It just struck me how unusual it is that Star Trek TOS had no smoking. Not on the Enterprise. Not while people are relaxing on shore leave. Not by desk admirals. It was the 60s and this was actually pretty unusual. Go under-the-radar accurate predictions!
(after reading through the various notes) Leaving aside the concept of Roddenberry purposely having thought about this and ruled smoking out of the show (which is absolutely possible): it strikes me as likely that if they had ever wanted to depict smoking in an episode, they might have had to have fire marshals present on the set. Which would have cost extra… and ST:TOS was already routinely the most expensive TV show shooting in LA at that point.
Anyway, I’m curious about this now. I’ll go ask David Gerrold: he might very well know.
ETA: David got back to me and simply said in response to the query “Did Roddenberry explicitly rule smoking out?” — “Probably.”
ETA 2: And as usual,, David was right. Thanks to @ceropegia for pointing me at this entry on “Smoking” at Memory Alpha, which deals with the issue directly.
During the making of Star Trek: The Original Series, Gene Roddenberry and others associated with the production fought NBC and Desilu so that cigarettes were omitted from the series. “Even with the heaviest smokers, including myself, I fought for it,” Roddenberry recalled. “In the end, it paid off for everyone; I think everyone now agrees that the original episodes would not be rerunning so successful if we had yielded to advertising pressure and put a ’twenty-third century cigarette’ into the mouth of Kirk and others.” (The Making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, p. 43)
#star trek TOS #while I think this is overall a net positive #think about all the phallic symbolism we missed out on
jim lights a cigarette and bones materializes from out of nowhere with a fire extinguisher “your ass isn’t willingly getting lung cancer if i can help it”
amhrancas 