Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Secrets of the Star Trek Title Sequence Revealed

“Title Sequence.” Star Trek. Seasons 1-3 (Original Series); Seasons 1-7 ( The Next Generation). DVD. Paramount, 2002.

From its beginning—from the first word of its title sequence, in fact—Star Trek has been deeply indebted to Shakespeare. In this clip and in the text below it, I reveal the allusions to Shakespeare made in the opening title sequence. For the first time, you may trace the origins of the word "space" and the name of the multiple Enterprises that fill the screens of Star Trek lore:

“I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space[: The final frontier].”
—Hamlet
“Goes it against the main of Poland, sir, or for some [final] frontier?”
—Hamlet
“With her I lived in joy; our wealth increased / By prosperous voyages [of the starship Enterprise].”
—Aegeon
[These are the voyages of the starship] Enterprises of great pith and moment.”
—Hamlet
“Whose glorious deeds, but in these fields of late, / Made emulous [five-year] missions ’mongst the gods themselves.”
—Ulysses
“O brave new world, [O strange new worlds] / That [have] such people in [them]!”
—Miranda
“I thank your majesty, and her, my lord: / These words, these looks, infuse new life [and new civilizations] in me.”
—Titus Andronicus
“Sound drums and trumpets [to] boldly and cheerfully [go where no one has gone before]; / God and Saint George!”
—Henry V

For more connections between Star Trek and Shakespeare, head to Shakespeare and Star Trek Complete.

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Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
All material original to this blog is copyrighted: Copyright 2008-2039 (and into perpetuity thereafter) by Keith Jones.

The very instant that I saw you did / My heart fly to your service; there resides, / To make me slave to it; and, for your sake, / Am I this patient [b]log-man.

—The Tempest