Original subtitles

Come in.

I'm at the foot of the ladder.

Back before we'd taken one small step

for man and one giant leap for mankind,

Gene Roddenberry boldly took us where no man had gone before.

He just had this idea for this future series.

To the final frontier,

and in the process, he forever changed our galaxy.

Star Trek is a philosophy.

It's a way of life for many people.

"Star Trek", the groundbreaking original series

that sparked a pop culture phenomenon.

I looked at the pilot and I was enthralled with it.

It's about the future and about the way things might be.

They came up with so many forward-thinking ideas.

The man who actually invented cell phones

said he was influenced and inspired

by the communicator in "Star Trek".

"Star Trek: "The Original Series"

forever changed the TV landscape.

The diversity of the "Star Trek" cast

was like nothing you saw on television at that time.

I met Dr. Martin Luther King and he said,

"You have opened the door

"and changed the face of television forever."

Join us as we beam you up inside the USS Enterprise

and explore how it all started.

It was Lucille Ball who stepped forward and said,

"I want to do the show, I believe in the show."

Star Trek was never a hit

when it was on the air.

What on-set conflicts almost derailed

the series in its first season?

He had been hired to carry the show,

and all of a sudden everybody's Spock this, Leonard that.

There was a tension between them

and a distance.

And why does it endure today?

It will not go away,

proven by the new series that are coming on now.

It will, I think, carry on in perpetuity.

More than 50 years later,

the original series has grown into a blockbuster franchise

with a permanent place in pop culture.

People just walking down the street, you know,

would see me pass, "Beam me up, Scotty!"

"Captain, guess what?

"The ship is about to blow up!"

December 6, 1979.

Throngs of fans await the premiere of a film

more than a decade in the making.

Who could have imagined, in their wildest imagination,

think that they would turn this little television series

into this motion picture?

After the back to back successes of

"Star Wars" and "Close Encounters of The Third Kind",

Hollywood studios are scrambling to find the next great

sci-fi fantasy blockbuster.

Paramount looks to their own library

and takes a gamble on relaunching the adventures of

the USS Enterprise.

It's a gamble that would continue to pay off

for decades to come

"Star Trek: The Motion Picture"

was supposed to be the only "Star Trek".

That's why it was called "The Motion Picture".

When that made a ton of money,

they started talking about one sequel,

and that was so final that we killed off Spock,

and you can't have "Star Trek" without Spock.

But that made a ton of money, and so forth and so on.

The television show that inspired the film

premiered 13 years earlier in 1966.

The crazy thing is "Star Trek" was about

exploring space and the possibility of going to space

before we landed on the moon.

"Star Trek: The Original Series"

only lasted three years on the air,

but it would go on to spawn multiple spinoff series,

a film franchise, a reboot,

and a devoted fan base that ensures it will forever remain

in the zeitgeist.

"Trouble with Tribbles", one of the great episodes

in the history of "Star Trek".

You found out that Tribbles really hate Klingons.

And my favorite episode is where they're aliens

and nobody knows why they're fighting.

One head black on the left and white on the right,

the other was exactly reversed, and they hated each other.

They look like the old-fashioned black

and white cookie, these guys.

"The City on The Edge of Forever".

Kirk and Spock wind up back in 1930s America,

and it's the middle of the Depression,

and Kirk falls in love with this woman,

and the future has been changed.

The Enterprise isn't up there to beam back to

because one thing that Kirk did changed everything.

You know, at the end of the day,

Star Trek is about human beings trying to do the right thing,

and it sounds so simple, it sounds so corny,

I could imagine myself on an adventure on a starship.

Everybody can see themselves on the Enterprise,

going into space.

Focuses on these themes that make people think

because each episode is like a morality play.

What is it, I wonder, about "Star Trek"

which engenders this kind of interest?

Optimism, good storytelling, interesting characters,

and a few laughs along the way.

Its cast and story

and science fiction and special effects.

And we follow a storytelling tradition

that has mythology as its base

and the hardy group of travelers,

the hero protagonist, the antagonist,

and the human values are all part of the magic.

It's escaping the reality of the Earth for one magic hour

to get on the Enterprise and explore the heavens.

In us is that knowledge and that fascination

with what's out there.

"Star Trek" at its core is about hope and inclusiveness,

and it inspires, in fact, demands from us

the very best of ourselves, the highest and the best,

and that's a pretty good thing.

It's a very positive vision of humanity.

It's a vision of the world where if you work together,

you can achieve great things.

It's a show that taps the imagination, doesn't it?

It's about the future and about the way things might be

2 or 300 years from now.

It's a hopeful show about the future.

We sure need some of that, don't we?

"Star Trek" is so much more than

just a silly science fiction show from the 1960s.

It's a philosophy.

It's a way of life for many people of all races,

creeds and colors.

I think so many of us found it when we were young,

and it's just a huge part of our childhoods

and a part of how we learned about the world,

and it asked you questions and made you think.

I think that one of the reasons we're so obsessed

with "Star Trek" is that, in the end,

we all want to be them.

We want to have the ability

to go where no man has gone before.

To truly understand the genesis

and the enduring legacy of "Star Trek",

we have to start back on Earth

with this man, series creator Gene Roddenberry,

who, in 1964, is a former LAPD cop

moonlighting as a television writer.

Gene Roddenberry was a really extraordinary individual.

He was a pilot in World War II.

After the war, he was a speechwriter for the LAPD,

and I think that kind of inspired his love of

wanting to write and wanted to be a writer, and he broke in.

He ended up writing for a bunch of shows like,

that were very popular at the time,

stuff like "Naked City" and "Dr. Kildare".

But the most important one, the one that I think

is the most significant is "Have Gun, Will Travel".

After writing for several hit series,

Roddenberry is eager to create his own show,

one that reflects the times he is living in.

There was so much going on in the country at the time.

There was racial issues, there was the war in Vietnam.

You had protests,

you had Cold Wars with foreign powers.

And Gene Roddenberry's vision for the future was one where

everybody got along, no matter what color they were.

Everybody, men and women, were working together

for something good.

Gene was a secular humanist.

He firmly believed that the human spirit will prevail.

Roddenberry decides the perfect setting

for his new series is a place, at least at the time,

where no man has gone before.

It was the chance to deal with social issues

that television couldn't really grapple with in the '60s,

so he couched his social commentary

in dealing with the political issues of the day

in science fiction.

He called it his wagon train to the stars.

That's how he sold it, his idea of,

let's get onto a ship and go out

and explore something new every day.

Originally he thought, oh, this would be like

a western in outer space,

and all of a sudden he realized it encompassed something larger.

And it was created in a time when mankind, America,

and the Russians were only just starting to go into space.

Gene Roddenberry was the visionary.

It was really his idea to create this whole universe,

but it was more than just action.

There was a message with the series.

When it comes time to pitch a socially-conscious

space Western Roddenberry connects with Desilu,

the studio started by Lucille ball and Desi Arnaz.

And Desilu, which had much success in comedy,

obviously with the "I Love Lucy: show,

wants to do more drama, so they developed two shows,

"Star Trek" and "Mission Impossible".

Pretty good batting average.

Lucy liked the "Star Trek" concept

once she understood it.

She said, "Go for it," and the rest is history.

Gene Roddenberry was very smart

about how he designed the show.

He brought in at the very early stages of its conception

futurists and technologists

and they came up with so many forward-thinking ideas.

Like one of them was a giant computer brain

that you could talk to, you know, and it would answer.

Now we have it in our living room with Alexa and Siri,

but you know, back then,

the idea you could talk to a computer

and they could answer back and give you information,

it's remarkable, and the man who actually invented cell phones

said he was influenced and inspired by the communicator

in "Star Trek".

But perhaps the most fascinating

design element is the series' centerpiece,

the starship named after the world's first

nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

The aesthetic of the Enterprise is perhaps

one of "Star Trek's" greatest accomplishments

because it is the most beautiful

fictional spaceship ever designed.

Nothing comes close.

It was designed by the great Matt Jeffries, who, again,

another World War II veteran who was a professional aviator,

and he just comes up with something completely new.

As pre-production on the series continues,

one daunting challenge for Roddenberry and his team

is how they will get the Enterprise crew to and from

the different planets they visit each week.

Originally, the plan had been

to just use a shuttle

that would take people back and forth,

but it's too expensive to do special effects every week

to show and time consuming to send a crew from the ship

in a shuttle down to a planet,

so the transporter was their way around it.

In 30 seconds, you could have somebody

stand on the pad and suddenly find themselves

in the center of the adventure,

and that's where the transporter came from.

♪

With the design of the series established,

casting gets underway for the pilot,

but the episode, titled "The Cage",

is strikingly different from the "Star Trek"

that would ultimately inspire and appeal

to its devoted fan base,

including one early iteration of an Enterprise crew member.

Mr. Spock originally, when he was created,

one of the ideas Gene Roddenberry had

was he was going to be like a Martian or red alien,

and it was just so alien

that there was nothing relatable to it.

The role of Mr. Spock is initially offered

to well-known film star Martin Landau,

but the actor turns it down.

The part is then offered to 33-year-old Leonard Nimoy.

He had been a guest star on "The Lieutenant",

and Gene from very early after seeing him on "Lieutenant"

thought of him for this new show.

Had a pretty good reputation as a serious actor,

and it was dangerous to start out in this new

and otherworldly character with a strange look,

pointed ears, could be a joke.

I thought the character had great potential,

but also some built-in pitfalls,

and if it didn't work, it could be disastrous,

so I worried about it, but it worked out fine.

Leonard Nimoy was the perfect actor to play it.

It was both calm and logical,

but there were also these flashes of a real passion.

Ror the crucial role of the ship's doctor,

a veteran of stage and screen is chosen.

They cast John Hoyt, who was best known to people

from "The Twilight Zone" at that point.

as the head of the USS Enterprise,

now named Captain Christopher Pike,

Roddenberry is keen to cast popular TV actor Lloyd Bridges,

best known at that point

as the star of the series "Sea Hunt",

but Bridges isn't too interested in sci-fi,

and passes on the pilot.

So the casting team moves on to their next choice.

Jeffrey Hunter was the choice

after they exhausted their other choices.

He was a fairly large movie star.

He'D been in "The Searchers" with John Wayne,

and it seemed like a really good choice.

The final character cast

is the ship's second-in-command,

and the merry Gene Roddenberry

has just the right actress in mind.

So, in the pilot "The Cage",

there was a role for the first officer,

which was not Mr. Spock at the time.

It was Number One. Didn't even have a name.

Number One was played by Majel Barrett.

Now, Majel Barrett was Gene Roddenberry's mistress,

so the network,

who had had other ideas for the role,

were overruled by Roddenberry, who was with Majel at the time,

and cast her.

The pilot is finally screened

for executives at NBC in February of 1965,

but reactions to the episode

are not exactly what Roddenberry had hoped.

"The Cage". So it was maybe not exactly right

for what NBC was expecting or planning.

It was a very different kind of "Star Trek".

It was very cerebral, and they said,

"We're not gonna pick it up, but we're not gonna pass.

"We want you to do a second pilot,

"and this time, we want more action adventure

"and have it be less heady." Now, at this point,

Desilu wasn't even sure t hey wanted to do it

because this is gonna be very expensive,

but it was Lucille Ball who stepped forward and said,

"I want to do the show, I believe in the show."

Lucy actually had discretionary fund

for development purposes.

She could use it any way she wanted,

but she decided she was gonna give it to them

to do this second pilot.

So "Star Trek" does owe its existence to Lucille Ball

and her approval because she could have said no

and it never would have happened.

So it's another reason why we should all love Lucy

because Star Trek wouldn't exist without Lucille Ball's foresight

and passion for the show,

which could've bankrupted her studio.

In addition to a less cerebral story

with more action, NBC also takes issue with

several of the pilot's casting choices,

forcing Roddenberry and his team to go back to the bridge

and shake up the crew of the USS Enterprise.

In 1965, Gene Roddenberry and his team

are crafting a second "Star Trek" pilot.

In addition to a revised story,

the Peacock Network also requests

several major casting changes.

Unfortunately for Roddenberry,

one of the characters on the chopping block

is Number One, played by Majel Barrett.

Roddenberry would later go on to divorce his wife

and marry Barrett, but at the time,

the two were having an extramarital relationship.

She was the first casualty of the first pilot.

Now why is that? Well, Gene would say

it's because the network didn't want a woman.

You know, they said that the women in the test groups

would say, "Who does that woman think she is bossing them

"around like that?"

The reality is a little more complicated than that,

as it often is in life.

Majel Barrett was Gene Roddenberry's mistress,

and they didn't like the fact

that she was Gene Roddenberry's mistress.

So that was the end of Majel,

but of course Majel would return as not only Christine Chapel

for the next three seasons of "Star Trek",

but as Gene Roddenberry's wife as well.

With the character of Number One

no longer a factor,

Mr. Spock, the half-man half-Vulcan

played by Leonard Nimoy is promoted to second-in-command.

Gene used to tell a joke.

He would say that the network basically said

it's one or the other, Spock or Number One,

so I kept the Vulcan and I married the woman.

Also gone for round two is John Hoyt

as the ship's doctor.

He is replaced by veteran character-actor Paul Fix.

And new to the second pilot are the characters of

Montgomery Scott, the ship's engineer,

played by James Doohan,

and George Takei as the ship's

botanist-turned-navigator, Hikaru Sulu.

When I went to meet Gene Roddenberry,

he was the only person seated behind that desk,

and he came out from behind that desk,

and we sat together in a corner of his office,

and we just shot the breeze.

He wanted to know more about who we were as people,

what we brought with us

in addition to our acting competence,

and I think that's the secret of his genius.

But perhaps the most significant bit of recasting

is one that NBC didn't request.

One of the most remarkable stories happens

when they do do the second pilot,

"Where No Man Has Gone Before".

Jeffrey Hunter passes on returning to

the lead role of Captain Pike.

Him and his wife have decided that he should be doing

more movies and not TV, because back then,

TV was kind of like slumming.

It's where you go when your movie career is over.

So they decide they're gonna recast,

which is fine because a lot of people felt

they wanted somebody who was perhaps

more a man of action,

and they find it fortunately in William Shatner.

♪

William Shatner was one of a group of

young handsome actors in the late 50s and 1960s

who were in the movies and moving into television,

and they called Shatner, and he auditioned,

and got the part.

So Gene Roddenberry called me to look at that pilot

with the idea of him recasting the whole show

and me playing the part that Jeffrey Hunter had played.

So I looked at the pilot, and I was enthralled with it,

and we made the second pilot.

The second pilot,

completely different, complete 180, action,

Shatner's running around with a phaser gun

doing barrel rolls and, you know, jumping,

and things are exploding, and it does the trick.

It does what it was supposed to do,

which is show the network, this is what we can do

on a weekly basis with action and adventure,

and I think the network was excited about

the potential for the show.

"Star Trek" premieres on NBC

in September of 1966.

The episode wins the first half hour

and tied in its second during its initial time slot.

It was a set of characters

that seemed to be working nicely with each other,

and they were intent on solving problems.

And in those particular years,

that wasn't very normal for science fiction,

and these people felt like real people.

The stories were about adventure

and exploring the universe,

and there was drama and there was action,

but there was really a message to every episode.

In the subsequent episodes,

viewers are introduced to several new faces,

including a second recasting of the ship's Dr. McCoy,

when DeForest Kelley boards the Enterprise.

I was not in either one of the pilots.

He had wanted me for "Star Trek", the other pilot,

but the network turned against me,

and the feeling was that

I had done so many villains and heavies

that I was not right for the doctor role,

so I started with it,

but I was not in neither one of the pilots.

Also joining the cast is Nichelle Nichols

as Uhura, the ship's communications officer.

Nichelle Nichols was one of the few black actresses

on TV at the time.

She was the person who talked between

Starfleet Command and the Enterprise.

She was in charge of all of the translations,

and she could speak a dozen languages,

and she was the heart of a lot of those episodes

because she was teaching you how to communicate

with other species.

Having a bridge crew

with people from different backgrounds,

different ethnicities, different races

was really important for the American public to see,

but at the time it was very, very groundbreaking.

The diversity of the "Star Trek" cast

was like nothing you saw on television at that time.

There was a Black woman at the communications console.

There was a Japanese man driving the ship.

It was diverse before diversity was a thing.

In a 1986 sit-down interview

for "Good Morning America",

Gene Roddenberry recalls the pushback he received

for his diverse casting choices.

When I brought in a mixed racial crew,

both the network and Desilu Studios,

which headed at that time came in saying,

"What are you doing?

"You're going to ruin us."

And then when I insisted on it, then the advertisers came in,

the agencies, and said,

"If you show this Black girl as an officer

"dealing with white people on that basis,

"you're going to be barraged with the hate letters,

"and whole areas of the country

"are going to refuse to handle your show,"

and we often forget, that's how the country was then.

As viewers continued to tune in week after week,

several of the characters gained a devoted following.

I wanted to be Captain Kirk.

William Shatner as Captain Kirk

sat there in the center seat commanding everything.

He had swagger. He hooked up with all the alien chicks.

But he was also a mighty leader and a compassionate human being.

He was just this classic American hero

that everybody loved.

My feeling has always been that the more human

you can make a character, the more vulnerable,

the more identifiable, the better it is.

But it was Leonard Nimoy's Spock

that becomes the show's unexpected breakout character.

I think when William Shatner signed on for the show,

he was the lead character,

so he expected that he was gonna be the star.

But the character of Spock kind of jumped out at everybody,

and everybody was talking about Spock.

The first week after the show had gone,

had been on the air for the first time,

one day, somebody in the studio brought me some mail.

There were maybe 10 or 15 pieces of mail,

and I sat down during the lunch hour,

and I autographed pictures and sent notes

to all these people, and I thought,

"Well, once a week, I can do that, you know,

"it doesn't take that much time."

Three or four days later, they brought a stack about that big,

and there were about 70 or 80 or 100 letters, I don't know.

This I'll have to spend the weekend doing.

The next week, it came in a sack about that high,

and it just kept growing from there.

And of course,

Nimoy started doing all these interviews

and getting all this fan mail,

and it creates a little tension with Bill because, you know,

Bill was the star of the show.

He had been hired to carry the show,

and all of a sudden everybody's Spock this, Leonard that,

so I think it was a little tough for Shatner at first.

There were arguments, there were discussions,

there was dissatisfaction,

but to call it a feud overstates it tremendously.

There was at times distance.

ta times, there was a coldness between them.

There was a tension between them.

But eventually that tension forces Roddenberry to intervene.

While filming "Star Trek's" first season,

on-set tension develops

between stars William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy,

as Spock's growing popularity

threatens to overshadow Captain Kirk.

Roddenberry had his vision of what "Star Trek" was.

Shatner and Nimoy had their visions

of who their characters were

and what the world of the future was,

and sometimes they clashed.

A creative tension on a set is not abnormal.

But the conflict

finally forces "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry

to step in.

In a very famous memo that Gene Roddenberry wrote

and sent to William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy,

he tells Bill that he's getting too big for his britches,

he tells Leonard that his ego is getting out of control,

and Gene, and in that letter, threatened to leave.

He said, you know, "I know where the show is going,"

and he said, "Bill, you think it's Leonard,

"and Leonard thinks it's Bill," and he says it's all of you.

And he says if this behavior doesn't change,

how are we supposed to sell the idea

that you're people that love each other

and care about each other, you know, when you're feuding,

and this is going on,

and it clearly had some effect because William Shatner

and Leonard Nimoy end up becoming very good friends.

NBC announces a second season of "Star Trek",

and for its sophomore outing,

a new crew member is added to the bridge.

♪

Pavel Chekov, the navigator, he was Russian.

Remember, at this point,

we were on the brink of war with the Russians,

and now you had a starship with a Russian navigator

played by Walter Koenig.

The way the world was written,

they didn't have the name of the character yet.

It was just sort of an anonymous nondescript character,

but they wanted a maybe Russian accent,

and it was a very suspenseful moment,

very tension-filled moment.

It was, "Captain, the ship is about to blow up.

"What are we going to do?" But when I got done, they said,

"Okay, well, that's nice,

"but can you make it funny?"

Funny, you know?

So the the the reading that actually got me the role

was, "Captain, guess what?

"The ship is about to blow up!"

The very fact that there was a Russian onboard

the bridge of the Enterprise in the middle of the Cold War

said something about

Gene Roddenberry's vision for the future.

We were gonna get past this.

We still were far from an ideal integrated society.

The Civil Rights Acts were just being passed

while this show was on the air.

But Star Trek did a lot of episodes about social justice

and about war and ideology,

and they would be disguised in the science fiction genre.

In one groundbreaking episode,

Shatner's Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura,

played by Nichelle Nichols, share a kiss.

♪

Just a year before the episode aired,

the Supreme Court had struck down laws that made

interracial marriage illegal.

It was a huge moment in television.

Remember, this is the 1960s.

This is when we're fighting segregation down south.

But the landmark TV moment almost didn't happen,

as Nichelle Nichols came close to departing the ship.

She wanted to leave after the first season

because she didn't have enough lines and all of that.

She felt like, in the 1960s,

she felt, hey, what am I doing here?

I should be acting, I should be doing theater.

I should be exploring my potential more.

I felt that I had a vibrant and exciting career going,

and my first love is musical theater,

and I had come back from Europe to do "Star Trek",

and I thought I had created this lovely character,

and it was fun doing,

and I wanted to go on and do other things.

And as fate would have it,

I met Dr. Martin Luther King that very weekend,

and he said, "You cannot quit, you can't leave now."

He said, "You have opened the door

"and changed the face of television forever.

"You can't leave it now, it's too soon."

He says, "You have the first non-stereotypical role

"on television for the world to see.

"This is not a Black role and it's not a female role,

"and you've got it,

"and you're part of the Command Crew,

"and the world must see that

"they see us as we should be seen."

And Nichelle Nichols listened to Dr. King,

and that's what made her not quit Star Trek.

But despite "Star Trek's" popularity,

viewership for the show begins to drop.

So at the end of the second season,

the ratings weren't great, and there was a question

as to whether or not NBC would renew "Star Trek".

It looked like it wasn't going to renew "Star Trek"

for a third season.

Word of a possible cancelation

reaches two of "Star Trek's" most passionate fans,

BJo and John Trimble.

I said, you know,

they really ought be something we can do about that.

The Trimbles come up with a plan

to save their favorite show.

It was a letter-writing campaign.

We had to work it out because nobody else had done that,

and we, you know, we had no template.

So I wrote up a set of rules basically on telling people

what to do.

We came up with the concept of write your letter

and then send it out to 10 friends

and ask each of them to write a letter

and send it out to 10 of their friends.

That really worked.

We were quite surprised.

All these NBC executives were flooded with mail saying,

"Save Star Trek."

There had never been anything like this

for a tv show before, and they didn't know what to make of it,

and they were clogging the switchboard,

and they were getting bags and bags of letters,

and more letters than Santa. Ultimately, NBC relented.

In fact, they had to go on air and announced the fact that

"Star Trek" will return for a third season.

We were actually out shopping for a new TV set,

and they were showing an episode of Star Trek at the time,

and right at the end of the show,

this voiceover comes on and says that "Star Trek"

is going to be renewed for a third season,

please stop writing letters.

And I'm sure that the people in that store were kind of

bemused by the fact that

there were two people jumping up and down and cheering.

It was pretty amazing.

Despite its third season renewal,

NBC moves the show to a different time slot,

a decision that doesn't sit well with the show's creator.

Gene Roddenberry was hoping for a good time slot,

and when the network settled on the death slot,

you know, Friday at 10,

when none of the young demographic

that watched "Star Trek" was around, you know, he walked.

He had threatened them if they had done that, he would leave,

and he had no choice but to leave.

The Roddenberry-less third season of "Star Trek"

premieres in the fall of 1968

in the midst of American social and political upheaval,

but under its new leadership

and with significant budget cuts, the series falters.

The ratings started dropping,

and honestly, some "Star Trek" fans

would argue the third season wasn't the best anyway,

and I would probably get killed for saying that on the street,

but yeah, by the third season,

that's when some of the cornier "Star Trek" episodes came in.

And with less money and less time

and a producer who didn't understand the show as much,

it was a recipe for disaster.

Now there's a marked dip in quality.

In 1969, after three seasons,

NBC decides to ground the USS Enterprise,

and this time, despite the best efforts of its fan base,

the cancelation sticks.

♪

The cost per thousand was not there.

All media works on,

how much does it cost to reach how many people?

If only 30 million people are watching instead of 50 million,

the thinking is by the network that if we take them off the air

and put something else on,

we may get a show that will be more popular

When the show got canceled, people were horrified,

and they really wanted it to come back.

And it looks like this is the end for "Star Trek",

but it's only the beginning. It's only the beginning.

After three seasons,

"Star Trek: The Original Series" is canceled in 1969.

And that could've been the end of that.

The show runs three seasons.

A few years later, nobody remembers it.

But that third season

clinched by the letter writing campaign

launched by BJo and John Trimble

give Star Trek enough episodes to go into syndication.

So, by 1969, there's no new content, but

the show does hit syndication in a way that makes it

much more accessible to broader audiences

who find "Star Trek" and love "Star Trek".

And what happens is

you suddenly have all these local stations

that are looking for new content to play after the news

picking up "Star Trek".

Remember. repeating television shows

was a new concept,

so what happened was a lot of people, like me,

didn't discover "Star Trek" in its original run,

and they start finding it getting played during the day,

sometimes late at night,

and it brought a whole new world of fans to the show.

When it was canceled, I thought it was over.

I really did.

I thought it'll do a year or two or three of reruns

and then disappear. Three or four years later,

it started to come back bigger than ever,

and that was a pretty interesting time,

from 1972,3,4,5,6,

when the series was a big hit in syndication,

and we were not making any more "Star Treks"

and there were no plans to make "Star Trek."

There was a great audience hungering for more "Star Trek".

By the early 1970s, the series is airing in

more than 100 domestic and 60 international markets

and the show develops a cult following

greater than it had during its original run.

It's wildly popular, hugely popular, and a lot of that is

college students and younger people,

the most desirable demographic,

is watching and rewatching "Star Trek".

Trekkies became a thing in the '70s.

There are people who are interested in "Star Trek",

people who know every word that the series ever made.

They have examined with a microscope

and they know every motivation

other than they like or they dislike,

and those are the hardcore Trekkies,

and they are vociferous.

If they don't like something, they'll let you know.

I'm impressed by some of the fans

and how much they love "Star Trek"

and how much they've embraced this.

Being a Trekkie is almost a badge of honor

because I think that people have begun to see that

liking "Star Trek" isn't just for nerds

or people like that.

Gene Roddenberry can't believe it.

He's treated like he walks on water

So, it's extraordinary, and the network,

everyone starts taking notes, saying,

hey, maybe this "Star Trek" isn't dead yet.

Network executives revisit the

once-canceled program,

and in 1973, "Star Trek: The Animated Series"

premieres with most of the original cast

voicing their roles.

In the animated series, you had the first Holodeck,

which is really the beginning of virtual reality.

You know, it's not that different than, you know,

people playing VR games today.

And by the late 1970s

after the major box office success of "Star Wars"

and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind",

the USS Enterprise was finally given another chance

to resume its mission.

Somebody at Paramount who eventually bought Desilu

said, "Wow, this is impressive.

"People really like this.

"We need to reboot the 'Star Trek' franchise,"

and they said, "why are we wasting 'Star Trek'

"on a tv show? "Let's do a movie."

In March of 1978,

Paramount announces "Star Trek: The Motion Picture"

with the original series cast

reprising their now-iconic roles.

And notably, there was a much bigger budget

and much more involvement with the cast,

even behind the scenes.

The arrival of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture"

in 1979 was huge for Star Trek fans.

It was something we had been waiting for for years,

and to see all of our favorite characters

back together again,

Kirk and Spock and McCoy and Scotty,

and that magic was still there.

"Star Trek: The Motion Picture"

opens on December 7th, 1979,

and sets a box office record for highest opening weekend.

The film made a huge amount of money,

so that was very appealing to the studio.

A second movie is released in June of 1982.

"Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan",

perhaps the most popular movie in the "Star Trek" series.

The sequel leads to several more sequels

filmed over the next decade.

I think every "Star Trek" fan

went to the theater to see every "Star Trek" movie.

Everybody in the theater was there for the same reason.

They loved the show, they love the universe,

they wanted to be there for that opening day.

The success of the films

leads to an idea to bring "Star Trek" back to its roots.

They started to think that there might be interest

in another show.

"Star Trek: The Next Generation"

is set almost a century

after the events of the original series,

and is equipped with a whole new Enterprise crew,

including Patrick Stewart as Captain Picard,

Brent Spiner as Data,

and Levar Burton as Geordi LaForge.

Original creator Gene Roddenberry

is heavily involved in the new spinoff.

It's a different time for "Star Trek".

Captain Picard is a calmer and

more diplomatic Starship Captain.

he's not just kissing every girl on every planet.

He is a more thoughtful captain.

It's a slower show in many regards,

and it's really a whole different elevation

of "Star Trek".

And "The Next Generation" would also be

the final outing for series creator Gene Roddenberry,

who passes away in 1991 at the age of 70.

I think that Gene Roddenberry was kind of amazed

because even before he died, there was so much "Star Trek",

and it was the series that wouldn't die.

I mean, it became a whole way of life

for some people,

and a real positive, optimistic, uplifting vision for the future.

Despite the father of the franchise

no longer steering the Enterprise,

the "Star Trek" universe is about to expand even further.

In the early '90s,

after its triumphant return to TV with "The Next Generation",

Paramount decides to order a new series further expanding

the "Star Trek" universe. - "Deep Space Nine"

was the first post-Roddenberry series.

It took place on a space station

that was circling around Cardassia.

I was a major Cardassian.

Cardassian, by the way, not Kardashians, so.

It started out as a dark horse

and ended up being,

in a great many people's estimation,

one of the best series.

In 1994, after six films featuring

the original "Star Trek" cast,

the seventh feature, "Star Trek: Generations",

is released and serves as an official crossover transition

from one Enterprise crew to the next with Captain Picard

enlisting the help of Kirk, Scotty and Chekov.

Come on in, it's all right.

It's my house.

At least, it used to be.

I'm Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise.

The original series cast had done six films,

and they were, frankly, all getting a little older

to be chasing around the galaxy,

so they thought that "Generations" would be able to

make that transition seamless,

and Captain Picard meets Captain Kirk

in something called The Nexus,

and Kirk once again saves the universe,

and then Picard can take it from there.

With the continuing success

of the revitalized TV shows and films,

the franchise continues to grow,

and to the relief of fans everywhere,

producers of the new installments remain committed to

Gene Roddenberry's original vision of progress.

You have a show like "Voyager"

with the first female captain, "Deep Space Nine" with

the African-American captain in Cisco.

Deep Space Nine deals with sort of deep-rooted social issues

and explores it through the lens of science fiction,

and it goes back to Gene Roddenberry's idea

at the very beginning.

in the early 2000s, the fourth "Next Generation"

film "Nemesis" is released

to negative reviews and poor box office,

and the cancelation of the "Enterprise" TV series

in 2005 marks the first time in 18 years

without any new "Star Trek" series in production.

Fans carried the torch of "Star Trek"

when the studio and network dropped it, you know,

and I think all these fannish activities,

like "Star Trek" conventions

or talking about "Star Trek" online

or "Star Trek" fan fiction,

and I think we wouldn't still be watching "Star Trek" today

if it wasn't for those "Original Series" fans

not giving up on this show.

Fans anxiously wait for the next iteration,

but after six television shows and 10 films,

it's clear that "Star Trek"

is in need of some fresh perspective.

The "Star Trek" universe takes a slumber.

Then all of a sudden, boom,

JJ Abrams comes in and reboots the movie series.

Paramount said, let's go back, let's go back to the beginning

with Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock

and all of those beloved characters,

and let's do a movie with that.

He casts Christopher Pine as Captain Kirk,

Zachary Quinto as Mr. Spock,

and the premise is original Mr. Spock Leonard Nimoy

travels back in time to guide a new timeline

as there's a time-traveling bandit that now creates

a second timeline for "Star Trek",

And that allowed them to really just go off

and change the story

and trajectory of "Star Trek" entirely.

So that way we can make "The Original Series"

without ticking off "The Original Series" fans.

Well done, JJ Abrams, well done.

The rebooted "Star Trek" film

is released in 2009 and is a box office smash.

Two successful sequels follow and paved the way

for a brand new "Star Trek" TV series.

And with "Star Trek Discovery",

we had this new era of Star Trek back on television,

and from there, you know, we've only gotten more iterations

which is very exciting. Right now we're in a very fertile time

in "Star Trek" franchise history.

The well-received "Discovery" leads to two additional

TV spinoffs, "Picard",

and the much anticipated "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds",

which, in a truly full circle moment,

will follow the adventures of Captain Christopher Pike,

the character from the 1964 original "Star Trek"

pilot episode who was retooled to become Captain Kirk.

I think that Gene Roddenberry would be happy that it's gone in

the different directions that it has.

He would like that the ethos of "Star Trek" is still alive,

and again, it's humanity reaching its best potential,

and I think that you can see that in every "Star Trek" series

that's out right now.

Today, the "Star Trek" universe

is a multi-billion dollar franchise,

one of the most successful in history.

Not bad for a once-canceled space western from the 1960s.

It will not go away,

and proven by the new series that are coming out now,

it will, I think carry on in perpetuity.

"Star Trek" is very much in the popular culture.

Everyone knows Kirk, Spock, McCoy.

They know these characters, they love these characters.

It's modern mythology,

and I don't think it's going anywhere

because "Star Trek" keeps reinventing itself.

The "Star Trek" universe is this kind of magical place

where you think we all get together eventually

and we overcome our differences,

and I think that all of us hope that the future is like that.

And I think it will continue to live long and prosper,

if not into the 23rd century, probably pretty close.