Star Trek Day Date in the current year: September 8, 2024

Star Trek: The Original Series was named The Original Series retroactively. Back in the 1960s, it was just Star Trek, and no one expected that a three-season sci-fi television show would go on to become a worldwide cultural phenomenon and expand into a massive franchise that includes television series, films, video games, comic books, and licensed novels.

Star Trek was created by the American screenwriter and television producer Gene Roddenberry. He pitched his idea of a science fiction television series to several networks, with NBC picking it up. The first pilot episode of Star Trek, titled “The Cage”, was completed on January 22, 1965. The network rejected it, but ordered another pilot episode.

The second pilot episode, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, was approved by NBC, and the series went into production. Interestingly, it was not the first episode of Star Trek to air on television. This honor went to “The Man Trap”, the sixth episode to be filmed. It aired on NBC on September 8, 1966 – the day that is now considered the true birthday of Star Trek.

Star Trek: The Original Series lasted for three seasons and 79 episodes before being canceled due to low Nielsen ratings. However, as it sometimes happens, it became a hit in broadcast syndication and spawned a massive fandom. The popularity of Star Trek contributed to the dramatic growth of the number of fan conventions in the 1970s. Star Trek fandom is also credited with giving birth to modern fan fiction.

A short-lived animated series, Star Trek: The Animated Series, aired on NBC in 1973-1974, and a motion picture was released in 1979 to mixed reviews. The franchise truly began to take shape following the release of the motion picture Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Paramount commissioned six more Star Trek films and a new series titled Star Trek: The Next Generation, set a hundred years after The Original Series.

As of 2022, there were eight live-action Star Trek series (The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, Discovery, Picard, Strange New Worlds), three animated series (The Animated Series, Lower Decks, Prodigy), one short-form companion series (Short Treks), six films in The Original Series timeline, four films in The Next Generation timeline, and three reboot films (the so-called Kelvin timeline), as well as a large number of video games, comic books, novels, and other tie-in works.

There are plenty of ways to celebrate Star Trek Day. You can watch any Star Trek series or film, play a Star Trek video game, read a Star Trek novel, comic book or fan fiction, introduce your friends to the marvel that is Star Trek by hosting a watching party, make fan art or write fan fiction, cosplay a Star Trek character, buy Star Trek merchandise, or attend a fan convention near you. And don’t forget to give a shout out to your fellow trekkies and spread the word about the holiday on social media using the hashtag #StarTrekDay.