Boldly going, etc, etc, on this day of days

It is September 8: a fantastic day to be alive if you're the actor Martin Freeman, as it's his birthday, a not so fantastic day for the late Peter Sellers, whose birthday it would have been. September the 8th also marks two very important anniversaries - one for me personally, and the other, that of a TV show which made its debut on this day 50 years ago and, while lasting only three series in its original form, launched one of the most enduring domains of popular culture.

But, first, let's get my anniversary out of the way: 30 years ago today I began working for a living. On September 8, 1986, I walked through the front door of 47 Gravel Hill in Ludlow, the quaint, Tudor-timbered Shropshire market town to start out as a staff writer on the short-lived but [briefly] much-loved LM magazine. It was the brainchild of the publishing company Newsfield, who, having made huge success in the nascent video games industry with the magazines Crash, Zzap! 64 and Amtix!, turned its attention to the 'men's lifestyle segment'. Somewhat blokeish, LM targeted young men with features on music, films, fashion and, as I recall, gravy. In fact, a lot of gravy, an in-joke born of the many Ludlow-based LM staffers who had, at some point, passed through a local guest house where boatloads of gravy gushed over most meals.

Not the Star Trek cast - the LM staff: yours truly second from right at the back

As a precocious 18-year-old, fresh from A-levels and at the southern end of LM's 18-30 demographic, I was tasked with writing news stories and reviews of new albums as well as - remember this? - the latest VHS releases. Not long into the job I was bundled off to Birmingham to gather in material for the first edition of a monthly feature called Man In A Suitcase, named after a classic '60s detective show then in afternoon reruns on the BBC. The idea was that each month I'd visit a city - Birmingham and, subsequently, Manchester, Newcastle and Brighton - to soak up its youth culture. This meant talking to local celebrities like Factory's Tony Wilson, Mick Hucknall and a young Eammon Holmes (then co-presenting a daytime TV show...much like today...) and hanging out at the legendary Haçienda in Manchester, interviewing bands like Shakespeare's Sister and Swingout Sister (bands without "sister" in their name were also available), and getting to spend quality time in Newcastle with Jools Holland, producer Malcolm Gerrie and the crew behind The Tube, then bucking trends by having A-list rock bands come up to the north-east on a Friday evening for that seminal music TV show.

Sadly, LM only lasted five issues, closing in the May of 1987, but it was enough to see me started in journalism, leading to work at Smash Hits, Record Mirror and others. I was hardly Lester Bangs and LM was no Rolling Stone, but those nine months in Shropshire were my grounding. The magazine itself was something of a precursor to Loaded but, contrary to some opinions, never a lascivious lads magazine (even though many assumed that was what the name stood for). LM even broke ground, introducing the world to the Rough Guides and founders Mark Ellingham and Martin Dunford, and running a substantial feature on HIV/AIDS at a time when there was considerable ignorance on the subject amongst the magazine's core readership. With grim public information films on television and in cinemas narrated by John Hurt intoning "don't die of ignorance", I contributed to the feature by spending a Saturday in Hereford vox-popping at some considerable risk to my own wellbeing (Me: "Are you aware of AIDS? Do you practice safe sex?" Hereford people: "Do you want a smack in the head?").

One of LM's lighter subjects was the subject of today's second major anniversary - Star Trek, which made its debut on American television 50 years ago tonight. LM ran a substantial cover feature in its April 1987 edition, incredibly just 20 years after the original TV series had begun, and somewhat presciently only a few months before its first spinoff, Star Trek - The Next Generation made its own debut on American television.

As this blog has reflected several times in recent months, 1966 was an incredible year for pop culture, with The Beatles releasing Revolver and The Beach Boys bringing out Pet Sounds, artists of all kinds reflecting on the developing war in Vietnam, Time magazine declaring London "The Swinging City", racial tensions brewing throughout the US and England winning the World Cup. Yes, kids, it did happen once.

Star Trek was something of a product of the hippy ideals emerging at the time: tasked by the studio MGM to come up with a hit new primetime TV show, former bomber pilot Gene Roddenberry had the idea of a sci-fi show which captured the mood of the space race, then in full flow, and was infused with the pioneer spirit of classic Western series. The concept he arrived at, a "Wagon Train to the stars", was pitched to Lucille Ball's production company Desilu (Ball herself reportedly thought that the idea of Star Trek, given its name, was a reality show in which celebrities visited American troops overseas).

With work beginning in the summer of 1964 on a pilot script, two lasting milestones were reached that November: the first was the early design of the USS Enterprise, the 'wagon' that would propel Roddenberry's band of pioneers on their five-year journey into "space, the final frontier". The second was the casting of Leonard Nimoy as a half-human, half-alien member of the Enterprise crew - Mr. Spock.

In the pilot, which began shooting in December 1964, Spock was a red-skinned Martian with the pointy ears. This, NBC, the network which commissioned the show, concluded made him look too much like the Devil. On reflection, the eventual look Nimoy adopted became as much an icon of the show, and indeed the franchise, as anything else. The pilot starred Jeffrey Hunter as the smooth but somewhat anodyne Captain Pike, John Hoyt as the doctor, Boyce, Peter Duryea as Tyler, the navigator, and Majel Barrett (who would later become Roddenberry's wife as well as Nurse Christine Chapel in the series) as the Enterprise's straight-laced First Officer. NBC rejected pilot, but persistence took over and new scripts were produced, leading to a new pilot - Where No Man Has Gone Before - being chosen to go into production the following July.

Casting for the new pilot became the next lasting milestone. Pike was replaced by Captain James Tiberius Kirk, with the handsome, classically-trained 34-year-old Canadian character actor William Shatner hired for the role. There were other significant decisions made: a design brief to build a 'physical' shuttle craft started to take too long, so Roddenberry's team came up with the idea of a 'transporter beam' to get the Enterprise crew from the ship onto the new worlds and civilisations that were the premise of their five-year mission. And in devices like the phasers, tricorders and communicators - the latter of which presciently envisaged the design of modern flip-phones - Star Trek was to later establish a lucrative line of toys and merchandising.

After what seemed like lengthy deliberation of the second pilot, NBC gave the green light for a 16-episode series of Star Trek in February 1966, and over the following three months episodes were intensely shot back-to-back. Further, lasting casting decisions were made, with craggy-faced De Forrest Kelly brought in as Doctor 'Bones' McCoy, another Canadian, Jimmy Doohan as Caledonian chief engineer Scott, and, for reasons that would later become highly significant socially, actress and singer Nichelle Nichols was given the role of communications officer Lieutenant Uhura.

At 8.30pm on September 8, the first episode of Star Trek went out on American television. For the first time, audiences heard the famous intro "Space - the final frontier...". Initial reactions were positive, though not overwhelming. But this was enough for NBC to commission a further 13 episodes of the first season. Amongst audiences there was much admiration for the quality of the show. This still being 1966, the special effects, the aliens and planet sets - could be politely described as 'of their time', but there was much more going on besides a lot of polystyrene boulders. In particular, there was the diversity of the cast, and a valid attempt to embrace the space age with a show more about exploration than confrontation, though there was still plenty of that.

Star Trek was, however, something of a brave show, even in the changing times of the 1960s. It's racial diversity - even the first interacial kiss on prime time TV, between Kirk and Uhura - was a landmark. But the ratings didn't seem to match the magnitude, and after its third season in 1969, the plug was pulled. That might have easily been the end of Star Trek: like The Prisoner (which started on British television only a few days beforehand), consigned to a brief experiment with fantasy on television before returning to the usual weekly diet of cop shows and medical dramas.

However, after it's network cancellation, Star Trek entered syndication, and the show began to pick up what would now be called a cult audience. In 1973, Paramount launched a 22-episode animated series, aimed at the Saturday morning children's audience, but featuring the voices of Shatner, Nimoy, Kelley, Doohan, Nichols, Barrett and George Takei, who'd joined the live action show as helmsman Mr. Sulu in Star Trek's second season. Between these two platforms, Star Trek grew its global audience (my first experience of colour TV was seeing Star Trek at a childhood friend's house and being amazed by the different coloured uniforms of the cast).

There is much, much more to say about Star Trek - the 13 movies and five spinoff series (including the new one, Star Trek: Discovery due next year) that have followed. The most recent, JJ Abrams-directed and produced reboots have been excellent entertainment, whether you've been into the canon before or not. And even if the original TV series didn't exactly initially set the world alight, think back to that evening, 50 years ago today, when audiences were first introduced to a show that went boldly going where no TV show had gone before. 1966 - what a year.

Kirk out.