In The AI Age, Star Trek’s Still Alive

It’s the age of AI, a time of runaway innovation – more and more of our lives are impacted by digital systems running on electronic hardware, and a lot of what used to be science fiction is now science fact.

And then there’s Star Trek – the enduring legacy of those who dreamed of space exploration and advanced technology back in the very analog days of the mid-to-late twentieth century.

It wasn’t too long ago that the ENIAC at UPENN and Project Whirlwind at MIT were humming away, mammoth systems with tape and spinning wheels. And as those large mainframes started to give way to the personal computer, as a new generation of digital users came of age, Star Trek that takes place 250 years from now according to the writer guide that Gene Roddenberry the creator of the show, was telling its stories: of a futuristic spaceship festooned with high-tech buttons, lights and dials that supported amazing capabilities. Some of those, with LLM capability, are now reality as well.

The Star Trek Set Tour in Historic NY

The Star Trek Set Tour experience in Ticonderoga, NY is just down the way from historic Fort Ticonderoga, where a little more than 250 years ago the French and British fought the seven years’ war, before the formal foundation of the nascent United States of America. Only a couple of hundred or so years later, look at what we have built.

Nearby, in a former Ticonderoga supermarket, James Cawley has recreated a lot of the set pieces and costumes of the original Star Trek show – that takes place 250 years in a fictional future. And it’s amazing.

The place is open to the public, for a reasonable admission fee, and many have walked through its halls. William Shatner has visited a dozen times, too.

I recently took my annual trip there and got to talk to Cawley about his project.

Speaking to him, you get a sort of picture of what it was like to be involved on the ground floor, recreating all of these timepieces in a new world where the designs are so retro. In the late 1980s Cawley cold called the studio during the Star Trek Next Generation production and landed a job on the costume staff. When his boss there passed away he left him the original set blue prints to the 1960s TV series which Cawley use to recreate the set. He said he also rewatched the original three seasons of shows to be able to get the look and feel of the sets.

“It hit at the right moment in time, where it needed to say what it said, and reach the people that it reached,” he said, of the original Star Trek show. “Kennedy had been killed, and we were going through a lot as a nation, and Star Trek had the courage to go on TV and say: ‘Nope it’s going to be OK. We’re going to get there, and we’re going to do it together.”

He talked about how media changed from VHS and DVD to Blu-ray and 4K, and how, in that intervening age, computing hardware changed, too.

“We’ve had to take things apart and redo them,” he said, showing off some of the set work that visitors see as they move through the space.

The project, he said, has evoked a strong reaction in more than a few people. Some cry. Some don’t want to leave. All of this, to me, speaks to the power of nostalgia – as our lives change so much, we like to interact with the past.

The Serene Setting

As for why this museum of sorts is located here, in Ticonderoga, and not in a big city, Cawley did point out the practicality of the choice.

“You’re looking at 13,000 square feet,” he said. “(It would take) millions and millions of dollars to do this in a big city, and then it’s not practical. You wouldn’t sell enough tickets to warrant that – they couldn’t keep the Star Trek experience in Las Vegas going for a length of time, because real estate is expensive, and things change, so I think here, it works, because it’s a small community.”

Star Trek Through the Lens of AI

Think about this: in the 1970s and 1980s, we experienced a premonition of AI through the iconography of shows like Star Trek. As you look at that dated gear, and the types of stagework that cast and crew did, you can see the foreshadowing of everything we now enjoy due to the work of neural nets.

My Visit: A Visual Experience

As I toured, I got to see some of the visuals that the original actors would have seen as they went “where no man had gone before.”

Here are some of the photos I took while experiencing the set.

And I think this really showcases how many of us feel as we contemplate a future with AI: We’re seeing it through the lens of vintage sci-fi. Just a thought.