SEATTLE — After a two-year run, “Star Trek: Exploring New Worlds”.exhibit at Seattle's MoPOP ends Monday. The entire exhibit is embarking on a national tour.
There's the Gorn, the alien Captain Kirk fights on a desert planet.
Tribbles like the ones that infest the USS Enterprise in another classic episode.
And Kirk's command chair and a restored navigation board on display.
They are just some of the more than 100 artifacts and props from the Star Trek television series, spin-offs, and films you can see in the exhibit.
“Star Trek has had this enduring legacy for fifty years,” says curator Brooks Peck. “I think that comes from the fact that Star Trek espouses this very optimistic future and has these cool ideas about how we might live, and it shows us at our best.”
Though it wasn’t a big ratings winner in its original run, Star Trek attracted most devoted fans—Trekkies--during re-runs. Billionaire Paul Allen is one. Kirk's chair and the navigation board are his.
For another Trekkie David Taylor "Let This Be Your Battlefield", in which aliens with black and white faces don’t get along with aliens with white and black faces, is the classic episode.
“That message was so overt it sunk into me as a 12-year-old,” says Taylor.
At the exhibit, you can celebrate a series that was always about more than exploring strange new worlds.
“I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a way of life,” says Taylor, “but it has definitely impacted my life in a positive way.”
