In the Star Trek universe, Earth, as in reality, is the only planet in our solar system with life that we know of. And it’s definitely the only planet with humanoid life. But in the season premiere of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, “Valles Marineris,” we learn that over 65 million years ago, there was indeed humanoid life in the Sol system — just not on Earth. When dinosaurs roamed the Earth, there was humanoid life on Mars. Yes, Star Trek has officially canonized Martians. And in a way, it goes back to an original idea for series, as Gene Roddenberry originally intended for everyone’s favorite Vulcan, Mister Spock, to be a Martian.
In the episode, the Enterprise is caught in a temporal vortex that takes them back 65 million years, to a Jurassic-era Earth. This is all thanks to a pesky solar storm. They quickly learn that Mars is a habitable world at this point in time, ruled by an intelligent and spacefaring race. These Martians are at war with an insectoid species, the Dol’Drim. By the time they return to their own era, they learn that this species had a mass extinction event, rendering Mars totally lifeless. It is one that the Enterprise crew’s own time travel enabled. But some Martians made it off-world and began seeding their DNA in the cosmos. But what few may know is that Roddenberry always intended Martians to be part of Trek lore. This decision was narrowly avoided in the mid 1960s.
In Gene Roddenberry’s original pitch for Star Trek back in 1964, he described the resident alien on the Enterprise as the “half-Martian” Mister Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy. Roddenberry originally intended Spock to have a reddish complexion, just like the “red planet.” But since so many televisions were still black and white, the producers thought red wouldn’t read on screen. Or worse, it would read like blackface. They also had a concern that a red alien with pointy ears might evoke Satan, offending religious Americans. But Roddenberry was also well aware that the Mariner 4 spacecraft would soon arrive on Mars. And if they found nothing there, Star Trek would instantly become science fantasy, not science fiction.
When the first Star Trek pilot, “The Cage,” went into production in early 1965, Gene Roddenberry hedged his bets, and changed the alien lineage of Spock to half Vulcan, not half Martian. This was a wise choice, as later that year, NASA’s Mariner 4 orbited Mars and found an arid, desolate world without an iota of life. Thanks to the creation of the fictional planet Vulcan, Roddenberry’s pilot didn’t look instantly dated when presented to NBC executives. But famously, they passed on that first Star Trek pilot episode all the same.
Of course, Star Trek would get picked up with its second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” And the rest, as they say, is history. But now, Star Trek has come full circle and returned to Roddenberry’s original ideas, with Mars as the home of a highly intelligent humanoid species with pointed ears. They’re not exactly the same kind of pointed ears, but close enough.
At the end of the episode, the Enterprise returns to its present in the 23rd century. The crew learns that Martian DNA exists in several species across the galaxy, with Vulcans almost certainly one of them. So in the end, Spock was probably “part Martian” after all. In a manner of speaking that is. It took six decades, but thanks to Captain Pike on Strange New Worlds, Martians made it into Starfleet.