On January 24, 2020, in addition to the big event of Chinese New Year, there is also a big happy event that makes science fiction fans around the world feel like the New Year, that is, the first season of another new "Star Trek" TV series "Star Trek: Picard" began to air. What's more, CBS All Access has currently renewed the second season of Star Trek: Pickard. To understand the cultural influence of Star Trek, just watch a few episodes of The Big Bang Theory and see how fascinated the highly intelligent otaku are to get a taste or two. For viewers who are not familiar with Star Trek, this may be a pit that is not easy to enter. After all, the Star Trek thing has to start at least in 1966, involving six TV series, thirteen movies, and an animated film. Each of the six TV series includes several seasons, and each season includes several episodes, which together have a total of more than 700 episodes, and it takes two years to brush one episode a day. Let's talk about the ins and outs of the great Star Trek, and finally talk about the latest Star Trek: Picard.
Star Trek: Picard poster
Everyone may see at a glance that the old man in the middle is not Professor X in "X-Men"? That's right, he's the famous actor Patrick Stewart, the elderly Professor X, who is also the second Star Trek tv series, Captain Picard, who premiered in 1987 for the Star Trek: The Next Generation. In the latest "Star Trek: Picard", Patrick Stewart is still playing captain Picard as a character in the play. A while ago, "Star Trek: Picard" premiered in London, and "Magneto" actor Ian McKellen personally came to the scene to give his old friend Patrick Stewart a kiss.
At the star trek: Pickard premiere, Magneto kissed "Professor X"
The following table lists all the current episodes of Star Trek. Let's talk about this table one by one.
Star Trek: The Original Series: The story begins here
Fast forward to 1966, when the American people were worried about the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the nuclear threat, racial contradictions, sexism and other real problems, a TV series called "Star Trek" quietly began. In fact, the birth of the entire TV series did not go smoothly, and the TV station also wanted to cut the show several times. However, it was such a simple-made TV series that today successfully attracted the first batch of Star Trek fans. To distinguish it from later Star Trek episodes, the first three seasons of Star Trek were called Star Trek: The Original Series (ABT: TOS or TOS). Although the original "Original Series" was discontinued after the third season in 1969, it was replayed several times in the future, attracting more and more fans.
The earliest title credits for Star Trek: The Original Series
Why would anyone be so fanatical about this show? The movie-watching psychology behind it may be explained by the big vernacular, that is, "what is missing makes up for what". World construction, concept presentation, and conceptual exploration are the most advanced and fascinating places in the series "Star Trek: The Original Series". When the real world is in tatters and people are anxious, screenwriter Gene Roddenberry imagines and creates a beautiful new future world: three hundred years later, the 23rd century humans have mastered the ability of interstellar navigation, and all races live in harmony with each other to form the Interstellar Federation. The great Captain Kirk and his Enterprise are dedicated to exploring the unknowns of the Galaxy, with equality and respect as the supreme guiding principle, in search of and contact with other unknown civilizations in the Galaxy. The spaceship Enterprise (once translated as "Enterprise", the English name Enterprise, translated as "Enterprise" is closer to the original meaning of the play) is itself a utopia where all races live on an equal footing, much ahead of the real-world utopia at that time. Many episodes of the show use science fiction stories to satirize racial inequality, sexism, and various social pedantic concepts in the real world.
An enterprise member in the Star Trek: Original series
Although the Original Series was only three seasons long and had all been broadcast by 1969, its popularity has grown due to several reruns. Subsequently, Paramount Pictures, based on the Original Series, gathered the original team of Star Trek: The Original Series and developed the first to sixth star trek film versions, namely Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), Star Trek III: The Stone Breaker (Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, 1984), Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered.) Country，1991）。 The six films are of varying standards, and most fans tend to think that even-numbered episodes are generally of better quality than odd-numbered episodes, so interested readers may wish to look at them in 2/4/6 order.
Star Trek: Animated Series: Childhood Memories of Chinese Audiences
From 1973 to 1974, the Star Trek cartoon came out, airing two seasons and 22 episodes. The series became known as Star Trek: The Animated Series (ABT: TAS or TAS). The two seasons of the anime continue the world setting and character setting of Star Trek: The Original Series, but the shortcoming is that the production is simple and thin. However, several episodes have invited well-known science fiction writers to participate in the screenwriting, so it is still remarkable in terms of science fiction ideas.
Star Trek: Animated Series poster
For Chinese film and television viewers, it is unlikely that the earliest Star Trek: Original Series will be seen at the same time (emphasis will be 1966-1969), and even the first six films of the later film series will not be seen by many people. However, for china's middle-aged and elderly TV viewers over the age of forty (such as the author), it is very likely that they will have a memory of watching this "Star Trek" cartoon. In my childhood and adolescence, every night at 6:30 on TV, there would be a twenty-minute episode of cartoons to watch, which was the only chance to see such a precious thing as cartoons at that time. Many years later, I learned that the cartoon called Star Trek that I had seen that year (about 1992) was actually the Chinese dubbed version of star trek: animated series. Captain Kirk's voice will appear at the beginning of each episode of the cartoon, "Space, the last front line, this is a voyage of the spaceship Enterprise." Its mission over five years is to explore unfamiliar worlds, to find new life and new civilizations, to places that people have never explored before. Immediately after, the captain's voice said, "Captain's log, ephemeris XXXX.X remember, we have come to a new planet..." That is probably the earliest sci-fi charm I felt in my life.
Star Trek: The Next Generation: Successfully Continues a New Chapter
In 1987, the second Star Trek episode, Star Trek: The Next Generation (ABT: TNG or TNG), finally came out. Set in time, the story takes place about a century after the end of Star Trek: The Original Series, and the fourth generation of the Enterprise, led by Captain Picard, continues to devote itself to the exploration of the unknown territory of the galaxy.
Star Trek: The Next Generation title credits
Star Trek: The Next Generation is the longest of all Star Trek television series, running seven seasons and 178 episodes from 1987 to 1994. Not only that, but it's also the highest-rated of all Star Trek episodes. Star Trek: The Original Series shaped the bright world of the Federation of Stars in the 23rd century, laying the foundation for the positive, optimistic, rational exploration, and equal respect of the Star Trek series. Star Trek: The Next Generation further enriches this world structure and further develops the exalted, enterprising spirit of the Original Series. Captain Picard's image of determination, integrity and fearlessness, portrayed by Patrick Stewart, became the second full-fledged Captain Enterprise after Kirk.
Crew member of the Enterprise in Star Trek: The Next Generation
Several Star Trek films (seventh to tenth) based on Star Trek: The Next Generation are equally remarkable. In Star Trek: Generations 1994, Captain Kirk from the Original Series and Captain Picard from The Next Generation, two captains a hundred years apart, meet in the same time and space — no spoilers.
In Star Trek VII: Star Trek, Captain Picard (right) meets Captain Kirk (left)
Star Trek: First Contact (1996), Star Trek: Insurrection (1998), and Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) declined in successive ratings, largely because the three films began to move towards an incorrigible dark wind in style, and this was precisely the older generation's Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) ratings. Star Trek fans are the last thing to see. The story of Captain Picard, until the 2002 "Star Trek 10: Nemesis" here is a temporary end, until the 2020 "Star Trek: Picard" story restart, this is the afterword.
Star Trek 10: Nemesis poster
From Deep Space Nine to Discovery: New Expansion of Old Stories
By the 1990s, the influence of Star Trek could be said to be fully open, and two new Star Trek episodes were developed and even broadcast at the same time.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (ABT: DS9) aired seven seasons and 176 episodes from 1993 to 1999, closest in number to Star Trek: The Next Generation. According to the setting, "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" tells the story of what happened around the space station "Deep Space Nine", the plot mode is quite different from the previous two "Star Trek", the theme is deep but the style is dark, and there is no gene Roddenberry, the elder of the first two "Star Trek", involved in the screenwriting, so it can be largely seen as a story of the "Star Trek" family.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine poster
Star Trek: Voyager (ABT: VOY, ST: VGR or VOY) ran from 1995 to 2001, and also ran for seven seasons with 172 episodes. The ship of the Federation of Stars in the play was replaced by the Voyager, led by Captain Catherine Janeway, and the main story line was no longer to explore the unknown parts of the galaxy, but to "return home". The ratings of Voyager were high and low in that year, and the more fans got later, the more they couldn't find the positive feeling of Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation. By the end of 2001, Voyager.
Star Trek: Voyager poster
After star trek: deep space nine and star trek: voyager, the story of outward expansion, Star Trek: Enterprise (abbreviated ST: ENT or ENT) decided to return to the classics to create a prequel to the Star Trek series, telling the story of the predecessor of the Interstellar Federation, the first generation of Enterprise in Earth's history, to embark on its first space exploration. Although the creativity is good, the slow and methodical long-term story mode of "Enterprise" is probably not so attractive to audiences who are not familiar with the setting of the previous Star Trek world. In 2001, the first season of Star Trek: Enterprise was tepid after the broadcast, and it was only because of the hard work of Star Trek fans that the TV station renewed the second and third seasons of the show, and in 2005, the fourth season of "Star Trek: Enterprise" ended. Some fans launched a fundraiser for the fifth season of "Star Trek: Enterprise" that year, but it was still unsuccessful.
Stills from Star Trek: Enterprise
In 2017, another new Star Trek episode, Star Trek: Discovery, began airing and has now run two seasons. In the first two episodes of "Discovery", the biggest highlight is the role of the female captain played by Yang Ziqiong, who is both full of the calm and steady training of a ship and full of the unique charm of oriental women. Regrettably, Yang Ziqiong is basically a cameo in the show, and this character died at the end of the second episode, and from the third episode onwards, the story turns to the new space of Discovery.
Stills from Star Trek: Discovery
Discovery also follows a slow, long-line story model, which is actually far less interesting than The Orville, another Star Trek episode that aired at the same time. To a certain extent, the drama refers to the world setting of "Star Trek", returning to the story mode of the series, basically an episode of a story is short and fast, while humorous, relaxed, witty in style, rational, optimistic and enterprising in value orientation, and at the same time has a high degree of social reflection and critical awareness of concepts, although it does not belong to the "Star Trek" family, but the overall temperament is the closest to the "Star Trek: Original Series" a TV series. (For a detailed description of "Orville", see the author's humble work "American Drama< Orville >: Fables from the 25th Century))
Stills from The Orville
Although the influence of Star Trek: Discovery is mediocre, it is still scheduled for a third season, which will be broadcast this year. Another piece of news is said that the "Star Trek: Discovery" spin-off drama starring Yang Ziqiong is also in development.
Fifth, the new version of the "Star Trek" trilogy: the first choice for novices to enter the pit
For a new generation of domestic moviegoers, unless they are iron fans of "Star Trek", the most familiar "Star Trek" is probably the new version of the "Star Trek" trilogy of these three movies.
In 2009, a new version of the Star Trek movie was released. Some places call this one "Star Trek 11" according to the "Star Trek" film sequence, but it actually tells the story of Captain Kirk, Parker, Uhura and other people in "Star Trek: Original Series" when they were young, which is a prequel. In 2013, the second installment in the series, Star Trek: Into Darkness, was released. In 2016, the third Star Trek: Beyond was released. The more this prequel story is compiled, the more it cannot be connected with the story in the "Star Trek: Original Series" behind the timeline, so the official setting later simply describes it as a story on another timeline, and as to whether to pull the parallel universe, there is still no conclusion.
For viewers who are not familiar with Star Trek culture and have no emotional baggage, it is a good choice to start with this new version of the Star Trek trilogy, after all, the audiovisual effects of this series are the best of all star trek movies and TV series at present. As for the strong dissatisfaction of "Star Trek" fans about this new trilogy, for audiences who are watching hilarity or new pits, it can be regarded as something other than these three movies for the time being.
New Star Trek trilogy movie poster
There's also a well-made sci-fi comedy, Galaxy Quest (1999), which can be seen as a film dedicated to Star Trek. The play fictionalized a science fiction drama similar to "Star Trek", and the yin and yang developed a large number of alien fans. These alien fans not only believed the "Star Trek" drama set in the film as true, but also built a real spaceship and invited this group of actors on Earth to be commanders...
A tribute to Star Trek's sci-fi comedy "The Amazing Galaxy"
The science fiction beauty of Star Trek
Star Trek's influence in the West far exceeds that of Star Wars, X-Men, and so on as we know it. The famous science fiction writer Asimov once actively participated in the creation of the show, and even the genius physicist Stephen Hawking also made a cameo appearance in the TV series. In the opening credits of the 26th episode of the sixth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the robot Data finds Hawking, Newton, and Einstein to play a card game together.
There is a cameo appearance in Stephen Hawking on the filming scene of episode 26 of the sixth season of "Star Trek: The Next Generation"
The world created by Star Trek is far more colorful than this little article can cover. For example, the alien language of the Klingons that already appeared in the "Star Trek: Original Series" was only a few random babbles with subtitles in the first few episodes, and later, the screenwriter asked a special linguist to create a complete Klingon language, and even published a Klingon dictionary. It can be said that the Klingons have become the most detailed alien civilization in terms of history, culture, language, writing and other aspects that we have created so far.
In the movie Star Trek VI: City of the Future, the Federation and the Klingons go from conflict to reconciliation
And the discussion of technology involved in "Star Trek" can be even more sweaty. There are a lot of people who became scientists by watching Star Trek. The discussion of technology in the play was initially only conducted in the fan base of "Star Trek", and later many well-known scientists also joined in, seriously discussing various seemingly absurd issues. For example, which of the technologies imagined in Star Trek have been realized and which have not been realized; whether the unimplemented technology problems lie in the technical bottleneck or the theoretical basis... Nowadays, the clamshell mobile phone that has been eliminated, the tablet computer and Bluetooth headset that have been realized, the VR technology that is in full swing, etc., these things we can actually see in "Star Trek" decades ago. It has not yet been realized, such as the laser gun in "Star Trek" that can vaporize people in an instant, which is a relatively simple special effect in the series, but it is still difficult to achieve. The technical bottleneck is not whether it can produce such a huge amount of energy, but how to compress that large amount of energy into a pistol.
For example, the instantaneous transmission technology that is often used in "Star Trek" to transfer a person from one place to another in an instant requires only a very simple special effects technique from the creative process, but this technology is still quite far away in the implementation level, and may not even be realized. From a physical point of view, does it really need to decompose the person from the cellular level before transmission, or from the molecular, atomic, or more microscopic particle level? How to deal with quantum uncertainty in the microscopic world? At the time, it was a technical imagination created with simple special effects, just to facilitate the progress of the story, but it had attracted serious discussion among many professional scientists, and the focus of the debate expanded from technical feasibility to the ethical level - the so-called instant teleportation, whether to teleport Captain Kirk from one place to another, or to kill the original Captain Kirk and then reproduce a new Captain Kirk?
Teleportation technology that often appears in Star Trek
As for each generation of The Enterprise that has appeared in the "Star Trek" "universe", from the external design to the internal structure and the specific parameters of each item, it has attracted fans to study and study in detail. It can be said that the real "Star Trek" is not just a TV series of more than 700 episodes and thirteen movies, but the most plump, detailed and beautiful imaginary world in the history of science fiction built by film and television creators and audience fans.
Every generation of Enterprises is different
7. The humanistic spirit of Star Trek
Really good science fiction is not only a fantasy of the future world, but more of thinking, thinking about science and technology, thinking about human beings, thinking about the future. The success of Star Trek lies in its focus on the humanistic spirit. What it induces is not people's obsessive fantasies about superpowers and high technology, but thinking and thinking about what kind of self, what kind of culture, and what kind of cosmic society should be pursued by future human beings. The Star Trek series itself runs through confusion about "better humanity" and what exactly is the direction of human evolution. The Vulcans abandon emotions and act entirely in logic; intelligent robots envy human nature and constantly imitate human behavior to mask mechanical instincts. The Borg mechanize themselves, integrate themselves into the collective consciousness, annihilate the individual consciousness, and assimilate other races to obtain evolution and development, regardless of the destruction of other races; human beings pursue individual liberation, respect individual consciousness, and finally release the captured Borg individual when he derives humanity. The Klingons believed that honor was supreme and that it was shameful to die glorious prisoners of war; the Frigis believed that interests were paramount, that anything could be traded, and that profits should be maximized in everything they did... Thankfully, human beings have always adhered to the development of individuality, and the pursuit of freedom has neither instilled or forced its own values into other civilizations, nor has it ever succumbed to external oppression. It is this freedom, equality and respect in everyone's heart that make up star trek culture.
The Borg in Star Trek
When we opened the Star Trek Proto series in the 60s, from the current point of view, both the special effects and the story rhythm are very bad, but many of the advanced consciousness contained in it are beyond the reach of today's people. In the 60s, when racism and the Cold War were racist, Star Trek godfather Gene Roddenberry added a black woman and a Russian and Asian Japanese to the Executive of the Enterprise, and it was this black female communications officer whose on-screen image inspired a generation of black people who "used to be black women who could not be maids." It is a culture of fraternity and equality, and Jean Roddenbury is a champion of political egalitarianism, imperceptibly channeling positive value orientations to people. This culture was also inherited by later sequels, with the appearance of a blind engineer in Star Trek: The Next Generation, a black male protagonist in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and a female captain in Star Trek: Voyager. It is also this culture of equality and fraternity that has laid the foundation for a cosmic society of mutual respect and mutual understanding in Star Trek.
Four hundred years ago, the geographical discovery, the white people slaughtered the "barbarian" natives of the Americas with the posture of superior "civilized people", and the human invasion of space civilization is not a new geographical discovery, and at this moment we are civilized people or indigenous people? Jean Roddenbury cross-era proposed what he considered to be the moral code of the Federation of Stars, the supreme guiding principle of the Federation: that any member of Starfleet shall not, for any reason, interfere in the life and cultural development of an alien race that is conscious and inhabits an environment of normal cultural development and self-contemplation, including the introduction of advanced knowledge, power, and technology into a world in which the incompetence and advanced wisdom control its development. It was this spiritual principle that fused Earth into the galactic family and tried to integrate more species civilizations with respect, eventually establishing the great family of the Interstellar Federation.
It is this belief that gives the Star Trek set a philosophical significance and occupies the commanding heights of the humanist spirit. It is this belief that allows us to see the detachment that always sets the phase gun as a stun at the risk of danger, lets us see that the surviving crew of the shipwreck would rather fight each other desperately until they leak any information to the initial civilization, and let us see Captain Picard risk his life to let the arrow pass through the chest rather than let the primitive people abandon atheism and believe in him as a god. It is this belief that you and I may not be able to do, and do not understand, but it does not hinder the admiration in our hearts. Because every civilization, every race, and even every species is a respectable being, we should not pollute them. This is the humanistic spirit of Star Trek.
Sparker's classic gestures and lines were imitated by Sheldon many times in The Big Bang Theory
The society of "Star Trek" is called a future utopian society, and even the shipyard in the story is self-deprecatingly named the utopian shipyard, but the humanistic philosophy in this utopian society is indeed the eternal pursuit of mankind. Even if none of us know what the future of human civilization will look like, at least we hope that our future civilization concept will be like the one depicted in Star Trek.
Star Trek: Picard: Captain, My Captain!
On January 24, 2020, Star Trek: Picard was officially launched. In total, this should be considered the seventh Star Trek series after Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Enterprise, and Star Trek: Discovery. And since Star Trek: The Next Generation, which began airing in 1987, the same actor (Patrick Stewart) playing the same character (Captain Picard) more than thirty years apart is difficult to match in the history of world cinema and television.
Judging from the first episode that has been aired so far, this is another Star Trek drama with a long story. However, this latest "Star Trek: Picard" in terms of production accuracy, audiovisual effects is far from the original "Star Trek: The Next Generation" can be compared, absolutely the level of film. Whether it is the image style, story environment or character setting, the first episode is a bit like playing cyberpunk Blade Runner in many places, but at the end it is back to the magnificent and majestic space opera style unique to Star Trek. Anyway, our captain is back! Captain Picard, who was brave and fearless at the time, has now become a charming Picard grandfather, and there is a little more love in the awe of justice. In 2020, chase the drama and go!
Stills from Star Trek: Picard