Star Trek is an American science fiction and entertainment franchise based on the television series created by Gene Roddenberry. The first television series, simply called Star Trek and now referred to as The Original Series, debuted in 1966 and aired for three seasons on the television network NBC. It followed the interstellar adventures of Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and his crew aboard the starship USS Enterprise, a space exploration vessel, built by the interstellar federal republic United Federation of Planets in the twenty-third century. The Star Trek canon of the franchise include The Original Series, an animated series, four television series, the Star Trek film franchise and an upcoming television series scheduled to debut in 2017.