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Because going back to the Grand Canyon really would be crazy.
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00:00How's it going, my dudes? This video's brought to you by Squarespace today.
00:04Sci-fi and fantasy is a bit of a double-edged sword when it comes to showing you these incredible
00:08locations that you just wish you could spend time in. It's a double-edged sword because,
00:14on the one hand, we are so grateful for getting to see them. On the other hand,
00:18it's sci-fi and fantasy. Oh no, they may not be real. That is not the case for this list.
00:25Our wonderful writer Jack has gone ahead and compiled a group of locations where you can
00:30actually visit and pretend that you are there in an episode of Star Trek itself. There may or may
00:38not be a couple of cameos in this video. Who could tell? Who could tell? I'm Sean Ferry for Trek
00:45Culture
00:46and here are 10 real-world Star Trek locations you can visit. Number 10, the Santa Monica Pier.
00:54Where to next after you've landed in 20th century Southern California? Why, the Santa Monica Pier,
00:59of course, and risk dermal dysphagia? No thank you. What Voyager's Debbie Downer I was actually trying
01:06to say. Sean, if you're gonna go to Los Angeles, like, wear sun cream, buddy, wear sun cream.
01:12The first shot of the nice clothes, fast car, lots of money gang, namely Janeway, Chakotay,
01:19Paris, Tuvok, and eventually the Doctor, on Earth in the episode Future's End, sees them perched over
01:25the railings of the Santa Monica Pier. They are directly in front of the Leuf Hippodrome, which
01:30is of course a famous landmark of the region. Just underneath their feet is the Heal the Bay
01:35Aquarium, which is formerly UCLA's Ocean Discovery Centre, which, funnily enough, only a
01:41time traveller would know this because it opened in 1996. Janeway and Chakotay then take a bit of a
01:47stroll down the boardwalk, looking for the temporally displaced Captain Braxton, who's a
01:53little the worse for wear, having spent 30 years in, well, then 20th century Earth. They find him
02:00next to the hot dog on a stick stand, which was actually opened in 1946, which is of course very
02:06close to a muscled beach as well. It was the very first location of that now famous fast food chain.
02:14Number nine, El Capitan. I mean, there's a very strong chance that if you climb El Capitan without
02:20the proper training, you're going to go straight to Shakari and meet your maker. Personally, I'm going
02:25to be down with bones, looking up through my binoculars and going, gone crazy. You just gone crazy,
02:32because I'm not even trying it with hover boots. That's a bit too high even for me. While the main
02:38surface of El Capitan that was shown in Star Trek V The Final Frontier was made from fiberglass, the
02:43real El Capitan does indeed exist in Yosemite National Park. El Capitan is a famous challenge
02:50for free climbers because its face is a 900 meter ascent. You may have seen it most recently in the
02:56movie Free Solo, which tells the story of free climber Alex Honnold. He achieved for the first
03:03time in 2017 what Kirk was attempting to do in Star Trek V. Climb El Capitan with just his shoes,
03:10the shirt on his back and some chalk. Even though he may have come up with the idea for the
03:14scene in
03:14Star Trek V, Shatner did admit on the behind the scenes documentary that he was afraid of heights.
03:20Therefore, to give the illusion that he was actually on El Capitan, a 60-foot fiberglass wall was built.
03:27While close-ups were shot with William Shatner, experienced climbers were brought in to do the
03:32wide shots of this climb. Number eight, the one without the whales. In terms of real world locations
03:40in Star Trek, San Francisco has to be one of the most featured. I mean, in Star Trek, you've got
03:45both
03:46Starfleet Academy and Starfleet Headquarters, both of which I'll get back to you later on this list,
03:51located in San Francisco, not to mention the numerous views of the Golden Gate Bridge stretching
03:57out as far as the Presidio that dot the entire franchise. Funnily enough, a lot of the San Francisco
04:03we see in Star Trek wasn't actually filmed there, with one glaring exception to that role,
04:10Star Trek IV The Voyage Home. You certainly can't miss San Francisco in that film's shots in its
04:18artwork for the poster, of course, which was recently recreated for Star Trek Lower Decks' fourth season.
04:24Downtown double dumbasses, bus rides and exact change only aside, the main plot of Star Trek IV is to
04:32find some large cetacea, namely two whales named George and Gracie. In the film, Kirk and Spock go to
04:38Cetacean Institute in Sausalito, whereas in real world, this was the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
04:42Opened in 1984, the Monterey Bay Aquarium's primary goal is the preservation of ocean life. Its mission
04:50is conservation through action and education. In reality, while the aquarium and Monterey itself is
04:57home to plethora of cetacean life, it has unfortunately never housed the whales that we were all looking for.
05:05Number seven, Bloomington, Indiana. I've always preferred farm country myself is how Janeway
05:12describes her upbringing when she's talking to Seven of Nine in the astrometrics lab in the episode
05:17Imperfection. The first mention of Janeway's home state was in the episode Macrocosm. It would later
05:23be referenced again by the con artist Dala when she talks about summers in Indiana in, of course,
05:28the hilarious episode Live Fast and Prosper. We reckon as well that the birthplace of Captain Janeway can be
05:34traced back to the novel Mosaic, written by then showrunner and show creator Jerry Taylor. Jerry
05:42Taylor's own birthplace was, of course, Bloomington, Indiana. This novel was considered canon at the
05:48time by the writers, so we can only consider it canon ourselves. If you are to pay the city a
05:53visit
05:53yourself, the first thing you should do is visit the statue of Captain Janeway that was erected in 2020.
06:00Kate Mulgrew herself paid that statue a visit to honor the, frankly, honor that the city offered
06:08toward Janeway. While this says that the future birthplace of Janeway will be in 2336, in 2022,
06:16Mulgrew and a sizable crowd gathered together to celebrate this fun little snippet of Trekdom located
06:24in the real world. Number six, Riverside, Iowa. He was born in a small town in the state of Iowa.
06:33The 1968 book, The Making of Star Trek, was the first one to mention this fact about Captain James
06:38T. Kirk. At that time, and even later on, they never provided an exact location. Even the aforementioned
06:43Star Trek IV The Voyage Home says, I'm from Iowa, I just work in outer space. This all changed in
06:491985,
06:50when one member of the city council of Riverside proposed that they officially name themselves
06:56as the future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk. In a fun twist, the council agreed. The rest,
07:02as we say in the temporal mechanics department, is history. Or will be. Riverside has completely
07:08embraced its status. The city motto is, where the best trek begins, and its website even announces the
07:15future happy birth of Kirk, as happening in 2228, even though it's 2233 in canon. The Voyage Home
07:24Riverside History Centre is dedicated to all things Star Trek, and the USS Riverside Constitution class
07:31is parked in the car park. Riverside also has an annual Trek Fest in July, which has seen a parade
07:38including guests like Chase Masterson, Walter Koenig, George Takei, and Nichelle Nichols.
07:43The choice of Riverside was accepted by Gene Roddenberry in 1985, and has popped up in various
07:49beta canon appearances since, but it wasn't until the second season episode, Tomorrow and Tomorrow
07:55and Tomorrow of Strange New Worlds, that Paul Wesley, as Kirk, stated something was from Riverside,
08:02Iowa, same as me. Number five, Toronto and Toronto and Toronto. For the first time in its history,
08:09Star Trek was not being filmed in Los Angeles when Star Trek Discovery moved to Pinewood Toronto
08:15Studios. Star Trek Strange New Worlds was also shot in Canada at CBS Studios, while Star Trek Picard
08:22would return to LA for filming. Toronto and its environs have therefore stood in for not Toronto
08:28several times in Star Trek. The city's Aga Khan Museum stood in for Vulcan in the episode of Star
08:34Star Trek Discovery Leith. Saru's Home Village was filmed at Scarborough Bluffs Park, which actually
08:39borders part of Lake Ontario. Strange New Worlds has already filmed around Toronto for several episodes,
08:44but this was dialed up a notch in the episode Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. In an interview
08:48for Collider, showrunner Akiva Goldsman stated, we were gonna take the show to New York and we
08:53quickly realised we could not afford it. We went through the process of how do we make Toronto look like
08:58New York and then we sort of thought, huh, why don't we just let Toronto be Toronto? And so they
09:04did.
09:05During their trip to the past, La-Anne and Kirk take a walk through Yonge Dundas Street, they steal from
09:11the Root Store, they take a walk along the waterfront where Kirk is ridiculously good at chess and they
09:17enjoy some hot dogs before finishing up with lunch at the Lakeview restaurant where they find out that
09:22poutine has gravy and aliens are not just from sci-fi. Number four, the Donald C Tillman Water
09:29Reclamation Plant and Japanese Garden. As the LA City Sanitation website puts it,
09:35the Japanese garden is irrigated with effluent from Tillman and the 2.75 acre lake is filled
09:42with the plant's treated water. Oddly, that sounds almost like Technobabble and therefore makes it one
09:48the most Star Trek things on this list. It only makes sense then when you think that the at least
09:55exterior of Starfleet Headquarters and Starfleet Academy be filmed at such a sustainable location.
10:01The Reclamation Plant is in the San Fernando Valley in California. It started operation in 1985
10:05and the Japanese garden beside it, designed by Dr. Kochi Kawana, was dedicated in 1984 and was indeed
10:12intended to be sustained by runoff from the plant. It was conceived to extol the virtues of reclaimed
10:20water. The garden is open and free to visitors although you need to reserve a slot which only
10:26take place from as of recording Monday to Thursday so maybe that's something to bear in mind when you're
10:31planning your cosplay trip. The first use of the Japanese garden was, shall I say, a risky episode.
10:38It was the first season episode of The Next Generation Justice and it played the homeworld of the Edo.
10:44Yeah, we all remember those costumes. I'm not quite at that cosplay level yet.
10:48The garden wouldn't appear as Starfleet Academy until the fifth season episode, The First Duty,
10:54and it would then be reused footage from that episode that was shown in Time's Arrow Part 1.
10:59In DS9's Homefront and Paradise Lost, the Japanese garden became Starfleet Headquarters. Voyager's
11:05time and again featured the reclamation plant itself before we went back to the gardens,
11:10sort of, for in the flesh. Number three, the Vasquez Rocks. The Vasquez Rocks have actually only appeared
11:19as itself in two episodes of Star Trek and both of them were from Star Trek Picard. They stood in
11:27for
11:27Rafi's hideaway in the episodes Maps and Legends and The End is the Beginning. Every other time we see the
11:34Vasquez Rocks in Star Trek, they're standing in for an alien world, Gorn in a rubber suit not
11:38withstanding. And of course, let's not forget myself and Chris and Matt's amazing trip there
11:44and my horrific sunburn that followed. Probably called the Vasquez Rocks National Park Area,
11:51it's located just north of Los Angeles and is easily one of Star Trek's most famous and frequent
11:57filming locations. From its first use for fisticuffs with the wonderful Finnegan in the original series
12:04Shore Leave, it has then been used in a further 14 times in Star Trek. Now, probably most immediately
12:13recognizable is the Kirk versus Gorn fight in Arena, but it would also be used in the Alternative
12:18Vector and Friday's Child. It's played Vulcan, or Nivar, three times in Star Trek IV The Voyage Home,
12:25in Star Trek 2009, and in Discoveries All Is Possible. It would then stand in for the
12:31holographic Xyrillian homeworld in Enterprises Unexpected. Vasquez was twice a planet in Voyager,
12:38in both Initiations and Gravity. It would appear in Star Trek Into Darkness, and also in The Next
12:43Generations Who Watches The Watchers. Despite the area being used in so many different films and TV
12:50episodes, it's the Star Trek connection that's really stuck, with the Big Rock effectively being,
12:56well, lovingly known as Kirk's Rock. As the Los Angeles Times put it, while it may provide an
13:02excellent off-world aesthetic, there's a really simple reason why it keeps getting used. It's just
13:08inside the 30-mile zone around LA, which means, quite frankly, you don't have to pay the actor's
13:15premium to travel to it. Number two, the Griffith Observatory. So, if you're to believe Rayne
13:20Robinson, it's a left at Mars, right at Halley's Comet, and then just straight ahead to go to the
13:25grooviest place in the galaxy, or at least LA. The Griffith Observatory, built on the north side of
13:30Mount Hollywood, first appeared in Star Trek in the episode Future's End. One of its astronomers,
13:36Rayne Robinson, detects Voyager in orbit, having time-traveled, while Tuvok and Paris would travel
13:42to the observatory to check up on Robinson's checkings, it would then appear in Star Trek
13:48Picard's second season episode Assimilation as well, to set up a dreamy establishing shot of LA.
13:55In the real world, the Griffith Observatory was opened by Griffith J. Griffith in 1935,
14:00and it's free to visit by the public. The observatory does have a planetarium, and remember,
14:05the best stars in Hollywood are above us all. Griffith Observatory is also home to Leonard Nimoy
14:10Event Horizon Theatre. This was funded by a contribution from the legendary actor himself
14:15and his wife Susan Bay Nimoy. The theatre serves as a presentation space for the observatory's
14:21astronomy, space science and space exploration programming, as well as a classroom for visiting
14:26students. Number one, Titan Missile Museum, Arizona. Data's historical irony that a weapon of mass
14:34destruction would usher in an era of peace is Star Trek's dream of a brighter future made so tangible
14:39that you could reach out and touch it. In a sense, you can. For Zefram Cochran's pioneering
14:45spaceship, the Phoenix rising from the ashes of the Third World War, the producers chose to use a
14:50Titan II missile, which once housed the largest bomb that had ever been developed that could be fitted
14:57onto an intercontinental ballistic missile. This would be a real relic from the Civil War,
15:02and the theme of rising from something so dark to produce something so bright was not lost on audiences
15:10in 1996. The Titan II missile complex near Tucson, Arizona, where the scenes in Star Trek Picard were
15:16filmed, was one of 54 such locations on alert from 1963 until 1987 in the United States. It's now a
15:26museum
15:27dedicated National Historic Landmark. You can visit the underground facility yourself, which includes
15:32a very chilling simulated launch, although you won't be able to get as close as Picard and Data did.
15:38As detailed in the making of Star Trek First Contact, to get as close as possible to John
15:44Eve's design for the Phoenix, a nose cone was built, hoisted in the air, and placed atop the Titan II
15:52missile
15:5330 meters tall. That was really in place. Now, contrary to Data's analysis, there were no imperfections.
15:59It fitted perfectly.
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16:44That's everything for this list, folks. This is for those, the truly geeky,
16:48who just like to reach out and touch what's actually been on film. You can imagine how
16:52much I was excited when I saw this list to come in. So thank you very much, Jack,
16:55for writing this for us. Thank you very much, Eddie, for putting this together and making this
16:59a decent video. You're awesome. Thank you all for following us along. Please make sure to do so
17:05over on the socials. We're at Twitter, sorry, Twitter, Blue Sky and TikTok. We're at trackculture.
17:10On Instagram, we're at trackcultureyt. You can follow myself at Sean Farrick on the various
17:14socials as well. Look after yourselves until I talk to you again. Treat each other with kindness.
17:18Lead with love and put that love out into the world. Our love and support to all of those
17:23going through tough times in the universe. Live long and prosper. And I will talk to you soon.
17:27Thanks very much.
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