Behind the Scenes: Star Trek and the Vietnam War (Part II).
My new video traces two simultaneous interrelated stories throughout the tumultous period 1968-69.
I’m two days late posting this, but, as is customary, here is a companion article to my latest YouTube video release, Part II, the final part, of the series “Star Trek and the Vietnam War.” It went up on my channel on Friday, August 28. As usual I have embedded it below. This is the conclusion of the story I began in Part I, and personally I think the history I’ve covered in Part II is the more interesting part of these particular twin tales. When I embarked on the project several months ago I made an early decision to break the material into two videos, with Part II detailing the final year of the original Star Trek series’s run, 1968-69, which unfolded exactly as the most dramatic and consequential events in America’s tragic involvement with the Vietnam War were occurring.
The story picks up in the spring of 1968. It’s hard to overestimate exactly how momentous this time was in American and Vietnamese history. Between January 30 and June 6, 1968, a period of 127 days, the Tet Offensive occurred in Vietnam, Eugene McCarthy made a surprise showing in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, Lyndon B. Johnson stood down from attempting another term as President, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were both gunned down by crazed ideologically-driven gunmen. This also happened to be occurring right at the transition between Star Trek’s second and third seasons, with key personnel changes and two decisions by NBC—one on the show’s time slot, the other on its budget—that ultimately crippled the show and preordained its cancellation. As I did with the first part, I tell these stories in tandem, cross-cutting between them.
