THE most famous split infinitive in the English language celebrates its 30th birthday on Monday, when BBC 2 devotes an evening to boldly going in search of the truth about Star Trek. With documentaries, personal recollections and trivia, Star Trek Night promises five hours of programming devoted to a television series which has evolved: from minor hit through late night cultdom to a global marketing phenomenon of the 1990s.
When Gene Roddenberry first took his idea for a "Wagon Train in space" to Lucille Ball's: production company, Desilu, in the mid 1960s, he believed he was bringing them more than just a sci fi soap. "I saw science fiction as a way I could infiltrate my ideas," he said. "Star Trek may have been considered by many to be a frothy little, action adventure - unimportant, unbelievable, but watched by a lot of people. You just slip ideas into it.
Roddenberry's show had men and women of different races (and different species) working together in harmony and friendship. Star Trek was the first show to break a major taboo on US television when the Plato's Stepchildren episode saw an inter racial kiss between Uhura and Kirk (admittedly while both were under the control of an alien).
Star Trek crews have always been admirably integrated, culminating in Avery Brooks's role as Commander Benjamin Sisko in Deep Space Nine, but women have always been something of a problem. Roddenberry's liberalism was of the 1960s, Hugh Hefner variety, which saw nothing wrong in dressing the set with scantily clad lovelies. The very first episode, The Man Trap, set the tone - Kirk was forever falling under the spell of seductive, beehive haired sirens who turned out to be nasty, scaly aliens. At the end of those episodes, he'd smile wryly when back in the safe and mauly company of Spock, Bones and Scotty, his lesson learned until the next episode. The man just couldn't keep those tight black pants on.
The Next Generation, going where no one has gone before, tried to update the sexual politics for the 1990s, but the female crew members were still stuck in the caring professions, and the key woman crew members were Doctor Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) and the empathic, pneumatic counsellor Deanna Troi (Manna, Siitis). The newest series, Voyager, has the first female commander in Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew, the replacement for Genevieve Bujold, who mysteriously left before completing the first episode).
Trekkies are still suspending judgment on Mulgrew - does she have the unique qualities required of a star ship commander? The captain is the most crucial element in the mix, and Patrick Stewart as Jean Luc Picard is a hard act to follow.
On Monday night the nuts and bolts of Star Trek - transporters, warp drives and wormholes - are investigated in Science: The Final Frontier, in which eminent scientists (including Stephen Hawking, a bonafide fan who appeared in a cameo role in The Next Generation) compare fiction with fact. Other fans, ranging from David Soul to Damieu Hirst, offer their favourite clips throughout the evening.
Labour MP Paul Boateng considers Lieut Uhura as a black role model, Camille Paglia reveals why she once wrote a love letter to Data, and Maucunian bad boys Shaun Ryder and Kermit from Black Grape explain why they yearn for the fantasy world of the holodeck.
John Peel hosts Funk Me Up Scotty, a trawl through the archives for records inspired by Star Trek (the best of which is Spizz Enegi's 1979 new wave mini classic, Where's Captain Kirk?, while the worst must be 1987's Star Trekkin by the Firm, with its hellish refrain: There's Klingons on the starboard bow, starboard bow, starboard bow - surely one of the worst novelty records ever made). Peel will also be choosing musical performances by Star Trek cast members over the years, which means we'll have the dubious pleasure of hearing William Shatner's version of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, the record which many believe ended the 1960s in three and a half minutes.
Nobody seems to love the Klingons, but the Klingon language, invented by linguist Marc Okrand for Star The Search for Spock, is going from strength to strength. A quarter of a million copies of, The Klingon Dictionary have been printed, and two audio cassettes, Conversational Klingon and Power Klingon, are available. The language is most, popular on the Internet, perhaps because speaking it entails spraying those close to you with saliva. Unfortunately, plans for the translation of the Bible into Klingon have been, stymied by a fierce schism between literalist who think that "bread" should be translated as "grain food" - and poetic types, who would argue for "Rokeg blood pie".
"My God, Bones, what have I done?" asks Kirk of McCoy, and well he might as Star Trek in all its manifestations seeps across the airwaves like an intergalactic plague. In the movies, the bat has been handed on from one generation to another, with the first fully fledged Next Generation movie First Contact, due for release in the US in November. First Contact is directed by Jonathan Frakes, who plays Riker, thus continuing the tradition of Enterprise crew moving from the bridge to the director's chair - Leonard Nimoy made quite a good fist of Star Trek III and IV, while Shatner proved his directing skills almost matched his singing with the dreadful V.
The programme has peppared the English language with more memorable phrases than any other TV series: "Live long and prosper," "The dilithium crystals cannae take it, Cap'n," "Make it so" and many more. As part of the anniversary celebrations, Barbie will be joining Star Fleet in October, in a fetching red mini on the original series, while Ken gets a gold command jersey and his own phaser. Some things never change.
