"Where no man has gone before" is a phrase originally made popular through its use in
the title sequence of most episodes of the original Star Trek science fiction television
series. It refers to the mission of the original starship Enterprise. The complete introductory
sequence, narrated by William Shatner at the beginning of every episode of Star Trek except
"The Cage" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before", is:
Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year
mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to
boldly go where no man has gone before.
The phrase in the Star Trek universe is called "The Captain's Oath".
Origin It has been suggested that the quotation was
taken from a White House booklet published in 1958. The Introduction to Outer Space,
produced in an effort to garner support for a national space program in the wake of the
Sputnik flight, read on its first page:
The first of these factors is the compelling urge of man to explore and to discover, the
thrust of curiosity that leads men to try to go where no one has gone before. Most of
the surface of the earth has now been explored and men now turn on the exploration of outer
space as their next objective.
The situation came full circle in 1989, when NASA used the Star Trek version of the quotation
to title its retrospective of Project Apollo: Where No Man Has Gone Before: A History of
Apollo Lunar Exploration Missions. Following an early expedition to Newfoundland,
Captain James Cook declared that he intended to go not only "... farther than any man has
been before me, but as far as I think it is possible for a man to go". Cook's most famous
ship, the Endeavour, lent its name to the last-produced of the space shuttles, much
as the Star Trek starship Enterprise lent its name to the program's test craft.
Similar expressions have been used in literature before 1958. For example, H. P. Lovecraft's
novella "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath", written in 1927 and published in 1943, includes
this passage:
At length, sick with longing for those glittering sunset streets and cryptical hill lanes among
ancient tiled roofs, nor able sleeping or waking to drive them from his mind, Carter
resolved to go with bold entreaty whither no man had gone before, and dare the icy deserts
through the dark to where unknown Kadath, veiled in cloud and crowned with unimagined
stars, holds secret and nocturnal the onyx castle of the Great Ones.
In-universe, the quote was attributed in the Star Trek: Enterprise pilot episode "Broken
Bow" to warp drive inventor Dr. Zefram Cochrane in a recorded speech during the dedication
of the facility devoted to designing the first engine capable of reaching Warp 5 in the year
2119, some thirty-two years before the 2151 launch of first vessel powered by such an
engine, the Enterprise:
On this site, a powerful engine will be built. An engine that will someday help us to travel
a hundred times faster than we can today. Imagine it – thousands of inhabited planets
at our fingertips... and we'll be able to explore those strange new worlds, and seek
out new life and new civilizations. This engine will let us go boldly... where no man has
gone before.
Evolution of the quotation The phrase was first introduced into Star
Trek by Samuel Peeples, who is attributed with suggesting using it as an episode name.
The episode became "Where No Man Has Gone Before", the second pilot of Star Trek. The
phrase itself was subsequently worked into the show's opening narration, which was written
after the episode. Indeed, the introductory sequence was devised in August 1966, after
several episodes had been filmed, and shortly before the series was due to debut. It is
the result of the combined input of several people, including Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry
and producers John D. F. Black and Bob Justman. Under their influence, Roddenberry's original
narrative:
This is the adventure of the United Space Ship Enterprise. Assigned a five year galaxy
patrol, the bold crew of the giant starship explores the excitement of strange new worlds,
uncharted civilizations, and exotic people. These are its voyages and its adventures.
went through several revisions before settling on the one used in the TV series.
In the series Star Trek: The Next Generation, created two decades after the original series,
the introductory sequence, now narrated by Patrick Stewart, was modified:
Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing
mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to
boldly go where no one has gone before.
The word "no one" was substituted for the original sequence's "no man" to be gender-neutral.
Outside of Star Trek The quotation has also gained popularity outside
Star Trek. The phrase has become a snowclone, a rhetorical device and type of word play
in which one word within it is replaced while maintaining the overall structure. For example,
an episode of Futurama that dealt with a character's devotion to Star Trek is named "Where No Fan
Has Gone Before", a level in the videogame Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time
is called "Starbase: Where No Turtle Has Gone Before".
The phrase was referred to sarcastically on the retail box of the 1987 computer game Space
Quest: The Sarien Encounter as "His mission: to scrub dirty decks...to replace burned-out
lightbulbs...TO BOLDLY GO WHERE NO MAN HAS SWEPT THE FLOOR!" and similarly in 1992 regarding
Apple's Mac 7.0 which was planned to run on the Intel chip by calling it "the OS that
boldly goes where everyone else has been". Likewise on Babylon 5, Ivanova implies that
a woman is promiscuous by telling the captain, "Good luck, Captain. I think you're about
to go where... everyone has gone before." The split infinitive "to boldly go" has also
been the subject of jokes. British humorist and science-fiction author Douglas Adams describes,
in his series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the long-lost heroic age of the Galactic
Empire, when bold adventurers dared "to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before".
In The Physics of Star Trek, Lawrence M. Krauss begins a list of Star Trek's ten worst errors
by quoting one of his colleagues who considers that their greatest mistake is "to split an
infinitive every damn time". See also
Cultural influence of Star Trek References
External links Captain's Oath at Memory Alpha