A Brief Guide to Star Trek

Original Series
to inform the movies and successor TV shows. Among them were the Klingons (in ‘Errand of Mercy’), genetic Übermensch Khan Noonien Singh (in ‘Space Seed’), warp speed developer Zefram Cochrane (in ‘Metamorphosis’) and the concept of the Prime Directive (which pro -posed non-interference in undeveloped indigenous planetarycultures). Coon’s supervision also resulted in the naming of the United Federation of Planets, while Starfleet Command was established as the body that directed the voyages of the
Enterprise
.
    Coon’s work, alongside that of Roddenberry, Fontana, Black and the individual episodic writers served to create a coherent, seemingly consistent universe within which the
Star Trek
TV adventures could take place. There is a sense of completeness and consistency to the environment in which the characters exist, even if individual early episodes feature glaring continuity errors or shifts in the naming of parts of the ship or peoples (is it deflector screens or deflector shields? Vulcanians or Vulcans?). These details would be more clearly defined over time, but the bigger picture made the future world of
Star Trek
feel like a real, coherent place.
    These details accumulated, episode by episode, and were shaped by Roddenberry’s rewriting into a gradually more cohesive universe. As well as Coon’s major contributions, other elements that make up the recognisable
Star Trek
universe came from a variety of people. D. C. Fontana gave Spock his parents – a Vulcan father and human mother (he’d previously only admitted to ‘human ancestors’ in ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’) – as well as the two-handed Vulcan ‘death grip’ (a bluff used by Spock to fake Kirk’s death in ‘The
Enterprise
Incident’). It was from her episodes that two alien races emerged, the blue antenna-sporting Andorians and the Tellarites, one of the founding races of the United Federation of Planets – both would survive right through to
Enterprise
. Leonard Nimoy came up with the more benign Vulcan nerve pinch for Spock, based on Richard Matheson’s script ‘The Enemy Within’, which contained the idea that Spock could disable enemies in a non-violent, non-fatal way. Nimoy also contributed the Vulcan salute, a peaceful, welcoming hand gesture (with the raised palm held outwards and fingers parted in the middle in a V-shape), apparently basing it on a half-remembered Jewish blessing and the Hebrew letter Shin (meaning ‘God)’. The Romulans, along-running
Star Trek
antagonist race based on the Romans, pre-dated the more well-known Klingons, first appearing in Paul Schneider’s script ‘Balance of Terror’ (which also introduced actor Mark Lenard, later to play Spock’s father, Sarek). Writer Schimon Wincelberg (under his pen name S. Bar-David) introduced the Vulcan mind-meld in ‘Dagger of the Mind’, allowing Spock to read the thoughts of other beings through physical contact. The background of Spock’s Vulcan race was further developed by Theodore Sturgeon in ‘Amok Time’, which, as well as introducing the Vulcan salute, also saw the debut of the phrase ‘Live long and prosper’ as a Vulcan greeting.
    While Roddenberry came to be affectionately fêted by
Star Trek
fans as ‘the Great Bird of the Galaxy’ and sole creator of
Star Trek
, it is clear that (as with all television productions) many creative hands were involved, even if one person provided the initial guiding force for all the others to follow. In a later speech, Roddenberry noted: ‘When they say on a show “Created by” anyone, like “Created by Gene Roddenberry”, that is not true. I laid out a pathway, and then the only thing I will take credit for is [that] I surrounded myself by very bright people who came up with all those wonderful things.’
    Writing about the creation of
Star Trek
, D. C. Fontana noted: ‘It was not one mind, but many – a creation by people who lived and loved the show. More than forty years later audiences still watch and enjoy
Star Trek
, quite an accomplishment for a show that almost didn’t make it.’
    By early 1966 Gene Roddenberry had secured his long-held dream: an order for sixteen episodes of his own space show on network television.
Star Trek
’s production was in full swing by summer 1966, with the lessons learnt on the two pilots applied to the shooting of individual episodes in the space of six to eight days. The scripts were flowing in and Roddenberry’s rewrites