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.

Dressing Room Secrets of Star Trek - Spock's Make-up

We all know Spock - that green tinted, matte skinned pointy eared Vulcan. What many don't know is that it took plenty of trial and error to get Leonard Nimoy to look that way, and even when a professional knew what he was doing it took an hour and a half to apply the prosthetics and makeup.

I scanned these from the Files Magazine Spotlight on Spock (and they scanned it from something else in 1967) - a series of photographs showing the hour-and-a-half long procedure.

According to good Mr. Nimoy, the ears were very painful wear and to take off because of the glue. I recently read a cute story in "The World of Star Trek" by David Gerrold about his Girl Friday, Teresa Victor.

After working for Leonard for a while, she wanted to do something special to show her appreciation. She decided that on the last day of her trial period she would wear Vulcan ears. Now, it was difficult enough for Leonard to get the right ears - for Teresa it was almost impossible. 

One of the casting directors eventually got a pair for her, but they were molded to Leonard's ears and she had to use a strong adhesive. She spent an hour putting them on and wore them all morning, trying to cover her ears with her hair so nobody would notice (although the tips kept poking out). They were immenslely painful, but finally at the end of the day she met with Leonard and pulled back her hair to show him the ears. "I am dying from the pain!" He cracked up laughing, but realized how important is was to her that she show him how she felt.

More problems arose when she had to go to a party that night and she couldn't get the ears off - and none of them knew who Mr. Spock was.

Here's another interesting fact: Spock's skin was originally going to be red, but Leonard pointed out that most people still had black and white TVs, and on those sets Spock would look pitch black. (It would also make him look even more "demonic".)

I will leave you with this wonderful clip of the great Leonard Nimoy speaking on that exact subject: