Google Doodle for Star Trek Birthday, Civil Rights Role in Series

Google features a doodle for Star Trek: The Original Series – a nod to one of the most progressive television shows of its era.  

The Google Doodle's "Star Trek" tribute offers up a fine way to waste some time on a Friday: an interactive homage to the groundbreaking television show on its 46th anniversary.

"Star Trek" was a relatively short-lived science-fiction series, running from 1966 to 1969. But the show, starring William Shatner as Capt. James T. Kirk and Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock, left an indelible mark on our culture, a mark that exists today. (And we're not just talking about those Priceline Negotiator commercials.)

The three-season series, about humankind's quest to search the outer limits of the universe, spun off films, toys and games, not to mention several other television series. "Star Trek" was nothing short of a cultural phenomenon, in part because it gave the world a glimpse of a multicultural future, starting with a crew that seemed immune to conflicts over race and gender and included Nichelle Nichols as Uhura and George Takei as Sulu.

The show's creator, the late Gene Roddenberry, has been famously quoted as saying, "[By creating] a new world with new rules, I could make statements about sex, religion, politics, and intercontinental missiles. Indeed, we did make them on 'Star Trek': we were sending messages and fortunately they all got by the network."

The show apparently holds a permanent place of honor inside Google headquarters, according to Entertainment Weekly. The pop culture magazine quoted Ryan Germick, credited with heading up the Star Trek Google Doodle, about how the show impacts the kind of big-picture dreaming for which Google's business strategy is known.

"We often talk at Google about how awesome it would be to talk to a computer and get exactly what you want and have that kind of engagement, where the computer just knows all, and that’s what we’re moving toward," Germick said, adding: "It seemed like such a fun thing to celebrate."

Click around the Doodle as you wrap up a four-day work week. (You won't have any trouble picking out Spock, thanks to those pointy ears atop the first G in "Google.") This Google Doodle has been in the works for years, although Germick told EW that the team started working in earnest on it only about four months ago.

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Google Doodle Star Trek

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uploaded by Emily Sutherlin