{"id":256355,"date":"2024-11-14T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-14T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.factstoryhub.com\/?p=256355"},"modified":"2024-10-17T10:09:52","modified_gmt":"2024-10-17T09:09:52","slug":"star-trek-facts","status":"publish","type":[],"link":"https:\/\/www.factstoryhub.com\/star-trek-facts\/","title":{"rendered":"21 Fun Facts About Star Trek You Might Not Know"},"content":{"rendered":"
Star Trek has captured imaginations for decades, inspiring real-life heroes and technologies along the way.\n
Behind the scenes, the show has boldly gone where no other show has gone before, challenging social norms and practices.\n
Like much of science fiction, it has tried to show us the incredible things we can do as earthlings if we work together and look to the stars.\n
Check out these out-of-this-world facts that show how Star Trek truly pushes the boundaries of what TV could be.\n
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Although not the first interracial kiss on television, their kiss was the first kiss between a black and a white person on American television.\n
The kiss was highly debated at the time and is now considered by many as a huge milestone in the normalization of interracial relationships.\n
The historic moment happened in the episode “Plato’s Stepchildren,” which aired in 1968, one year after the American Supreme Court repealed laws prohibiting interracial relationships.\n
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Few can call themselves completely fluent, but more and more people are trying to learn with Duolingo, which added a Klingon course to its app in 2018.\n
The language was created by linguist Mark Okrand for the 1979 film Star Trek: The Motion Picture.\n Along with actor James Doohan (Scotty) and writer Jon Povill, the trio developed the language to sound as alien as possible.\n In 1985, Okrand released \u201cThe Klingon Dictionary,\u201d and fans began to learn their favorite fictional language.\n Inspired by the ones on Star Trek’s Starships, a group of researchers at the Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder is trying to build a tractor beam.\n The tractor beams won\u2019t be used to entrap alien spaceships, though. They are there to solve the growing problem of space junk created by the many satellites that orbit Earth.\n In the series, the maneuver is touted as Picard\u2019s most famous battle tactic.\n A short warp jump makes the enemy\u2019s crew believe that the Enterprise has appeared in two places, allowing the Federation crew time to strike.\n On set, the Picard Maneuver took on a whole new meaning, becoming an inside joke about how actor Patrick Stewart would pull his shirt down to readjust his uniform every time he stood up.\n This crucial rule, which forbids the Federation from imposing its own beliefs and technologies on other cultures, was invented by one of Star Trek\u2019s writers, Gene L. Coon.\n The original series (TOS) aired while the US was still fighting in the war with Vietnam.\n Writers on the show opposed the colonial nature of American involvement and created the directive to take a stance against colonial interference of other cultures.\n Toward the end of the second season of the original series (TOS), Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) signed her resignation letter and wanted to return to Broadway.\n Before the resignation could be finalized, she was approached by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, who convinced her to stay on the show.\n He mentioned the influence she had as a black female actress on young minds at the time of the Civil Rights Movement.\n Dr. King mentioned that Star Trek was the only show he would allow his kids to stay up late to watch.\n In 2009, a reboot of Star Trek was released, which excited many long-time fans of the series.\n The trailer aired on Apple TV, and in 24 hours, more than 1.8 million people downloaded it.\n This broke Apple\u2019s record for the most downloads, and that number only grew larger, reaching 5 million downloads after just five days.\n The Invincible class starship was created as a fully armed battleship, a full-fledged fleet carrier, and a mobile base of operations in the year 2384.\n Three of these ships were created, including the USS Invincible. At 5255 feet (1607 meters) long and weighing 13,850,000 metric tons, this was truly Starfleets strongest vessel.\n The impressive model was built out of sheet plastic and hardwood and took hundreds of hours to build. It was attached to a mechanical arm to control its direction and angle in flight.\n Star Trek TOS was commended for many of its special effects, most notably its ability to show what a starship might look like going faster than the speed of light.\n To do this, they used their massive cinema model and a series of black matte backgrounds with stars printed on them, which they superimposed on each other to give the star trail effect we know so well.\n The cinematographers of TOS had to do a lot of work, especially in the early seasons, to show the characters dematerializing and rematerializing somewhere else.\n They ended up sprinkling glitter into a beam of light and filmed that effect. They then needed to cut that effect into the shape of the characters and slowly fade them in and out of the scenes.\n Spock’s famous split-finger, live long and prosper salute is not as alien as we may think.\n When Leonard Nimoy was a child living in a Jewish area in New York, he witnessed Orthodox Jewish people at a special ceremony called Shekhina.\n The first use of the Vulcan salute was in TOS, during the episode \u201cAmok Time.\u201d\n Sometimes referred to as \u201cthe first lady of Star Trek,\u201d Barrett has played many characters in the franchise’s series.\n You may have recognized her as the voice of most computers in the Federation\u2019s Starfleet up until 2009 when she passed away.\n She has also played Lwaxana Troi in The Next Generation (TNG), Nurse Chapel in TOS, and plenty of smaller roles over the years.\n Armstrong played a total of 12 different characters over the years. He was most recognized for his role as Vice Admiral Maxwell in Star Trek: Enterprise.\n Many of his roles involved heavy makeup, including two Cardassians, two Klingons, and a Virginian Captain.\n Riker is famous for two movements that have become memes over the years: The Riker Lean and The Riker Maneuver.\n Because of a bad back injury before he ever made it onto the Star Trek set, Frakes had to find ways to stay comfortable while doing his scenes.\n Leaning on his leg while talking to other characters and maneuvering over the back of chairs to sit down became the most recognizable. Remember to lift with your back!\n Voyager is well known for its special effects and amazing use of makeup, for which most of it\u2019s Emmy\u2019s were awarded. The series also won 2 Emmy awards for its use of music.\n In total, the series got 33 nominations for all kinds of things, from costume design to sound design and even hairstyling. Remember Neelix\u2019s amazing Mohawk?\n Martin Cooper, an engineer at Motorola, was on a break watching Star Trek when he saw Captain Kirk use his communicator to call Spock.\n This invention changed the way humans communicate around the world and is just another example of science fiction becoming a reality.\n Although it was only ever used in tests for later space flight and didn\u2019t even have engines, the real Enterprise was NASA\u2019s first orbiting space shuttle.\n The shuttle was originally named Constitution, but thousands of Trekkies at the time petitioned for it to be renamed after the starship in their favorite show.\n In recognition of this, most of the original cast and creator, Gene Roddenberry, were all present at the unveiling ceremony.\n Worf quickly became a fan favorite after his first TV appearance on TNG in 1987, which was supposed to be temporary.\n He went on to appear on Deep Space 9 for four more seasons once TNG had ended and again in 2023 for Star Trek: Picard. In total, Dorn made 283 appearances as the character.\n This is an incredible feat, considering it took up to three hours to apply the Klingon makeup, and he would need to wear it for as long as 15 hours.\n Creator Gene Roddenberry, his wife Majel Barrett, and Nichelle Nichols have all had their ashes spread into the universe.\n After their deep connection with space exploration, we can\u2019t think of a better resting place for them.\n Four companies offer this unique burial service, with options to be sent into orbit, deep space, onto the surface of the moon, or just to space and back.\n Hollywood has many ways of cutting production costs. One of these is to reuse sets from other shows or previous iterations of the same show. This is no different in Star Trek.\n You may recognize Data or Worfs quarters as Captain Kirk’s original quarters from TOS. The Enterprise-D corridors were also reused in many of the films.\n They are not stuck to one ship, though. The room where Spock sacrifices himself in TOS was reused for the Klingons, the Ferengi, and the Telerians in TNG.\nScientists are trying to build a real tractor beam.\n
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The Picard Maneuver makes the Enterprise appear in two places at once.\n
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The Prime Directive was a response to the atrocities of the Vietnam War.\n
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was a huge fan of Star Trek.\n
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The Star Trek reboot trailer broke Apple.com\u2019s record for the most downloads.\n
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The Invincible-class starship is the largest that Starfleet ever built.\n
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The original Enterprise model was about 14 feet (4.2 meters) long.\n
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To film the transporter scenes, they used foil and tricks of light.\n
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The Vulcan salute was inspired by an Orthodox Jewish blessing.\n
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Majel Barrett-Roddenberry was the voice of most Starfleet computers.\n
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Vaughn Armstrong played more characters than anyone else in the Star Trek franchise.\n
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Jonathan Frakes\u2019 back injury birthed his character’s iconic movements.\n
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Star Trek: Voyager won an outstanding seven Emmy awards during its run.\n
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The original communicator inspired the first mobile phone.\n
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NASA\u2019s first space shuttle was named after the starship Enterprise.\n
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Michael Dorn appeared on screen more than any other actor in Star Trek.\n
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A few of the original cast have had their ashes launched into space.\n
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Many of the later Star Trek sets were reused from previous series.\n
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Mae Jemison was the first real astronaut to appear on Star Trek.\n
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