Fun Facts About Star Trek

F is for Fun Facts!

I love reading books about Star Trek, as well as looking through manuals and blueprints. Through my studies, I have stumbled upon many a delightful fact. Here are only a few of them, in no particular order:

• Captain Christopher Pike was played by Jeffrey Hunter in the first Pilot, "The Cage". The crippled Pike in the Menagerie, however, was played instead by Sean Kenney as Jeffrey Hunter wanted to move on to doing movies. 
• The first interracial kiss shown on TV was between Captain Kirk and Uhura, in the episode "Plato's Stepchildren". This kiss was originally to be between Spock and Uhura.

• In order to do the Vulcan salute, Zachery Quinto had to glue his fingers together.
• Spock was originally going to have red skin, but because he would look almost black on black and white TVs, he was given a "chicken soup" coloring instead. He also originally was not going to eat or drink, but would have a special plate in his stomach - he would feed off of any energy that struck the plate. I used my "amazing" editing skills to see what he might look like with red skin:

• After filming "The Trouble With Tribbles", it took about two weeks to get all of the tribbles off the set - between takes, tribbles would be pulled out instead of communicators, and  DeForest Kelley recalls doing surgery on someone - he thinks it was Mark Lenard in Journey to Babel - and pulling out a tribble.
• George Takei had to take fencing lessons before filming The Naked Time, as he had never fenced before.
• Leonard Nimoy had a tootsie pop with him almost constantly, sometimes even with him on set while the camera was rolling, because the the makeup made his mouth so dry.

• Leonard Nimoy, during the second or third year of the Original Series, became an alcoholic - but did not drink while they were filming.
• When planning The Next Generation, they considered getting rid of the Enterprise, and starships altogether - transported technology would be so far advanced that they could simply beam from planet to planet.
• The character, Deanna Troi, was almost given three breasts.
• The original pilot, The Cage, was deemed to sexy for viewers, and this was part of the reason Star Trek did not go further at that time.
• In the original series, "outrageously" sexual content would be inserted into the episodes so that the censors would focus on that instead of themes such as political allegory.
• The network wanted Roddenberry to get rid of two characters: the female first officer, and the demonic looking alien. He begrudgingly removed Number One from the cast, but fought to keep Spock. 

• Majel Barrett, the woman best known for playing the role of Nurse Chapel in the original series, also played roles such as Number One in The Cage, and Lwaxana Troi in The Next Generation. She also did the voices for many characters in the Animated Series, a few being Amanda Grayson, M'Ress, Theela, Lora, the Queen of Hearts, and Randi Bryce. She is also the voice of the Federation computers, a narrator (TNG, DS9,VOY), and has written an episode (DS9). She also became wife to Gene Roddenberry.
• The TOS Enterprise had a six lane bowling ally. 
• Star Trek used many of the set pieces from the Andy Griffith Show, for financial reasons.