Google Inc. is celebrating the 46th anniversary of Star Trek: Original Series, with a new Doodle which is live right now on its homepage.
Yesterday, EW talked with Ryan Germick, who headed up this particular Google Doodle, about Star Trek’s pop-culture significance. “We often talk at Google about how awesome it would be to talk to a computer and get exactly what you want and have that kind of engagement, where the computer just knows all [like in Star Trek], and that’s what we’re moving toward,” Germick said. “Other than that, it just seemed like a perfect fit. There are so many Star Trek fans, myself included, it seemed like such a fun thing to celebrate.”
The point-and-click adventure game doodle depicts Star Trek characters as the letters of the word Google (Spock is the ‘G’, Uhura and Kirk are ‘o’s, McCoy is the ‘g’, Sulu is the’l', and Chekov is missing) and features many sound effects from the series.
Throughout the short adventure, players get a chance to see the bridge of the USS Enterprise, the transporter room, and the surface of a barren planet, where an abbreviated version of a famous scene (seen below) from the Star Trek episode “Arena” takes place. Kirk quickly builds the “Gorn Cannon” and defeats the Gorn Captain, who looks like a PEZ dispenser. Of course, the ‘e’ at the end of ‘Google’ who beams down with Kirk is an unnamed redshirt ensign who doesn’t make it through the journey entirely unscathed.
