ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, September 16, 1996 TAG: 9609180056
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: HUNTSVILLE, ALA.
SOURCE: JACK MILLROD\NEWSDAY
No one expected ``Star Trek'' to live long or prosper.
``It won't work,'' the entertainment trade publication Variety concluded after the first episode was beamed into our living rooms 30 years ago this month. It called the show ``an incredible and dreary mess of confusion and complexities.''
And with the series' ratings deteriorating like the orbit of a plummeting spacecraft, NBC considered canceling ``Star Trek'' at the end of that first year, and again the next, and finally pulled the plug in February 1969. Just three years into its five-year mission, the starship Enterprise and its crew disappeared into the black hole of cancellation.
The sets were taken down, the actors each went their separate ways. In fact, that summer, when America landed a man on the moon, William Shatner, the actor who portrayed Capt. James T. Kirk, was in a touring theater production, living in a camper - where he watched the landing on a miniature portable TV.
If the story had ended then, there would have been little to celebrate a week ago in the self-proclaimed Space Capital of America. Mayor Steve Hettinger wouldn't have changed the name of Huntsville, home of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Marshall Space Flight Center, to ``Star Trek, Ala.,'' for the occasion. And as many as 8,000 fans wouldn't have converged here from all over America and as far away as Germany and Australia for ``Star Trek 30: One Weekend on Earth'' - a celebration of three decades of "Star Trek" movies, TV spinoffs and a merchandising machine that has accounted for more than $1 billion in retail sales.
At the first convention, in January 1972, in a New York hotel, only 500 fans had been expected. More than 3,000 showed up. By the third convention, in 1974, attendance had risen to 14,000 as the show continued to experience a rebirth of sorts through syndicated reruns.
Fred Sylvester of Long Island, N.Y., is one fan who showed up for the 30th birthday celebration. He's 44 now and remembers seeing the show in the '60s - though, he said, he didn't fall in love with ``Star Trek'' until he was watching reruns in college in the '70s.
``The people who follow it want to believe that this is how the future will be and that people will get along....'' he said. But that's not all. ``You've got heroes. You've got all the different things that people want out of life.''
He and a friend were standing beside a moon rock that NASA had displayed in the center of a convention area primarily devoted to "Star Trek" merchandise. There you could buy anything - from "Star Trek" checks, jewelry, books and videos to Mattel's newest Barbie and Ken, dressed as Enterprise crew members in a gift set priced at $75. Barbie is merely an engineering officer, yet Ken sports a golden command jersey. The apparent sexism aside, Nichelle Nichols, who wore an outfit like Barbie's as communications officer Lt. Uhura, signed box after box for adoring fans.
Sylvester carries his "Star Trek" enthusiasm into his business, which represents manufacturers and distributors of construction products. He uses the "Star Trek"-style typeface on his business cards and letters, and his faxes carry the emblems of both the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon empire.
In the hallway, fans posed for photos with a dead ringer for Patrick Stewart, in full uniform and looking for all the world like Capt. Jean-Luc Picard. A family walked by, the father dressed as a Klingon warrior and the mother and toddler both in uniforms from ``Star Trek: The Next Generation.''
Even Shatner, who attended this year's party, said such looks could be misleading.
``To the outside people looking on, it seems a little foolish, dressed in their uniforms and some of them in makeup....'' he said in an interview. ``But there are in fact a lot of very serious people.''
Shatner was one of seven original cast members and 10 other Star Trek actors that Paramount brought in for the convention - the first the studio has ever sponsored. And, from real outer space, six former astronauts participated, among them Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and Apollo 13's Fred Haise.
Daniel S. Goldin, NASA's chief administrator, attended the convention to take part in a tribute to the series' creator, the late Gene Roddenberry.
``America is about dreams and hopes and opening frontiers, and `Star Trek' - science fiction - helps people visualize what those dreams might be,'' Goldin said. ``Having a picture in your mind and knowing what could be allows the scientists and engineers to convert dreams into reality.''
For many fans, though, there's meaning beyond "Star Trek's" hopeful vision of what is yet to be. There's a personal involvement that can be inspirational.
James Doohan, whose character, Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, may be the most beloved of all "Star Trek" characters, came close to tears during Saturday night's main event when he told fans the story of a woman who 25 years ago sent him two pages of a suicide note. ``I said, `Oh God, I've got to do something about this,''' he said. He called her and asked her to meet him at his next public appearance. And, he said, he did the same thing about 18 times - each time setting up the next meeting and making her promise to come. ``Eight years later, I received a letter from her saying she had just received her master's degree in electrical engineering.''
Nichols said the person she may have had the biggest impact on was Whoopi Goldberg, who asked to become part of the ``Next Generation'' series because of the inspiration she found watching ``Star Trek.'' When Goldberg was young and the show was new, Nichols said, she would run through the house screaming, ``Come look, come look. There's a black lady on television, and she ain't no maid.''
Roddenberry's insistence that the Enterprise crew be cast to reflect the ethnic diversity of the planet may be responsible for the show's success around the world, where it can be seen in more than 100 countries in any of a dozen languages.
Although George Takei, who played Lt. Sulu, appeared this week on a special episode of ``Voyager'' to celebrate the 30th anniversary, most members of the original "Star Trek" cast don't expect to set foot on the bridge again.
``It's a good body of work and not easily achieved,'' said Leonard Nimoy, when asked if he'd regret never playing Mr. Spock again. ``I wonder if it makes sense, unless the conditions are absolutely wonderful, to spoil the taste by coming in to do a less-than-wonderful piece of work as a final note. If the grace note isn't glorious, let's not do the grace note.''
But the original crew lives on in computer games featuring their voices and, in some cases, new video of them, and in "Star Trek" novels. With Simon & Schuster putting out at least two novels a month, about 50 "Star Trek" books, including memoirs and reference manuals, will be released by the publisher this year. And that's fine with Shatner, one of the newest "Star Trek" novelists.
He has collaborated with a couple of seasoned Trek novelists in a trilogy of hardcover books, the third of which is about to be released, and he has just signed on for two more.
And there will be plenty of new "Star Trek" stories to watch this fall, as the ``Next Generation'' cast's second motion picture, ``Star Trek: First Contact,'' opens around Thanksgiving and ``Deep Space 9'' and ``Voyager'' embark on new seasons and another round in the war for ratings.
LENGTH: Long : 133 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: In 1979, 10 years after "Star Trek" was canceled,by CNBWilliam Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley teamed up again
as Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock and Dr. "Bones" McCoy for "Star Trek: The
Motion Picture," the first of many TV and movie spinoffs that still
are being cranked out for generations of "Trek" fans. color.