Star Trek

Star Trek: The Original Series (referred to as Star Trek, prior to any spin-offs) is an American science fiction series created by Gene Roddenberry for NBC. It is the first show in the long-running Star Trek franchise.

Plot
Star Trek revolves around Captain James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise and his crew, who are set on a five-year mission to explore new worlds.

Why We Should Travel To Space With Them

 * 1) It was the kickstart of the Star Trek franchise.
 * 2) This show has a lot of historical value for television:
 * 3) * It was one of the first shows to have a racially diverse cast, like the African-American Nichelle Nichols as Uhura and Japanese-American George Takei as Sulu.
 * 4) * It was the first American TV series to feature a Russian character (Pavel Chekov) as one of the protagonists, at a time where Russians were usually portrayed in American media as villains.
 * 5) * It was the first TV show to have an onscreen interracial kiss, between Kirk and Uhura in "Plato's Stepchildren".
 * 6) Great music compositions, including the main theme and the fight theme from "Amok Time".
 * 7) Good cast, including William Shatner as Captain Kirk and Leonard Nimoy as Spock.
 * 8) The USS Enterprise personnel such as Kirk, Spock, and Bones are compelling characters.
 * 9) Apart from the USS Enterprise, there are plenty of memorable characters, such as Gary Seven, Khan Noonien Singh, Harry Mudd, the Guardian of Forever and others.
 * 10) Lots of great episodes, like "The Trouble with Tribbles", "Amok Time", "A Piece of the Action", "Mirror, Mirror", "The Enemy Within", "The City on the Edge of Forever", and so on.
 * 11) Spawned famous quotes like "Live long and prosper.", "I'm a doctor, not an X" and "He's dead, Jim".
 * 12) Some episodes have very good moral messages, like "The Omega Glory" showing how dangerous blind patriotism and nationalism can be, and "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" having an anti-racism message.
 * 13) * The moral messages are also much more balanced than future Star Trek shows, as they allowed each writer free reign to write their personal beliefs into episodes; for instance, "Day of the Dove" promotes pacifism, while "A Private Little War" says that pacifism is an admirable, but naive ideal which doesn't work in the real world.
 * 14) While the show got cancelled in 1969 and moved to syndication, it became popular enough to eventually recieve a continuation in the form of Star Trek: The Animated Series and 6 theatrical movies.
 * 15) If it wasn't for this show, there would've been no Star Wars or future Star Trek installments.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) While the audio remixes are well-done, its original broadcast mono soundtrack sounds so stiff.
 * 2) As this show was made in the 1960's, some moments in the series aged poorly nowadays, like Yeoman Rand being molested by Kirk's evil duplicate in "The Enemy Within".
 * 3) Due to budgetary problems, the original visual effects haven't aged well, and the CGI effects that replaced them in the remastered CBS version haven't aged well either, being below average for 2006 standards and a major downgrade from TNG, DS9, and VOY effects.
 * 4) The third season was somewhat inferior compared to the first two, due the show's budget being slashed in half and Gene Roddenberry not being involved in its production. Most of the episodes in this season aren't actually outright bad, but there's three infamously poor ones ("Spock's Brain" and "The Way to Eden", which are at least hilariously bad, and "And The Children Shall Lead", which is just completely awful with no redeeming qualities in the slightest), and the rest of the episodes are pretty average.

Trivia

 * During the show's initial run on NBC, as its most successful all-color program, this series led to increased sales of color TV sets.
 * Before the show was cancelled, it had faced the threat of cancellation many times in its lifetime. The biggest threat was after Season 2, where NBC threatened cancellation. Luckily, a massive letter campaign organized by two fans named Bjo and John Trimble, where they and thousands of other fans sent letters to NBC to prevent cancellation. It worked an Star Trek would eventually continue for one more season.
 * The communicators used by the USS Enterprise's crew inspired the creation of mobile cellphones.
 * In 2002, there was an episode of Futurama titled "Where No Fan Has Gone Before", which revolves around Fry, Leela and Bender going to the forbidden world of Omega 3 to find the tapes of all the old Star Trek episodes and movies after it was banned by the 3000's. Most of the cast members of the Original Series reprise their roles, with the exception of DeForest Kelley (who died in 1999) and James Doohan (whose health was declining at the time).
 * The episode "Patterns of Force" was banned in Germany from 1968 to 1995 due to depictions of Nazi uniforms presence of several different Nazi insignia.
 * In 2021, a brand new series "Star Trek: Prodigy" released on Paramount+. It's a Nickelodeon series as well.