Star Trek is a legendary American science fiction entertainment franchise.
The original Star Trek is a classic American science fiction TV series, created by Gene Roddenberry, which debuted in 1966 and ran for three seasons, following the interstellar adventures of Captain James Tiberius Kirk and the crew of the Federation Starship USS Enterprise, following an earlier pilot film “The Cage,” which starred Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike.
Following the release of other series in the franchise, the Kirk-headed series was retroactively referred to as "Star Trek: The Original Series".
These adventures were continued by the short-lived Star Trek: The Animated Series and six feature films.
The original series were influential in both the west and the east. In Japan it inspired the famous Uchuu Senkan Yamato classic anime series.
Four more television series were eventually produced, based in the same universe but following other characters: Star Trek: The Next Generation, following the crew of a new Starship Enterprise set a century after the original series; Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager, set contemporaneously with The Next Generation; and Star Trek: Enterprise, set before the original series, in the early days of human interstellar travel.
Four additional feature films were produced, following the crew of The Next Generation, and most recently a 2009 movie reboot of the franchise featuring the young crew of the original Enterprise set in an alternate time line.
The franchise also includes dozens of computer and video games, hundreds of novels, as well as a themed attraction in Las Vegas (closed in September 2008). Beginning with the original television series and continuing with the subsequent films and series, the franchise has created a cult phenomenon and has spawned many pop culture references.
