MENTION the Mary Celeste and most people think of a ghost ship, without knowing much more about the story.

Five's Revealed documentary attempted to uncover what happened back in 1872, a tale that's been clouded by the court case to hear the salvage claim and a magazine story by Sherlock Holmes' creator Arthur Conan Doyle.

His fictional tale had African tribesmen raiding the cargo ship but allowing one man to escape - and write his story. It served to obscure the facts, already cloudy due to attorney general Frederick Solly Flood's courtroom allegations and insinuations of foul play.

These included accusing the salvage captain of massacring the crew to gain the salvage rights. He also surmised that the Mary Celeste's drunken crew killed the captain with the ornamental sword found in his cabin.

This was all fascinating stuff for those of us whose knowledge extends no further than the legend of the deserted ship. It was en route to Genoa with a cargo of 1,071 barrels of industrial alcohol.

On board with Captain Benjamin Briggs were his wife, two-year-old daughter Sophie and a six-man crew. Something catastrophic must have made the captain give the order to abandon ship. The lifeboat was missing but the valuable cargo was intact and there were no signs of a disturbance.

A seaquake - underwater earthquake - was a possible cause. More likely was that an explosion panicked Briggs into abandoning ship as fire was a captain's biggest fear. But why were there no burn or scorch marks? An experiment was set up to demonstrate what happens when alcohol vapour explodes and, hey presto, there was a big bang and flames but no evidence left behind.

How William Shatner Saved The World was really How Star Trek Saved The World but the makers were allowed to use the cult TV series name. The neat idea was to illustrate how the futuristic world, gadgets and gizmos of the series had influenced and inspired people to make them a reality.

All this was presented by Shatner who set the tone by not taking himself or Star Trek too seriously. This was fun - up to a point. I got bored around the 90-minute mark.

Scientific and space experts and academics played along with it.

The inventor of the cell phone told how Kirk & co's communicators were the inspiration to build a phone that was mobile. The US space agency's chief propulsion engineer said that watching Star Trek made him want to go out and conquer space.

And so it went on, along with nuggets of information about Star Trek itself. Like the fact that the famous "beam me up Scottie" transporter came about because the shuttles to get people on and off the ship weren't built in time.

The writers had to find a cheap and easy mode of transport. Necessity was truly the mother of this particular invention.