Cultural Influence of Star Trek - Star Trek: The Original Series

Star Trek: The Original Series

Gene Roddenberry sold Star Trek in 1964 to NBC as a classic adventure drama, calling it a "Wagon Train to the Stars". In reality, Roddenberry wanted to tell more sophisticated stories, using futuristic situations as analogies for current problems on Earth and rectifying them through humanism and optimism. The show's writers frequently addressed moral and social issues in the episodes by tackling topics such as slavery, warfare, and discrimination. The opening line "to boldly go where no man has gone before" was taken almost verbatim from a US White House booklet on space produced after the Sputnik flight in 1957.

A major inspiration for Star Trek was the science-fiction film Forbidden Planet whose influence is especially apparent in the pilot episode The Cage . There were previous sophisticated science fiction TV shows that were either anthology series such as The Twilight Zone or the British Quatermass serials, but Star Trek was the first American science-fiction series with a continuing cast that was aimed at adults telling modern morality tales with complex narratives.

Although earlier British science-fiction shows done with marionettes and soap operas had interracial casting, it was unique for an American live-action series to do this. When there were few non-white or foreign roles in American television dramas, Roddenberry created a multi-ethnic crew for the Enterprise, including an African woman (Uhura), a Scotsman (Montgomery Scott), a Japanese American (Hikaru Sulu), and—most notably—an alien, the half-Vulcan Spock. In the second season, reflecting the contemporaneous Cold War, Roddenberry added a Russian crewmember (Pavel Chekov). The original series is also credited with American television's first interracial kiss, although this had happened earlier in a British medical soap opera, Emergency – Ward 10.

The series gained multiple Emmy award nominations during its run, but never won. Despite a restricted budget, the show's special effects were superior to contemporary TV shows, its stories were often written by prominent science fiction authors (though often re-written by the show's regular writers), and many of its production values—such as costuming and set design—were of high caliber for such a low budget. Some of the production staff of The Outer Limits worked on Star Trek and often made creative re-use of effects of props from the earlier series.

During its network run from 1966 to 1969, TOS's ratings were mediocre. A letter-writing campaign by fans, unprecedented in size, contributed to NBC's decision to renew the series for a third season, but the network put the show in a disadvantageous timeslot, and TOS was finally canceled after its third season.