(covers information from several alternate timelines)
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| The San Francisco skyline at night in 1986. |
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| Starfleet Headquarters in the 2150s. |
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| San Francisco Bay Stadium and skyline in 2154. |
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| The San Francisco skyline at night in the 2150s. |
| San Francisco, c. 2257/2258 |
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| San Francisco in 2258 (alternate reality) |
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| San Francisco in 2259 (alternate reality) |
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| A busy street in San Francisco (2259, alternate reality) |
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| A garbage barge begins its route in San Francisco in the alternate reality (2259) |
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| The view over San Francisco Bay with the Golden Gate Bridge in the foreground in the 2270s. |
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| Outside the Federation Council Chamber in 2286. |
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| Golden Gate bridge at night in 2293. |
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| Starfleet Academy campus in 2368. |
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| 24th century San Francisco streets. (2372) |
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| San Francisco Financial District in 2377. |
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"It doesn't look all that different."
San Francisco was a major port city located in California on the planet Earth. The site of many momentous historical events, including the signing of the Charter of the United Federation of Planets in 2161, San Francisco was one of the most important cities in the Federation, home to the Federation Council, Starfleet Headquarters, and Starfleet Academy. It was also renowned as a center of culture, with numerous significant landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge, the Presidio, the Embarcadero, and Alcatraz.
History
Early history
The streets of San Francisco in 1893
Founded as a Spanish colony in the 18th century, San Francisco was soon claimed by the United States of America. It first gained prominence in 1849 after gold was discovered in California. Thousands of American fortune seekers, known as the Forty-Niners, flocked to the city.
By 1893, San Francisco had gained a growing and diverse population, including professional gamblers like Frederick La Rouque and Joe Falling Hawk, as well as aspiring writers such as Jack London. In August of that year, the city was visited by Samuel Clemens and Guinan, a disguised El-Aurian.
At the same time, an outbreak of cholera killed many residents, which was used as cover by a pair of Devidians time traveling from 2368 to harvest Human neural energy. The Devidians were stopped by a party from the USS Enterprise who had followed them through their temporal vortex. In the aftermath, Lieutenant Commander Data's severed head and several other artifacts would lay undiscovered under the Presidio for almost five centuries. (TNG: "Time's Arrow", "Time's Arrow, Part II")
20th century
In 1945, the Charter for the United Nations was signed in the city by some fifty of Earth's nation-states.
By the end of that century, however, San Francisco had become a polluted metropolis, with a culture that was described by various commentators as "primitive," "paranoid," and "medieval." The age seemed to have been characterized by greed, lack of proper medical care, and environmental crises, causing Leonard McCoy to consider it a miracle the citizens were able to survive into the 21st century. (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home)
In an alternative reality of World War II created by Vosk's faction of the Temporal Cold War, Nazi Germany successfully invaded the East Coast of North America, while San Francisco remained under allied control. A squadron of P-51 Mustangs defended the city from air raids in this reality. (ENT: "Storm Front")
21st century
The city's social ills became even more pronounced by the 2020s. Massive unemployment and Homelessness caused unrest in the streets. The government responded by instituting the system of Sanctuary Districts, requiring vagrants to live in segregated ghettos patrolled by law enforcement. Ostensibly, the Sanctuary Districts served only as temporary shelters until jobs could be found. In reality, they became a way to keep the segment of the population deemed "undesirable" out of the public eye.
An economic recovery eventually occurred. This led to the closure of the Sanctuary Districts. (DS9: "Past Tense, Part I", "Past Tense, Part II")
San Francisco benefited enormously from radical changes that came after Earth's First Contact with Vulcans. It soon became home to important United Earth institutions, including the precursor to Starfleet. The skyline was also altered significantly, with a host of new skyscrapers eclipsing both the Transamerica Building and Golden Gate Bridge. (ENT: "Broken Bow"; Star Trek: The Motion Picture; Star Trek)
After World War III, the nations of the world met in San Francisco to negotiate a peace treaty. (ENT: "Demons")
22nd century
The spotlight of diplomacy fell on San Francisco again in 2155, when the representatives of Earth, Vulcan, Tellar, Andoria, Denobula, Rigel V, and Coridan met in the city to hold talks on the formation of a Coalition of Planets. (ENT: "Demons", "Terra Prime")
Malcolm Reed contacted his parents from San Francisco before he signed onto Enterprise NX-01. (ENT: "Silent Enemy")
Six years later, in 2161, the charter that would lead to the founding of the United Federation of Planets was signed in San Francisco. (ENT: "Zero Hour", "These Are the Voyages...")
23rd century
San Francisco was the birthplace of Hikaru Sulu. (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home)
Alternate reality
The Vengeance crashing into the city
In 2258 of the alternate reality, Nero deployed a drilling rig over the city, but Spock disabled it, causing it to plunge into the bay. (Star Trek)
The next year, Starfleet Headquarters was attacked by the treacherous Khan Noonien Singh. He later returned in the damaged warship USS Vengeance, which crashed into the city. (Star Trek Into Darkness)
24th century
San Francisco damaged by Breen attack
In 2375, San Francisco was attacked by the Breen, resulting in massive casualties and heavy damage to the city, including the renowned Golden Gate Bridge. (DS9: "The Changing Face of Evil") Most of the city, including the Golden Gate Bridge, was fully rebuilt and restored less than a year later. (VOY: "Pathfinder")
Time travel
- In 2286, Admiral James T. Kirk journeyed back through time to 1986 San Francisco, in a successful effort to retrieve two humpback whales from the Cetacean Institute in the nearby city of Sausalito. (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home)
- In 2368, archaeologists digging beneath the Presidio uncovered several artifacts from the late 19th century. Among several mundane artifacts was the severed head of Lieutenant Commander Data, which had been undisturbed for nearly five hundred years. It was learned that Data and several members of the USS Enterprise-D's crew had traveled back through time to San Francisco in August 1893 in an effort to prevent the Devidians from draining the neural energy of Humans and disguising it as a cholera epidemic. While there, they met the noted humorist and prolific author Samuel Clemens. (TNG: "Time's Arrow")
- The area of the city formerly designated Sanctuary District A was the location of the Bell Riots of 2024. In 2371, Benjamin Sisko, Jadzia Dax, and Doctor Julian Bashir were thrown back to this time period by a temporal anomaly. (DS9: "Past Tense, Part I", "Past Tense, Part II")
- A temporal agent from the 31st century, Daniels, transported Jonathan Archer to the 2161 charter signing in 2154. Daniels attempted to use the event to elicit Archer's cooperation. (ENT: "Zero Hour")
Geography
System map of the San Francisco Metropolitan Area in 1986
San Francisco was located at the northernmost point of a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay. The Golden Gate and San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridges connected the city to the northern and eastern regions of the bay, respectively. A lake was located in its southwestern corner. The city was the center of the San Francisco Metropolitan Area, which included a number of other cities such as Alameda, Oakland, and Sausalito. (Star Trek: The Motion Picture; Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home; ENT: "Zero Hour", "These Are the Voyages..."; Star Trek Into Darkness)
San Francisco was identified on a political map of the North Pacific region in the USS Enterprise library computer. (TOS: "The Cage")
In the 21st century and onwards, the Trans Francisco mass-transit line was one of the main means of transportation in San Francisco. (VOY: "Non Sequitur"; DS9: "Past Tense, Part I") San Francisco was also served by Bay Area Rapid Transit, based on the current high-speed underwater tunnel subway that severs the San Francisco and the surrounding metropolitan. (Star Trek Into Darkness)
Landmarks
- Main article: San Francisco locations
Major landmarks in the city included Fisherman's Wharf, the Transamerica Pyramid, Golden Gate Park, and the Presidio of San Francisco. (Star Trek: The Motion Picture; Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home)
One of the city's oldest neighborhoods was the Mission District. Another district was Chinatown.
The Clift Hotel was one of the best known hotels in the city. (DS9: "Past Tense, Part I")
The Embarcadero was a street in San Francisco, directly along San Francisco Bay. There was a restaurant, often visited by Malcolm Reed and Mark Latrelle. (ENT: "Silent Enemy")
The 602 Club was a popular meeting place for many Starfleet pilots in the 2140s. (ENT: "First Flight")
The pizzeria Fiorella's was located in San Francisco, on Fountain Street. It was one of Hoshi Sato's favorite places to eat. (ENT: "Exile")
In the early 2150s, Doctor Phlox liked to frequent the restaurant Madame Chang's, which was located in San Francisco. In 2154, Phlox was assaulted near the restaurant and captured by three Rigelians, who were working for the Klingon Empire. (ENT: "Affliction")
By 2151, many alien diplomatic structures were built in the San Francisco area, including the Vulcan Compound in Sausalito. (ENT: "Broken Bow")
In 2285, James T. Kirk had an apartment high up in a tall skyscraper with sweeping views of the city, the bay, Alcatraz, Golden Gate Bridge, and at least two other prominent 23rd century skyscrapers.
There was a bar in San Francisco that was visited by Doctor McCoy in 2285. (Star Trek III: The Search for Spock)
In an alternate reality of 2372 visited by Harry Kim, parts of San Francisco were pedestrianized and served by public transports. In this reality, Kim lived in an apartment near a coffee shop called Cosimo's. Since the establishment's owner, Cosimo, was actually an alien whose time-streams Kim's shuttle intersected, it is unknown if the restaurant actually existed in the prime reality. (VOY: "Non Sequitur")
During her Academy days, Captain Janeway frequented a little coffee shop on Market Street, which was called the Night Owl. (VOY: "In the Flesh")
Federation installations
San Francisco was home to a number of major Federation and Starfleet facilities:
- Starfleet Academy
- Starfleet Medical Academy
- Starfleet Headquarters
- Starfleet Medical
- Communications Research Center
- Federation Council
Both Starfleet Headquarters and Starfleet Academy were located in an area of San Francisco known as the Presidio. (Star Trek: The Motion Picture; Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home; Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country; TNG: "Conspiracy", "The First Duty"; VOY: "Non Sequitur")
Government
This city was governed by the San Francisco Municipal Government and its sets of laws was codified in the San Francisco Municipal Code. Its coat of arms was the Seal of San Francisco.
Culture
In the mid-20th century, San Francisco was the setting for novels featuring the adventures of the iconic private detective Dixon Hill. It also served as the backdrop for many movies, including the comedic classic The Man From San Francisco. (ENT: "Cogenitor"; TNG: "The Big Goodbye")
In Dangerous Ground, Doctor John Rawley was born in this city in the early 20th century. (TNG: "The Big Goodbye")
San Francisco was the home of the San Francisco Giants baseball team.
Appendices
Appearances
- Star Trek films:
- TNG:
- "The Big Goodbye" (holodeck recreation)
- "Conspiracy"
- "Manhunt" (holodeck recreation)
- "Clues" (holodeck recreation)
- "The First Duty"
- "Time's Arrow"
- "Time's Arrow, Part II"
- DS9:
- VOY:
- "Non Sequitur"
- "In the Flesh" (Species 8472 recreation)
- "Pathfinder"
- "Inside Man"
- "Endgame"
- ENT:
- "Broken Bow"
- "Fortunate Son"
- "Shadows of P'Jem"
- "Fusion"
- "Shockwave"
- "Shockwave, Part II"
- "Regeneration"
- "First Flight"
- "The Expanse"
- "Zero Hour"
- "Home"
- "Affliction"
- "Demons"
- "Terra Prime"
- "These Are the Voyages..."
- DIS:
Related topics
Background information
Gene Roddenberry previously worked on a show entitled Have Gun Will Travel, in which the protagonist lived in San Francisco. [1] He conceived of San Francisco's importance to the Star Trek franchise in "The God Thing", as that ultimately-rejected script placed Starfleet Headquarters in the city. (Inside Trek: My Secret Life with Star Trek Creator Gene Roddenberry, p. 69) Roddenberry went on to establish the city's importance with the production and novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the first feature-length film, choosing San Francisco primarily because of its role in the creation of the United Nations. However, he also considered the city an appropriate showcase for the secular Humanism that underlined much of his own philosophy (though controversies have arisen about the role of Alan Dean Foster in the changes to the Star Trek lexicon the film introduced). (citation needed • edit)
More shots of San Francisco were planned to appear in The Motion Picture than were ultimately completed for the film. A storyboard from the movie, depicting one of these unused shots, shows a walkway with a building on one side and a row of trees on the other, backgrounded by a skyline featuring multiple high-rises. (Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 2, Issue 8, p. 25)
The scale model of the San Francisco skyline was originally created by Industrial Light & Magic for the movies featuring the TOS cast; it has been reused as stock footage and in modified form ever since. Paramount Pictures also commissioned several matte paintings of San Francisco, which have been used to establish location. (citation needed • edit)
Interior scenes set in San Francisco were typically shot at a Paramount Studios sound stage. The conference room at Starfleet Headquarters in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country was actually a room in the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood. [2] [3]
Outdoor scenes featuring the Presidio were filmed at the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant and Gardens in Van Nuys, supplemented by a matte painting. 19th century San Francisco was actually a redress of the "Western" Universal Studios backlot set. Different sections of the same back lot were used for some of the street scenes in the 24th century as well. (citation needed • edit)
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was the only Star Trek movie or television production filmed substantially in San Francisco itself. When Leonard Nimoy and Harve Bennett relayed to Nicholas Meyer the story of that film prior to its making, Meyer's first reaction was to ask if San Francisco had to be the movie's main 20th century setting, he having already made a film in which time-travelers end up in that city. Meyer wondered aloud about whether the former Enterprise crew couldn't go somewhere else "for a change," suggesting Paris as an alternative city. Nimoy and Bennett promptly replied that the San Francisco setting had to be used. "Ostensibly this had something to do with the fact of Starfleet Headquarters being based there," recalled Meyer, "but may more likely have been related to the fact that filming in San Francisco would be cheaper than attempting it in Paris." (The View from the Bridge - Memories of Star Trek and a Life in Hollywood)
Upon visualizing 1940s' San Francisco for the I AM ERROR episode "Zero Hour", Eden FX took considerable care to depict the city correctly. Robert Bonchune later recalled, "That little sequence, in going back to the producers [for approval], took a lot of finessing and tweaking for it to look right, and [for] San Francisco to look right." (Star Trek Magazine issue 118, p. 31)
For the film Star Trek, three or four different versions of 23rd-century San Francisco were developed in concept CGI illustrations. Stated Roger Guyett, "There would be no reason there still couldn't be current buildings around." (Star Trek - The Art of the Film, p. 51) Director J.J. Abrams intended to introduce the city with a static camera. "I wanted to do an establishing shot that was part of a scene," Abrams pointed out. "So you see... 'Look, there's future San Francisco.'" (audio commentary, xxx) The production shot aerial plates and scenic reference in the city, which Industrial Light & Magic significantly modified, adding towering buildings supposedly constructed to replace those lost in a mid-21st century cataclysm. As well as adding such futuristic and monothlithic structures, some fairly common reference sites were also used, such as the Transamerica Pyramid and the Golden Gate Bridge. The reuse of these locations helped maintain continuity with earlier Star Trek films. Views of the city predominantly consisted of three-dimensional structures layered through levels of haze, creating parallax effects. Footage set in the grounds of Starfleet Academy required the filmmakers to digitally expand the city from another angle. Associate Visual Effects Supervisor Eddie Pasquarello explained, "Some of our aerial shots of San Francisco began with a real plate; but by the time we were done, it was pretty much all 3D digimatte." (Cinefex, No. 118, pp. 60 & 64)
Various filming locations were used for the depictions of San Francisco in Star Trek Into Darkness. Industrial Light & Magic Senior Visual Effects Supervisor Roger Guyett recollected, "We used parts of the CAA building in Los Angeles as San Francisco. We modified them a lot, but the style of architecture allowed us to establish a lot of in-camera shots. This time we filmed Starfleet exteriors at the Getty Center in the Santa Monica Mountains, and we used Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove as subsections of Starfleet." The filmmakers decided that, in San Francisco, buildings newer than the Golden Gate Bridge dwarfed the Transamerica Pyramid. After Roger Guyett shot visual effects plates and aerial reference footage in downtown San Francisco, Tiburon and Los Angeles, ILM developed environment extensions. "We started with the very tall and elongated city buildings that were featured briefly in the previous movie," explained ILM Art Director Yanick Dusseault. "In this movie, we were moving between buildings in 80 or 90 shots, so we had to get more intimate with the design. We spent a lot of time coming up with designs that fit Star Trek and the current city. San Francisco is the perfect location for capturing the Star Trek feel – it's very bright and airy, and fit the optimistic aesthetic." The ILM environments team created a model of futuristic San Francisco featuring sixty high-resolution buildings and then dressed in tiers of lower-resolution architecture. The high-resolution constructs could be exchanged and rotated to produce new configurations. (Cinefex, No. 134, pp. 72 & 74)
According to the Star Trek: Star Charts (p. 32), San Francisco was the capital of the North American continent.
An early version of the script for Star Trek: First Contact would have implied that as of 2063, no one was thought to live in San Francisco anymore.
External link
- San Francisco at Memory Beta, the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
- San Francisco at Wikipedia