Made by Star Trek fans for Star Trek fans
I’ve been a fan of writer Mark Altman since his days at Cinefantastique magazine, which was a must-read for me in my twenties and thirties. I’d later buy Altman’s books, including “The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek,” which he cowrote with Ed Gross (“Nobody Does It Better”), and which was spread across two books, covering the first and second halves of Star Trek’s then-50 year history. Altman and Gross would later write equally definitive “Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History” books on Star Wars (“Secrets of the Force…”), Battlestar Galactica (“So Say We All…”), and others. These books are exhaustively researched, and filled with both original and archival interview quotes.
In addition to his books, Altman is also a TV producer (“Femme Fatales” “Pandora” “1982: Greatest Geek Year Ever”) and had cowritten/produced the romantic fandom comedy “Free Enterprise” (1999), which my wife and I often joke is our 1990s courtship captured on film. Along with a group of producers that included his son Isaac, actor William Shatner (who played a bumbling version of himself in “Free Enterprise”), fellow “Inglorious Treksperts” podcasters Daren Dochterman (“Star Trek: The Motion Picture Director’s Cut”) and Ashley Miller (“X-Men: First Class”), Altman wrote and directed the feature-length documentary “The Sixty-Year Mission: How Star Trek Changed Television and the World” (2026).
Crafted with the same meticulous research as Altman’s oral history books, the movie commemorates the 60th anniversary of the original Star Trek series, and its enduring social and cultural impact. Having met Altman and visual FX producer Dochterman (a hilarious mimic) several times at conventions over the past 20 years, I know they’re about my age, and that we share a similar perspective on Star Trek. With that in mind, I made a rare solo trip to the cinema to check out “The Sixty Year Mission,” which is now in a limited theatrical run…
“The Sixty-Year Mission: How Star Trek Changed Television and the World.”
The movie opens with lots of interview clips of various high profile fans of the original Star Trek, including actor Wayne Knight (“Jurassic Park” “Seinfeld”) who tells his story about how staying home to watch Star Trek as a ten-year old boy may have saved his life, by preventing him from being in a horrific car crash with his parents (!). Other actors, writers, producers and other fans offer their own memories of the series as well. Like myself, writer-director Mark Altman first discovered Star Trek in reruns during the 1970s, along with first run episodes of the Star Trek animated series, which debuted in 1973.
The movie then delves into the life of war hero, pilot and LAPD motorcycle cop-turned TV writer/producer Gene Roddenberry. Roddenberry made a name for himself writing scripts for TV’s “Have Gun Will Travel” (1957-1963); a more introspective, thoughtful western about a regretful gunslinger named Paladin (Richard Boone) who travels from town to town, helping strangers whenever he can; not unlike the altruistic crew of the starship Enterprise. From there, Roddenberry would eventually create and produce a short-lived TV series called “The Lieutenant” (1963-4), which featured future Star Trek guest star Gary Lockwood as a US Marine dealing with some of the same issues we’d later see dealt with metaphorically in Star Trek, including racism and anti-communist hysteria.
Perhaps due to his relationship with the network, Roddenberry’s “The Lieutenant” was quickly cancelled, and Roddenberry began working on a fresh pilot for a sci-fi series that he pitched as a “Wagon Train to the stars,” since westerns were a staple of American TV in the 1960s. That pilot episode, “The Cage,” featured Jeffrey Hunter as a brooding Capt. Pike, Leonard Nimoy as a less-reserved Mr. Spock, Peter Duryea as young navigator José Tyler, and Majel Barrett as emotionally suppressed First Officer, ‘Number One’ (she’d later play Nurse Chapel in the series). The documentary does a superb job of establishing the gestalt of mid-1960s television. With only three major US television networks (CBS, NBC, ABC) and limited options, sci-fi/fantasy was nowhere near the proven quantity it is today.
The search for the ship’s doctor began with actor John Hoyt (“The Twilight Zone”) who also acted as the captain’s conscience.
Archival anecdotes suggest that filming of “The Cage” was an unpleasant experience. The dilapidated soundstage had infestations of beehives and other pests residing in the same spaces where “Gone with the Wind” had been filmed nearly 30 years earlier. Director Robert Butler hated working there. Some of the talking heads in the movie also suggest that a reason for the failure of “The Cage” to be sold as a series might’ve been in the casting. Feature film actor Jeffrey Hunter (“King of Kings,” “The Searchers”) played Captain Pike as deeply brooding, with a more internalized performance. Hunter delivers a fine portrayal, though it sometimes feels too cinematic. A subtle bit of acting that bombards audiences from a 45-foot movie screen may not project as well from a 19-inch TV set. Enter William Shatner…
Shatner is also listed in the documentary’s credits as an executive producer; not a surprise, given his involvement with Altman’s sci-fi fandom comedy “Free Enterprise” (1999) which helped ignite Shatner’s later career of playful self-mockery.
William Shatner as Captain Kirk, plays a “very irritating game of chess” with Mr. Spock in “Where No Man Has Gone Before.”
William Shatner, a Canadian-born Shakespearean actor who’d began accruing steady work in late 1950s/early 1960s movies and TV shows (“Judgment at Nuremberg,” “The Twilight Zone”), was Roddenberry’s first pick for the role of captain. However, Shatner was then starring in the short-lived legal drama “For the People” (1965), and was unable to accept. Following its cancellation, Shatner was brought in to audition for Star Trek’s second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before” (1965), and Captain James Kirk was born. The documentary makes a very convincing case for how Shatner made the series work, with a series of well-selected clips from that second pilot demonstrating his theatrical projection, delivery and dynamism. To be honest, I was never really as big a Shatner fan as Altman (I’m more of a Spock guy), but the documentary makes an unassailable case: William Shatner’s Captain James T. Kirk is the engine that propelled Star Trek into warp speed.
“Where No Man Has Gone Before” has a look more consistent with “The Cage” than the series that followed. Some of that is attributable to the costumes, but also to veteran cinematographer Ernest Haller (1896-1970), who shot such films as the aforementioned “Gone with the Wind” and 1955’s “Rebel Without a Cause.” Haller did a feature-film quality job with “Where No Man…,” using somewhat muted colors with less experimentation. Enter series cinematographer Gerald “Jerry” Finnerman (1931-2011) whose work for Star Trek began with the series’ first regular episode “The Corbomite Maneuver.” Finnerman’s bolder style saw colored lights being placed everywhere on the ship, which gave the Enterprise’s interiors a more heightened, dramatic feel.
Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) deals with angry, disoriented patient Khan (Ricardo Montalban) in TOS’ “Space Seed.”
After John Hoyt and Paul Fix failed to make the cut as the Enterprise’s Chief Medical Officer, DeForest Kelley came in as Dr. Leonard McCoy. A former western ‘heavy,’ Kelley got the role after getting a softer, John F. Kennedy-style haircut. With Shatner’s passionate Kirk and Nimoy’s Mr. Spock now adopting the cooler-headed, logical persona of Number One, the curmudgeonly, yet warm-hearted Dr. McCoy rounded out the original series’ troika. One comment suggests this trio was like Paladin from “Have Gun Will Travel” divided into three characters.
The movie then looks into the formation and casting of the secondary characters, including James Doohan as the Enterprise’s working class Scottish engineer, Montgomery Scott, George Takei as helmsman Sulu, Nichelle Nichols as communications officer Lt. Uhura, and Walter Koenig as Russian-born navigator Chekov in the second season. Sulu was a significant presence, since Star Trek debuted only 21 years after the end of World War 2. In the documentary, Los Angeles-born Takei recalls his traumatized mother’s indignation as his relocated family was forced to sleep in race horse stalls at a repurposed Santa Anita Park in Southern California (without any legal rights) in the anti-Japanese mania that followed after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
Note: For other details on Takei’s childhood spent in Nissei interment camps, I highly recommend his graphic memoirs, “They Called Us Enemy,” and “It Rhymes with Takei.”
The casting of Nichols as Uhura occurred at a time of great racial disharmony in the United States (not unlike today, sadly), coming only a year after the 1965 Watts Riots in Los Angeles, and two years before the assassinations of civil rights activists/leaders Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King. Nichols played a command-level bridge officer on the USS Enterprise at a time when most African-American women on TV were maids or other subservient roles. As Daren Dochterman reminds us in the movie, a young Whoopi Goldberg was inspired by seeing Nichols on the show, famously yelling to her mother, “Look! There’s a black woman on TV, and she ain’t no maid!” Despite her character rarely getting a spotlight, Nichols’ very appearance on the show spoke volumes at that turbulent time in American history (once again, not unlike today). It was seamless representation without the often clumsy sign-posting we see in more recent Star Treks.
Walter Koenig was brought into the series second season to solve a twofold problem; addressing the lack of Russian representation in Star Trek’s future (a fact brought to Roddenberry’s attention by the Russian newspaper Pravda), and to give younger fans a bushy-haired answer to The Monkees’ popular singer/heartthrob Davy Jones. Koenig says that he initially read for a character named “Jones,” but was asked to speak his lines with a Russian accent. With his hair cut very short for a prior role, Koenig was taken for a wig fitting, and was forced to try on various kinds, including a blonde wig, before settling on an approximation of Davy Jones’ look. Koenig was so humiliated that even initially jealous costar Takei (who feared Koenig was stealing his limelight) felt badly for him.
Of the many talking heads in the doc, we also meet Robin Curtis, who took over the role of ‘Lt. Saavik’ in “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock” and “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.” Curtis said she would’ve loved to have seen Saavik’s continued presence in later Star Trek movies, including a scripted but deleted subplot which saw Saavik pregnant with Spock’s baby following the events of Star Trek III. However, she didn’t want to “get greedy.” Also interviewed in a shortened, mid-credits segment covering the Star Trek feature films, we see Star Trek II/IV/VI’s writer/director Nicholas Meyer talk about the development of Vulcan operative ‘Lt. Valeris’ for “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country,” after an infirm Gene Roddenberry objected to Lt. Saavik being a traitor.
While the majority of actors working on Star Trek tended to see it as just another gig, others were all too aware of the Star Trek franchise’s cultural significance. The documentary is peppered with interviews of actors from the Star Trek spinoff shows, such as Nana Visitor, Terry Farrell, Armin Shimerman (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), Robert Picardo (Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Prodigy, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy) and many others regarding their own experiences of being genuine Star Trek fans themselves, and of watching the original series, or playing Star Trek with their siblings as little kids.
One of the documentary’s greatest achievements is shining well-deserved spotlights on the less-heralded heroes of Star Trek; the writers and producers who shaped it into the popular form we recognize today. Gene Roddenberry is usually credited as the “creator of Star Trek,” and “the great bird of the galaxy,” but here we see a deeper exploration of the team behind that legend, as we learn more about the terse, prolific, cocaine-addicted writer/producer Gene L. Coon (1923-1973) who could bang out a solid script in a day or two. Coon took over as producer after the early departure of John D. F. Black (“The Naked Time”), but eventually stepped down late in the second season. Also interviewed in the documentary is Gene Coon’s former secretary Andee Kindryd, an African-American woman who nearly passed on the job, for fear of being called “Coon’s coon,” which, unfortunately, did happen. She nevertheless stayed with Gene Coon, even into his next series, “It Takes a Thief” (1968-1970).
Also highlighted is the tenacious Dorothy Fontana (1939-2019) who worked under an abbreviated name to hide her gender at a time when women writers were not taken seriously in television and films. Fontana wrote some of the best episodes of the series, including “Tomorrow Is Yesterday,” “Journey to Babel,” and “The Enterprise Incident,” as well as major rewrites on “Charlie X,” “This Side of Paradise,” and (allegedly) for “The City on the Edge of Forever.” Fontana was also a producer on Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973-4), which has found rediscovery and rehabilitation among fans, who now recognize it as a less-acclaimed, wildly psychedelic extension of the original series, despite its limited trappings of cheap 1970s animation and repetitive stock music. As said in the documentary, Roddenberry was the blind man holding the lantern for others to see in the dark. Yes, Roddenberry created Star Trek, but it was in other hands where it evolved.
Writer-producer Bryan Fuller (Star Trek: Voyager, Pushing Daisies) also opens up to how the inner turmoil felt by the half-human/half-Vulcan Mr. Spock spoke directly to him as a young queer man struggling to find acceptance in a bigoted, hostile world. Despite queer representation being conspicuously absent during most of the franchise’s history (a fact acknowledged elsewhere by Deep Space Nine writer-producer Ira Steven Behr), Star Trek has amassed a huge LGBTQ+ following during its 60-year lifetime, with queer-coded characters and situations that fans glommed onto in the absence of overt representation, which came only much later.
Screenwriter and Inglorious Trekspert podcaster Ashley E. Miller (“X-Men: First Class,” “Thor,” “The Sarah Connor Chronicles”) challenges the usual stated reasons for being a Star Trek fan (its optimism, hope for a better future, etc) and how they often sound a little too pat and self-congratulatory. Miller prefers to credit the series’ solid storytelling. It’s hard to argue with that, particularly since some of the series’ goofier episodes (“And the Children Shall Lead,” “The Omega Glory,” “Spock’s Brain”) still manage to be absurdly entertaining. At its best, Star Trek deftly balanced significant social commentary with action-adventure. At its worst, it was never boring.
At 134-minutes, “The Sixty-Year Mission…” has the same thoroughness, detailing and myriad perspectives as any of Mark Altman and Ed Gross’s books, with generous helpings of rare, behind-the-scenes footage and photos, along with colorful anecdotes that paint a nice tableau for the time and place of Star Trek’s scrappy origins. It also looks at the formation of the original series and its characters in ways that I haven’t quite experienced before in the countless other books and documentaries I’ve read and seen on the origins of this series. Made with meticulous care and great love, “The Sixty-Year Mission…” may well be fandom’s best Star Trek 60th anniversary gift yet.
Where to Watch
“The Sixty Year Mission: How Star Trek Changed Television and the World” is currently in a limited theatrical run, with roadshow Q & A tours at various venues and conventions later on, with no immediate plans for a streaming or physical media release. Check with Fandango or other local movie listings websites for screenings in your area.
