With the ongoing story of the Federation of Planets and at least a couple of ships named
Enterprise, the Star Trek franchise has inspired generations of die-hard fans.
There are still a few persistent myths that the crew just can’t seem to shake, though,
so here are some of the false “facts” that you’ve been believing about Star Trek.
During the first season of Star Trek: Discovery, a minor scandal broke out when actor Jason
Isaacs admitted he was told not to ad-lib a particular swear word - not because of the
profanity, but because it included the word "god."
Star Trek has long promoted a humanist and non-religious view of the future, with spirituality
usually left to the aliens, and religious figures like God and the Devil often used
as tricks by the bad guys.
“Excuse me, I’d just like to ask a question?
What does God need with a starship?”
Trek producer Brannon Braga once said that creator Gene Roddenberry handed down an edict
to the show’s writing staff, saying that,
“Religion and superstition and mystical thinking were not to be part of his universe.”
The show is clearly meant to take place in a future based on atheism and secular humanism,
but in practice, that’s not exactly the case.
While Picard wasn't walking around with a giant crucifix around his neck, human religion
has been a bit more present in Star Trek than is popularly thought.
We see the Enterprise’s chapel on the Original Series episode "Balance of Terror," and Star
Trek: Generations includes a celebration of Christmas, so some version of Christianity
certainly seems to have survived to the 23rd century.
Uhura even directly references Christianity as being impossible to ridicule in “Bread
and Circuses,” when the crew encounters a technologically advanced Roman Empire who
have “Sun Worshippers” broadcasting on pirate radio.
“Well, don’t you understand?
It’s not the sun up in the sky.
It’s the Son of God.”
That’s a lot of love for the Lord on the supposedly atheist show.
A lot of Star Trek fans think The Next Generation started from scratch, picking up almost 20
years after the end of the original show with a collection of brand new characters completely
removed from the classic series.
For the most part, that’s true, especially with regards to the idea of adding a prune-juice
loving Klingon -
“A warrior’s drink.”
- to a crew commanded by a brooding, Shakespeare-quoting Captain Picard.
"My love is a fever, longing still for that which longer nurseth the disease."
But before The Next Generation hit the airwaves in 1987, there was another attempt at reviving
Star Trek, and it included the blueprints for a few key characters.
In 1977, a TV project called Star Trek: Phase II almost made it to production.
Sets were built, actors cast, and over a dozen scripts written.
When producers decided it would work better as a feature film, however the project was
scrapped, and pieces of it were repurposed.
Alan Dean Foster’s pilot script was retooled into Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Two of Phase II’s characters, the debonair Commander Decker, and his former love, the
exotic alien Ilia, made their way into the film.
But a third new character, the emotionless Vulcan Xon, didn't make the same jump to the
big screen.
When all three of those characters were jettisoned from future movies, the Trek team decided
to tweak them again for the small screen.
Xon was transformed from a Vulcan learning to be more human into Data, an android with
the same dream, and Decker and Ilia were reimagined as Commander Riker and Counselor Troi, with
the same basic backstory and personalities.
Even a few of those Phase II scripts were pulled out of the mothballs during the 1988
writers’ strike for some second-season episodes of Next Generation, including the one where
Troi was impregnated by a ball of light.
Maybe it’s a good thing that we never got to see more of Phase II.
Star Trek has always tried its hardest to promote equality, and considering that Martin
Luther King Jr. was a fan, they were clearly doing something right.
When it came to equality, the show always had good intentions, but implementing them
was another matter, and the show's lofty ideals ran into the reality of real-world bigotry
right from the beginning.
The show’s original pilot, which saw a woman serving as the Enterprise's first officer,
also saw the captain complaining about his female crewmates.
“It’s just that I can’t get used to having a woman on the bridge.”
Then there's the infamous Next Generation episode "Code of Honor,” which is often
regarded as one of the worst Star Trek episodes of all time.
It managed to be both racist and sexist at the same time, telling the story of an aliens
who, as Screenprism put it,
"...speak in thick African accents, dress in stereotypical tribal garb, and are ruled
by appetites like ancient barbarians.”
And they also kidnap the blonde, caucasian Lieutenant Tasha Yar.
In fact, the director of the episode was fired halfway through filming for his uncomfortably
racist choices.
And that’s not the only episode of TNG explicitly based on racial stereotypes, either.
And then there's the long, drawn-out debate about including LGBTQ characters in the Trek
universe.
Trek writer Ronald D. Moore has been candid about the franchise's handling of the topic,
saying, quote, "we've just failed at it."
Thankfully, Discovery has finally included a gay couple as key members of the ship's
crew, helping to fix an oversight that's long vexed the franchise.
Gene Roddenberry, the visionary behind all things Star Trek, had a very specific edict
for the characters on his shows.
He was creating a utopian future in which humans have achieved peace and conflict will
be a thing of the past.
An admirable goal for humanity, sure, but for a room of TV writers it was a living nightmare.
How do you write drama without conflict?
Well, it turns out you can't.
While the conflict-free decree did allow for the more allegorical storytelling style that
the franchise has always been famous for, the writers still managed to sneak in a fight
here and there.
Why else do you think the crew got possessed by alien gods and mating hormones so often?
As long as the personal beefs were the result of some outside force causing trouble with
the crew, Roddenberry would look the other way.
When he passed away in 1991, the writers behind the many Star Trek series began to loosen
the reins.
Deep Space Nine was filled with internal conflict and an all-out war, and incorporating a group
of former terrorists gave the main ensemble of Voyager the flexibility to create conflict
on a weekly basis.
By the time Discovery rolled around, the crew members were at each other's throats.
From a deceitful captain to a key character leading a mutiny, the famous no-conflict rule
became a relic of the past, if it was ever truly followed to begin with.
Everyone knows that on The Original Series, if you wore a red shirt, you were going to
die.
The crew was always beaming down to some god-forsaken planet where an unforeseen danger would make
itself known by killing off a hapless, no-name crimson-cloaked officer.
They were the cannon fodder of the Star Trek universe, just anonymous enough to make us
feel bad without their deaths at the hands of alien blobs really mattering.
But would it surprise you to learn that these cardinal-hued crewmen weren't actually the
most likely to die?
While it's true that redshirts did represent a whopping 73% of the total deaths over the
series' 79 episodes, something surprising pops out once you start running the numbers.
There were 430 crewmen aboard the Enterprise, 239 of them dressed in red.
According to research done by Significance Magazine, even though redshirts die pretty
often in the show, when you look at the total population, the fact that they make up over
half the crew means they’re statistically much less likely to die than their crewmates
in gold.
Their finding?
"Only 10% of the entire Redshirt population was lost during the three-year run of Star
Trek.
This is less than the 13.4% of Goldshirts."
So, if you're looking to make it through that five-year mission unscathed, suiting up in
a red isn’t exactly a bad bet by the numbers - especially if you make yourself busy when
they’re handing out assignments for the Away Teams.
You might want to make it blue just to be sure though.
Speaking of the uniform colors, any fan of The Original Series knows that Spock wore
blue, Scotty wore red, and Kirk wore gold.
Those colors are as indelibly linked to their characters as Spock's Vulcan salute and Shatner's
over-the-top acting.
“KHAN!”
So sit down because this may come as a bit of a shock.
Kirk's uniform was, in fact, actually more of a lime green.
It only turned into command gold thanks to the quirks of film stock development.
If you don't believe us, take a look at the rest of Kirk's wardrobe, like his wrap-around
tunic from the "Trouble With Tribbles" episode, or his dress uniform in the Season 1 episode
"Court Martial.”
All green!
Apparently, many of the colors chosen for the show were intended to promote RCA's new
color television units, including the green uniforms.
That explains the bright, striking style of the series, even if some of the colors failed
to turn out exactly as expected.
For decades, fans and even some of the people behind Trek itself have steadfastly believed
that Pavel Chekov, the spunky ensign with the indecipherable accent, was created as
an olive branch to the Soviet Union.
“Excuse me sir, can you direct me to the naval base in Alameda?
It’s where they keep the nuclear wessels.”
As the legend goes, in the fall of 1966 Gene Roddenberry got the idea to introduce a new,
hunky heartthrob to the cast with hair like a British Invasion rock star, and Walter Koenig
apparently fit the bill.
But at some point, word got to Roddenberry that Pravda, the official newspaper of Soviet
Russia, had criticized the show for not including a Russian character in its vision of the future,
and Gene jumped at the idea.
Chekov was born, and Roddenberry even wrote a letter to the minister of cultural affairs
in Moscow, apologizing for not including him sooner.
Alas, they never heard back, presumably because there's no record of Pravda ever writing such
an article.
In fact, Star Trek wasn't even available in Russia at the time, so whoever received this
letter from an American television producer proudly hailing the addition of a hunky young
Russian heartthrob to his space show must have been confused beyond belief.
If there is one cultural catchphrase Star Trek is best known for, it's Captain Kirk
asking everyone’s favorite engineer to transport him away from whatever salty vampire or lizard
monster the crew was tangling with that week with a quick “Beam me up, Scotty!”
But despite the decades-long prominence of this phrase in pop-culture and on t-shirts
and buttons, Kirk never actually said it… and neither did anyone else.
Captain Kirk did, of course, say very similar things a number of times throughout the series,
and in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, he gets pretty close with this:
"Scotty, beam me up."
However, the exact phrase "Beam me up, Scotty" has never appeared in any Star Trek series
or movie, though it does appear in some of the unofficial Star Trek novels and other
media.
As a result, it belongs in the same category as Casablanca’s “play it again, Sam,”
and “Elementary, my dear Watson" from Data’s favorite detective Sherlock Holmes as quotes
that have been mistakenly attributed to their source material so often that most people
think they were there all along.
Yes, this is one big pedantic point, but this is Star Trek we’re talking about.
If you don’t want to obsess over the most minor details, then it’s probably not the
fandom for you.
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Grunge videos about your favorite obsessions are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.