Star Trek: To boldly go where no show has gone before

Source: Wikimedia Commons

T’arah Inam-McDermott reflects on a lifelong obsession with Star Trek, and how it has crafted the world we live in today.

Star Trek, originally airing in 1966, was borne out of the space race frenzy. The children brought up watchingStar Trek were the same ones who crammed in front of a small black and white screen, watching man’s first steps on the Moon. They dreamt of being in a world where Star Trek was real and, with space travel becoming increasingly possible, it seemed that their dream could come true. These people are adults now, and in some ways they are living in that world.

State-of-the-art technologies once dreamt up in Star Trek now exist, and are very much a part of our daily lives. For example, Lieutenant Commander Geordi LaForge used a Personal Access Data Device (PADD), which is a very similar device to what we now call tablet computers. Many other characters used it for watching videos and listening to music. The Communicator, another device found in the Star Trek universe, not only allowed for voice communication, but could also be used as an emergency signalling beacon. Martin Cooper, inventor of the hand held mobile phone, credits Star Trek as his inspiration. “That was not fantasy to us,” Cooper said, “that was an objective.”

Furthermore, there have been many people who have seen the show as an inspiration for the development of their own technologies. Ed Roberts, the founder of Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), invented the first home computer in 1975. Roberts gave a 20-year-old Bill Gates and a 22-year-old Paul Allen the job of writing software, Altair BASIC, for this computer, which eventually lead to the creation of Microsoft.Although many are familiar with this story, what most people do not know is that even the computer used to write this article originates from Robert’s Altair 8800, which was named after the Altair Solar System in a Star Trek episode. NASA even named its first space shuttle orbiter Enterprise after the show’s starship. State-of-the-art technologies once dreamt up in Star Trek now exist, and are very much a part of our daily lives.

Star Trek was also the beginning of the modern day fan culture. When the show originally aired it wasn’t as popular as you would think. Due to low ratings, NBC decided to cancel the show after the third season, which lead to the Star Trek fan base having to create a whole new way to celebrate and enjoy the show. As a result, the ‘Trekkie’ subculture blossomed, and fans of the show made their own magazines, fanfiction, songs and even homemade episodes.

Highly popular Star Trek conventions were also staged, where fans could meet the original actors and hear them talk about their work on the show. This may not seem strange to us, as nowadays we see this level of dedication to many shows, from Glee to Game of Thrones, with fan conventions such as Comic Con becoming almost mainstream. However, Star Trek was the first show which inspired this type of dedicated and active following, and is now considered the epitome of ‘nerd culture’. Even these conventions have played a part in turning science fiction into reality. In 2012, the Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize competition was announced at the Star Trek London convention. Teams had to create a handheld diagnostic advice, taking inspiration from the Tricorder Dr McCoy uses in the show, in order to win £6.2 million. Final Frontier Medical Devices and Dynamical Biomarkers Group both created successful devices which were capable of diagnosing over 10 disease states.

I myself was raised by Trekkies. Our shelves were piled high with Star Trek VHS tapes. I was desperate to rebel against my parents and escape the pull of the Starship Enterprise and her crew. I found the special effects (if they can even be called that) unbelievable; the painted polystyrene sets made me cringe, and let’s not even talk about the Shatnerian style of acting.

But, as the Borg would say, resistance is futile. I was hooked. Although the show’s visual style was of its time, the stories and characters were, on the contrary, far ahead. In defence of the show’s special effects, they improved drastically as the series developed. The original Star Trek used very primitive, but smart, ways of showing technology that had not yet developed. The automatic sliding doors seen in the show were not used at the time, except in lifts. On set, these were operated manually through pulley systems and the sound effect was ingeniously created by pulling a piece of paper out of an envelope.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, released in 1982 over 15 years after the first Star Trek episode, was significant in the history of special effects as it marked the first major use of computer graphics in a feature film. After that, the effects were improved even more with Star Trek: The Next Generation, released in 1987. At the time, most TV shows were shot on film. However, with The Next Generation, the footage was shot on film and then transferred to video tape. This meant new video-based visual effects could be used, speeding up the process of editing and adding after effects.

Star Trek is arguably one of the most influential shows to date, and not just for its impact on technology and for groundbreaking sci-fi. The show’s creator, Gene Roddenberry, presented a vision of the future where racial discrimination and prejudice were non-existent. The show had a diverse cast including an African American woman (Nichelle Nichols), a Japanese American (George Takei) and a Russian (Pavel Chekov). The latter was particularly striking, given the show was aired during the Cold War. These characters did not follow any obvious stereotypes, and possessed both power and intelligence. The first interracial kiss shown on TV, between Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura, was controversial at the time, but has greatly improved the acceptance of mixed-race couples both on TV and in real life. Even 50 years later, there are few shows today that can draw parallels to such progressive actions.

Many people fell in love with Roddenberry’s harmonious vision of the future, with its insistence on equality and lack of discrimination. The diverse casting of the show itself also inspired many. The actress Whoopi Goldberg, when she first saw Star Trek at age 9, said to her mother “There’s a black lady on the television and she ain’t no maid!”. Goldberg says that seeing Lieutenant Uhura, played by Nichols, on the bridge of the Enterprise inspired her to be an actress, and made her believe that she could obtain roles regardless of her race. In fact, Goldberg went on to play a regular role as Guinan, the mysterious bartender known for her helpful advice, onStar Trek: The Next Generation.

Growing up in a world with iPhones and computers, many of us may not grasp the truly groundbreaking nature of Star Trek. Even now, we are still simply scratching the surface of the technology they explored. Some of the more implausible ideas in the show were the use of warp drive and the teleporter. However, even though our technology hasn’t quite caught up with Roddenberry’s extensive imagination, the science may check out.Scientists in China have been able to beam photons 300 miles into space, from a ground station in Tibet, to China’s Micius satellite. This quantum transportation works by exploiting the effect of quantum entanglement, where a pair of particles share the same quantum state, and so any change to one will affect the other, even at large distances.

However, as the name suggests, quantum teleportation only works for quantum particles, and scientists currently do not know how to replicate this process using large objects such as humans. While this is not quite as impressive as the all-powerful Scotty, who could teleport the Enterprise crew from a planet back to the ship within seconds, it does inspire the possibility of usable teleportation technology in the near future.

Star Trek undoubtedly changed the world of science fiction and technology, as well as the lives of the individuals who it inspired. In an age of cutting-edge technology, and of movies with astonishing special effects, it’s easy to discount Star Trek as a long-forgotten relic of the past, especially for those who didn’t grow up with the Trekkie craze. However, it would be wrong to ignore the messages we can still take from the show, and there is still much to learn from it, both from technological and social perspectives. So, to all those fellow Trekkies out there: live long and prosper.