For a show with a self-proclaimed ‘five-year mission’, Star Trek hasn’t done badly. Gene Roddenberry’s ‘Wagon train to the stars’ is celebrating its 50th anniversary, although, as Marcus Berkmann’s entertaining and irreverent history points out, things could have been very different. Roddenberry’s initial idea was for a troupe of disparate 19th-century adventurers to explore the undiscovered corners of the New World in a grand airborne dirigible. While the prospect of Leonard Nimoy arching an eyebrow in a flimsy, flying gondola is irresistible, it’s hard to imagine such a concept proving as enduring as Roddenberry’s eventual brainchild. Would Balloon Trek: The Next Inflation have carried its fanbase into the 21st century and beyond?
Berkmann is an unashamed fan, and writes as only a fan can: with intoxicated glee for the show’s high points and utter disdain for its failings. And, if the USS Enterprise was powered by dilithium crystals, then Berkmann’s book is fuelled by an equally potent supply of glorious trivia. I delighted in revelations that Dr McCoy’s medical instruments were unmodified Swedish salt cellars; that aliens were frequently constructed from piles of joke-shop novelty vomit; and that William Shatner’s 2006 kidney stone is now in the possession of an online casino, which offered $25,000for the privilege. Where did they find the gall? (A joke that Berkmann manfully resists making.)
The book wisely concentrates on the show’s iconic, but troubled, 1960s infancy, for this is where the really juicy stuff lies. The series lived under constant threat of cancellation, with its creator encouraging letter-writing campaigns to save it, even before the end of the first series’ transmission. Roddenberry himself comes over as a curious cove, his enduring obsession with mini-skirts frequently reminding me of Les Dawson’s Cosmo Smallpiece, and supporting writers Gene L.
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