Chapter 22

Trek Trivia! We all know (and love) that science fiction series Star Trek. Here are some interesting facts about the show that you might not have been aware of:

In 1995, 13 books were sold every minute in U.S. on the subject of Star Trek.

In the original series, it was originally planned for Spock and Uhura to have the first interracial kiss. However, William Shatner stepped in and protested, saying he wanted Captain Kirk to kiss Uhura.

They couldn’t afford to have scenes of the characters shuttling to planets in smaller space crafts, so they came up with teleportation to fix the problem.

While they were on a Star Trek movie set, Shatner and Nimoy both stood too close to an explosion and got a ringing in their ears. It never went away. Shatner sought medical treatment but was told he’d have to just live with it. Eventually, he found a device that emits white noise to cancel out the sound.

DeForrest Kelly (Bones) almost played the role of Spock (played by Leonard Nemoy).

Known for playing Lieutenant Uhura, Nichelle Nichols planned to resign from Star Trek after a year. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. implored her to stay on the show, as she represented the first leading Black Character on TV that wasn’t a stereotype, like a maid, but instead was a Bridge Officer.

Despite its popularity as a catchphrase, no one in Star Trek has ever said, “Beam me up, Scotty!”

J. Abrams used 721 lens flares in the first Star Trek.

Stephen Hawking played himself on Star Trek: The Next Generation. When passing the Warp Drive Engine, he stated; “I’m working on that!”

Shortly before she died, Majel Barrett recorded an entire library of phonetic sounds, allowing her voice to be used in future products outside of Star Trek and, quite possibly, as the computer voice in Star Trek: Discovery. Thus, she could live on as the voice of Starfleet possibly for all time.

Galaxy Quest, a satire of Star Trek and fandom, is so popular with the latter’s fans that it was named the 7th best Star Trek film at the 2013 Star Trek Convention. Actors of TOS, TNG, Voyager, and DS9 also have expressed admiration for the film.

Patrick Stewart signed a 6-year contract for “Star Trek: The Next Generation” because he, his agent, and others with whom Stewart consulted all believed that the new TV show would quickly fail, and he would return to his Shakespearean career after making some money.

Mae Jemison, the first female African-American astronaut, was inspired to apply to NASA by the Star Trek character, Lieutenant Uhura. Jemison later went on to make a cameo appearance in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

DeForest Kelley disliked repeating Dr. McCoy’s catchphrase “He’s dead, Jim”, which appears 20 times in the original Star Trek series. It became so famous, however, that he joked that the line would appear on his tombstone. It did appear in the first sentence of Kelley’s obituary.

Some of the male background characters in ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ can be seen wearing skirts. This was explained as “a logical development, given the total equality of the sexes presumed to exist in the 24th century.”

When Florence Henderson arrived to do her Brady Bunch screen test, there was no one on staff to do her make-up. She went over to the adjoining studio where Star Trek was filmed and ended up in a make-up chair surrounded by William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and “six or eight space monsters”.

James Doohan, “Scotty” on Star Trek, was shot by 6 bullets storming Juno Beach on D-Day: four in his leg, one in the chest, and one through his right middle finger (hence, we never really get a clear look at the characters right hand).

After NBC rejected the first pilot of Star Trek, Lucille Ball of “I Love Lucy” Fame used her clout to convince NBC to give Gene Roddenberry a second chance.