20 Mind-Blowing Facts You Never Knew About Star Trek

9. Loads Of Old TV Props And Sets Were Used

The original series is all the more impressive when you consider Star Trek was made on a minuscule budget. Despite taking place across the universe in the far future, requiring any number of sets, outfits and make up jobs to be provided, the low-rated early series was a big risk for NBC, and so they refused to sink any particularly large amount of money into the show. In fact the production was on such a shoestring that they frequently Paramount[/caption] There was actually a lot more to the uniforms in the original series than you think. The infamously doomed red shirts indicated support services €“ such as communications, engineering, or security €“ whilst the blue tops of Spock and Bones were to identify them as science officers, and the yellow of Kirk, Sulu and Chekov meant they were on the command track. Eventually those outfits became just as iconic as much of the other production design on the series, although in this case it came at a price. Because of that insanely low budget the production was working on, they couldn't afford to get proper costumes provided by union-approved labourers. So instead those iconic outfits were made by what were essentially sweatshop workers, in sweatshop conditions. They were non-union-approved, made overnight and then smuggled in through the back door to be used for shooting the following morning. Not quite the utopian world of Star Trek...