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A Taste of Armageddon- The Surprising Anti-Abortion Message in one Star Trek Episode
Caroline Furlong - October 29, 2021
The original Star Trek series, though short-lived in production, has had a profound impact on the world of today. From the personal communicator (which morphed into the handheld cellphone) to the replicator (the genesis of the 3D printer), this landmark television series foresaw a number of modern inventions.
Contrary to popular opinion, though, not all of Star Trek’s predictions were well received. NBC attempted to kill the series following its second season, and it was only because of a massive letter-writing campaign by fans across the country that Star Trek received a third season. The studio then attempted to strangled the show to death by cutting its funding, resulting in low quality production for the final season’s episodes.
Yet the series refused to fade into obscurity. To receive syndication rights a TV series had to reach one hundred episodes; Star Trek produced only seventy-eight. And yet Joss Whedon’s Firefly is renowned for remaining in syndication at the astonishingly low number of fifteen episodes, but it achieved this rank only because the fans of the “Wagon Train to the stars” (the phrase Gene Roddenberry used to pitch the original series to studio execs) blazed a trail into that wilderness first. Star Trek went into syndication during the 70’s and became an even bigger hit among a much larger audience.