Origins of the series
The original Star Trek was created by Gene Roddenberry, a television writer and former airline pilot, and it first aired on NBC on 8 September 1966. NBC had commissioned a pilot, “The Cage”, which the network found too cerebral, but unusually it paid for a second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, with a new lead actor, William Shatner, as Captain James T. Kirk. The cast was built around Shatner, Leonard Nimoy as the half-Vulcan science officer Spock, DeForest Kelley as Dr. McCoy, and, among others, Nichelle Nichols, James Doohan and George Takei.
The premise was a starship, the USS Enterprise, on a five-year mission of exploration. Roddenberry used the format to tell stories that touched on contemporary issues under the cover of science fiction, and he assembled a crew that was unusually mixed for American television in 1966. The setting was an optimistic future, and that optimism was in part a response to the news of the time.
The first season
The first season ran from September 1966 to April 1967 in a Thursday evening slot. Among its better-known episodes was “The City on the Edge of Forever”, written by the author Harlan Ellison and broadcast in April 1967. Ellison later disagreed with changes made to his script, which became a lasting feud, but the episode is regularly ranked among the best of the series.
The ratings were not strong, but NBC kept the show. One reason frequently given is that NBC’s parent company, RCA, made color television sets, and the network had a commercial interest in colourful programmes at a time when color television was only beginning to take over living rooms. Accounts differ on how much that mattered, so it is better described as a possible factor than a certain one. Another reason may simply be that the programme appealed to a younger audience that advertisers wanted.
The second season in 1967
The second season began in September 1967. Its opening episode, “Amok Time”, broadcast on 15 September, was set on Spock’s home planet and introduced the Vulcan salute that has become the series’ best-known gesture, with the phrase “live long and prosper”. Season two also brought a new regular character, the young Russian navigator Pavel Chekov, played by Walter Koenig. It has been reported that the character was added in part to attract younger viewers, in the way that the Monkees television band appealed to the same age group on the same network, and that Soviet press criticism about the lack of Russians in the future had been noted. These accounts are widely repeated but not easy to confirm in detail.
Other season two episodes include “Mirror, Mirror”, broadcast in October 1967, in which the crew meets harsher alternate-universe versions of themselves, and “The Trouble with Tribbles”, broadcast in December 1967, a comedy about fast-breeding furry creatures. Both are still frequently cited by fans.
The move to a Friday evening slot in the second season is generally considered to have hurt the show, since younger viewers were more likely to be out on Friday nights.
Ratings and the fan campaign
Nielsen ratings were modest throughout the original run, and by early 1968 it was widely expected that NBC would cancel the show. Fans organised a letter-writing campaign. One of the best-known organisers was Bjo Trimble, and it was reported that large numbers of letters and petitions reached the network, including from college campuses. NBC announced that the series would continue for a third season, and it even broadcast an on-air statement thanking viewers for their interest. Historians of the show disagree about how decisive the campaign was; the network may have been already inclined to renew it. What is not in doubt is that the campaign was an early example of organised fan activism around a television programme.
The third season was moved to Friday at 10 p.m., a late slot, and Roddenberry stepped back from day-to-day producing. The series was cancelled, with the last new episode broadcast on 3 June 1969.
A show of its moment
Star Trek was made in a year when the space race was at its height. The Apollo 1 fire in January 1967 killed three astronauts and shocked the public, yet the programme continued to present space exploration as a hopeful human project. Its casting also had a real effect: Nichelle Nichols has told the story that she considered leaving the series after the first season and was encouraged to stay by Martin Luther King Jr., though that account rests on her own recollection. The show’s treatment of the Vietnam War era was usually indirect, using allegory and scenarios on alien planets rather than direct comment.
After cancellation the show found a larger audience in syndicated reruns in the 1970s. An animated series followed in 1973, and the first feature film appeared in 1979. The modest ratings of 1966 to 1969 are therefore a poor guide to its lasting influence, and a reminder that a television programme’s initial reception and its later reputation can differ greatly.