Practice your Vulcan salute, ladies and gentlemen; Star Trek is set to return to the small screen! Following the success of the rebooted films, CBS have announced that a new Star Trek series will be taking to the stars in January 2017 on their on-demand platform, CBS All Access. This means that American viewers will need to pay a fee and watch online; however CBS said that the new series “will also be distributed concurrently for television and multiple platforms around the world by CBS Studios International” – so we might get lucky over here!
So, to celebrate, here are some facts about Star Trek you probably don’t know – unless, of course, you’re one of the Federation’s finest.
Four episodes were banned in the UK.
Four episodes of the original series were banned in the UK; one was shown in 1970, but prompted complaints which led to the others being withheld. They weren’t officially broadcast until Sky sub-licensed the series in 1990. The episodes in question are “Miri”, “Plato’s Stepchildren,” “The Empath,” and “Whom Gods Destroy”.
But this wasn’t actually the first inter-racial kiss on TV.
At NBC’s insistence, they filmed a version without the kiss, but William Shatner was determined that the kiss should happen, so purposefully flubbed the alternate scene.
The Klingon language was invented by Scotty…
Yes, it was James Doohan who kicked off the Klingon language, coming up with the basic sound and a few words. It was then taken on by linguist Marc Okrand, and now includes vital phrases like nuqDaq yuch Dapol? (Where do you keep the chocolate?)
It’s been used to stage an opera…
It was called ‘u’ and it was first staged at the Zeebelt Theater in The Hague. It’s based on the legend of Kahless the Unforgettable, an important figure in Klingon history.
And to perform Shakespeare.
In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, he says “An ancestor of mine maintained that when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
This is, of course, a dictum attributed to Holmes in The Sign of Four, published back in 1890.
The first film was made ten years after the original series ended.
Patrick Stewart didn’t expect The Next Generation to succeed.
It’s said he didn’t unpack his suitcases for the first six weeks of filming, because he expected it to be a failure – everyone he spoke to, including his agent, said so.
Stephen Hawking played himself in an episode.
The original series had 79 episodes; both Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space 9 had 176, while Voyager ran a little shorter at 172. Prequel series Enterprise ran to 98 episodes. If you want to watch them all, you’d best put at least a month aside!
The inventor of the warp drive should be born in about 20 years.
While Back to the Future may be in the past now, Star Trek is still the future – for a while. Zefram Cochrane should be born in the 2030s; in 2063 he’ll launch the Phoenix on a test warp flight and catch the attention of the Vulcans. Well, we have to hope!
And no, Kirk never said “Beam Me Up Scotty”.
The closest he ever came was “Scotty, beam me up.” But if you search the more iconic phrase on YouTube, you’ll see the results beam in to the page!
Here at Cheap TVs, we may not have perfected replicator technology, but we do have our own ways of getting great cheap TVs into your hands – giving you plenty of time for that month-long marathon. For more information, call us on 0121 327 3273. In the meantime, live long and prosper!
