Sixty years after NBC first beamed the crew of the USS Enterprise into American living rooms, the Bay Area is getting its own five-day send-off. Starting Friday, roughly 15 Bay Area theaters are kicking off Star Trek 60, a celebration pairing each of the first four Star Trek theatrical films with a classic episode from the original series, wrapping up September 8 with a daylong marathon of all four film-and-episode pairings.
The festivities are timed to a real piece of television history: NBC aired “The Man Trap,” the first Star Trek episode broadcast to the public, on September 8, 1966, even though it was actually the sixth episode filmed that year. As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, showtimes and ticket prices for the local screenings vary by theater, and the celebration includes themed merchandise like popcorn buckets, soda cups, pint glasses, and other theater-specific collectibles.
Four Films, Four Episodes, One Big Send-Off
The lineup traces the arc of the franchise's early film era. Star Trek: The Motion Picture, released in 1979 and reportedly inspired in part by the episode “The Changeling,” opens the celebration on Friday paired with that same episode. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the 1982 film credited with reinvigorating the franchise on the big screen, follows on Saturday alongside “Space Seed,” the episode that introduced Ricardo Montalban's character.
Sunday brings Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, released in 1984, paired with the episode “Amok Time,” while Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home — released in 1986 and widely regarded as a fan favorite — screens Sunday alongside “City on the Edge of Forever,” often considered one of the best original series episodes. The Chronicle's report notes that all four films star the original cast, including William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and DeForest Kelley. The celebration closes on September 8 with the full marathon of all four film-and-episode pairings, and Alamo Drafthouse's three Bay Area locations will show the so-called Genesis Trilogy — the second through fourth films — that same day.
San Francisco's Long-Running Trek Connection
The choice of Bay Area venues for this kind of celebration is fitting given how deeply Star Trek's fictional geography is tied to San Francisco. Gene Roddenberry, who pitched the series in 1964 and filmed the first pilot that same year, set Starfleet Command and Starfleet Academy in the city in part because the United Nations Charter was signed there in 1945, an event that mirrored his vision of global unity, according to SFGATE.
That connection became literal on screen with Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, which Nicholas Meyer wrote and which was filmed in San Francisco. Popular local lore holds that the Enterprise crew's Klingon Bird-of-Prey lands in Golden Gate Park, but Hoodline previously reported that the park landing sequence was actually filmed at Will Rogers State Historic Park in Pacific Palisades, while the film's downtown street scenes, including shots near North Beach intersections like Columbus, Kearny, and Pacific Avenues, were shot on location in the city. The fictional Sausalito “Cetacean Institute” featured in that same film was actually filmed at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, roughly 120 miles south of San Francisco, according to Memory Alpha.
Director Nicholas Meyer's Bay Area Ties
Nicholas Meyer, who directed The Wrath of Khan, has his own history with the city. He briefly lived in San Francisco with his aunt in the 1970s and recalled being impressed by the city after crossing the Bay Bridge, per the Chronicle's account. Before helming Star Trek II, Meyer made his 1979 feature directorial debut with Time After Time, a sci-fi time-travel film also shot on location across San Francisco, following H.G. Wells as he pursues Jack the Ripper through the 1970s city, as SFGATE has reported.
Meyer has said he was inspired by the 1957 film The Enemy Below when he made Wrath of Khan, and he presented that film at San Francisco's Vogue Theatre in June 2026. He will not, however, attend the Castro Theatre's screening of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home on September 6, according to the Chronicle's report. The paper's account of the anniversary was written by G. Allen Johnson, a Datebook film and television writer who has worked for the Chronicle since its 2000 merger and for Hearst Corp. since 1996.
A City Woven Into Trek Canon Beyond the Films
San Francisco's fingerprints on Star Trek extend well past the film series. The 1995 Deep Space Nine two-part episode “Past Tense” stranded time-traveling Starfleet officers in a dystopian version of the city set in August and September 2024, partitioned by so-called Sanctuary Districts and centered on the historic Bell Riots, a storyline BBC News has connected directly to San Francisco's real geography.
The city's Trek culture also lives on off-screen. SoMa venue OASIS regularly hosts “Star Trek Live!,” a long-running gender-bending stage adaptation of original 1960s episodes performed by local drag artists, a tradition Hoodline has covered previously. And Go-Go's guitarist Jane Wiedlin, who made a cameo as a Starfleet officer in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, went on to live for years in San Francisco's Castro district, as Hoodline reported in 2017.
Looking Ahead to October
Fans wanting more can look toward October, when a new documentary titled “The Sixty-Year Mission: How Star Trek Changed Television and the World,” executive produced by William Shatner, is set to open exclusively in Regal Cinemas nationwide on October 9, 2026, according to Space.com. The film reportedly features new interviews with surviving original series cast members Shatner, George Takei, and Walter Koenig. For now, though, the celebration is local: about 15 Bay Area theaters, five days, and four decades' worth of starships boldly going where they've gone before.
