Women's crew uniforms, which consisted of miniskirts, high heeled boots, and heavy makeup, have been pointed-to as degrading to women for highlighting their frequent role as sexual objects. The Original Series has later received some criticism for its portrayal of women, particularly its visual aesthetics. When she told Roddenberry what King had said, he cried. I never got to tell him why, because he said, 'You can't. Nichols, I am your greatest fan.' He said that Star Trek was the only show that he, and his wife Coretta, would allow their three little children to stay up and watch. Martin Luther King walking towards me with this big grin on his face. I thought it was a Trekkie, and so I said, 'Sure.' I looked across the room, and there was Dr. In fact, Whoopi Goldberg recalled that the first time she saw Uhura, she excitedly told her mother: "Mama, there's a black woman on television and she ain't no maid!" In an interview, Nichelle Nichols, who played the black female communications officer, said that the day after she told Roddenberry she planned to leave the show, she was at a fund-raiser at the NAACP and was told there was a big fan who wanted to meet her. Black actresses at that time on television were almost always cast as servants. Star Trek 's contributions to television history include giving women jobs of respect, most notably through the casting of Nichelle Nichols, a black actress, as Uhura, the ship's communications officer. Also, the spy series I Spy featured a scripted, unedited interracial kiss between Robert Culp (white) and France Nuyen (Vietnamese) in the episode "The Tiger" a kiss that would not gain the controversy or attention as the Star Trek kiss did. The original series is also credited with American television's first interracial kiss, between a white man and an African-American woman, although this had happened earlier in a British medical soap opera, Emergency – Ward 10. In the second season, reflecting the contemporaneous Cold War, Roddenberry added a Russian crew member, Pavel Chekov (played by Walter Koenig). At a time when there were few non-white or foreign roles in American television dramas, Roddenberry created a multi-ethnic crew for the Enterprise, including an African woman ( Uhura), a Scotsman ( Montgomery Scott), an Asian man ( Hikaru Sulu), and-most notably -an alien, the half- Vulcan Spock. Previous sophisticated science fiction television series included anthology series such as The Twilight Zone and the British Quatermass serials, but Star Trek was the first American science fiction series with a continuing cast that was aimed at adults, telling modern morality tales with complex narratives.Įarlier British science fiction series with marionettes and soap operas had interracial casting, but this was the first American live-action series to do this. The opening line "to boldly go where no man has gone before" is almost verbatim from a US White House booklet on space produced after the Sputnik flight in October 1957.Ī major inspiration for Star Trek was the science fiction film Forbidden Planet (1956), whose influence is especially apparent in the pilot episode " The Cage". The series' writers frequently addressed moral and social issues such as slavery, warfare, and discrimination. But Roddenberry wanted to tell more sophisticated stories, using futuristic situations as analogies for current problems on Earth and showing how they could be rectified through humanism and optimism. Gene Roddenberry sold Star Trek in 1964 to NBC as a classic adventure drama, calling it a " Wagon Train to the Stars". The fact is, never in the history of any entertainment medium has there ever been a story, an idea, a situation, a set of characters, or a theme that has approached the magnitude or impact of Star Trek. Two films, Galaxy Quest (1999) and Free Enterprise (1999), and a television series, The Orville, have been inspired by the cultural influence of Star Trek. Paramount Global continues to hold DVD rights to the television series, and the rights to produce feature films. The franchise is owned by CBS Studios, which currently owns television properties previously held by Paramount Pictures, the studio that produced Star Trek for many decades. The original series, which aired in the late 1960s, has since spawned nine successor series and thirteen movies as of August 2020, merchandise, and a multibillion-dollar industry collectively known as the Star Trek franchise. The science fiction multimedia franchise of Star Trek since its original debut in 1966 has been one of the most successful television series in science fiction television history and has been considered by many to have had a large influence in popular culture as a result. Star Trek influence on society A group photo of people costumed as Star Trek characters at San Diego Comic-Con 2008
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |