Classic Sci Fi TV: Our ongoing look back at many of the classics of science fiction and fantasy television.
What Is It? Not that this show needs an introduction, but this classic space exploration series followed the crew of the USS Enterprise on their five year mission to explore new worlds, make contact with alien civilizations, and also patrol the area of the galaxy that is governed by the United Federation of Planets.
Aired: NBC, 1966-69, 3 Seasons Totaling 79 Episodes (Plus the Pilot)
Staring: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Nichelle Nichols, James Doohan, George Takei, Walter Koenig
Created By: Gene Roddenberry
Is It Must Watch Sci Fi TV? Absolutely. This show set the bar for intelligent sci fi on television as well as space-based series, and other shows are still trying to match up to its quality fifty years later.
The Skinny: Gene Roddenberry had high ambitions for Star Trek when it first hit the small screen back in the sixties, and it more than lived up to many of those through its three year run. Taking on a format that borrowed from the earlier juvenile space operas like Captain Video and Space Patrol (more on the latter show at this link) as well as 1956’s Forbidden Planet (seriously, that movie plays just like a classic ep of Trek), it moved sci fi into a more adult realm on television while never losing the sense of wonder that appeals to the kid in all of us. Sure, it seems rather cheesy and even campy at times by today’s standards, but it was actually a pretty impressive production for its day. And Roddenberry, along with the production staff he assembled, placed so much emphasis on telling a good story (in one episode, mind you, not an ongoing arc) that the show manages to transcend its budget limitations and still stand up fairly well for modern-day audiences.
The cast definitely helped elevate the series with William Shatner in a career-defining role as bold yet thoughtful Captain James T. Kirk. Leonard Nimoy has since become a sci fi icon for playing the Vulcan Spock who believes in logic yet fights against his more irrational human side. Balancing out the leading three is DeForest Kelley as Dr. McCoy, the county doctor who travels to the stars and who can always be counted on to speak his mind. But beyond the three leads, the show offered a multi-racial and multi-ethnic cast that was rare on television at that time and that emphasized Roddenberry’s hopeful vision that humans would learn to live together and embrace our differences in the future.
By Trek‘s third season the quality of the stories had slipped notably, but during its first two years the show delivered some of the best and most influential episodes of any science fiction program on television. The fact that it has since generated six sequel series (including the animated show) with more on the way, as well as thirteen feature films, attests to that. Plus, the characters from the show have since become icons, not just for the sci fi community, but for pop culture in general. The show’s legacy speaks for itself and, along with other import sixties entries The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, Trek helped the genre grow up on television and established a bar that has been hard to match in the many years since it debuted.
>Buy Star Trek on Blu-ray and DVD from Amazon.com
Cancelled Too Soon? Perhaps. If it had been cancelled in its second season, then almost certainly because the syndication market may not have had as much interest in the show and that is where it turned into the phenomenon that launched it into franchise status. But considering the poor quality of much of the show’s third season, would a fourth year have seen it descend into similar levels of camp absurdity achieved by Lost in Space and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and tarnished its reputation? Many of us long-time fans would love to have more adventures of the original crew, but perhaps this one ended its run at just the right time.
Revival: The original cast returned to their roles in the 1979 film Star Trek: The Motion Picture. That spawned multiple sequels and eventually the spin-off shows Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987), Star Trek: Deep Space 9 (1993), Star Trek: Voyager (1995), Star Trek: Enterprise (2001), Star Trek: Discovery (2017), and the franchise continues strong to this day with Star Trek: Picard (2020) and more shows in the works.
Interesting Facts: William Shatner and James Doohan had previously traveled into space together on television as they both appeared on the Canadian kiddie space opera Space Command back in the early fifties.
George Takei’s Sulu disappears for several episodes during the second season, with no explanation in the show, because he was filming the movie Green Berets. Walter Koenig’s Chekov received a fair amount of the lines during that period originally intended for Sulu.
Where Can You Watch It? The entire series has been released on DVD and Blu-ray. It is also available for streaming Prime Video, Hulu, Netflix, and CBS All Access.
Further Reading: Marc Cushman’s excellent series of books These Are the Voyages cover the show episode by episode including tons of behind the scenes information. These are highly recommended for all fans of the original series.
Read More About the Show: Wikipedia | IMDb.com
More Classic Sci Fi TV at This Link
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