Facts which I know about Star Trek and its casts

PLAGERISM ALERT!: My contest entry has been copied in its entirety in THIS ENTRY. Please be on notice that I am, in fact, the original author of this blog entry. Proof? There's a spelling mistake in my disclaimer, which was duplicated.

Disclaimer: I'm not responsible for the bad grammar mistake in the title. It's a requirement for participating in a competition to win STAR TREK TICKETS! I will gladly sully my grammer for STAR TREK TICKETS!


This is my somewhat shameless bid to win Star Trek premiere tickets.

Facts I know about Star Trek and its cast.

(1) Contrary to popular belief, Captain James T Kirk is not the first captain to appear in a TV series. The first captain was Captain Christopher Pike, played by Jeffery Hunter, then Sean Kenney. The studios switched to Captain James T Kirk because they felt that the series needed "more action". Mild Spoiler Warning: Ironically, in the new movie, the man that convinced a young Kirk to sign up with Starfleet is none other than Christopher Pike.

(2) The "T" in James T Kirk stands for "Tiberius".

(3) Mild Spoiler Warning: The latest Star Trek movie represents a soft "reboot" of the series, because it actually happens in another "timeline" from the original series. The villian of this series, played by Eric Bana, travels in time to take his revenge on a younger Kirk. That explains the reason why the trailer has Eric Bana saying "James T Kirk was a great man, but that was another life."

(4) Mild Spoiler Warning Cont'd: This also explains Leonard Nimoy's guest star appearance in this movie - he plays an older Spock from an alternate timeline.

(5) Speaking of Leonard Nimoy, he's written two autobiographies about his time as Spock, entitled respectively, "I am not Spock" and "I am Spock". Go figure.

(6) There are massive homages paid to Star Trek on the series "Heroes". For one, George Takei, who played Sulu in the original series, plays Hiro Nakamura's father in "Heroes". The homage was made even more obvious when George Takei is seen driving off in a car that bears the license plate "NCC-1701". "NCC-1701" is the starship designation of the original Enterprise.

(7) Of course, Zachary Quinto, who plays Sylar, is now the new movie's Spock.

(8) More facts about George Takei - he's homosexual, out of the closet, and one of the first few men to get his domestic partnership registered as an actual marriage in California before Proposition 8 kicked in. You would never have figured seeing this photo.



(9) Memory Alpha, the famous(?) wiki on all things Star Trek, is named after the planetoid containing the sum total of the knowledge and culture of all Federation members. I used this reference only once during the composition of this and that was to find out the episode Khan Noonien Singh first appeared.

(10) The original series of Star Trek featured the first interracial kiss shown on TV. The kiss was between William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols, playing Kirk and Uhura respectively. It was a big deal back then.

BONUS!

(11) The plot of "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" was actually the continuation of an episode from the Original Series "Space Seed". In that episode, Kirk convinces Khan Noonien Singh to settle on a marginally inhabited planet, not knowing that the planet eventually becomes unstable. Khan loses his wife to that planet, and blames Kirk for her death - which is the motivation for his actions in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan".

(12) Speaking of grammar mistakes, "To boldly go where no man has gone before" is a grammatical mistake when the Original Series was first telecast, because it splits an infinitive. It's now grammatical correct because the rules on split infinitives have been changed.

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I can probably get the list up to 50 or even 100 if I wanted to, but I think this would suffice. As can be seen I am a massive Star Trek geek (even though I missed "Voyager" and "Enterprise").

I want to watch this movie bad. As a lover of Trek, I am excited about this reinterpretation of Kirk and Spock - showing them as younger, less skilled but no less idealistic and courageous members of Starfleet. It's like watching Daniel Craig as James Bond - the fact that they are vulnerable and young does not detract from their heroism. Rather, it showcases how much more heroic they are.

I've always loved how Star Trek reflected the mood of the times. This is a prime example. We no longer want our heroes invincible. We want them flawed. We want them emotionally vulnerable. We want them human.

Most of all, we want them being heroes, because they remind us even ordinary men can be heroes.

Remember guys! Catch Star Trek in cinemas on May 7!