using a transporter the size of a duffel bag, starships that can hide underwater, and magic serum from Khan's blood that will bring someone back from the dead.
The modern reboot movies think sacrificing the technology makes for good plot, but it's just the opposite: Good plot will be based on the limitations of the technology.
Consider: How can anyone get emotionally involved in someone's death, knowing that they can be brought back to life now using Khan's blood?
(Let's not mention a red liquid that can turn a planet into a black hole, delivered by hand using a big syringe. Or a cold fusion bomb that can't be remote armed, has to be assembled and armed by hand while standing at the place of detonation. Or a bomb the size of a class ring that can take out a building. Or beaming from a planet onto a ship that's been at warp for a couple of hours using a formula that considers the ship and the planet stationary while the space between them moves.)
This moment deserves a hearty Nanoo Nanoo!
Table-ized A.I.
Sulu and Chekov have been deleted from this timeline before Bones, Scotty and Spock died.
...for me, it's probably the time Spock looked into that glowing box, and was blinded for a good while.
Reminds me of my first goatse encounter.
Ranked second is the fantasy planet that they didn't know was a fantasy planet, and wasted lots of time trying to solve the puzzle while trying not to get distracted by all the old friends and lovers that kept popping up. Psych!
For me, it's a metaphor for working my tail off at work on projects that probably won't be appreciated and will likely be PHB'd into mediocrity anyhow.
Learn to enjoy the journey and the personal satisfaction itself instead of expecting kudos or gold. If you don't expect them, then you will be pleasantly surprised when they actually appear.
Table-ized A.I.
Mine was the one where Princess Lea walked into the TARDIS for the first time and met Captain Sinclair for the trip over to Clavius to check out the monolith. That was before they knew it was made by the Cylons, but they didn't know how safe it was and I remember a robot going, "Danger, Will Robinson!" to warn them. In the end the Reavers showed up and fought with the Cylons in some simulation until Kirk made them face the reality of their war.
Way ahead of its time.
Ah yes, we certainly wouldn't want to see "shoehorned agendas" in STAR TREK of all things.
Iirc, transporting at warp was something tos Scotty did
When a ship is travelling away from a planet, considering the ship and planet stationary and space itself as moving doesn't quite make logical sense now, does it?
The news essentially ignored it. There is nothing on TV, no show marathons or special programs. Google didn't even do a doodle for it. What a bummer... I didn't even find out about it until I saw a buried story about the 50th anniversary. I guess Trek really has fallen off the face of the earth, and its influence has truly waned. That is a real shame.
Star Trek is the best franchise ever made. Resistance is futile
There's a few of us still alive.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It was in re-runs (I'm not *that* old) and The Changling came on. That's the "I am Nomad" episode if you're like me and had to google it. I was a kid though. I just saw the first part. I think it took a while for Star Trek to "click" since I was a kid and some things went over my head. The thing that makes this episode stand out is not even the episode itself. I only saw the first part that evening. There was this *thing* on the transporter pad and... we had to go out to dinner. I didn't want to go out; but I was a kid so of course I had to go with the rest of the family. For all I knew, it might never come on again. Pissed me off! Fortunately, it did come on again many times and at some point in my later childhood or teens, the little logic battle in there was something I came to appreciate. I don't like the part at the end with Uhura re-learning how to read though. Why did Nomad wipe her memory clean anyway? If it wanted to learn, you think it'd have a copy of the data and could restore it. It always bothered me...
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
"live long and propser". Star Trek forever even if its newer ones suck.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
...followed by this thought: "Has it really been 50 years? Have I become this old?"
It has, and I have.
I first saw Star Trek TOS in black and white, in Caracas, dubbed into Spanish. This must've been around 1973 or 74. Later on I got to see most of TOS in color and in English. Read a lot of the novels, watched all the films, saw all of Next Generation.. and then I lost interest.
What Trek taught me? IDIC, which I have to remind myself of -- I am prone to dislike diversity, then I remember IDIC. That little show taught me logic is not an inflexible thing, there must be wiggle room for the human element. At times I have been known to try to completely shut down all emotion and try a twisted version of logic. That didn't end well for me.
Above all, Trek, to me, is a bit like Beethoven's music: No matter how rough the beginning and middle acts are, the last act ends with hope, or a least a bad joke or lame pun. Some times, hope is all one has left.
That little show which lasted only three seasons because the network didn't know how to measure its popularity in a relevant way sure Lived Long and Prospered...
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
http://startrekcontinues.com/
JJ and the reboot of 'Star Trek' make mediocre action films, but they aren't Star Trek anymore.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Only Kirk is still kicking
Well, yeah, if you mean "out of Kirk and the ones who have died."
Walter Koenig, George Takei, and Nichelle Nichols are all still alive.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
As a very young boy, I exhausted the children's area of our small-town library in no time. With my parents' permission and a wonderful librarian, I was allowed to start getting books from the Adults' floor. I was a complete science fiction addict. I went through the whole section. I was even allowed to read stories like Farmer's "The Lovers" and Sturgeon's "Venus Plus X", which at the time were considered very definitely not for children.
I was thoroughly familiar with concepts that are now almost trite, but at the time were pretty much limited to the science fiction community: preserving time lines to preserve reality, the implications of faster-than-light spaceships, matter transmission, parallel universes and a lot more. Television science fiction (except Outer Limits and Twilight Zone) bored me to tears, and Lost In Space made me sick. My parents couldn't figure out why I loved SF books so much, but had no time for "Fireball XL-5".
Then, just as summer was winding down, the networks started promoting the new TV shows for the coming season. And there was Star Trek. Even the very limited "trailers" made it clear this was going to be something different. It delivered in spades. All of the stuff I'd been reading about was brought to life, and I got to watch my family and friends catch onto the same things that had held me spellbound for a good part of my short life. And most important, Star Trek made it clear that we'd get through all the evil and ugliness we saw around us...Vietnam, the assassinations, the Cold War. It was looking pretty bleak there, for a while.
And it also did what science fiction was supposed to do: hold up a mirror to problems in our own world we didn't often discuss openly. Plus (huge bonus) some of the seriously imaginative science fiction writers whose work I loved were writing episodes. My mother, who was a tough, capable woman, cried like a baby at the end of "The City at the Edge of Forever", and my dad was very quiet. They'd both lived through WWII (my dad served with the RAF), and they both knew just how close Hitler came to winning.
But it was that first view of the first promo I remember best...when my sister and I were sitting on the living room floor playing a card game and I looked at the TV and just couldn't believe what I was seeing.
All these years later, I know how lucky I was to see it happen through a child's eyes.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Let's see how it does 2-3 decades from now.
Any movie that just got out with latest technology and effects will do great in cinema. If it has a good franchise name to its back, only the better. But what when the new car smell is gone?
Yes, the studio probably won't give a shit. Do they care that people still love to watch old Star Trek movies and keep watching the shows? Nah. They already sold the DVDs and BluRays, they don't really care whether you watch them or whether they collect dust on the shelf, they got their money out of it.
And that's really a pity. Because that's what makes or breaks franchises. A fan base. A fan base is income you can rely on. They WILL come to watch your next installment of the franchise, whether it's good, whether it's crappy, whether it's 3 hours of watching paint dry, they WILL pay for the ticket and they WILL buy that BluRay. And then the remastered edition, and the director's cut, and they will buy a new movie ticket to watch the same movie they already have seen because it has 10 more seconds "that change the whole meaning" of whatever scene or character development of ... fuck, whatever. They buy that ticket!
Bottom line: You WANT a huge fan crowd. They are your cash cows. You can milk them forever and they will be like flour bags. Even if empty you can still beat them and something will come out of them. You also don't need to do much to please them. Just pretend to take them serious, have them dress up for your movie premieres and make sure you show off just how much everyone loves your movie franchise. Don't worry, they'll LOVE to appear in your ads.
They are essentially free advertising... as long as you can ensure that they stay PG and "family friendly". Which isn't really a big problem for Star Trek, just make sure that the "serious" fans get all worked up over those that dare to "sully" the pristine wholesome experience. They'll even do the policing for you.
So yes, having nerds that care for your movies is a pretty good thing. They are free PR, marketing, IP "tarnish" protection and so much more. Wait, no, they're not free. They PAY YOU for having that privilege.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Fuck Google....
... I'm afraid I'm going to have to decline your kind invitation to have coitus with Google, in view of all the crap that's floating around on the internet I'm pretty sure I'd catch something really nasty.
Wow. To think of all us technical and scientific people, and military and air & space people - who really got their start in STEM & IT not because of a university degree, but by a Dream - Trek Lovers WANT Star Trek to be REAL. The exploration, the technology, the meeting alien species. People love the bright vision for the human race. A functionally better world vision almost completely lost after ST:TNG . Happy Anniversary to all Slashdot readers and bloggers who have fond memories of dreams of the future... some dreams now real science ! :-)
The first episode was shown two days earlier in Canadia. So TFS is wrong - it's talking about the first showing in the US (typical US-centric approach).
I'm very close to 40.
When I was a kid I watched reruns of ToS on TV and some of my dads VHS tapes he got suckered into buying at $30 a pop from some subscription, with only 3 eps per tape. I loved it and I enjoyed sporadically watching TnG as it aired.
Eventually I became a dumb angsty later teen and thought Star Wars was what's cool and Trek was dumb / lame.
As I've gotten older (well 20 years later) and every god damned movie and TV show has taken on a "dark edgey tone" and I've finally started to not give a shit if someone calls me a dork! or nerd! I can accept Star Trek as god damn cool, because it was so out there, it's camp, it's silly, it's great. The humour can be fantastic and the nerdiness I don't need to feel ashamed about. When Star Trek is funny I laugh with it, when it's bad I laugh with it "oh that silly old Star Trek!"
At the core of Star Trek though is that Roddenberry philosophy of an almost utopian future. I can respect that, more and more as I age. As I see the world around me slip in to eventual chaos, the environment becoming a disgrace, capitalism, greed and globalization becoming more intense, the world is becoming a very very dark place and I think it's not going to end well, Star Trek is a welcome, fantasy relief of what would happen if almost all humans all did the right thing, for humanity and the universe not just for themselves.
Heck when I see a 1966 show talk in metres and kilometres and not have smoking on the show despite the lost potential revenue from product placement because that's how it would be in the utopian future, I can see why Gene is so lauded as a visionary.
A great show that I'm finally proud to say I'm a big fan of.
Greatest and most glorius fan Kim Jong-un organised historys biggest celebratory fireworks measuring 5.3 magnitude to honor all trekkies.
Say what you will about The Search for Spock as a whole; that sequence in which Kirk steals the Enterprise and escapes spacedock is one of the most engaging I can think of in all of cinema. Everything from "Don't call me Tiny" to "The doors Mr. Scott!" "Right sir! I'm working on it!", "Oh, I'll have Mr. Adventure eating out of my hand." all the way up to "Kirk, you do this, you'll never sit in the captain's chair again." It's an incredibly emotionally charged scene that is simultaneously tense, funny, and thrilling even though it takes place at 1/4 impulse power, there's no lens flare, and nobody gets choked or murdered or even shot at. That's classy fucking filmmaking. And scoring too! James Horner's finest work in my opinion.
Or even the mirror universe would be cool.
Not in this incarnation anyway.
Too confusing for "mainstream audiences" while being completely outside of what said audience knows about Star Trek and feels comfortable with based on the cultural osmosis alone.
While watching Star Trek characters jumping around on dirt bikes like Evel Knievel as "Sabotage" by Beastie Boys blares out of the speakers.
You know... Star Trek.
Similarly, patching up of the time line will never happen.
For the same reason that Robert Duncan McNeill plays the same character on TNG and on Voyager - but it is a different character on Voyager.
Royalties and copyright.
Which is the underlying reason for reboots instead of sequels.
If you make things different enough you don't have to pay any of the "old people", you just pay the "new people", whom you've gotten to work for a pittance.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
When I discovered that my girlfriend liked Star Trek, I bought a small color TV so I could entice her to come to my apartment to watch the original series. We both cheered when NBC announced that there would be a third season.
We were married in 1968 and had two children. We raised them in a very technology-friendly household. They played with my Apple II when I was at work. Today they both have Computer Science degrees and good jobs in the industry.
When my son got married I ended the customary father-of-the-groom speech with “live long and prosper” and the hand gesture. My son, his new wife, and all of their friends, understood me.
So, yes, you can say that Star Trek changed my life.
There are a lot of stories looking back Trek TOS floating around because of the 50th anniverseray. My favorites are:
Lucile Ball was the first trekkie. Yes, Lucile Ball, your new geek overlord.
MLK said he was a Trekkie. Wouldn't let Michelle Nickhols leave the show. MLK, blerd before it was cool.
TNG, DS9, others never did much for me. Maybe it's because female crew of TOS had the sexy shirts, go-go boots, big hair, thick mascara.
mfwright@batnet.com
So, I was born in '82, that being said, when I hit double digits or so, Star Trek:TNG was the new hotness and I didn't care for "Kirk chases green women" episode #306, so I grew up along with TNG. Sometimes my mom & dad would take me over to a family friend's house to watch TNG the night the new episodes aired and we had kind of a Star Trek dinner party. I have very fond memories of sitting in dark or dimly lit rooms, various beige boxes blinking in the distance, watching TNG in my room or with friends. Like many others have stated, the early seasons are hard to watch, the main point of contention for me is Dr. Polaski, boy does she suck. Anyway, it doesn't hold the same magic it did when I was a kid, but I rewatched The Inner Light recently and was still captivated and entertained. When the first new Trek movies came out, my IRC friends (no more geek friends IRL) and I all agreed that it was good hollywood fluff, decent visuals (OW DAMN IT JJ, CUT DOWN ON THE FSCKING LENSE FLARE) and pretty decent as a standalone sci-fi flick, but it wasn't Star Trek. Much like Star Wars, either the old spirit of the franchise is dead or the creator (RIP Gene... ) is and Hollywood doesn't give a fuck, they just see dollar signs, so the bloated corpse is dragged through yet another galaxy far, far away. With any luck, the new TV series will be decent...
640k ought to be enough for anyone.
Qapla' ! :-)
that the 50th anniversary of Star Trek generates so few comments on Slashdot...
Try it! Library of Babel
because I grew up watching it, and bought the anthology done by James Blish so I had every episode almost etched in memory banks. I bought the making of star trek, from Roddenberry himself, who explained how thorough they were about the ship, even down to how laundry was supposed to be done on the ship: the washing machine or whatever it was, would beam the clothes to the dryer, without the dirt. And yes, he even described how salt and pepper shakers would work in the future.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Gene Roddenberry's real contribution to pop culture was providing us with the idea that the future will be great. It instilled in us a measure of hope and optimism that most people get only from their religious beliefs.
Star Trek TOS was significant because the writing was great, which is something that American television doesn't usually have. To get good writing, most of us have to look to British shows like Doctor Who and Red Dwarf. I've been watching American science fiction TV my whole life and the only examples of excellence I can think of are Star Trek TOS episodes "City on the Edge of Forever" and "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky", the 5th season of TNG, the Voyager episodes "Tuvix" and "The Year of Hell", the first season of Heroes, and Firefly.
Star Trek did the best job of inspiring us to bring that bright future into reality. James Doohan often remarked about the volumes of fan mail he received that described how the character of Scotty inspired many people to become engineers.
Harlan Ellison wrote "City on the Edge of Forever" which is arguably the best episode of Star Trek ever produced. He is well known for elevating sarcasm and bitterness to an art form. He said that most of science fiction on television and in the movies is "crap". I tend to agree. I'm not a fan of the man but I do appreciate his often excellent work.
When I was young I often found myself hoping that science fiction would get better. I remember sitting down to watch something like Buck Rogers, Greatest American Hero, or Galactica 1980, week after week, hoping that maybe "this episode will be good". Even though I was a stupid teenager at the time I still knew that those shows sucked. I didn't see how those TV shows were heralding the future. I wish I heard at the time what that mountain of crap was trying to tell me.
Going beyond script writing, though, I always felt that the future would be awesome and bring us incredible wonders, thanks in part to Star Trek. Like most people, I wanted us to walk on distant planets, to have flying cars, and to reach new plateaus of excellence in my lifetime.
While I thank Roddenberry and everyone who worked on Star Trek for that sense of optimism that contributed to my great childhood, my heart sinks when I contemplate the future that has come to pass. We live in a surveillance society, we cannot trust our own phones or computers, the internet is becoming a cage instead of a platform for free expression, terrorism is increasing all over the globe, and we're losing our freedoms and our rights at an ever increasing rate.
With the upcoming presidential election, where there is no lesser of the available evils, I'm more afraid for the future of America than ever before in my entire life. Never Hillary, Never Trump, Jill Stein's been arrested and charged, and Gary Johnson's been buried by the press for his Aleppo blunder just like Dan Quail was buried because of the way he spelled "potatoes" that one time. We're left without any viable options.
Ultimately, did Gene Roddenberry do us a disservice? Was the dream of Star Trek actually a lie? Were we wrong to be optimistic? Are we unable to choose a destiny that avoids a post-apocalyptic dystopian future? Have we wasted all those years being hopeful about the future, discovering far too late that we had our heads buried in the sand while the world disintegrates around us? Are the "preppers" and the gold bugs hiding in their bunkers REALLY the ones who are right?
BBC America...
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
VideoSift shared an over 1.5 hours YouTube video showing "Building Star Trek (Full Episode)" -- "When 'Star Trek' first aired, it expanded the viewers' imaginations about what was possible. Today, many of the space-age technologies on the show have gone from science fiction to reality. Join us as we celebrate a show that continues to inspire..."
A three years old 47 minutes YouTube video showing "The Real Story: Star Trek (Full Episode)" -- "Meet Star Trek's producers, the first Trekkies, and Mr. Spock himself to discover the true story of Star Trek's history and how its vision of the future has influenced today's technology..."
Star Trek is 50 years old! "Live long and prosper." :D
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).