by Emily Maesar, Staff Writer

It would be unfair to say that the reason Gene Roddenberry and company had to make a second pilot for Star Trek is because the executives didn’t like “The Cage.” They actually loved it. When they screened it for the NBC suits in New York, including Mort Werner, the VP of Television Programming, they were so enraptured by the presentation that they, “really believed these people were out there in deep space in a starship.” At least according to Herb Solow, the VP of Desilu Studios, who’d produced the pilot.

In fact, the pilot was loved and highly celebrated every single time it was screened. However, NBC still passed. They thought it was both “the most fantastic thing” they’d ever seen and also entirely “too cerebral.” Not that they didn’t have specific concerns, though. Mr. Spock, for instance, was the subject of many studio notes. Roddenberry noted that they were “nervous about Spock as a character.” They told him, “We have a big religious group in this country, and those pointed ears look too much like the devil.” Which was, of course, part of the appeal, as Gene would later expound upon. 

As the series went on, even after the reworking of the pilot and general makeup of the crew, it became obvious that Mr. Spock’s appeal was two-fold - both of which were laid out by Roddenberry pretty clearly. First, Spock represents the humanizing of the alien. “My own idea on that was, in a very real sense, we are all aliens on a strange planet.” Second, and much less nebulously, women love Spock. “Also, there’s another little side of Spock, just a hint or suggestion, that pulls toward evil, á la Eve, the snake, and the apple. I therefore felt his slightly satanic appearance would have a great female attraction.” And it’s astounding to me that Roddenberry was able to make such a dialed-in assessment, before the series had even aired. (To be fair, he was proven immediately correct when the women who visited the set during the filming of the original pilot were completely enamored by Mr. Spock.) And it would be women’s love affair with Mr. Spock that would push Leonard Nimoy’s character into the bright spotlight of the series, over the next 50+ years. 

It’s also unfair to say that they had to make a second pilot. Basically unheard of, even today, it was ultimately an honor that NBC loved the original so much they were willing to see more. An honor that came at great monetary expense, I might add. Collectively, between the two pilots, the budgets are estimated at around $930,000. But that’s in 1965 money. In 2022, it’s roughly $8.3 million. Which… yeah, that’s a lot for two pilots, especially since most of that was spent on the, technically failed, first one. And listen, there are many more expensive pilots - but they were all made in the last 15 years or so. Star Trek was an absolute anomaly of a thing. 

One of the big changes, though, other than the creation of James T. Kirk (which is, obviously, a pretty huge one) was the deletion of Number One. Played by Majel Barrett (who would later play the supremely wonderful Nurse Christine Chapel), Number One was Christopher Pike’s first officer. Which ended up being one of the big studio notes. A woman having that much power seemed too far fetched to the men making all the decisions. Roddenberry realized that, despite Star Trek taking place in the 23rd century, it was still being viewed by a 20th century audience. So, while he didn’t want the Enterprise to have an “all-white, Protestant, Caucasian crew,” he realized he’d have to play ball with the three leads - Captain, First Lieutenant, and Chief Medical Office. “I decided to wait for a 23rd century audience before I went that far again.” Which was true. There wouldn’t be a woman captaining a starship, and leading a series, in the franchise until after Gene’s death with 1995’s Star Trek: Voyager. (Side note: At some point I want to have a big, long, conversation about William Shatner’s treatment of Kate Mulgrew in his documentary, The Captains. It’s bad and I have a lot of feelings about it!)

Now, during the creation and airing of the first season of The Original Series, which took place over a solid two-and-a-half year span, there were quite a few historical events. There was the active Vietnam War, of course, and the trappings of American life and ideas of the military that brings with it. A passionate argument could be made that the late introduction of a centralized government and authority in the first season (aka, Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets) was, in part, a way to distance Star Trek, as a clearly Navy-type military story, from the American government and active war machine of its time. Although it’s just as likely, probably more so, that they simply hadn’t figured out all the granular details yet. I mean, Spock calls himself a Vulcanian, rather than just a “Vulcan” when talking about him and his culture. Some things just aren’t sorted for a while, you know?

The time between 1964 and 1967 saw lots of social and racial unrest in the culture that Star Trek was being born into. During the first season is when the famous story about Martin Luther King, Jr. convincing Nichelle Nichols to stay on the series takes place - the one where he told her not to leave the show because of what being a Black woman on TV meant. Additionally, this was when some of the major advancements in space exploration and humanity’s entry into the Final Frontier started in earnest. Alexei Lenonov, a Russian cosmonaut, became the first person to walk in space during this time - quickly followed by American astronauts. So, while Pavel Chekov didn’t get introduced into the series until season two, the importance of having a Russian character on the series during the Cold War and the Space Race was deeply important on a cultural level. Something I’m sure I’ll talk about, at length, next month. 

But let’s move into some specifics about the first season of Star Trek: The Original Series! There’s a lot going on, especially by way of Very Important™ things in the lore and history of the franchise. It’s got the first Romulans, the first Klingons, and Kirk’s great nemesis: Khan. 

Romulans give us some nice world building with the Neutral Zone, some ideas about how they might relate to Vulcans (something later expounded upon all the way up to the reboot franchise), and some general military intelligence from our crew. The Klingons act similarly, later in the season, and it’s interesting that these are the two alien species from The Original Series that get to reprise their roles in such sharp and interesting ways. I mean, the Klingon Empire is one of the biggest forces against the Federation for most (if not all) of the run of the original crew. They’ve only just come into the fold during The Next Generation. But, they also hadn’t quite ironed out what the Klingons looked like yet. There are no classic forehead ridges. Instead specifically shaped facial hair does a lot of the heavy lifting - like with most of the recurring aliens. 

Not to mention the darkening of their skin. Which. Okay. We’ve gotta talk about it. Because it happens with Khan, too. It was not uncommon for shows at the time to participate in brown face, which is, in no uncertain terms, fucking archaic and racist. And Star Trek can often, especially in TOS, toe the line of trying to be so progressive that you tumble backwards into bigotry. Like, sometimes you’re just externalizing the racism and sexism of the time, you know? Tropes like the “Noble Savage” and whatever the fuck the idea of Orion slave girls wanting it falls into were visible from jump. The series is worse for them and, half a century later, we have to internalize the mistakes of the past and do better. Something Star Trek, as a franchise, has actively done. 

But, outside of that, we’ve gotta talk about Khan. Played by the magnanimous Ricardo Montalban, we’re introduced to the character in the episode “Space Seed,” and boy does he pack a punch. Between the new historical knowledge of the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s and his general magnetism, Khan Noonien Singh is a force to be reckoned with. He also stands as one of the great foils to our Captain Kirk, a fact that will serve his return in the second Star Trek film quite well. The episode, and Khan himself, also speak to the complicated nature that people (though specifically white men in power, I’d argue) have with powerful tyrants. They respect Khan for his leadership and capabilities, much to Mr. Spock’s confusion. I think it’s notable that the episode was co-written (with a solo story by credit) by Carey Wilber, one of the few women who wrote on the first season. Mr. Spock, written by Wilber, allows a perspective outside of the white men who might otherwise celebrate Kirk, McCoy, and Scotty’s respect for Khan’s past - rather than find it odd. 

Also, hi. We need to talk about what the Eugenics Wars means for the in-universe history of Starfleet, the United Federation of Planets, and the world our heroes exist in. Like, there’s a lot to say about how art seemingly never advanced past a certain point in the Star Trek universe, something I’ll talk more about during TNG, but there’s also the ramifications of the kinds of historical events that would traumatize an entire species. We’re about to hit the in-universe year for the start of World War III, for instance. (2026 and it was also a eugenics thing. FUN!) 

But it’s not like they’ve moved past the eugenics of it all, even in the 23rd century. My favorite Star Trek storyline for the original crew is a eugenics story. “The Conscience of the King” has, at least in my very strong opinion, some of the most fertile ground for storytelling when it comes to James Kirk. However, it’s also a powerful stepping stone for talking about the kind of darkness that the supposed utopia of the future still has lurking under its surface. 

So, let’s talk Tarsus IV. When Jim Kirk was a young man, he was one of the survivors of the genocide of the colony Tarsus IV. He was also one of the few people to see, and therefore know, the face of the man responsible: Kodos the Executioner. The governor of Tarsus IV during a food shortage, he used his eugenics beliefs to order the deaths of half the colony. Some 8,000 people were killed when he called martial law and enacted a bloody massacre. 

Which… okay. That’s a lot. And it’s a lot of trauma that is so utterly unused for Kirk that I will be screaming at the rafters to let me write a Tarsus IV story until I die. However, what Tarsus IV tells us about the utopian future is that there is no such thing as a true utopia. It’s an episode that, more than most in the first season, shows the cracks in the veneer of a perfect future.

So, season one ends in April of 1967, having aired 29 episodes. Critics and audiences loved it. The fan support was starting to show up in a big way (which would later allow the show to get a third season). But it was also getting nominated for Emmys and Hugo Awards (though it never ended up winning any of the Emmys). In 1967, Star Trek was nominated for Art Direction, Cinematography, Sound Editing, Dramatic Series, and Supporting Actor in a Drama for Leonard Nimoy. (Nimoy would be nominated every year after, as well!) But, more importantly to Roddenberry, they did win some Hugo Awards, which are the premiere awards for genre media. They tend to focus on literary achievements, but do recognize television, film, and even online video. 

The recognition of the episode “The Menagerie” for Best Dramatic Presentation is extremely notable and vindicating for the time, effort, and money that went into “The Cage.” It is, afterall, a two-part episode (extremely rare in this time) that utilizes most of the footage from the original pilot. It’s also worth noting that of the five nominations in the categories that year, three of them were episodes of Star Trek (“The Menagerie,” “The Corbomite Maneuver,” and “The Naked Time.”) The following year would see the category filled with only episodes of Star Trek. The winner of Best Dramatic Presentation in 1968 was an episode of season one, which aired later than the entry date for the year previous: Harlan Ellison’s episode, “The City on the Edge of Forever.”

And it is with that vindication that Gene Roddenberry and company carried on making their “Wagon Train to the stars,” which had a solid world slowly growing up around it. Points of fictional history that would lead the series ever forward, even in the episodic time of television. But when thousands of devoted fans write to the network because they’re afraid of the series being canceled? There’s something particularly special. Something that will lead to the future of modern fandom as we know it. A subject for next month, as we move into season two of The Original Series and Star Trek fanzines are born!