'Star Trek,' which made its debut 50 years ago, marked a change in the culture

The series’ stars, from left: Leonard Nimoy as Spock, William Shatner as Capt. Kirk, DeForest Kelley as Bones and James Doohan as Scotty.

By JIM BECKERMAN

STAFF WRITER |

The Record

When the original “Star Trek” made its debut 50 years ago Thursday, Westerns ruled the ratings.

“Gunsmoke” (No. 1, 1957 to 1961), “Wagon Train” (No. 1, 1962) and “Bonanza” (No. 1, 1964 to 1967) led TV’s stampede of six-guns and Stetsons. More than 100 other shoot-’em-ups vied for viewers between 1949 and 1966. No wonder producer Gene Roddenberry, trying to sell his offbeat sci-fi format about a starship captain and his crew exploring the cosmos, did his best to grease his description with saddle soap. “It’s ‘Wagon Train’ to the stars!” he told NBC.

The last thing Roddenberry wanted to seem was revolutionary.

“We didn’t think of this as groundbreaking – who knew?” says William Shatner, who played Capt. James T. Kirk in what turned out to be one of TV’s watershed series.

Looking back, it’s possible to see 1966 as a pivot point – the year when the pop culture torch was passed, as President Kennedy might have said, to a new generation of Americans. Suddenly it wasn’t “My Mother the Car” and “Mister Ed” anymore. It was “The Monkees,” “That Girl” and a new, hip-ironic “Batman.” Action-adventure, too, had a new face. Horse operas were out. Space operas were in.

“It marked a change of science fiction being taken seriously,” says Todd Ehrenfels of the Science Fiction Society of Northern New Jersey, based in Paramus. “‘Star Trek’ showcased serious storytelling. You could talk about the changes in the culture. Things you can’t do in a Western.”

To be sure, “Star Trek” wasn’t an instant hit from the moment that first episode, “The Man Trap” (it was about an alien “salt vampire”), aired in 1966. “Star Trek” picked up its huge audience gradually, in syndication. Nor did Westerns completely vanish in the 50 years since the Starship Enterprise began its “five year mission to explore strange new worlds.” TV has had a “Lonesome Dove” here, a “Deadwood” there, each time with the air of reinventing the wheel. But where Westerns used to be far and away the dominant form of action yarn, sci-fi has now planted its flag — on both the big and small screens.

“There’s a Syfy channel, but there’s no Western channel,” says David Bushman, television curator of the Paley Center for Media in Manhattan. “There’s not that same level of interest.”

The change didn’t happen overnight. Following “Star Trek’s” lead, Hollywood gave us “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968) followed in 1977 by the big bang of “Star Wars.” After that, it was inevitable that TV would go space-happy: two iterations of “Battlestar Galactica,” “Firefly,” “The Expanse,” “Babylon 5,” “Stargate.” Not to mention all the “Star Trek” spinoffs: “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” “Deep Space Nine,” “Voyager,” “Enterprise” and, beginning in 2017, “Discovery.” (There have also been 13 “Star Trek” feature films so far).

“ ‘Star Trek’ was a turning point,” says “Trek” fan and author Mark A. Altman, co-author of “The Fifty-Year Mission,” new from St. Martin’s Press. “It was extremely groundbreaking.”

Which is odd — because as Roddenberry suggested in his “Wagon Train” pitch — “Star Trek” is in some ways not so different from a Western.

Each is a frontier drama, whether it’s the Dakota territory in the 19th century or the edge of the galaxy in the 23rd. In each case, a strong man – Ben Cartwright or James T. Kirk – has to make decisions, often without recourse to higher authority. Both feature a stock set of antagonists: call them Apaches and rustlers, or Romulans and Klingons.

“Really, the Western was about American manifest destiny,” Altman says. “Of boldly going, and knocking around a few Indians in order to take over the final frontier. ‘Star Trek’ was the logical extension of that.”

The differences, though, are as striking as the similarities.

The average 1960s Western featured a lily-white cast. “Star Trek” was proudly, and insistently, multicultural: African-Americans and Asians were regulars on the Starship Enterprise (the original concept called for a Latino navigator and a female second-in-command).

And then there was that one character you would never have seen riding the range.

Mr. Spock (the late Leonard Nimoy) was a half-alien first officer who regarded Earthling prejudices, foibles and knee-jerk behavior with a kind of amused contempt. “Illogical,” he would say. Or even more cutting, with one eyebrow raised: “Fascinating.”

Westerns looked to the past. “Star Trek” looked to the future. Westerns reinforced cultural norms. “Star Trek,” at its most characteristic, questioned them.

In one episode, “The Devil in the Dark,” Kirk and his crew are hunting a fearsome alien rock monster that has been killing off miners. Only the Horta, it turns out at the end, is not a monster but a mother — trying to defend the eggs that the miners had been carelessly destroying. “ ‘Star Trek’ flips the script,” Altman says.

In “Metamorphosis,” a spacewrecked astronaut has been kept alive for years by a gaseous alien entity that – he suddenly learns – regards him as a lover. He is disgusted. “There’s nothing disgusting about it,” Dr. McCoy (the late DeForest Kelley) says sharply. When the astronaut argues for “decency and morality,” Mr. Spock is unimpressed. “Fascinating,” says Mr. Spock. “A totally parochial attitude.”

Most famously, the 1968 episode “Plato’s Stepchildren” featured TV’s first interracial kiss – between handsome Captain Kirk and fetching communications officer Lt. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols). Never mind that the kiss was “forced” on them by the telepathic Platonians. It still freaked out the South.

“You couldn’t have Uhura and Kirk kissing on a Western,” Ehrenfels says. “In the future, where people have stopped being so stupid about certain things, you could push the boundaries.”

Much of the forward-thinking, socially conscious morality on “Star Trek” was inspired by Roddenberry (he, too, got his start writing for Westerns, including “Bat Masterson” and “Have Gun – Will Travel”). But “Star Trek” also drew, for its writing, on some top sci-fi authors, including Harlan Ellison, Theodore Sturgeon, Richard Matheson and Norman Spinrad. Science-fiction writers, by and large, tend to be a progressive bunch.

“I began to realize how well-written [‘Star Trek’] was,” Shatner says. “I had been interested in science-fiction prior to the show, and I’d read many of the authors who ultimately, subsequently, turned in story lines for us. And I got to meet them.”

Not every “Star Trek” script was a preachment about prejudice, war or sexual difference. Some were pure adventure, as rough-and-tumble as any Western (and, to be fair, a few Westerns – notably “Bonanza” – did have the occasional “socially conscious” episode about an Indian or a runaway slave).

But 50 years later, “Star Trek” does point to a change in America’s mental furniture. To the extent that we’ve gone, in our fantasy lives, from a nation of cowboys to a nation of starship commandoes, we’re living in the world Roddenberry created. And to the extent that we’re a more tolerant people than we were 50 years ago – as we are, at least in some respects – maybe Roddenberry deserves a little bit of credit for that, too.

“This is absolutely the first American adult sci-fi series to deal with these kinds of moral, ethical and social quandaries,” Bushman says. “And it did it in a way that did reflect optimism, humanism, tolerance.”

Email: beckerman@northjersey.com