Star Trek
Star Trek was an influential science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry that followed the adventures of the crew of the starship U.S.S. Enterprise. The show began with the production of the 1964 pilot "The Cage". "The Cage" featured Jeffrey Hunter as Enterprise captain Christopher Pike. The pilot was rejected by NBC executives as being too cerebral. In order to demonstrate the action-adventure potential of the series, another pilot entitled "Where No Man Has Gone Before" was produced. Replacing Jeffrey Hunter as Enterprise captain was William Shatner who starred as Captain James T. Kirk. The new pilot also starred Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock who was the only character to return from the original pilot after NBC's rejection of "The Cage". Response to the second, action-oriented, pilot was good and NBC gave the go ahead to the series.
The series premiered on NBC on Thursday, September 8, 1966 in the 8:30-9:30 PM timeslot with the episode "The Man Trap". Critical response to the series was mixed and rating were lower than expected. In its second season, reoccurring guest star DeForest Kelley was added to the series' starring cast and the show was moved to Friday at 8:30. A decline in the ratings, however, prompted NBC to attempt to cancel the series after its second season, but a letter writing campaign by die hard fans of the show saved it from cancellation. An additional season of episodes were produced, but ratings continued to decline most likely due to the quality of the third season episodes and a bad 10:00 PM Friday night time slot. Despite another letter writing campaign, the series was finally cancelled after its third season. The last new episode "Turnabout Intruder" was shown on June 3, 1969.
After its three year run Star Trek began running syndication where it was discovered by legion of new fans and became a phenomenon. The show inspired six features films, an animated series, and four additional spin-off television shows. Other spin-off's include novels, comic books, merchandise and an enormous amount of fan-fiction based on the series. Despite its short network run, Star Trek has become one of the most successful shows in television history.
Aside from its three main stars, Star Trek featured a large cast of reoccurring guest stars that includes James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, Walter Koenig, Majel Barrett, and Grace Lee Whitney. Other notable guest stars include Diana Muldaur, Gary Lockwood, Ricardo Montalban, Sally Kellerman, Julie Newmar, Frank Gorshin, John Colicos, Roger C. Carmel, William Campbell, Ted Cassidy, Michael Ansara and Elisha Cook, Jr. Notable writers for the series include Gene Roddenberry, Gene L. Coon, George Clayton Johnson, Jerry Sohl, Jerome Bixby, Robert Bloch, Theodore Sturgeon, Harlan Ellison, David Gerrold, and D.C. Fontana.
Leonard Nimoy | Mister Spock | |
William Shatner | Captain James T. Kirk | |
Eddie Paskey | Lieutenant Leslie | |
DeForest Kelley | Dr. McCoy | |
Nichelle Nichols | Uhura | |
Frank da Vinci | Capt. John Daley | |
Bill Blackburn | Lieutenant Hadley | |
James Doohan | Scott | |
Ron Veto | Harrison | |
George Takei | Sulu | |
Majel Barrett | Number One | |
Grace Lee Whitney | Yeoman Rand | |
Jeannie Malone | Yeoman | |
Sandra Lee Gimpel | Talosian | |
Ed Madden | Enterprise Geologist | |
John Burnside | Bridge Crewmember | |
John Hoyt | Dr. Phillip Boyce | |
Jeffrey Hunter | Captain Christopher Pike | |
Meg Wyllie | The Keeper | |
Jon Lormer | Dr. Theodore Haskins | |
Tom Anfinsen | Crewman | |
Bob Johnson | First Talosian | |
Adam Roarke | C.P.O. Garrison | |
Malachi Throne | The Keeper | |
Susan Oliver | Vina |
Capt. Pike is held prisoner and tested by aliens who have the power to project incredibly lifelike illusions.
Dr. McCoy discovers his old flame is not what she seems after crew members begin dying from a sudden lack of salt in their bodies.
Captain Kirk must learn the limits to the power of a 17-year-old boy with the psionic ability to create anything and destroy anyone.
The flight recorder of the 200-year-old U.S.S. Valiant relays a tale of terror--a magnetic storm at the edge of the galaxy.
The crew is infected with a mysterious disease that removes people's emotional inhibitions to a dangerous degree.
A transporter malfunction splits Captain Kirk into two halves: one meek and indecisive, the other violent and ill tempered. The remaining crew members stranded on the planet cannot be beamed up to the ship until a problem is fixed.
The Enterprise picks up untrustworthy entrepreneur Harry Mudd accompanied by three beautiful women who immediately put a spell on all the male crew members.
Nurse Chapel is reunited with her fiancé; but his new obsession leads him to make an android duplicate of Captain Kirk.
The Enterprise discovers a planet exactly like Earth, but the only inhabitants are children who contract a fatal disease upon entering puberty.
Kirk and psychiatrist Helen Noel are trapped on a maximum security penal colony that experiments with mind control and Spock must use the Vulcan mind-meld to find a way to save them.
After the Enterprise is forced to destroy a dangerous marker buoy, a gigantic alien ship arrives to capture and condemn the crew as trespassers.
Spock kidnaps the disabled Capt. Pike, hijacks the Enterprise, and then surrenders for court martial.
At Spock's court martial, he explains himself with mysterious footage about when Capt. Pike was kidnapped by powerful illusion casting aliens.
While Captain Kirk investigates whether an actor is actually a presumed dead mass murderer, a mysterious assailant is killing the people who could identify the fugitive.
The Enterprise must decide on its response when a Romulan ship makes a destructively hostile armed probe of Federation territory.
The past months have left the crew exhausted and in desperate need of a break, but does this explain McCoy's encounter with a human-sized white rabbit or Kirk crossing paths with the prankster who plagued his days at Starfleet Academy?
The Galileo, under Spock's command, crash-lands on a hostile planet. As the Enterprise races against time to find the shuttlecraft, Spock's strictly logical leadership clashes with the fear and resentment of his crew.
A being that controls matter and creates planets wants to play with the Enterprise crew.
For bringing hostility into their solar system, a superior alien race brings Captain Kirk into mortal combat against the reptilian captain of an alien ship he was pursuing.
The Enterprise is thrown back in time to 1960s Earth.
Kirk draws a court martial in the negligent death of a crewman.
Seeking the answer to a century-old mystery, Kirk and crew encounter a vacantly peaceful society under a 6000-year autocratic rule that kills all those it can't absorb.
While on patrol in deep space, Captain Kirk and his crew find and revive a genetically-engineered world conqueror and his compatriots from Earth's Twentieth Century.
Kirk and Spock must save their ship's crew when they are all declared killed in action in a bizarre computer simulated war where the actual deaths must nevertheless occur.
The Enterprise investigates a planet whose colonists should be dead, but are not.
The Enterprise is sent to a mining colony that is being terrorized by a mysterious monster, only to find that the situation is not that simple.
With a war with Klingons raging, Kirk and Spock attempt to resist an occupation of a planet with incomprehensibly placid natives.
Existence itself comes under threat from a man's power-struggle with his alternate self, with the Enterprise's strained dilithium crystals presenting his key to a final solution.
When a temporarily insane Dr. McCoy accidentally changes history and destroys his time, Kirk and Spock follow him to prevent the disaster, but the price to do so is high.
The Enterprise crew attempts to stop a plague of amoeba-like creatures from possessing human hosts and spreading throughout the galaxy.