Sputnikfest 2014

Star Trek “Into Darkness” was released this past week.  I did a search for Sputnik references in the

Star Trek universe and was surprised by how few I was able to find.  There is a passing reference in the Star Trek: The Next Generation TV series to a “Korolev Class” starship designation.  Though the ship itself is never seen on-screen, a schematic appears on a display screen in one episode.  Sergei Pavlovich Korolev was the lead Soviet rocket engineer and spacecraft designer during the Sputnik program. 

In the Star Trek: Enterprise television series, there is a flashback story about a Vulcan ship

observing the launch of Sputnik I.  In the episode Carbon Creek, this Vulcan ship subsequently crash lands in Pennsylvania and the three survivors are forced to blend in with the local populace in order to survive.  One neat bit of dialog has the Vulcans discussing what Earth culture of 1957 has to offer, including “alcohol, frozen fish sticks, and the constant threat of nuclear annihilation.”

The lead-in video for the Star Trek: Enterprise TV series theme song Faith of the Heart/Where My Heart Will Take Me plays over a video montage representing the history of exploration and space flight.  It includes images of the Wright Brothers, the Charles Lindbergh and the Spirit of St. Louis, and the Apollo space program, but any reference to the Russians being first in space is conspicuously absent.

One Star Trek fan has made an attempt to correct this oversight by splicing footage of Sputnik I and Yuri Gagarin into the Star Trek Enterprise theme video.  Check the video below.  About 30 seconds in you will see the “UPN” mark in the lower right corner of the screen disappear for about 10 seconds – which is about the only clue that this footage has been edited in.  The added video meshes seamlessly with the rest of the footage and one wonders why the creators of the original series would not have included something like this.   

Sputnikfest 2013 is less than 4 months away!  See you then.  Planet Terry