It wasn't supposed to last. Honestly, if you look at the ratings from 1966, Star Trek the original cast should have been a footnote in television history, tucked away between forgotten westerns and variety shows. NBC actually tried to kill it. Twice. Yet, here we are sixty years later, and the faces of William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and Nichelle Nichols are basically secular icons.
Desilu Studios was a mess back then. Lucille Ball—yes, that Lucy—was the one who actually pushed for the "Star Trek" pilot to be made, even though she reportedly didn't quite get what it was about. She thought "Star Trek" was about traveling USO performers. It wasn't. It was a gritty, low-budget, high-concept morality play set on a plywood bridge.
The chemistry wasn't instant.
In the first pilot, "The Cage," there was no Captain Kirk. We had Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike. He was stoic. Maybe too stoic. When the network passed but ordered a second pilot—a move that almost never happens in Hollywood—Gene Roddenberry brought in a Canadian Shakespearean actor named William Shatner.
The Kirk, Spock, McCoy Triumvirate
People talk about the "big three" like it was a planned marketing strategy. It wasn't. The writers just realized that the show worked best when you had a logical perspective, an emotional perspective, and a command decision.
Leonard Nimoy played Spock with a terrifying amount of restraint. In the beginning, the network was actually nervous about his ears. They thought he looked "satanic" and might scare off viewers in the South. They even airbrushed his pointed ears out of early promotional brochures. Think about how absurd that is now.
Then you had DeForest Kelley as Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy. He was the heartbeat. While Shatner’s James T. Kirk was busy jumping over Styrofoam rocks and ripping his shirt, McCoy was there to tell him he was being an idiot. It’s that dynamic—the ego, the id, and the superego—that made Star Trek the original cast feel like a family rather than a military unit.
Kelley was older than the rest. He had this weary, Southern charm that grounded the high-concept sci-fi. When he said, "I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer," it wasn't just a catchphrase. It was a reminder that these were people with jobs, dealing with impossible physics.
Breaking Barriers Without Making a Scene
We have to talk about Nichelle Nichols and George Takei.
In 1966, having a Black woman and a Japanese-American man on the bridge of a ship as ranking officers was a political statement. But the brilliance was that the show didn't treat it as one. Uhura wasn't the "Black communications officer." She was the communications officer. Period.
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously told Nichols she couldn't quit the show. She wanted to go back to Broadway. She was tired of having her lines cut. King told her that for the first time, people were seeing Black people as they should be seen—as professionals, as equals, as people who existed in the future.
It’s easy to forget how radical that was.
Then there’s James Doohan. Scotty. Most people don't know Doohan was a genuine war hero. He was at Juno Beach on D-Day. He got shot six times. He actually lost the middle finger on his right hand during the war, which is why he usually hid that hand or used a stunt double’s hand for close-ups of the transporter console. When you see him "working" on the engines, that’s a man who actually knew how to handle hardware.
The Weird Reality of Life on Set
It wasn't all harmony and Vulcan salutes.
The budget was tiny. Like, "we can only afford one bag of glitter for this whole planet" tiny. That’s why so many aliens looked like humans with green face paint or a weird rug thrown over them. The "Horta" from The Devil in the Dark was literally a guy (Janos Prohaska) under a piece of lumpy foam.
And the hair. God, the hair.
Shatner and Nimoy had a complex relationship. It’s been documented in a dozen memoirs. There was a lot of ego involved. Who got more fan mail? Whose name was bigger on the credits? It’s sort of funny looking back, but at the time, it was high drama. Yet, when the cameras rolled, that friction turned into some of the best televised chemistry in history.
Walter Koenig joined later as Chekov. The studio wanted a "Monkees" vibe. They wanted a young guy with a Beatles haircut to appeal to the kids. Koenig had to wear a wig for a while because his hair wasn't long enough.
Why the Original Cast Outlasted the Show
The show was canceled in 1969. That should have been the end.
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But then came syndication.
In the 1970s, Star Trek the original cast became more popular than they ever were during the original run. The fans—the first "Trekkies"—did something nobody had done before. They organized. They held conventions. They demanded more.
When Star Trek: The Motion Picture finally happened in 1979, the cast was older. They were a bit grayer. The uniforms were pajamas (seriously, those gray jumpsuits were a mistake). But the magic was still there.
The movies are where the cast truly cemented their legacy. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is, arguably, the best thing the franchise ever produced. It dealt with aging. It dealt with death. When Spock dies at the end, it wasn't just a sci-fi trope. It felt like losing a relative.
What People Get Wrong About Kirk
There’s this caricature of James T. Kirk as a reckless womanizer who ignores the Prime Directive every Tuesday.
If you actually watch the 79 episodes, that’s not who he is.
Kirk was a "stack of books with legs." That was his nickname at the Academy. He was a nerd who happened to be able to throw a punch. He agonized over his decisions. Shatner played him with a frantic, nervous energy that often gets mocked because of his unique cadence, but it was a choice. He was a man who felt the weight of 430 lives on his shoulders.
The Legacy of the Final Frontier
The influence of Star Trek the original cast is visible in your pocket right now.
Engineers at Motorola literally cited the Trek communicator as the inspiration for the flip phone. The concept of the tablet computer? PADDs. The cast didn't just play characters; they modeled a future that people actually wanted to build.
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NASA even named the first Space Shuttle Enterprise. Nichelle Nichols spent years after the show recruiting women and minorities for the space program. Sally Ride and Guion Bluford were influenced by that outreach.
That’s the power of this specific group of people.
They weren't perfect. They had public feuds. They struggled with being typecast for decades. DeForest Kelley once joked that if he ever needed a real doctor, he’d probably die because people would just expect him to heal himself. But they leaned into it. They realized that they represented an idea—that humanity might actually grow up one day.
Getting Started with the Original Series
If you're diving back in or seeing it for the first time, don't start with the pilot. Start with the essentials to see why the cast clicked.
- Watch "Balance of Terror." It’s a submarine thriller in space. It shows the tactical brilliance of Kirk and the stoicism of Spock.
- Check out "The City on the Edge of Forever." It’s widely considered the best episode. It’s heartbreaking and shows that sci-fi can be high literature.
- Skip "Spock's Brain." Just... don't. Unless you want to see how bad things got when the budget hit zero.
- Look for the remastered versions. The original effects were charming, but the updated CGI makes the Enterprise actually look like a ship instead of a plastic model on a string.
The reality is that we won't see another cast like this. Modern shows are "prestige" and "dark" and "gritty." There was a certain sincerity to the 1960s crew. They believed in the mission.
To understand the impact, you have to look past the dated sets and the shaky cameras. Look at the eyes of the actors. They weren't just making a TV show. They were building a myth.
If you want to explore further, look into the 4K restorations of the original films. Seeing the chemistry of the cast in The Voyage Home (the one with the whales) is a masterclass in ensemble acting. They were having fun, and for a brief moment in the mid-80s, the entire world was having fun with them.
The next step is simple. Stop reading about them and go watch "Amok Time." See the Vulcan lirpa fight. Listen to the music. Understand why, for millions of people, those seven people on a soundstage in California will always be the true pioneers of the future.