Keep on Trekin’
The Strange New Worlds episode “Subspace Rhapsody” is certainly the first time a Star Trek series or movie has engaged the genre of the musical, but 47 years earlier a parody of the original boldly went Broadway… by way of newsprint.
Mad Magazine (or MAD) was infamous for its impudent take on… well, everything. It spoofed, satirized, and skewered politics, social issues, fads, celebrities, music, etc., plus movies and TV shows.
Trek Gone Mad
Star Trek got the MAD treatment midway through the airing of its second season as “Star Blecch.” (Interestingly, one joke in it prefigures by months Spock’s “ears” line in “The Trouble With Tribbles.”)
Page 2 of “Star Blecch” from MAD Magazine #115, December 1967.[1]
This is opinion, obviously, but its great Mort Drucker art was unable to elevate a tepid, toothless Dick DeBartolo script that didn’t grok the show well enough to definitively harpoon it. Ironically enough, the cover of that issue reads “We don’t try very hard!” which was certainly the case with Star Blecch.” End of opinion.
The “Star Blecch” issue showed up on the Star Trek set during location shooting for “A Private Little War" on October 2, 1967, and photos were taken of William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy reading it.[2]
Not to be outdone, Trek’s Desilu neighbor Mission: Impossible got in on the joke. Stars Martin Landau and Barbara Bain were photographed with the same issue[3] and this was submitted to MAD along with a letter reputedly signed by them,[4] but this might have been the work of the publicity department. (Their show would get the MAD treatment as “Mission: Ridiculous” three issues later[5]).
Trektennial 1976
Most TV shows that were curs— er, blessed with a MAD satire received the treatment only once. That short-lived Star Trek got a second one seven years following its cancelation is a testament to just how successful it was in syndication, and how visible its growing fandom had become.
Thus it was that in the bicentennial year of 1976, MAD had another go at the Star Trek enterprise, and this time nailed it. Mort Drucker’s art accompanied Frank Jacobs’[6] sharp satire of not just the show’s characters and its format, but its syndication success, fandom, and the lucrative business of selling merch to Trekkies… And did so in the format of a musical titled “Keep on Trekin’.”
One reason this 1976 parody was so spot-on was because MAD reached out to the fandom itself via the Federation Trading Post in New York City. As Doug Drexler said in a 2006 interview:
Doug Drexler: Anytime anyone in big-time NY media did anything Star Trek, they came to our store first. Saturday Night Live, Mad Magazine[…][7]
We chatted with Mr. Drexler about MAD specifically, and he told us:
Doug Drexler: Ron Barlow used to work at The Monster Times. We managed the Federation Trading Post store together. MAD came to us for all the reference material. They knew about us because the store became famous. There was no place else to get the kind of stuff we could provide. Paramount sure wouldn't provide anything. I used to visit the MAD offices regularly.[8]
From our very first post, we’ve said that the series and the franchise that spawned from it are best understood when considered within the social and media landscapes in which they were birthed and lived.
For some context, the previous year of 1975 saw the end of the animated series and Paramount’s rejection of Roddenberry’s “Star Trek II” screenplay[9] (which fandom calls “The God Thing” because that was to be the title of a never-published novel based on that script). Around that time his assistant, Jon Povill, wrote a story outline concerning an ancient psychic cloud from Vulcan.[10]
And Bobby Pickett (famous for “The Monster Mash”) and Peter Ferrara recorded their novelty single “StarDrek” just in time to sell at the New York “Star Trek Lives!” convention the following February (as evidenced by the Tellurian Enterprises, Inc. text on the record label and sleeves.)[11]
Some of the humor in “StarDrek” is period-specific. Lt. Manura (whose single line refers to them having taken “a shellackin' out here!”) sounds like a takeoff of Flip Wilson’s character “Geraldine Jones.”[12] The elevator’s “I’m fine, how are you?” was a common comeback to anyone who came on too strong.
In 1976 Povill and Roddenberry wrote two variations on a time travel story in which Kirk meets famous 20th-century figures, including JFK (no, no one shoots him, let alone Spock), all of which went nowhere.[13][14] On May 29th the variety show NBC's Saturday Night (later retitled Saturday Night Live) aired its sketch "The Last Voyage of the Starship Enterprise" with John Belushi as Captain Kirk.[15] (The makers of that sketch also reached out to The Federation Trading Post, even reportedly purchasing the tunics worn by the cast.[16][17])
On the fiction publishing side, 1976 saw the publication of The New Voyages (short story collection), Spock, Messiah! (novel), and three entries in the Star Trek Log series: Six, Seven, and Eight (novelizations of the animated show). On the reference side, the Ballantine edition of the Star Trek Concordance was published that year.
And in comics, the Gold Key series, which began in 1967, was still going strong.
In toys, MEGO had been beaming up dollars since 1974, and virtually all but three of their original series products had been released.[18] In 1976, AMT released its K-7 Space Station, its ninth Star Trek model kit.[19]
And not long after MAD mascot Alfred E. Neuman appeared in Vulcan guise and redshirt on newsstands around August 1976, Chris Bryant and Allan Scott’s “STAR TREK” story treatment[20] (what fandom calls “Planet of the Titans”) was approved to go to script.
Such was the state of Star Trek in media and the marketplace in America’s bicentennial year.
About That Crumby Title…
The title “Keep On Trekin’” was a play on the “Keep on Truckin’” phrase, which had permeated the mainstream by way of the underground… Underground “comix” that is.
In his 1968 Zap Comix #1 cartoonist Robert Crumb included a single-page strip with that title.[21] The phrase and the primary image at the top of that strip gained immense popularity and were reproduced and endlessly riffed on in various forms of media and merchandise from the end of the 1960s and well into the mid-late 70s. “Keep on Truckin’” appeared on posters, patches, T-shirts, mugs, pins, and many other items. Crumb never authorized any of this, sued over it, and grew to detest it, even drawing a satire of it in his 1972 XYZ Comics.[22]
Crumb’s strip popularized the phrase but didn’t invent it. The saying apparently originated from a lyric from the song “Truckin' My Blues Away” recorded by Blind Boy Fuller in 1936, where “truckin’” served as a euphemistic bit of hokum blues slang for a different word ending in “uckin’.”
I got a gal here, in this town, the best-lookin' brown around
I got a gal, in this town, the best-lookin' brown around
She's a strictly tailor-made, she ain't no hand-me-down
Catch you trucking' with her, I'm gonna sure shoot you down
Keep on truckin', mama, truckin' my blues away
Truckin' my blues away
The 70s trucking craze embraced the catchphrase and further drove it into the ground via oversaturation.
So omnipresent was this catchphrase that in 1973 the genre newspaper The Monster Times printed a poster of a Trek-ed up version of Crumb’s original with the title “Keep on Trekin’…”[23]
Given all that, what else was MAD going to title their send-up?
Spock ‘N Roll Dept.
MAD had sent up music and musicals for years prior.[24] “The Mad ‘Comic” Opera” was printed as far back as 1960.[25] 1963’s ”East Side Story” took the premise of West Side Story and used the songs to spoof the United Nations.[26] And 1967’s “Stokely and Tess” adapted the music from even-then-vintage opera Porgy and Bess and applied it to the state of Black America and the civil rights movement.[27]
Movies became prime targets for such “musical” spoofage. “On a Clear Day You Can See a Funny Girl Singing ‘Hello Dolly’ Forever” was published in 1971,[28] and “What’s Entertainment” in 1975.[29] Later would come “The Force and I" in 1978.[30]
But it appears Star Trek was the only TV series to ever be given the MAD musical treatment.
Being in a print magazine these “musicals” were by necessity silent. The writers would pen parody lyrics to popular songs most of their readers would be familiar with, and call out those songs in the text as “Sung to the tune of.” You’d sing it in your head, so to speak.
What’s “fascinating” about the tunes chosen for the parody was that none of them were current. All but one of them predated the series or came out while it was on the air. So, intentional or not, nine of the ten songs are contemporary to the show.
Below we’re going to share the comic, but we can do something that MAD couldn’t during the Ford administration: provide links to the songs being parodied. So if you’re too young for these tunes to be familiar, you’ll be able to put the words to the music. We also cut the pages up a bit to keep songs together.
Without further ado, let’s raise the curtain on MAD’s “Keep On Trekin’.”
click/tap images to enlarge
“SEND IN THE CLOWNS” (1973)
This song is from 5 years after the original series ended, and the same year that the Filmation animated Star Trek debuted.
The song isn’t actually about clowns. Songwriter Stephen Sondheim once said of it:
[I]t's a theater reference meaning ‘if the show isn't going well, let's send in the clowns’; in other words, ‘let's do the jokes.’[31]
In one sense, that’s what this comic is doing: sending in the clowns.
“I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” came from the 1968 musical Promises, Promises, and was popularized by Dionne Warwick.
“Aquarius” originated in the controversial 1967 musical Hair, and that’s the recording we’re linking to. Most people know it from its memorable cover by The 5th Dimension in a 1969 medley with “Let the Sunshine In,” also from Hair. (The lyrics start at 42 seconds in.)
MAD’s parody of “Aquarius” is brilliant; likely informed by Drexler and Barlow, who knew fans had been calling out the plot armor and redshirt phenomena long before either term was invented. This illustrates just how little fandom has changed in the past half-century.
“The Sound of Silence” hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 eight months before Star Trek’s TV debut. The following year it featured in the film The Graduate and its soundtrack album.
Many younger people will know it from the late 2015 cover by American heavy metal band Disturbed.
The drawing of McCoy at the center of the page is the most perfect cartoon of DeForest Kelley we’ve ever seen.
Glen Campbell’s 1967 cover of “Gentle On My Mind” popularized Johns Hartford’ song, and got onto the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 twice. In 1968 it won four Grammy awards. Within a year ≈50 other artists had covered the song. There’s little question most MAD readers would recognize it.
1966’s Cabaret first hit Broadway in the week between Trek’s “The Menagerie” part one and part two, but its title song hit the U.S. Billboard Top 40 Easy Listening chart in October, where it remained for 13 weeks.[32]
The 1972 film adaptation likely reinforced the song in the public consciousness.
1965’s “Yesterday” by the Beatles has been frequently listed as the most covered song of all time.[33] While we can’t speak to the accuracy of that, the song is certainly ubiquitous, and almost unavoidable. The lyrics here are to the first two verses.
Bob Dylan’s “Blowing In the Wind” (1963) was coved by folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary in June 1963. On August 17, 1963, it reached number two on the Billboard pop chart, with sales exceeding one million copies, and made the song world-famous.
1965’s “Call Me” by Petula Clark pre-dates Trek’s network run and shouldn’t be confused with New Wave band Blondie’s song of the same name, released almost five years after this MAD musical.
Bobby Hebb’s 1966 single “Sunny” was the tune selected to close “Keep on Trekin’.” The replacement lyrics are illustrative of the public perception of Hollywood. Surely the makers and cast of Star Trek were raking it in from the endless reruns and merchandising. Right?
The reality was something different.
The actors were only paid for the first five reruns,[34] and they weren’t compensated for the use of their likenesses in advertising and merchandising (which was a sticking point to getting Nimoy to return for The Motion Picture). At best, they made some cash through public appearances at the booming biz of Star Trek conventions.
Even those with contracted profit participation — William Shatner, Gene Roddenberry, and NBC itself — wouldn’t see a penny for another decade due to “Hollywood Accounting” practices..
So outside of Paramount and its licensors, it wasn’t “Sunny” where Star Trek money was concerned.
That’s what you might call MAD-ness.
—30—
FACT TREK NOTE: COVER DATES
If it seems strange for the December issue of MAD to be on-set in early October, that’s because the magazine would go on sale 7 to 9 weeks before the month listed on the cover." It was published eight times a year. See this image from the "Star Blecch" issue.[35]
Cover dates on many publications frequently misalign with when they are on newsstands. They often reflect the so-called “off-sale date.” As the Longman Business Dictionary puts it:
the date when a business selling newspapers and magazines calculates the amount sold and reports this to the wholesaler[37]As such, the off-sale date may mean the date by which retailers are to pull the publication from the rack, something like the Sell By or Use By dates on groceries. This future dating may also be artifice, to make the material in the publication feel early or urgent, hence the Sunday edition of many newspapers being available the day beforehand.[37][38] After all, you want Christmas advertising in the issue on shelves the month prior, hence the December issue on stands in November.
Revision History
2023–10-15 Original post.
See Also
'Star Trek' Says Goodbye and Thank You to MAD Magazine, Startrek.com, July 14, 2019
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Doug Drexler for dropping some great historical nuggets on this topic. You’re a mensch.
Special thanks to Doug Gilford and his 26-year-old MAD Cover site, which was an invaluable resource in helping us research the history of MAD musicals. (link)
Great thanks to Fact Trek Associate David Tilotta for his always-helpful input and for helping us pin down the date on which the photos of Shatner and Nimoy with Mad Magazine were taken.
End Notes & Sources
[1] “Star Blecch,” Mad Magazine #115, December 1967, p4. (link)
[2] David Tilotta pinned down the date of the Shatner–Nimoy photos using production documents and photos. He wrote:
According to the call sheet, Oct 2, 1967. I can be specific because of the costumes on Shatner and Nimoy (and Shatner's Clark Kent lock) and how they compare to the MAD mag photo. And, although I don't have any specific slates from the teaser, I have slates from other shots on that date that show that they were on schedule, at least until the end of that day.
[3] Photo source for Martin Landau and Barbara Bain: SAY CHEESE! 13 Times Celebrities Were Photographed Reading Comics, Dan Greenfield, 13thdimension.com, Jun 26, 2022 (link)
[4] Letter from Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, Mad Magazine #118, April 1968, p2. (link).
[5] “Mission: Ridiculous,” Mad Magazine #118, April 1968, p. 27. (link)
[6] Mad Magazine Contributors: Frank Jacobs, Doug Gilford’s MAD Cover site. (link)
[7] Doug Drexler Interview, Trekplace, 2006. (link)
[8] Doug Drexler, via private correspondence with FACT TREK, Oct. 16, 2023.
[9] Screenplay STAR TREK II, by Gene Roddenberry, June 30, 1975, with pages 1 –86 revised by July 11, 1975.
[10] Story Proposal For STAR TREK II, by John Povill, August 28, 1975.
[11] Tidbits and Anecdotes, Star Trek Lives! (convention)/1976, Program Book. The program book refers to the governing body as “Tellurian Enterprises, Inc.”, which is the same name on the “StarDrek” records sold at the con. (link) (link) Later editions of the single would be released on the Pizzaria Records label. (link)
[12] Flip Wilson: The Persistence of Geraldine Jones, by Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times, May 5, 2013. (link)
[13] Motion Picture Proposal for STAR TREK II, by John Povill and Gene Roddenberry, Jan 9, 1976.
[14] Story Treatment for STAR TREK II, by John Povill and Gene Roddenberry, July 22, 1976.
[15] Video: “The Last Voyage of the Starship Enterprise,” NBC’s Saturday Night. Aired May 29th, 1976 on the NBC television network. (link)
[16] Doug Drexler, FACT TREK, ibid.
[17] Doug Drexler quoted in The Fifty Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman, 2016, p. 254.
[18] Mego Star Trek 1974-1977, The Toy Collectors Guide. (link)
[19] Star Trek model kits; Licensed model kit release chronology, Memory Alpha. (link)
[20] First Draft Story, STAR TREK, October 1976, By Allan Scott and Chris Bryant.
[21] “Keep on Truckin’”, Robert Crumb, ZAP Comix #1, published by Apex Novelty/Print Mint, 1968.
[22] “Remember Keep on Truckin’?” Robert Crumb, XYZ Comics, published by Kitchen Sink Enterprises, 1972.
[23] “Keep on Trekin’...” poster, The Monster Times, Vol. 1 #20, cover and p16–17. (link)
[24] “Sung To The Tune Of...” (A list of songs parodied over the years within Mad Magazine articles), Doug Gilford’s thorough MAD Cover site. (link)
[25] “The Mad ‘Comic’ Opera,'“ Mad Magazine #56, July 1960, p25-30. (link)
[26] “East Side Story,” Mad Magazine #78, April 1963, p.4. (link)
[27] On a Clear Day You Can See a Funny Girl Singing ‘Hello Dolly’ Forever, MAD Magazine #143, June 1971, p4. (link)
[28] “Stokely and Tess,” MAD Magazine #111, June 1967, p.4. (link)
[29] “What’s Entertainment?,” MAD Magazine #175, June 1975, p.4. (link)
[30] “The Force and I,” MAD Magazine #203, December 1978. p.4. (link)
[31] Stephen Sondheim on "Send in the Clowns." Interview 5:38. (link)
[32] #Billboard Billboard magazine, October 1 — December 24, 1966.
[33] Beatles “Yesterday,” The Beatles Official Website. (link)
[34] Star Trek First Production Year Pay Rates document, UCLA, Gene Roddenberry Star Trek Television Series Collection, 1966–1969. May 31, 1966.
[35] Mad Magazine #115, p1. (link)
[36] Off-sales date Longman Business Dictionary, Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Online (link)
[37] “Why are magazines dated ahead of the time they actually appear?” Straight Dope, Cecil Adams, June 21, 1990. (link)
[38] Off-Sale Date definition, Law Insider. (link)
A sign of the [Monster] Times?