Lloyd Bridges and Jeffrey Hunter (who had played Captain Pike in the original pilot) both turned down the role of Captain Kirk.
Martin Landau was originally offered the role of Spock, but declined. Later, Leonard Nimoy, who did accept the part, took over the role of disguise-expert on "Mission: Impossible" when Landau left that show. Landau later headed his own sci-fi series, "Space: 1999" (1975).
Actor Mark Lenard, best known for his role as Sarek, Spock's father, was the first actor to play a member of all three of the major alien races: Romulan, Vulcan, and Klingon (he is the commander of the Klingon attack group at the beginning of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).
After viewing the popularity of characters such as Robin on the "Batman" (1966) series and shows like "The Monkees" (1966), the producers decided to introduce Ensign Pavel Chekov in the second season in order to attract more teenage viewers, especially girls, to the show. Walter Koenig was selected due to his resemblance to Davy Jones.
One of the writers, D.C. Fontana, was told to use the initials "D.C." by Gene Roddenberry because studios at the time generally wouldn't hire women writers. Her first name is Dorothy.
Sulu and Uhura didn't have first names in this series. Sulu did get a first name (Hikaru) but not until Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). Fans have tried to give Uhura a first name ("Nyota" or "Penda") but there has never been any official confirmation.
Gene Roddenberry said Uhura has only the one name, which is Swahili for "freedom".
Scotty's full name is Montgomery Scott. The name was improvised on the spot by James Doohan and Gene Roddenberry: 'Scott' because Roddenberry liked Doohan's Scottish brogue, and 'Montgomery' because it's Doohan's middle name.
James Doohan ("Scotty") lost his right middle finger during WWII. Most of his scenes are shot to hide it. However, it is very noticeable in the episode "Catspaw." Scotty is hypnotized and holding a phaser pistol on Kirk & Spock in Korob & Sylvia's dining hall. When Scotty is in the shot, only two fingers are holding the butt of the phaser.
Many elements of the Spock character were improvised by Leonard Nimoy during production. For instance, the "Vulcan neck pinch" was his suggestion during filming of "The Enemy Within" for how Spock could subdue an opponent. The "Vulcan salute" was created during the production of "Amok Time" using a version of a traditional Jewish religious hand gesture as a distinctive Vulcan greeting.
When NBC was promoting Star Trek in magazines, all shots of Spock's pointed eyebrows and ears where airbrushed out of the pictures because NBC thought that no one watch the show due to Spock's resemblance to the Devil.
Mr. Spock was played as much more emotional and "human" in the original rejected pilot, "The Cage". This is very noticeable during the flashback sequences of the two-part episode, "The Menagerie". The flashbacks were simply scenes from the original pilot, re-edited into the new episodes.
Captain Kirk wore a yellow shirt in the original series - in later series, Captains wear red.
Contrary to popular belief, Captain Kirk never said "Beam me up, Scotty" in any episode.
Dr. McCoy's handheld "medical scanners" were actually modified salt and pepper shakers. Another medical device, seen in the episode "Court Martial" is obviously a hand-held microphone.
In the hallways of the Enterprise there are tubes marked "GNDN", these initials stand for "goes nowhere does nothing".
The slanting crawlway that leads up to the warp-drive nacelles is referred to as a "Jefferies tube." This is a reference to art director Walter M. Jefferies.
The transporter was a plot device intended to eliminate the pacing and production problems involved in depicting the ship landing and taking off all the time. Budgetary constraints on effects were also a consideration. The first landing of a starship would not occur until Star Trek: Voyager episode #2.1, The 37's, broadcast 28 August 1995.
According to official blueprints of the Enterprise, published in 1975, among features on the ship that were never mentioned on the TV series were: two auxiliary bridges, a second sickbay area, a swimming pool, a garden, and a 6-lane bowling alley. This last item, no doubt included in the blueprints as a joke, is the earliest known case of humor creeping into the background of Star Trek's designs; this would become commonplace in the TV series of the 80s and 90s.
A bowling alley aboard the USS Enterprise, as shown in the 1975 blueprints, was actually mentioned in the episode "The Naked Time. " In that episode, Lt. Riley declares that "a formal dance will be held in the bowling alley at 1900 hours tonight." However, he was also quite delusional, so it's not certain that the bowling alley he spoke of actually existed.
According to legend, when Gene Roddenberry approved the design for the enterprise used on the show, he was holding the drawing upside down.
On at least two occasions ("Miri" & "City on the Edge of Forever") the exterior Mayberry set from "The Andy Griffith Show" (1960) was used. In "City," as Kirk walks Edith home, they pass by the easily recognizable courthouse, Floyd's barbershop, Emmett's repair shop, and the grocery.
In several episodes, prop beverage bottles were modified from existing alcohol bottles. Aldeberan Whiskey bottles were Cuervo Gold 1800 Tequila bottles. Bottles used for Saurian Brandy were George Dickel Tennessee Sour Mash Whiskey carafes.
According to the Hollywood Entertainment Museum, as of fall 2003 only a few pieces of the original 1960s bridge survive. The museum, on Hollywood Blvd., incorporates two original turboshaft doors into its Star Trek display, while a Los Angeles bookstore reportedly owns the original captain's chair.
The Romulan enemy race which first appeared in the Original Series remains the only 'adversary' to have been featured on all four Star Trek series.
Gene Roddenberry originally conceived the Klingons as looking more alien than they do in the series, but budget restriction prevented this. When Star Trek moved to the big screen, he was finally able to make Klingons look more alien. The resulting continuity break between TOS and the movies and later series was finally addressed in the "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" (1993) episode "Trials and Tribble-ations" in which the character of Worf confirms that something did happen to make the Klingons appear human, but he refuses to elaborate.
Victor Lundin appeared in the show "Errand of Mercy". Although he did not have a speaking part he was the first Klingon to appear in the original Star Trek Series.
Gene Roddenberry once hypothesized that the Enterprise carried a platoon of Starfleet Marines, but they never appeared onscreen in the original series. The Starfleet Marines would eventually make an appearance, but not until Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) and "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" (1993). The idea was revived with the addition of a group of "space marines" beginning in the 2003-2004 season of "Enterprise" (2001).
Stardates were established in order to keep the audience guessing as to when the series takes place. A calendar year for the adventures of the Enterprise crew is never given in any episode, and Roddenberry said the series could have taken place anywhere from the 21st to the 31st Centuries. By the time of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" (1987), however, calendar years for Trek adventures had been established and the official Star Trek Chronology now indicates that the original "Star Trek" TV series takes place between the years 2266 and 2269.
Both pilots for "Star Trek" - "The Cage" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before" - were the only episodes of "Star Trek" not filmed at the current-day Paramount Studio lot in Hollywood. They were filmed at the present day Sony Pictures Culver Studios in Culver City, California.
Jerry Goldsmith was Roddenberry's first choice to write the theme for this series. Years later, Goldsmith wrote the theme to Star Trek: The Motion Picture which later was used for "Star Trek: The Next Generation".
The series' opening credits has lyrics that were never used. They were written by Gene Roddenberry so that he would receive a residual for the theme's use alongside the theme's composer, Alexander Courage.
The first interracial kiss on American network television was in the episode "Plato's Stepchildren," which aired on 22 Nov 1968, when Captain Kirk ( William Shatner) kissed Lieutenant Uhura ( Nichelle Nichols). The studio expressed some concern, and it was suggested instead that Spock should kiss Uhura 'to make it less of a problem for the southern [US] audience'. Some stations in the South originally refused to air the episode. Kirk did not kiss Uhura *voluntarily*; they were forced to do it by aliens controlling their bodies. So the first interracial kiss, although between two of the good guys, was the moral equivalent of sexual assault.
Despite the controversy of the first interracial kiss of Kirk and Uhura on television in the episode "Plato's Stepchildren," they never actually kissed on-screen - Kirk turns away from the camera as they draw closer keeping Uhura in front of him, obscuring the fact that their lips stay an inch or so apart.
In the episode "The Trouble with Tribbles" Tribbles continue to fall on Kirk after the container should have emptied out onto him. It is later revealed in the "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" (1993) Episode "Trials and Tribble-ations" that the Tribbles are being tossed down the hatch at Kirk as they are being discarded for not being a Tribble-bomb which Sisko and Dax are attempting to find.
The episode "Balance of Terror", focusing on the Enterprise hunting a cloaked Romulan destroyer, was inspired by the film "The Enemy Below" (1957).
Early drafts for the Harlan Ellison episode "City on the Edge of Forever" included a guest character, an Enterprise crew member who dealt in addictive drugs; it was this character who escaped into the past, via the Guardian of Forever. Gene Roddenberry asked him to change this element, on the grounds that no member of *his* crew would ever use or deal in illegal drugs. According to Ellison's account in the book "Harlan Ellison's the City on the Edge of Forever: The Original Teleplay That Became the Classic Star Trek Episode", for years after the series was cancelled, Roddenberry said that Ellison's original draft had been unusable because "he had Scotty dealing in interplanetary drugs" - although Mr. Scott does not even appear in that draft.
The episode "Requiem for Methuselah", in which Kirk's heart is broken by the death of an android woman with whom he has fallen in love, was first aired on Valentine's Day, 1969.
In the episode "Spectre of the Gun", Kirk, Spock, Scotty and Dr. McCoy are placed in the OK Corral as the Clanton gang, facing off against Wyatt Earp and his brothers. In the 1957 film "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" (1957) 'DeForest Kelly' played the part of Morgan Earp.
The episode "Assignment: Earth" was written to introduce a hoped-for spin-off series that never materialized. It would have featured Robert Lansing as Gary Seven, Barbara Babcock as Isis, and Teri Garr as Roberta Lincoln. In the new series, the intrepid three would have worked to make sure humanity achieved the destiny glimpsed via the Trek characters and Seven's mysterious extraterrestrial information.
In the episode "Assignment: Earth", Spock mentions all the events that would happen the week of 1968 that they arrived in. Among the events he mentioned was an important political assassination. A few days after that episode aired, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee.
The original series was cancelled after only a three year run on NBC in 1969. It is now broadcast almost continuously on over 120 stations in the USA and in over 100 countries worldwide.
The original review of Star Trek in Variety magazine (Sept 14 1966) was far from favourable: "Star Trek obviously solicits all-out suspension of disbelief but it won't work. It was an incredible mess of dreary complexities and confusion at the kick-off." Just how wrong can a critic be?
Shortly after the cancellation of the series, the staff of the marketing department of the NBC TV network confronted the network executives and berated them for canceling Star Trek, the most profitable show on the network in terms of demographic profiling of the ratings. They explained that although the show was never higher than #52 in the general ratings, its audience profile had the largest concentration of viewers of ages 16 to 39, the most sought after television audience for advertisers to reach. In other words, the show, despite the low ratings, had the precise audience advertisers hungered for, which was more than ample justification to consider the show a big success.
A 1993 study found that kids in the USA learn more about science from Star Trek than from any other source.
Ranked #1 in TV Guide's list of the "25 Top Cult Shows Ever!" (30 May 2004 issue).
The 'Star Trek Crews' from all the Star Trek series were ranked #2 in TV Guide's list of the "25 Greatest Sci-Fi Legends" (1 August 2004 issue).
In 2000, Star Trek is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as having the largest number of spin-off productions, including the feature film series and the numerous TV series.
Such is the impact of the series on American culture that a model of the Starship Enterprise has been displayed at the Smithsonian Institution of American History.
Perhaps the last word on the Original Series should come from William Shatner in 'Star Trek Memories': "over time the original cancellation of Star Trek has transformed itself from the unhappy ending of a story into the opening chapter of a far bigger tale, an astounding tale that's unsurpassed in the history of entertainment...."
