50 Years of Star Trek (2016)

[bunniefuu]

["Star Trek" theme]

Male narrator: On September 8th, 1966, America tunes in to catch a glimpse of the future and launches a global phenomenon. A television series like no other that unites us in its vision of a better world to come.

Here's a group of people who are solving problems together, and they're all different, diverse people.

Narrator: This is the secret history of "Star Trek." It's epic 50-year mission.

That was what was so brilliant about "Star Trek"

was that it was human nature and human instinct and the drive to want to know more combined with adventure.

Narrator: The mastermind of the "Star Trek" universe.

And Gene says, "Do you want to be on Star Trek?"

I said, "Yes. Yes!"

Narrator: The cast and crew reveal the stories you've never heard.

Roddenberry looked at the beard and goes, "I love the beard. It's nautical."

Narrator: Plus Leonard Nimoy's final full interview.

If I were given the choice of any character ever portrayed on television, I would choose Spock.

Happy anniversary, "Star Trek."

Happy 50th. Wow, way to go.

Before anybody else were touching on subjects, racism, segregation, discrimination, before any other TV shows did.

"Star Trek: Voyager" is probably my first acting job.

There's an optimism to it that I think we've never needed more than now.

Seven of Nine's one of my favorite "Star Trek" characters because she was so hot.

Narrator: Featuring an intimate conversation with cast members, comedians, scientists, and academics covering all things "Star Trek."

That was one of my big fears in accepting the role.

Happy 50th anniversary, "Star Trek."

You know how old that makes me?

We're here on the 50th anniversary of "Star Trek" at the Griffith Observatory outside the Leonard Nimoy theater to discuss "Star Trek" with a lot of great people and a lot of fine minds and Kevin Pollak.

[laughter]

Let's just jump right into it.

Let's talk about the general impact of "Star Trek."

The great sense of discovery and curiosity on this five-year mission to seek out new worlds.

You know, those... those...

That phraseology was kind of impactful.

"The Measure of Man" where Data's on trial, that's the episode that led me to create my class.

Oh, wow.

Because it has references to sl*very in it, and I thought about, "Gee, this is very interesting."

You know, there's a whole pro-sl*very argument.

It's really the Dred Scott decision worked out there.

Yeah.

Is Data property or not?

I saw a couple episodes of the original series when I was a kid because you can't not have seen some things.

I saw the Tribble episode, I think, and I saw the planet of kids, "grups."

And they were saying, "Grups, grups," that one.

Whatever.

Yeah.

But I was never a sci-fi fan, so I wasn't into it.

And I never watched any of the other incarnations until I was on the show.

I saw "Star Trek" as this, you know, amazing way of bringing humanity together, right?

You had the height of the Cold w*r.

You had Russian and American people working together.

You had black people and white people working together.

That's an incredible thing to see as a kid when, you know, you're from two worlds that really also don't get along.

I first started on the original series, my mother was a big fan, and those were reruns that were happening at the time.

It was right before "Next Generation" started and it was... I just always was fascinated by Dr. McCoy's grumpiness.

That relationship with Spock I thought was amazing.

He just was, like, "I can't stand you, but I love you."

Yeah.

And I was like, "Oh, that's my family."

[laughter]

I understand everything from "Star Trek."

Yes.

You know, it's funny because I wasn't allowed to watch TV when "Star Trek" was on the air.

My parents wouldn't let me watch it.

So I snuck downstairs and I turned on the TV.

And, uh, that was my first... The first time I saw the show.

I think it was, um, "This Side of Paradise" was the episode.

Oh.

And you could tell that whoever was doing the show was a science fiction fan.

♪ ♪

Narrator: "Star Trek" begins as the brainchild of one man, Gene Roddenberry, a former World w*r II pilot and policeman turned screenwriter.

His first television series premieres in 1963, and features a few faces that will soon become familiar to "Trek" fans.

He was a big man, enthusiastic.

He really, really loved producing a show, which he had never done before.

He created "The Lieutenant."

[patriotic music]

It was "The Lieutenant." It was his first big TV show.

And he cast me.

I had acted in an episode of a series called "The Lieutenant"

that was produced by Gene Roddenberry.

My agent called me and said, "He's interested in you for a science fiction pilot that he's gonna produce.

Narrator: "The Lieutenant" runs for just one season, but Roddenberry's already working on a bigger idea.

In 1964, he begins pitching a series about a starship with a multi-ethnic crew.

I had worked for him directly when his secretary was ill.

And he knew that I had sold some things that I wanted to be a writer, a full-time writer.

And he called me into his office and said,

"What do you think of this?" And he showed me about a 10-12 page piece that was called "Star Trek."

Well, he had done...

both: "The Lieutenant."

I went in to do a pitch on a story.

Somehow or another, he asked if I was interested in doing "Star Trek."

I said, "Yeah, I would be interested in that."

And I went home, and I read it, and I came back the next day, and I said, "Who plays Mr. Spock."

The script was very good, very good.

I didn't quite understand how it was gonna work as a television show because it was so unique.

It was really quite special.

But it was a very intelligent script.

It had layers of ideas in it that you didn't often get in television.

Roddenberry was very inspired by Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels."

And wanted to tell stories that you couldn't normally tell on television through the prism of science fiction.

He was such a complex and interesting man.

Very bright, very bright.

Hard-working.

Tough job, tough job.

Particularly getting "Star Trek" right the first couple of seasons.

To get it... to get it what he wanted it to be.

They didn't think there was a big enough audience out there.

They thought it was gonna be sci-fi kooks and kids.

And they didn't think they could make enough money from their sponsors to put these on in prime-time.

Well, they had put on "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" in fall of '64, winning its timeslot for ABC.

Fall of '65, he puts on "Lost In Space" on CBS.

It's winning its timeslot for CBS.

That was when they made the decision to put it on for the fall of '66. NBC wants one.

They felt they were missing the boat.

Narrator: President John F. Kennedy issues a challenge, to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade.

The space race heats up as America looks to the stars.

And one unlikely supporter sees an opportunity.

Well, "Star Trek" may be the first TV show I can really remember.

"Star Trek" and "Mission: Impossible."

In fact, the both... the two great Desilu productions.

The other player in "Star Trek" and get it on the air was Lucille Ball with Desilu Studios.

It was Lucille Ball who said, "Let's make this."

That studio was built on reruns.

And when "I Love Lucy" was in production, they wanted to film it here in LA.

So they said, "We'll pay the difference and film this if we can have the rerun rights."

And the answer from Harry Ackerman at CBS was, "What's a rerun?"

Nobody had ever rerun anything on TV.

They sh*t it live, it was gone.

And "Star Trek" was brought in.

And Lucy said, "I think that could rerun for ten years.

Well, here we are 50 years later.

"I Love Lucy" is still on five days a week in every city around the country.

And probably the second most rerun show in the history of television is "Star Trek."

Let's give her credit, Lucy loved "Star Trek."

And we wouldn't have had "Star Trek" without Lucy, so we love Lucy.

You know, my father passed away when I was 17.

He's got such a legacy and he's touched so many people that I've learned a great deal about him after his passing.

You know, he was a bomber pilot in World w*r II.

He flew something like, uh, is it 79 or 89 missions.

My father had seen the best of humanity and he'd seen the worst of humanity.

But I think that really helped shape his view of "Star Trek" and that better future.

Narrator: The pilot episode of "Star Trek" is filmed in 1965, introducing the world to what would become one of the most iconic characters of all time, Mr. Spock.

And he shoved a picture of Leonard Nimoy across the desk at me.

At that point, he was a Martian first officer.

He said a character with pointed ears, and that set me back a bit.

I had to think about that one.

Leonard was an actor. He was a real actor.

And he walked me through the various departments.

He showed me where they were making the props.

He showed me where the sets were being designed, the design for the Enterprise, the ship.

And I realized that he was selling me on this job.

And that's the way it would happen.

Narrator: The network orders a new "Star Trek" pilot.

Spock stays on board, but the Enterprise gets an entirely new crew, including a brash, young captain, James T. Kirk.

William Shatner had Kirk down from act one, scene one, and he played that through right till the end in "Star Trek: Generations" in 1994.

You know, Shatner, who's totally nailing the part, but DeForest Kelley, the person that Gene wanted from the beginning for Dr. McCoy.

Scotty felt like he was a little more fully formed as a character.

There was an empathy with Jimmy Doohan's performance.

We just liked Scotty. You wanted to hang out with Scotty.

You wanted to go have a drink in the bar with Scotty, you know?

It's a very hallowed and beloved thing that you don't want to mess up.

I feel honored to play Scotty.

I will always defer to the greatest Scotty ever, which was James Doohan, but if I can do half as good as he did, then I'll be happy.

George Takei, who plays Mr. Sulu, sat at the helm.

An Asian man on a show like this, you seldom saw anything like that.

And here he was, a man with responsibilities.

He was the helmsman.

Everyone, Nichelle, just beautiful and smart and an incredible role model as Uhura.

I think the first memory of "Star Trek" really was going, "Oh, look..." [chuckles] "There's a black lady in the future."

And this was the first time I knew we would be in the future.

Later on, Walter Koenig as Chekov.

If the circumstances hadn't fallen the way they did, if things hadn't happened the way they did, then I probably never been in for the role of Chekov on "Star Trek."

I read one line. He says, "You got the part."

And that was the part of a Russian.

Who had a Russian on the show?

We were still just reaching out trying to make contact with Russia in a friendly sense.

To bring these people together created the magic that is "Star Trek."

From day one, we got along... [snaps]

Just like that.

Narrator: With the cast and crew assembled, the Enterprise is nearly ready to begin its mission.

But Roddenberry knows something is missing.

G.R. said, "I gotta do an opening for the show."

So he said, "You take a sh*t at it, I'll take a sh*t at it, we'll see what happens."

It was, "Space... the final frontier," was yours, wasn't it?

Yeah.

"The final frontier."

"Space...

"the final frontier.

["Star Trek" theme]

So it was some Roddenberry, it was some Black.

We came out with...

"Boldly go where no man has gone before."

To boldly go where no man has gone before.

♪ ♪

Narrator: NBC premieres "Star Trek" on a Thursday night in the fall of 1966.

Well, the first episode of "Star Trek," "The Man Trap," had 47% audience share.

Lucy wrote a memo to Gene Roddenberry saying, "Congratulations, boys, you're a hit."

Back in the late '60s, what "Star Trek" was doing on television was cutting edge.

It was ahead of its time.

This was the first time we saw a miniskirt on television.

"Star Trek" premiered in September of '66, the mini made its debut in London in the summer of '66 and had not made it to America.

He was way ahead of his time.

It was also a science fiction series that took the subject matter very seriously.

Narrator: "Star Trek" is unlike anything on television at the time, but what makes it unique also threatens to destroy it.

Coming up, the end of "Star Trek" is just the beginning.

Narrator: "Star Trek" premieres in 1966, and instantly becomes one of the most ground-breaking series in the history of television.

Gene Roddenberry's vision is a sign of changing times in America.

A story about a hopeful future made in a difficult time.

The times were tough.

The w*r in Vietnam, the racial issues that were happening, riots in the streets, riots at political conventions.

People were angry and upset and nervous and concerned.

And it was this thing that said, "Hey, in the future we have a way of dealing with these issues. It's gonna be okay. Here's a group of people who are solving problems together. And they're all different, diverse people."

Narrator: "Star Trek" tackles the most pressing social issues of its day.

We had the one where Uhura and Kirk kissed.

That, I think, was more of... I mean, I think that was great.

And the people in the South, there were probably a lot of people jumping out of windows at that.

The director was nervous.

The front office at Paramount was nervous, which was just dumb, you know, then don't do it, which is what I said.

And they went, "You don't want to do it?"

I said, "I want to do it. It's written in the script. It's a great scene."

This is the first interracial kiss on television.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

[applause and laughter]

They were writing some pretty major stuff in those days.

I mean, very eloquent writers. Very knowledgeable.

They did "Mark of Gideon," which got a lot of flack, about birth control, overpopulation.

'Cause nobody had talked about that on TV up until that point.

NBC was disappointed with "Star Trek" from the get-go, but the rating were not bad and the fan mail was huge.

"Star Trek" is doing things that a lot of the affiliates were uncomfortable with, so they kept moving it from one bad slot to another until they finally put it in the death slot to get rid of this show.

That is what k*lled "Star Trek."

Narrator: The original series is canceled after 3 seasons and 79 episodes.

But it's gained a cult following that's become undeniable.

Within four years, "Trek" is back on the air.

This time reaching a new generation of young fans.

["Star Trek: The Animated Series" theme]

♪ ♪

My first contact with "Star Trek" was probably watching the animated series on Saturday morning TV in the early '70s.

And, you know, I was really struck by the, you know, the bright colors of the uniforms.

The fans were very wary.

In fact, some of the cast was wary too.

They felt, "Hey, 'Star Trek' is starting to get momentum.

"We think there could be more life in this.

But if we do a cartoon, it's gonna k*ll it."

And Gene Roddenberry was very cagey and very smart.

He says, "No, this will fan the flames.

This will keep it alive rather than let it disappear."

And he was right.

It sounds funny for saying this, but it has never been canceled.

You know, um, we were just off longer than we wanted to be.

So then we have the '70s, right, '70s hit.

Everyone went to see that "Star Wars" situation.

[laughter] I think we can make some money.

So you had a TV script that was being padded out into a motion picture.

They took themselves a little too seriously and they were trying to be a little more like, "2001."

Then they brought in Robert Wise because he was known as a big-time movie director.

There never really been a movie years after a show was canceled.

["Star Trek: The Motion Picture" theme]

"Star Trek" would be the beginning of that phenomena, which... now, you know, well, unceasing phenomena.

When we came back to do the first really big one that we did after being away so long, it was amazing.

Narrator: "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" hits theaters in December of 1979.

But the cast has its doubts.

So Robert Wise was a very good filmmaker.

He was a multiple Academy Award-winning director, but he did not know "Star Trek."

We sat down to watch that first movie and the beginning was great.

Dat-dat-dat-dat-dat-dat-dat. Bum-bum-bum-bum.

And then it suddenly became a talking heads movie.

Where was the friction? Where was the conflict?

Where was the passion?

It had very little to do with "Star Trek."

You had the spaceship, the Enterprise.

You had the crew.

But the story had very little to do with anything "Star Trek-y."

The characters were not in shape, in place, playing off of each other and with each other the way we did best.

Why are they wearing pajamas?

Why, you know, does it look like they're in a Holiday Inn?

So a lot of what "The Wrath of Khan" proved to be about aesthetically and maybe even intellectually as well was a reaction to what I saw.

And for a movie that was so poorly received, we had done extremely well.

To my great surprise, they said, "Star Trek II."

Narrator: "The Wrath of Khan" becomes an instant classic.

It's villain is a genetically engineered superhuman, who first appeared in the original series bent on revenge against Captain Kirk.

"Wrath of Khan" is a classic.

I mean, "Wrath of Khan" just works on every level.

You know, it just does. It's pop entertainment.

It's a fan's dream. It's fun. It's funny.

The visual effects are state of the art and really hold up even to this day.

Those space battles are fantastic.

Montalban was a charismatic actor.

He really gave us this wonderful performance.

It was theatrical, imaginative, creative performance as Khan in "Star Trek II."

And he looked great.

And that was his chest that people thought had been built up with makeup or something.

That was him, you know?

It was really Ricardo Montalban.

That's his chest. It's his chest.

Gives you an idea of "Star Trek-ian" scholarship that that's the most, you know, frequently asked question.

Narrator: Behind the scenes, the cast didn't always get along.

I had immediately had a good rapport with Nick Meyer, but as we went through several rehearsals working with the camera, Shatner would come over to me and start trying to redirect me.

Is the word given, Admiral?

The word is given.

So I finally said, "Can I stop for a second?"

Nick said to me, "What's the matter, Ike?"

I said, "Well, I'm getting direction from other people on the set, and it's making me very uncomfortable. I just want to make sure I'm doing my job correctly, So I'm listening to you."

And he said, "That's right.

You're listening to me. We good?"

I said, "We're good. Thank you very much."

And I just stood back.

No one else ever said anything to me again after that.

Narrator: Khan uses mind control to achieve his ends, delivered in a gruesome way.

They're young. Enter through the ears.

And wrap themselves around the cerebral cortex.

Yeah, well, that was fun.

You know, being on the other end of that.

What it was, it was a stunt bug.

No, it wasn't a stunt bug.

It was... it was a little thing that had a little rubbery plastic thing, and they had a fine filament thread attached to it.

It was very hard to see.

When it was going up my face, there was actually a guy standing above me, and they had drilled a hole in my helmet, and he was pulling it up my face on that filament.

And when they got to my ear, and them I made all those screams, really unbecoming an officer, but they... that's what they wanted.

[both screaming]

Narrator: But there is one scene that has become the defining moment in "The Wrath of Khan."

I read that script and I saw the conflict, and I saw the passion in it, and when I saw the scene where Spock tries to save the ship and dies in the process, I said, "This is a good, good film."

I really believed that this was going to be the final "Star Trek" movie.

So I thought if "Star Trek" is coming to an end, maybe it's fitting that Spock should die saving the ship and the crew, and be a hero and go out in a blaze of glory.

During the making of the movie, I began to be concerned that maybe I'd made a mistake.

And on the day we went to sh**t Spock's death scene, Harve came to me on the set.

He came to me on the set and he said, "What can you give us that might be a thread for the future for Spock or 'Star Trek'?"

And it took me a moment. I said, "I can do a mind-meld on DeForest Kelley who's laying there unconscious, and I can say something ambiguous like, 'Remember.'"

And that's how that moment came about.

Remember.

And then you have "Star Trek's" finest hour between Kirk and Spock.

That death scene through the radiation chamber...

Cried like a baby.

I was always very touched by what happened in that... in that sequence. Ahem.

I thought it was beautifully written, the death scene.

And it really worked in the film.

I have people still today who write me and say, "Every time I still see that picture for the fifth, tenth time, I still cry when Spock... At that death scene," you know?

[raspy] I have been... and always shall be... your friend.

Live long... and prosper.

Narrator: Two short years after the success of "Khan,"

"Trek" returns to the big screen, and the franchise is truly reborn.

"Star Trek III" was the first movie that Nimoy directed, and it was also his way to come back to "Star Trek" to bring Spock back.

Nicholas Meyer, a very talented guy, was directing.

I thought, "I-I can do what he does.

I know what he's doing and I can do that."

So I went in the next morning, and I put it to them very simply.

I said, "Michael, you have two problems.

"You want me to play Spock in 'Star Trek III, '

"and you need a director.

I solved both of your problems with one stroke."

And that's the way it went, and he said, "Okay, let's make a deal."

And we immediately made a deal and went to work.

You Klingon bastard.

There are two more prisoners, Admiral.

Do you want them k*lled too?

It's just such a delicious badass son of a bitch, you know?

He's just... he's just a bad guy with no remorse.

[both grunting]

I k*lled Kirk's son and I blew up the original Enterprise.

Just freaking wiped it out.

And I could do it again. [chuckles]

I was asked to do "III," I didn't know how to do it.

So I said I wasn't interested in doing it.

I was not part of "IV" either.

They had had a script written tailor-made to star Eddie Murphy, who was Paramount's other big star at the time.

And Paramount didn't like the idea of putting all their golden eggs in one basket, Eddie Murphy and the Star Trek people.

So I went to see Harve and Leonard, and they told me the story about the whales.

And Harve said, "I'll write the outer space parts if you do the on Earth parts, you know, the bookend.

And I said, "Okay."

"Star Trek V" is hurt by it's budget more than anything else. It's not a badly directed film.

In fact, Bill did a nice job directing for the most part, but they just didn't have enough money to recognize the vision, so it looks very cheap, and as a result, it feels like a bad movie.

We watched the movie, we were like, "Yeah, that was great."

And I remember my brother, he was the one who had not been drinking.

He was looking at, like, "I don't think it really was great."

We were like, "No, it was great. Let's watch it again."

And we did, so we watched it again.

That's probably the last time I saw "Star Trek V."

Then "Star Trek V" came out and didn't perform well.

And then Leonard came, and he had this genesis, you should pardon the pun, of an idea for "VI," which was all about the wall coming down in outer space.

It was about the Klingons have been their substitute for the Russians. I went, "They were?"

And we wrote it.

His idea was that, you know, time's change.

You know, you can't be, you know, mad at a group for 100 years and you don't know anything about them.

Michael Dorn was my idea.

He could play his own grandfather.

I thought that would be funny.

Narrator: Coming up, the Enterprise returns to TV with a new mission and a new crew.

When I heard that they were doing a next generation,

I went, "Oh, afraid I got to do this," you know?

So "Star Trek IV" does gangbusters at the box office.

They're like, "Hang on, this is a hot property."

Gene's like, "Guess what, fellas?

I want to do I on TV again."

And then Paramount's like...

"Yes, please."

"I might as well."

Yeah.

"Well, it's sitting here doing nothing."

"How soon will you start?"

So then we have "Star Trek: The Next Generation" comes out.

Narrator: In 1987, 21 years after the original series hits the air, "Star Trek" returns to television with the premiere of "The Next Generation."

Gene Roddenberry called me and he was talking about a new version of "Star Trek" bouncing off the movies, of course.

He came up with the basics for the older captain, for the characters that we see in "Star Trek: Next Gen."

Narrator: Diehard fans are skeptical of the reboot.

We got a bald, English captain with a French name and you got a Klingon on the bridge?

Really? You got a blind guy driving the ship?

Gene was there during the first couple of years and all the spinoffs carried on the tradition of "Star Trek."

When that cast was first assembled and the show first went into production, "The Next Generation,"

I invited them here to this house, the whole bunch of them, all of them.

"Come to my house. Let's get to know each other.

And good luck, and bon voyage. I think... I hope it works."

When I first auditioned for "Next Gen,"

I was one of the few people in the world who was not quite aware of the phenomenon that we were about to get involved with.

When I heard that they were doing a next generation,

I went, "Oh, afraid I gotta do this," you know?

I got a call from my agent who said, "You know what?

They're casting 'Star Trek.' Oh, my God."

And she was a huge "Star Trek" fan.

I had no clue it was going to be a big show.

So LeVar Burton and I go to eat.

I say, "What are you doing?"

He said, "Oh, you'll love this. I'm doing 'Star Trek.'"

I said, "Well, I want to be on that."

And he was like, "What?" I was like, "No, no.

You gotta tell them I want to be on the show."

And I made an appointment to go see Gene.

And Gene says, "You want to be on 'Star Trek'?"

I said, "Yes. Yes."

And he asked me would I please write the pilot script, "Encounter At Farpoint." And I said, "Fine," did that.

The question had been whether Gene Roddenberry would do, you know, like a retrospective back to the original "Star Trek" to lead into this or would he add to my pilot script.

He added all the stuff that had to do with Q.

Three days into sh**ting, uh, you know, somebody came up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder and said, "You have no idea what you've gotten yourself into."

And it was... it was Roddenberry.

And I didn't have any idea. I mean, you know.

Riker's relationship with Picard, which was filled with respect.

With Data, the curiosity that Data had about being a human being.

And I worked with Worf and Geordi, the three of us were sort of, you know, we made the... we kept the [bleep] together on the ship.

And it was... it all got more natural.

And as it got more natural, I think it got more appealing to the audience.

I decided to write a spec script, so I wrote a script called "The Bonding."

Michael Piller came aboard to be the new head writer, and he found my script.

And I get this call one day that he wants to buy it and produce it, which literally changed my life.

We used to do 26 episodes a year, and it was great.

So we'd work for ten months, and then the first Monday after the 4th of July, we'd come back to work.

And that lasted for seven years and could have lasted, in all fairness, for ten years probably.

The humans of the 24th century on "Next Generation" didn't have the kinds of problems and squabbles and petty jealousies that we have today.

Chief O'Brien talks to me.

Keiko talks to you.

Why do they not talk to each other?

[chuckles] That's a good question, Data.

I wish I had a good answer for you.

Perhaps when they're ready, they will.

Hmm. Many aspects of this situation are puzzling to me.

Roddenberry somehow magically made us... made me believe in his vision of the 24th century, right?

He said to me, "In the 24th century, there will be no hunger, and there will be no greed.

And all of the children will know how to read.

Gene Roddenberry.

He was given the right to do "Star Trek"

the way he wanted to do it.

Unfortunately his health was failing by the time they even got "Star Trek: The Next Generation" on.

So he didn't really get the chance to do all of the things he wanted to do.

Narrator: When Gene Roddenberry dies in 1991, "The Next Generation" is more popular than ever.

Carrying on his legacy, week after week, for the next three years.

There were those of us, myself included, who thought it could go on for ten years.

That we weren't done yet.

Knowing that there was another series waiting in the wings where we could continue to tell stories that we hadn't told yet made that okay.

And it seemed smart to take "Next Gen" off at the peak of its popularity.

'Cause it was a very popular show.

There is a part of me that wished, that wishes "Next Gen" had continued.

I was asked to direct the first "Next Generation" movie.

I just... I wasn't attracted to it.

I read it, and it didn't feel like something that I was gonna have a good time doing.

Ron Moore and I were asked to write the first "Next Generation" movie.

We were very excited.

It was the first movie either of us had written.

We loved these characters. We knew these characters.

And we set about conceiving the first "Next Gen" movie.

Kind of hand-off from the original series, Kirk to Picard.

There was sort of a list of things that the movie had to have, so when Bran and I stepped in, here's the list of things it has to be.

"It's gonna be the next first "Next Gen" movie. It can have the original cast in it. We want a transition film, but the original cast can only be in the first ten minutes or 15 minutes of the movie tops. It has to be a Picard story. There has to be a Data humorous runner in it. We want to have a big villain, sort of like Khan. We also want to have the Klingons in it. And it should probably have some time travel involved."

And you're just going, "Okay.

By the time "Generations," the first movie, is coming out, you have Kirk and Picard on the cover of "Time" magazine.

That's the apex, it's the zenith of the show.

"Generations" was still in the theaters when the said, "Hey, let's do another one. And we want you guys to do the second one."

And we said, "Okay."

"First Contact" was the film that they should have made every time after that.

Then the second movie, "First Contact," is, you know, a roller coaster ride and wonderful and really sort of redeems that franchise.

That movie was a huge success. It made a lot of money.

And everybody liked it.

And Alfre Woodard was great in it.

And Cromwell was great in it.

I'm not a drinker, so I got a fifth of Jamesons.

And I took one before when we rehearsed.

And then between every sh*t, I would go back up to my tr...

[laughing]

So by the time I did the thing we're at the bar, when I take the drink... [retching]

Ahh!

[gagging]

Oh!

[coughing]

Narrator: "Star Trek: First Contact" debuts in 1996 with Commander Riker himself, Jonathan Frakes in the director's chair.

It was great to work with Jonathan, you know?

We'd worked with him before as a director on the show, so we knew his working methods, he knew us, you know.

There was a great shorthand, obviously, between him and the entire cast and the crew.

This was our first movie that was just "Next Gen."

So that... that was a life-changer, you know.

I think "Star Trek's" a TV show.

The movies are fun, but, you know, it's... it's a TV show.

It needs to tell the stories each week.

"First Contact" is fanta... it's like...

It's the best of the "Next Generation" movies.

I'm sorry, everyone, that's how I feel.

Probably.

I see some grunting happening over on the corners here.

Bobak, you grunted particularly hard.

I'm just a big "Insurrection" fan because...

What? What?

It's the most like a "TNG" episode.

The movies really, like, diverge from my thought what made the show great.

And I like that it was a little bit more of that "TNG" -style episode than I felt the rest of the movies were.

So we go from "Insurrection."

"Voyager's" still running at this point.

And then we end up with, I hate to say it, "Star Trek: Nemesis," so Janeway...

They asked me to be in that. Did you know that?

Really? What were you gonna do in that?

Were you gonna be on the Enterprise?

Evidently.

Why would you say no?

What is wrong with you?

'Cause I had just gotten off of "Voyager."

Oh, my God, Jeri.

My biggest fear is in signing on to "Star Trek" to begin with, not having been a fan, and not really knowing much about it other than that the actors get pigeonholed.

Yeah.

And it was sort of known for that.

Yeah.

That was one of my big fears in accepting the role is ever breaking out of that character.

I don't know if that's even...

No, please.

Known by anybody, but apparently they were replacing a character.

They were gonna yank and character out and stick Seven of Nine in there.

It's a popular character, get her in the movie.

And that's what it felt like. And it didn't feel like it would be anything other than that story-wise.

Yeah.

Narrator: Coming up, "Star Trek" takes a dark turn.

"Deep Space Nine" is the most meaningful to me.

Mm-hmm.

Because it gets into the darker side.

I mean, it's after Gene Roddenberry's death.

They're kinda free to kind of get away from this, you know, everything ends happily.

Yeah.

You know, you look at w*r in a variety of different ways.

I mean, there's a great episode on PTSD, where Nog has to deal with the loss of his leg.

Nobody does that kind of stuff.

Right.

On science fiction in particular.

And so I think that show in terms of its depth, in terms of the issues it would address, I thought made it the best.

And, you know, arguably there are some of the best episodes of all 700-plus hours.

"The Next Generation" had become such a success in first-run syndication for the studio that they wanted more, so you had "Deep Space Nine,"

which was about a space station and it was a little darker.

"Next Gen" was my undergraduate studies in TV writing and production, and "Deep Space Nine" was graduate.

"DS9" had such a different feel while still being "Star Trek."

It took things even deeper.

We were attracted to doing darker stories.

We were attracted to doing stories that had much more conflict in them, that were more morally ambiguous, that were tackling difficult subject matter with our characters.

And we all felt that we were pushing "Trek," but none of us felt like we were breaking it.

That was the first time that you see what television is now, which is dark and foreboding.

And I really wanted to do the show.

Really wanted to do the show.

I-I was like...

I just... not only as an actor who would get a steady paycheck, but more importantly, as a fan of the show I wanted to be part of the ethos that was "Star Trek."

It's really nice to see that people could stick with the show when it became darker and more demanding of its audience.

But no victory can make this moment any easier for me.

And I promise I will not rest until I stand with you again.

Somebody had the brilliant idea of bringing Worf onto our show.

Unfortunately, I will be away from the station at that time.

What they hoped would happen did happen.

Thousands, if not millions, of people watched because Worf was on the show.

And so our fan base got resurrected because of Michael Dorn.

And I had my concerns about that 'cause I didn't want Worf to be standing around, just to be a, you know, some guy that just...

They throw in there.

I really want him to open up as a character.

Worf was, like, really the only choice from that cast that made any sense and that would actually add something to the puzzle.

Here's the w*r-like character coming into a situation that's a w*r-torn environment.

So that made a certain amount of sense.

What is that smell?

Is there a pile of rotting forshak in here.

I loved my time on "Next Generation," but the work I did on "Deep Space" was much better.

Over my tenure on "Deep Space," that was the mantra was, "How far can we push this franchise? Or what are the places we can go that none of the other shows can go? What can't they do in 'Star Trek,' and is there a way we can do it?"

Every "Star Trek" show broke grounds in some way, you know?

"Deep Space Nine," Sisko, he was a black captain.

And then you have Janeway in "Voyager," a woman.

I mean, they were always thinking ahead.

Narrator: When "Voyager" launches in 1995, "Star Trek" has been pushing the envelope for nearly 30 years.

The new series pushes further.

A lot of women of a certain age who that show meant a lot to because of Kate.

You know, they look at it, you know, the same way that guys of my generation look at Kirk as a role model, they look at Kate's Janeway and say, "You know, she proved that, you know, I could be thoughtful and smart and commanding, and not necessarily use my sexuality to get what I want."

Then you leave me no choice.

You are hereby relieved of duty until further notice.

As a writer, writing Captain Janeway, I didn't think of her as a woman.

I thought of her as the captain.

And I think it's great that she ended up being a role model to a lot of people, men or women.

I was very happy and proud of what the producers had done with this cast in "Voyager."

First of all, starting off with a female captain 'cause we had not seen that before.

My friend, Rene, got cast in "Deep Space."

And he told me how cool it was, and I envied him.

I said, "What a great show to be on," you know.

And then a couple of years later, boom, I was in "Voyager."

And I-I had no idea what the character was makeup-wise, you know?

But I flew out and I-I went into the room, and there was UPN, and there was Paramount, and there were the creators of "Star Trek."

And, um, I read and I guess I was exactly what what they were looking for.

"Star Trek: Voyager" is probably my first acting job.

And I was so excited, and I was so nervous.

It was a two-part special and I was playing a scientist.

What do you do here?

We watch the skies.

For what?

Signs of extraterrestrial life.

Nice meeting you.

I remembered going to my acting coach, and he read through the script.

And I was looking to him for guidance.

And he just went, uh, "You know, sometimes when you're running from lasers, you just... you just gotta pretend you're running from lasers."

Get down!

[laser fire]

I was like, "Oh.' Ahem.

It gave me so much freedom.

I was like, "Oh, yeah, I just... I pretend," you know?

You don't really draw from your childhood or something.

You just pretend you're running from lasers.

[laser fire]

What the hell?

What I wanted to do was bring the Borg in.

It was my feeling that the Borg could always be "Voyager's" Klingons.

They needed a recurring villain.

And for better or worse, that's what we ended up doing.

And it's one of the things that defined "Voyager" was the introduction of the Seven of Nine character.

You had a very sexy woman in a very sexy outfit.

You know, it was supposed to lure in a certain male demographic.

But, in reality, she was the Spock character.

She was the Data character.

Report.

I've applied 10,053 algorithms to the energy signatures produced by chaotic space.

The Roddenberry influence was always respected.

We didn't want to do something totally, outrageously anti-Roddenberry.

It's almost like you have to keep pinching yourself.

You show up on these sets and you have to remind yourself, "I'm in the middle of something that when we do it right, is really important, can really affect people."

Now it's hard to do that on every single episode.

I don't know who has ever succeeded in that, but I think that we all could feel as a cast when we were telling a good story and doing it well.

There was a lot of discussion what "Enterprise" would look like and feel like.

Narrator: "Star Trek: Enterprise" is a prequel to the entire franchise.

Set in the 22nd century, as Starfleet's first explorers venture into space.

You know, we were trying to, I think, deconstruct "Star Trek" and figure out, you know, how it all came together.

You know, we'd certainly seen the future of where it was all going.

And it was a real challenge to kind of back that up and imagine, you know, what was this...

What was this like 150 years before Captain Kirk.

I called my mother and said, "Ma, I'm not gonna have to stress about work. I got a job."

I had to audition with a slight alien accent for the character of Dr. Phlox, which puzzled me.

I didn't really know what to do, so I...

I sort of tried out a variety of funny voices with my wife before I settled on the voice I eventually arrived at.

Sounds sort of vaguely East Indian.

I don't believe you'll be needing my services.

You know, I thought that we were gonna make it and that we were gonna do seven years like all the rest of these shows.

I was just trying to tell good stories and do Gene's vision proud.

Tell the best "Star Trek" stories that I could, you know?

And now that I'm no longer involved with the show,

I'm the fan eagerly awaiting the next television show.

Narrator: Coming up, "Trek" is on the cutting edge.

I had just been offered a major role in a Broadway musical.

Narrator: And later, a look at "Star Trek's" most beloved villain.

I ended up doing six episodes of "Next Generation."

So in the 60', I mean, it a period of racial discord.

We got the Vietnam w*r, youth rebellions, emerging feminism, and, you know, TV...

Dirty hippies.

Dirty hi... exactly.

There's no series or television show really addressing these things.

You know, Roddenberry's able to do is kind of explore these things, but again, in a way which is...

Not only avoids the censors, which he had a lot of problems with, but also allows the audience to kind of look at it from a different perspective.

And if they were looking at race in America on a documentary, that's just not gonna have the kind of impact, whereas in "Let That Be Your Last b*ttlefield," we have the black and white faces.

You know, and you can imagine what the American public was looking at this going, "You know, yeah, this is right. This is kinda strange."

And again, this is an episode that was done right after Mart...

It was produced right after Martin Luther King's assassination.

That's the beauty of sci-fi. You can sort of have these allegories without people knowing they're being taught a lesson.

Yeah.

Big two on the nose.

Yeah, they just think they're watching a fun space adventure with a Canadian.

[laughter]

"Star Trek" very much at a time when, you know, race, in particular, in the '60s was such a big thing.

It broke down those barriers in terms of talking...

Talking about color, multi-culturalism, other people.

And instead of making walls, and instead of trying to villainize others, it was all about embracing the other.

Because, you know, when you look at the "Star Trek" world, you know, Gene really wanted to create a world where everybody could be, you know?

And if we were having some kind of trouble, we could talk it out.

We had one of the most wonderful icons in Nichelle Nichols, who was not only African American, she was a woman.

And, you know, she was there on the bridge all the time.

She was important.

Sometimes she would just say, "Channels open, sir," but the thing was that she was there.

She speaks perfect English.

She's the communications officer and she takes that very seriously.

She is not only gorgeous, but she is the communications officer.

She's the one you have to talk to if you want to talk to anybody out in space.

And she's fly, okay?

And they all want to bone her, and you know it.

And there were some stations in the South that said, "Oh, you're having," what was then, "a black woman on the bridge. We're not gonna show your show."

And Roddenberry said, "[bleep] you," you know.

[chuckles]

And, you know, "Too bad. You lose."

A woman of color in the late '60s while the civil rights riots were going on.

Her presence there was a big deal.

I had just been offered a major role in a Broadway musical.

And I met Dr. Martin Luther King.

And I was so excited to tell him.

And he said, "You can't do that."

He said, "Don't you understand what you're doing?

"This is television and there's nobody like you on TV.

You can't... you can't abdicate."

And I couldn't.

The main thing that has struck me about Gene's series at the time was how he mirrored the things that were going on in our society by using the aliens and the humans to carry out those storylines.

He was very clever in doing that.

I liked the idea.

I'm not sure it was always ex*cuted as well as it might have.

I think we used the bludgeon when we did the story of the half black and half white.

You know, but we did it you know?

And good for us for taking on the issue.

I am black on the right side.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

I fail to see the significant difference.

Lokai is white on the right...

All of his people are white on the right side.

Frank Gorshin was a wonderful performer, and he and Lou Antonio were the two actors who played these opposing roles.

People who were actually mirror images of each other should hate each other they way they did.

And there was that great moment where Kirk says,

"Why do you people hate each other so much?

You're... you're the same."

"Don't you get it?

He's black on the right side, I'm black on the left."

You know, "Oh." [laughing]

Science fiction is at its best when it challenges you.

It presents a message while disguising itself as entertainment.

In an episode called "Symbiosis," there's a planet where they're all addicted.

And there's another species that always supplies them with their drug.

And we know that... that this is this horrible enabling situation.

And we could easily cure the addicts.

Please, help us.

I'm not sure that I can.

But do we get involved or do we let them figure it out?

The moment that I felt was so haunting to me was the one where B'Elanna is pregnant and can see that her child will have Klingon DNA and be born with the forehead and she has developed a way to possibly alter that so her daughter doesn't have to go through what she went through.

And I wept when I read the episode.

But then to be responsible for a child and to have the technology to change the future of this child.

And it was, um...

It was a difficult and wonderful episode.

When you look at Data, you know, at one point he is on trial, you know.

And it's, like, is he on trial because he's different?

Is he on trial because he should be not be thinking the way that he's thinking because he's, after all, a machine and should not be moving...

I mean, they're all the questions that we deal with.

And whether it's race because it's skin color, or race because you're an android, or, you know, race because you're only this big and fuzzy.

You're a Tribble, you know?

It's all of these stories go into saying, "Hey, we actually all have to try to do this together."

The cultural makeup of the bridge, that was science fiction...

Absolutely.

In the mid '60s.

People who watch it today have no idea how startling that was.

You had this multi-cultural crew, not just multi-cultural, but it was male and female as well.

I mean, I know that when Roddenberry did the first pilot and Majel Barrett was Number One, the studio was like...

Yeah.

Who's gonna believe a woman in charge of a starship?

Narrator: Coming up, "Star Trek" invents the cell phone.

The tech that predicts our future.

The thing that's really amazing about "Star Trek" is that it definitely has inspired people to sort of, you know, proceed down that path, right?

Yeah.

A lot of technologists, of course talk about the StarTAC Motorola phone, right?

The flip phone coming from the communicator.

But it gives people a vision to sort of think about, "Well, why isn't that possible?"

Well, the PADD is an obvious thing, which the iPad, I think, was designed after specifically.

Didn't they say...

Yes.

He took the design from iPad...

Yes.

Well, they wanted to call it a PADD, Personal Access Display Device, which is what we called it on the show, but Paramount wouldn't allow it.

And what's really neat, I mean, the computer interaction is things like we get with Siri and Alexa.

Well, yes, exactly.

I mean, you literally talk to a computer, and it, you know, responds to your queries.

Wow, you don't even think about that.

Yeah.

I mean, I think this is a really... kind of a neat dynamic of science sort of influencing science fiction and in return, getting some sort of inspiration back.

The only thing they got really, really wrong for me is the fact that they plugged Data in.

I feel like he'd have Bluetooth.

[laughter]

They got to put him in his charger every night.

[laughter]

When I see someone in a restaurant and they have the Bluetooth in their ear while dining with someone else, I usually shout out, "Let it go, Uhura."

[laughter]

And you know what?

They know what I'm talking about.

Oh, there you go.

And they feel horrible.

Gene was clearly a visionary.

He went and studied, though, the technologies that would be involved in order to make his show credible.

Believability was a huge thing for my father.

If you go back and read some of the original writers' guides and bibles for the original series, He says in there, you know, "Believability is essential."

He brought Harvey Lynn, his cousin who worked with the RAND company, to advise.

And that's where a lot of the technology came from.

I think because I loved the space program, "Star Trek" to me at that point felt real.

It felt like they all took it kinda seriously.

There was a real ship like that.

I do remember when I was a kid I thought that was a real ship.

I thought, you know, "There's a big ship that flies around in space. I see it every week."

The technology absolutely captured my imagination.

I mean, especially the idea of being able to live in this giant spaceship.

He wanted to do adult stories, adult science fiction, so he knew that in order to make that kind of a show work, he had a very credible design for his starship.

But there's a reason the Enterprise hangs in the Smithsonian Institute.

It is such... not just an iconic ship, but such a beautiful ship.

It's a magnificent aesthetic achievement.

Roddenberry said, "We want our audience to believe that for the hour they're watching 'Star Trek, ' they're really on a spaceship out exploring the galaxy.

So we have to design the bridge.

We have to think about navigation.

We have to think about what powers the ship."

And then he thought, "You know, why don't we set up a system in the sick bay called the biobed?

A crewman comes in, lays down on the biobed, and on a computer screen above the bed, it instantly displays all of their vital signs."

Narrator: The creators of "Star Trek" designed and engineered gadgets for the crew that are decades ahead of their time.

And inspire the devices that are second nature to us today.

But also the smaller things like the tricorder or the communicator, which, I mean, you know I have one in my pocket right now that's not dissimilar.

Leonard Nimoy, years ago, he told me the flip phone was purposely designed to look like a communicator.

That the inventor of the flip phone wanted it to be a pastiche of "Star Trek."

A guy named Martin Cooper in the 1970s was tasked by Motorola and Bell Labs to create a, you know, one of the first cell phones.

A portable telephone that, you know, you could carry and walk around with, and it would ultimately be small enough to fit in a pocket.

And Cooper explicitly said, "When I was designing that first handheld phone, I thought, You know, this thing is kinda big.

It's a little bulky, but if I fold it in half, that'll save... that'll save space.

It'll make it smaller and easier to carry.

Plus, it'll be really cool to flip open Like the communicators on "Star Trek."'"

You have these PADDs that are now iPads and everything.

Well, we didn't have iPads then, so it was... it was like we were doing it, we'd be making things up.

But if you set it down too hard, you gotta do...

It would make a clunk.

You'd have to take the whole sh*t over.

The PADDs that they used, which had nothing on them, we'd use them in the stories to somehow advance the plot, or they're looking at a report.

Never in a million years did any of us think this would be a thing.

It was total science fiction to us.

It was 20 years after "Star Trek: The Next Generation" premiered that Apple introduced the iPad.

And that's, you know, that's a dead ringer, really, for the PADDs that we had on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" 20 years earlier.

People forget this. They look at it now, they say, "Oh, 'Star Trek's' so dated. It's so primitive."

They have no idea.

Supermarkets didn't have sliding doors yet.

That's how prescient "Star Trek" was.

It was Roddenberry's idea for the holodeck, which I always thought was revolutionary, you know?

Virtual reality was being explored in science fiction novels, but he was really the first to kind of put true, thorough virtual reality, certainly onto a television show.

The holodeck, which was a wonderful invention taken to imaginative creative extremes in "Next Generation," has its origins in the "Star Trek" animated series that most people don't know.

The holodeck was in an episode of the "Star Trek" cartoon, "Practical Joker."

That was the first time we saw that.

If you look at "Star Trek," the original "Star Trek,"

you will see Spock holding little cards and data cards that he would slip into a slot on the computer.

They look exactly like the 3 1/2" floppy disks that were created 20 years later.

It's remarkable to think, you know, Siri's getting pretty close to the computer on the Enterprise.

"Star Trek," I think, on the technology side, partly it's the extraordinary vision of Gene and the people that he worked with in creating that original show and thinking about how things can be better in the future, and then people growing up watching "Star Trek" making those things happen because they were inspired by "Star Trek."

So it's a really fascinating kind of feedback loop between art and science.

I can't think of another show that had nearly the impact for people who really, you know, work in the aerospace industry that "Star Trek" did, right.

Or even for a lot of cases, physics and things like that.

Because it did take a realistic approach to science and using science to solve problems.

But you try to solve them with a rational approach.

Narrator: Coming up, the Enterprise lifts off.

"Star Trek" begins as a prime-time television series, but over the next half century, it reaches far beyond the airwaves to help shape our world.

"Star Trek" inspired people.

"Star Trek," like, people became scientists.

They became physicists.

They became doctors and astronauts because of "Star Trek."

When you see someone who says, "You were such a role model.

You know, I went to med school because of you."

Or, "I got into nursing because of you."

It made it richer for me. It made it a richer experience.

One of the reasons I wanted to become an engineer was because of "Star Trek."

Because there was something different about it in that the world felt more thought through and real than other things that you had seen.

I mean, there's a picture of NASA and Mission Control and people were wearing Spock ears.

People who went to college to study physics or engineering or medicine because they grew up and were inspired by "Star Trek."

And wanted to be the next Scotty or the next Dr. McCoy.

Jimmy Doohan, who played Scotty, and DeForest Kelley, who played McCoy, were always relating stories of people who had written to them and would become engineers and doctors because of "Star Trek."

I think that was great.

But how does that apply to me? And it didn't.

And for the longest time, it didn't.

Until I met a young lady, who after "Star Trek" had gone to school to learn Russian and went to work for the State Department.

Her mission was so important that she couldn't tell me what it was about.

But it had to do with the Russians, so I actually helped inspire a spy.

[laughing]

I was so fascinated by "Star Trek" that maybe the first filmmaking book I can remember reading was "The Making of Star Trek" by Stephen Whitfield.

And I remember being so fascinated by looking at the behind-the-scenes pictures, the layout of how the sets were put together at Desilu and Paramount Studios.

The idea of using a colored light to create different planets.

Just all the imagination that went into it, it just really excited me, and it really became a doorway into the idea of filmmaking and into television, which obviously, you know, I've spent my whole life on.

Probably one of the most influential books in my life was discovering "The Making of Star Trek"

by Stephen Whitfield, which I found at a school book fair in the sixth grade.

And I read that thing cover to cover over and over again 'cause that really was about the making of a television series, about selling a pilot, you know, show bibles and production questions and issues and fighting with networks.

And I was completely enthralled with it.

And it sort of... it imprinted itself in me in a profound way.

You know, I didn't really think about becoming a television writer at that age, and wouldn't for many, many years.

'Cause that wasn't a real job.

But reading that book gave me a hunger to do that.

I wanted, on some basic level, to do that, too, to make a television series and to do those things like Gene had done.

We were invited to the rollout of the Enterprise shuttle.

I didn't have an understanding of how significant it was until we got there.

And there were several hundred people there.

And they had the Air Force Band.

The conductor raised the baton and waved his hand and the band started playing up.

The Enterprise rolled out from behind the building, and it was amazing to see.

As it came out, the band started playing the theme music from "Star Trek."

And we jumped up as one, and were cheering and screaming.

It was just the most remarkable moment.

And, you know, across the nose of the shuttle was the word "Enterprise."

For the first time, I realized that there was a significance beyond the fact that we were a television show that went on once a week.

That we really had an influence in the culture.

And I guess it was the first time that I really felt that I could take a bow.

Up until then, my sense was, "I'm a supporting character "with very little to do.

I'm riding the coattails of this television project, and I haven't really contributed very much.

Well, that was all true, but I realized then that I was part of a group that, as a group, we had an influence.

That we had an influence in society Because of "Star Trek," I am all the things I just said.

Engineer, physicist, doctor, psychiatrist.

I've joined the m*llitary. I became a policeman.

But the most potent, I think, are the stories where someone comes up and looks you in the eye and says, "Star Trek was the only time in my house where there was peace. Where my dad or my mother or the abuse or the alcohol," or whatever it was, "the only time where we sat together and it was peaceful and trouble-free."

And... and it's heartbreaking.

And it's true.

You can see it in their eyes how true it is and how important it is.

There are people who have gone to nine foster homes, and the only steady thing in all of those foster homes was that the family watched "Star Trek."

"Star Trek" over the years has inspired people.

And whether it's inspired them to follow their dreams or believe in themselves, I mean, that's the... one of the key messages in "Star Trek" is, "You're a great person. You have valid thoughts, valid ideas. Never think of yourself as less than anyone else. Now go out there and follow your dreams."

We were talking earlier, Doug, before we started sh**ting here and I just found out, somehow, just found out about a book right here.

How could you have missed this book?

Here it is, "The Making of Star Trek."

That's the book.

The book.

The book.

That book changed my life completely.

That book came out, I guess, like, the second season of "Star Trek."

Uh-huh.

I was crazy about the show.

That book was, I mean for me, it was like Popeye downing a can of spinach.

Can I see it?

I mean, look at this.

This is the diagram of the bridge.

Honestly, I mean, it totally gave me a direction.

I knew what I wanted to do after I read that book.

And I could say that "Star Trek" and that book made me who I am today, and that kinda sounds a little sad.

But, you know, it led me to a couple of Emmys.

Led me to an Academy Award, you know.

And that's all because of "Star Trek."

Narrator: Coming up, the battle of the episodes.

The cast reveal their favorites.

This episode is brilliant.

My favorite episodes were always the ones...

Personally, 'cause, you know, I was doing 'em.

Mm-hmm.

Were the ones where Seven was really exploring her humanity.

So I think it was "Someone To Watch Over Me" where the doctor's teaching Seven how to date.

Oh, that's a great one.

And I just...

I thought that was so lovely and so touching, and it just broke my heart at the end when he's kinda falling in love with Seven and she's like, "Yeah, there's nobody here for me."

I hated that moment.

That's where you break the exoskeleton if I'm not mistaken.

Yes!

The lobster.

The creature has an exoskeleton, yes.

[laughter]

So that was one of my favorites, definitely.

Well, a truly great "Star Trek" episode, in my opinion, has a list of ingredients.

It's an equation.

And that equation includes: a great high concept that provides cool character dynamics and conflict, but also is a parable.

It has some deeper theme.

"Devil in the Dark"

I thought was a wonderful episode about... about fear of the unknown.

How we fear... and even hate something that we don't know anything about.

Learn who your enemy is and maybe then...

Maybe then it's no longer your enemy.

Interesting episode.

You know, I remember the "Devil in the Dark" episode with the Horta. That really left a big impression on me as a kid, that he didn't k*ll the monster and that the monster was a mother and had all these eggs.

They're eggs, aren't they?

Yes, Captain. Eggs.

And about to hatch.

"A City on the Edge of Forever" which is, of course, the episode of "Star Trek" that is the one that everybody knows is a great one.

It's a little bit... it's an eccentric episode.

I love also the two-parter.

The repurposing of the original pilot into "The Ca..."

What is it, "The Cage: Part one and two"?

And that's brilliant... we refer to these shows all the time on "Breaking Bad" in the writer's room.

We prefer to, you know, Tranya.

We refer to Captain Pike with his... with the light.

I mean, which, you know, couldn't even think of as being a little bit like a Hector Salamanca when he's in the wheelchair and he's got the bell.

I really loved "Yesterday's Enterprise."

It was a spec script that I had that had gone through a couple of drafts already.

Then I took a pass at it and reconceiving the story and kinda making it a much more darker universe on the other side and emphasizing the w*r aspect of it.

And the tragedy of it.

My favorite is my favorite because it's just brilliant.

Brilliant writing. Brilliant directing.

Brilliant acting.

And it's called "Far Beyond the Stars."

It's where all the series regulars appear as humans, and the episode has to deal with racism.

It's not just good "Star Trek."

It's not just good science fiction.

It's great literature.

[Star Trek: The New Generation theme music]

Well, you know, I think I'm the last character Gene created.

I think I'm the last one that he actually created based on Texas Guinan.

Guinan her name was. After Texas Guinan who was a famous card player and gambler, or whatever she was.

And Whoopi showed up in the show and brought in this... this aura.

And the wild... remember the shovelhead hats she used to wear? That beautiful face with those big eyes and that gorgeous skin and the voice. And she played it so straight.

Guinan was great, again, 'cause Whoopi's playing it.

Guinan was a strange, mysterioso character that no... none of us really understood what the hell she was.

When we started really getting into "Next Gen" in the later years, what we said was, "It's really about her relationship with Picard. Yes, she's the bartender and, yes, she listens to all their problems and gives insight to people for various issues, but she has some back-story with Picard, and it's a personal relationship with him that drives that character forward. And it's the only reason she's on the ship. It's the only reason that she really matters on the show."

In my mind, always believed that Guinan was the great-great great-great-great- great-great-great-great- great-great-great-great-great- great-great-great-great-great... couple more greats grandmother of Picard.

And the reason she's on the ship is just to see how he's doing.

'Cause, you know, she can go anywhere at any time, and she just irritates the hell outta Q.

Which made me very happy. John is wonderful.

You know him?

We have had some dealings.

Those dealings were two centuries ago.

This creature is not what she appears to be.

She's an imp, and where she goes trouble always follows.

You're speaking of yourself, Q, not Guinan.

Guinan? Is that your name now?

Guinan is not the issue here. You are.

I ended up doing six episodes of "Next Generation."

Anytime there was an episode with Q in it, I loved because whenever he was in an episode, he was, you know, he was Agent Mayhem.

He was... it was going to be something really intense, and he was seemingly unstoppable.

And so it was always really fascinating to watch.

Jonathan Frakes used to say to me, "You're the litmus test. You come back once a year."

I always looked forward to come back, but I never asked.

It's a little bit like asking whether you're gonna be invited to somebody's dinner party.

The character of Q... that omnipotent, Machiavellian, cunning, bitter, nasty, mean-spirited, controlling character...

I can't even fathom anybody else doing as much with it.

Painting that canvas as completely as de Lancie did and does with all his characters.

Have you any idea how far we'll advance?

Perhaps in a future that you cannot yet conceive, even beyond us.

The character on the page is just not as entertaining.

You give it to John de Lancie, and it becomes this other thing, right?

And everyone enjoyed writing for him.

It really... people would just write scene after scene after scene for Q in any of those shows, and many of them were too silly or too over-the-top, but you just really enjoyed it.

You really couldn't wait to dig your...

Dig into a Q episode.

Internally, what we said all the time was, "Q is in love with Picard."

That was the fundamental of the relationship.

He's in love with him. He just is.

He loves Picard.

It's a particular relationship with this one human and this omnipotent being that's bizarre, but that's really what's at the heart of it.

Narrator: Coming up, Kirk versus Picard.

Who will win the battle of the captains?

"Star Trek" is so character-oriented, and there were so many great characters.

So many people got a chance to shine.

But I think that my favorite character is "Mcskirk."

"Mcskirk"?

"Mcskirk."

Which is McCoy, Scotty, and Kirk.

Oh...

'Cause they're really one guy.

I was like, "What did I miss?"

[laughter]

Mcskirk?

I didn't see that episode.

It's a transporter malfunction.

You take that... those three...

Those three, it's like one guy split up three ways.

You know, ordinarily, if you have one person, if you want to know what's going on in their head, you gotta have a voice-over or something.

But with those three guys, split up that way, they could have a conversation...

Yeah.

And it's really like one guy.

I gotta go with Kirk.

You gotta go with Kirk.

I mean, the original series.

You just... the way he just kinda, you know, sauntered around.

Yes.

You gotta love him.

The Shat was the guy I grew up on.

I admire Picard.

I love them all equally, but... uh... I think there is no substitute for Bill Shatner.

Shatner's putting on such a great persona of a trustworthy captain with just enough sense of humor.

You know? And calm under pressure.

And good with the ladies.

Shatner had it all.

The way he presented that character was just so awesome and believable and theatrical at the same time.

He's not a subtle guy.

But I just thought it was great.

He fought... I think it was, like, a Gorgan or whatever. It's where he had...

Captain Kirk is stranded in the desert and he's got, like, this lizard creature he's gotta fight and he's gotta learn how to make, like, gunpowder and projectiles and stuff like that.

Certainly the iconic, classic scene in which Spock... or Kirk confronts "God" and says, "What does God need with a starship?"

What other character in the history of cinema would come up to God? Not even Charlton Heston would say to God, "What do you need with a starship?"

Absolutely, without question, my favorite captain is James T. Kirk.

I mean, he just... Kirk did the right thing.

He said the right thing. People looked up to him.

He was a man of action. He was a man of romance.

And, like, I mean, as performed by William Shatner?

I mean, there was a reason why as a little kid I wanted to be Captain Kirk.

There's a reason why as an almost 50-year-old grown-up that I still watch the original series and I still wanna be James T. Kirk.

He is the best captain.

The way he would stare down 100-foot tall Apollo, and with great... sort of indignation.

"What gives you the right..." you know, to a 100-foot tall god...

[laughter]

He shouted, "What gives you the right?"

When Apollo just could have...

[laughter]

Done that.

Yeah, the sort of leadership and the fearlessness and also... my first understanding of what a... you lead by example.

Yeah.

The captain's setting, the fish stinks from the head down, all of those leadership qualities that hadn't been shown to me by a family member or by anyone at school, a teacher.

Really, it oddly was that leadership necessary as put forth by Captain James Tiberius Kirk.

I mean, I love Captain Kirk. However...

I have...[stammers] you know, I have to say that I think my favorite captain is Picard...

Uh-huh.

Because the thing is Kirk is really only 1/3rd of a guy.

Oh...

He's only 1/3rd of a guy!

Interesting.

Picard is a nice, well-rounded guy.

And he doesn't have to punch anybody in the face to get his point across, right?

But if he has to, he can.

Well, he can, but he usually has Riker do it or Worf.

Yeah, he, uh...

You know, for me, in a lot of ways, "Next Generation" was a... "Star Trek" kind of grown up.

Yeah.

You know? And that started with Picard.

Yeah. My answer's actually Picard too.

Just because I find him to be...

I don't think he's the most realistic of a captain.

I think that Picard has so few flaws, and he only really finally becomes human after he's a Borg and then turned into a human.

You know, he really just starts like...

They give him a love story once in a while...

But it just... I don't know.

I just love... I found Picard to be virtuous and I found Picard to be like, oh... if humans could one day turn into that guy, maybe "Star Trek's" plausible.

But it's not gonna happen.

Yeah, he's a great representation 0 of kind of Rodenberry's vision.

Yeah, a vision of what humanity can be.

A captain needs to be.

What a captain is.

Exactly.

Yeah. Just putting every...

He just... I don't know. I just always...

And that accent. I mean, you can't really...

Well, the accent, yeah.

Top that voice.

Narrator: Coming up, the 50-year legacy of "Star Trek" and beyond.

The show is about what it is to be human, and that never goes out of style.

And it's the type of stories that they tell that you don't generally get in other television shows.

Yeah.

The introspective...

And the basis of it is who are we... who are we as human beings?

I think it's because it's an optimistic view of the future.

Hope.

Yeah. It's hope.

Yeah.

I think that's exactly what it is... it's an optimistic portrayal of what we could hopefully achieve and what our society could be like and that we finally accept each other and we finally learn to look past differences and things like that.

And I think that we so desperately hope that we can achieve that.

And it evolves, you know, from series to series, over the 50 years.

It may have some core values and ideas and the optimism and the hope, but it evolves with the times, too.

So it, you know, it... hopefully the next reiteration will fit our times today much like, you know, "The Next Gen" did in the late '80s, early '90s or "Deep Space Nine" and "Voyager" in the '90s, and, of course, the original series back in the '60s.

But it's been able to evolve.

It hasn't been a static kind of franchise.

That is what's great about it, for sure.

There's that Martin Luther King line...

"The arc of history bends toward justice."

I think for fans of this show, the arc of history bends towards "Star Trek," that we have this hope, this belief, that... things are getting better.

And that, yeah, we're probably not gonna, you know, run into guys with pointed ears out there.

But we will find a way to fix our problems and move out into the universe and believe in, you know, the... you know, the better angels of our nature and... and make the world a better place.

One thing about "Star Trek" that I've said before and I really believe it is it was the Beatles of 1960s TV.

And if you had to describe the Beatles, you would say it's magic.

And take any one of them out of that band, and it's not the Beatles.

Well, "Star Trek's" the same way from the same period.

I mean, take William Shatner out.

Take Leonard Nimoy out.

Take Rodenberry or co*n or Fontana out or Deforest Kelley, and you don't have it.

It's still gonna be good, but it's not gonna be what it is, and we wouldn't have what we have now 15 years later.

I think there's a lot of reasons why it endures so long.

You know, I think, um...

I think the biggest thing to me, in terms of its longevity and success, is that it is unique in that its portrayal of the future, the optimistic portrayal of the future, does kind of stand alone in pop culture.

The vast majority of science fiction pieces that take place in the future, you know, show us a dystopian future, a terrible future.

Here's the only real science fiction construct that I wanna go live in, you know, that I want to be part of.

I want to join that crew. I want to live that life.

I want to have those adventures with those people.

"Star Trek" has something to say about who we are as people, who we aspire to be, and it says that we will endure.

We will overcome all obstacles.

I think "Star Trek" will be around for a long, long time because it's a unique piece of science fiction in that it's optimistic.

"Star Trek" is optimistic.

It holds out the hope not that humans are gonna be somehow perfect in the future but things can get better.

I think "Star Trek" succeeded because a number of elements fell into place.

They had a great overall story.

They're modern-day pioneers where no man has gone before.

So it could be the Wild West.

It's the Wild West in space, really, led by a great captain and an incredible team.

And I think it's gone on for 50 years so far because it is a show about human interest and adventure and how far we will go to try to learn more and to expand our own worlds and our own minds.

And I think that's something that resonates with people 50 years ago, and it'll resonate with people 50 years from now.

And now, of course, J.J. has taken it to a whole other place.

Why "Star Trek" is still relevant is because of the paradigm that Gene Rodenberry came up with, the idea of unity, of humanity...

And other species, actually... working together.

There's an optimism to it that I think we've never needed more than now.

Well, it starts with the characters, you know.

I love the ensemble.

I love the idea that, you know, this group of people came together and through the shared journey, they become a family.

The sense of family that goes beyond blood.

And I also love every night there's a sense of discovery and exploration, you know, and that, to me, is the DNA of "Star Trek."

You know, I think "Star Trek's" enduring appeal is really because it presents a vision of humanity that is united and, particularly in this day and age, it's wonderful to have kind of a beacon of morality to see that, you know, maybe the dystopian future that you see in a lot of movies like the "Mad Max" movies and the "Blade Runner" movies is not gonna be our future.

Collectivism versus separatism, which is a big thing in today's society, you know.

About how we're better together.

And that was something that we felt obligated to do.

This is "Star Trek."

"Star Trek" has always spoken about who we are now.

And now it's, I guess, coming back on another network.

You know I'ma try to get on there, you know, just to see.

Because I try... You know, Guinan is everywhere all the time.

A majority of the "Star Trek" fans that I've met are proactive in making that vision of a better future a reality.

The "Star Trek" fans are the most unique people you've ever met.

They know your character.

They know every episode and what it meant and how it affected them.

If I were given the choice of any character ever portrayed on television...

That I could play any character I wanted...

I would choose Spock.

Well, people identified with us.

They identified with "Star Trek," they identified with the characters.

They were dressing in their own uniforms and their own costumes.

It resonated with that group of people that were kids, you know, and now they're young adults.

"Star Trek" created an umbrella for everybody else.

And then once we got in under the shade, we then said, "Oh, come. Come and join us."

That's what "Star Trek" did.

And that tent will continue to grow.

And it's now 30 years later for our show, when I'm talking to you, 50 years for the original show, and, I mean, it goes in waves, but people are still attached to, committed to, affected by, interested in this thing that Gene invented, and I was blessed enough to be part of.