The British actor Stephen Fry, who investigated the triangular relationship of Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock and “pill” McCoy in his university thesis – a renowned expert so – once said: “most of human history and art can be explained in Star Trek plots.”
A great idea that probably no one had imagined that 50 years ago, on 8 . September 1966 at 20.30 (or in other words: on Stardate 20153.6) the first episode of “star Trek” in the United States ran on NBC. The crew of the spaceship “Enterprise” applies it to a shape-shifting, the last survivor of an entire species.
In fact, inventor Gene Roddenberry initially had problems, “Star Trek” to accommodate in a studio. At that time he played the science fiction elements of his idea down and sold them as a kind of Western in space, as a “Wagon Train to the Stars”, a wagon trek to the stars.
this was revolutionary
but when he could realize his idea, he could not be dissuaded from his visions accommodate in the series – visions that were clearly inspired by the great upheavals and ideas of sixties, about the civil rights and women’s movement: Roddenberry insisted on an ethnically diverse crew. The bridge crew was composed of Mr. Spock from the planet Vulcan, Pavel Chekov from Russia, Nyota Uhura from the “United States of Africa”, Hikaru Sulu, an American with Japanese roots, and Captain James T. Kirk in Iowa.
This was revolutionary. Ironically Sulu was helmsman of the “Enterprise”; then it was a common stereotype that Asians are particularly bad drivers – here one sat at the steering wheel of a spaceship. And with Uhura worked a black woman in the command center, equated with the other. Even that had never been seen on television.
Just George Takei (Sulu) and Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) fought repeatedly backstage for their roles, were not small write – and Roddenberry was on their side. Nichols sued him once jokingly that he wrote but only morality tales. Roddenberry replied, “Shhh You know that, I know that, the receptionist know that only the studio has no idea!..”
technique that inspired the imagination of engineers
from today’s perspective some of his lessons read actually quite striking and morally. For example, if the Enterprise encounters aliens, whose skin is half black and half white, and has to deal with racism. But at that time the company was another, narrower than today. Most famous is the scene kiss in Kirk and Uhura herself. The first “interracial kiss” on television was not celebrated throughout the country – in a radio interview told Takei that the episode caused anger especially in the southern United States and was banned
Of course it was also in “. Star Trek “not everything is perfect. Especially women had always show a lot of skin to be relevant in the series. Originally Roddenberry had provided for a woman for the position of first officer. But the studio intervened. The actress still got a role – as a nurse on the “Enterprise”.
However, it was “Star Trek” an inspiration. The art on the Enterprise inspired the imagination of engineers and computer nerds. People who had never believed they would be able to fly into space – also because Nichelle Nichols.
Technologically, the future orientation of Star Trek struck produced concrete – art, science, and dealing with them have always been a core element of the utopia of Roddenberry: Ten years after you could see Captain Kirk in how he in a small, expandable communications device said when Scotty should beam up him, Martin Cooper invented the mobile phone – and called “Star Trek” his main inspiration. And as 1996 Motorola introduced the first flip phone on the market, they called it simply “StarTAC”
The next generation of mobile devices actually brought then “The Next Generation.” – The title of the second Enterprise series. They aired 18 years after the original, play content but of 100 years in the future. Who a sequence from 1987 looks at himself, discovered the iPad, laptop, man sees videoconference and use touchscreens. Science Fiction worked here in the best sense as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Today, however, tell cinema and television barely stories that look ahead optimistically: The show films like “Elysium”, “After Earth” or the “Matrix” trilogy. The more recent British series “Black Mirror” even thinks of each episode a new, dark version of the future. And even the new “Star Trek” movies is gone missing of optimism; what the announced new series brings, to be launched in 2017, remains to be seen
It is a paradox: The technical fantasies of “Star Trek” partly came true – but the positive visions of the future have been lost, although in times. where people are afraid that smartphones brains to ruin and steal robot jobs, optimistic science fiction might be helpful certainly. Not just to add a bit to make improvements since the energy, financial and job crises of the seventies and eighties permanently pessimistic mood, but also to create concepts and instructions on how to deal with the rapid technological advances of recent years , When talking about the smartphone only speaks like a enemy, it remains an enemy.
humanity prior art
Perhaps we are also so negative because innovation is no longer the fantasy of creative nerds comes, but by large companies? If Google’s CEO Larry Page says, the next big thing is the computer chip in the head, then you do not buy from him that he has the welfare of mankind in mind. Technological progress always has a price – and not only, set the Apple and Co. for the counter. But Roddenberry’s vision tells that we determine how our devices affect our lives: technology is not per se bad or good
On the “Enterprise” technology frees man and not enslaved him.. Replicators created food out of sheer energy, medical scanners find and eliminate any disease that money has been abolished long ago. “Wise science fiction helps us to consider where the meaning of life could be when man by his inventions has great power,” wrote the peace prize winners Jaron Lanier in his book “Who Owns the Future” on “Star Trek”.
The series itself is always found in this consideration to an attitude which, ultimately, despite all the enthusiasm for technology has been questioned by human action. Because the technology is secondary in literally when the crew has to ask whether the Android Data, which is just a machine actually, with its artificial intelligence does not yet represent a new kind of life. The various ethnic groups and cultures on the Enterprise have, although a computer translates their languages, always problems, to really understand. From “Star Trek” you can learn how to live in a technological world through and through, without losing his humanity that.
Nichelle Nichols once met at a charity event – the first season of “Star Trek” had just gone on television – a famous “Star Trek” fan: Martin Luther King. The two chatted, and opened as Nichols King that she wanted to get out of the series, King was, so legend has it, very seriously and said, “You can not do not get to change how people think.? . For the first time, through you, we see ourselves – and what is possible “
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