Burbank, CA — Historians from Brigham Young and Southern Methodist Universities have discovered that the quaint former gold rush town of Nevada City, California, is a set from a lost Star Trek episode. The researchers discovered while digging through the Paramount television archives in Burbank, CA.
“We were doing some follow-up Hitler research. We got a tip that Paramount had some key Nazi/Argentina footage that might be of some help,” said lead SMU anthropologist and team representative Henry “Hank” Starnes, Ph.D. “As we were digging through the archives, we found an unreleased Star Trek episode. As we were running it through the reel, one of our graduate students, who happened to be from Nevada City, noticed his hometown. So we went over and over the film, and sure enough, it was Nevada City.”
According to the research team, the entire town of Nevada City was built in the early 1960s to host season 2’s There’s Gold in There episode which never aired. According to notes obtained by The Fazzler, the plot involved time travel to a 1950s-era small town where its zombified citizens had been possessed and hypnotized by a strange, invisible electronic ray. The crew of the Starship Enterprise’s job was to find the source of the possession and neutralize it. According to Dr. Starnes, it had what he assumed was an uncomfortable theme.
“Well, the plot involved Nazis,” continued Professor Starnes, “or something like Nazis who had taken control of America with an electromagnetic radiation ray or something. We don’t have all the parts of the story here, so we have to guess. But suffice to say, middle-60s America was not ready for this. According to studio documents, the town was supposed to be torn down after the shoot, but they ran out of demo [demolition] money and left it up.”
Enter in the 1960s, San Francisco Bay Arecounterculturere, who had grown tired of revolutionary activity, moved to the area and discovered the hastily constructed town. They decided to make it their own and, throughout the early Seventies, converted the studio facades into “funky” livable spaces. As more people escaped the trappings of city and suburban life throughout the 1970s and ’80s, the town took on more of its current 18th Century Gold Rush-era charm. The startling discovery by the SMU and BYU teams has the potential to upset Nevada City’s residents’ idea of their favorite towns’ heritage.
“I just don’t believe it,” said Nevada City resident and self-appointed enthusiast Stacy Grant from the porch of her Cottage Street home. “I mean, people can make up all kinds of things these days. You know, like fake news and other crap. I live in this 130-year-old house, and it’s on the historical registry, for crying aloud. Are you telling me hippies built this in the 1970s from old Star Trek props?”
The shocking discovery is expected to impact home values in what used to be the historical Sierra Nevada foothills town and its status as a nationally recognized historic location.
