FAQ for
"Star Trek" (1966) More at IMDbPro »

"TOS" is an abbreviation for "The Original Series". It is used by fans to diffferentiate between this series and any of the others (TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT).

The original shooting model of the U.S.S. Enterprise measures 11 feet long, 5 feet wide, and 32 inches tall, weighing in at about 200 pounds. It is currently on display at the gift shop of the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C.

The model of the U.S.S. Enterprise was designed by Walter M. "Matt" Jeffries. Nearly all Federation ships featured throughout "Star Trek" are based on this model. The crawl spaces on ships were named "Jeffries Tubes" in his honor.

Desilu was a production company owned by Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. By the time "Star Trek" and "Mission: Impossible" went into production in 1966, Ms. Ball was the sole owner of the studio. A year later, Paramount bought out Desilu, but Desilu was allowed to continue using their name as long as their shows were in production.

Not every episode ends with Desilu. From "The Immunity Syndrome" through the end of the series, episodes end with the Paramount logo.

A black and white print of "The Cage" was screened by Gene Roddenberry in September, 1966 on the "World Science Fiction Convention" along with "Where No Man Has Gone Before."

In the 1980s a half black-and-white half color print was made available on VHS tape edited together from "The Menagerie" and a black and white print of "The Cage".

An original, full-color negative was found in the Paramount archives in 1988 (some fans speculate that they simply colorized the black-and-white print, but it seems unlikely). This print - and the full pilot itself - first aired in the United States as part of a special during the strike-shortened second season of "Star Trek: The Next Generation," in October 1988. The first scheduled airing of the episode in the U.S. was on the Sci-Fi Channel in 1998.

Season 1: Thursdays, 8:30 - 9:30pm. Season 2: Fridays, 8:30 - 9:30pm. Season 3: Fridays, 10:00 - 11:00pm. All times are Eastern/Pacific. (NBC aired 12 or 13 third season episodes during the summer of 1969 on Tuesdays at 7:30 - 8:30, replacing "The Jerry Lewis Show," a variety show. Most of them were third season repeats, but "Turnabout Intruder" had its first run in that time slot, on June 3, 1969.)

No. "Star Trek" had no predetermined ending point. (Captain Kirk makes reference to a "five-year mission" in the introduction, but the show was not intended to stop after five seasons either.)

"Star Trek" was nearly canceled during both the first and second seasons. A very creative and aggressive letter-writing campaign to NBC was enough to save the series for a third season.

But the show was now scheduled in the Friday night 10-11 "suicide" slot. The slot was particularly bad for "Star Trek," whose typical fan would be going out on Friday night. (VCRs, of course, were not around in the late 60s.) After the third season, "Star Trek" was finally canceled.

Roddenberry promised that he would return to Producer status which he held in the first two pilots and the first nine regular episodes, if NBC puts the show to a decent, 7:30PM timeslot. However when NBC put Trek into the "suicide" slot of 10PM Fridays, he stepped off and had very little control over the series during the third season.

According to William Shatner's book "Star Trek Memories," the campaign originated when Bjo and John Trimble approached Gene Roddenberry, and they asked him for ideas on how to reach other fans of the show (The Internet did not exist in those days, so it had to be letters, phone calls, and face-to-face contact). As a token for their efforts, Bjo Trimble had a walk-on role in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). Fans of the show to this day regard the couple as the ones who saved "Star Trek."

Though science-fiction conventions had been around long before "Star Trek" entered the scene (Gene Roddenberry premiered two episodes at a sci-fi convention), the first convention devoted to "Star Trek" took place in New York City, in 1972.

Both were made up on the set by Leonard Nimoy. In the script of "The Enemy Within" Spock disabled the duplicate Kirk by pistol whipping him. Nimoy felt that it would be too "savage" and unsuitable for such a logical individual as Spock. He asked the director if he could improvise his own idea. He said yes, and Nimoy choreographed the now-famous neck pinch with Shatner for the episode. The Vulcan hand salute was improvised by Nimoy on the set of "Amok Time." As a child, his religious Jewish parents often took Nimoy to the local synagogue where he had seen people making this hand gesture while saying prayers--a handsign done with both hands by the descendants of Aaron (called cohen, plural cohanim) when the congregation of a Jewish synagogue is being blessed with the "May the Lord bless you and keep you." This inspired Nimoy to create the Vulcan hand salute.