Beloved 'Star Trek' celebrates its 60th anniversary

Event brings together stars from groundbreaking sci-fi series for nostalgic look at show's near-mythical status

SANDIEGO:

"Star Trek" legend George Takei on Saturday headlined a 60th anniversary celebration of the groundbreaking sci-fi series at Comic-Con, which featured stars from across the Starship Enterprise's expanded universe of films and shows.

The 89-year-old Takei -- who played the helmsman Hikaru Sulu on the original series and in multiple movies -- earned a standing ovation from fans in a packed Hall H at the four-day pop culture extravaganza in San Diego, California.

The actor joked about how young he felt marking such a milestone in television history, before turning more serious in talking about what he called an "extraordinary phenomenon" -- from its initial low ratings to its near-mythical status.

He said that the franchise's longevity was due to "all the people like you and your parents and your grandparents, because of their intelligence and their sensitivity and their vision" in supporting Gene Roddenberry's concept.

"We have lived long and endured for 60 years and going," he said, evoking the famous motto of Leonard Nimoy's Mr Spock.

The first episode of "Star Trek" aired in September 1966. It depicted the voyages of the Enterprise captained by James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and his multiracial crew, taking on major moral and social issues against the backdrop of outer space.

Shatner and Nichelle Nichols, a Black actress who played Lieutenant Uhura, made history in 1968 with one of the first interracial kisses ever seen on US television.

Since then, the original series and its more than a dozen spin-offs have generated nearly 1,000 episodes.

It has a major presence at Comic-Con, both with panels devoted to the series and the many fans who roam the halls dressed as their favorite characters.

The panel also featured Michael Dorn ("Star Trek: The Next Generation"), Jerry O'Connell (the animated "Star Trek: Lower Decks"), Robert Picardo ("Star Trek: Voyager") and Karim Diane, who plays the franchise's first openly gay Klingon in "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy."

The tribute began with comments from Roddenberry's son Rod, who heads the production and distribution company Roddenberry Entertainment.

"It had spaceships. It had a laser gun, had strange planets, even had weird-looking aliens. But that was never really the point, was it? This show wasn't about science fiction. This show was about us," he told the audience.

"'Star Trek' is not just science fiction entertainment. It's a show that makes people believe in a better future."

Since its creation, the franchise has expanded into various films, television series, video games, novels, and comic books, and it has become one of the most recognizable and highest-grossing media franchises of all time.

The franchise began with Star Trek (The Original Series), which premiered on September 6, 1966, on Canada's CTV network. In the United States, it debuted on September 8, 1966, on NBC. The series followed the voyages and crew of the starship USS Enterprise, a space exploration vessel built by the United Federation of Planets in the 23rd century, on a mission "to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before". Roddenberry was inspired by C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower series of novels.

The Star Trek canon includes The Original Series, several subsequent television series, and a film franchise; further adaptations also exist in expanded media. After the conclusion of The Original Series, the adventures of its characters continued in The Animated Series, and six feature films. A television revival beginning in the late 1980s and concluding in the mid 2000s saw four spinoff series: The Next Generation, following the crew of a new starship Enterprise a century after the original series; Deep Space Nine and Voyager, both set in the same era as the Next Generation; and Enterprise, set a century before the original series in the early days of human interstellar travel.

Comic-Con runs through Sunday. AFP