In 1972, children competed in German schoolyards to see who could spread their fingers in the Vulcan salute as skillfully as Mr. Spock. On Saturday, May 27, 1972, at 5:45 p.m., the time had come in Germany: Six years after the start of broadcasting in the USA, “Spaceship Enterprise” (“Star Trek”) flickered across the television screens on ZDF. “Space. Infinite expanses,” agreed the opening credits. The adventures of the daring Captain Kirk and the sober Vulcan Mr. Spock quickly became a cult.
Mr. Spock delights the youth
After the first episodes, Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy, was more popular with children than other series heroes such as “Tarzan” or “Daktari”, wrote the TV magazine “Gong” at the time. He is neither strong as a bear, nor particularly funny. “The rather forbidding-looking Mr. Spock is nothing more than exceptionally smart, and that impresses young viewers.”
When “Spaceship Enterprise” started in Germany, “the beautifully told space adventures, the bright colors and these great technical visions” were in the foreground, remembers the “Star Trek” expert Hubert Zitt. The computer science lecturer on the Zweibrücken campus of Kaiserslautern University of Applied Sciences gives nationwide lectures on the technology in the cult series. The profound sociological background of “Star Trek” was initially not recognized, he said. The German synchronization also trimmed the series for a children’s and youth program.
Positive future utopia
Only later were the positive future utopias of a united humanity recognized, which the creator of the series, Gene Roddenberry (1921-1991), had built into the space series in times of the Vietnam War and racial discrimination. “Having this positive perspective of a possible future to look forward to is a big part of what makes the ‘Star Trek’ series so popular to this day,” Zitt said.
Civil rights activist Martin Luther King was also a fan of the series in the United States. When black actress Nichelle Nichols – frustrated with her small role as communications officer Uhura – wanted to leave the series, King implored her to continue, as the actress wrote in her autobiography.
So it came in 1968 to the first film kiss in the USA between a black and a white man, between Uhura and Captain Kirk played by William Shatner. In some states in the south of the USA, the episode is said to have been dropped from the program.
“Miscellaneous” crew of the Enterprise
The multicultural crew, which included not only the Japanese helmsman Sulu, but also the Russian navigation officer Chekov, was also revolutionary during the Cold War.
With its 400-strong crew, the “USS Enterprise” provided something like a UN mission in space. The supreme law – the first directive – was non-interference and respect for foreign cultures. Conflicts were rarely resolved with weapons, but with diplomacy.
Because of the great response to the series, ZDF followed up twice after the first 20 episodes. After 39 of a total of 79 episodes in Germany it was over for the time being. Only with the advent of private television in the 1980s were almost all the remaining episodes shown. “Sat.1” became the “Star Trek” house broadcaster in Germany, which also broadcast the later “Star Trek” series.
Only a single episode of the original series was only to be released in Germany in 1996 and initially only as a video: In “stencils of violence” (Patterns of Force) the Enterprise stops the experiment of a lost historian who installs a copy of the Nazi dictatorship on a planet Has. The episode is full of Nazi symbolism with SS runes and swastikas, Kirk wears a Gestapo uniform for camouflage.
Also failures at Star Trek
“The message may even be well-intentioned. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s dangerous nonsense,” write Mike Hillenbrand and Thomas Höhl in their book “How Captain Kirk Came to Germany – Star Trek in Germany”. The episode “unfortunately failed mercilessly” as a serious examination of the subject of National Socialism.
Almost exactly ten years after their last flight in the USA, the majority of the original crew was reactivated for the cinema in 1979, resulting in “Star Trek – The Movie”. Soon after, a new generation of Enterprise crew entered television service, beginning with “Starship Enterprise: The Next Century.”
The Vulcan greeting goes back to a Jewish gesture of blessing
“Star Trek” (in German “train to the stars”) is still successful worldwide. The balance of more than 50 years includes the follow-up series around 800 TV episodes, 13 movies and countless novels, comics and computer games. Even today, follow-up series like “Star Trek – Discovery” and “Picard” provide the fans. In Germany, Michael “Bully” Herbig paid homage to the original series in 2004 with the cinema comedy “(T)Spaceship Surprise – Period 1”.
Spock actor Leonard Nimoy, who died in 2015, only revealed years after the original series what the Vulcan salute, which is so popular to this day, is all about: it goes back to a Jewish gesture of blessing that fascinated him as a child when visiting synagogues.
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