50th Anniversary TOS Episode Discussion Marathon

[Nate the Great]

Recently I acquired a number of back issues of Star Trek: The Magazine. One of them has an article about the writing of the opening monologue. I thought that you might enjoy seeing some of the drafts, all of which came from the staff bouncing memos back and forth on August 2nd, 1966:

This is the story of the United Space Ship Enterprise. Assigned a five year patrol of our galaxy, the giant starship visits earth colonies, regulates commerce, and explores strange new worlds and civilizations. These are its voyages...and its adventures.

Gotta love Gene's perpetual hypocrisy, he puts commerce right in the draft. This version seems like it'd be read by a narrator and not Kirk. Call me a romantic, but I still prefer referring to the Enterprise as "her" where practical. Her voyages and adventures.

This is the adventure of the United Space Ship Enterprise. Assigned a five year patrol, the bold crew of the giant starship explores the excitement of strange new worlds, uncharted civilizations and exotic people. These are its voyages and adventures...

Is this five year mission one big adventure or a series of smaller adventures? Because you can't have it both ways in three sentences, Gene! Including both "civilizations" and "people" seems redundant, the only instance I can think of in TOS where it wouldn't be is the Guardian of Forever.

John D.F. Black, a story consultant and associate producer, proposed this...

Space, the final frontier. Endless, silent, waiting. This is the story of the United Space Ship Enterprise. It's mission, a five year patrol of the galaxy, to seek out and contact all alien life, to explore, to travel the vast galaxy where no man has gone before. A Star Trek.

It's quite interesting how often the early days of TOS treated the entire galaxy as traverseable in a reasonable amount of time, isn't it?

Then Robert Justman, an assistant director and producer, came back with this...

This is the story of the Starship Enterprise. It's mission: to advance knowledge, contact alien life and enforce intergalactic law. To explore the strange new worlds where no man has gone before.

Now that's starting to sound familiar!

The final version didn't appear in a memo until August 10th.

Looking at these, it could get confusing trying to figure out what the Enterprise's mission actually is. After all, scientific exploration, cultural exploration, and police/military action seem like almost mutually exclusive objectives, don't they? And if this is taking place in the context of a patrol around the perimeter of the Federation that's supposed to take five years, does that mean that all of the Constitution-classes are meant to follow this course spaced out like carousel animals?

[NAHTMMM]

Neat!