Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 27, 1992 TAG: 9202270076
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
GOING BOLDLY TO MUSEUM SPACE
The crew of the original starship Enterprise - Kirk, Spock, Bones and the others - is boldly going where no pop icons have gone before: on display in the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum."Star Trek: The Exhibition," which opens Friday and runs through Sept. 7, incorporates more than 80 props from the original television series, including phasers, costumes, a tricorder, fuzzy Tribbles and even a reconstructed transporter.
The retrospective examines the historical, political and cultural issues of the 1960s that were incorporated into the show, which ran weekly from 1966 to 1969 and spawned six movies.
But it's also a lot of plain old fun. Visitors can sit in Capt. James T. Kirk's chair (it's only painted plywood and naugahyde) or get a close look at tiny Klingon battle cruisers and a model of the USS Enterprise.
They also can watch a 25-minute documentary film, prepared for the retrospective, featuring interviews with the show's principals, including creator Gene Roddenberry, interviewed before he died in October.
The exhibit is organized into categories, such as "A Cold War in Space," "Civil Rights and Urban Rebellion" and "Sexuality." The last focuses mainly on Kirk's many interstellar and interspecies liaisons.
At a news media preview Wednesday, museum officials and the actors who starred in the show described "Star Trek" with a reverence usually reserved for great works in science or the humanities.
"When you look at the biographies of the great pioneers in the field [of air and space], you find that time and time again, they were inspired by the stories of H.G. Wells and others who speculated about the future and the role that we as inhabitants of this Earth would play in that future," said Martin Hewitt, director of the National Air and Space Museum. " `Star Trek' did the same thing for the youngsters of the 1960s."
Mary Henderson, the exhibition's curator, said "Star Trek" rendered a vision of science and technology in which space travel would be possible and humans would be benevolent and wise.
"Unquestionably, the show influenced attitudes about the space program, then and I think now," she said, standing in the shadow of a huge lunar exploratory module. "One need only look at its enormous popularity to see that it is a living and vital cultural artifact - that's museum talk."
Eight of the original cast members on hand said they didn't feel like icons, but believed the show has made an important contribution to American life.
"I think many people took it into their hearts . . . that what was being said on TV at that time was a reason to celebrate," said Nichelle Nichols, who played communications officer Uhuru and was half of TV's first interracial kiss.
"People will come up to me and say, `Thank you, because I would not be an engineer if it weren't for you,' " said James Doohan, who played the affable chief engineer, Montgomery Scott.
Actor Walter Koenig warned reporters to keep the exhibit in its proper cultural perspective.
"Please don't go away from this thing thinking this was the enshrinement of `Star Trek' at the Smithsonian," said Koenig, who played Commander Pavel Chekov. " `Star Trek' is simply a springboard for a better future."