Star Trek Primer Vol. 1

With the new movie nearing release, I thought some people might be interested in seeing it, but don't want to go in as complete newbie so here is my primer for the world of Star Trek. Like the X-Men primer I'm writing, the goal is to be as brief as possible to provide an appreciation for a very complex and long running series that's had as many great elements as horrible ones.

Now to present my credentials... I own every single DVD of Star Trek: The Original Series, The Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine. I own eight out of ten movies, all special edition, and I have seen every episode of Star Trek: Voyager and Enterprise as well as those two movies I don't have (and there is good reason for that).

Now, in order to restore some measure of dignity, I will also undermine my Trek cred: I've never been to a Star Trek convention. I've never worn Vulcan ears. I've never been to the Star Trek Experience in Las Vegas. My height is roughly proportionate to my weight. I've had sex.

Everyone ready? Great, here we go.

Star Trek (AKA Star Trek: The Original Series AKA Star Trek: TOS)

Gene Roddenberry

Star Trek was created by Gene Roddenberry, an aeronautical engineer and pilot during World War II where he flew a B-17 Flying Fortress and received the Distinguished Flying Cross and an Air Medal for his service. After the war, Roddenberry became a pilot for Pan Am and received a Civil Aeronautics commendation for his rescue efforts following a June 1947 plane crash in the Syrian desert, as this excerpt from StarTrek.com explains:

It was on a flight from Calcutta that his plane lost two engines and caught fire in mid-air, crashing at night in the Syrian desert. As the senior surviving officer, Roddenberry sent two Englishmen swimming across the Euphrates River in quest of the source of a light he had observed just prior to the crash. Meanwhile, he parleyed with nomads who had come to loot the dead. The Englishmen reached a Syrian military outpost, which sent a small plane to investigate. Roddenberry returned with the small plane to the outpost, where he broadcast a message that was relayed to Pan Am, which sent a stretcher plane to the rescue.

After seeing television for the first time, Roddenberry left for Hollywood, but found television still in its infancy so he followed his footsteps to become a police officer, but still he continued to write for television, his credits including Goodyear Theatre, The Kaiser Aluminum Hour, Four Star Theater, Dragnet, The Jane Wyman Theater and Naked City, at which point he became established as a freelance writer, turned in his badge, and became head writer on the popular Western Have Gun Will Travel followed by The Lieutenant, a show about a young man training in the Marine Corp which Roddenberry created and produced.

As early as 1960, before and during his work on the afforementioned shows, Roddenberry was had been working on a science fiction show which he publicly marketed as a "Wagon Train to the stars" (Wagon Train being a popular series at the time), but privately to his friends, he expressed a desire to model the show after Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels where each episode would seek to appeal to the audience on two levels: first as a suspenseful adventure serial and second as a moral parable.

Although I cannot find any evidence to confirm this, I strongly believe that the concept of Star Trek was inspired, in large part, by John F. Kennedy's inaugural address. If you haven't listened to this address, you are missing out on one of the greatest speeches in human history. Commonly, it is known as the "Ask not what you're country can do for you..." speech, but that is actually the least impressive part of it. Amongst other things, the president expresses the importance of space exploration, proposes the Peace Corp, and advocates peace and understanding between the United States and the Soviet Union. He paints a vision for the future of America that Roddenberry seems to entirely subscribe to.

A three-year deal was made with Desilu Studios, the production studio started by I Love Lucy's Desi Arnez and Lucille Ball. The pilot episode of Star Trek was titled The Cage and featured a captain by the name of Christopher Pike, played by Jeffery Hunter. Second-in-command was an emotionless woman by the simple name of Number One and after her came a very emotional Mr. Spock, but the studio executives decided that a female second-in-command was unbelievable and had the character eliminated. The role of second-in-command and emotionless counterpoint went to Leonard Nimoy's Spock. CBS turned down the show, but NBC picked it even though the executive thought it was "too cerebral."

Crew of the Enterprise/Cast of Star Trek

Both the cast and crew of the series were designed to reflect racial and cultural diversity suggesting a future where problems of bigotry and petty cultural conflicts had been eliminated. In order of appearance, they are:

Spock (Leonard Nimoy)

The stoic half-alien, half-human Spock was originally conceived as having red skin and being from Mars, but the studios determined that the red would make him look too much like a demon and Roddenberry was afraid that humans might land on Mars during the course of the show and didn't want to contradict contemporary scientific reality. Instead, they went with "oriental yellow" and gave the Vulcan's a somewhat eastern sensibility. Still, in later episodes, Vulcan is shown to resemble the lifeless red deserts of Mars.

Roddenberry has remarked several times that he is a great believer in logic, so this trait was made central to the Vulcan character. Consequently, the character is always trying to maintain the dignity and strength of Vulcan logic while he is often tempted by human emotions and passions. This has become a central theme for the series, even in the spin-offs where there are no Vulcans.

Spock also was the first in a reoccurring theme in Star Trek to have one character so fundamentally different from the rest of the crew that they are always struggling to understand one another.

Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner)

In the trendy Star Trek homage film Free Enterprise, William Shatner refers to Kirk as a "John F. Kennedy lothario" and it's hard for me to look at the character without seeing the former president. His cocky, self-assured smile, friendly leadership style, and famously strong sexual appetite clearly rings of JFK, however most people don't know that William Shatner was already an accomplished and respected actor by this point with film role in Yul Brenner's The Brothers Karamazov, Roger Corman's The Intruder, Stanley Kramer's Judgement at Nuremberg, and two episodes of The Twilight Zone to his credit.

Dr. Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley)

DeForest Kelley was probably my favorite actor in the original series. There really is no other character that balances his folksy southern charm, his acerbic wit, and his sense of moral outrage. Strangely, even though he seems like he belongs in a Mark Twain novel, he always seems like the guy most comfortable with being in the future. Spock is doing his experiments, Kirk is thinking about how cool he is, but McCoy is always in his sickbay either operating, performing tests, or doing paperwork. He grumbles about it, but he also loves it. There is something very identifiable and noble about his character.

He's also the only clearly racist character on the show, constantly pointing out the differences in Spock's physiology or accusing him as having no appreciation for the value of life. But Spock gives as good as he gets, pointing out the irrational, violent nature of humanity. Often Kirk stands between them, enjoying the arguement and occasionally fueling it when possible.


Together, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy make the conceptual trinity of Star Trek. Aside from being the best actors in the cast, these three represented primary, perhaps even Freudian drives. Kirk, you might say, is ID, driven by his lusts, both for life and... other things. Spock, with his dependence on logic and overrelience on reason, could be seen as the Ego, while McCoy, with his doctors compassion and humanity would represent the Superego. Or you can simply think of Kirk's role in command as the synthesis between reason (Spock) and emotion (McCoy).

Montgomery "Scotty" Scott (James Doohan)

When given the role of the engineer of the Enterprise, James Doohan was given the freedom to choose his nationality. According to Doohan (a veteran of World War II), Scotsmen always made the best engineers and so Scotty was born.

Interesting sidenote, Doohan landed on Juno Beach on D-Day. He was shot four times in the leg, once in the chest (the bullet hit a cigarette case given to him by his brother, saving his life), and once in the right hand, severing his middle finger. Star Trek directors generally did everything possible to hide the missing digit, presumably because lost limbs (especially finger) can be replaced in the future.

Hikaru Sulu (George Takei)

George Takei is gay. This is probably the most interesting thing about Sulu... even though Sulu has never shown as anything but straight. George himself didn't come out of the closet until just a few years ago, although the knowledge of this makes watching the show far more interesting... particularly his shirtless sword-fight in Naked Time or his evil duplicate's "attempted rape" of Uhura in Mirror, Mirror. I'm hoping that they out Sulu in the upcoming film. As of yet, there are no gay characters in Star Trek; one bisexual, but I will get to that much, much later.

Uhura (Nichelle Nichols)

What was the role of the one black person and one woman on the main cast of Star Trek? Communications officer. She was basically the operator on the Enterprise constantly patching people in to the captain. Nowadays, this seems very insulting, but it was pushing the boundaries at the time. According to Nichelle, she was going to quit the show before she had a chance encounter with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. shortly before his death. Mr. King encouraged her to stay with the show, telling her that seeing a black woman in space is very inspiring for young people. This turned out to be the case as reported by a young Whoopie Goldberg who said that when she saw Uhura, she ran to her mom and yelled, "Look, there's a black lady on TV and she ain't no maid!"

Sidenote: The name "Uhura" comes from the Swahili word "uhuru" meaning freedom. Years after Star Trek was cancelled, a fan suggested to her the first name "Nyota" which is Swahili for "star." It has since become the characters official name, although she is generally just referred to as Uhura.

Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig)

In the second season, Walter Koenig joined the regular cast as young Ensign Pavel Chekov. Star Trek was competing with Beatles immitators The Monkees, so it was believed that the show needed a sexy young man to compete with Davy Jones and bring over more female viewers. The often hot-headed Chekov, like Sulu, didn't have a regular position in the original series, but in the movies, Sulu was retroactively made the Enterprise helmsman while Chekov would be the tactical officer. However, in the original series, they seem to share these functions.

Nurse Chapel (Majel Barrett)

While this would comprise the bulk of the cast, I feel compelled to mention Majel Barrett. Originally, she was cast as Number One in the pilot, making her second-in-command, but as I said, the studio didn't think it was believable, so she was recast as Nurse Chapel, a passionate, intelligent woman deeply in love with Spock, who is unable to return her affections. After the series was cancelled, she married Gene Roddenberry and eventually returned to Star Trek as the voice of the computer in all later incarnations of the series.

The Episodes

While the majority of the series is bad, it's bad in the way of all old sci-fi. The effects are laughable and you can tell that they rarely have any intellectual intentions. To make matters worse, they worked on such a poor budget that many episodes center around a bunch of props taken from other television shows or films. Consequently, there are a lot of episodes that have historical themes such as western, ancient Rome, Nazi, or gangster planets. But it's the exceptions that make the series work, whether it is a genuinely well-written script (like "City on the Edge of Forever") or a playful embrace of camp ("A Piece of the Action"). Listed below are the best episodes of Star Trek in chronological order.

Sidenote: You may be wondering why this show looks incredibly gaudy and why there is a heavy reliance on primary colors. Keep in mind, this show debuted in 1967. The color television was still a relatively new invention, much like HD today, and like when the Wizard of Oz debuted to highlight the capability of color film, a lot of television shows had a gaudy use of color to please people who invested in a color TV. But at the same time, most people still had black and white televisions so they still had to make sure that it looked good in black and white, which meant you couldn't rely on subtle color contrast to be recognized in black and white so you needed sharp contrasts between darkness levels. The effect looks really strange and child-like to those of us who didn't grow up with just black-and-white film and television. Think about it. (Trekkie + Film major + Digital video support technician = Synthesis)

Another thing worth noting is that, in addition to The Monkees, Batman was in competition with Star Trek for ratings, so they were also in something of a competition to out camp one another. What can I say? It was the style of the time.

The Naked Time

It's a shame that we had to start with such a campy episode, but what better way to get to know a new cast than to get them all drunk? This was the fourth episode of the series where they encounter a strange illness on another planet that makes people act out their inhibitions or essentially become intoxicated. It's an opportunity for every actor on set to ham it up and by god do they ever! Toke it if you got it, because when you get half a dozen hammy Shakespearean actors playing cultural stereotypes drunk in a rainbow colored spaceship, you are in for a good time! Sulu does some half-naked swashbuckling, Spock gets angry and then has a good cry, and Kirk confesses that, despite how much intergalactic tail he's gotten, his one true love is the Enterprise.

Strange sidenote: This episode ends with the crew accidently discovering how to travel through time. This is used in a few episodes later on, despite all of the ethical and conceptual flaws involved in having characters who can time travel.

The Menagerie

In an effort to use footage from the much different pilot, a clever framing device is used to tell the story of the Enterprise's former captain, Christopher Pike. Presumably because they are using a larger pilot budget, the effects in this episode are pretty good. It's a story about living a perfect illusion as a captive or a difficult life of freedom and it addresses these themes well. I also enjoy seeing all of the changes in cast and costume from the original pilot.

Balance of Terror

This was the episode that determined how Star Trek would handle ship-to-ship conflicts. This episode was largely inspired by the submarine film Run Silent, Run Deep. Unlike Star Wars, Star Trek has a Naval rather than Air Force based approach to space combat. The difference is the same as between samurai and martial arts films. In martial arts films, there is a focus on quick, visceral action. In samurai films, you spend a lot of time anticipating a few short manuvers. Some people say its less exciting. I think the fact that it feels more real makes it more exciting.

The Enterprise is called to the Romulan neutral zone where they engage an enemy that they were at war with one hundred years ago. Because the Romulans are deeply mistrustful, the crew doesn't even know what a Romulan looks like, but they soon find out that it looks just like a Vulcan. This spreads racial tension through the crew. Meanwhile, the Romulan ship has a cloaking device which makes it invisible to other ships, but it also cannot see other ships. This makes the battle even more like submarines.

I don't want to spoil the ending, but Mark Lenard delivers an incredible performance as the Romulan commander, clearly using depictions of Roman leaders as his inspiration. The effect is like placing Captain Kirk in a chess match with Julius Caesar. This is one of my very favorite episodes.

Space Seed

This is one of the most influential Star Trek episodes because it introduced us to Khan Noonien Singh. When the Enterprise discovers a ship hundreds of years old containing a few dozen cryogenically frozen people, they soon realize that they are genetically engineered refugees from the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s led by the tyrrant Khan. Ricardo Montelban plays the charismatic ruler that dares to pit his intellect and, more importantly, his ego against Kirk's. Probably the reason this story worked so well is because they are so much alike. They are both megalomaniacs.

Errand of Mercy

This is the episode that introduced the Klingons. Klingon leader, Kor, was played by John Colicos who, like other actors before him, was given the opportunity to make decisions which would have major implications in Star Trek's future. In this case, he determined that Kor should have a Mongolian look which has since dominated the Klingon aesthetic. Even though the original Klingons lacked the signature brow ridges they eventually acquired, Kor's eyebrows and facial hair set the standard which would later be adopted by TNG's Worf. John Colicos is also known to period sci-fi afficionados as Gaius Baltar, the Judas of the original Battlestar: Galactica.

The story is essentially a Cold War analogy where two powerful militaries arrive on a primative, peaceful planet on the border of the Klingon Empire and United Federation of Planets. Kirk asks the planet to accept Federation protection against Klingon aggression. The people refuse his assistance, but Kirk is certain that the Klingons will destroy the planet if he leaves, so he and Spock stay in secret, disguised as natives, as the Klingon occupation begins. Playing the role of a native political upstart, Kirk pits his intellect against Kor's as he engages in a guerrilla campaign, much to the displeasure of the local government, even when people start dying.

City on the Edge of Forever

On just about every list, City on the Edge of Forever is regarded as the best episode of Star Trek. Ironic, then, that's it's creator disowned it... or perhaps its appropriate in this case. Sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison is one of the best in the business, and he is beloved amongst fans for voicing his honest opinion, and his honest opinion was that the producers butchered his script on City on the Edge of Forever. True or not, it still ends up one of the series best.

After McCoy goes insane from a strange illness, he accidentally travels through time to the 1930s and changes history destroying the Federation. Kirk and Spock travel back to find him. On the way, Kirk falls in love with the pascifist activist and social worker Edith Keeler (played by Joan Collins) while Spock tries to get clues based on information from an altered future. Kirk is shocked to discover that the reason for the change is because Edith Keeler began a massive pascifist movement which made the country unprepared for World War II essentially resulting in the destruction of human history as they know it. I'll spare the spoilers, but the script is great, the acting is great, and it has little of the camp so abundant in other episodes.

Amok Time

In the second season premier, we are shown the planet Vulcan when Spock experiences Pon Farr, a Vulcan mating instinct accompanied by maniacal emotionality happening once every seven years in the Vulcan life cycle. In this case, Spock must return home to T'Pring to whom he has been betrothed. Kirk and McCoy accompany Spock at his request when T'Pring suddenly chooses Kirk as her mate. The only way for this to be settled is for Kirk to fight Spock to the death. Unfortunately, Vulcan's have ten times the strength and stamina of a human being and Spock is pretty much insane.

Mirror, Mirror

Another legendary episode best remembered for Spock's goatee. Due to a transporter accident, Kirk, McCoy, Uhura, and Scotty find themselves in a universe where the Enterprise is a warship from a vast intergalactic empire. Attempts on his life are common place, as assassination is considered a legitimate form of promotion. As they figure out how to get back home, Kirk has to come up with excuses to spare a peaceful race from extinction for refusing to hand over valuable fuel. His uncharacteristic mercy makes the other suspicious, particularly the very logically cruel Spock.

Journey to Babel

In this episode, we first meet Spock's parents Sarek and Amanda. Sarek is played by Mark Lenard who had previously played the Romulan commander in Balance of Terror. He reprises the role of Sarek in several movies and a few episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Sarek has arrived at the Vulcan ambassador to a peace conference taking place aboard the Enterprise. An assassin on board places Spock in a difficult position when Kirk and his father are both in sickbay. His father needs a blood transfusion from the only other Vulcan on the ship, but his duties require him to protect the conference.

This is also the first we would see of the Andorians (blue-skinned antenna aliens) and the Orion Syndicate, both of which would feature prominently in Enterprise.

The Trouble With Tribbles

In probably the most famous episode of Star Trek, the Enterprise is called to protect a grain shipment from a possible Klingon threat. While there, they see little sign of a threat, but his crew manages to take shore leave at the local station where Uhura buys a cute, purring ball of fluff called a tribble which, they soon find out, is born pregnant. Before long, the Enterprise has to contend with an infestation of cuteness meanwhile Starfleet and Klingon officers are having a bar brawl on the station.

A Piece of the Action

Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to a primative alien planet only to find it to be an exact duplicate of 1920s Chicago. It turns out, the planet's dominant species are incredibly immitative, so when a human left a book called Chicago Mobs of the 1920s on the planet one hundred years ago, they naturally based their entire society on it. It's another good fish out of water story as the ideal, peaceful Kirk plays gangster to try to keep him and his crew alive.

The Enterprise Incident

One of the few great episodes of the third season, The Enterprise Incident begins with Shatner chewing the scenery as he goes crazy and flies the Enterprise into the Romulan neutral zone where it is quickly contained by three enemy vessels. Spock relieves the captain of command and surrenders the Enterprise to the Romulans. Kirk is outraged and attacks Spock, forcing him to use the Vulcan death-grip. This is soon revealed to be a ploy as Kirk is revived and altered to look like a Romulan while he and Spock work on a calculated plan to steal a Romulan cloaking device.

Watch 'em

So if you are planning on seeing the new movie, you might want to check out an episode or two of the original series. There is no need to see them in order. If any of the ones I just mentioned sound interesting, go to YouTube and you can watch the full episode for free.

Next

Due to low-ratings, Star Trek was canceled after only three seasons, but it quickly became popular with the next generation through reruns. Ten years later, Star Trek returned as a motion picture.