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![\"star](\"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2019\/09\/ST1.jpg\")
<\/a>Before the time of streaming TV online and recording episodes to watch later, the only chance to watch a show was live. This lack of immediate access to Star Trek made fans, including David, want to collect pieces of the show like the film strips used during production.
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A quick note for some of our younger readers: Before digitization, Star Trek was produced on 35 mm film created from sustainable materials like cellulose. The film was reviewed by the production team and strips frames were cut out. The selected frames and negatives for the final version were assembled, while the unwanted strips were thrown away or sold as memorabilia. David began collecting these unwanted film strips as a kid and now has almost four million in his collection. The only people who saw these deleted scenes were those in the studio during filming that day. That is until David and a friend combined their film strip collections and wrote a book called \u201cStar Trek: Lost Scenes.\u201d<\/a> The book, which catalogs professionally restored deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes moments and bloopers from the original Star Trek shows, was published in August 2018 by CBS and Titan Books. Even before the publishing of his book, David was known as the regional expert on all things Star Trek and was even asked to give a panel discussion<\/a> at the Museum of Natural Sciences for the show\u2019s 50th anniversary. We recently sat down with David to discuss his love of Star Trek and how it’s influenced his career in science. David Tilotta: I\u2019m proud to be a Trekkie. I don\u2019t have a problem with it. You\u2019re asking me to choose from my children, and I don\u2019t know if I can do that \u2026 My favorite movie is \u201cThe Wrath of Kahn\u201d because it deals with themes of friendship, loss, and aging \u2014 things I\u2019m dealing with now in my life. My favorite TV episode is \u201cThe City on the Edge of Forever\u201d (Season 1, Episode 28). I love the initial movies. To me, it\u2019s apples and oranges. They\u2019re just different. The presentations are different, the philosophies are different. They\u2019re fun. People laughed when Star Trek first pulled out \u201ccommunicators<\/a>.\u201d When the show first came out, telephones were still bolted to your wall. They had wires. Today, your cell phone does exactly what a \u201ccommunicator\u201d does and more. So that\u2019s a reality that has already come to fruition. Some things [from the original show] that I wish would come to pass are traveling faster than the speed of light and transporter technology<\/a>. It would be great to beam anywhere on the planet that you wanted to. Also, basic computer technology is running circles around what they portrayed in the show. It\u2019s interesting to me that Star Trek didn\u2019t make much use of sustainable materials as far as we can see \u2026 There\u2019s very little wood displayed on the Enterprise. Unless there\u2019s a future sustainable material we don\u2019t know about, there\u2019s very little displayed. [The show\u2019s producers] wanted to show something exotic, something futuristic, and apparently the thinking back then was wood is just not going to be futuristic. I noticed that with the new Star Trek series that\u2019s streaming on CBS, they finally have an all-wooden table. They\u2019re finally showing the value of our sustainable materials. Few TV shows have captured the nation\u2019s attention like Star Trek. Beginning with the first episode in 1966 and leading up to the current movies, kids and adults of all ages have been inspired and engaged by Star Trek\u2019s out-of-this-world premise. One such kid was David Tilotta, now a professor in the Department of Forest Biomaterials at NC State\u2019s College of Natural Resources. Since a young age, David had watched the show with awe, wondering how space travel could be possible and what extraterrestrials might act and look like. \u201cI am in science because of Star Trek and the influence it had on me,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen I was a pre-teen, Star Trek showed me that science could be exciting and relevant,\" he said. \"It taught me that the unknown was something to explore. It also taught me to be creative in problem solving. Later, as I started to grow-up and think about my future and what I wanted to do with my life, I realized the careers that Spock and Scotty and Dr. McCoy had were pretty cool and were worth going after.\u201d Before the time of streaming TV online and recording episodes to watch later, the only chance to watch a show was live. This lack of immediate access to Star Trek made fans, including David, want to collect pieces of the show like the film strips used during production. A quick note for some of our younger readers: Before digitization, Star Trek was produced on 35 mm film created from sustainable materials like cellulose. The film was reviewed by the production team and strips frames were cut out. The selected frames and negatives for the final version were assembled, while the unwanted strips were thrown away or sold as memorabilia. David began collecting these unwanted film strips as a kid and now has almost four million in his collection. The only people who saw these deleted scenes were those in the studio during filming that day. That is until David and a friend combined their film strip collections and wrote a book called \u201cStar Trek: Lost Scenes.\u201d<\/a> The book, which catalogs professionally restored deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes moments and bloopers from the original Star Trek shows, was published in August 2018 by CBS and Titan Books. Even before the publishing of his book, David was known as the regional expert on all things Star Trek and was even asked to give a panel discussion<\/a> at the Museum of Natural Sciences for the show\u2019s 50th anniversary. We recently sat down with David to discuss his love of Star Trek and how it's influenced his career in science. David Tilotta: I\u2019m proud to be a Trekkie. I don\u2019t have a problem with it. You\u2019re asking me to choose from my children, and I don\u2019t know if I can do that \u2026 My favorite movie is \u201cThe Wrath of Kahn\u201d because it deals with themes of friendship, loss, and aging \u2014 things I\u2019m dealing with now in my life. My favorite TV episode is \u201cThe City on the Edge of Forever\u201d (Season 1, Episode 28). I love the initial movies. To me, it\u2019s apples and oranges. They\u2019re just different. The presentations are different, the philosophies are different. They\u2019re fun. People laughed when Star Trek first pulled out \u201ccommunicators<\/a>.\u201d When the show first came out, telephones were still bolted to your wall. They had wires. Today, your cell phone does exactly what a \u201ccommunicator\u201d does and more. So that\u2019s a reality that has already come to fruition. Some things [from the original show] that I wish would come to pass are traveling faster than the speed of light and transporter technology<\/a>. It would be great to beam anywhere on the planet that you wanted to. Also, basic computer technology is running circles around what they portrayed in the show. It\u2019s interesting to me that Star Trek didn\u2019t make much use of sustainable materials as far as we can see \u2026 There\u2019s very little wood displayed on the Enterprise. Unless there\u2019s a future sustainable material we don\u2019t know about, there\u2019s very little displayed. [The show\u2019s producers] wanted to show something exotic, something futuristic, and apparently the thinking back then was wood is just not going to be futuristic. I noticed that with the new Star Trek series that\u2019s streaming on CBS, they finally have an all-wooden table. They\u2019re finally showing the value of our sustainable materials. Watching Star Trek as a kid inspired Professor David Tilotta to pursue a career in science. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":165,"featured_media":8374,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"source":"","ncst_custom_author":"","ncst_show_custom_author":false,"ncst_dynamicHeaderBlockName":"ncst\/default-post-header","ncst_dynamicHeaderData":"{\"showAuthor\":true,\"showDate\":true,\"showFeaturedVideo\":false,\"subtitle\":\"How Star Trek Inspired David Tilotta to Pursue a Career in Science\",\"caption\":\"Photo courtesy of NC State\"}","ncst_content_audit_freq":"","ncst_content_audit_date":"","ncst_content_audit_display":false,"ncst_backToTopFlag":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,102],"tags":[39],"_ncst_magazine_issue":[],"class_list":["post-8368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hidden-news","category-hidden-newswire","tag-forest-biomaterials"],"displayCategory":null,"acf":{"ncst_posts_meta_modified_date":null},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8368"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20561,"href":"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8368\/revisions\/20561"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8368"},{"taxonomy":"_ncst_magazine_issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_ncst_magazine_issue?post=8368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/p>\n\n\n\nCNR: How do you feel about the word Trekkie? <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat are your favorite Star Trek moments? <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat are your feelings about Star Wars? <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nDo you see any possibility of some of the themes or components of Star Trek coming to fruition in real life? <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat connections can you make between sustainability and Star Trek? <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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<\/p>\n\n\n\nCNR: How do you feel about the word Trekkie? <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat are your favorite Star Trek moments? <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat are your feelings about Star Wars? <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nDo you see any possibility of some of the themes or components of Star Trek coming to fruition in real life? <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat connections can you make between sustainability and Star Trek? <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n"},"excerpt":{"rendered":"