Star Trek

William Shatner the first Star Trek captain is a Canadian (from Montreal) and trained as a stage actor at Ontario's Stratford Festival. James Doohan who played rambunctuous Engineer Scotty is also a Canadian orginally from Vancouver.

The name of the U.S.S. Enterprise in the original draft for the Star Trek TV series was the U.S.S. Yorktowne.

The original captain of Star Trek's starship 'Enterprise' was Jeffrey Hunter - not William Shatner - as Christopher Pike in the pilot episode 'The Cage' (1964). The cast was quite different from that of the classic series except for Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock. NBC rejected this pilot for being 'too cerebral and too good for TV'.

The original review of Star Trek in Variety magazine (Sept 14 1966) was far from favourable: Star Trek obviously solicits all-out suspension of disbelief but it won't work. It was an incredible mess of dreary complexities and confusion at the kick-off. Just how wrong can a critic be?

Star Trek: The Original Series was cancelled after only a three year run on NBC in 1969. It is now broadcast almost continuously on over 120 stations in the USA and in over 100 countries worldwide including TV1 in Australia! It has been translated into over forty-seven languages.

Star Trek® creator Gene Roddenberry attempted unsuccessfully to have a woman as first officer in the original Star Trek® series. Instead Majel Barrett (who later became Mrs. Gene Roddenberry) played Nurse Christine Chapel and Leonard Nimoy became First Officer Spock.

Such is the impact of Star Trek on American culture that a model of the Starship Enterprise has been displayed at the Smithsonian Institution of American History.

On the original Star Trek Lt. Uhura's name means 'freedom' in Swahili.

Spock the Vulcan almost didn't make it into the series. The NBC executives were loathe to have an alien with such strange ears and appearance on screen. It was only after Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry so voraciously fought the network that the Vulcan was allowed to stay.

Star Trek's William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols as Captain Kirk and Officer Lt Uhura shared television's first interracial kiss. The revolutionary episode aired in 1968.

Legend has it that Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura on the original Star Trek) was thinking about quitting the revolutionary series when she met civil rights leader Martin Luther King. King insisted she stay because people were seeing how black and white people could work together as equals.

Leonard Nimoy's father owned a barber shop where apparently one of the popular styles on offer was the Spock cut which he sported on Star Trek.

NASA has named a space shuttle after the Enterprise (the ship in Star Trek).

Gene Roddenberry (Star Trek creator) was a World War II bomber pilot and later a Los Angeles police officer before turning to writing.

Kirk never actually spoke the line Beam me up Scotty in the original series. Beam us up Scotty was from the 1970s cartoon series version of Star Trek.

Known for his role as Spock in the Star Trek series Leonard Nimoy directed the hit film Three Men and a Baby (1987) which starred Tom Selleck Ted Danson and Steve Guttenberg.

Before the rise of Star Trek Captain Kirk was originally to be Captain April and the Enterprise was orginally to be the Yorktown.

Exasperated by his fan-adulation Leonard Nimoy wrote a book entitled I Am Not Spock.

From the original Star Trek James Doohan (Scotty) only had four fingers on his right hand. While this was mostly disguised in the show you can still see it if you look carefully.

A man of musical as well as many other talents Leonard Nimoy (Spock from Star Trek) has released several albums. His best known track is his 1969 homage to a hobbit The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins.

Before achieving world-wide fame as Spock in the original Star Trek Leonard Nimoy sold vacuum cleaners.

Before she was cast as the sultry Uhura on the 1960's Star Trek Nichelle Nichols performed as a singer with Duke Ellington.