See The Star Trek Anniversary Google Doodle
The September 7, 2012, Google Doodle on the front page of Google.com paid tribute to the 46th anniversary of the original Star Trek series. The engineers and designers at Google created a playable point-and-click flash game that explores the bridge and transporter room of the USS Enterprise.
In a clever game of exploration, the Star Trek characters have been transformed into the letters that make up the word “Google” (Spock is the ‘G’, Uhura and Kirk are ‘o’s, McCoy is the ‘g’, Sulu is the ’l’, and Chekov seems to be missing in action).
You could even click around the bridge to listen to the iconic sound effects of Star Trek.
If you went to the transporter room, you could beam down to the surface of a barren planet wasteland. On the planet, you re-enact a scene from the Star Trek episode “Arena,” where Captain Kirk builds a “Gorn Cannon” to defeat the Gorn Captain, which looks like a reptilian Pez-dispenser.
The letter ‘e,’ who is an unnamed redshirt ensign and is, of course, used as a punching bag during the journey, accompanies you.
At the center of Google HQ in Mountain View, California, a large group of Trekkies walking around on campus were inspired by what the original Star Trek series has done for them creatively and technologically.
It makes sense that the folks at Google would be Star Trek fans of some sort or another. This is geek culture at its finest, after all.
It has captured the imagination of Google engineers to boldly go where no man has gone before. After all, Google’s motto is “don’t be evil,” which captures the ideas and themes of the original Star Trek series.
