Star Trek: The Original Series Trivia
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59 free Star Trek: the Original Series trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Looking for Star Trek: The Original Series trivia? Our full 59-question TOS quiz lives at Star Trek: The Original Series Trivia. This page keeps a shorter set of the same era of questions.
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Q 01In Star Trek's "The Trouble with Tribbles", what makes the furry creatures such a menace?
They multiply out of control
They multiply out of control because, as Dr McCoy works out, they are born pregnant; but the pests prove useful in the end, when dead tribbles reveal that a grain shipment has been poisoned.
Q 02What made the cancelled Star Trek a 1970s hit?
Syndicated reruns
Syndicated reruns found the show a bigger audience than it ever had on NBC, turning a series dropped for low ratings into a phenomenon that Paramount revived for the cinema ten years after the cancellation.
Q 03Gene Roddenberry pitched Star Trek to the networks as what?
Wagon Train to the stars
Wagon Train to the stars dressed science fiction as a Western, then a television staple: like that chart-topping series about a wagon convoy heading west, each episode would be a self-contained adventure within one long journey.
Q 04Desilu, Star Trek's first studio, was founded to make which 1950s sitcom?
I Love Lucy
I Love Lucy made its stars, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, the owners of a major studio; by Star Trek's day she had bought him out and ran Desilu alone, the only woman then heading a major Hollywood production company.
Q 05What was the title of the first Star Trek pilot, rejected by NBC as "too cerebral"?
The Cage
The Cage was not shown on television in its own right until 1988: its footage had been cut into a later episode, and for years fans knew the original only from prints screened at conventions.
Q 06Which actor played Captain Christopher Pike in Star Trek's first pilot?
Jeffrey Hunter
Jeffrey Hunter declined to return for the second pilot, preferring to concentrate on movies, so the captain's chair went to William Shatner as James T. Kirk.
Q 07What was the title of Star Trek's second pilot, the one NBC accepted?
Where No Man Has Gone Before
Where No Man Has Gone Before introduced Kirk, Scotty and Sulu, who was the ship's physicist in the pilot before the series moved him to the helm.
Q 08Which Star Trek episode launched the series on US television on September 8, 1966?
The Man Trap
The Man Trap was picked to lead off ahead of other finished episodes because its monster plot was judged the most straightforward science fiction of the bunch.
Q 09Star Trek fans nicknamed the shape-shifting monster of the first broadcast episode what, after its craving?
The salt vampire
The salt vampire, the last native of planet M-113, posed as McCoy's old flame Nancy Crater and killed crewmen to feed on the salt in their bodies.
Q 10Which actor joined Star Trek in season two as Ensign Pavel Chekov?
Walter Koenig
Walter Koenig was cast largely for his resemblance to Davy Jones of the Monkees, and wore a mop-top wig in his first episodes to complete the look.
Q 11George Takei missed half of season two because he was filming which John Wayne movie?
The Green Berets
The Green Berets cast Takei as a South Vietnamese army captain, and when filming overran, many of Sulu's lines went to the newly arrived Chekov.
Q 12NBC airbrushed Spock's pointed ears out of early publicity photos because executives feared he looked like what?
A demon
A demon was the worry: NBC feared a "demonic" look would offend station buyers in the conservative South, though Roddenberry had given Spock a slight look of the devil on purpose.
Q 13Which fan led the 1967-68 letter-writing campaign that won Star Trek a third season?
Bjo Trimble
Q 21Which composer lost half his Star Trek theme royalties after Gene Roddenberry added lyrics the show never used?
Alexander Courage
Alexander Courage called the move legal but unethical: the lyrics were never meant for the show, yet they let Roddenberry claim half the royalties as co-writer.
Q 22Which show twice beat Star Trek to the best drama Emmy?
Mission: Impossible
Mission: Impossible, made by the same studio and launched the same autumn, won in 1967 and 1968, and Star Trek ended its run without a single Emmy.
Q 23In 1968, Star Trek episodes took all five nominations for which science-fiction award's drama category?
Hugo
Bjo Trimble and her husband John organised the mail drive that buried NBC in letters; she later led another that got NASA's first space shuttle named Enterprise.
Q 14Students from which university marched on NBC's Burbank studios in January 1968 with "Draft Spock" signs?
Caltech
Caltech sent more than 200 students on a torchlit march through Burbank to NBC's gates, and weeks later the network took the rare step of announcing the renewal on air.
Q 15For its third season NBC moved Star Trek to what notoriously bad time slot?
10 pm Friday
10 pm Friday was the only slot left after NBC went back on its promise of Mondays at 7:30, because the producer of top-rated Laugh-In refused to move his show.
Q 16Who replaced Gene Roddenberry as producer for Star Trek's third and final season?
Fred Freiberger
Fred Freiberger had been approached to produce the show before its first season but went on a planned holiday instead; he later ran the second season of Space: 1999.
Q 17Which art director designed the Enterprise and is honoured by the name of its equipment shafts?
Matt Jefferies
Matt Jefferies kept the hull smooth and put the ship's workings inside so that nobody would have to spacewalk to make repairs; the crawlways the crew use became Jefferies tubes.
Q 18Which Star Trek prop, designed by Wah Chang, is often credited with inspiring the flip phone?
The communicator
The communicator and the tricorder were Wah Chang's work, though the phaser often credited to him was not; clamshell mobile phones followed his flip-top design some thirty years later.
Q 19Before Gene Roddenberry settled on Enterprise, what name had he intended for Star Trek's starship?
Yorktown
Yorktown was the ship's name in Roddenberry's 1964 pitch; he switched to Enterprise because he had always been proud of the wartime aircraft carrier and wanted to use its name.
Q 20Since 1974, who has owned the original 11-foot filming model of Star Trek's Enterprise?
The Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution was given the model by Paramount and now displays the fictional starship in its National Air and Space Museum, in a hall of real aircraft and spacecraft.
The Hugo shortlist for drama that year was five Star Trek episodes and nothing else, so the series could only lose to itself; "The City on the Edge of Forever" won.
Q 24Which science-fiction author wrote the Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever"?
Harlan Ellison
Harlan Ellison so disliked the rewrites that he asked to be credited as Cordwainer Bird, his protest pseudonym; his original draft still won a Writers Guild award.
Q 25In "The City on the Edge of Forever", which actress played Edith Keeler, the soup-kitchen worker Kirk loves?
Joan Collins
Joan Collins, later Alexis in Dynasty, plays a pacifist whom Kirk must let die, because her peace movement would keep America out of the war long enough for Hitler to win.
Q 26Star Trek's "The Trouble with Tribbles" was the first professional script by which writer?
David Gerrold
David Gerrold's tribbles so resembled the flat cats in Robert Heinlein's novel The Rolling Stones that the producers phoned Heinlein, who agreed to waive any claim.
Q 27Which Star Trek series digitally inserted its cast into 'The Trouble with Tribbles' for the 30th anniversary?
Deep Space Nine
Deep Space Nine used Forrest Gump-style effects to put its crew aboard Kirk's Enterprise; asked why the old Klingons look so different, Worf says only, "We do not discuss it with outsiders."
Q 28In Star Trek's "Space Seed", what was the name of the derelict ship carrying Khan and his followers?
SS Botany Bay
SS Botany Bay is named after the Australian bay famous for transported convicts, a nod to an early draft in which Khan's people were criminals exiled into space.
Q 29"Amok Time", the only episode with scenes on Spock's home planet, introduced which concept?
Pon farr, the mating cycle
Pon farr, the mating cycle, forces Spock home to take a mate or die; the episode also introduced the Vulcan salute and the words "Live long and prosper".
Q 30The actor who played Spock based the Vulcan salute on a blessing he saw as a boy in what setting?
An Orthodox synagogue
An Orthodox synagogue was where the boy peeked, though worshippers are meant to look away, as the kohanim gave the priestly blessing with fingers split into the Hebrew letter shin.