J.J. Abrams' Star Trek Was Heavily Inspired By The Lives Of The Beatles

Few fictional partnerships are as famous as that of Captain James T. Kirk and first officer Spock. The dynamic "Star Trek" duo's relationship has become the stuff of legends in the decades since the pair was first introduced in Gene Roddenberry's seminal series, but even when the show was on the air, Kirk and Spock were popular. The characters played by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy inspired fervent fans to all but invent modern fanfiction, and soon after the original series run ended, fan magazines, collectibles, and conventions had already become the new norm for viewers of the show. The "Star Trek" fandom was fervent, but in the cultural landscape of the '60s, it was easily eclipsed by a different fan phenomena that rocked the world: Beatlemania.

On the surface, The Beatles and "Star Trek" might seem like they have little in common besides their place in the zeitgeist in the 1960s, but according to "Star Trek" reboot co-writer Roberto Orci, there's a clear parallel between Starfleet's most legendary heroes and the music industry's most iconic songwriting duo. "We looked at John Lennon and Paul McCartney's friendship as part of our model for Kirk and Spock when we were writing," Orci revealed in Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross' 2016 book "The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years From The Next Generation To J.J. Abrams."

Once you start noticing the similarities between Lennon and McCartney and Kirk and Spock it's impossible to stop, but Orci and the team behind "Star Trek" 2009 (which Orci co-wrote with Alex Kurtzman) had one aspect of the duo's backstory in mind when shaping the script: the pair's formative shared grief. "They were opposites and they bonded very young because they both lost their mothers when they were teens," Orci explains in reference to Lennon and McCartney. Lennon's mother, Julia, died tragically in a pedestrian auto accident when he was 17. McCartney's mother passed when he was 14 due to surgery complications.

"They might not have actually gotten along at the time had it not been for that kind of a bond," Orci explained, and though the pair actually met before Lennon's mother died, McCartney once told NPR that some of the most emotional moments of their friendship came from the shared trauma. "This was a great bond John and I always had," he explained in an interview in 2001. "We both knew the pain of it, and we both knew that we had to put on a brave face" — except when the pair ended up crying together during a trip to Florida. The pair's bond in the face of tragedy built a foundation on which they produced some of the best songs ever made, with Lennon even immortalizing his mom in the songs "Julia" and "Mother."

According to Orci, this bittersweet bond inspired the Kelvin timeline's version of Kirk and Spock. "They were the only ones who understood each other's pain, so they were definitely an influence on our view of Kirk and Spock," he said in an interview shared in "The Fifty Year Mission." In Abrams' "Trek" films, the action memorably begins with Kirk's father (played by Chris Hemsworth), a Starfleet officer, dying to protect his wife as she gives birth in the midst an active Romulan attack. 

Spock grew up with his mother's presence in his life, but was especially protective of her after he faced bullying due to his half-human heritage. The Kelvin timeline version of Amanda Grayson (Winona Ryder) later died on Vulcan during a Romulan attack; as with the boys from The Beatles, Spock had already met Kirk by this point, but the pair had yet to completely forge the relationship that would carry them through their biggest adventures.

It's no surprise, then, that Orci sees Spock as in kinship with Lennon, whose more negative tendencies were often contrasted by McCartney's warmth. "Spock is Lennon, because Paul is the optimist who can see through the pain and still keep his chin up," Orci explained. "That's Kirk. Spock is a little more fatalistic with his logic, as John Lennon was." Though the two real-life figures were and are complex, that give-and-take dynamic is on full display in documentaries like Peter Jackson's recent acclaimed series "The Beatles: Get Back."

"You know, 'Star Trek' and The Beatles were products of the sixties, so sometimes you have to tie it all together," Orci noted in Altman and Gross' book. He's not the only one who thinks so; I've personally seen a number of Beatles songs show up in fan playlists for the oft-shipped Enterprise captain and first officer, from "When I'm 64" to "Help!" to "Got to Get You Into My Life." The band's songs about love, friendship, and creative partnership certainly strike a chord for fans of the two characters, who kept their strong bond alive through three seasons of "The Original Series" and several different tie-in and alternate timeline movies.

Remarkably, the original link between "Star Trek" and The Beatles wasn't just created by fans. In an excerpt from the first volume of "Fifty Year Mission" shared via The Hollywood Reporter, Roddenberry's co-writer Susan Sackett said the pair actually met McCartney — apparently a fan of the franchise — after he pitched them a sci-fi movie about his band Wings. There's even a photo of the pair meeting, featuring an excited-looking Paul. The movie, apparently "a crazy story" about an intergalactic band competition that Sackett says McCartney himself outlined, never came to fruition.

Still, the parallels between the biggest band in the world and the most influential sci-fi show of all time seem like they could be endless — just like the words that flow "across the universe" in that otherworldly old song.