There are many things about Star Trek that you may not have realised.

• The original series (TOS) was transmitted before the moon landings.
• Star Trek follows the golden rule of science fiction; never explain anything that you don't have to.
• Only alien religions are explored in Star Trek. Human religions are never mentioned.
• The USS Enterprisehas one disc section and three tube sections because at the time, saucers and cigar shaped UFOs were the most commonly reported.
• The NCC 1701 number was chosed because it is recognisable at the greatest distance.
• NCC doesn't mean anything, but is based on the NC used by the navy after the second world war, standing for New Construction.
• NX is supposed to denote experimental¹.

When the show became popular, Gene Roddenberry was worried that since most fans seemed to prefer with Kirk or Spock that the two actors would develop a rivalry. He consulted with Issac Azimov², and based on his recommendations made the two the best of friends, so that when one thinks of one character, you automatically think of the other.

The transpported effect in TOS, at the time, looked like the most expensive special effect. In fact it was the cheapest, using a simple fade with glitter thrown in.

The warp drive originally used lithium crystals. Gene Roddenberry believed that he had pulled the word lithium out of the air, but later discovered that litium powered batteries were being used in watches. He changed lithium to di-lithium and hoped that no-one would notice.

When the first motion picture was released, it was criticised for having too many beauty shots of the ship. These are shots of the exterior of the ship. The reason behind this is because Paramount gave the job of doing the external shots to another company. Shortly before the film was to be released, the work done was found to be unsatisfactory and was given to another company to redo from scratch. This meant that the footage cost more than twice what was origianally budgetted for, and as a result, Paramount was unwilling to cut any of the footage from the final cut of the film.

As strange as it sounds, Star Trek owes much of its existence to Star Wars. The original series was never very popular during its original broadcast and in the third season was put on late on Friday night, when most of the people who watched it would be out partying with their friends. It was then syndicated (the individual stations making up the network could show it when they wanted to), and was revived. When Star Wars was first released in 1979, it showed that not only was sci fi popular, but that it could make money and Paramount wanted to make a Star Trek film. The first film was criticised, but made a lot of money and justified making the second film, which was hugely sucessful. And the rest is history.
Thanks you George Lucas!³