Star Trek Original and Limited Edition Art (1966-2013)
Star Trek is a highly acclaimed American science-fiction franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. Star Trek: The Original Series and its live-action spinoff TV shows: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, and Star Trek: Enterprise as well as the Star Trek film series make up the official, main canon.
The first series, now called Star Trek: The Original Series, followed the interstellar adventures of Captain James T. Kirk and his crew of an exploration vessel, the Starship Enterprise, of the United Federation of Planets. The Original Series debuted in 1966 and ran for three seasons. The adventures of Kirk and the Enterprise continued in the short lived Star Trek: The Animated Series and six feature films. Four spin-off television series were eventually produced: Star Trek: The Next Generation, which followed a new crew onboard a new Starship Enterprise set a century after The Original Series. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager were set contemporaneously with The Next Generation and Star Trek: Enterprise was set in the early days of human interstellar travel, before The Original Series. The Next Generation saw four additional feature films produced.
In 2009, under director JJ Abrams, the Star Trek franchise saw an official relaunch with the feature film, Star Trek, which returned to The Original Series. It featured a new cast of characters portraying younger versions of the original crew of the Enterprise. A second film, Star Trek: Into Darkness was released in 2013.
Star Trek has been a cult sci-fi phenomenon for decades, with an almost fanatical fanbase known as "Trekkies". The franchise spans a wide range of spinoffs such as games, figurines, toys, novels, and comics. The series has its own fully-formed language, Klingon, taken from the alien race of the same name in the series. Star Trek is also noted for its influence on the world outside of science-fiction. The cultural impact of the series ranges from NASA christening its prototype space shuttle, the Enterprise, to the adoption of famous Star Trek phrases such as "Live Long and Prosper", "Beam me up, Scotty" and "Resistance is Futile". It has even been cited as the inspiration for several technological inventions, such as the cell phone, palm PDA and touch screen technology.
The series is also noted for its progressive civil rights stances. The original series included one of television's first interracial casts (Japanese helmsmen, Russian navigator, Scottish engineer, African-American female communications officer, and Vulcan-Human first officer) as well as television's first interracial kiss. Later series would address same-sex relationships as well as other social issues. The series is able to include such scenes and dialogue due to its nature as a work of science-fiction, using the various alien species and societies or futuristic setting to get away with potentially controversial scenes.