Star Trek

by Lorna, January 2001

Write a one page summary of Star Trek... well that shouldn't be difficult. I mean there's only 30 years of so of history. (sigh). Well, here goes....

The first Star Trek episode was aired in 1966, created by Gene Roddenberry he planned the series as a Western set in Space, his particularly cheesy phrase was "A wagon train to the stars". 35 years later there have been four series, nine films, hundreds of books, thousands of items of tacky merchandise and another series and film in planning. Although Gene Roddenberry died in 1991 the series have continued to grow in popularity and apparently there isn't a minute goes by without an episode being on tv in a country somewhere in the world.

Star Trek is set in the 22nd to 24th centuries and is centred around Starfleet and the Federation. The Federation is a kinda intergalactic UN, made up of hundreds of different worlds and races, it's headquarters are on Earth and the humans seem to play a central role (cheaper on the make-up front I guess). Starfleet is the military and exploration branch of the Federation, it has a large fleet of starships, space stations, research posts on planets etc etc. In the original series the emphasis was slightly more on the military aspect. However by the later series the Federation seems to have befriended a lot of their previous enemies and be concentrating on the 'boldly going where no one has gone before' bit.

Star Trek - Original Series (ST:TOS)

The original Star Trek series ran between 1966 and 1969 for three seasons and 78 episodes. It featured the original Enterprise under the command of Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner)

Star Trek - The Next Generation (ST:TNG)

This series really did go where few had gone before - a successful spin off series. It ran from 1987-1994 for seven seasons and 178 episodes, becoming the highest rated syndicated drama series on television. Set about a century after ST:TOS aboard the much larger Enterprise D, the series continued in much the same theme, with notable changes including a more diplomatically inclined Captain and families.

Star Trek - Deep Space Nine (ST:DS9)

The third series was set at the same time as ST:TNG and it's production (1992-99) overlapped and meant occasional character overlap. DS9 was a darker series, set aboard a Space Station near a wormhole to the other side of the galaxy. Political tensions abound and from about the 4th season the writers developed an ongoing story (arc) involving the invasion of the Federation.

Star Trek - Voyager (ST:Voy)

The fourth series began in 1995 and wrapped last year at the end of it's seventh season. The action returns to a space ship, but due to an interfering alien they are stranded in the delta quadrant, 75 years or so from home. The surviving crew of the USS Voyager are joined by the crew of a ship they were sent to capture and the two crews have to function as one.

Enterprise (Ent)

The current series premiered last September and is now in its second season. Set in the 22nd century the Enterprise is one of the first starships and it's crew has very little idea what is going on. This prequel series is the first to not have star trek in it's title and stars Scott Bakula (of Quantum Leap fame) as Captain Archer.

Films

There have been nine films so far, with a tenth in production. The general guide is that even numbered films are much better than the odd numbered ones. Films 1-6 are based on the original series and crew, film 7 mainly features the TNG cast with a couple of guest stars from the original and films 8 onwards are solely TNG.
I The Motion Picture (1979) - A strange alien thingy is threatening to destroy Earth and the Enterprise dashes to the rescue. A fairly dull movie, many gratuitous "look at our pretty model" shots and a deathly dull plot.
II The Wrath of Khan (1982) - Frequently considered the best ST film. Khan is Kirk's nemesis, the villain that nearly beats him. The effects still look good, the acting and scripting is superb, the score is brilliant. If you only see one ST movie, see this one!
III The Search for Spock (1984) - Something of a let down after II. Spock had heroically sacrificed himself in the previous film. But you can't keep a good Vulcan down, and he comes back to life.
IV - The Voyage Home (1986) - The Enterprise crew need a whale as some aliens have come looking for them on Earth and they're all extinct. So the crew trundle back to 1980s LA to steal one. Some humorous moments (such as Russian Chekov asking a US policeman where they keep the "nuclear wessles"), but some cringey ecological scenes too.
V - The Final Frontier (1989) - A real low point, Spock's half brother hijacks the Enterprise to go and find God. Quite frankly the less said the better.
VI - The Undiscovered Country (1991) - The last original series film, sees the crew preparing for retirement and the Klingon's and the Federation preparing for peace. After a small hiccup involving assassinations, trials, prison planets and space battles, all is well.
(They usually stop referring to them as numbers at this point, but it makes referencing easier) VII - Star Trek Generations (1994) - The film starts with the commissioning of the Enterprise B with honoured guests Kirk, Scotty and Chekov, although it all goes a bit pear shaped and Kirk ends up dying. We then jump to the TNG crew and ship head out to prevent the evil Dr Soran from destroying a planet. In the process of which they find Kirk alive in a space wibbly thing, but then he dies again. And they crash land the ship on a planet, insurance write off, wheel out the Enterprise E.
VIII - First Contact (1996) - The crew have to go back to 21st century Earth to prevent the Borg (big bad mechanical baddies) from changing history and preventing Earth's first meeting with aliens.
IX - Insurrection (1998) - The crew must prevent some evil people from destroying a planet in the search for eternal youth. Not much happens, Picard finds himself an older woman and they manage to not seriously damage the ship. X - Nemesis (2002) - The new film will be out in the new year in the UK and will feature the Romulans. Billed as the "last mission for a generation".

Races

There are several important races who deserve a further mention.
Humans - seem to play a pretty central role in the universe
Vulcans -The logical thinkers, always have a smug 'that is not logical' comment on everyone else's matters. Pointy eared, ability to read minds if they think about it and all round smart arses.
Klingons - The enemy in the Original Series, but made peace eventually and were sort of allies. A warrior race with a long history, concerned with honour and valour. Kinda Spartan, they're the ones with the wrinkly foreheads.
Romulans - More pointy eared folks, these guys are the sneaky espionage types and don't tend to pop up that often.
Borg - a creepy bunch of people, they assimilate people from lots of different races, attach mechanical bits to them, plug them into a hive mind and go around in big cube ships trying to assimilate more people.
Dominion - A race introduced in Deep Space Nine. They're the gamma quadrant equivalent of the Federation, but they wanna take over the universe. They're led by the Founders, shapeshifters who are treated as gods by the rest of them. The soldiers are the Jem'Hadar, genetically engineered to fight and be dependant on the Founders.

Books

There are a lot of Star Trek books out there, both novelisations of the episodes and original stories. There are about 150 ST:TOS, 60 ST:TNG, 40 ST:DS9 and 30 ST:Voy books. Some of them are really bad, some of them are brilliant, there are lots in between. The icsf library holds a pretty good selection of the better ones. I might be persuaded to write a brief review of my collection (fairly extensive I'm afraid) if people are interested.

Links

Just a couple of links to get you started. For more results search the links database for Star Trek.

 Official Star Trek Site

Link submitted by Sulkyblue on 2002-04-10

Contents include - Images, Synopses, Reviews, People, News

Subjects include - Star Trek: Deep Space 9, Enterprise, Star Trek - General, Star Trek: TNG, Star Trek: Voyager

There's a lot of information on this site about all genres of star trek. There are extensive encyclopedia's of races and ships with quite a few images. The synopses are comprehensive with a number of screen shots. There's plenty of news about the shows, cast and crew past and present and as it's an official site it's all only confirmed stuff, for better or worse.
It looks like a trek site should do, the computer like interface etc. With any site this big the structure is pretty horrific and the cross linking isn't always what it could be. But once you get the hang of it, it's not too bad.

 Trek Today

Link submitted by Sulkyblue on 2002-04-18

Contents include - Information, Synopses, Reviews, Spoilers, News

Subjects include - Star Trek: TNG, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Deep Space 9, Enterprise, Star Trek - General

Part of Treknation, this is the best source of star trek news there is. If anything happens which involves star trek, or a star trek alumni, it's freatured here, usually within a few minutes of it happening. The news stories are well written and link to a range of sources. There's extensive information on new Enterprise episodes.
Straightforward and simple, you can even get a selection of headlines for your own site.

 Mediatrek.Com

Link submitted by Sulkyblue on 2002-09-05

Contents include - News

Subjects include - Star Trek: TNG, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Deep Space 9, Enterprise, Star Trek - General

A great resource for star trek clips and footage. Most of the files they have are the official promo's shown by stations, but there are also a lot of interviews and features from chat shows and entertainment news shows.
Pretty usuable athough you can get a little lost in it sometimes. The download bandwidth is good, and although the clips aren't amazing quality they're good enough that you can see what's going on without being huge files.

This site seems to have shut down due to demands on the webmasters time and issues with bandwidth costs. A real shame to lose this resource. I won't delete the link yet in case it's resurrected.

 The Great Link

Link submitted by Sulkyblue on 2002-09-09

Contents include - Bulletin Board/forum, Information, Reviews, News

Subjects include - Star Trek: TNG, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Deep Space 9, Enterprise, Star Trek - General

A UK based site for Star Trek information, news and reviews. They include extracts from interviews from magazines like TV Zone. There's also extensive information on the Dominian and Founders of DS9. Although Star Trek is at the centre, there's also other sf news as well.
The site looks 'busy' but is usable once you work out where you're going. News etc are available as weekly e-mail digests and can even be accessed via WAP!

 Trek bbs

Link submitted by Sulkyblue on 2002-10-15

Contents include - Bulletin Board/forum, Reviews, Spoilers, News

Subjects include - Books, Comics, Movie Site, Star Trek - General, TV Show, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Star Trek: Deep Space 9, Enterprise, Fandom, Star Trek: TNG, Star Trek: Voyager

This is the biggest star trek bulletin page in existance and is part of the Trek Nation system. It's well moderated and is usually very friendly. The boards are broken up into different trek shows, books, websites, fanfiction and technology. There are also threads for general science fiction and miscellaneous chats. A great source of info and friendly bantering, wave at sulkyblue if you spot her
Pretty fast, threads are closed when they get to big. It's very easy to start and theirs an FAQ to guide newbies. The different areas of the board are well defined so everything is nicely sorted.