“A Tall Ship and A Star to Steer Her By:” Star Trek and Naval History

In the fictional history of Star Trek[1] there are few days more important than 5 April. On that day in 2063, Vulcans landed in Bozeman, Montana following Zefram Cochrane’s successful test of a faster-than-light engine built from a modified ICBM. In Star Trek’s utopian future, this event led to the creation of the peaceful and prosperous United Federation of Planets.[2] It is significant, though, that today’s film and television viewers only see the Federation through the lens of a fictional multispecies and multicultural navy: Starfleet. The numerous iterations of Star Trek have always been viewed through the lens of Starfleet, with plots centering the starships Enterprise and Discovery, scout ship Voyager, the military base Deep Space 9, and support vessel Cerritos among others.[3] As a result, our view of the Star Trek future (and franchise) has necessarily been influenced by the real world military histories and traditions of both the United States and Royal Navies that influenced the show. Star Trek, in turn, has helped to influence popular perceptions of the two naval services. In honor of First Contact Day, let’s explore how Gene Roddenberry’s original iteration of Star Trek (1966–1969) built off of this joint Anglo-American naval heritage. [4]

Set in the 2260s, Star Trek: The Original Series portrays the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Led by Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner), First Officer Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Leonard McCoy (DeForrest Kelly), the starship and her crew “explore strange new worlds” and “seek out new life and new civilizations.” While Star Trek, at its best, achieves a timeless quality, it remains very much a product of its era. Filmed in the 1960s, many of its writers, producers, and actors fought in World War II, as had much of its audience.[5] Series creator Gene Roddenberry flew B-17s in the Pacific Theater.[6] Associate producer Robert Justman served on two destroyers, a destroyer escort, and a repair ship.[7] James Doohan, who portrayed Chief Engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott, fought in the Canadian Army and lost a finger on Juno Beach on D-Day.[8] Even actors and crew who did not serve in the military were deeply impacted by the war. George Takei, who played helmsman Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu, for example, spent much of his childhood as a Japanese-American internee at Camp Rohwer, Arkansas, and later at the Tule Lake War Relocation Center in California.[9] In addition, hundreds of thousands of Americans were introduced to military service during the Vietnam War right as Star Trek hit the airwaves.[10] 

While this wartime context is evident[11] in Star Trek, most of the imagery and terminology comes specifically from the Navy. The first words spoken in the series, and in many episodes thereafter, are “Captain’s log . . .”[12] Starfleet officers attend Starfleet Academy. Enterprise is piloted by a helmsman on the bridge and was constructed at the San Francisco Navy Yard.[13] The ship’s rank structure mirrors that of the U.S. Navy with officers and crew divided into functional areas. Federation ships are also designated with “USS.”[14] Captain Kirk has the duties and authorities of a U.S. Navy ship’s captain, sometimes conducting marriages, overseeing courts-martial, and convening a board of inquiry. While Roddenberry wanted Star Trek to portray a utopian, post-conflict society, Starfleet is responsible for defending the United Federation of Planets from adversaries and threats across space. Several episodes revolve around defeating threats to Federation outposts, bases, and colonies, while also expanding and modelling the “right” way to live to the rest of the universe.[15]

One of the most memorable episodes of Star Trek, “Balance of Terror” (aired 15 December 1966), transports World War II-era anti-submarine warfare patrols to deep space. In the episode, the Enterprise responds to a series of distress calls from Federation outposts under attack by a Romulan Bird-of-Prey. The Romulans have a “cloaking device” rendering their ship invisible to Enterprise and attack using a devastating plasma torpedo. This framework casts Enterprise as a destroyer and the Romulan ship as a submarine. The episode traces Enterprise in its struggle to find the Bird-of-Prey amid the chaos of debris, torpedo strikes, and an improvised nuclear mine. To lure the Romulans in, Enterprise feigns damage. Enterprise then lands a crippling blow and the Romulans scuttle their ship to avoid capture, but not before the Romulan commander tells Kirk, “you and I are of a kind. In a different reality, I could have called you friend.”[16] The episode was deeply influenced by the submarine films Run Silent, Run Deep (1958) and The Enemy Below (1957).[17] These postwar films, too, were shaped by real submarine patrols by American and British destroyers in World Wars I and II, and potential threats from Soviet subs to the Cold War Allied Navies.

Star Trek writers and producers also pulled more directly from America’s recent naval history for the show’s naming conventions and the Federation’s opponents. Roddenberry explained, “I’d been an army bomber pilot in World War II. I’d been fascinated by the navy and particularly fascinated by the story of the Enterprise in World War II, which at Midway really turned the tide in the whole war in our favor. I’d always been proud of that ship and wanted to use the name.”[18] Most of the Federation starships encountered in the Original Series adopted famous American ship names, including Lexington, Constellation, and Intrepid, with Enterprise falling into the Constitution-class.[19] Starfleet’s enemies, especially the Klingons, are coded as either Russian or Asian and have fast, uncomfortable warships akin to those employed by the Imperial Japanese Navy.[20] A Japanese Zero even makes an appearance in a December 1966 episode, strafing members of an away team on a malfunctioning pleasure planet.[21] However, the show did more than just celebrate World War II American naval culture.

The entire structure of Star Trek is built around Anglo-American naval cruises. Roddenberry’s original outline for the show described the ship like so: “The U.S.S. Enterprise, a naval cruiser-size spaceship. The vessel . . . includes bridge, control rooms, crew quarters and facilities, science labs and technical departments, plus passenger and cargo accommodations.”[22] The ship’s responsibilities sound familiar to anyone familiar with peacetime cruiser duty. “Landings are made for a wide variety of reasons – scheduled ports of call, resupplying the cruiser, aid to Earth colonies, scrutiny of an Earth commercial activity, collection of rare animal or plant specimens, a courtesy call on alien life contacted by earlier exploration, a survey of mineral deposits, or any combination of scientific, political, security, or supply needs,” and the ship is responsible for patrolling and protecting a large section of Federation space.[23] These missions hearken back to the Golden Age of Sail, and turn-of-the-century naval voyages of exploration, contact, and colonization. Indeed, historian Alice L. George points out that Enterprise’s mission has a distinct flavor of European exploration, and that Kirk is both “virtuous explorer and the unwanted intruder.”[24]

Star Trek’s connection to cruisers goes even further back. Roddenberry initially pitched the show not only as a “Wagon Train to the Stars” but also as “Horatio Hornblower in Space.” The star of a series of novels by C. S. Forrester, Hornblower was a fictional British captain of assorted sailing vessels in the Nelsonian Era British navy. As adventure stories, the novels emphasize the excitement of command and the vast reaches of the ocean, as well as the introspection and loneliness inherent to leadership. Published between 1937 and 1962, the Hornblower series gave Roddenberry’s generation an exciting, if fictionalized, vision of the Age of Sail.[25] This influence is easy to see in Star Trek as Enterprise travels from planet to planet, rarely hearing from superiors while dealing with crises alone. Enterprise’s duties and nomenclature parallel British and American ships of the Napoleonic Era, as do battle scenes. Space combat in Star Trek is unusual when compared to other science fiction franchises. Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate, Honor Harrington, and others focus on small, single-seat fighters as a key element of space warfare.[26] Influenced by World War II aerial combat and carrier battles, George Lucas, creator of Star Wars, even famously re-shot World War II dogfights with X-Wings and TIE Fighters.[27] In Star Trek, however, fighters are absent, and Enterprise always tries to talk before fighting. Once combat starts, it is usually a ship duel largely focused on maneuver and damage control.[28] Thanks to shuttles, transporters, and godlike aliens, Starfleet ships frequently face boarding actions, much like their eighteenth and nineteenth century predecessors.[29] Starfleet also parallels the supposedly romantic, enlightenment era of exploration that characterized the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the Age of Discovery. Even Captain James Kirk’s iconic mission statement – “to boldly go where no man has gone before” – echoes the explorer Captain James Cook, who wrote in 1774, “ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible to go.”[30]

Star Trek is a rich text, commenting openly about race relations, the Vietnam War, religion, human potential, artificial intelligence, cooperation, tolerance, and an idealized diverse humanitarian future.[31] It is a fundamentally aspirational creation.[32] At its heart, though, it is a show enraptured with naval vessels, whether powered by sail, steam, or dilithium, exploring the wide expanse of sea and space. When stressed, Captain Kirk often expresses his deep longing for the sea. In one episode, faced with losing his job to a computer, he wistfully thinks back to the Age of Sail: “‘All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.’ You could feel the wind at your back in those days. The sounds of the sea beneath you, and even if you take away the wind and the water it’s still the same. The ship is yours. You can feel her. And the stars are still there.”[33]