star trek the first adventure

Star Trek: The First Adventure

Star Trek: The First Adventure , also tentatively titled Starfleet Academy and Star Trek: The Academy Years , was a planned movie penned by Harve Bennett and David Loughery that was intended to follow Star Trek V: The Final Frontier , for a 1991 release date, corresponding with Star Trek: The Original Series ' 25th anniversary . The production of this film, which culminated over a period of a year, made it as far as a written script and a few pieces of conceptual artwork.

• 4 Conceptual art
• 5 Development and rejection
• 6 Resurrection

Proposal [ ]

Star Trek: The First Adventure was intended to be a new vehicle to continue the Star Trek movie missions .

According to David Loughery, " Every time they go to make one of these Star Trek movies, the producers and the studio always run into the same problem in getting the original cast together. The reasons for that are money, power, creative differences, ego, health, unavailability... all of those things. Harve [Bennett] always had this ace up his sleeve, which was if we can't get everybody together for one of these Star Trek movies, we should do a prequel. "

Star Trek producer Ralph Winter originally pitched the idea for the film to Harve Bennett at his daughter's Bat Mitzvah. " We had already locked in the Star Trek IV storyline with the whales and I said, 'You know, I have a great idea, let's do a prequel' in the middle of this reception for his daughter. I suggested we develop a series of films to be another franchise, another tent pole that we could open. We could do a prequel and find out how Kirk and Spock met at the Starfleet Academy . When we were doing Star Trek V , we got the studio to approve work on the script. It is an excellent story, but it has been misperceived. It's a great story finding out about this young cocky character on a farm who goes to flight school and meets up with the first alien that comes from Vulcan and how they meet the other characters. It would have been a gift for the fans on the 25th anniversary. "

David Loughery noted, " When I heard about the idea, I thought it was terrific. Not from the point of view of recasting, but from the point of view of storytelling, because I worked so closely with these characters on Star Trek V , that the idea of doing an origin story – where you show them as young cadets and kids – was tremendously exciting. What it was, was a real coming of age story. "

Winter believed that Starfleet Academy would have ushered in a new approach to the Star Trek franchise for the studio in which a coherent plan would be created for producing the Star Trek films on a semi-regular basis as opposed to the sporadic, fitful stop-and-go start-up on a new film every three years with the arduous contract negotiations that initiating each new chapter entailed.

According to Harve Bennett, the film, which could have been made for US$27 million, would also have avoided the hefty multi-million dollar salaries of its leads – William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy – as well as DeForest Kelley 's take-home of nearly half a million dollars and the $125,000 paychecks the supporting players pocketed. ( Charting the Undiscovered Country: The Making of Trek VI )

Premise [ ]

Michael Curtiz 's 1940 film Santa Fe Trail served as an inspiration for what Harve Bennett envisioned as the classic triumvirate's first trek. ( Charting the Undiscovered Country: The Making of Trek VI )

Conceptual art of young Kirk and Spock

According to co-writer David Loughery, this film was intended to be kind of a " Top Gun – Star Trek , in which this rambunctious, willful Iowa farmboy, Jim Kirk , goes to Starfleet Academy and meets up with this misanthropic, misunderstood, brilliant Vulcan , who is the first Vulcan ever to attend Starfleet Academy. " ( Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country – Special Edition DVD, Disc 2 ) The film was also to have introduced Leonard McCoy , a thirty-year-old doctor who began attending the Academy after having pulled the plug on his terminally ill father and was searching for the meaning of life. ( Charting the Undiscovered Country: The Making of Trek VI )

The premise of the story would have focused on young Kirk's development from a careless youth to a responsible leader, and included the loss of a great love, while at the climax of the story, he and Spock battled slavery on an alien world. ( Trek: The Unauthorized Story of the Movies )

Loughery stated, " In outline form, it was the story of Kirk and Spock meeting for the first time as cadets here on Earth. We've got a young Jim Kirk, who's kind of cocky and wild. He's not exactly what you might think starship captain material might be. He's like one of these kids who would rather fly hot planes and chase girls. Spock is this brilliant, arrogant, aloof to the point of obnoxiousness, genius. It's this mask he's hiding behind to cover his own conflicting Human emotions. He's an outcast, he left Vulcan in shame against his father 's wishes and, like all adolescents, he's trying to find a place to fit in, but he keeps screwing it up. "

Loughery added, " Over the course of this story, which is one year at Starfleet Academy, Kirk and Spock are sort of put to the test and they begin as rivals and end up as friends and comrades who learn that they have to combine their talents for the first time to defeat a deadly enemy. In the final scene, where they say goodbye at graduation and go their separate ways, we're able to see the legends that these two boys are going to grow up to become. " ( Charting the Undiscovered Country: The Making of Trek VI )

Outline [ ]

A script review for this film, bearing the Star Trek: The Academy Years title, was explored by Ain't It Cool News on March 20, 2006. The following is a summary of that review:

Conceptual art [ ]

Development and rejection [ ]

According to Harve Bennett, in a 2006 interview on The Trek Nation website, " We had a green light to picture which was canceled only when there was a regime change at the studio and a concern that we should do something more conventional for the then-25th anniversary. We had 19 months to do it in. 19 months? There's no way to do a special effects picture in 19 months. The best time we had was Star Trek III , which was two years from concept to release date. And the reason for that is, we would write the script normally and that was an easy script, that was six weeks and we were ready to go. But the special effects planning takes the better part of the year. I said, 'It can't be done.' And then my time was up, so I left. " [1]

In a 2010 interview with StarTrek.com , Bennett said, " It was the best script of all and it never got produced. It was at the end of my run. Ned Tanen, who was Paramount's head of production, had green lighted it before he left. We even had location scouts and sent feelers out for the cast. I had an eye on John Cusack for Spock, which would have been great. Ethan Hawke could have been Kirk. There were so many possibilities. But basically it was a love story and it was a story of cadets, teenagers. And, in order to get Shatner and Nimoy in, we had a wraparound in which Kirk comes back to address the academy and the story spins off of his memory. At the end, Kirk and Spock are reunited and they beam back up to Enterprise , which would have left a new series potential, the academy, and a potential other story with the original Trek cast. All the possibilities were open, the script was beautiful, and the love story was haunting, but it didn't happen. " [2]

Bennett's script created a lot of friction between himself and the original cast with whom he had spent the better part of a decade working. Support was marshaled against the film and vociferously denounced on the convention circuit by Gene Roddenberry and the members of the supporting cast.

Roddenberry, who stated in a Cinefantastique interview that " I didn't like it. Who was going to cast the new Kirk and Spock? No one has ever cast a Trek character besides me that's worked. Braggadocio or whatever, that is the history of Trek . It wasn't good. Some of it was like Police Academy . You could hardly do this without the magic of a group of characters tailored for Star Trek , which this was not. "

Walter Koenig shared Roddenberry's feelings, stating that " I think there was a fat chance of that happening. I can't read Harve's mind, but if Starfleet Academy had done well, they would have gone on with that group. If it hadn't, they probably would have abandoned the whole project. "

Once word began to leak about the project, letters began to pour into Paramount decrying the planned feature as heresy. Loughery admitted that " We were really caught off guard and surprised by the fans who reacted so negatively to the idea of this movie. Somehow they conceived it as sort of a spoof or a takeoff. That's where we got off on the wrong foot. The fans had misinformation, which may have been put out there by people for their own reasons. Certainly if we were going to make a movie like that, it meant that Walter [Koenig] and whoever wouldn't get that job a year or two down the line that they had come to expect. I don't know if that's the case, but I do know that the misinformation released had people convinced that we were going to do a cross between Police Academy and The Jetsons . It was never that kind of story. I think it's traditional that the fans have objected to different things. Harve's always been smart enough to double-cross them; given them what they've objected to, but surprise them with something that makes it good and worthwhile. We felt that there was a powerful story there, one that the audience would be interested in. We're always interested in young Indiana Jones and young Sherlock Holmes , and how they started and came to be who they are. This was sort of the way to explain Kirk and Spock and where they came from. "

Bennett recalled that " the only one I'm really furious at though is Jimmy Doohan . He said I was fired and I can't abide lies. My term was up and I was offered $1.5 million to do Star Trek VI and I said, 'Thanks, I don't wish to do that. I want to do that. I want to do the Academy. " Doohan's response was that " I was impressed with Harve when he first came in and did Star Trek II and III , but I think he got a little greedy. He wanted things his own way. He wanted to take over Star Trek for himself. What the heck, you don't do that sort of thing, trying to destroy instead of building. He obviously did not realize the strength of the old cast. The whole thing would have been starting out as if from scratch. " ( Charting the Undiscovered Country: The Making of Trek VI )

While Paramount Pictures studio executive Ned Tanen supported the project, the other studio executives did not. Paramount ultimately rejected the script when Bennett made a make-or-break demand, and according to Doohan, " I think it was [Frank] Mancuso who didn't realize we were not going to be in it. When he found out, [he] said good-bye Harve. "

For Bennett, the rejection of the project was a big disappointment for the veteran producer who planned the film as his freshman directorial effort. " It meant a lot to me because I came out of UCLA film school wanting to be a director and other winds blew me to other ports. It was a desire of mine to direct and it was accepted by the studio and, the fact is, part of the deal was for us to do a Star Trek VI , with the original cast after Starfleet Academy , " which was slated for production eighteen months later.

Bennett added that " My last words to Mancuso before he was asked to leave was if it was a question of anyone's concerns about my directing, I'd back off on that. " In response, Paramount " offered me Star Trek VI and gave me a pay or play commitment to direct and produce Starfleet Academy afterwards. My position was, and I think it was correct, that they would pay me to do VI and make the movie which would have been a real big, fat check for me and never make Starfleet Academy . To be paid off because the movie I might have done, which is being done by others, would close the franchise was not my intention. "

Bennett ultimately quit the studio when he lost, turning down the offer to produce Paramount's version of Star Trek VI . " It wasn't easy to walk away from that, but if your heart is not in something and you've earned the right not to have to do things that cause you pain, then you don't do them. " He maintains that the supporting cast was entirely accountable for the film's demise, however recognizing that " their jobs and livelihoods were jeopardized. "

Bennett later admitted that " because of the way Star Trek VI is being sold, don't miss your chance to say good-bye, it's unlikely that Starfleet Academy , which asks 'Would you like to know how it all happened?' will be made. " He maintained, however, that "Starfleet Academy , like Star Trek IV , would have reached beyond the cult. It would have interested people who had never seen a Star Trek film which did not exclude the regulars, but it simply said, if you don't understand what it's all about, come see how it all began. " ( Charting the Undiscovered Country: The Making of Trek VI ; Trek: The Unauthorized Story of the Movies )

After the idea for the premise was tossed out, the studio was still "not happy going out on V " and still "wanted another Star Trek movie" so they approached Nicholas Meyer on coming up for an alternate idea, which both he and Leonard Nimoy eventually developed into the story that would become Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country . ( Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country – Special Edition DVD, Disc 2 )

Resurrection [ ]

In spite of the film's rejection, Bennett remained hopeful, stating in 1992 that " Brandon [Tartikoff], Paramount production chief is an admired colleague and we've done business together in the past. If he ever called me and said 'I read this script and I'd like to do this,' I would go back. " Tartikoff, unfortunately, died five years later, dashing Bennett's immediate hopes. ( Charting the Undiscovered Country: The Making of Trek VI )

Bennett later admitted that " some of the steam went out of it when my dear DeForest Kelley died. He was going to be in it along with Bill [Shatner] and Leonard [Nimoy], those were the only two regulars, and they were involved in a flashback . That's how we incorporated the three main characters into the prequel: it was a memory. Kirk comes to the Academy to address the classmates and remembers his time, when they were 17. "

Yet in 2004 , Harve Bennett and, then Chairman of Paramount Pictures' Motion Picture Group, Sherry Lansing had a meeting in which Bennett proposed that " now was the time to do Starfleet Academy . " According to Bennett, Lansing "loved it," and " we would have made it, but then she said the television department had asked her not to do it, because Enterprise was being produced and they thought that should be the prequel. Therefore, we did not do that. "

Despite these roadblocks, Bennett still did not give up hope, having expressed interest as late as 2006 in working on the film if anyone was willing to make it. [3]

The 2009 film Star Trek , written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman , superficially borrowed the same basic premise of Bennett's film by returning the franchise to the Academy years of the original crew, how they first met, and how they first came aboard the USS Enterprise . Aside from these surface similarities, the plotlines of these two films are significantly different. When asked about the 2009 film, Bennett said, " I did see it. I'm not the audience for that. Rapid cuts. Explosions. Gore for the sake of gore. Either that makes me a dinosaur or there's a generational problem, but that's not J.J.'s fault. " [4]

• 2 Daniels (Crewman)
• 3 USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-G)

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Enterprise: The First Adventure

• 1 Description
• 3.1 Characters
• 3.2 Starships and vehicles
• 3.3 Locations
• 3.4 Races and cultures
• 3.5 States and organizations
• 3.6 Other references
• 4.1 Related media
• 4.2 Background
• 4.4.1 Translations
• 4.5 External links

Description [ ]

Summary [ ].

James T. Kirk awakens from a nightmare of the Battle of Ghioghe , in which he lost his ship (the USS Lydia Sutherland ) and his first officer Gary Mitchell was badly injured. He visits the hospital, where Gary is unconscious but recovering, and runs into Carol Marcus . Meanwhile, Spock goes swimming on his last day of leave, Sulu looks forward to being assigned to the USS Aerfen , and on Arcturus , the Klingon renegade Koronin takes possession of a Bird-of-Prey .

Spock goes to Christopher Pike 's headquarters to congratulate him on his promotion to Commodore and thank him for the opportunity to work with him. On the Enterprise bridge, Uhura returns from the Irish Harp Festival at Mandela City and Scotty hands out cigars to celebrate the birth of his niece Dannan Stuart . While on Spacedock , Kirk runs into an old friend, Agovanli , and the two share a few drinks together. Sulu is dismayed to learn that he has instead been assigned to the Enterprise , but his complaints to Spock prove fruitless.

At the reception for the change-of-command ceremony, Kirk meets his bridge crew and learns that Spock will be serving as his first officer . Admiral Noguchi turns down his request for Gary Mitchell to be assigned first officer. Kirk takes his mother and brother on a tour of the Enterprise , where they find an equiraptor in the shuttlebay.

Kirk meets the equiraptor's owner, Amelinda Lukarian . He is surprised and dismayed to learn from Admiral Noguchi that the Enterprise has been assigned for the next three months to transport Amelinda's vaudeville troop to the starbases in the Federation Phalanx in order to boost morale. Kirk tries to argue with the Admiral and speaks rudely to Amelinda. His mother scolds him for his behavior, and his brother tries to reach out to him, but both efforts fail. Later, he apologizes to and makes peace with Lindy.

Kirk postpones departing from Spacedock until McCoy can board the Enterprise . Several attempts are made to track down his whereabouts, but all of them prove fruitless. McCoy, who had been on a rafting vacation without any communications technology, is transported to the ship in time. That evening, the vaudeville troop dines with the crew in the mess hall , where the food synthesizers are malfunctioning. Kirk is late for dinner, having decided to catch up on his paperwork, and McCoy recommends that he get a yeoman to handle it for him.

Janice Rand is assigned as Kirk's yeoman. Although proving capable at organizing his paperwork, she lacks self-confidence and feels constantly frightened. McCoy gives a medical exam to Spock and gets into an argument with him on emotionalism. Kirk assigns Rand to help Lindy design an advertising poster for the vaudeville company. He later calls Gary Mitchell (who has regained consciousness), talks with McCoy about Rand, and impresses Spock by using intuition to solve a chess problem.

Rand shows up on the bridge in a disheveled state. Kirk harshly reprimands her for this, and she runs off in tears. Uhura follows and comforts her, learning of her background as a slave and refugee, and her current situation as a victim of her roommate's bullying. She gets Rand moved into the yeoman's cabin, and later Kirk apologizes to Rand. Lindy contacts a juggler for her act, a Vulcan named Stephen .

Spock has a barely-repressed emotional reaction on seeing Stephen and leaves for his quarters to meditate. Kirk follows him and learns that Stephen is considered a deviant on Vulcan for seeking out emotional experiences. Kirk and Lindy meet with Stephen after he docks with the Enterprise . The ship acquires cometary debris from an Oort cloud to cover the shuttlecraft deck with dirt so Athene can run on it. Kirk and Lindy converse, Lindy telling him the history of her vaudeville troop, and Kirk telling her about the Battle of Ghioghe.

Spock finds Stephen in his quarters and the two exchange harsh words. Kirk goes to the bridge early and meets Pavel Chekov as the Enterprise enters the Phalanx. Later, Kirk has a fencing match with Sulu, rides Athene, and takes Lindy to the arboretum , where she tells him - much to his disappointment - that she thinks she's falling for Stephen.

The vaudeville troop performs for the Enterprise crew. Spock attempts to deduce how Lindy does her magic tricks, prompting her to make him part of her act. After making him disappear, she angrily confronts him backstage. Spock had been concerned that Lindy was claiming to be a real magician, and the misunderstanding is cleared up. The troop's second performance is interrupted when the Enterprise is thrown out of warp by the sudden arrival of a gigantic starship. Kirk and Spock make contact with the ship's inhabitants, who communicate through complex song that cannot be translated. Matters are complicated by the arrival of Koronin's ship, the Quundar .

Beings from the worldship visit the Enterprise . Spock realizes almost too late that the ship's gravity is too high for them and quickly has them transported to the shuttlecraft deck. He mind melds with one of them, but is overwhelmed and loses consciousness. The being learns how to speak from the meld and communicates with Kirk. Spock is taken to sickbay and Uhura tries to learn the beings' song. When Scott objects to Kirk's order to reduce gravity throughout the ship, Kirk goes to engineering to confront him. Athene almost hurts herself attempting to imitate the beings' flying, prompting Stephen to take her and Lindy to the worldship.

Kirk decides to go after Stephen. He places Scott in charge of the Enterprise despite their earlier argument. On the worldship, Athene flies for the first time in her life. Stephen turns down Lindy's advances, as his Vulcan training keeps him from returning her feelings. Spock, believing himself to be one of the worldship people, escapes from sickbay and makes his way to the alien vessel. Koronin also boards the ship and, while trying to get the people to obey her, stabs part of the wall with her blade, causing a small explosion. Her crew captures Spock, and Kirk's team arrives on the ship.

A Klingon warship fleet assigned to capture Koronin arrives in the area. Kirk's party finds Lindy and Stephen and informs them of the situation. On Spock's advice, Koronin takes the Quundar to the worldship's center, believing it to be where the vessel's leaders are. When Koronin sees that the Klingon fleet has found her, she takes off, leaving Spock behind. Kirk, with Athene's help, rescues Spock, although they are injured in the process. Stephen mind melds with Spock, who wakes in time to warn Kirk that if fighting breaks out, the worldship will release enough energy to destroy several hundred star systems. Koronin attempts to ram the worldship's center to avoid capture and get revenge on the Klingon Empire, but is deflected by Kirk's shuttlecraft.

Kirk returns to the Enterprise and Koronin is captured by the Klingons. Kirk receives a call from Admiral Noguchi and Gary Mitchell. The Klingons present Kirk with a medal for his role in the capture of Koronin. Lindy's troop performs for the crew, the worldship people, and the Klingons, the latter of whom do not like the show except for Cockspur's soliloquy, which they appreciate immensely. The worldship departs from the Phalanx, and Koronin escapes from her captors.

References [ ]

Characters [ ], starships and vehicles [ ], locations [ ], races and cultures [ ], states and organizations [ ], other references [ ], appendices [ ], related media [ ], background [ ].

• The stardate is derived from the audiobook adaptation of the story, wherein Leonard Nimoy opens the novel reading a log entry by Spock .
• The cover was presented, in paperback release, as a hidden panel behind a cardstock outer flap, with a cutaway corner showing the Enterprise beneath. Later editions omitted the intricacy and had the cover as one piece, thus only showing the Enterprise . In actuality, artist Boris Vallejo had created a much more expansive painting that was only included in hardcover book club editions as a wraparound cover, showing Chekov, Scotty, Sulu and Uhura on the back, and Kirk, Spock and McCoy on the front with the Enterprise in one corner. Kirk, Spock and McCoy appeared on the back cover of most paperback editions and on the inner flap of the original paperback printings.

Timeline [ ]

Translations [ ], external links [ ].

• Enterprise: The First Adventure article at Memory Alpha , the wiki for canon Star Trek .
• 1 Ferengi Rules of Acquisition
• 2 Achilles class
• 3 Odyssey class

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Enterprise: The First Adventure (Star Trek) Paperback – 1 Jan. 1988

• Language English
• Publisher Baen Books
• Publication date 1 Jan. 1988
• Dimensions 10.8 x 3.18 x 17.78 cm
• ISBN-10 0671730320
• ISBN-13 978-0671730321
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Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Baen Books; Reissue edition (1 Jan. 1988)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0671730320
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0671730321
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 10.8 x 3.18 x 17.78 cm
• 25,294 in Science Fiction Space Operas

About the author

Vonda n. mcintyre.

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Enterprise :the first adventure

By vonda n. mcintyre.

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He was the youngest man to captain a starship in Federation history. His crew included an untried first officer - and a maverick ship's surgeon. In the years to come, the voyages of Captain James T. Kirk and the USS Enterprise would become legend.

But before their historic five-year mission began, before the crew meshed into the superb unit that would journey across the galaxy, before the legend took shape, there was the mission that brought them together for the first time.

Here, at last, is that untold story - the first voyage of Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy and all the rest of the Enterprise crew - the most eagerly awaited Star Trek adventure of all!

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Star Trek Enterprise: the First Adventure

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About the book, about the author.

Vonda N. McIntyre is the author of several fiction and nonfiction books. McIntyre won her first Nebula Award in 1973, for the novelette “Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand.” This later became part of the novel Dreamsnake (1978), which was rejected by the first editor who saw it, but went on to win both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. McIntyre was the third woman to receive the Hugo Award. She has also written a number of Star Trek and Star Wars novels. Visit her online at VondaNMcIntyre.com.

About The Readers

George Takei is an actor, activist, and New York Times bestselling author. He is best known for his role of Mr. Sulu in the acclaimed television and film series Star Trek . Takei has been featured in over forty films and he has made hundreds of guest-starring television appearances. He also developed the award-winning Broadway musical Allegiance . Takei is a proponent of gay rights and is a member of the Human Rights Campaign. He has also won several awards for his work on Japanese-American relations, which includes serving as Chairman Emeritus of the Japanese American National Museum's Board of Trustees; a member of the US-Japan Bridging Foundation Board of Directors; and served on the Board of the Japan-United States Friendship Commission. He is the author of three books, including his memoir To the Stars , as well as Oh Myyy! There Goes The Internet , and its sequel, Lions And Tigers And Bears: The Internet Strikes Back .

Product Details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio (March 15, 1988)
• Runtime: 1 hour and 30 minutes
• ISBN13: 9780743542760

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In the 23rd Century, Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise explore the galaxy and defend the United Federation of Planets. In the 23rd Century, Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise explore the galaxy and defend the United Federation of Planets. In the 23rd Century, Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise explore the galaxy and defend the United Federation of Planets.

• Gene Roddenberry
• William Shatner
• Leonard Nimoy
• DeForest Kelley
• 280 User reviews
• 99 Critic reviews
• 16 wins & 31 nominations total

Episodes 80

Photos 2020

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• Trivia In the hallways of the Enterprise there are tubes marked "GNDN." These initials stand for "goes nowhere does nothing."
• Goofs The deck locations for Kirk's Quarters, Sickbay and Transporter Room vary (usually between decks 4-7) throughout the series.

Dr. McCoy : "He's dead, Jim."

• Crazy credits On some episodes, the closing credits show a still that is actually from the Star Trek blooper reel. It is a close-up of stunt man Bill Blackburn who played an android in Return to Tomorrow (1968) , removing his latex make up. In the reel, He is shown taking it off, while an off-screen voice says "You wanted show business, you got it!"
• Alternate versions In 2006, CBS went back to the archives and created HD prints of every episode of the show. In addition to the new video transfer, they re-did all of the model shots and some matte paintings using CGI effects, and re-recorded the original theme song to clean it up. These "Enhanced" versions of the episodes aired on syndication and have been released on DVD and Blu-Ray.
• Connections Edited into Ben 10: Secrets (2006)
• Soundtracks Star Trek Music by Alexander Courage

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• Jun 8, 2002

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• September 8, 1966 (United States)
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Den of Geek

Star Trek: Enterprise – An Oral History of Starfleet’s First Adventure

It’s been 20 years since the Star Trek: Enterprise pilot brought us the first Star Trek prequels. With the cast and creators, we take a look back at how it all began.

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Before Discovery or Strange New Worlds , the early days of the future as postulated by Star Trek were explored in the television series Star Trek: Enterprise . Celebrating its 20 th anniversary at the end of the month, it was set roughly 75 years prior to The Original Series , during the fledgling days of Starfleet, when humanity was first venturing out into the cosmos. 

Scott Bakula as Jonathan Archer captained the first starship given the name Enterprise, leading a team consisting of humans, a Vulcan, and a Denobulan. The voyage wasn’t always a smooth one, but certainly an important part of the canon. What follows, presented in oral history format, is a look back at the show’s formative days.  

BRANNON BRAGA (executive producer/co-creator): Star Trek always needs fresh blood. I left the franchise before Enterprise ; I just said, “I can’t do this anymore.” I remember where I was and what I was working on and where I was standing and at what point in time when I officially burnt out on Star Trek . I decided not to do the seventh season of Voyager and then I was asked to create Enterprise . Rick Berman had a really cool idea for it and I said, “You know what? I’m going to do this one more time.” One could argue maybe I shouldn’t have. Rick was a really good overlord, but even he needed fresh writers. One could argue maybe we both should have left earlier. 

RICK BERMAN (executive producer/co-creator): As Voyager was ending, the studio came and said, “Let’s get another one up and going.” I begged them to let the franchise have a few years’ rest. In fact, they wanted it to start before Voyager ended and I managed to get them to at least wait until Voyager went off the air. The question was, what could we do that was different? I’d been working a great deal with Brannon, and so I asked him to work with me on creating a new series. Our decision, and I still think it was a good one, was to change the time period. We had done three shows that took place in the 24th century, and I thought it was time to go to another century. To go forward meant spacesuits that were a little sleeker and ships that were a little shinier, but it wasn’t that much to invent what had come before. 

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BRANNON BRAGA: Rick called me and said, “What do you think about setting it between the film First Contact and Kirk’s time?” And I said I thought that was a great idea. We started talking about it and considered what it would give us, and it evolved from there. We never considered another concept. We thought that First Contact seemed to be more of a relatable film somehow, because it had characters from the near future versus the distant future, and it allowed a more non– Star Trek audience to embrace Star Trek . You didn’t really have to know much to enjoy that movie. 

RICK BERMAN: There was no Star Trek canon to respond to how Earth got from being in this post-apocalyptic nightmare to being in the world of Kirk and Spock with Starfleet Academy. So our feeling was to pick a time somewhere within that, when the first humans are going into space on warp-capable vessels, and they’re not as sure of themselves as Kirk or Picard were. They’re taking baby steps. We knew, with Enterprise , that we wanted to turn the ship [the franchise] around. We were dealing with the time when the first warp-drive ship was being developed for a crew of humans. There were no holodecks and people didn’t beam themselves anywhere, they just beamed cargo. It just seemed to be the right idea, so it’s the one we pursued. 

BRANNON BRAGA: The biggest challenge was that the studio wanted something, but they were dubious about the prequel idea when we went in to pitch it. I don’t think they liked it very much. They thought Star Trek should be about moving forward and not moving backward. We were asking questions like, “How did we end up building the first warp ship? What was it like to meet a Klingon for the first time?” People had ball caps and walked dogs and wore tennis shoes and are more identifiable as people than, say, a Captain Picard, who is more of an idyllic man of the future that you probably wouldn’t recognize as a person that you could ever meet today. 

RICK BERMAN: From the point of view of some fans, there’s the great sense of continuity that the shows have had, and they’re very, very particular about that. A lot of them were not happy about things that they felt were outside the canon of Star Trek . A lot of them felt that Brannon and I ignored that, which we absolutely didn’t. We tried to pay great attention to it and we had people who knew Star Trek backward and forward that helped us, but obviously there were things that had to be dealt with and adjusted.

SCOTT BAKULA (actor, “Captain Jonathan Archer”): Enterprise is The Right Stuff . That kind of energy of being the first ones out there and being a little scared sometimes and being a little overwhelmed by the experience, which I think is a great emotion to have to play with. Americans have explored our planet in a variety of different ways. Some successfully, some not. We have a wide history of exploration in this country. Certainly different experiences in Vietnam and places like that where we tried to impose our ideas or philosophies on different cultures, and still are in many places around this planet. Making it more about the experience and less about planting the flag. In other words, enjoying the experience and learning from it, rather than saying, “Now we’re here and we’re going to tell you how to do it. We’ve got good ideas and can do things better than you.” So if you’re someone out there looking to do good, and looking to explore in a healthy way, there’s a great responsibility to that. As well as a great temptation to change and alter and fix. Which became this very wonderful kind of play within the show, which is, how are we all going to deal with not only being out there, but the choices we make? 

BRANNON BRAGA: Archer is something between Chuck Yeager and Kirk. He’s anything but the fully enlightened man that Picard is.

RICK BERMAN: It was very important for us to have a captain who was not necessarily that sure of himself, because we wanted him to be different from all the other captains. The other captains got on a spaceship at warp five or warp seven, they never thought twice about it. They ran into aliens every week and they never thought twice about it. We wanted a captain who was taking those first steps out into the galaxy; we wanted him to be a little green, a leader of men and at the same time, somebody who was in awe of everything he saw. With Scott, it just seemed like the perfect fit. 

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JAMES L. CONWAY (director, Enterprise pilot): Scott Bakula was the only actor ever discussed for Archer. Problem was, his deal wasn’t closed until the table read of the script three days before production began. In fact, there were rumors he was going to a CBS comedy pilot and we got very worried. We had never met him, talked to him, or heard him do the material. All during the casting process the casting director was the only one to read Archer’s dialogue. So it was a relief and pleasure to hear Scott brilliantly bring Archer to life at the table read. 

SCOTT BAKULA: I responded to the idea of it and this character, and then I got the script for the pilot and everything just fell into place. I liked the character and it was really a return, in many ways, to what the original Star Trek was all about.

JAMES L. CONWAY: Scott brought a humanity to Archer that’s hard to put on the printed page. Also, as an actor and star of the show, Scott brought a top-notch work ethic and professionalism to the production. As star of the show, he set a great example for everyone. 

BRANNON BRAGA: The funny thing about Scott’s take on the character was he spoke in kind of an unusual cadence when he was Archer and I could never figure it out. Someone told me he was a huge John Wayne fan. I’ve never talked to Scott about it, but I think he may have been doing a little bit of a John Wayne thing. He was our only choice. 

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SCOTT BAKULA: We had a different dynamic on our show, and I’ve thought about it since then, because basically I was the older captain compared to the younger guys on the crew. John Billingsley’s in the middle there somewhere. That’s why I think the stuff between him and me was always special, even though he was nonhuman. There was a different kind of distance between characters created by the casting. We were building those relationships, but it was still from a different place. 

RICK BERMAN: John Billingsley is a character actor and somebody else who’s in tremendous demand. He’s just a wonderful guy. We wanted sort of a wise, quirky alien to play that role of Phlox. Somebody who would be our doctor, and he did a marvelous job. He’s another actor I would do anything to work with again. 

JAMES L. CONWAY: We were having trouble finding an actress for T’Pol. We read a lot of actresses, looked at a lot of names on a wish list, but couldn’t find anyone we liked. The role was critical, because she was a Vulcan and had to be able to “be” a Vulcan, yet still have sex appeal. Thankfully we saw a demo of Jolene’s work, loved it, and then met and read and loved her. 

JOLENE BLALOCK (actress, “T’Pol”): I grew up on Star Trek . My favorite was Spock. I would sit there with my dad and my brother just watching the show, watching the relationship between Captain Kirk, Bones, and Spock. My favorite relationship was between Bones and Spock, because it was just this animosity and this love-hate relationship. But overall there was such utter loyalty between all three of them. I love the way they worked together, just the way Bones would be, like, “You green-blooded fool.” Somewhere in The Next Generation , I got lost. 

BRANNON BRAGA: We wanted a Vulcan babe like Saavik, and wanted a Vulcan on board because the Vulcans were very antagonistic toward humans and she was essentially a chaperone, which really rankled Archer. Their relationship worked kind of nicely, and we saw T’Pol, Archer, and Trip as our triumvirate of characters. 

JOLENE BLALOCK: I personally believed that T’Pol should have more of her Vulcan culture. I didn’t believe she should be so desperate to be like everyone else, because the original Star Trek , which I grew up with, had a very simple message that I took from it, and that is that not everyone is like me, and I’m not perfect, and nobody’s perfect, and that’s okay. That really helped me.

RICK BERMAN: Connor was the only actor in four television series that I had to fight for. I just love this guy. I think he’s a remarkable actor, and I saw four pieces of tape on various things that he had done, and there was just something about him; that this character, Trip, that we had written, he was just made for. 

CONNOR TRINNEER (actor, “Charles ‘Trip’ Tucker III”): I wanted this job a lot . It was a good, time-tested franchise with a good audience. It had so many different things happening in it and it gave me the opportunity to play kind of a space cowboy—it was a dream job. Plus, you got to use your imagination as you’re meeting new species and races. Since this was our first time out, everything was new and we weren’t used to anything. You, as the actor, got to take in something as the audience did for the very first time, which was my experience as both an actor and a character. 

ANTHONY MONTGOMERY: It was incredible. There was an electricity that just ran to my core, and it was because I was sitting at the helm of a show, being a part of a franchise that I grew up with and knew about. I’m not a Trekkie by any stretch of the imagination, but I still understand enough about the franchise that it made me say, “Wow, this is real!” That was even more exciting and intense than when I got the call saying I got the part. 

RICK BERMAN: We were looking for an African American actor. We wanted someone young—we wanted this whole cast to be a lot more approachable, in a way; we wanted the audience to be able to relate to them more than they could other shows. Anthony was gorgeous, a terrific actor, and pretty much talked himself into the role the first day we saw him. We also wanted an Asian actor to play the role of communications officer and go back to a little listening device like Uhura had had in The Original Series . We also wanted her to be a translator of almost magical abilities. And Linda nailed it. We wanted somebody very vulnerable and someone who was not into flying on spaceships. In the first audition she completely got it and did very well. 

LINDA PARK (actor, “Hoshi Sato”): There’s a lot of growth that happened for me, not only as an actor in front of the camera, but as a businesswoman. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that part of being an actor is that you are your own business, especially when you become successful at any level; you see how you work as a business and you can’t say, “I’m just an artist, and I don’t need to concern myself with the practical,” because it’s just as important to keep your artistic tools as sharp as your business tool. That’s the biggest thing I learned. In the end, it is my career and my life that these decisions are being made about. 

RICK BERMAN: I had met Dominic on the first day of the last season of Voyager . He had the role of an English character. We were still a year away from going into production on the new series, but we were already starting to write it. He came in and I said to him, “We’ve got a role for you in a series that we’re creating that’s not going to be going on the air for eight or nine months, whatever it is, but I don’t want to use you up here.” This guy looked at me and said, “You’re right.” 

DOMINIC KEATING: I had a chat with Brannon and Rick where I said, “I’m quite excited, and honestly, I’ll say whatever you put in front of me, but I would like it that he isn’t just the talking head Brit on an American spaceship.” Brannon said, “You won’t be saying lines like ‘My dear old mum.’” When I read the breakdown, he’s described as “buttoned-down, by the book, wry, dry, shy around women.” I’m like, “Oh, crap, I’ve got to act this.” 

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JAMES L. CONWAY: The pilot of Enterprise was terrific. But then the first season was very repetitive and it felt like it was written by people who were burned out. And Brannon copped to this, saying he had made some bad choices in hiring staff and he was burned out from finishing up on Voyager . So I think that first season suffered and it took him awhile to re-steer that ship.

BRANNON BRAGA: When we were shooting the pilot and it was time for me to start writing episodes, I had a lot of things that I wanted to do. But once the ship officially set sail, I felt constrained. I felt, “Here we go again,” and I felt very challenged. Also, it was the first time I wasn’t working with people I’d worked with before. It was a large staff of ten people, and Star Trek was notoriously difficult to find writers for, because it was a hard show to write. I don’t even want to say hard; it’s unique. It just had a specific voice, and I had this writing staff that was new to the genre. Out of ten people, I think just a couple survived that first year. 

Ed Gross | @EdGross

Ed Gross is an entertainment journalist who has served on a variety of editorial staffs throughout his career, among them Cinescape, Movie Magic, Cinefantastique, closerweekly.com and…

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#031: Enterprise: The First Adventure (TOS event novel)

On 18 May 2018

In Event Novels , TOS

Part of what we love so much about Star Trek , and the original series in particular, is the lived-in camaraderie between the senior officers. But it’s rarely considered by fans and authors alike that those relationships took time to develop and endured a heap of growing pains in the process. Enterprise: The First Adventure , the first instance of what we will come to know and recognize as the “event novel”, takes us back to a time before that rapport was locked in, when the crew we know as legendary were almost torn apart by the vagaries of the rumor mill and each other’s baggage before ever having a chance to become the chums we know and love, and imagines that ragtag bunch thrown together for the first time. Published exactly twenty years after Star Trek made its television debut, let’s join Kirk as he learns on a particularly stressful first outing that heavy lies the wrist that wears the command stripes.

Enterprise: The First Adventure Author:  Vonda N. McIntyre Pages:  371 Published:  September 1986 Timeline:  Before TOS Prerequisites:  None necessary, though major characters from “Where No Man Has Gone Before” (TOS S1E3) and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan  significantly inform Kirk’s backstory

As we enter the story, Kirk is closing the book on his relationship with Carol Marcus, hoping for a speedy recovery for his friend Gary Mitchell so he can make him his first officer, and getting wasted with an alien buddy before his own command transition ceremony. Spock is bummed that he’ll no longer be serving under Christopher Pike, who he thought was pretty okay for a human. Sulu thinks he’s about to report to the Aerfen for some frontier action, but he gets a rude awakening when Kirk requests him specifically to be his helm officer, and he keeps getting waylaid in his attempts to get someone to do something about it. McCoy has gone off the grid and is kayaking like he’s the “after” guy in a Viagra commercial when he’s supposed to be reporting for duty. Things go from bad to worse at the party celebrating the transition of command, where Kirk overhears Scotty calling him an “inexperienced tyro” (which, apparently , is redundant).

So no one respects or believes in Kirk and everyone considers him an impetuous noob. That’ll change once he receives an exciting thrill-a-minute mission worthy of his talents, right? Yeah, about that. Admiral Noguchi has hand-selected a real dilly of an assignment: hosting a troupe called the Warp-Speed Classic Vaudeville Company as they tour starbases and attempt to boost morale along the Federation Phalanx, a finger of Federation space that pokes audaciously into Klingon territory. So Kirk has to bend over backwards to accommodate a bunch of carnies specializing in a form of entertainment almost no one in the 23rd century has even heard of, nobody likes him, and his shuttle bay is being rented out as a barn for a pegasus—sorry, an equiraptor (no, not that one ). It’s a little like “Up the Long Ladder” , except far less stupid.

Kirk starts out yelling at Lindy Lukarian (the leader of the company) and resenting her need to keep her stupid eagle-horse comfortable, but things get complicated just as he starts warming up to her when they rendezvous with Stephen, a blond-haired, blue-eyed Vulcan who according to Spock “seeks out emotional experiences”, and not just basic stuff like laughing or owning a cat or adopting a Terran nom de plume , but actual thrills like juggling torches and doing insane stunts in his beat-up shuttlecraft. Spock admits Stephen is brilliant, but naturally disapproves mightily of his choices and feels he’s putting his considerable talents to waste. He also mentions Stephen coming from an “unobjectionable family”. Like, of course Spock knows him somehow. Having read these books for a while now, Spock is getting to be sort of like that offensive stereotype of one person knowing all people of their race, except in his case it’s kind of true. Anyway, if you’ve ever wondered what it looks like when a Vulcan decides to live way off the beaten path, Stephen definitely delivers, but naturally, he’s got a lot of inner turmoil as well, and I really enjoyed just about everything involving him.

Meanwhile, a Klingon woman named Koronin has gone rogue and commandeered a shiny new warship called a … a, uh, “Bird of Prey”? or something? Never heard of it. She has some vaguely vengeance-based plans for it that involve the same thing most generic megalomaniacs in Star Trek get up to: crossing borders, inciting intergalactic war, all that noise. But if you think McIntyre is going to attempt to posit this normally extremely commonplace ship as some unprecedented harbinger of destruction and try to egregiously hype up what would otherwise be a bog-standard space battle, you’ve got another think coming. For one thing, Koronin is one of those “wait and see” Klingons whose subordinates practically soil themselves with impatience, and she does a lot of waiting of seeing before making her play. But also, the Klingons are far from the most important thing going on in this story.

Nearly everything about the Klingons is incidental compared to the real meat of the story, which is a first contact with a group of extremely weird, hyper-sophisticated aliens. We’re talking Duane-level trippy here. They live in a massive worldship that’s so technologically advanced that when it moves, what’s actually happening is that  the universe is moving around it . They’re really nice, albeit oblivious and uncomprehending toward human concerns (understandable, given how ka-ray-zee advanced they are). When they beam over to the Enterprise, the gravity nearly crushes them, and in the process of preventing one from falling, Spock accidentally mind-melds with her, frying his mental circuits and setting up the main dilemma of the book’s second half.

As I mentioned earlier, Enterprise: The First Adventure is the first of what are often called “event novels”, or sometimes “giant novels” (I prefer and use the former). These are books of expanded length and scope that take on subject matter of significantly higher stakes and far-reaching implications than your average standalone novel. From 1986 onward, they generally crank out about one or two a year—more if you include episode and movie novelizations as being within the purview of the term—and they’re almost always (at least, of the ones I read prior to starting this site) of very to extremely good quality. That’s not exactly surprising; despite the inconsistent quality of Star Trek novels (particularly in this era), the folks behind the scenes had a strong sense not only of who their best writers were but exactly which one(s) to choose to write a given story.

Of course, a substantial amount of the story’s conflict derives from the fact that Kirk and the senior bridge crew are very much getting off on the wrong foot. On the most superficial level, this results in wryly ironic lines like “Jim probably would not have much interaction with Commander Spock” (p. 44) and prototypical variations on beloved dynamics (e.g., McCoy’s first needling of Spock essentially boils down to “u mad, bro”). But Vonda McIntyre really rose to an unenviable challenge. Many books have a one- or two-character handicap, but imagine having to write one where no one’s personalities as you and millions of fans have known them for decades are locked in yet. McIntyre’s greatest accomplishment is that despite not having the option of falling back on that comfy familiarity, she keeps everyone totally in character with nary a slip-up, even as they’re grousing and gossiping and generally not really liking each other very much.

There’s nothing really unexpected about Enterprise: The First Adventure  or the way it plays out, but it’s made up of a pretty excellent collection of component parts that keeps the pace fun and buoyant while still leaving room for excitement and suspense when the situation calls for it. And it progresses realistically, by which I mean you don’t make it to the end of the book and suddenly everyone is all chummy and the personalities we’re used to are set in stone. Kirk manages to earn his crew’s grudging respect, if not their total admiration. It’s not a story where everything is supposed to resolve tidily, and it doesn’t. Were I writing this story, I would identify my main goal for the end of the story as putting the characters on a path that provides a clear line of sight to their canon dynamics while ensuring it tracks with everything that came before it. Enterprise: The First Adventure  achieves that goal in the same way that its crew passes their first mission: with flying colors.

Nuggets & Stray Bits

• We need to talk about Janice Rand. Like, what the what? If people are still using the phrase “hot mess” in the 23rd century, they’re definitely calling her one. She doesn’t have her iconic checkerboard beehive , but rather a choppy weed-whacker cut; she lied about her age to get into the Academy because the planet she lived on sucked that much; and she’s ultra-timid and jumpy, has zero self-esteem, and apologizes so much it makes Kirk angry (though to be fair, in this book, a lot of things do that). It’s briefly questioned how someone like her could have even made it through the Academy in her state, although it’s handwaved by saying that basically Starfleet’s recruitment rate is such that they don’t have the luxury of turning down people who want to join, and if a few of them have a crippling neurosis or two or three or seventeen, then so be it. Still, that doesn’t put the question to rest in a satisfying manner. I think of all the character arcs, hers is the only one that when all is said and done is too difficult to reconcile with where we know the character ends up.
• Still, the subplot involving Rand’s cruel roommate is consistently hilarious, since it’s always delicious to see jerks get their comeuppance, especially over and over again.
• Koronin has a pink monkey-type pet she contemptuously names Starfleet, whom she sometimes deigns to feed if he puts his uniform on correctly. Pretty darned on-the-nose, sure, but amusing nevertheless (and he gets a surprisingly affecting redemptive arc).
• In addition to Snnanagfashtalli, a.k.a. Snarl, McIntyre introduces two more felinoids as part of the vaudeville troupe: Tzesnashstennaj and Hazarstennaj, which shorten to Gnash and Hazard, respectively. Isn’t it convenient how felinoid names always shorten to something evocative of violence in English? (A certain doctor would definitely not approve.)
• p. 96: Spock evidently loves avocados so much he has to exercise self-control around them so he doesn’t eat a ton of them. So (no) do you think (don’t) you think (don’t you dare) do you think Spock (why are you doing this) you think Spock has a recipe for (I swear, don’t you do it) ….. Spockamole? [ Deep Space Spines gets abruptly and mysteriously deleted from existence ]
• p. 314: “[The flying people] understood [their worldship technology] so well that they thought about it as often as they thought about breathing. They did not need to think about it. And so they had freed themselves to concentrate on a life of the mind.” I know a guy who’ll show you the life of the mind.

Final Assessment

Excellent.  By no means does J.J. Abrams have the market cornered on Enterprise crew origin stories. A blurb from the Great Bird himself adorns the back cover, and he’s not just whistlin’ Dixie. Enterprise: The First Adventure reminds you why Vonda McIntyre is the one Trek author that gets the lion’s share of the shoutouts and callbacks from other Trek authors. If you’re interested in what a non-Kelvin take on the Enterprise crew’s first mission together would look like, Enterprise: The First Adventure is just what the doctor ordered. (Depending on how charitable your attitude is toward that film, you’re liable to find the book to be the superior take.) Unfortunately, McIntyre’s Pocket Books run has just about reached its end; we’ve got just one more movie novelization to go before that duty gets turned over to J.M. Dillard.

NEXT TIME:  Get ready to man your post for Battlestations!

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I read this book in the mid-90s and remember hating it. The circus troupe seemed really out of place. And once the flying horse showed up and started soaring through the ship? I was done.

Also, I should mention my favorite “first adventure” for the Enterprise crew would have to be the fantastic tale from DC Comics’ Star Trek Annual #1 (1985). Now that was some good, good stuff.

This was the first Star Trek novel I ever read! I bought it and the Star Trek IV novelization at the same time. I was flipping my 14 year old brain out – “THERE ARE NOVELS????!!!”

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• Enterprise: The First Adventure

He was the youngest man to captain a starship in Federation history. His crew included an untried first officer - and a maverick ship's surgeon. In the years to come, the voyages of Captain James T. Kirk and the U.S.S. Enterprise would become legend.

But before their historic five year mission began, before the crew meshed into the superb unit that would journey across the galaxy, before the legend took shape, there was the mission that brought them together for the first time.

Here, at last, is that untold story - the first voyage of Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy and all the rest of the Enterprise crew - the most eagerly awaited Star Trek adventure of all.

• Vonda N. McIntyre

Vonda Neel McIntyre (1948-2019) was an American science fiction author.

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Star trek's first contact day explained: how it started & what it means.

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Star Trek’s Prequel Movie Can Answer First Contact’s 30 Year Old Questions

Star trek's mirror universe fully explained, after 57 years, star trek settles the truth about trelane's godlike species.

Celebrated on April 5th, First Contact Day remains one of the most significant holidays within the Star Trek universe. While Star Trek occasionally references Earth holidays like Halloween or Christmas, the franchise has also introduced several holidays unique to the Star Trek universe. Established to commemorate First Contact with the Vulcans after Zefram Cochrane's (James Cromwell) successful warp flight, First Contact Day has also been adapted by real-world Star Trek fans. In 2021, Star Trek began celebrating First Contact Day with reveals about upcoming Trek projects and merchandise, panels with cast and crew members, and other virtual events.

First Contact Day as a holiday was first established in Star Trek: First Contact , which saw Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and the USS Enterprise-D crew travel back in time to stop the Borg from altering history. First Contact co-writer Ronald D. Moore chose April 5th because it was his son's birthday and Star Trek's most famous holiday was born. Star Trek's other real-world holiday, Star Trek Day, is celebrated on September 8th to mark the day that Star Trek: The Original Series first premiered. Still, First Contact Day remains a favorite among Trekkers, who often flock to social media to commemorate the holiday.

Star Trek's First Contact Day Celebrates Zefram Cochrane & The Vulcans

The vulcans would later become earth's strongest allies.

Zefram Cochrane (Glenn Corbett) was established as the inventor of warp drive in Star Trek: The Original Series season 2, episode 9, "Metamorphosis," when Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and the USS Enterprise encountered a young, immortal Cochrane on an asteroid. Cochrane role that lead to the United Federation of Planets' founding were more fully explored in Star Trek: First Contact, when the USS Enterprise-D crew helped ensure Zephram's historic warp flight occurred as it was always meant to. Accompanied by Commander William Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton), Cochrane launched the Phoenix on April 5, 2063, breaking the warp barrier just after 11 am.

Star Trek is prepping a theatrical prequel movie, and this origin story can address some questions left behind by Star Trek: First Contact.

A Vulcan survey ship called the T'Plana-Hath happened to be passing nearby at the time and detected the Phoenix's warp signature. The Vulcan ship then landed in Bozeman, Montana, initiating the first open contact between an alien species and humanity. This historic meeting would lead to a new era for the human race, laying the groundwork for what would one day become the United Federation of Planets . Although Cochrane's initial motivations for inventing warp drive were largely financial, he later accepted his place in history, delivering speeches and sharing stories about his historic flight.

How First Contact Day Is Celebrated In Star Trek's Universe

First contact day becomes tinged with tragedy in star trek: picard.

Hundreds of years after the original First Contact between Earth and Vulcan, the holiday became less of a spectacle. Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) once remarked that First Contact Day was merely a day off from school. While Earth's population likely celebrated First Contact Day in different ways, it appears it was used as an excuse to take a day off work or school and have a nice meal. Still, First Contact Day celebrated the Federation ideal of "infinite diversity in infinite combinations," commemorating the day when two species came together for the betterment of both.

In Star Trek: Voyager season 7, episode 23, "Homestead," the crew of the USS Voyager went all out celebrating the 315th First Contact Day as a way to feel more connected to Earth despite being in the distant Delta Quadrant.

Tragically, one of the most devastating attacks in Federation history occurred on First Contact Day, forever tarnishing the holiday. On First Contact Day 2385, rogue synths attacked Mars, destroying the Utopia Planitia Shipyards and decimating the planet. With over 92,000 lives lost, as well as 20,000 ships, the attack on Mars led Starfleet to scale back missions of exploration to focus on defense. The Federation also banned synthetic life, although this ban was later overturned when the Romulan Zhat Vash were revealed as the orchestrators of the attack.

Star Trek's Mirror Universe Has A Much Darker Version Of First Contact Day

The mirror universe zefram cochrane welcomed the vulcans with a shotgun.

Zefram Cochrane's first meeting with the Vulcans went a lot differently in Star Trek's Mirror Universe . As revealed in the Star Trek: Enterprise two-parter, "In a Mirror, Darkly," Cochrane still launched the Phoenix on April 5th, breaking the warp barrier. However, when the Vulcans made contact in Bozeman, Cochrane shot the first Vulcan with a shotgun and the Terrans raided the Vulcan ship. The Terrans assumed the Vulcans meant to invade Earth, and they killed all of the visiting aliens. The Terran Empire then used the stolen Vulcan technology to rapidly improve their own ability to travel the galaxy.

The Mirror Universe is one of Star Trek's best concepts. Here's the Mirror Universe's history from Enterprise, TOS, DS9, Discovery, and Prodigy.

Rather than using this upgraded technology for exploration, the Terran Empire set out to invade and conquer as many worlds as possible, relentlessly expanding their territory. Terrans acquired Vulcan technology more quickly than their Prime Universe counterparts, using it only for their own gain and developing new ships and weapons sooner. By the 2150s, the Terrans had conquered numerous alien civilizations, including the Vulcans, Denobulans, Andorians, Orions, and Tellarites. In the Mirror Universe, First Contact Day is celebrated as a holy day and Cochrane is lauded as a hero for stopping the supposed Vulcan invasion.

First Contact Day Vs. Frontier Day: Differences Explained

Frontier day celebrates the enterprise nx-01 & its crew.

One of Star Trek's other major holidays, Frontier Day commemorates the maiden voyage of the Enterprise NX-01 in April 2151. Both First Contact Day and Frontier Day celebrate the collaboration between alien species, but Frontier Day highlights Starfleet and its many achievements. In the final episodes of Star Trek: Picard season 3 , the Federation celebrated the 250th anniversary of Captain Jonathan Archer's (Scott Bakula) first mission. Admiral Picard and Captain William Riker (Jonathan Frakes) were both scheduled to speak at the event, which would also celebrate the final flight of the USS Enterprise-F.

Frontier Day was introduced in Star Trek: Picard season 3.

As almost all of Starfleet's most important ships were gathered around Earth for the 250th Frontier Day celebration, the Borg/Changeling alliance saw this as the perfect time to strike. With all of the Federation starships connected by a new automated fleet formation system, the Borg took over the ships and triggered assimilation in every officer under the age of 25. As the assimilated fleet prepared to fire on Earth, the USS Enterprise-D swooped in to save the day as the only ship not connected to the Starfleet mainframe. Admiral Picard and his crew put an end to the Borg, preventing the Frontier Day attack from being much worse and preserving a Star Trek holiday.

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Star Trek: First Contact

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Star Trek Enterprise: The First Adventure Paperback – July 1, 1987

But the young crew, which would later become the legendary space explorers, quickly puts aside their differences when a monstrous starship appears on their nascent flight path.

• Print length 371 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Star Trek
• Publication date July 1, 1987
• ISBN-10 0671625810
• ISBN-13 978-0671625818
• See all details

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Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Star Trek; First Edition (July 1, 1987)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 371 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0671625810
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0671625818
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.2 ounces
• #32,334 in Science Fiction Adventures

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Vonda n. mcintyre.

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