First Star Trek movie announced
Having tried to find a suitable script for a big-screen relaunch of Star Trek virtually since the cancellation of the television series, Paramount – riding the coattails of the much-publicized unveiling of the Space Shuttle Enterprise – issues a press release announcing that the first Trek movie is finally underway – in this case, a still-in-development script called Star Trek: Planet Of Titans, featuring a radically redesigned Enterprise concept by illustrator Ralph McQuarrie, whose other recent genre work – designs for the yet-to-be-released Star Wars – has yet to make him a household name.
Enterprise leaves drydock
On schedule, the Space Shuttle Enterprise is rolled out of the Rockwell International plant in Palmdale, California to much public fanfare, a ceremony including Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and most of the cast who played the crew of the Enterprise’s fictional namesake (William Shatner was conspicuously absent). The timing of the rollout, ironically, was intended to roll the test shuttle – originally named Constitution – out of the hangar on Constitution Day during the bicentennial year.