Star Trek


Star Trek is an American media franchise based on the science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry. The first television series, called Star Trek and now known as "', debuted on September 8, 1966, and aired for three seasons on NBC. It followed the voyages of the starship USS Enterprise on its five-year mission, the purpose of which was "to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before". The USS Enterprise was a space exploration vessel built by the United Federation of Planets in the 23rd century. The Star Trek canon includes the Original Series, an animated series, six spin-off television series, the film franchise, and further adaptations in several media.
In creating Star Trek, Roddenberry was inspired by C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower series of novels, Jonathan Swift Gulliver's Travels, and television westerns such as Wagon Train. These adventures continued in the 22-episode ' and six feature films. Six new television series were eventually produced: ' follows the crew of a new starship Enterprise a century after the original series; ' and ' are set contemporaneously with the Next Generation, and ', set before the original series in the early days of human interstellar travel. The most recent Star Trek television series, ' and ', stream exclusively on digital platforms. The adventures of the Next Generation crew continued in four additional feature films. In 2009, the film franchise underwent a reboot called the Kelvin Timeline. Three films were made in this alternate universe. Two additional television series are in development for CBS All Access, ', an animated series scheduled to debut in 2020; and ', featuring the previous crew of the Enterprise prior to the original series, tentatively set to debut in 2021.
Star Trek has been a cult phenomenon for decades. Fans of the franchise are called "Trekkies" or "Trekkers". The franchise spans a wide range of spin-offs including games, figurines, novels, toys, and comics. Star Trek had a in Las Vegas that opened in 1998 and closed in September 2008. At least two museum exhibits of props travel the world. The series has its own full-fledged constructed language, Klingon. Several parodies have been made of Star Trek. In addition, viewers have produced several fan productions. As of July 2016, the franchise had generated $10 billion in revenue, making Star Trek one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time.
Star Trek is noted for its cultural influence beyond works of science fiction. The franchise is also noted for its progressive civil rights stances. The Original Series included one of television's first multiracial casts.

Conception and setting

As early as 1964, Gene Roddenberry drafted a proposal for the science fiction series that would become Star Trek. Although he publicly marketed it as a Western in outer space—a so-called "Wagon Train to the Stars"—he privately told friends that he was modeling it on Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, intending each episode to act on two levels: as a suspenseful adventure story and as a morality tale.
Most Star Trek stories depict the adventures of humans and aliens who serve in Starfleet, the space-borne humanitarian and peacekeeping armada of the United Federation of Planets. The protagonists have altruistic values, and must apply these ideals to difficult dilemmas.
Many of the conflicts and political dimensions of Star Trek are allegories of contemporary cultural realities. The Original Series addressed issues of the 1960s, just as later spin-offs have tackled issues of their respective decades. Issues depicted in the various series include war and peace, the value of personal loyalty, authoritarianism, imperialism, class warfare, economics, racism, religion, human rights, sexism, feminism, and the role of technology. Roddenberry stated: " a new world with new rules, I could make statements about sex, religion, Vietnam, politics, and intercontinental missiles. Indeed, we did make them on Star Trek: we were sending messages and fortunately they all got by the network." "If you talked about purple people on a far off planet, they never really caught on. They were more concerned about cleavage. They actually would send a censor down to the set to measure a woman's cleavage to make sure too much of her breast wasn't showing"
Roddenberry intended the show to have a progressive political agenda reflective of the emerging counter-culture of the youth movement, though he was not fully forthcoming to the networks about this. He wanted Star Trek to show what humanity might develop into, if it would learn from the lessons of the past, most specifically by ending violence. An extreme example is the alien species, the Vulcans, who had a violent past but learned to control their emotions. Roddenberry also gave Star Trek an anti-war message and depicted the United Federation of Planets as an ideal, optimistic version of the United Nations. His efforts were opposed by the network because of concerns over marketability, e.g., they opposed Roddenberry's insistence that Enterprise have a racially diverse crew.

Mythology

The central trio of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy from the Original Series was modeled on classical mythological storytelling.

History and production

Timeline

The ''Original Series'' era (1965–1969)

In early 1964, Roddenberry presented a brief treatment for a television series to Desilu Productions, calling it "a Wagon Train to the stars." Desilu worked with Roddenberry to develop the treatment into a script, which was then pitched to NBC.
NBC paid to make a pilot, "The Cage |The Cage", starring Jeffrey Hunter as Enterprise Captain Christopher Pike. NBC rejected The Cage, but the executives were still impressed with the concept, and made the unusual decision to commission a second pilot: "Where No Man Has Gone Before".
While the show initially enjoyed high ratings, the average rating of the show at the end of its first season dropped to 52nd out of 94 programs. Unhappy with the show's ratings, NBC threatened to cancel the show during its second season. The show's fan base, led by Bjo Trimble, conducted an unprecedented letter-writing campaign, petitioning the network to keep the show on the air. NBC renewed the show, but moved it from primetime to the "Friday night death slot", and substantially reduced its budget. In protest, Roddenberry resigned as producer and reduced his direct involvement in Star Trek, which led to Fred Freiberger becoming producer for the show's third and final season. Despite another letter-writing campaign, NBC canceled the series after three seasons and 79 episodes.

Post-''Original Series'' rebirth (1969–1991)

After the original series was canceled, Desilu, which by then had been renamed Paramount Television, licensed the broadcast syndication rights to help recoup the production losses. Reruns began in late 1969 and by the late 1970s the series aired in over 150 domestic and 60 international markets. This helped Star Trek develop a cult following greater than its popularity during its original run.
One sign of the series' growing popularity was the first Star Trek convention which occurred on January 21–23, 1972 in New York City. Although the original estimate of attendees was only a few hundred, several thousand fans turned up. Star Trek fans continue to attend similar conventions worldwide.
The series' newfound success led to the idea of reviving the franchise. Filmation with Paramount Television produced the first post original series show, '. It ran on NBC for 22 half-hour episodes over two seasons on Saturday mornings from 1973 to 1974. Although short-lived, typical for animated productions in that time slot during that period, the series garnered the franchise's only "Best Series" Emmy Award as opposed to the franchise's later technical ones. Paramount Pictures and Roddenberry began developing a new series, ', in May 1975 in response to the franchise's newfound popularity. Work on the series ended when the proposed Paramount Television Service folded.
Following the success of the science fiction movies Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Paramount adapted the planned pilot episode of Phase II into the feature film '. The film opened in North America on December 7, 1979, with mixed reviews from critics. The film earned $139 million worldwide, below expectations but enough for Paramount to create a sequel. The studio forced Roddenberry to relinquish creative control of future sequels.
The success of the sequel, ', reversed the fortunes of the franchise. While the sequel grossed less than the first movie, The Wrath of Khans lower production costs made it net more profit. Paramount produced six Star Trek feature films between 1979 and 1991.
In response to the popularity of Star Trek feature films, the franchise returned to television with '' in 1987. Paramount chose to distribute it as a first-run syndication show rather than a network show.

Post-Roddenberry television era (1991–2005)

Following Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Roddenberry's role was changed from producer to creative consultant with minimal input to the films while being heavily involved with the creation of '. Roddenberry died on October 24, 1991, giving executive producer Rick Berman control of the franchise. Star Trek had become known to those within Paramount as "the franchise", because of its great success and recurring role as a tent pole for the studio when other projects failed. The Next Generation had the highest ratings of any Star Trek series and became the most syndicated show during the last years of its original seven-season run. In response to the Next Generation success, Paramount released a spin-off series ' in 1993. While never as popular as the Next Generation, the series had sufficient ratings for it to last seven seasons.
In January 1995, a few months after the Next Generation ended, Paramount released a fourth television series, '. Star Trek saturation reached a peak in the mid-1990s with Deep Space Nine and Voyager airing concurrently and three of the four Next Generation-based feature films released in 1994, 1996, and 1998. By 1998, Star Trek was Paramount's most important property; the enormous profits of "the franchise" funded much of the rest of the studio's operations. Voyager became the flagship show of the new United Paramount Network and thus the first major network Star Trek series since the original.
After Voyager ended, UPN produced ', a prequel series. Enterprise did not enjoy the high ratings of its predecessors and UPN threatened to cancel it after the series' third season. Fans launched a campaign reminiscent of the one that saved the third season of the Original Series. Paramount renewed Enterprise for a fourth season, but moved it to the Friday night death slot. Like the Original Series, Enterprise ratings dropped during this time slot, and UPN cancelled Enterprise at the end of its fourth season. Enterprise aired its final episode on May 13, 2005. A fan group, "Save Enterprise", attempted to save the series and tried to raise $30 million to privately finance a fifth season of Enterprise. Though the effort garnered considerable press, the fan drive failed to save the series. The cancellation of Enterprise ended an eighteen-year continuous production run of Star Trek programming on television. The poor box office performance in 2002 of the film cast an uncertain light upon the future of the franchise. Paramount relieved Berman, the franchise producer, of control of Star Trek.

Film reboots (''Kelvin'' Timeline) (2005–2016)

In 2005, Paramount's parent company Viacom split into two companies, the CBS Corporation owner of CBS Television Studios, and Viacom owner of Paramount Pictures. CBS owned the film brand while Paramount owned the film library and would continue the film franchise. Paramount was the first company to try to revive the franchise by hiring a new creative team to reinvigorate in 2007. Writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman and producer J. J. Abrams had the freedom to reinvent the feel of the franchise.
The team created the franchise's eleventh film, Star Trek, releasing it in May 2009. The film featured a new cast portraying the crew of the original show. Star Trek was a prequel of the original series set in an alternate timeline, later named the Kelvin Timeline. This gave the film and sequels freedom from the need to conform to the franchise's canonical timeline. The eleventh Star Trek film's marketing campaign targeted non-fans, even stating in the film's advertisements that "this is not your father's Star Trek". It also would not interfere with CBS's franchise.
The film earned considerable critical and financial success, grossing more box office sales than any previous Star Trek film. The plaudits include the franchise's first Academy Award. The film's major cast members are contracted for two sequels. Paramount's sequel to the 2009 film, Star Trek Into Darkness, premiered in Sydney, Australia, on April 23, 2013, but the film did not release in the United States until May 17, 2013. While the film was not as successful in the North American box office as its predecessor, internationally, in terms of box office receipts, Into Darkness was the most successful of the franchise. The thirteenth film, Star Trek Beyond, was released on July 22, 2016. The film had many pre-production problems and its script went through several rewrites. While receiving positive reviews, Star Trek Beyond disappointed in the box office.

Streaming originals (2017–present)

turned down several proposals in the mid-2000s to restart the franchise. These included pitches from film director Bryan Singer, Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski, and Trek actors Jonathan Frakes and William Shatner. The company also turned down an animated web series.
Despite the franchise's absence from network television, the Star Trek film library would become highly accessible to the average viewer due to the rise of streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. To capitalize on this trend, CBS brought the franchise back to the small screen with the series ' to help launch and draw subscribers to its streaming service CBS All Access. The premiered on September 24, 2017 and a second season premiered in January 2019. A third Discovery season was announced on February 27, 2019. While Discovery is shown in the United States exclusively on CBS All Access, Netflix, in exchange for funding the production costs of the show, owns the international screening rights for the show.
A second All Access series, ', features Patrick Stewart reprising the show's namesake character. Picard premiered on January 23, 2020. Unlike Discovery, Amazon Prime Video will stream Picard internationally. CBS has also released two seasons of ', a series of standalone mini-episodes which air between Discovery and Picard seasons. An additional streaming series following the crew of the Enterprise under the command of Captain Pike featured in Discoverys second season, ', was announced on May 15, 2020.
Additional All Access series are under development including the ' adult animated series, and a show centered around the Discovery character Philippa Georgiou. CBS's goal is to have new Star Trek'' content year-round on All Access.

Television

Eight television series and one short-form companion series make up the bulk of the Star Trek mythos: Original Series, Animated Series, Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, Discovery, Short Treks and Picard. All the series in total amount to episodes across seasons of television.

''The Original Series'' (1966–1969)

Star Trek: The Original Series, frequently abbreviated as TOS, debuted on NBC on September 8, 1966. The show tells the tale of the crew of the starship and its five-year mission "to boldly go where no man has gone before". During the series initial run, it was nominated for Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation multiple times, and won twice. Cast included:
NBC canceled the show after three seasons; the last original episode aired on June 3, 1969. A petition near the end of the second season to save the show signed by many Caltech students and its multiple Hugo nominations would, however, indicate that despite low Nielsen ratings, it was highly popular with science fiction fans and engineering students. The series later became popular in reruns and found a cult following.

''The Animated Series'' (1973–1974)

Star Trek: The Animated Series, produced by Filmation, ran for two seasons from 1973 to 1974. Most of the original cast performed the voices of their characters from the Original Series, and some of the writers who worked on the Original Series returned. While the animated format allowed the producers to create more exotic alien landscapes and life forms, animation errors and liberal reuse of shots and musical cues have tarnished the series' reputation. Gene Roddenberry often spoke of it as non-canon. The cast included:
The Animated Series won Star Treks first Emmy Award on May 15, 1975. The series briefly returned to television in the mid-1980s on the children's cable network Nickelodeon, and again on Sci-Fi Channel in the mid-90s. The complete series was released on LaserDisc during the 1980s. The complete series was first released in the U.S. on eleven volumes of VHS tapes in 1989. All 22 episodes were released on DVD in 2006.

''The Next Generation'' (1987–1994)

Star Trek: The Next Generation, frequently abbreviated as TNG, takes place about a century after the Original Series. It features a new starship,, and a new crew:
The series premiered on, and ran for seven seasons. It had the highest ratings of any of the Star Trek series and became the highest rated syndicated show near the end of its run, allowing it to act as a springboard for other series. Many relationships and races introduced in the Next Generation became the basis for episodes in Deep Space Nine and Voyager. The series earned several Emmy awards and nominations—including Best Dramatic Series for its final season—two Hugo Awards, and a Peabody Award for Outstanding Television Programming for one episode.

''Deep Space Nine'' (1993–1999)

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, frequently abbreviated as DS9, takes place during the last years and immediately after the Next Generation. It debuted the week of, and ran for seven seasons. Unlike the other Star Trek series, Deep Space Nine was set primarily on a space station of the same name rather than aboard a starship. The cast included:
The show begins after the brutal Cardassian occupation of the planet Bajor. The liberated Bajoran people ask the United Federation of Planets to help run a space station near Bajor. After the Federation takes control of the station, the protagonists of the show discover a uniquely stable wormhole that provides immediate access to the distant Gamma Quadrant, making Bajor and the station a strategically important location. The show chronicles the events of the station's crew, led by Commander Benjamin Sisko, and Major Kira Nerys.
Deep Space Nine stands apart from earlier Trek series for its lengthy serialized storytelling, character conflicts, and religious themes—all elements critics and audiences praised but were forbidden by Roddenberry while a producer of the original series and the Next Generation.

''Voyager'' (1995–2001)

Star Trek: Voyager ran for seven seasons, airing from January 16, 1995 to May 23, 2001. It features Kate Mulgrew as Captain Kathryn Janeway, the first female commanding officer in a leading role of a Star Trek series. Cast included:
Voyager takes place at about the same time period as Deep Space Nine and the years following that show's end. The premiere episode has the USS Voyager and its crew pursue a Maquis ship. Both ships become stranded in the Delta Quadrant about 70,000 light-years from Earth. Faced with a 75-year voyage to Earth, the crew must learn to work together to overcome challenges on their long and perilous journey home while also seeking ways to shorten the voyage.
Like Deep Space Nine, early seasons of Voyager feature more conflict between its crew members than seen in later episodes. Such conflict often arose from friction between "by-the-book" Starfleet crew and rebellious Maquis fugitives forced by circumstance to work together. The starship Voyager, isolated from its home, faced new cultures and dilemmas not possible in shows based in the Alpha Quadrant. Later seasons brought in an influx of characters and cultures from prior shows, such as the Borg, Q, the Ferengi, Romulans, Klingons, Cardassians and cast members of the Next Generation.

''Enterprise'' (2001–2005)

Star Trek: Enterprise, originally titled Enterprise, is a prequel to the original Star Trek series. It aired from to on UPN. Enterprise is set during the 2150s, ninety years after Zefram Cochrane's first warp flight, and approximately ten years before the creation of the Coalition of Planets which became the United Federation of Planets. The show follows the crew of Earth's first Warp-5 capable starship,. Cast included:
Initially, Enterprise featured self-contained episodes, much like the Original Series, Next Generation and Voyager. The comprised a single narrative arc. The fourth and final season consisted of several three and four episode arcs, which explored the origins of some elements of previous series, and resolved some continuity errors with The Original Series.
Ratings for Enterprise started strong but declined rapidly. Although critics received the fourth season well, both fans and the cast reviled the series finale, partly because of the episode's focus on the guest appearance of members of the Next Generation cast. The cancellation of Enterprise ended an 18-year run of new Star Trek series, which began with the Next Generation in 1987.

''Discovery'' (2017–present)

Star Trek: Discovery is a direct prequel to the , set roughly ten years prior. It premiered in the United States and Canada on CBS. The series is CBS All Access exclusive in the United States. Netflix distributes the series worldwide, except for Canada.
The series primary protagonist is Lt. Commander Michael Burnham, portrayed by Martin-Green. This is a departure from previous Star Trek series whose lead character is traditionally the "captain of the ship". The series opened with a conflict between the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon T'Kuvma, who is attempting to unite the twenty-four Klingon factions called the Great Houses.

''Short Treks'' (2018–present)

Star Trek: Short Treks is a short film anthology companion series initially exploring settings and characters from Discovery. More recent episodes feature the crew of the Enterprise under the command of Christopher Pike.

''Picard'' (2020–present)

Star Trek: Picard is the ninth series in the Star Trek franchise and centers on the character Jean-Luc Picard at the end of the 24th century, 18 years after the events of .

In development

CBS All Access has two animated and two live-action television series that are currently in development.
Two seasons have been ordered for ', an animated adult comedy series created by the Rick and Morty writer Mike McMahan. The series will follow the support crew of "one of Starfleet's least important ships." Nickelodeon has commissioned an animated children's series, to be produced as a joint-venture with CBS, titled ' and set for a premiere in 2021.
A series titled Strange New Worlds has been announced, starring Ethan Peck, Anson Mount and Rebecca Romijn reprising their roles as Spock, Captain Pike and Number One respectively. Michelle Yeoh will reprise her role as the mirror universe's Philippa Georgiou of Section 31 from Discovery in a separate still-untitled series.

Film

Paramount Pictures has produced thirteen Star Trek feature films, the most recent being released in July 2016. The first six films continue the adventures of the cast of the Original Series; the seventh film, Generations was intended as a transition from original cast to the cast of the Next Generation; the next three films, focused completely on the Next Generation cast.
The eleventh film and its sequels occur in an alternate timeline with a new cast portraying the Original Series characters. Leonard Nimoy portrayed an elderly Spock in the films, providing a narrative link to what became known as the Prime Timeline. The alternate reality was christened the Kelvin Timeline by Michael and Denise Okuda, in honor of the starship USS Kelvin which was first seen in the 2009 film.
An R-rated Star Trek film, to be directed by Quentin Tarantino, was announced as in-development in December 2017. In a December 2019 interview with Consequence of Sound, Tarantino indicated he may not direct the film. He later confirmed he would not direct any future Star Trek film in a January 2020 interview with Deadline, effectively ending development. In November 2019, a new, unrelated film was announced as in-development, to be directed by Noah Hawley.

Shared cast

Star Trek has an on-going tradition of actors returning to reprise their roles in other spin-off series. In some instances, actors have portrayed potential ancestors, descendants, or relatives of characters they originated. Characters have also been recast for later appearances.
Below is an incomplete list:

Merchandise

Many licensed products are based on the Star Trek franchise. Merchandising is very lucrative for both studio and actors; by 1986 Nimoy had earned more than $500,000 from royalties. Products include novels, comic books, video games, and other materials, which are generally considered non-canon. Star Trek merchandise generated $4 billion for Paramount by 2002.

Books

Since 1967, hundreds of original novels, short stories, and television and movie adaptations have been published. The first original Star Trek novel was Mission to Horatius by Mack Reynolds, which was published in hardcover by Whitman Books in 1968.
Among the most recent is the . Three titles were published by Random House in 2019, a fourth is scheduled for July 2020.
The first publisher of Star Trek fiction aimed at adult readers was Bantam Books. James Blish wrote adaptations of episodes of the original series in twelve volumes from 1967 to 1977; in 1970, he wrote the first original Star Trek novel published by Bantam, Spock Must Die!.
Pocket Books published subsequent Star Trek novels. Prolific Star Trek novelists include Peter David, Diane Carey, Keith DeCandido, J.M. Dillard, Diane Duane, Michael Jan Friedman, and Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens. Several actors from the television series have also written or co-written books featuring their respective characters: William Shatner, John de Lancie, Andrew J. Robinson, J. G. Hertzler and Armin Shimerman. Voyager producer Jeri Taylor wrote two novels detailing the personal histories of Voyager characters. Screenplay writers David Gerrold, D. C. Fontana, and Melinda Snodgrass have also penned books.
A 2014 scholarly work Newton Lee discussed the actualization of Star Trek's holodeck in the future by making extensive use of artificial intelligence and cyborgs.

Comics

Star Trek-based comics have been issued almost continuously since 1967, published by Marvel, DC, Malibu, Wildstorm, and Gold Key, among others. In 2009, Tokyopop produced an anthology of Next Generation-based stories presented in the style of Japanese manga. In 2006, IDW Publishing secured publishing rights to Star Trek comics and issued a prequel to the 2009 film, . In 2012, IDW published the first volume of Star Trek – The Newspaper Strip, featuring the work of Thomas Warkentin. As of 2020, IDS continues to produce new titles.

Games

The Star Trek franchise has numerous games in many formats. Beginning in 1967 with a board game based on the original series and continuing through today with online and DVD games, Star Trek games continue to be popular among fans.
Video games based on the series include ' and '. An MMORPG based on Star Trek called Star Trek Online was developed by Cryptic Studios and published by Perfect World. It is set during the Next Generation era, about 30 years after the events of . The most recent video game was set in the alternate timeline from Abrams's Star Trek.
On June 8, 2010, WizKids announced the development of a Star Trek collectible miniatures game using the HeroClix game system.

Magazines

Star Trek has led directly or indirectly to the creation of a number of magazines which focus either on science fiction or specifically on Star Trek. Starlog was a magazine which was founded in the 1970s. Initially, its focus was on Star Trek actors, but then it expanded its scope. was a magazine published in the U.S. that ceased publication in 2003. Star Trek Magazine, originally published as Star Trek Monthly by Titan Magazines for the United Kingdom market, began in February 1995. The magazine has since expanded to worldwide distribution.
Other magazines through the years included professional, as well well as magazines published by fans, or fanzines.

Cultural impact

The Star Trek media franchise is a multibillion-dollar industry, owned by ViacomCBS. Gene Roddenberry sold Star Trek to NBC as a classic adventure drama; he pitched the show as "Wagon Train to the Stars" and as Horatio Hornblower in Space. The opening line, "to boldly go where no man has gone before," was taken almost verbatim from a U.S. White House booklet on space produced after the Sputnik flight in 1957. The central trio of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy was modeled on classical mythological storytelling.
Star Trek and its spin-offs have proven highly popular in syndication and was broadcast worldwide. The show's cultural impact goes far beyond its longevity and profitability. Star Trek conventions have become popular among its fans, who call themselves "trekkie or "trekkers". An entire subculture has grown up around the franchise, which was documented in the film Trekkies. Star Trek was ranked most popular cult show by TV Guide. The franchise has also garnered many comparisons of the Star Wars franchise being rivals in the science fiction genre with many fans and scholars.
The Star Trek franchise inspired some designers of technologies, the Palm PDA and the handheld mobile phone. Michael Jones, Chief technologist of Google Earth, has cited the tricorder's mapping capability as one inspiration in the development of Keyhole/Google Earth. The Tricorder X Prize, a contest to build a medical tricorder device was announced in 2012. Ten finalists were selected in 2014, and the winner was to be selected in January 2016. However, no team managed to reach the required criteria. Star Trek also brought teleportation to popular attention with its depiction of "matter-energy transport", with the famously misquoted phrase "Beam me up, Scotty" entering the vernacular. The Star Trek replicator is credited in the scientific literature with inspiring the field of diatom nanotechnology. In 1976, following a letter-writing campaign, NASA named its prototype space shuttle Enterprise, after the fictional starship. Later, the introductory sequence to Star Trek: Enterprise included footage of this shuttle which, along with images of a naval sailing vessel called Enterprise, depicted the advancement of human transportation technology. Additionally, some contend that the Star Trek society resembles communism.
Beyond Star Trek fictional innovations, its contributions to television history included a multicultural and multiracial cast. While more common in subsequent years, in the 1960s it was controversial to feature an Enterprise crew that included a Japanese helmsman, a Russian navigator, a black female communications officer, and a human–Vulcan first officer. Captain Kirk's and Lt. Uhura's kiss, in the episode "Plato's Stepchildren", was also daring, and is often mis-cited as being American television's first scripted, interracial kiss, even though several other interracial kisses predated this one. Nichelle Nichols, who played the communications officer, said that the day after she told Roddenberry of her plan to leave the series, she was told a big fan wanted to meet her while attending a NAACP dinner party:
Computer engineer and entrepreneur Steve Wozniak credited watching Star Trek and attending Star Trek conventions in his youth as a source of inspiration for co-founding Apple Inc. in 1976. Apple later became the world's largest information technology company by revenue and the world's third-largest mobile phone manufacturer.

Parodies

Early parodies of Star Trek included a famous sketch on Saturday Night Live titled "The Last Voyage of the Starship Enterprise", with John Belushi as Kirk, Chevy Chase as Spock and Dan Aykroyd as McCoy. In the 1980s, Saturday Night Live did a sketch with William Shatner reprising his Captain Kirk role in The Restaurant Enterprise, preceded by a sketch in which he played himself at a Trek convention angrily telling fans to "Get a Life", a phrase that has become part of Trek folklore. In Living Color continued the tradition in a sketch where Captain Kirk is played by a fellow Canadian Jim Carrey.
A feature-length film that indirectly parodies Star Trek is Galaxy Quest. This film is based on the premise that aliens monitoring the broadcast of an Earth-based television series called Galaxy Quest, modeled heavily on Star Trek, believe that what they are seeing is real. Many Star Trek actors have been quoted saying that Galaxy Quest was a brilliant parody.
Star Trek has been blended with Gilbert and Sullivan at least twice. The North Toronto Players presented a Star Trek adaptation of Gilbert & Sullivan titled H.M.S. Starship Pinafore: The Next Generation in 1991 and an adaptation by Jon Mullich of Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore that sets the operetta in the world of Star Trek has played in Los Angeles and was attended by series luminaries Nichelle Nichols, D.C. Fontana and David Gerrold. A similar blend of Gilbert and Sullivan and Star Trek was presented as a benefit concert in San Francisco by the Lamplighters in 2009. The show was titled Star Drek: The Generation After That. It presented an original story with Gilbert and Sullivan melodies.
The Simpsons and Futurama television series and others have had many individual episodes parodying Star Trek or with Trek allusions. Black Mirror's Star Trek parody episode, "USS Callister", won four Emmy Awards, including the Outstanding Television Movie and Writing for a Limited Series, Movie or Drama, and was nominated for three more.
In August 2010, the members of the Internal Revenue Service created a Star Trek themed training video for a conference. Revealed to the public in 2013, the spoof along with parodies of other media franchises was cited as an example of the misuse of taxpayer funds in a congressional investigation.
Star Trek has been parodied in several non-English movies, including the German Traumschiff Surprise – Periode 1 which features a gay version of the Original Series bridge crew and a Turkish film that spoofs that same series' episode "The Man Trap" in one of the series of films based on the character Turist Ömer. An entire series of films and novel parodies titled Star Wreck has been created in Finnish.
The Orville is a comedy-drama science fiction television series created by Seth MacFarlane that premiered on September 10, 2017, on Fox. MacFarlane, a longtime fan of the franchise who previously guest-starred on an episode of Enterprise, created the series with a similar look and feel as the Star Trek series. MacFarlane has made references to Star Trek on his animated series Family Guy, where the Next Generation cast guest-starred in the episode "Not All Dogs Go to Heaven".

Fan productions

Until 2016, Paramount Pictures and CBS permitted fan-produced films and episode-like clips to be produced. Several veteran Star Trek actors and writers participated in many of these productions. Several producers turned to crowdfunding, such as Kickstarter, to help with production and other costs.
Popular productions include: and Star Trek Continues. Additional productions include: , originally released as a three-part web series, and Prelude to Axanar. Audio dramatizations such as The Continuing Mission have also been published by fans.
In 2016, CBS published guidelines which restricted the scope of fan productions, such as limiting the length of episodes or films to fifteen minutes, limiting production budgets to $50,000, and preventing actors and technicians from previous Star Trek productions from participating. A number of highly publicized productions have since been cancelled or have gone abeyant.

Fan fiction

Star Trek inspired the popularity of slash fiction, a genre of fan-produced, in-universe fiction where normally platonic, same-sex characters are portrayed as being a romantic couple. The most notable being Kirk/Spock stories.
Over the intervening decades, especially with the advent of the Internet, fan fiction has become its own thriving fandom.

Awards and honors

Of the various science fiction awards for drama, only the Hugo Award dates back as far as the original series. In 1968, all five nominees for a Hugo Award were individual episodes of Star Trek, as were three of the five nominees in 1967. The only Star Trek series not to receive a Hugo Award nomination are the Animated Series and Voyager, though the Original Series and Next Generation never won in any nominated category. No Star Trek feature film has ever won a Hugo Award. In 2008, the fan-made episode "World Enough and Time" was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Short Drama.
Star Trek won the Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, the franchise's first Academy Award. In 2016, the franchise was listed in the Guinness World Records as the most successful science fiction television franchise in the world.

Episode rankings

''TV Guide'' (1996)

In 1996, TV Guide published the following as the ten best Star Trek episodes for the franchise's 30th anniversary:
  1. "The City on the Edge of Forever"
  2. "Amok Time"
  3. "Mirror, Mirror |Mirror, Mirror"
  4. "The Doomsday Machine |The Doomsday Machine"
  5. "Journey to Babel"
  6. "11001001"
  7. "Yesterday's Enterprise"
  8. "The Best of Both Worlds |The Best of Both Worlds"
  9. "Tapestry |Tapestry"
  10. "The Visitor |The Visitor"

    50th Anniversary Convention (2016)

At the 50th Anniversary Star Trek Las Vegas convention, in 2016, the following were voted by fans as the best episodes:
  1. "The City on the Edge of Forever"
  2. "In the Pale Moonlight"
  3. "The Inner Light |The Inner Light"
  4. "Amok Time"
  5. "Yesterday's Enterprise"
  6. "The Visitor |The Visitor"
  7. "Chain of Command |Chain of Command"
  8. "Balance of Terror"
  9. "In a Mirror, Darkly"
  10. "The Magnificent Ferengi"
Additionally, fans voted the following as the worst episodes:
  1. "These Are the Voyages..."
  2. "Code of Honor |Code of Honor"
  3. "Threshold |Threshold"
  4. "Turnabout Intruder"
  5. "Shades of Gray |Shades of Gray"
  6. "Sub Rosa |Sub Rosa"
  7. "And the Children Shall Lead"
  8. "Move Along Home"
  9. "The Alternative Factor"
  10. "Precious Cargo |Precious Cargo"

    Corporate ownership

Star Trek began as a joint-production of Norway Productions, owned by Roddenberry, and Desilu, owned by Desi Arnaz. The profit-sharing agreement for the series split proceeds between Norway, Desilu—later Paramount Television, William Shatner's production company, and the broadcast network, NBC. However, Star Trek lost money during its initial broadcast, and NBC did not expect to recoup its losses by selling the series into syndication, nor did Paramount. With NBC's approval, Paramount offered its share of the series to Roddenberry sometime in 1970. However, Roddenberry could not raise the $150,000 offered by the studio. Paramount would go on to license the series to television syndicators worldwide. NBC's remaining broadcast and distribution rights eventually returned to Paramount and Roddenberry sometime before 1986, which coincided with the development of what would become .
As for Desilu, the studio was acquired by Gulf+Western. It was then reorganized as the television production division of Paramount Pictures, which Gulf+Western had acquired in 1966. Gulf+Western sold its remaining industrial assets in 1989, renaming itself Paramount Communications. Sometime before 1986, Sumner Redstone had acquired a controlling stake of Viacom via his family's theater chain, National Amusements. Viacom was established in 1952 as a division of CBS responsible for syndicating the network's in-house productions, originally called CBS Films. In 1994, Viacom and Paramount Communications were merged. Viacom then merged with its former parent, CBS Corporation, in 1999. National Amusements and the Redstone family increased their stake in the combined company between 1999 and 2005.

Split ownership (2005–2019)

In 2005, the Redstone family reorganized Viacom, spinning off the conglomerate's assets as two independent groups: the new Viacom, and the new CBS Corporation. National Amusements and the Redstone family retained approximately 80% ownership of both CBS and Viacom. Star Trek was split between the two entities. The terms of this split were not known. However, CBS held all copyrights, marks, production assets, and film negatives, to all Star Trek television series. CBS also retained the rights to all likenesses, characters, names and settings, and stories, and the right to license Star Trek, and its spin-offs, to merchandisers, and publishers, etc. The rights were exercised via the new CBS Television Studios, which was carved out of the former Paramount Television.
Viacom, which housed Paramount Pictures, retained the feature film library, and exclusive rights to produce new feature films for a limited time. Viacom also retained home video distribution rights for all television series produced before 2005. However, home video editions of the various television series released after the split, as well as streaming video versions of episodes available worldwide, carried variants of the new CBS Television Studios livery in addition to the original Paramount Television Studios livery. It was unclear who retained the synchronization or streaming rights.
Rights and distribution issues, and the fraught relationship between the leadership at CBS, Viacom, and the National Amusements' board of directors, resulted in a number of delayed and or cancelled Star Trek productions between 2005 and 2019. Additionally, the development and release of the new Star Trek film, in 2009, was met with resistance by executives at CBS, as was Into Darkness and Beyond, which affected merchandising, tie-in media, and promotion for the new films. During this period, both CBS and Viacom continued to list Star Trek as an important asset in their prospectus to investors, and in corporate filings made to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Current ownership

The competitive nature of the entertainment industry led to negotiations between Viacom and CBS on a potential merger, with CBS as the acquiring party, which would realign the stakeholders of the franchise under one corporate umbrella. After several failed attempts at a merger between 2009 and 2014, negotiations restarted between CBS and Viacom in 2019, led by Shari Redstone, chairman of National Amusements, and Joe Ianniello, then CEO of Viacom. On, CBS and Viacom boards of directors reached an agreement to reunite the conglomerates as a single entity called ViacomCBS. National Amusements' board of directors approved the merger on, which was finalized on December 4.