An Oral History of "Star Trek"

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http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-c...958779/?no-ist

It was the most wildly successful failure in television history. First shown on NBC 50 years ago this September, the original “Star Trek” lasted just three seasons before it was canceled—only to be resuscitated in syndication and grow into a global entertainment mega-phenomenon. Four live-action TV sequels, with another digital-platform spinoff planned by CBS to launch next year. A dozen movies, beginning with 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture and resuming this July with the director Justin Lin’s Star Trek Beyond. It finds Capt. Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto) in deep space, where they are attacked by aliens and stranded on a distant planet—a plot that may make some viewers glad that at least the special effects are new. Over the decades “Star Trek” merchandise alone (because who does not need a Dr. McCoy bobblehead?) has reportedly brought in some $5 billion.

This is quite an outpouring for a concept that its creator, the Los Angeles police officer-turned-TV-writer Gene Roddenberry, pitched to producers as a “space western” and once described as a “‘Wagon Train’ to the Stars.” There’s much, much more to the appeal of the original “Star Trek” than gunplay in the wilderness, of course, as countless articles and dissertations have tried to explain, but in one key respect Roddenberry’s notion was right on target: People everywhere, especially Americans, are fascinated by the frontier, whether final or not. And fans are still intrigued that Roddenberry, a World War II veteran, set his 23rd-century multiracial epic in a universe that seemed to be moving beyond bigotry and petty conflict, a cold war-era imagining of the future that was reassuringly counter-dystopian. Plus, you’ve got to love the gadgets—mobile communicators, videoconferencing, diagnostic scanners, talking computers—which have had an uncanny habit of turning up in real life lately, a tribute to the wit and ingenuity of not only Roddenberry but also the show’s designers and writers.

The richness and persistence of the original vision are what make an extensive oral history of “Star Trek” so compelling. (The same cannot be said of “The Newlywed Game,” for instance, another TV show that debuted in 1966.)

For more than 30 years, Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman have made it their mission to document the creative process underlying “Star Trek” in all its iterations. In tens of thousands of hours of interviews conducted everywhere from Gene Roddenberry’s Bel Air mansion to movie set camper trailers, the writers recorded virtually anyone who put his or her stamp on this pop culture monument. The result is The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek: The First 25 Years, excerpted here. (Volume 2 is in the works.) “What I loved about the oral history format,” says Altman, “was that it was like getting 500 people in a room and telling the story in a linear fashion.” It was, adds Gross, a “genuine labor of love.”