{"id":19257,"date":"2016-09-02T19:22:46","date_gmt":"2016-09-02T11:22:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/building-star-trek-connects-50-year-old-artifacts-with-23rd-century-technologies\/"},"modified":"2016-09-02T19:22:46","modified_gmt":"2016-09-02T11:22:46","slug":"building-star-trek-connects-50-year-old-artifacts-with-23rd-century-technologies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/building-star-trek-connects-50-year-old-artifacts-with-23rd-century-technologies\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Building Star Trek\u2019 connects 50-year-old artifacts with 23rd-century technologies"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Star
A scaled-down model of the Starship Enterprise hangs from the ceiling at \u201cStar Trek: Exploring New Worlds,\u201d an exhibit at Seattle\u2019s EMP Museum marking the 50th anniversary of the TV show\u2019s premiere. (GeekWire photo by Kevin Lisota)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The vision of the future that \u201cStar Trek\u201d laid out in 1966 may have been bright and shiny, but 50 years later, the most valuable artifacts that the show left behind were a real mess.<\/p>\n

\u201cBuilding Star Trek,\u201d premiering on the Smithsonian Channel on Sunday, tells how those artifacts were restored to their 23rd-century glory \u2013 for the Smithsonian Institution\u2019s National Air and Space Museum, and for Seattle\u2019s EMP Museum.<\/p>\n

You can see the fruits of the conservators\u2019 labors at the EMP\u2019s 50th-anniversary \u201cStar Trek\u201d exhibit, but \u201cBuilding Star Trek\u201d shows you much more: glimpses behind the scenes at what it takes to preserve the past, parallels between the futuristic fiction of \u201cStar Trek\u201d and cultural trends of the 1960s, and present-day technological developments that echo the show\u2019s sci-fi innovations.<\/p>\n

There are even enough cheesy clips from the original series to remind you that this was a TV program from the days before computer-generated wizardry took hold, when \u201cBonanza\u201d led the ratings.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=yCTbAM0ieUs
\n 
\nThe need to work within the limitations of the age was what spawned many of the futuristic technologies on \u201cStar Trek.\u201d For example, crew members beamed back and forth using the Starship Enterprise\u2019s transporter to save set designers and scriptwriters from having to worry about how to fly them down to an alien planet\u2019s surface.<\/p>\n

Faster-than-light warp drive, meanwhile, made it easy for Captain James T. Kirk to wedge lots of locales into a five-year mission \u2013 and three seasons\u2019 worth of TV episodes.<\/p>\n

The prop masters and set designers weren\u2019t necessarily thinking about how their creations would hold up after 50 years, and that\u2019s where the drama comes in for curators like Brooks Peck at the EMP, and Malcolm Collum at the Smithsonian.<\/p>\n

During one segment of \u201cBuilding Star Trek,\u201d you can read the look of dread on Peck\u2019s face when he opens the box containing a section of the Enterprise\u2019s main control panel. It looks like something you\u2019d find in a trash bin, with holes in the plywood where Ensign Chekov\u2019s sparkly lights and switches should have been.<\/p>\n

\u201cWow,\u201d Peck says. \u201cI knew it was in a bad way. I didn\u2019t know it was this bad.\u201d<\/p>\n