Brian

J. Robb is a writer and biographer whose previous books have included a

New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling biography of Titanic star
Leonardo DiCaprio; Screams & Nightmares, the definitive book on horror
director Wes Craven; Counterfeit Worlds, exploring the life and work of Philip
K. Dick; and a series of acclaimed film star biographies. For over ten years he
was the managing editor of The Official Star Trek Magazine.
 Recent titles in the series

A Brief Guide to Secret Religions

 David Barrett

A Brief History of Angels and Demons

 Sarah Bartlett

A Brief History of Roman Britain

Joan P. Alcock

A Brief History of the Private Life of Elizabeth II

 Michael Paterson

A Brief History of France

 Cecil Jenkins

A Brief History of Slavery

 Jeremy Black

A Brief History of Sherlock Holmes

 Nigel Cawthorne

A Brief History of How the Industrial Revolution Changed the World

 Thomas Crump

A Brief History of King Arthur

 Mike Ashley

A Brief History of the Universe

J. P. McEvoy

His Finest Hour: A Brief Life of Winston Churchill

Christopher Catherwood
A BRIEF GUIDE TO

STAR TREK

BRIAN J. ROBB


Constable & Robinson Ltd

55–56 Russell Square
London WC1B 4HP
www.constablerobinson.com

First published in the UK by Robinson,

an imprint of Constable & Robinson, 2012

Copyright © Brian J. Robb 2012

The right of Brian J. Robb to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

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 For Paul Simpson,
whose valuable feedback and Star Trek brainstorming sessions
helped immensely to focus and shape my thinking.
Contents
Introduction: The Storytellers

Chapter 1 Evolution: Star Trek Creator

Gene Roddenberry

Chapter 2 First Flight: The Two Star Trek Pilots

Chapter 3 Where No One Has Gone Before:

Star Trek’s First Year

Chapter 4 Too Short a Season: Consolidating Star Trek

Chapter 5 Timeless: The Birth of a Franchise and Fandom

Chapter 6 Persistence of Vision: The Original

Cast Movies

Chapter 7 Far Beyond the Stars: The Next Generation

Chapter 8 Future’s End: The Next Generation Movies

Chapter 9 New Ground: Deep Space Nine

Chapter 10 Business as Usual: Voyager

Chapter 11 Yesterday’s Enterprise: Enterprise

Chapter 12 Hollow Pursuits: Unmade Star Trek

Chapter 13 Future Imperfect: Star Trek (2009)

Chapter 14 Legacy: Can Star Trek Live Long and Prosper?

Bibliography

Index
Introduction
The Storytellers
‘The job of Star Trek was to use drama and adventure as a way of
portraying humanity in its various guises and beliefs. Star Trek is the
expression of my own beliefs using my characters to act out human
problems.’ Gene Roddenberry

Whether you are relatively new to Star Trek, having enjoyed the J. J. Abrams
blockbuster movie from 2009 or the sequel, or a fan of the show who’s been
following the various series and movies since the US debut of the original in
1966, it is clear that this iconic television show that struggled through its first
three years on air has – to adapt the worlds of the Vulcan Spock – ‘lived long
and prospered’.
The phenomenon of Star Trek has been much studied, from features in the
popular media and in-depth academic analysis to fan commentary and internet
flame wars. The forty-five-year history of the ‘franchise’ has been dissected
every which way in an attempt to discover the reasons for its success, longevity
and cultural impact – why has Star Trek been so long-lasting when other science
fiction TV series have fallen by the wayside, and why have its various iterations
on screens large and small been so popular?
This is not an academic tome, but a critical cultural history of Star Trek. It’s
an in-depth look at how the various series and movies were made, the creative
forces driving them, what their cultural impact was and what it all means. The
book will examine how Star Trek changed through the decades and how it
perhaps eventually failed to change enough with the times to escape ossification
and irrelevance, requiring a dramatic re -invention to save it. It will also look at
what the future might be for the Star Trek concept, assess what the series’
impact has been on viewers, and consider the unstoppable growth of Star Trek
fandom.
Star Trek now spans five distinct television series (six, if you include the often
overlooked early-1970s Star Trek: The Animated Series) and eleven movies,
from 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture to J. J. Abrams’ 2009 reinvention,
which has led to a new series of movies to take the franchise through the next
decade and maybe beyond.
While many have pointed to the way Star Trek has reflected and critiqued the
ethical, social and philosophical issues of our times and attempted to depict
progressive gender, class and racial representations – so offering a hopeful and
positive vision of the future of humanity – the secret of the success of the series
is much simpler: it’s all down to great storytelling.
The genius of Gene Roddenberry in creating Star Trek was to tackle those
serious and important issues through well-told science fiction action-adventure
tales that appealed to a mass audience. It was the unusual stories and
unforgettable characters that first attracted curious television audiences in the
1960s, while the forward-looking ideas presented by the series turned many of
those viewers into lifelong fans.
Legend elevates Roddenberry – known to fans as the Great Bird of the Galaxy
– to the status of sole creator of Star Trek. However, while his important role as
the instigator of the series and author of its concept should not be undervalued
(three times, no less: in its original 1960s incarnation, its reinvention as a series
of movies and its return to television in the 1980s), Roddenberry himself wasn’t
necessarily the most successful Star Trek storyteller. In fact, Star Trek has
enjoyed more success when under the control of other storytellers, as this book
sets out to demonstrate.
Among the host of others who have put their stamp on the concepts of Star
Trek, some have honoured them (perhaps a bit too much), while others have bent
them all out of shape (almost beyond recognition). Significant among them are
Samuel A. Peeples, David Gerrold, D. C. Fontana and Gene Coon on The
Original Series in the 1960s; Harve Bennett and Nicholas Meyer on the original
cast movies of the 1980s; Rick Berman and Michael Piller on The Next
Generation; Ira Steven Behr, Robert Hewitt Wolfe and Ronald D. Moore on
Deep Space Nine; Brannon Braga and Jeri Taylor on Voyager, all in the 1990s;
and Manny Coto on Enterprise in the twenty-first century. Some of them
outstayed their welcome, while others had far too short a run, but each of these
creators brought something unique to their respective attempts to create a new
spin on Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek.
The story behind the Star Trek phenomenon is one of inspiration, struggle and
good luck. Following a less than stellar career as an episodic television writer,
Gene Roddenberry pitched a series he dubbed ‘Wagon Train to the stars’, which
was taken up by Paramount and ran for three seasons between 1966 and 1969 on
NBC. The central trio of characters – headstrong Captain Kirk (William
Shatner), inscrutable alien Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and McCoy (DeForest
Kelley), the humanist doctor – rapidly became familiar to viewers. However, the
series failed to capture a large enough audience to stay on air, narrowly escaping
cancellation twice before the axe finally fell, following a lacklustre third season,
in 1969. The show found new, unexpected success during syndicated reruns
throughout the 1970s (and thanks to daily exposure, sealing the iconic nature of
the central trio of characters in pop culture in the process), giving rise to a short-
lived animated spin-off and – more importantly – a big-budget movie in 1979
intended to compete with the success of Star Wars (1977). While that film met
with a mixed reception, it led to a successful series of movies, including the
acclaimed The Wrath of Khan and The Voyage Home, which ran throughout the
1980s.
A return to television was inevitable for Star Trek, with Gene Roddenberry at
the helm once more (for the first few years). Between 1987 and 2005 Star Trek
would be in constant production, spanning The Next Generation’s new journeys
where no man had gone before, through the 1990s’ ethnic war dramas of Deep
Space Nine, the exploration-driven Voyager and into the twenty-first century,
with post-9/11 prequel series Enterprise. Franchise fatigue – too much mediocre
Star Trek ‘product’ flooding the market at the same time – led to the cancellation
of Enterprise and the curtailment of The Next Generation movie series. The
second batch of movies had produced one bona fide summer blockbuster in
1996’s First Contact (featuring The Next Generation’s signature antagonists, the
Borg), but had crashed to Earth with the dismal Nemesis in 2002.
A rescue mission for Star Trek was necessary. It fell to film-maker (Mission:
Impossible III) and cult TV producer (Alias, Lost) J. J. Abrams to rise to the
challenge of reinventing Star Trek once more for a whole new generation.
Alongside screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, Abrams returned to
the very beginning, rediscovering the iconic characters of Kirk, Spock and
McCoy.

Star Trek has been acclaimed as utopian science fiction. Arriving at the end of
the 1960s, Roddenberry’s space opera tapped into real-world social and political
movements, presenting a vision of the future that offered infinite diversity in
infinite combinations (IDIC) and the non-interference rule of the Prime
Directive. Aspects of the world of Star Trek were obviously contradictory: these
people of the future espoused clearly liberal values, but did so while encased in a
military outlook. This was a future that displayed great advances in
communications and medical science, but also offered similar advances in
weaponry, such as photo torpedoes and phasers.
 Each version of Star Trek reflected the times in which it was made. The
movies of the 1980s featuring the cast of The Original Series tackled issues of
ageing and rebirth through the core trilogy of The Wrath of Khan, The Search for
Spock and The Voyage Home. By the time of The Next Generation, the self-
absorbed ‘Me generation’, who came to adulthood in the 1970s, were running
things, so alongside the tactical officer and science officer, the bridge team of
the new Enterprise for the 1980s featured a touchy-feely psychologist in the
shape of Counsellor Troi. Deep Space Nine turned darker for the 1990s, a time
when ethnic strife tore up central Europe and the Middle East erupted in conflict
that continues today. The post-colonial world of Bajor and the United Nations-
style peacekeeping crew of the space station Deep Space Nine dramatised issues
of war, sacrifice and conflict in a way unthinkable in the comparably anodyne
Star Trek of the 1960s. On the other hand, the next series, Voyager, reflected a
somewhat blander, safer 1990s as the twenty-first century loomed; it also
featured a failure of the imagination on the part of those creating Star Trek to
genuinely escape from the past and boldly go into the unknown. They became
trapped within the formula that Deep Space Nine had so successfully strayed
from. Instead of updating Star Trek for the new century, both Voyager and
prequel series Enterprise set about recreating the deep-space exploration tropes
of The Original Series from the 1960s, and even tried to create new versions of
the iconic 1960s characters through relatively colourless avatars like Captain
Archer and Chief Engineer ‘Trip’ Tucker. Concurrently, The Next Generation
movies had trouble defining themselves, failing to service the ensemble cast that
had blossomed on television, yet succeeding when adopting the style and
approach of the contemporary summer blockbuster in First Contact. Even here,
though, the producers of Nemesis were looking backwards, attempting to model
their new Star Trek movie for 2002 on the one that had succeeded twenty years
earlier, 1982’s The Wrath of Khan.
Alongside these series and movies, a different type of utopian experiment was
going on as Star Trek fandom developed, grew and changed, aided and abetted
by developments in modern technology (the Internet, cheap video). Starting out
in the 1960s as isolated local clubs and mail-order fanzines (fan-produced
magazines), Star Trek fandom grew during the 1970s thanks to mass
conventions that brought like-minded people together to celebrate their
obsession. The future depicted on Star Trek created a genuine new community
here on Earth. Star Trek served to free fans’ imaginations and to spark their
creativity, allowing them to become creators (of, among other things, slash
fiction). The fans themselves became Star Trek storytellers, bringing their short
stories to each other through communities spawned on the internet and in the
making of officially tolerated not-for-profit fan video films, such as the New
Voyages/Phase II fan-made movie series.
All of this began with the vision of one man: Gene Roddenberry. His basic
ideas were taken by others, shaped and reshaped, stories told and retold.
Actively involved audiences took it upon themselves to create their own versions
of Star Trek, keeping the concept alive during the ten-year gap between the end
of The Original Series and the arrival of the much-compromised The Motion
Picture. Star Trek endured for the simple reason that Gene Roddenberry’s
creation allowed all those involved to tell great, relatable stories.

Note on Titles Usage

In this volume I’ve adopted the official Paramount/CBS designations for each of
the Star Trek TV series and movies. Each TV show or film is usually prefaced
with the label ‘Star Trek:’, but I’ve sometimes dropped that in the interests of
providing a smoother read. Below, ‘TV’ indicates a television series, while ‘F’
indicates a cinema release. The series and films will be referred to using the
following notation (in strict chronological order):

The Original Series (TV, 1966–9)

The Animated Series (TV, 1973–4)
The Motion Picture (F, 1979)
The Wrath of Khan (F, 1982)
The Search for Spock (F, 1984)
The Voyage Home (F, 1986)
The Final Frontier (F, 1989)
The Undiscovered Country (F, 1991)
The Next Generation (TV, 1987–94)
Deep Space Nine (TV, 1993–9)
Generations (F, 1994)
Voyager (TV, 1995–2001)
First Contact (F, 1996)
Insurrection (F, 1999)
Enterprise (TV, 2001–5)
Nemesis (F, 2002)
Star Trek (F, 2009)
Star Trek sequel (F, 2012)
Chapter 1
Evolution: Star Trek Creator
Gene Roddenberry
‘If you are cursed with a somewhat logical mind, you ask questions. I have
many thoughts which, if I were to voice them, would turn many people
against me.’ Gene Roddenberry

Science fiction has a long and proud history across all media, but it has perhaps
had the most impact and success with mainstream audiences through the visual
media of film and television.
Ancient literature is rife with tales of the fantastic, often used by developing
cultures as ways of exploring and explaining the wider world they were
beginning to discover beyond their immediate environment. Modern science
fiction can generally be dated to the early-nineteenth-century works of Mary
Shelley with Frankenstein and The Last Man, followed by the speculative novels
of Jules Verne, such as From the Earth to the Moon. A series of turn-of-the-
century novels by H. G. Wells developed many of the basic tropes of modern
science fiction, primarily in The Time Machine, The Invisible Man and The War
of the Worlds. Wells’ work can even be seen directly in a Star Trek episode, with
his 1901 short story The New Accelerator a clear inspiration for The Original
Series episode ‘Wink of an Eye’, in which Kirk is physically speeded up so
much he vanishes relative to those around him.
The ‘scientific romances’ of the late nineteenth century led to the science
fiction magazine boom of the early twentieth century, with the genre becoming
codified and popularised. Printed on cheap wood-pulp paper (leading to the
usually derogative ‘pulps’ tag), these popular magazines featured fast-paced,
adventure-driven tales and prospered from the mid-1890s (with Frank Munsey’s
Argosy Magazine) through to the mid-1950s, when cheap paperback novels
largely replaced them. Titles such as editor Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories
(from 1926 onwards) and John W. Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction (from
1929, later Analog Magazine) gave an outlet to the first wave of professional
science fiction authors in the 1930s and 1940s. Emerging in this period were
writers such as Isaac Asimov, Damon Knight, Fred Pohl, James Blish, E. E.
‘Doc’ Smith, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke and A. E. van Vogt (and several
of these ‘first wave’ science fiction storytellers would later have Star Trek
connections).
The science fiction novel developed in the 1950s and 1960s and brought new,
longer-form writers to the genre, including epic and influential works by Frank
Herbert (Dune), Harlan Ellison (known for his short stories and essays) and
Philip K. Dick (a major influence on film and television fantasy and SF from the
1980s through to the twenty-first century). With the longer form came a more in-
depth exploration of ideas and a better focus on character, along with an
improvement in the literary quality of the writing.
The same period saw a dramatic boom in science fiction on radio, film and
television, much of which had a direct influence on those who’d later tell their
stories through Star Trek. Radio is the perfect medium for science fiction drama.
It is a truism that the locations are much better on radio, not requiring the
extravagant budgets often needed for visualising science fiction settings in film
and TV. On radio, ideas and settings could be explored in dramatic fashion,
relying on the listener to fill in the blanks with their imagination. Shows from
the 1950s – such as NBC’s Dimension X and X Minus One – dramatised short
stories from the pulps and the new paperbacks, as well as producing original
scripts. Other shows included 2000 Plus and Beyond Tomorrow, although much
of the material produced was simplistic and juvenile.
Several of these early science fiction radio shows were transferred to the new
medium of television in the early 1950s, including Tom Corbett – Space Cadet
and Space Patrol. Television was welcoming to science fiction from the earliest
days, despite the difficulties of visually realising spaceships, alien worlds and
new high-tech gadgets. Most of the early series were broadcast in short episodes
(fifteen to twenty minutes, often transmitted live) and mostly aimed at the
children’s audience (shown in the early-evening ‘kid-vid’ time slots). Captain
Video and His Video Rangers was one of the first, starting in 1949 and running
until 1955. The show revolved around the adventures of Captain Video (Richard
Coogan) and a space police squad who patrolled the solar system. It featured the
first robot character as part of a regular television cast. Many well-known
science fiction authors wrote some of the later Captain Video scripts, including
Isaac Asimov, Cyril Kornbluth, Robert Sheckley, Damon Knight, James Blish,
Jack Vance and Arthur C. Clarke. Similarly, Tom Corbett – Space Cadet starred
Frankie Thomas, Jr. and included science fiction author Alfred Bester among the
principal scriptwriters. The similar Space Patrol reached 210 half-hour shows
and almost 900 fifteen-minute shows across that series’ five-year run.
While these shows were largely primitive, regarded as disposable and aimed
at children, they did pave the way for the more adult approach of Star Trek in the
late 1960s. Youngsters who’d enjoyed the juvenile adventures of Captain Video,
Tom Corbett and Space Patrol’s Buzz Corry (Ed Kemmer) in the mid-1950s
were teenagers in the mid-1960s and ready for something more substantial in
their television science fiction.
There were some slightly more adult – or at least more pseudo-scientific – TV
shows in the 1950s and 1960s that may have influenced Star Trek’s approach to
the science of its fiction. Between 1955 and 1957, Ziv-TV produced seventy-
seven episodes of an anthology show called Science Fiction Theater. Introduced
by respected former war correspondent Truman Bradley (often against a science
laboratory background), the series told a different story every week with a
different cast involved in a scientific dilemma, often based around new
discoveries or the ways in which new technology might change society or
humankind. The show purported to draw its stories from the headlines, and used
realistic scientific approaches and data in formulating many of its tales. More
cerebral than the likes of Tom Corbett or Space Patrol, Science Fiction Theater
provided more thoughtful drama readily enjoyed by teenagers who’d outgrown
the early kid-vid space operas.
By 1957, Russia had launched the Sputnik satellite into orbit and sparked the
real-life space race between the Cold War superpowers. This gave rise to a new
strain of more realistic science fiction shows based around the imagined realities
of the exploration of near space. Ziv-TV’s Men into Space ran for a year in
1959–60 and took a more grounded approach to space exploration, dealing with
the scientific minutiae of space suits, re-entry trajectories and the challenge of
sustaining human life on the moon. Among the writers on the show were Jerome
Bixby (who’d go on to write four episodes of Star Trek) and B-movie specialist
Ib Melchior.
Men into Space ran in parallel with The Man and the Challenge, produced by
an ex-Ziv-TV creative, Ivan Tors (later respon -sible for Florida-based sea
adventure series Sea Hunt and Flipper). That series took a similar tone,
following a team of scientists as they tested human endurance on behalf of the
US government in order to prepare astronauts for their travels into space.
Many early television science fiction dramas drew on the fantastic movie
serials of the 1930s and 1940s for inspiration in their heavily serialised format
and melodramatic approach to action. From the earliest days of film in the late
1890s, the medium was used to depict the fantastic. French surrealist Georges
Méliès developed trick photographic effects, testing the limits of the new
medium, and discovered that fantasy stories were most suitable to these
explorations. From 1902’s A Trip to the Moon through 1912’s Conquest of the
Pole, Méliès’ films were tales of the fantastic that also dramatically developed
film techniques and technology. Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) and Woman in
the Moon (1929) saw out the silent science fiction era.
Episodic serials dominated the 1930s through to the 1950s, spurred by comic
strip-inspired characters like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, who also fuelled
the early science fiction TV shows of the 1950s. Universal horror films of the
1930s, featuring supernatural creatures like Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula, the
Wolf Man and the Invisible Man, led to the 1950s’ science fiction boom that was
dominated by creature features in which post-war atomic fears inspired pulp
thrills. Monster-dominated films included Them! (1954), 20 Million Miles to
Earth (1957) and The Blob. Aliens arrived on Earth – often set on domination of
mankind – in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), The Thing from Another
World (1951) and The War of the Worlds (1952). Another strand of science
fiction film was based upon exploration of the unknown, whether it be 20,000
Leagues Under the Sea (1954) or Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1959).
Prime among the films that took the outward-looking exploration of deep space
as their focus was Forbidden Planet (1956).
Easily the biggest influence on the development of the look and feel of Star
Trek, Forbidden Planet featured many elements that would become standardised
by the three-year run of the original Star Trek TV show. Creator Gene
Roddenberry freely admitted to the influence of the film in an early memo to
production executive Herb Solow in which he discussed the design of his
proposed TV series’ starship: ‘You may recall we saw MGM’s Forbidden
Planet some weeks ago,’ wrote Roddenberry on 10 August 1964. ‘I think it
would be interesting to take another very hard look at the spaceship, its
configurations, controls, instrumentations, etc, while planning our own. We have
no intention of copying that ship, but a detailed look at it again would do much
to stimulate our own thinking.’
It wasn’t only the ship from Forbidden Planet that would be echoed in Star
Trek: much of the overall approach of the movie to its story, characters and
setting would find a place on television in Roddenberry’s space adventure series.
Like Forbidden Planet, Star Trek would also be set around 200 years in the
future; the ship would have an alpha-numeric designation (C57D in Forbidden
Planet, NCC-1701 in Star Trek, both Navy-inspired); and Star Trek’s central trio
of Kirk, Spock and McCoy would reflect the core triumvirate of the earlier
film’s crew: the captain, chief science officer and chief medical officer. These
influences, while confessed to by Roddenberry in his memo, are more due to the
creative people behind both Forbidden Planet and Star Trek looking to the
American military, and in particular the Navy, for inspiration for their space
exploration ships and crews. Even the uniforms, down to the departmental
colour coding and insignia, on both the film and the later TV series, are
uncannily similar. It should be noted, too, that as a space-set partial retelling of
Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Forbidden Planet was itself far from original.
Also of interest is a now little-remembered 1963 Czech movie Ikarie XB-1
(released in an English-dubbed version as Voyage to the End of the Universe).
The film follows the journey of the Ikarus XB-1 starship, whose multi-national
crew must cope with the rigours of deep space travel. The episodic film has the
crew encounter a derelict twentieth-century space vessel carrying still-deadly
nuclear weapons, a radioactive ‘dark star’ that threatens the ship and the mental
dissolution of a crewmember. Similar storylines would crop up in some very
early Star Trek episodes.
All these preceding examples of science fiction, especially those in film and
TV, undoubtedly had an influence on the development of Gene Roddenberry’s
Star Trek. Indeed, specific elements that made up Star Trek can be traced back to
individual films and shows, mainly Forbidden Planet, as discussed, but also –
for example – the ‘United Federation of Planets’ organisation featured in Space
Patrol. However, the creation of Star Trek was not just a case of cherry-picking
elements from the science fiction that came before it. Everything had to be
filtered through one creative intelligence, a unique storyteller who was a TV
writer and producer, and who’d paid his dues in detective and Western shows
before winning the chance to explore the final frontier of unknown space: Gene
Roddenberry.

Prior to creating Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry had filled many professional
roles, including bomber pilot in the Second World War, commercial pilot for
Pan-Am, police officer (following family tradition) and jobbing TV writer, who
drew on his real-life experiences to create episodic television. However, when he
died in October 1991 at the age of seventy, there was only one thing that
obituary writers concentrated on: Star Trek.
Eugene Wesley Roddenberry was born in El Paso in Texas on 19 August
1921, the son of a police officer, who would eventually become a cop himself.
Before he was two years old the Roddenberry family relocated to Southern
California, where this born storyteller would find his natural environment.
Los Angeles in the mid-1920s had become the centre of the growing movie
industry. The famous Hollywoodland (later just Hollywood) sign was erected in
1923. Both the city and the movies were growing and changing, and
Roddenberry became ideally placed to take advantage of the opportunities
offered. His father secured a job with the Los Angeles Police Department: they
were desperate for beat cops and his Army service made the senior Roddenberry
an ideal candidate.
Young Gene did well enough at school, attending to his studies as the lively
1920s gave way to the great depression of the 1930s. By then the Roddenberry
family had grown, with Gene joined by a brother and a sister. Gene and his
brother were encouraged by their father to take on odd jobs (delivering
newspapers, working in a petrol station) in order to earn money and discover the
meaning of independence. He took them both fishing and hunting – pastimes
that Roddenberry senior enjoyed, but neither of his sons did.
Gene Roddenberry attended Los Angeles City College (LACC) from early
1939, studying the police curriculum. Through the LACC Police Club he met
several figures he’d later work with after the war. Various stints of further
education followed, but Roddenberry never formally graduated.
Aged eighteen in 1940, Roddenberry signed up to the Civilian Pilot Training
programme, a scheme designed to increase the number of trained American
pilots in the run-up to the country’s likely entry into the conflict in Europe.
Having long been interested in flying and aeroplanes, he was awarded his pilot’s
licence and in 1941 joined the US Army Air Corps, just before it became the US
Air Force. Combat missions followed in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor
in December 1941, including action with the 394th Bomber Squadron. In August
1943 Roddenberry’s B-17E Flying Fortress crashed on take-off due to a
mechanical failure, with the loss of two lives. Despite that setback, Roddenberry
claimed to have chalked up eighty-nine missions (his natural storytelling abilities
would lead him to often embellish his personal achievements) and was awarded
the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal prior to leaving the Air Force in
1945.
Roddenberry married his college girlfriend Eileen Rexroat in 1942 and they
had two daughters, Darlene and Dawn. Using the knowledge and skill
accumulated during the war years, he became a commercial pilot for Pan
American World Airways (Pan-Am). Following a June 1947 crash in the Syrian
desert, the second of his flying career, Roddenberry was awarded a Civil
Aeronautics commendation for his involvement in the rescue efforts (another
account embellished in the telling). During his time as a commercial pilot,
Roddenberry had become interested in the relatively new medium of television
and was keen to develop a career as a TV writer. This was a new business, with
opportunities for the right people – and the ambitious Roddenberry felt he could
find a role.
In the meantime, to generate income, Roddenberry fell back on the family
tradition and joined the LAPD at the start of 1949. He became an officer in 1951
and a sergeant in 1953, all the while optimistically submitting story outlines to
various TV shows. After six weeks of perfunctory training, Roddenberry began
his police life as a traffic cop.
In mid-1950 William H. Parker became the LAPD Chief with a mandate to
clean up corruption in the force. By 1951 Roddenberry realised his ambition to
begin writing professionally by securing a job in Parker’s PR division, writing
speeches for the Chief. Roddenberry delivered talks to schoolchildren on road
safety, but it was as publicist to Parker that he became invaluable. Later in 1951
he sought permission to accept outside work, intending not to take the usual
security job, but to explore whether he could make some headway as a writer for
television.
For Roddenberry, television was the equivalent of the ‘pulps’ of the 1930s: a
here-today, gone-tomorrow medium that provided a perfect training ground for
would-be writers. He used his office at the LAPD to obtain old scripts from
shows like Dragnet in order to learn the formal layout and techniques of
teleplays, then by 1953 the hopeful TV writer began to send his own scripts to
producers, believing his real-life police experience would give his writing
authenticity.
Thus, Roddenberry’s first television success came in selling storylines to cop
shows, often based directly on his own experiences or tales he’d heard from
other officers. He quickly discovered LA’s TV writer hangouts – the bars, the
restaurants – and began to spend time there off duty, making friends and
building contacts. This paid off and he wrote episodes for various shows through
the mid-1950s, including six instalments of Mr. District Attorney and five of
Highway Patrol.
In April 1956 he sold a script to The West Point Story, a TV show about US
Army cadets, produced with the cooperation of the military. Roddenberry had
accosted E. Jack Neuman, the show’s producer, on a cross-country flight. Over
the next year he would write eight more episodes, and one other in collaboration
with Neuman himself. Stories came easily to the West Point staff, drawn as they
were from the actual files of the real-life New York US Military Academy.
Actors who appeared on the show and later became big names included Clint
Eastwood, Barbara Eden (I Dream of Jeannie), Larry Hagman (Dallas), and
Leonard Nimoy. Over two seasons on air, West Point clocked up forty episodes,
and Roddenberry had written, co-written or rewritten a quarter of them. It was a
baptism by fire and one he was keen to learn from.
In 1956 Roddenberry quit the LAPD to become a full-time TV writer,
continuing to draw on his police experience for his first commissions. One script
Roddenberry rewrote for West Point was by Sam Rolfe (rewriting often involved
taking a writer’s original work and making it more suitable for the pro -duction
realities of any given show: it’s something Roddenberry would do a lot during
the early days of Star Trek). Rolfe would soon go on to create Have Gun, Will
Travel, and Roddenberry would quickly move on to that show, writing twenty-
four of the half-hour Western adventure episodes. The light-hearted show ran
from 1957 to 1963 and starred Richard Boone as ‘gentleman gunslinger’
Paladin, a champion-for-hire who liked to right wrongs without violence, but
was an excellent shot when required. Paladin had been an Army officer and
graduate of West Point and used a knight chess piece as his calling card. Among
the episodic guest cast were DeForest Kelley (a veteran of many film and TV
Westerns), Whit Bissell and William Schallert (all seen in later Star Trek
episodes). Another significant writer who graduated from this series to run his
own show was Bruce Geller (Mission: Impossible, Star Trek’s stablemate at
Desilu Studios).
Having won a Writers Guild Award for an episode of Have Gun, Will Travel
in 1957, the early 1960s saw Roddenberry develop a career as a jobbing TV
writer, moving from show to show, building experience and contacts in the
business. He was reliable, but he’d often write no more than one or two episodes
for each series and never secured a staff-writing job. In 1962 he wrote
instalments of some of American TV’s top-rated shows, including Dr Kildare,
Naked City and The Virginian.
Roddenberry tried several times to get his own programme off the ground.
He’d written a pilot script in 1959 called Night Stick about a Greenwich Village
cop, while his 1960 episode of Alcoa Goodyear Theatre called ‘333
Montgomery Street’, about a criminal defence attorney, was intended as a
possible series pilot. It at least aired (unlike Night Stick), but didn’t go to series.
His third pilot script – APO 923, a drama about three Army servicemen stationed
on an island – was made but not seen except by network executives and ad
agencies. Finally, Defiance County was written but never made.
Now aged forty-two, Roddenberry was keen to make a break from run-of-the-
mill episodic TV writing. Pitching a series to Dr Kildare producer Norman
Felton, he fell back on his days in the service and came up with an idea about the
work of a professional soldier during peacetime. Through Felton’s industry
connections Roddenberry secured a pilot deal with funding from MGM and a
commitment that allowed him to produce the series, if it was commissioned. The
writer believed that becoming a producer was the vital next step in his TV
career: that was where the power lay in the business and to achieve that he had to
secure a show he’d created. Realising this new project through Felton’s
independent Arena Productions meant that the resulting show could be pitched
to all three broadcast networks. The downside of this freedom was that as none
of the networks had a funding commitment to the pilot, it was much easier for
them to reject the show.
The Lieutenant was built around the leading character of William Tiberius
Rice, a second lieutenant in the US Marine Corps. In his mid-twenties and a
recent graduate of the Annapolis Naval Academy, Rice is sent to investigate an
alleged assault by a private against a corporal. Fearing he’ll miss out on a plum
posting in the meantime, Rice resists but falls in with an attractive young woman
named Lane Bishop. Through her, Rice discovers the private had good reason
for attacking the corporal – he was having an affair with the private’s wife – but
refuses, due to the potential embarrassment, to reveal these mitigating
circumstances. The script, ‘A Very Private Affair’, was circulated within Arena
Productions in January 1963 with a view to producing it that spring.
Roddenberry’s troubled private life may have informed his teleplay. Although
still married to Rexroat, Roddenberry had begun an affair with a young aspiring
actress named Majel Barrett, only the latest in a long series of extra-marital
affairs he’d pursued. As his twenty-year marriage slowly disintegrated,
Roddenberry found himself out of his depth on the set of The Lieutenant pilot,
contributing to delays on the already complicated location shoot at Camp
Pendleton, where the military were lending their cooperation. The episode was
finished just in time to be presented to the network executives who’d decide
which new shows they’d commission for the fall TV season.
Despite the problems, which included tensions between Roddenberry and the
episode’s director, the very experienced Buzz Kulik, and between Roddenberry
and executive producer Felton, the resulting show was good enough for NBC to
commit to a full series. After almost a decade in the TV writing business, Gene
Roddenberry had successfully made the switch from episodic writer to series
producer.
His euphoria was short-lived, however. Almost immediately, The Lieutenant
ran into trouble. In order to secure the continued involvement of the Marines and
the Department of Defense – the show would not be half as effective without it –
the producers had to abide by a lengthy list of prohibitions from the military.
Given that the core of drama is conflict, the requirement that The Lieutenant
should portray military life positively severely restricted the new series’
storytelling possibilities – oddly, an approach Roddenberry himself would later
take in his vision of the future on Star Trek. Roddenberry also ran up against his
own creative limitations. As ‘showrunner’ it was down to him to determine the
tone and direction of the series, but beyond making a version of Dr Kildare set
in the Army, he was at a loss for a way to distinctively define his series. He only
knew the show had to focus on Rice (Gary Lockwood), while each episode had
to introduce one-off characters and situations for him to learn from.
Screenings of the pilot were arranged for LA’s freelance TV writers in the
hope they could generate fresh story ideas. Roddenberry picked pitches he liked
and commissioned scripts, appointing Del Reisman (The Twilight Zone) as story
editor. Unhappy with the quality of the scripts and story outlines coming in, but
finding it difficult to articulate exactly what he wanted, Roddenberry began to
rewrite each script until he was happy with it. Reisman found himself on the
receiving end of many complaints from the nineteen different writers who
contributed to the twenty-nine episodes of the series. Roddenberry only scripted
the opening and closing episodes, but he rewrote just about every other
instalment.
From September 1963 The Lieutenant began airing on NBC, opposite the
ratings giant The Jackie Gleason Hour on CBS. The show was quick to catch on,
proving to be a ratings record-breaker. However, the behind-the-scenes troubles
continued. By early 1964 the Pentagon had complained about The Lieutenant
directly to NBC, who in turn raised the issue with MGM. The final straw was a
script called ‘To Set It Right’, dealing with racism in the service. Always aware
of the big issues of the day, Roddenberry had decided to spice up his show by
including some ‘hot-button’ topics. The episode saw a black Marine and his wife
(Star Trek’s Uhura, Nichelle Nichols, with whom Roddenberry also later had an
affair) attacked by a racist Marine (Dennis Hopper). Although Rice is able to
overcome the issue and the men agree to work together for the good of the
platoon, it was not enough to mollify the military: official cooperation was
finally withdrawn.
Thanks to the use of the MGM back lot, as well as materials left over from
assorted war movies and a lot of stock footage, The Lieutenant was able to
struggle through to completion of its one and only series. As the US involvement
in Vietnam escalated and looked ever more questionable, a series extolling the
virtues of the armed forces looked decidedly out of date: NBC decided not to
renew the show. Roddenberry wrote the final episode himself, sending Rice to
an unnamed south-east Asian country where he has to cooperate with a
representative of ‘the enemy’ in order for both to survive. The episode features a
debate on the nature of war and warfare that prefigured several episodes of Gene
Roddenberry’s much more successful second TV series as producer: Star Trek.

Gene Roddenberry was desperate to get another TV series up and running to

prove he was not a one-hit wonder. This time it had to be entirely his idea and a
production wholly under his control. He’d realised control by the producer was
necessary, but also that such control was often hard won in battles with networks
and financiers. He was equally realistic that both the broadcast networks and the
financiers were necessary evils he’d have to contend with. The Lieutenant was
only the beginning: after all, as a natural storyteller he had so many other tales to
tell.
One he’d outlined previously concerned a Zeppelin-style dirigible crewed by a
team of multi-racial explorers that crisscrossed the United States at the end of
the nineteenth century, discovering ‘new civilizations’. The idea had not
progressed far, until Roddenberry revived it after The Lieutenant. This time, it
was to be set in the future, the hot air balloon replaced by a spaceship.
The suggestion to develop a science fiction series had come from Alden
Schwimmer, Roddenberry’s agent and the West Coast head of the Ashley-
Famous agency. In 1963 the space race between Russia and the US was starting
to heat up. Two years previously President John F. Kennedy had made his
speech committing the country to ‘landing a man on the Moon and returning him
safely to Earth’ before the 1960s came to an end. Russia had been active in space
since the launch of Sputnik, with Yuri Gagarin the first man in space in April
1961. Astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr had become the first American in space in
May 1961, followed by John Glenn circling the Earth in 1962. A TV series that
could capture the excitement and optimism of the space programme would
surely attract a huge American television audience hungry for drama chronicling
the conquest of this wild, new frontier.
The first few years of the 1960s had seen science fiction continue to feature in
television and film. Movie audiences had visited The Angry Red Planet (1959),
journeyed to the past and the future in The Time Machine (1960) and saw the
world survive The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961). Irwin Allen had begun his
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961, developed into a TV series in 1964).
Television had brought viewers such fantasy shows as The Twilight Zone (Rod
Serling’s weird tales had begun in 1959 and would run until 1964), and One Step
Beyond (1959–61).
Schwimmer felt sure he could sell a Roddenberry-devised serious science
fiction drama. Discussing the idea with others, including Schwimmer and
Norman Felton (his executive producer on The Lieutenant), Roddenberry soon
took to calling his space exploration series ‘Wagon Train to the stars’ as a form
of shorthand (after ABC’s Sunday night hit Western series Wagon Train).
Roddenberry’s March 1964 sixteen-page pitch outline sum -marised the show:
‘Star Trek is a “Wagon Train” concept – built around characters who travel to
worlds “similar” to our own, and meet the action-adventure-drama which
becomes our stories. Their transportation is the cruiser USS Yorktown,
performing a well-defined and long-range Exploration-Science-Security mission
which helps create our format. The time is “somewhere in the future”. It could
be 1995 or maybe even 2995. In other words, close enough to our time for our
continuing characters to be fully identifiable as people like us, but far enough
into the future for galaxy travel to be thoroughly established.’
However, Roddenberry’s space-set Wagon Train looked to be an expensive
proposition, requiring new planetary settings every episode: it was easy to create
a new earthbound setting for each episode of Wagon Train (another town or
desert oasis), but much harder to come up with convincing alien planets on a
weekly television series budget and schedule.
Schwimmer had an ace up his sleeve. His company had become the agent for
Desilu Studios, which had once produced the hit series I Love Lucy (1951–7) and
now made The Lucy Show (1962–8). Star Lucille Ball had become the sole
owner of the studio, following her divorce from husband Desi Arnaz. The
extensive studio facilities (inherited from old Hollywood studio RKO, makers of
King Kong and Citizen Kane) built up during the heyday of I Love Lucy, now
stood largely empty, except for their once a week usage for The Lucy Show and
occasional external space rentals. Desilu Studios were keen to find projects to
utilise the studio space and their agent – Schwimmer – was keen for his client
Roddenberry to launch a science fiction television series. It was a marriage of
convenience from which all parties could benefit enormously.
As a result of her ongoing deal with CBS for The Lucy Show, Ball had access
to a $600,000-per-year development fund. Schwimmer was tasked with finding
new projects to spend the money on, in the hope that they’d develop into new hit
shows. Pilots that eventually resulted from this development fund included
Mission: Impossible (the series began in 1966, in the same season as Star Trek)
and Mannix (which debuted the following year).
The Desilu development money allowed Roddenberry to further build on his
ideas for ‘Wagon Train to the stars’, which may not have happened otherwise
without a firm series commission from a broadcaster. It was expected any
resulting series would be produced by Desilu and would air on CBS, as they
were providing the initial funding.
Roddenberry had a partner working with him on developing his new series
proposal, Herb Solow – Desilu’s in-house executive who would decide which
projects would be pitched to the broadcasters. Solow saw Roddenberry’s
proposed series as another anthology show, like The Lieutenant, with new
characters and settings every week, something he feared would be prohibitively
expensive. Solow also worried that reintroducing the series concept each week
would take up too much of the show’s running time. His proposed solution was a
voiceover from the spaceship’s captain explaining the set-up, allowing the
episode to get on with the drama. Later in life Roddenberry was reluctant to
share the credit for the success of Star Trek, especially in the creation of the key
elements that went into making up the series. In a memo from 1966 Roddenberry
erroneously credited the captain’s voiceover idea to ‘my cousin in Ohio’. For
him, it made for a better story.
There was another writer involved in developing ideas for Star Trek in
addition to Roddenberry. Samuel A. Peeples, a prolific television screenwriter in
the 1960s, had written for many Western series, including Wanted: Dead or
Alive, The Rifleman and Bonanza. Roddenberry knew that Peeples had a
significant collection of pulp magazines. Roddenberry had read some of the
same story magazines – including Amazing Stories – as a teenager, but was not
an expert or a particularly big fan of the genre. He remembered reading E. E.
‘Doc’ Smith’s Skylark series and the Buck Rogers newspaper comic strip, as
well as listening to the exciting radio serial. However, as a kid during the
depression he’d been far more interested in the adventures of the Lone Ranger
and the Shadow. He needed help putting his dramatic ideas into a plausible
science fiction context.
Peeples recalled, ‘[Roddenberry] was trying to start a science fiction series
and he knew that I had one of the largest science fiction collections in the world.
He was researching his show and asked if he could go through my magazines
and get some ideas for the Enterprise. Gene went through all the covers, and
that’s really how the Enterprise was born.’
Roddenberry felt he needed a crash course in science fiction and borrowed
some books from Peeples – among them Olaf Stapleton’s First and Last Men –
to get a feel for what the genre encompassed. Peeples suggested other writers
that Roddenberry should sample, including Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Bloch,
Poul Anderson and Richard Matheson. From the beginning Roddenberry was
keen to involve serious science fiction storytellers in his series to give the show
authenticity.
One of the first television writers Roddenberry arranged to meet was Jerry
Sohl, whose credits included The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and
The Outer Limits, as well as several science fiction novels. He had the ideal
combination of science fiction credentials and TV scriptwriting that
Roddenberry would look for in the initial batch of Star Trek writers. Sohl clearly
understood that the meeting was a fishing exercise on Roddenberry’s part, with
the putative showrunner asking for the names of other West Coast writers he
could contact, as well as sounding out Sohl’s opinion of his Star Trek idea.
Among the names Sohl added to Roddenberry’s growing list of writers to
contact were William Nolan, George Clayton Johnson and Harlan Ellison.
Desilu’s Herb Solow was charged with selling Star Trek to the studios. It was
quickly rejected by CBS, despite them having initially funded development
through the Desilu fund. Solow had more luck with NBC, who offered to finance
the writing of a pilot script (subject to a choice from three outlines) that might
result in the broadcaster funding the shooting of a pilot. Gene Roddenberry’s
Star Trek was about to blast off.
Chapter 2
First Flight: The Two
Star Trek Pilots
‘I am Spock!’ Leonard Nimoy

Gene Roddenberry was first and foremost an accomplished storyteller, and Star
Trek was the ideal vehicle for telling stories about the modern world that
happened to be set in space, in a far-off future that seemed strangely to echo the
present. He wasn’t alone in creating Star Trek in its lasting incarnation: he drew
on the talents of many other individuals who contributed key elements that went
in to making the concept durable.
Unusually for television in the 1960s, Star Trek was allowed two pilot
episodes to demonstrate to NBC that the show could work. The story of the two
Star Trek pilots is the story of the two writers involved, Gene Roddenberry and
Samuel A. Peeples. For the 1964 pilot, Roddenberry flew solo. In the script for
‘The Cage’ he brought to life the concepts that had featured in his March 1964
series outline in a dramatic form. For his critics, it was not dramatic enough and
simply too thoughtful for American television in the mid-1960s.
For the show’s second pilot in 1965, NBC chose Samuel A. Peeples’ script,
‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’. Peeples brought action and adventure to
Star Trek, elements that Roddenberry later admitted had been missing from his
effort. Between them, the two storytellers used their Star Trek pilots to lay down
the template for a franchise that would ‘live long and prosper’ for the next forty-
five years and beyond.

Gene Roddenberry had three alternatives to represent the potential of Star Trek
through the initial pilot storylines requested by NBC in 1964. The first storyline
was entitled ‘Landru’s Paradise’ (and would later become the basis for the
episode ‘The Return of the Archons’). In the story, Captain Robert April (the
name lifted from a character who’d appeared in the final episode of The
Lieutenant) discovers a seemingly all-American town located on a distant planet.
The contented inhabitants are reluctant to question their existence or challenge
authority, apparently happy with their lot. Roddenberry’s story outline reveals
that this ‘happiness’ is imposed by a group called The Lawgivers, who issue
severe punishments for even the mildest infractions of the rules (an idea later
explored in more depth in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode ‘Justice’).
The climax sees April confront the planet’s ruling computer and proceed (as in
several Star Trek episodes) to talk it to death, freeing the populace.
The second proposed storyline was ‘The Women’ (the basis for the later
episode ‘Mudd’s Women’). The outline was clear about its inspiration:
‘Duplicating a page from the “Old West”; hankypanky aboard [the Enterprise]
with a cargo of women destined for a far-off colony.’ Essentially about
prostitution, people trafficking and slavery, ‘The Women’ saw a space trader
supply plain-looking women to lonely men on far-off mining planets, using a
drug to create the illusion that the women are beautiful and happy to cater to the
men’s every need without question.
Finally there was ‘The Cage’, chronicling a battle between illusion and reality.
Captured by powerful aliens, April is forced to live through memories and
fantasies in the company of another human captive, the beautiful Vina. His
captors feed off the emotions generated by his turmoil, and in the end April has
to decide between the seductive illusions or harsh reality.
The three stories were surprisingly revealing and reflected Roddenberry’s
attitudes to life, especially as his marriage crumbled. In dealing with subjects
such as God-like beings, judicial authority, and the role of women Roddenberry
laid down a marker as to the ambitions of Star Trek: his science fiction TV show
was going to be ‘about’ something, rather than just entertaining fluff filling the
airwaves between advertisements.
There was no denying that living and working in the Hollywood milieu of
1960s television was having an effect on Roddenberry and his family life. He’d
long had a roving eye and not thought twice about cheating on his wife, even
during his police days. Now, in a position of relative power in the Los Angeles
television business, it was easier than ever for Roddenberry to indulge his
passions. His regular extra-marital relationship continued with actress Majel
Barrett, but she wasn’t alone. Roddenberry told friends he remained married for
the sake of his children, but that did little to curb his wandering ways. One of the
reasons for the growing distance between Roddenberry and his wife Eileen may
have been the widening of his horizons compared to hers. While he grew and
changed, perhaps not always for the better, she remained the policeman’s wife
and home-making mother, disapproving of the ‘Hollywood’ lifestyle. That they
grew apart is not surprising.
As the distance between him and his wife grew larger, Roddenberry focused
on his work. Although NBC had agreed to fund the writing of a pilot script for
Star Trek in 1964, it would be a further two years before the regular series would
reach American TV screens. The intermediate time was a frustrating one of
repeated development and failure for Roddenberry, eventually followed by
compromised success.
According to Desilu executive Herb Solow (in his personal memoir Inside
Star Trek, co-authored with Star Trek producer Robert Justman), NBC continued
to harbour doubts about whether Desilu could pull off a show as ambitious and
complicated as the Star Trek pitch. Of the three storylines submitted, NBC
finally chose ‘The Cage’. The plot had been further refined in numerous pitching
sessions with the NBC brass, so writing the script itself came fast and easy to
Roddenberry. Dated 29 June 1964, his story outline featured a group of
sixlimbed, crab-like aliens who capture the Enterprise’s Captain April and
subject him to a variety of tests. In captivity with him is another apparent human,
a woman named Vina. Writing without much regard to budget – odd for
someone who’d had a fair degree of practical television production experience –
Roddenberry seemed more interested in concocting a dramatic introduction to
his universe to sell the Star Trek concept to NBC than worrying about practical
considerations that might face Desilu should the series enter production.
A bizarre menagerie of non-humanoid creatures featured in the draft script,
including a six-legged ‘Rigelian spider ape’ and another character described as a
cross between an angel and a snake. These visions would be easy to achieve on
screen now with a decent budget and CGI technology. Back in the mid-1960s
computers in special effects were non-existent and animation for television was
prohibitively expensive. Nonetheless, Roddenberry stubbornly featured an
intelligent lemur from Arcturus (the kind of truly alien character that would not
be properly visually realised until Star Trek: The Animated Series in the early
1970s).
The final script delivered to NBC at the end of June 1964 featured Captain
Pike (replacing April, but still not yet the familiar Kirk) commanding the USS
Enterprise, en route to a Starbase for a spot of shore leave. Drawn by indications
that a ship may have crashed on Talos IV, the Enterprise diverts to investigate.
A landing party of Pike, Lieutenant Spock, Dr Phillip Boyce, navigator José
Tyler and others is convened. The ship is left under the command of the cold,
logic-driven female first officer, Number One.
A group of survivors is discovered, all that remain of the crew of the SS
Columbia, a ship that crashed over a decade before. Vina – just a child when the
ship crashed – forms a strong connection with Pike. Hidden alien intelligences
observe them and use Vina to lure Pike into a trap. Captured by the Talosians
(large-headed mute creatures, now humanoid in form), Pike is incarcerated with
Vina, in fact the sole survivor of the Columbia crash. The remaining Enterprise
landing crew see the encampment vanish, realising it to have been an illusion
created by the aliens as a lure.
The Talosians (played in the episode by short actresses, but voiced by male
actors for an ‘alien’ effect) want to breed a race of humanoids, and hope to mate
Pike with Vina. Utilising a series of illusions, they try to force Pike to comply,
but he resists. Number One and Yeoman Colt are kidnapped from the Enterprise,
beamed by the Talosians directly to Pike’s cage. If Vina is not to Pike’s liking,
think the Talosians, maybe they can tempt him with one of his own female
crewmembers? Meanwhile, Spock and company have returned with a laser
cannon and turn it on the hidden Talosians’ lair. Although the weapon is
effective, the Talosians maintain a psychic illusion so the Enterprise crew do not
perceive the damage they have done.
Pike escapes and discovers the truth about the Talosians. Having wrecked
their planet’s ecology the race moved underground, developing their mental
capacity but losing the ability to produce children (hence their interest in
recreating their race via Pike and Vina). The truth is also revealed about Vina:
she was disfigured in the crash of the Columbia, but the Talosians have
psychically maintained her self-image as that of a beautiful young woman. Pike
agrees to leave the Talosians alone, as long as they maintain Vina’s illusion – in
fact, they create an unreal Captain Pike who stays with her. The Enterprise crew
resume their ongoing voyages . . .
Executives at NBC responded to Roddenberry’s full pilot script with a series
of ‘notes’ – comments on the settings, characters and structure of the drama.
Roddenberry quickly took offence at this interference in ‘his’ project, thinking
he knew best how to tell his story, but was persuaded by Solow that if he were to
have any realistic hope at all of getting Star Trek on air, he’d have to work with
NBC, not against them. Again, this was odd behaviour from a producer who’d
already run his own TV show in The Lieutenant and had previously experienced
the trials and tribulations of dealing with network executives. Roddenberry’s
strong personal investment in the Star Trek concept as a storyteller was
beginning to get in the way of his duties as a practical producer.
Desilu had previously been known for comedy and variety shows, most of
them simple vehicles for the star power of Lucille Ball. Now it was looking at a
major, risky expansion into drama for network television with both Star Trek
and spy thriller Mission: Impossible entering production simultaneously.
Practical problems loomed, starting with assembling a production crew for the
needs of an ambitious drama like Star Trek: the team who produced The Lucy
Show would simply not be up to the task. Instead, Solow and Roddenberry were
faced with the challenge of building a completely new production unit from
scratch to film the revised Star Trek pilot script, in the hope that NBC would
commit to a full series and so result in Desilu recovering its up-front investment.
Although NBC would be paying for Star Trek, the fee Desilu would receive
would regularly be less than the cost of making the show – the difference would
have to be recouped through advertising and foreign sales.
The crew on Star Trek was made up of people selected by Roddenberry and
Solow to realise the creator’s storytelling ambitions. It was clear to the
production team that for every episode of Star Trek as an ongoing series,
everything would have to be re -invented, with the exception of the starship
Enterprise, the ‘police precinct’ of this new show. Every new world, alien
encountered and spaceship discovered had to be created from scratch, meaning a
huge design workload and a thoroughly complex production process, much more
so than any regular doctor, cop or lawyer show (the staples of American
television in the 1960s, as today).
That burden would largely fall on set designer Walter ‘Matt’ Jefferies, an
artist and designer who’d also been a pilot, so was aware of industrial and
technical issues concerning aircraft that could be applied to the Enterprise and
other starships. Roddenberry’s only instruction to him was to avoid the Flash
Gordon look that had previously defined movie spaceships. His task was to
come up with something unknown to present-day science, and definitely not
rocket powered. The result, based on images from the pulp magazine covers
supplied by Samuel A. Peeples, was the saucer propelled by tubular engines, all
tethered to a main body like a sailing ship. Star Trek’s iconic Enterprise was
born, and Peeples’ first contribution to the Star Trek legend had been made . . .
Similarly, costume designer William Ware Theiss faced a series of unusual
challenges. The crew of the Enterprise needed uniforms, and while there might
be plenty of historical and contemporary earthbound military and civilian
uniforms to draw on, Roddenberry wanted his crew clad in something viewers
had never seen before. Like Jefferies, Theiss was also toiling under severe
budget restrictions. Also like Jefferies, Theiss was given a clutch of Peeples’
pulp magazine covers as reference, although instead of spaceships these largely
featured scantily clad women being menaced by alien monsters, not really
reflective of Star Trek at all. They were to function as inspiration for Theiss’s
costume choices.
Effects were a whole other problem. It was fine to build sets and create
costumes, but it would be necessary to show the spaceships flying and the alien
worlds hanging in space. Luckily the Desilu lot in Hollywood was home to the
Howard Anderson Company, an experienced optical effects house. Roddenberry
didn’t have to go far to find the team who could put the ‘special’ into his effects
requirements. Darrell Anderson, who ran the company, would be on set to
ensure that any sequences needing added optical work were shot in such a way
as to be suitable (and economic) for his team to apply their visual magic.
Similarly, Anderson ran an off-stage model studio where the miniature
spaceships designed by Jefferies could be shot separately. The model shooting
stage was often entirely filled by the dominant, almost 14-foot-long model of the
‘miniature’ Enterprise.
The decision-making process involved in creating Star Trek’s first pilot meant
that the many questions that came up during production came back to
Roddenberry to be answered. It was undoubtedly a stressful time, but Star Trek
was his vision and as the key storyteller behind the show, he was the only one
who could clearly instruct the many practitioners hired to make it a reality. It
was Roddenberry who dictated that everything aboard the Enterprise, from the
uniforms through to how the crew conducted themselves, should have a US
Navy feel. It was in the casting of the characters, however, that Roddenberry
truly made his mark. Matching his draft descriptions in his series outline to
suitable actors drew on all his television experience and resulted in characters
that would go on to become international icons.
Key to Roddenberry’s vision of the forward-looking, optimistic characters he
wanted exploring deep space in his ‘Wagon Train to the stars’ was the captain of
the Enterprise. This character was a leader, a man’s man, but one who had
human weaknesses and frailties that he carried with him out to the final frontier
of unknown space. Although the captain certainly had an eye for the ladies, his
only true love would be his ship, the Enterprise.
The original 1964 pitch document defined Captain Robert K. April as ‘the
“skipper”, about thirty-four, Academy graduate, rank of captain. Clearly the
leading man and central character. This role is designed for an actor of top
repute and ability. A shorthand sketch of Robert April might be “A space-age
Captain Horatio Hornblower”, lean and capable both mentally and physically. A
colourfully complex personality, he is capable of action and decision which can
verge on the heroic – and at the same time lives a continual battle with self-
doubt and the loneliness of command.’
In ‘The Cage’, movie actor Jeffrey Hunter played Captain Christopher Pike
(also named James Winter in early drafts). He was then best known for playing
Jesus Christ in King of Kings (1961). Roddenberry was pleased to have secured
the services of a well-known film actor for his potential TV series on the basis of
his pilot script alone. Hunter had guest starred in various TV shows, but Star
Trek was to be his first commitment to taking on a leading role in a series,
following the failure of his 1963–4 Western/legal series Temple Houston. Other
actors who’d been considered for the leading role included Peter Graves (soon to
become the star of Mission: Impossible), The Time Machine’s Rod Taylor, Jack
Lord (later famous for his long run on Hawaii 5-0), Forbidden Planet’s Leslie
Nielsen (casting that would have done much to highlight the similarities between
that movie and Star Trek), Ed Kemmer (Commander Corry in Space Patrol) and
Canadian actor William Shatner.
With Hunter in place, attention turned to the other roles. Roddenberry and his
casting team were looking at ‘The Cage’ not as a one-off TV movie but as the
template for their ongoing series, so it was important to fill the key roles with the
right actors: after all, they could be playing these parts for a good number of
years if the show was a success.
The easiest part to fill – at least for Roddenberry – was the role of Number
One, the emotionless female second-in-command on the Enterprise. The pitch
document had billed this character as the Executive Officer, ‘never referred to as
anything but “Number One”, this officer is female. Almost mysteriously female,
in fact – slim and dark in a Nile Valley way, age uncertain, one of those women
who will always look the same between years twenty to fifty. An extraordinarily
efficient officer, “Number One” enjoys playing it expressionless, cool – [she] is
probably April’s superior in detailed knowledge of the multiple equipment
systems, departments and crewmembers aboard the vessel.’ The role was gifted
to Majel Barrett without any serious consideration being given to any other
actresses. Roddenberry’s blatant favouritism (his weakness for women would be
transferred to the character of the captain of the Enterprise) would be used
against him by the network when it was time to cast important roles in Star
Trek’s second pilot episode.
Perhaps the most important single decision made in the casting choices during
pre-production in early November 1964 was the choice of Leonard Nimoy to
portray the Enterprise’s alien science officer, Mr Spock. The pitch document
focused on the First Lieutenant’s alien appearance, but his later ‘emotionless’
character had already been given to Number One. Mr Spock is ‘the captain’s
right hand man, the working level commander of all the ship’s functions . . . the
first view of him can be almost frightening – a face so heavy-lidded and satanic,
you might almost expect him to have a forked tail. Probably half-Martian, he has
a slightly reddish complexion and semi-pointed ears. But strangely, Mr. Spock’s
quiet temperament is in dramatic contrast to his satanic look. His primary
weakness is an almost cat-like curiosity over anything slightly “alien”.’ Other
actors had been considered for the role, including Western actor DeForest
Kelley, Rex Holman and dwarf actor Michael Dunn, best known for playing
Miguelito Loveless, the recurring villain in The Wild, Wild West (1965–9). Their
casting would have brought a very different interpretation to the character of
Spock. It was, however, Majel Barrett who was instrumental in the selection of
Nimoy, recalling him from a guest appearance in Roddenberry’s The Lieutenant
and bringing him to the producer’s attention once again. His thin frame and
angular features were ideal for the alien character Roddenberry had in mind.
While all the actors associated with Star Trek saw their professional lives
changed by the series, this applied to no one more than Nimoy. Following his
time in the US Army, Nimoy played a variety of guest roles in TV series,
including episodes of The Untouchables, The Outer Limits and Perry Mason, but
it was the character of Spock that would bring him public acclaim, private
anguish and define him in the eyes of audiences right up to and beyond J. J.
Abrams’ 2009 movie reinvention of Star Trek. It is safe to say that Star Trek
would not have been the same without Nimoy as Spock: within days of his
casting Roddenberry had requested his props department cost up something
simply described in a memo as ‘ear appliances’ . . .
Rejected for the role of Spock, DeForest Kelley was up for the part of ‘Doc’,
the ship’s medical officer. The character was one of the more straightforward in
Roddenberry’s initial 1964 pitch document: ‘Ship’s Doctor – Philip Boyce, an
unlikely space traveller. At the age of fifty-one, he’s worldly, humorously
cynical, makes it a point to thoroughly enjoy his own weaknesses. Captain
April’s only real confidant, “Bones” Boyce considers himself the only realist
aboard, and measures each new landing in terms of relative annoyance, rather
than excitement.’ Kelley had played plenty of irascible country doctors in
several Western movies and TV series, but he lost out on the role in ‘The Cage’
to B-movie actor John Hoyt. Neither the character of Dr Philip John Boyce nor
the actor’s participation in Star Trek would last beyond the filming of this pilot.
After a fairly fruitless search for an actress to play Vina, Roddenberry eventually
secured Susan Oliver for the guest starring role.
With the creative and casting work complete, shooting began on ‘The Cage’
on the day after Thanksgiving, 27 November 1964 on Desilu’s Stage 16 in
Culver City. Fittingly, the first scenes shot involved one of Star Trek’s iconic
sets: the transporter room of the Enterprise. Roddenberry had dreamt up the
‘transporter’ as a method of getting characters to and from planets (and other
locations) without a lot of messing about in space shuttles (or, indeed, having the
Enterprise repeatedly land and take off from planets). It was an elegant solution
to a practical problem (saving a fortune in regular effects work, although the
transporter ‘beaming’ effect itself became a regular feature).
The two weeks’ filming saw Roddenberry engaged in script rewrites as well
as supervising the entire production process. Shooting wrapped on 11 December
and a period of frantic post-production followed in which special effects and
model shots were worked into the edited footage. Three days after Christmas
1964, Gene Roddenberry viewed a completed rough cut of his debut episode of
Star Trek – but he was not a happy man.
According to a memo he prepared after viewing the episode, and other
correspondence with friends, Roddenberry felt the action in ‘The Cage’ didn’t
start quickly enough, that the character of the captain was not defined clearly
enough in the show’s opening moments, and that the time constraints involved in
filming the episode over just two weeks had damaged the final product. A
revised edit was prepared for mid-January 1965, and then the show had to be
screened for NBC executives, ready or not. Roddenberry admitted that if he’d
had more time, he’d have continued to rework ‘The Cage’.
Screenwriter William Goldman’s famous maxim about Hollywood – ‘Nobody
knows anything’ – applied equally to US television in the 1960s. Reluctant to
make choices themselves about which programmes to back, NBC executives
relied on flawed audience tests to tell them whether a show would be a hit or not.
Such a different, unknown and untested quantity as Star Trek was always going
to throw a regular test audience more used to generic Westerns, cop shows or
sitcoms than challenging space adventures. So it proved.
With mixed results from the audience tests, NBC were still unsure about
whether to back Star Trek. There was a lot about the show – as exhibited in ‘The
Cage’ – that they liked, but there were other areas they were concerned about.
Their primary worry was that if they failed to develop the show, they could be
losing a potential hit series.
Roddenberry now felt he and the team had ironed out many of the problems
they expected to encounter in creating and mounting a dramatically different TV
series like Star Trek: he and the others involved wanted to capitalise on the
lessons learned and get stuck in to producing the series proper. Throughout
February 1965 Roddenberry felt trapped in a kind of limbo in which the fate of
his show lay in the hands of a group of nervous NBC executives who, reluctant
to make the wrong decision, were thus delaying making any decision at all. If an
answer wasn’t forthcoming very soon Roddenberry knew the series would not be
able to enter production quickly enough to make the forthcoming fall 1965 NBC
schedule. Just as it started to look like Star Trek would be an ignoble failure,
Gene Roddenberry was given a unique second chance.

Against usual practice for the time, Star Trek was afforded the unexpected
luxury of a second attempt at creating a viable pilot episode. NBC itself accepted
some of the blame for the failings of ‘The Cage’, in that they had selected that
storyline from the three on offer. Additionally, the network had already spent
$630,000 making ‘The Cage’ (at that point, Star Trek’s initial pilot was the most
expensive ever made) and while the expense of failed pilots was a recognised
part of the television business, they saw enough potential in the Star Trek
concept to let a frustrated Gene Roddenberry try again.
In Inside Star Trek, Desilu executive Herb Solow and associate producer
Robert Justman offered their take on the reasons for NBC’s rejection of ‘The
Cage’: ‘The NBC party line was that it was “too cerebral”. The unspoken reason,
however, dealt more with the manners and morals of mid-1960s America. NBC
was very concerned with the “eroticism” of the pilot and the ensuing series.
Their knowledge of Roddenberry’s attitude toward [women] didn’t help. NBC
sales was equally concerned with the Spock character, [fearing he’d be] seen as
demonic by Bible Belt affiliate-stations and advertisers. Their concern presented
a serious stumbling block to the sale of the hoped-for series.’
Roddenberry discussed his view of the rejection of ‘The Cage’ at a Star Trek
convention in 1986. ‘The reasons [for NBC’s rejection] were these: too cerebral,
not enough action and adventure,’ said Roddenberry, creating his legendary
explan -ation for the first pilot’s failure. ‘“The Cage” didn’t end with a chase and
a right cross to the jaw. Another thing they felt was wrong was that we had
Majel [Barrett] as a female second-in-command. In the test reports, the women
in the audience were saying, “Who does she think she is?” They hated her. It is
hard to believe that in twenty years, we have gone from a totally sexist society to
where we are today.
‘We also had what they called a “childish concept” – an alien with pointy ears
from another planet [Spock]. People in those days were not talking about life
forms on other worlds. It was generally assumed that this [Earth] is the place
where life occurred and probably nowhere else. It would have been all right if
this alien with pointy ears, this “silly creature,” had the biggest zap gun in
existence, or the strength of 100 men, that could be exciting. His only difference
from us was [that] he had an alien perspective.’
In a letter from February 1965 to his agent Alden Schwimmer, Roddenberry
had defended ‘The Cage’ from the criticisms of NBC. ‘Whether or not this was
the right story for a sale [to the network], it was definitely [the] right one for
ironing out successfully a thousand how, when and whats of television science
fiction. It did that job superbly and has us firmly in position to be the first who
has ever successfully made TV series science fiction at a mass audience level
and yet with a chance for quality and network prestige too. I have no respect or
tolerance for those who say things like “If it were not so cerebral . . .”, and such
garbage. [I] am wide open to criticism and suggestions, but not from those who
think answers lie in things like giving someone aboard a dog, or adding a cute
eleven-year-old boy to the crew.’ Later, Star Trek: The Next Generation would
come close to the ‘cute eleven-year-old boy’ in Roddenberry’s own creation of
the youthful wunderkind character of Wesley Crusher, while Star Trek:
Enterprise would include Porthos, the captain’s dog, among the ship’s crew.
Despite this combative attitude, Roddenberry did admit (quoted in Captains’
Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages) that as a producer he’d
perhaps failed to deliver what he’d promised. ‘They probably felt that I had
broken my word. In the series format I had promised a Wagon Train to the stars
action/ adventure, science-fiction style. But, instead, ‘The Cage’ was a beautiful
story, but it wasn’t action/adventure. It wasn’t what I had promised. Clearly the
problem with the first pilot was easily traced back to me. I got too close to it and
lost perspective. I had known the only way to tell Star Trek was with an
action/adventure plot. I forgot my plan and tried for something proud.’
With ‘The Cage’, Roddenberry’s storytelling ambitions had trumped his years
of practical production experience. According to him, it was only the prospect of
the US landing a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s, as pledged by
President Kennedy at the start of the decade, that made NBC pay con -tinued
attention to Star Trek beyond ‘The Cage’.
In approaching a potential second pilot episode, Roddenberry was willing to
tone down the Spock character, a compromise as NBC has originally wanted
him removed altogether. Ironically, the alien Spock would turn out to be the only
character retained from ‘The Cage’ in the ongoing Star Trek series. Indeed, he
would go on to become one of the most iconic characters in the history of
television and one of the most loved of all the Star Trek characters.
‘They rejected most of the cast [of “The Cage”] and asked that Spock be
dropped too,’ Roddenberry recalled. ‘I said I would not do a second pilot
without Spock because I felt we had to have him for many reasons. I felt we
couldn’t do a space show without at least one person on board who constantly
reminded you that you were out in space and in a world of the future. NBC
finally agreed to do the second pilot with Spock in it, saying, “Well, kind of keep
him in the background.”’
Once again, the network requested a trio of potential story outlines for the
second pilot. Roddenberry himself had originally written two of them (‘Mudd’s
Women’ – heavily rewritten by Stephen Kandel – and ‘The Omega Glory’, a
take on the politics of the Cold War), while the third was ‘Star Prime’ (later
retitled ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’), written by Roddenberry’s pulp
fiction source, Samuel A. Peeples.
NBC thought Peeples’ ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’ offered a better
showcase for the potential of Star Trek than any of the ideas put forward by the
show’s creator. Born in 1917, making him four years older than Roddenberry,
Peeples would go on to write one other Star Trek episode (for The Animated
Series), and he contributed to the storyline for the second Star Trek movie, The
Wrath of Khan. However, having written hundreds of television episodes in his
time, he knew how good drama worked, and he brought that to his script for Star
Trek’s second pilot.
One aspect of ‘The Cage’ NBC had disliked was the casting of Jeffrey Hunter
as Captain Pike. By 1965, the actor was also reluctant to commit to a potentially
long-running TV series, so when his option was not picked up for the second
pilot, it came as a relief. This move allowed Roddenberry and Peeples to develop
a different kind of captain for their Enterprise, and to build the drama around a
key relationship between the captain and his antagonist, Gary Mitchell (2001: A
Space Odyssey’s Gary Lockwood).
Roddenberry modelled his new captain more closely on Horatio Hornblower:
a flawed hero, or at least a hero who believed himself to be flawed. Given that,
according to Robert Justman, NBC saw Hunter as ‘wooden’, Roddenberry
sought out an actor with a more dynamic range and a more expressive approach
to television acting.
Roddenberry first approached Lloyd Bridges (father of actors Jeff and Beau
Bridges and star of Sea Hunt) for the new role of Captain James Kirk. He also
once again approached Jack Lord, who had been sounded out about the role of
Pike in the previous pilot. Neither actor secured the job, but it was third time
lucky for Gene Roddenberry in his hunt for a new Enterprise captain.
Robert Justman had worked with William Shatner on anthology show The
Outer Limits. ‘[Shatner] had a good reputation in the television and
entertainment industries. He was someone to be reckoned with and we certainly
understood that he was a more accomplished actor than Jeff Hunter . . . he gave
us more dimension. Shatner was classically trained. He had enormous technical
abilities to do different things and he gave the captain a terrific personality. He
embodied what Gene had in mind.’
While the drama of ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’ was built around the
captain trying to rescue his friend Gary Mitchell from the consequences of his
transformation into a God-like being, the recasting of the central role allowed for
new relationships with the ship’s other remaining crewmembers, especially
Spock.
For the second pilot, the character of the strong female Number One was
dropped (relegating Roddenberry’s lover Majel Barrett to the smaller
background role of Nurse Chapel in later episodes) and Spock promoted in her
place. The emotional Spock of ‘The Cage’ was rethought and he acquired the
coldly logical characteristics of Number One, his new nature playing nicely with
his unearthly looks. Noted Nimoy, ‘Bill Shatner’s broader acting style created a
new chemistry between the captain and Spock, and now it was quite different
from that of the first pilot.’ The central trio of Star Trek legend was not yet
complete, however, as the second pilot did not feature the yetto-be-developed
character of Dr McCoy. Although Roddenberry had included a ship’s doctor in
the series outline, the role of captain’s confidant was filled in the second pilot by
the character of Gary Mitchell.
To ensure that such an effects-heavy, unconventional TV show could be made
in a standard television time scale of around a week per episode, NBC insisted
that Star Trek’s second pilot be shot in an eight-day period rather than the
sixteen days taken to film ‘The Cage’ (each episode of the regular series would
have to be shot in seven to eight days if it was to meet fall transmission dates).
Director James Goldstone was hired to helm the show. ‘“Where No Man Has
Gone Before” [went through] a great deal of polishing and rewriting on a
conceptual and physical level, so that we could make it in eight days’, he later
said. ‘[It] seemed to have the potential to establish those characters on a human
level. The only gimmick is the mutation, the silvering of Gary Mitchell’s eyes,
and it works because it’s simple, as opposed to growing horns or something.
Ours was a human science fiction concept, perhaps cerebral [but] certainly
emotional.’
Production on ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’ began on 15 July 1965,
with shooting commencing on 19 July on Stage 15 at the Desilu Studio in Culver
City. As the production was able to use many of the sets already constructed for
‘The Cage’, the budget for the new episode came in at just $300,000, around half
of the first attempt. The second pilot featured all the elements that NBC had
liked about the Star Trek concept, but thanks to Peeples’ script, the action-
adventure element that had been missing from ‘The Cage’ had been beefed up
considerably. It didn’t take NBC long, upon viewing the completed cut of
‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’, to greenlight Star Trek as an ongoing TV
series for the fall 1966 schedule.
Chapter 3
Where No One Has Gone Before:
Star Trek’s First Year
‘Although we were in the seemingly simplistic medium of television, this
simplistic medium allowed us to really ask very deep questions. And we
didn’t always give deep answers, because it wasn’t possible. That’s why the
audience, over the last twenty-five years has stayed with Star Trek.’ Gene
Roddenberry

Star Trek was all about its characters. That was as much a sensible storytelling
decision as anything else. Gene Roddenberry’s ‘Wagon Train to the stars’
concept was sound enough, but someone – in this case the practical production
team of Robert Justman and Herb Solow – had to realise the planets, creatures,
aliens and future technology that was required every week. Hence, rather than
focus on the set dressing or the ‘wow’ factor of alien environments, Star Trek’s
core – and the main reason it has endured for over forty-five years – was to be in
its unique characters.
It is the distinctive triumvirate of Kirk, Spock and McCoy that has resulted in
the Star Trek phenomenon living long and prospering. Each of the characters in
the original series of Star Trek has become iconic, and that is because they are
simply defined (which is not the same as being simple). The central trio are
positioned at distinct points of an emotional continuum, at least to begin with.
Spock is the cold, logical alien who looks quizzically upon humanity. Dr McCoy
is essentially Spock’s opposite, driven by his emotions and his natural
engagement with humanity (that’s why he’s a doctor, dammit!). In between is
Kirk, the leader who must strike a balance between the opposing viewpoints of
Spock and McCoy, and take into account the wider welfare of his crew and the
new life forms and new civilisations the Enterprise encounters through its
explorations of the galaxy. Each is prone to extremes, and their actions are often
modulated by one (or both) of the other two.
That each of Star Trek’s core characters is easily summed up in an instantly
recognisable iconic catchphrase is a testament to the impact of these characters
on viewers worldwide. They may not have actually used any of these specific
phrases that often, but they became embedded in popular culture (along with the
never-uttered ‘Beam me up, Scotty’) as central to viewers’ ex -periences of Star
Trek. When novelty group The Firm bizarrely reached number one in the UK
music charts in 1987 (and became the ninth best-selling single that year) with
‘Star Trekkin’’, it was because the song was made up of nothing but phrases
associated with each iconic Star Trek character. They were instantly recognised
by British viewers who’d grown up watching the show in endless reruns
throughout the 1970s. Rather than the oft-uttered ‘Hailing frequencies open,
Captain’, Communications Officer Uhura gets ‘There’s Klingons on the
starboard bow’, while Spock is represented by the classic ‘It’s life, Jim, but not
as we know it’. McCoy gets a variation of a phrase he did often say on TV, ‘It’s
worse than that – he’s dead, Jim’, while Chief Engineer Scotty is represented by
the famous ‘Ye cannae change the laws of physics’. Kirk himself gets ‘We come
in peace; shoot to kill’, a phrase that never appeared on the show, but summed
up a popular impression of the trigger-happy captain’s approach to alien
encounters (when he was not bedding alien women, of course). This approach
would not necessarily work as well with the characters from Star Trek: The Next
Generation, who were harder to sum up in such simple, iconic and memorable
lines.
That these characters could be invoked in a novelty song made up of simple
catchphrases twenty years after Star Trek: The Original Series was in production
is astonishing and stands as a testament to the storytelling of Gene Roddenberry,
the writers and producers and William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest
Kelley and the rest of The Original Series cast. It is this trio of characters that
explains the lasting impact of Star Trek on pop culture worldwide.

With an order for an initial sixteen episodes of Star Trek delivered by NBC in
February 1966, it was down to Gene Roddenberry to draw together the stories
and scripts needed to feed Robert Justman’s weekly production machine if air
dates were to be maintained. The two pilots had shown just what an uphill task it
would be to bring the diverse and exotic worlds of Star Trek to the TV screen on
a weekly basis. Jefferies and Theiss were central to the task, as was Fred
Phillips, who would have to handle the make-up requirements of Spock and any
visiting guest star aliens-of-the-week.
Roddenberry’s biggest and most immediate requirement by early March 1966
was for writers for the new series, with shooting due to begin at the start of June.
The executive producer himself would function as an ideas and rewrite man, not
an original writer, but he needed scripts he could rewrite to make them uniquely
Star Trek. The TV writers who were to be involved in the creation of the show
had to be comfortable with the fact that their work would always be subject to
Roddenberry’s revisions – but not all were.
Talent agencies, independent agents and professional colleagues all got the
call: Star Trek needed writers! Groups of aspiring episodic contributors were
invited to a Desilu screening room, there to be shown the second pilot episode
and to hear Roddenberry outline the premise of the series and the requirements
the show had for scripts. The process was enough to turn off many established
TV writers who just didn’t get the concept, didn’t think the show would last, or
simply knew that ‘sci-fi’ was not for them. It was a disappointing process for
Roddenberry, who realised he was going to have to put in much more one-on-
one time with individually selected writers if he was going to succeed in
generating the story ideas and finished scripts he urgently needed.
Roddenberry drafted a memo (largely based on his original 1964 series
proposal) for aspiring Star Trek writers that outlined the series and included a
collection of ‘springboard’ storylines as examples of the kind of thing the series
required. The new ‘writer’s guide’ outlined the main characters, the series
situation, the world of the future the characters inhabited and the science and
sociology of the show. It was hoped this document would provide enough
information for writers more comfortable with Western towns, courtrooms or
hospital emergency rooms to write for a space-traversing ship and her diverse
crew.
Roddenberry, however, had ambitions to reach beyond just TV writers: he
wanted to appeal to successful science fiction novelists and short story writers.
His thinking was that such people, even if they had no experience of writing for
television, would be familiar with the ideas behind the futuristic drama of Star
Trek and so would be able to contribute in a unique way to the development of
this most singular of television series. While his instinct was right in reaching
out to other accomplished science fiction storytellers, it was to be an approach
that produced very mixed results.
Of those consulted, the one who most readily grasped the concepts and
characters of Star Trek was Richard Matheson. He had contributed episodes to
Rod Serling’s groundbreaking SF, horror and fantasy anthology The Twilight
Zone (which, like Star Trek, had initially begun life as a pilot at Desilu), and had
written a series of fantasy novels, several of which would later become films
(among them What Dreams May Come, Somewhere in Time and I Am Legend ).
He would contribute ‘The Enemy Within’, the fifth episode of the first season,
that saw a transporter accident split Captain Kirk into his ‘good’ and ‘evil’
personalities.
Others, such as novelist A. E. van Vogt, could not come to terms with the
economic limitations of weekly television compared to the limitless canvas of
the blank page. The ideas and characters he submitted to Roddenberry were
either not well developed enough for television or unsuitable for the medium,
being better suited to a 200-page novel than a one-hour TV episode.
Throughout the original three-year run of Star Trek, several well-known
science fiction writers did get episodes on air, not all of them without incident.
Among those who succeeded were Ted Sturgeon (who did much to develop
Spock and Vulcan culture in the second season opener ‘Amok Time’), Jerry
Sohl, Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison (the most problematic), Jerome Bixby,
George Clayton Johnson (another Twilight Zone veteran) and Norman Spinrad.
Roddenberry welcomed their inventiveness and ideas, but he had to put huge
amounts of work into translating their concepts into shootable scripts for
Justman to get on the stages at Desilu. Not all the authors understood or were
comfortable with the process of weekly television, but most were content to bow
to Roddenberry’s reworking of their originals (Harlan Ellison being the notable
exception). After all, most reckoned, who knew Star Trek better than Gene
Roddenberry?
Many of the initial basics of the show were driven by the realities of television
production. As well as the time-saving transporter that ‘beamed’ the crew up and
down from planets, it was deemed that the crew should predominantly visit
Earth-like worlds (labelled Class-M planets) as then the production could avoid
the need to put the show’s stars into bulky space suits every week. Additionally,
although the opening mantra of the show promised voyages ‘where no man has
gone before’, in the old Star Trek joke there always had to be someone there
when they arrived (alien or human) otherwise there was no drama . . . The
civilisations discovered far out in space would also often reflect those on Earth
(whether it be Romans, Greeks, Chicago gangsters or Nazis) in order that
viewers could relate. In his original 1964 pitch document, Roddenberry had
called this the ‘parallel worlds concept. It means simply that our stories deal with
planets and animal life, plus people, quite similar to that on Earth. Social
evolution will also have interesting points of similarity with ours. There will be
differences, of course, ranging from the subtle to the boldly dramatic, out of
which comes much of our colour and excitement. The “parallel worlds” concept
makes production practical by permitting action-adventure science fiction at a
practical budget figure via the use of available “Earth” casting, sets, locations,
costuming, and so on . . . The “parallel worlds” concept tends to keep even the
most imaginative stories within the general audience’s frame of reference.’ The
truly alien would have a hard time holding the attention of a mid-1960s TV
audience, or so executives and creatives alike believed. Roddenberry also had an
ulterior motive for this propensity for Earth-like planets . . .
From the very beginning Star Trek was about exploring ‘strange new worlds’,
but as it turned out, the strangest world the series would explore was 1960s
America. As with Rod Serling before him, Gene Roddenberry wanted his stories
to mean something, to contain some kind of social or political commentary, but
to evade the attentions of nervous commercial sponsors and network censors he
found a way to disguise his social commentary in science fiction stories of far
future worlds.
Second only to Roddenberry in controlling the creative storytelling side of
Star Trek was writer and story editor D. C. Fontana. She had briefly been
Roddenberry’s secretary, but quickly became a writer on the new show, starting
with the seventh episode of the first series, ‘Charlie X’. This was based on one
of Roddenberry’s ‘springboard’ storylines titled ‘The Day Charlie Became God’.
As with the second pilot, it was another story about a crewman attaining God-
like powers. Fontana would go on to write several notable episodes of the series,
but more importantly she quickly replaced the show’s initial story editor Steven
W. Carabatsos in early 1967. She would go on to story-edit The Animated Series
of 1973, contribute scripts to The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, as well
as various Star Trek spin-off projects, and co-write the post-Star Trek TV pilot
The Questor Tapes (1974) with Roddenberry.
Supporting Fontana on the creative story side was John D. F. Black. He was
the executive story consultant on the series, hired by Roddenberry after he won a
Writers Guild Award for an episode of the series Mr. Novak. His role was to
supervise the various freelance writers, monitor their work and get their scripts
in on time and in suitable shape for Roddenberry’s review. Although Black
didn’t write much for the series itself (in fact he contributed only a single
episode, ‘The Naked Time’ – and its follow-up on The Next Generation, ‘The
Naked Now’), he was crucial in shaping other writers’ work.
There was another Gene, writer–producer Gene L. Coon, who was a key
authorial voice alongside Gene Roddenberry in the early codification of the Star
Trek universe. Following the departure of John D. F. Black, who had difficulty
dealing with Roddenberry’s constant rewriting, Coon became the key cre -ative
force behind the development of Star Trek beyond Roddenberry’s original series
concept, joining the series as producer after the initial thirteen episodes.
Like Roddenberry, Coon was an accomplished TV writer mainly on episodic
Western series like Have Gun, Will Travel, Wagon Train and Rawhide. Also like
Roddenberry he’d served in the military during the war, although his experience
came from the Pacific theatre. From the middle of the first season to the middle
of the second, Coon brought a strong streak of moral thought to the drama,
something that defined many of the best and best-remembered Star Trek
episodes. Coon directly scripted twelve episodes in all, more than any other
writer, and he closely influenced many more.
During this period it was Coon, not Roddenberry, who created several key
concepts, including many that survived well beyond The Original Series to
inform the movies and successor TV shows. Among them were the Klingons (in
‘Errand of Mercy’), genetic Übermensch Khan Noonien Singh (in ‘Space Seed’),
warp speed developer Zefram Cochrane (in ‘Metamorphosis’) and the concept of
the Prime Directive (which pro -posed non-interference in undeveloped
indigenous planetary cultures). Coon’s supervision also resulted in the naming of
the United Federation of Planets, while Starfleet Command was established as
the body that directed the voyages of the Enterprise.
Coon’s work, alongside that of Roddenberry, Fontana, Black and the
individual episodic writers served to create a coherent, seemingly consistent
universe within which the Star Trek TV adventures could take place. There is a
sense of completeness and consistency to the environment in which the
characters exist, even if individual early episodes feature glaring continuity
errors or shifts in the naming of parts of the ship or peoples (is it deflector
screens or deflector shields? Vulcanians or Vulcans?). These details would be
more clearly defined over time, but the bigger picture made the future world of
Star Trek feel like a real, coherent place.
These details accumulated, episode by episode, and were shaped by
Roddenberry’s rewriting into a gradually more cohesive universe. As well as
Coon’s major contributions, other elements that make up the recognisable Star
Trek universe came from a variety of people. D. C. Fontana gave Spock his
parents – a Vulcan father and human mother (he’d previously only admitted to
‘human ancestors’ in ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’) – as well as the two-
handed Vulcan ‘death grip’ (a bluff used by Spock to fake Kirk’s death in ‘The
Enterprise Incident’). It was from her episodes that two alien races emerged, the
blue antenna-sporting Andorians and the Tellarites, one of the founding races of
the United Federation of Planets – both would survive right through to
Enterprise. Leonard Nimoy came up with the more benign Vulcan nerve pinch
for Spock, based on Richard Matheson’s script ‘The Enemy Within’, which
contained the idea that Spock could disable enemies in a non-violent, non-fatal
way. Nimoy also contributed the Vulcan salute, a peaceful, welcoming hand
gesture (with the raised palm held outwards and fingers parted in the middle in a
V-shape), apparently basing it on a half-remembered Jewish blessing and the
Hebrew letter Shin (meaning ‘God)’. The Romulans, a long-running Star Trek
antagonist race based on the Romans, predated the more well-known Klingons,
first appearing in Paul Schneider’s script ‘Balance of Terror’ (which also
introduced actor Mark Lenard, later to play Spock’s father, Sarek). Writer
Schimon Wincelberg (under his pen name S. Bar-David) introduced the Vulcan
mind-meld in ‘Dagger of the Mind’, allowing Spock to read the thoughts of
other beings through physical contact. The background of Spock’s Vulcan race
was further developed by Theodore Sturgeon in ‘Amok Time’, which, as well as
introducing the Vulcan salute, also saw the debut of the phrase ‘Live long and
prosper’ as a Vulcan greeting.
While Roddenberry came to be affectionately fêted by Star Trek fans as ‘the
Great Bird of the Galaxy’ and sole creator of Star Trek, it is clear that (as with
all television productions) many creative hands were involved, even if one
person provided the initial guiding force for all the others to follow. In a later
speech, Roddenberry noted: ‘When they say on a show “Created by” anyone,
like “Created by Gene Roddenberry”, that is not true. I laid out a pathway, and
then the only thing I will take credit for is [that] I surrounded myself by very
bright people who came up with all those wonderful things.’
Writing about the creation of Star Trek, D. C. Fontana noted: ‘It was not one
mind, but many – a creation by people who lived and loved the show. More than
forty years later audiences still watch and enjoy Star Trek, quite an
accomplishment for a show that almost didn’t make it.’
By early 1966 Gene Roddenberry had secured his long-held dream: an order
for sixteen episodes of his own space show on network television. Star Trek’s
production was in full swing by summer 1966, with the lessons learnt on the two
pilots applied to the shooting of individual episodes in the space of six to eight
days. The scripts were flowing in and Roddenberry’s rewrites were flowing out,
via line producer Robert Justman, to the cre -ative departments who had to
supply the costumes, the props and the planetary locations used to tell Star Trek
stories.
 Roddenberry had determined that by including ‘Where No Man Has Gone
Before’ and by using ‘The Cage’ footage as the basis for a later two-part
episode, he could reduce the required number of new episodes by three. For
those first thirteen new instalments, storyteller Gene Roddenberry owned Star
Trek – others may have contributed to the series’ core concepts and ideals
through their scripts (as noted), but every one of those initial thirteen episodic
scripts went through the ruthless Roddenberry rewrite machine. He was the final
arbiter as to what was or was not part of his Star Trek. Working late nights and
weekends on others’ scripts, Roddenberry was determined that his universe
would make sense and be attractive to viewers. That was one reason he insisted
on his show depicting an optimistic future. ‘I believe in humanity’, noted
Roddenberry during a speech marking his acceptance of a star on Hollywood
Boulevard in 1985. ‘We are an incredible species. We’re still just a child-
creature, we’re still being nasty to each other. And all children go through those
phases. We’re growing up, we’re moving into adolescence now. When we grow
up – man, we’re going to be something.’
Shooting on the first of the new episodes (‘The Corbomite Maneuver’) began
on 24 May 1966, with script revisions continuing right up until the days that
various scenes were shot, common practice in television. By now the Star Trek
production unit was firmly established within Desilu. The budget per episode
was set at around $193,000, at the top end of the scale for one-hour drama in the
late 1960s, but this was due to Star Trek’s many unique production and post-
production requirements in sets, props and costumes, as well as special visual
and sound effects. One way to keep down costs was in establishing an effects
library. Fly-by shots of the Enterprise were regularly reused as the ship came
into orbit around another planet (usually the same stock planet, recoloured),
while regular bits of tech like the medical tricorder, the phaser or the
communicator were given their own signature sounds. The background noise for
the bridge of the Enterprise similarly worked its way into the consciousness of a
generation through constant repetition. The pulsing sound effect itself was not
created especially for Star Trek, but instead came from the Paramount sound
library. It can even be disconcertingly heard in earlier episodes of The Outer
Limits and The Twilight Zone, pre-dating Star Trek. The consistent use of these
sounds establishes time and place in Star Trek: they’re different from the sounds
surrounding the 1960s viewer at home or at work, yet through reuse and
repetition they provide a consistent sense of place in a far out (in time and space,
as well as in concept) drama.
 Only William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy were contracted to appear in all
thirteen of the first batch of episodes. DeForest Kelley – one of the original
actors under consideration for the role of Dr Boyce on ‘Where No Man Has
Gone Before’ – filled the role of the irascible Doctor McCoy, but was only
signed up for seven of the first thirteen episodes. Canadian actor James Doohan
was cast as Scottish engineer Scotty and guaranteed five shows. George Takei
was cast as Sulu, fulfilling Roddenberry’s hopes for a multi-ethnic range of
characters on the Enterprise, and signed up for seven shows. Nichelle Nichols
won the role of Communications Officer Uhura, but no minimum number of
episodes was guaranteed. Actress Grace Lee Whitney was guaranteed four days’
work across seven episodes, as her character of Yeoman Janice Rand was then
considered part of the core group indicated by her inclusion in many of the pre-
publicity photos. Rand was, however, quietly dropped while Uhura went on to
become one of the characters instantly connected with Star Trek. These
contractual arrangements go some way to explaining why across the early Star
Trek episodes, characters appear to come and go and some don’t feature in
certain episodes at all, even McCoy, who was nonetheless quickly established as
one of the core trio. This flexibility, however, allowed the production team to
respond to audience reaction to characters and make changes and substitutions in
the hope of firming up that audience appeal. This was quite far-sighted and
fortuitous, especially as one Star Trek character proved to be more popular with
1960s viewers than any other: the ‘satanic-looking’ Mr Spock.

Prior to Star Trek’s September 1966 debut, a few pivotal details had to be locked
down. The opening of the show would be important in highlighting the setting of
Star Trek in the viewers’ minds every week. This had to be done in a succinct
manner, quickly and easily over the show’s opening credits. Alexander Courage
had been commissioned to produce the theme tune for the first pilot and that
would be retained, but Gene Roddenberry wanted a voiceover explaining what
the series was about (following Herb Solow’s early suggestion). As the episodes
featured regular ‘Captain’s Log’ story updates, it seemed sensible to have the
‘saga sell’ (as the dramatic statement of the concept of a show is called today)
narrated in character by William Shatner as Captain Kirk. The only debate was
around the exact detail of what he would say.
In August 1966, just five weeks before the first episode aired, associate
producer Robert Justman sent an urgent memo to Roddenberry pointing out: ‘It
is important that you compose, without delay, our standard opening narration for
Bill Shatner to record. It should run about fifteen seconds in length.’ That
opened the floodgates for various Star Trek creatives to try their hands at
crafting a suitable opening narration, something that encapsulated the story of
this new show. Roddenberry’s first attempt was rather long-winded: ‘This is the
story of the United Space Ship Enterprise. Assigned a five-year patrol of our
galaxy, the giant starship visits Earth colonies, regulates commerce, and explores
strange new worlds and civilizations. These are its voyages . . . and its
adventures.’
Although that contained some of the now classic Star Trek opening narration,
it wasn’t quite snappy enough. Justman’s turn at honing Roddenberry’s words
got closer to what was needed: ‘This is the story of the starship Enterprise. Its
mission: to advance knowledge, contact alien life and enforce intergalactic law .
. . to explore strange new worlds, where no man has gone before.’
Although Justman developed the distinctive rhythm that would be used in the
final narration, it still needed editing and revising. Producer John D. F. Black
took a pass at crafting suitable opening words. ‘The USS Enterprise . . . starship
. . . Its mission, a five-year patrol to seek out and contact alien life . . . to explore
the infinite frontier of space . . . Where no man has gone before . . . A Star
Trek!’
His second attempt introduced more pivotal elements that would influence the
final, now classic, narration: ‘Space, the final frontier . . . Endless, silent, waiting
. . . This is the story of the United Space Ship Enterprise. Its mission, a five-year
patrol of the galaxy – to seek out and contact all alien life, to explore, to travel
the vast galaxy where no man has gone before . . . A Star Trek!’
After over a week of this, Gene Roddenberry pulled together the various
drafts on 10 August 1966 and crafted this final (and now famous) version for
Shatner to record: ‘Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship
Enterprise . . . Its five-year mission to explore strange new worlds, seek out new
life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before . . .’
Roddenberry had successfully fused the best elements of all the drafts by
himself, Justman and Black to craft a new, snappier and more rhythmic
narration, while also introducing, in ‘to boldly go’, the infamous split infinitive
that would haunt him. The narration’s indication of a five-year mission for the
Enterprise was also a statement of intent on behalf of the show’s producers, who
hoped to secure a lengthy and profitable run for Star Trek, as after five years
there’d be enough episodes to put the show into syndication.


Prior to the launch of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry had the good sense to court
the growing body of science fiction fans that gathered regularly at conventions.
He felt they could act as ambassadors for his show, spreading awareness to their
friends and family via word of mouth. Roddenberry felt that such fans (often
more wedded to literary science fiction than the ‘lighter’ film and TV variety)
were so starved of decent television fantasy that they’d support Star Trek
regardless of whether they personally liked the show or not.
Some television producers may have seen Roddenberry’s attendance at the
24th Annual World Science Fiction Convention in Cleveland – just five days
before his new show premiered on NBC – as foolhardy. They’d no doubt be
keener on him touring the TV talk shows and news studios to promote their new
show. Roddenberry, however, felt it important to cultivate fan support – you
never knew when it might come in useful . . .
Roddenberry screened ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’ to a 500-strong fan
audience, who welcomed the new show with a standing ovation. This was just
the prelude to Thursday, 8 September 1966 when NBC aired ‘The Man Trap’ as
the first episode of Star Trek. Most critical reaction was lukewarm, seemingly
preferring to postpone judgement until the series had run a little longer. Only the
Hollywood Reporter wholeheartedly endorsed the new series as a ‘winner’. One
appreciative viewer, though, was Lucille Ball, who sent a note to the production
team’s Desilu offices congratulating them all on having ‘a hit on your hands’
and expressing how ‘proud and happy I am’.
Never one to waste anything, Roddenberry had come up with an idea on how
to use the material shot for ‘The Cage’ pilot episode – and keep the production
on schedule at the same time. That pilot could not now be screened as so much
had changed in terms of cast, approach and even the look of the show. However,
by concocting a ‘wraparound’ story featuring the current Enterprise crew,
Roddenberry figured he could use the material from ‘The Cage’ as a flashback,
with the common link being Spock. The result was the two-part tale ‘The
Menagerie’. Spock hijacks the Enterprise, along with the now-crippled Captain
Pike (Sean Kenney standing in for the non-returning Jeffrey Hunter), and returns
to Talos IV. Trapped aboard the Enterprise, Kirk and Starbase Commodore
Mendez stage an investigation into Spock’s actions – aided by a visual record of
his previous visit to Talos IV, transmitted from the now forbidden planet itself.
The new material was shot in just five days at a lesser cost than a regular
episode, while the participants in ‘The Cage’ were paid additional fees for the
reuse of their material. The result was a cheaper-than-usual two-part Star Trek
story (the only one in The Original Series) that made the universe of the show
appear just that little bit larger – and helped the production make up for time lost
when it slipped behind schedule.

Leonard Nimoy’s Spock rapidly proved to be the break-out character in Star

Trek. NBC had initially objected to his look and depiction in ‘The Cage’ and
‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’ – even going to the lengths of ‘doctoring’
publicity material to tone down his Vulcan ears. Executives had urged
Roddenberry to drop the ‘satanic-looking’ character, but the series’ creator was
not to be dissuaded. He knew that Star Trek needed a regular alien character as
part of the Enterprise crew, alongside his diverse selection of humans. Just as
the Lone Ranger needed his Tonto, the Green Hornet his Kato, so Captain Kirk
needed Spock by his side.
Roddenberry knew that the character opened up a whole universe of story
possibilities that would otherwise be difficult to reach. His half-Vulcan, half-
human heritage meant that Spock was a conflicted character from the beginning,
striving to live up to the Vulcan ideals of non-emotionalism, yet torn by his
genetic human leanings. In early episodes this would be explored through Nurse
Christine Chapel’s crush on Spock and how he dealt with the very human
feelings she brought out in him.
It was under the influence of a mood-altering drug that Chapel admitted her
feelings for Spock (in ‘The Naked Time’), while Spock’s experience of Pon farr
(the Vulcan mating ritual) would bring out Chapel’s maternal instincts (in
‘Amok Time’). Their relationship developed in odd ways through The Original
Series, with Chapel housing Spock’s consciousness within her own mind in
order to save him from Henoch, an evil disembodied energy being (in ‘Return to
Tomorrow’, an inspiration for the Spockcentric trilogy of Star Trek movies, II–
IV), while the pair ‘enjoyed’ a forced kiss while controlled by bored telepaths (in
‘Plato’s Stepchildren’). Much later, Spock himself expresses his infatuation with
Chapel while under the effect of Harry Mudd’s love potion (in the episode
‘Mudd’s Passion’, from the mid-1970s animated Star Trek series).
In the first J. J. Abrams’ Star Trek movie, Uhura controversially filled the
Chapel position in connection with the new Spock. In ‘The Man Trap’, the
original Uhura had shown similar interest in romancing Spock, even though he
seemed unable to comprehend the nature of her advances or her desire to take a
stroll in the moonlight. ‘This Side of Paradise’ sees Spock infected by Omnicron
spores, allowing him once again to drop his Vulcan inhibitions and express his
human emotions, in this case falling in love with botanist Leila Kalomi on
Omnicron Ceti III and ignoring Kirk’s orders. Kirk’s destruction of the spores
causes Spock’s submerged anger to surface, while later – once recovered – he
confesses that his time with Kalomi, although his brain chemistry was ‘altered’,
had been the first time he’d truly felt happy . . .
Spock provided the outsider’s view of humanity. While his human side gave
him some kinship with Captain Kirk, Doctor McCoy and the crew of the
Enterprise, his Vulcan heritage meant that he could look upon humanity in a
colder, more detached way. Certainly, in early episodes of the series it is Spock
who is quick to jump to the logical, sometimes violently destructive solution to a
problem. Spock calculates the odds and weighs up the options coldly. He is the
first to suggest killing Gary Mitchell in ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’ as
Mitchell poses a clear danger to the Enterprise and her crew (and beyond). In
‘Balance of Terror’ Spock wants to destroy the Romulan ship, believing that its
return, unharmed, to its own space would signal Federation weakness and lead to
eventual invasion. In ‘The City on the Edge of Forever’ it is Spock who
convinces Kirk that ‘Edith Keeler must die’ in order to protect the timeline,
regardless of the captain’s feelings for her (a viewpoint Kirk comes to
reluctantly recognise). Although Spock, along with many of the characters in
Star Trek, mellows as the series progresses, he never loses this outsider
perspective. It was the ideal viewpoint to make the character a counter-culture
icon in the late 1960s. His character was, as Spock himself might say,
‘fascinating’.
Nimoy had come to Star Trek a hungry, young, but serious-minded actor. He
welcomed a regular role on a prime-time TV series, but for most of the rest of
his life he would have very mixed feelings about playing Spock. More
specifically, he (like NBC initially) was worried about the physical appearance
of the character and the need to wear false ear appliances for that all-important
alien look. Roddenberry had promised the actor that if they remained a problem
he could come up with a story reason for their removal later in the series, but it
never came to that. The character quickly became the most popular on the show
– further adding to Nimoy’s mixed feelings.
Nimoy had been engaged to play a supporting role to the leading character of
the captain – ironic considering how popular his character was to become – and
so was being paid $1,250 per episode compared to Shatner’s leading man
remuneration of $5,000. After just a handful of episodes had been filmed, and
even before the show had aired, it had become clear to Nimoy’s agent that the
character of Spock was taking on a role that went way beyond that of a mere
supporting character. Meetings were held, but a request for increased pay was
refused, with an offer to revisit the issue if the show was renewed for a second
season. Nimoy, not happy with this outcome, was to hold a minor grudge against
both the production’s executives and the show’s leading man for the run of the
series as he felt he was being undervalued and underpaid.

Despite the success of Spock, by November 1966 Gene Roddenberry was a

nervous man. Star Trek was doing all right, ratings-wise, but it was by no means
a hit show and so was not guaranteed a continued life beyond the initial sixteen
episodes NBC had committed to. Almost as soon as the show was born, the
‘Save Star Trek’ campaigns began.
Star Trek had started well with the debut episode (‘The Man Trap’) airing
during an NBC ‘sneak preview’ special presentation opposite repeat
programming. It won the time slot with a 40.6 per cent share (meaning the
percentage of all television sets in actual use during the broadcast that were
tuned to that programme). The second show (‘Charlie X’) dropped dramatically
as it was broadcast opposite new programming on rival channels, scoring a 29.4
per cent share, putting NBC in second place behind CBS. For the next two
episodes (second pilot ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’ was aired third,
followed by ‘The Naked Time’), Star Trek ranked 33rd out of the top 100 US
TV shows. The next two episodes (‘The Enemy Within’ and ‘Mudd’s Women’)
saw viewership collapse and the show languish at 51st place. After just six
weeks on air, the first season of Star Trek was heading towards an average 52nd
place in the top 100, a position that would not lead to automatic renewal for a
second season.
Roddenberry turned to the science fiction fan community for support. He had
already built a relationship with fans Bjo (a shortened version of Betty Joanne)
and John Trimble at the 24th World Science Fiction Convention in Cleveland,
and they volunteered to spearhead a fan letter-writing campaign. However,
worried that NBC might respond to Star Trek’s falling ratings by pulling the
show off air before completion of the first season, Roddenberry set about
coordinating a ‘Save Star Trek’ campaign directly from within the show’s
production office. Roddenberry himself drafted a series of letters making key
points about the show, which were then offered to leading authors to use as the
basis of their own campaigning efforts in support of the programme.
In November 1966 Roddenberry co-opted fantasy author Harlan Ellison to
spearhead the campaign. Aimed at recruiting more science fiction professionals,
the Roddenberry-drafted letter highlighted the positive effect the existence of
‘adult’ science fiction television could have on the field as a whole. Encouraging
authors and fans to write letters to their local TV stations and newspapers in
support of Star Trek, Roddenberry’s campaign was a dry run for those that
would come at the end of each of the show’s three troubled seasons on air.
Among those writers who signed up to the campaign alongside Ellison were
Theodore Sturgeon, Richard Matheson, A. E. van Vogt, Robert Bloch, Lester del
Ray, Philip José Farmer, Frank Herbert and Poul Anderson.
Despite the low ratings, and almost in spite of the limited letter-writing
campaign of 1966, NBC decided it would extend Star Trek’s first season by
another thirteen episodes for 1966–7 and then pick up the show for a second
season of episodes for 1967– 8. Recognising the series’ appeal among younger
viewers, especially teenagers who were otherwise hard to reach through
television drama, NBC announced Star Trek would return in the 7.30 p.m. slot
on Tuesdays, before changing its mind and moving the show to the difficult 8.30
p.m. Friday night slot – a time when the target audience of teenagers and college
students would most likely not be bothering to watch broadcast television.
It was the beginning of the long, slow death of Star Trek.
Chapter 4
Too Short a Season:
Consolidating Star Trek
‘Star Trek – despite the wild enthusiasm of science fiction aficionados –
had a rough go its first year, due mainly to that purblind arrogance of the
nameless decision-makers on their skyscraper mountaintops.’ Harlan
Ellison

Series creator Gene Roddenberry took a step back from the day-to-day running
of Star Trek halfway through its first season on air. His credit changed from
producer on those first sixteen episodes to executive producer for the remainder
of the series. Into the second season, he continued to rewrite scripts to ensure
they fitted with the Star Trek universe he’d created, but producer Gene Coon
took a stronger hand on the script-editing front, with associate producer Robert
Justman continuing to handle the physical production process. This team, along
with screen-writer Harlan Ellison, were to be behind the creation of the episode
cited as Star Trek’s all-time best instalment.
Despite his wholehearted involvement in the campaign to raise the profile of
Star Trek with science fiction fans and professionals, Ellison would prove to be a
thorn in Gene Roddenberry’s side when he came to script an episode for the
series. The making of ‘The City on the Edge of Forever’ – an episode from
towards the end of Star Trek’s debut season – was extremely troubled from the
beginning.
Ellison was primarily a short story writer, essayist and columnist who’d
scripted various TV shows including two acclaimed episodes of The Outer
Limits (‘Soldier’ and ‘Demon With A Glass Hand’) and instalments of The Man
From U.N.C.L.E. He would go on to become a creative consultant and writer on
the 1985 revival of The Twilight Zone and J. Michael Straczynski’s
groundbreaking 1990s TV space opera Babylon 5 (a rival to the same era’s Deep
Space Nine). Getting a Star Trek script from Ellison was a priority for Justman.
‘We wanted a teleplay from Harlan as soon as possible, but despite a lot of
badgering Harlan was behind schedule right from the start, taking two months to
write his final revised story outline. The usual time allocated for a story was
more like two or three weeks.’
In a memo Justman described the long-awaited story outline as ‘beautifully
written’, but he recognised that Ellison’s proposed story contained huge
challenges for practical television production. Several of Ellison’s scenes
featured locations and effects that would simply be beyond Star Trek’s budget
and may even have been challenging for a major movie production to realise.
A shimmering time vortex, an angry woolly mammoth, too many locations
and too many speaking parts all caused Roddenberry to request a revision of the
story. Additionally, concerned by how long it had taken Ellison to draft just the
outline, he suggested the writer should be based in the studio offices for the
writing of the first draft teleplay. That way, Roddenberry, Coon and Justman
could keep a close eye on the maverick writer. ‘Harlan arrived with his own
typewriter, his own portable radio, and his own original approach to creativity’,
recalled Justman in Inside Star Trek.
Located in the studio’s wardrobe storage room, Ellison felt the need to escape
his limited confines at regular intervals and was often to be seen wandering the
back lot checking out whatever happened to be shooting. Even when he was
locked in the ‘office’, he’d escape out through the window. He complained of
being forced to work under ‘inhuman and inhumane conditions’, with constant
interruptions from people using the wardrobe store forcing him to work at night.
In response, Justman moved Ellison into his own office and supervised him
directly as he finished the teleplay (the pair had previously worked together on
The Outer Limits). Important meetings conducted with Justman would continue
around Ellison as he pecked away at his typewriter over a three-week period and
gradually completed a first draft of what became ‘The City on the Edge of
Forever’.
Justman described the finished script as ‘without a doubt . . . the best and most
beautifully written screenplay we’ve gotten to date’. However, he also knew ‘we
cannot afford to make this show as it presently stands [due to] set construction
costs, location shooting, crowds of extras, crowds of stunts, special effects
onstage, special photographic effects, wardrobe costs, period props and set
dressing rentals, and other costs too numerous to mention . . . We have to find a
way to retain all the basic qualities contained within this screenplay and make it
economically feasible to photograph it.’
What Ellison’s script revealed about Star Trek was that it was a strictly
budgeted production – that’s why so many of the planets visited resembled
Earth-type settings (allowing easy use of the back-lot standing sets), why alien
races often consisted of a handful of representatives, and why special effects
shots (such as the Enterprise orbiting a planet) were repeatedly reused.
 The decision to redraft the screenplay to make it producible within a television
budget saw the beginning of a long-running feud between Ellison and
Roddenberry that was to run for decades, even beyond the latter’s death.
Roddenberry faced rewriting what Justman had estimated to be an eight-day
shooting schedule for the episode down to Star Trek’s standard seven days per
episode, over Ellison’s loud objections. Roddenberry also felt that some of the
‘guest characters’ featured in the episode did not represent the ‘best of humanity’
that he saw in Starfleet’s officers. The blame, or credit, for the rewrite was
spread around, however. Gene Coon had the first try at rewriting the show,
following Ellison’s own changes under Justman’s direction. Then story editor D.
C. Fontana found the script on her desk for another redrafting, which although
now shootable resulted in Justman expressing his view that the revised teleplay
lacked ‘the beauty and mystery that was inherent in this screenplay as Harlan
originally wrote it. It is very good Star Trek material, but has none of Harlan’s
special magic.’ In response, Roddenberry had no choice but to take on the task
himself, attempting to fuse the drafts from his staff with the original from
Ellison, picking out the best from each while still resulting in a practical
screenplay that the production could shoot.
‘It budgeted out at nearly $100,000 over what we had to spend on an episode’,
wrote Roddenberry of Ellison’s first draft. ‘His use of our characters was not
according to format. When he couldn’t do an acceptable rewrite job, I rewrote
the script to bring it within budget and within line of our Star Trek format.’
Even during filming of the episode in February 1967, Roddenberry continued
to revise pages of the script. Ellison complained to the production, on the day
shooting began, that he was not happy about the rewriting process. He requested
that his traditional alias of dissatisfaction, ‘Cordwainer Bird’, be credited on
screen. Roddenberry, however, saw great value in the Ellison name and fought
to keep him attached. According to Justman, ‘After a lot of fussing and,
according to Harlan, an “absolute threat” from Gene to keep him from ever
working in Hollywood again, Cordwainer Bird was convinced to revert to being
Harlan Ellison again, and his screen credit reflected the fact. Nevertheless, the
uneasy truce that ensued between Harlan and Gene was never again remotely
approaching comfortable.’
The resulting episode saw Kirk and Spock pursue a drug-crazed McCoy
through a newly discovered time portal known as The Guardian of Forever, to
1930s Earth. There Kirk falls in love with social campaigner Edith Keeler (Joan
Collins), only for Spock to reveal that she must die to protect the timeline . . .
Fantastic ideas, a great emotional dilemma and high stakes, as well as superb
production design, all combined to make this one of Star Trek’s best-loved
episodes. The original script (before the Star Trek staff rewrote it) went on to
win Ellison the Writers Guild Award for most outstanding script for a dramatic
television series, and he took the opportunity of his acceptance speech to berate
studio ‘suits’ for ‘interfering with the writing process’. Ellison would go on to
chronicle his side of the creation of the episode in a book-length study that
included a lengthy essay and reprinted his original, award-winning screenplay.
Towards the end of the episode, the dialogue from Edith Keeler does much to
highlight the then-growing iconic status of the characters of Kirk and Spock.
Noting how out of place Kirk and Spock are in 1930s America, Spock asks her
where she thinks they belong. ‘You?’ she says to Spock. ‘At his side, as if
you’ve always been there and always will.’ To Kirk, she says, ‘And you? You
belong in another place, I don’t know where or how, but I’ll figure it out
eventually.’ She notes Spock’s relationship with Kirk by completing his
statement with the word ‘Captain. Even when he doesn’t say it, he does.’ With
these few lines, this episode encapsulated the relationship between Spock and
Kirk and did much to define their iconic natures.
The first season of Star Trek ended on a creative high in April 1967 – ‘The
City on the Edge of Forever’ was followed by the final episode, ‘Operation:
Annihilate!’ The show had come a long way from the two pilots, but
Roddenberry and his team knew there were even more new worlds and new
civilisations to be encountered.

Season two of Star Trek was all about honing Gene Roddenberry’s vision, as
well as providing enough action-adventure content to please the network (and
younger viewers) and so hopefully win the series another year on air.
The second year saw the introduction of a new character to the regular
Enterprise crew. While Roddenberry had tried to balance ethnic and gender
representations on the Enterprise, he’d given little thought to other nations. This
was redressed with the addition of Russian Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig), a
mop-topped youth designed to appeal to young fans of The Monkees and The
Beatles. The inclusion of a Russian character was meant to indicate that sources
of then-current tension, such as the Cold War of the 1960s, would be long
resolved by the time of Star Trek’s utopian future.
Continuing mediocre ratings meant that Star Trek scraped through to a third
year on air, but only after another vociferous fan campaign which this time
included student demonstrations outside NBC’s headquarters in Los Angeles. A
letter-writing campaign resulted in a steady flow of Star Trek mail to NBC.
According to Roddenberry his show had actually been cancelled by the end of its
second season in 1967, only for it to be renewed thanks to the volume of mail
the broadcaster received.
Like the previous campaign, Roddenberry himself had been heavily involved
in coordinating things from behind the scenes, but NBC were never to know
that. They actually investigated the legitimacy of the letter-writing campaign and
established to their satisfaction that the more than one million letters that arrived
at NBC were representative of a genuine outpouring from real Star Trek fans.
By the end of the second season Star Trek had produced fifty-five episodes,
not enough for NBC to run the show in syndication and thus maximise its returns
on the series through daily reruns. With a third season of episodes, the series
total would rise to enough for a decent syndication package (even though the
usually preferred number of episodes was around 100) and a chance at
generating a profit. The decision to renew may have been more of a sensible
business move on the part of NBC than a response to any fan campaign (and in
later years NBC claimed the number of letters received was actually less than
150,000). The decision to grant the series a third year would give Star Trek the
chance to achieve serious longevity.
The show was back on, but despite his role in rescuing Star Trek from
oblivion after its second year, Gene Roddenberry was to be even less involved in
the production than ever before. Writing to author Isaac Asimov, Roddenberry
addressed the changes behind the scenes of the third season and his hopes for
Star Trek’s future. ‘This year I am pulling back from . . . the show and will try to
operate now as a real executive producer. I had offered to NBC to line produce it
myself if they gave us a good hour on a good weeknight, but you know what
happened there. I decided it was simply not worth the crippling expenditure of
time and energy if I could not have a night and an hour which gave us at least a
fair chance of reaching a mass audience and staying on the air. It is always at
least possible that Friday night at 10 p.m. may work, or we might get a mid-
season shift to a good time slot. I hope it works. I hope I can supervise the new
team in keeping the quality of the show up, I hope Star Trek stays on for five or
ten years. I’ve done my damnedest for the show.’
Like any successful TV producer, Roddenberry was always on the lookout for
a way to advance to the next project, to a higher earning bracket or even into
motion pictures. A third year of Star Trek was just another way for him to
further that goal of advancing his own career. The new time slot helped
Roddenberry to step back from the show he’d created: he’d promised hands-on
involvement if NBC would return Star Trek to its previous successful early-
evening slot early in the week, when younger viewers and students could watch.
The Friday late-night slot was a blow, but it did help Roddenberry detach
himself from his creation more easily. As far as he was concerned, cancellation
after the third year was all but inevitable now, fan campaign or no fan campaign.
For its third year, producing duties on Star Trek fell to Fred Freiberger, an
experienced TV producer hired by Roddenberry (he’d written for many of the
same shows as Roddenberry, including Highway Patrol and West Point). In fact,
Freiberger had initially been interviewed in 1966 for the producer role taken by
Gene Coon. However, in the eyes of Star Trek’s fans, he would carry the
responsibility for the reduction in quality of the episodes in the series’ third
season. This had as much to do with a huge reduction in budget as it had with a
lack of creative ideas. Even so, a number of the later episodes of the third year
continued to prove that when Star Trek’s producers applied their minds, their
stories could still challenge audiences.
Halfway through transmission of the third season in January 1969,
Roddenberry confided in a letter to a friend his fears about cancellation. ‘I have
grave doubts that we will be picked up for a fourth season. The Friday night at
10 p.m. slot is an almost impossible one for a show like this and it hurts us
badly.’
Around the same time, Roddenberry outlined his frustrations with the final
year of Star Trek in a letter to his mentor and inspir -ation John W. Campbell.
‘[Star Trek] is being made by someone else [Freiberger] and comes out quite
different in important ways from the way I envisioned the show. The kind of
creativity and imagination you saw in the first year of Star Trek is hard to find.
Time, I think, to wash Star Trek out of my hair.’
January 1969 saw the shooting of ‘Turnabout Intruder’ – the final episode of
the initial run of Star Trek, and the last live-action Star Trek adventure for a
decade. The series had begun airing the previous September with ‘Spock’s
Brain’. Those two bookend episodes are widely regarded by fans as two of the
worst Star Trek instalments ever made. Ratings continued to be low and NBC
did not help the situation by ‘pre-empting’ (replacing scheduled episodes with
other programmes) the show three times and leaving a three-month gap between
the airing of ‘All Our Yesterdays’ in March 1969 and burying the final new
episode at the start of reruns in June 1969. NBC had issued a press release that
February listing the shows that would be picked up for the following year – Star
Trek was not among them. The network pulled the plug on the show before the
final few episodes of the third series could even be shot.
Not only was Star Trek over but the show had been branded a failure by both
its network, NBC, and its producer, Paramount (who had bought Desilu). NBC
had cancelled the show – as they stated in a form letter sent to complaining fans
– because it had failed to achieve the 30 per cent audience share the network
required, even though the network’s poor scheduling of the series had
contributed heavily to this failure. It was also true that the show had never
cracked the Nielsen Top 20 listing of TV shows for any of its three difficult
years on air.
In financing the show Paramount had sold Star Trek episodes to NBC at two-
thirds of their actual cost to make (known as deficit funding), so when
production wrapped on the series, Star Trek showed as a $4.7-million debt on
the Paramount balance sheet. With no more episodes forthcoming and ancillary
income streams (merchandise such as model kits) unlikely to develop any
further, Paramount saw little chance that the show would recover that
expenditure. The only hope was that some of that money might be recovered by
selling the series into syndication, which consisted of cheap reruns on affiliated
local TV stations – not seen as an important outlet or revenue stream until after
Star Trek proved a success through this very outlet in the 1970s.

One of the main reasons that Roddenberry claimed he had developed Star Trek
was so he could deal with then-contemporary issues (race, war, social
conditions) in the guise of far-future science fiction. The 1960s was a
revolutionary period for representations of ethnicity, gender and sexuality, as
well as being the height of the Cold War and a period of social turmoil – all of
which was reflected (often in disguise) in various Star Trek episodes. Learning
from his struggles on The Lieutenant, Roddenberry dramatised his social
comment within a fantasy context, much as Serling had done on The Twilight
Zone. ‘The first pilot really began with the fact that TV in the days when I began
was so severely censored’, said Roddenberry at a TV industry event in 1988. ‘I
thought maybe if I did what [English satirist Jonathan] Swift did, and used far-
off polka-dot people on far-off planets, I could get away with it.’
Star Trek reflected contemporary 1960s social and cultural issues in its
storytelling. As the series progressed Roddenberry smuggled social issue dramas
onto television disguised as science fiction action-adventure. On the TV show
Livewire Roddenberry admitted: ‘I saw an opportunity to use the series, to really
use it, to say the things I believe, like to be different is not necessarily to be ugly.
I wanted to make some comments. In television in those days you couldn’t talk
about sex, unions, politics – anything of any meaning – I thought if I have it
happen “way out there” maybe I can get it past the censors. And I did: every
fourteen-year-old knew what I was talking about, but it went right over the
censor’s head.’
Of the seventy-nine episodes that make up The Original Series, twelve of
them deal with computers or artificial intelligences that set out to dominate
organic life. Among those in the first season are ‘The Return of the Archons’,
which sees the descendants of Starfleet officers freed from the control of a
supercomputer, and ‘A Taste of Armageddon’, in which two warring cultures
abide by a computer’s assessment of virtual casualties and then calmly kill their
own people. In both, Kirk destroys the computer at the heart of the respective
cultures, and in the process tries to teach the now freed peoples to think for
themselves. It was a clear reflection of thinking promoting individuality in the
1960s, while ‘A Taste of Armageddon’ also functioned as an allegory for the
futile nature of war, particularly the ongoing controversial conflict in Vietnam at
that time.
In ‘The Changeling’, early in the second season, the Enterprise encounters an
artificial intelligence known as Nomad, a long-lost Earth probe, damaged during
its long voyage and reconstituted by superior machine intelligences. Its altered
programming now has Nomad seeking out life in order to exterminate it, a
mission only put on hold as the machine believes Kirk to be its creator. Kirk
demolishes the machine’s claim to infallibility by adopting the risky strategy of
revealing he is not Jackson Roykirk, creator of the Earth Nomad probe, and so
the machine is wrong. Naturally, this breakdown in logic causes Nomad to self-
destruct.
Other episodes from The Original Series dealing with the theme include ‘The
Doomsday Machine’, about a relentless weapon that destroys all before it (a
space-based variation of Moby Dick, essentially), while ‘The Apple’ features yet
another world run by a computer intelligence that is eventually destroyed by
Kirk. ‘The Ultimate Computer’ sees an artificial intelligence installed on the
Enterprise to demonstrate that a computer can run the ship better than its human
crew. In the course of the episode, Kirk begins to despair that he is no longer
needed, until the computer (which is augmented by creator Daystrom’s disturbed
mental patterns) acts illogically and begins destroying other starships. It’s
another opportunity for Kirk to talk a computer to death – in Roddenberry’s Star
Trek, the organic always overcomes the artificial and mechanical.
The appearance of malevolent computers or artificial intelligence in Star Trek
episodes are often used to highlight the character of Spock: while his logic often
causes him to agree with a computer’s processing, he’s always on the side of
Kirk in prioritising organic life and intelligence over the artificial. In ‘The
Ultimate Computer’, Spock goes so far as to say, ‘Computers make excellent
and efficient servants, but I have no wish to serve under them.’ In ‘The Apple’,
he can see the virtue in the computer-controlled primitive (and stagnant) society,
much to Dr McCoy’s disgust.
Another favourite topic of many episodes in The Original Series was
superpowered or God-like beings. While Gene Roddenberry professed humanist
beliefs and was disdainful of organised religion, he seemed fascinated by the
concept of God and this often arose in Star Trek stories. In a letter to a cousin in
1984, Roddenberry wrote: ‘The real villain is religion – at least, religion as
generally practised by people who somehow become sure that they and only they
know the “real” answer. How few humans there are that seem to realise that
killing, much less hating, their fellow humans in the name of their “god” is the
ultimate kind of perversion.’
From the second pilot, ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’, through a handful
of first season episodes – ‘Charlie X’, ‘The Squire of Gothos’, ‘The Return of
the Archons’ and ‘Space Seed’ prime among them – the theme occurs
repeatedly. Often, the powers that these beings demonstrate come with a degree
of immaturity. The Squire of Gothos himself is a child, and Balok in ‘The
Corbomite Maneuver’ is child-like’ (a concept well spoofed in the Futurama
episode ‘Where No Fan Has Gone Before’). Even the Greek ‘god’ Apollo in
‘Who Mourns for Adonais?’ seems out of his depth when he attempts to make
the Enterprise crew worship him, just as the humans of old did. He has to be
persuaded by Kirk that his time has passed and he must move on to the spiritual
plane, like his contemporaries did before him.
‘Space Seed’ presents the most obvious example of a superhuman in the
genetically engineered Khan. His biological superiority, a legacy of the Eugenics
War of the 1990s, allows him to feel it is his right to dominate those around him.
Khan uses crewmember Marla McGivers to facilitate his takeover of the
Enterprise, and she eventually joins him in his exile to Ceti Alpha V after Kirk
regains his ship. The story provided the springboard for Nicholas Meyer’s The
Wrath of Khan.
The many other episodes featuring superior or God-like beings include
‘Catspaw’, a Hallowe’en trifle that puts the Enterprise crew at the mercy of
Korob and Sylvia, powerful aliens exploring human emotions, and ‘Obsession’
(yet another Moby Dick variant) in which Kirk faces off against a truly alien gas
cloud responsible for the deaths of fellow crewmembers earlier in his career.
Most of Star Trek’s superior beings, however, are humanoid, like those in ‘The
Gamesters of Triskelion’. They force the Enterprise crew to take part in
gladiatorial contests for their amusement, an idea echoed in ‘Plato’s
Stepchildren’ that again sees the crew acting against their natures at the behest of
superior powers. In ‘By Any Other Name’, the Enterprise is hijacked (again) by
powerful beings from Andromeda (although, as in ‘Catspaw’, we only ever see
two of them due to the limited budget). They intend to use the ship to invade
another galaxy, but Kirk is able to use extreme human emotional states against
them, thus recapturing his beloved vessel.

The 1960s was a peak period of the Cold War stand-off between the United
States and the Soviet Union, culminating in the October 1962 Cuban missile
crisis. The Vietnam War had escalated throughout the decade, and by the late
1960s, when Star Trek was on air, public opinion was increasingly turning
against it. War, conflict, political matters and diplomacy became a central part of
Gene Roddenberry’s plan to use ‘far-off polka-dot people on far-off planets’ to
make his political comments through drama.
A variety of episodes depict straightforward conflicts that allow Kirk to
become a mouthpiece for a variety of views, mainly from Roddenberry and
Coon. Sometimes, the use of force is justified whereas at other times the need to
battle an enemy is a cause for lament. Early in the first season, ‘The Corbomite
Maneuver’ sees the human race branded as aggressive savages by Balok, who
threatens to destroy the Enterprise. Only the bluff of the title, that the Enterprise
has a weapon that deflects energy back upon the aggressor, allows Kirk to stop
Balok. ‘Balance of Terror’ shows the battle of wits between Kirk and a nameless
Romulan Commander (Mark Lenard) where the technology of destruction
available to each is almost equally balanced. ‘A Taste of Armageddon’ takes this
idea one step further, pitching two equally matched war-like cultures against
each other. The war between Eminiar VII and Vendikar has lasted for 500 years,
but there is no destruction of property – each planet abides by casualty figures
produced by computer and a docile populace meekly turns up at the
disintegration booths in the required numbers. Clearly a comment on Vietnam,
the satirical intent was buried beneath a great science fiction concept. The
Vietnam issue was even plainer in ‘A Private Little War’, a story that sees the
Klingons and the Federation arming opposite forces in a conflict on a developing
world. The only way to ‘preserve both sides’, according to Kirk, is to create a
balance of power by arming both forces equally, driving Kirk to match the
Klingons move by move. Interviewed on Good Morning America in 1986,
Roddenberry made the claim that Star Trek was ‘the only dramatic show that
ever talked against Vietnam. We set it on another planet. Kirk essentially played
the role of our presidents in those years, where he’d gotten into it and was
having trouble getting out of it. It’s a pity: Vietnam would have ended many
years sooner if it had been on dramatic shows on television because of the
impact of these dramatic shows. If Dr Marcus Welby had come out and said
something against Vietnam, my maiden aunts would have carried placards!’
A later episode, ‘Day of the Dove’, reversed this plot by having an alien entity
arm both the Klingons and the Enterprise crew with swords, setting them against
each other. Kirk and his Klingon opponent Kang have to stop fighting each other
and cooperate if they are to understand what’s happening. Like the majority of
Star Trek episodes, it’s entertaining even if the moral of the story (peace is better
than war) is simplistic and obvious.
Star Trek was often less than subtle in its political analogies: such was the
case with the ‘Nazi planet’ in ‘Patterns of Force’. In an effort to depict the rise of
a totalitarian state, this episode comes close to using Nazi iconography carelessly
in a simple entertainment, while trying to convey a history lesson to the show’s
young viewers about events then a mere twenty-five years in the past. A
Federation historian has employed Nazi methods to run a planet, hoping that
Nazism-with-a-conscience might have a different outcome – the conclusion of
the story is that it doesn’t. ‘The Enterprise Incident’ – apart from giving William
Shatner a taste of wearing Spock-style pointed ears – was a Cold War espionage
tale in which Kirk and Spock go undercover as Romulans to steal their
technology.
Perhaps the most interesting of all the Cold War-themed episodes of Star Trek
is ‘Mirror, Mirror’. This well-remembered episode sees Kirk, Spock, McCoy and
Uhura attempt to beam aboard the Enterprise, only to find themselves
transported to an alternative universe version of the ship. Here they find a
ruthless Terran Empire wreaking havoc throughout the galaxy, and a ship where
promotion is obtained through assassination. In this universe, Mr Spock –
sporting a goatee beard – is a ruthless enforcer, although he doesn’t want
command of the ship. Chekov attempts to assassinate Kirk, while Sulu runs a
sinister surveillance operation. The crewmembers from ‘our’ universe must
strive to fit in while trying to find a way back home – but Kirk can’t resist going
one step further in trying to persuade the mirror Spock that there is a different
way of running things. The episode gave rise to a series of follow-ups, in Deep
Space Nine and Enterprise, as well as in a series of spin-off novels. ‘Mirror,
Mirror’ offers a vision of how the Federation might have turned out if the
positive future for humanity as depicted by Gene Roddenberry had not come to
pass.
Diplomacy was explored in a variety of episodes, as the Enterprise crew
played the role of diplomatic ambassador to new and developing civilisations or
functioned as an intermediary between disputing cultures. ‘Errand of Mercy’
sees the Klingons and the Enterprise personnel battle for influence over the
strategically important planet of Organia. The seemingly unconcerned Organians
refuse to resist either side, frustrating Kirk and encouraging Klingon
Commander Kor in his desire to dominate the planet. As the conflict escalates,
the Organians reveal themselves as dominant energy beings that use their powers
to prevent the battle. Kirk finds himself arguing against the Organians for his
right to wage a war that he initially came to the planet to prevent. It was a rare
moment of self-awareness for the Enterprise captain that plainly stated the case
for and against the kind of conflict then raging in Vietnam.
More traditional is the second season episode ‘Journey to Babel’, which sees
various alien races transported aboard the Enterprise to a diplomatic meeting on
the planet Babel. A murder mystery is the backdrop for the introduction of
Spock’s parents, the Vulcan Sarek and the human Amanda. The diplomacy-as-
drama storytelling approach would be hugely expanded by The Next Generation,
reflecting the era in which the show was made.
The Enterprise crew intervened in events more proactively in ‘Friday’s
Child’, an episode that saw the Klingons involved with the political development
of a primitive culture. The battle for control of the planet is made personal, with
Kirk, Spock and McCoy protecting the dead leader’s pregnant widow from
aggression until she can give birth to a rightful heir. Kirk’s action results in the
Klingons being driven out and the Enterprise winning the valuable mining rights
on the planet, an analogy for US foreign adventures.
There’s more Federation-driven diplomacy in ‘Elaan of Troyius’, in which
Kirk ferries Elaan to her arranged marriage to the leader of an antagonistic planet
in order to avert a war. The involvement of the Klingons – again – highlights the
role of diplomacy in finding solutions to conflict.
Another 1960s hot-button topic regularly revisited by Star Trek was prejudice
and racism. At a time when the civil rights movement was progressing in
America, Roddenberry felt it was important to tell stories in Star Trek that
showed in the future such issues had been resolved within humanity, even if
sometimes Kirk had to show the various peoples of other races a more
enlightened way of relating to each other.
The most blatant example was ‘Let That Be Your Last Battlefield’, a third
season episode that sees the Enterprise involved with the last two representatives
of a warring race. Lokai of Cheron is half black on one side of his face, half
white on the other. Bele of Cheron is his mirror image, and his pursuer.
Originally conceived by Gene Coon as a story about two beings – one angelic,
one satanic – in conflict, the story was revised to be not just a comment on
surface appearances being deceiving, but the futility of hatred motivated purely
by physical (or social, religious or ethnic) difference.
Star Trek’s belief in ‘infinite diversity in infinite combinations’ – the Vulcan
philosophy of tolerance outlined by Spock in the episode ‘Is There in Truth No
Beauty’ – extended to nonhumanoid life forms. In ‘The Devil in the Dark’, the
Enterprise comes to the aid of a mining colony planet where miners are being
killed off by a mysterious beast. Kirk and Spock discover the ‘beast’ is a
sentient, silicon-based life form called a Horta. Spock mind-melds with the rock-
like creature, discovering its intelligence. Communicating with the pair, the
Horta carves the words ‘No Kill I’ into the rock, either as a plea for mercy or a
statement of intent. The Enterprise pair learns that the creature is a mother, who
has been attacking the miners in order to defend its eggs (not recognised by the
miners as such). In a neat solution, the natural rock-carving ability of the Horta
is harnessed to aid the mining activities of the colonists while the creature and its
progeny are protected. The point expressed by the episode is that life can come
in the most unexpected forms, and limited perceptions can blind people (like the
miners) from recognising it. It’s quintessential Star Trek, and one of the series’
best episodes.

Patrick Stewart, captain of the Enterprise on The Next Generation, was one of
the speakers at Gene Roddenberry’s memorial ser -vice in 1991. Despite the
solemnity of the occasion, he addressed an issue that continued into the spin-off
Star Trek TV series: the show’s sometimes controversial depiction of women.
‘[Star Trek] wasn’t always consistent, especially where it concerned women’,
noted Stewart. ‘Infuriatingly, Star Trek remains simultaneously liberated and
sexist. Maybe even in that, Gene remains, sadly, a visionary.’
Stewart’s phrase ‘liberated and sexist’ is the perfect, seemingly contradictory
way to describe Star Trek’s attitude to and depiction of women. Much of it
seems to be rooted in Roddenberry’s own private life and his womanising ways:
he idolised and loved women, believing them capable of as much, if not more,
than men. This resulted in a series of strong, independent, clever female
characters throughout Star Trek, but also the infamous short skirts and revealing
outfits of the series that replaced the more sensible trouser suits seen in the
original pilot. While Kirk may be seen as a standin for Roddenberry, seemingly
with a woman on every planet, those women themselves are often depicted as
irresistibly alluring (even if such allure is sometimes chemically assisted). Both
Kirk and Spock have sacrificed the possibility of relationships to their careers:
Kirk in his obsessive connection with his ship (best displayed in the early
episode ‘The Naked Time’) and Spock in his devotion to logic and duty (he
gives up his long-promised Vulcan bride in ‘Amok Time’).
Women in The Original Series often find themselves in thrall to powerful
men, whether it be Marla McGivers with Khan (‘Space Seed’) or Carolyn
Palamas and faux-god Apollo (‘Who Mourns for Adonais?’). The spectre of
rape, or at least forced physical contact, seems to haunt some of these
relationships. In ‘Shore Leave’, the men’s fantasies revolve around whimsy
(McCoy sees Alice and the White Rabbit, Kirk encounters Finnegan, a joker
from his past, and old flame Ruth), while Tonia Barrows’ fantasy involves a
violent seduction at the hands of Don Juan. Similarly, Carolyn Palamas is
ravaged by a violent storm of Apollo’s making when she rejects his advances.
Both encounters leave the women traumatised and in torn clothing, yet both
events are depicted as being a result of their own wishes or desires.
Through the years Star Trek has often shown women as the equal of men,
from the quickly axed Number One of ‘The Cage’ to Captain Janeway in
Voyager. In The Original Series even the strongest female characters were often
reduced to mere romantic interests to service the story of the week: Nurse
Chapel would occasionally be seen to moon over the unobtainable Mr Spock,
while Yeoman Janice Rand seemed to have a thing for the heroic captain. Even
Edith Keeler, a woman who gives Kirk more than a run for his money in ‘The
City on the Edge of Forever’, must perform the role of a tragic, lost love interest.
Kirk has a string of ex-lovers littered around the galaxy (including Areel Shaw
in ‘Court Martial’, Ruth in ‘Shore Leave’, Janice Lester in ‘Turnabout Intruder’
and Dr Carol Marcus in The Wrath of Khan), but he always puts his career in
space ahead of any lasting relationships. The temptation of casual liaisons was
seemingly ever-present for the captain of the Enterprise, as evidenced by the
number of women Kirk would seduce – and be seduced by – during the three
years the show aired.
Sex between aliens and humans was never explicitly tackled by the show,
although it was implied in many of Kirk’s relationships. Perhaps the most
explicit case was that of Zefram Cochrane and the amorphous, alien companion
who loved him (in ‘Metamorphosis’): he rejects the creature, until it adopts the
form of a shapely female. While science was shown to have made great steps
forward on Star Trek, the role of women still more often fell into stereotype
occupations, especially among the regular characters such as Nurse Chapel and
Communications Officer Uhura – a failing highlighted in the Star Trek movie
satire Galaxy Quest.
Seth McFarlane, inducting Roddenberry into the TV Hall of Fame in 2010,
summed up much of Roddenberry’s success in making Star Trek’s stories mean
something: ‘[Star Trek] made you think. Roddenberry was the closest thing you
could get in television to an actual philosopher. He had a point-of-view and he
was not afraid to express it. He believed that making a statement with regard to
political or social issues in the form of televised narrative was not being
“preachy” but rather the responsibility of a thoughtful writer. Gene did not offer
us the murder of the week or the disease of the week, he offered us the idea of
the week. The messages Roddenberry was sending were timely and important.’
However, these added layers of social and political comment were not enough
to save Star Trek. Within weeks of the series concluding on television, a real-life
space opera reached its climax in July 1969 as Neil Armstrong walked on the
moon. It appeared that real-life space adventure had finally outstripped
television science fiction.
Chapter 5
Timeless: The Birth of a
Franchise and Fandom
‘It turns out that the Trekkies have been right all along, on nearly
everything they have tried to tell us.’ Gene Roddenberry

By the middle of 1969 Star Trek was dead. Yet the show that had battled for
survival for each of its three years on air was about to sow the seeds that would
allow it to, in the immortal words of Mr Spock, ‘live long and prosper’. The
show’s fans were about to become Star Trek’s newest storytellers.
After the cancellation of his TV show, Gene Roddenberry finally achieved
what he’d hoped for all along: a transition into motion pictures. While Star Trek
continued for its final year without his regular input, he’d been scripting a film
version of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan. In keeping with the ethos of the 1960s
(and his personal interests), Roddenberry had created a more sexualised Tarzan
than had been seen before, while attempting to stay true to Burroughs’ original.
However, the budget was slashed, the theatrical film downgraded to a TV movie,
and Roddenberry’s script rejected, as its sexual content was now unsuitable for
TV.
Roddenberry’s first completed post-Star Trek project was the script for an
adaptation of Francis Pollini’s novel Pretty Maids All in a Row, about the
dalliances of a schoolteacher with his female students. The film was produced by
Roger Vadim (Barbarella) and Roddenberry, but was not considered to be a
success upon its release in 1971. The job had been a favour to Roddenberry from
Star Trek producer Herb Solow, now also working successfully in movies.
Roddenberry then scripted the fifth episode of Glen A. Larson’s comedy
Western series Alias Smith and Jones, ‘The Girl in Boxcar #3’, which aired in
February 1971. Professionally, things were rather quiet for the Star Trek creator
in the immediate aftermath of the show’s cancellation.
During this period there was a dramatic change in Rod -denberry’s personal
life: he divorced his wife Eileen in 1968 and married Majel Barrett in a Shinto-
Buddhist ceremony in Japan in 1969. The marriage had to be legalised later in
the US in December once Roddenberry’s divorce was finalised.
At the dawning of the new decade, Paramount seemed keen to divest itself of
Star Trek. As the show’s creator and executive producer, Roddenberry was
apparently offered the opportunity to purchase all rights to the show for a figure
in the region of $150,000. This was, however, beyond Roddenberry’s means,
both personally and in terms of commercial fundraising or bank loans. There
was little sign that Star Trek would ever recover its original investment, so
Roddenberry didn’t feel he was missing out on a potential future windfall.
Others, however, such as Star Wars creator George Lucas, would later learn
from Roddenberry’s mistake. Roddenberry would continue to benefit from the
show to the tune of one-third of any future profits, but without any guaranteed
creative input into the show’s future direction (if, indeed, it were to have any).
Certainly, Star Trek did not seem to have an immediate future, consigned to
the television graveyard of off-network syndication where old series went to die.
This meant entire seasons of shows being sold to many individual local TV
stations, often at knockdown prices. It was seen as a way of generating
additional revenue, especially for shows such as Star Trek that had not made a
profit during their first-run network screenings. Over 100 was the ideal number
of shows required for successful syndication in the 1960s and 70s because that
allowed daily ‘stripping’ of the show five days a week with the same episodes
only coming around twice a year or so. Star Trek had fallen short of the 100-
episode target, but at seventy-nine episodes, the package of three years worth of
shows was considered just about worthwhile for syndication. By January 1972
Variety reported that Star Trek was airing in over 100 local markets in the US
and another seventy overseas.
This move into syndication would not only prove to be the saviour of the
original show, but also the jumping-off point for the revival of Star Trek as a
fully-fledged franchise of several more spin-off TV series and a hugely
successful run of movies. Star Trek found new life and new viewers in
syndication. Airing every day, often in an after-school slot, the show attracted
school kids in their millions, as well as teenagers and students who had missed
the first run of the series on NBC (especially in its third series’ 10 p.m. Friday
graveyard slot). Star Trek slowly but surely began to embed itself in American
and then worldwide popular culture. Although the show had enjoyed a burst of
popularity when it first aired, that had quickly faded during the lacklustre third
series and Star Trek was on its way to being forgotten. Characters and phrases
(including the iconic ‘Beam me up, Scotty’) became commonplace thanks to
syndication, while the show was increasingly referenced in other TV
programmes, newspapers and magazines. Star Trek fandom was building, and
this would be instrumental in Paramount eventually reviving the concept.


The evidence for the growth of Star Trek fandom came in January 1972 with the
first ever Star Trek fan convention in New York. There had been many science
fiction conventions since the 1930s, such as the ones Roddenberry had attended
to drum up interest in his new series. However, there had never before been a
science fiction convention solely dedicated to a single TV show.
The organisers expected somewhere in the region of 500–600 attendees and
had arranged to borrow twenty episodes of the show from Paramount to screen
at the event. For three days, like-minded Star Trek fans could meet, discuss and
view the show and start to build a community. Some, like the convention
organisers, had previously come together as part of the various ‘Save Star Trek’
campaigns that had kept the show on air for three years. Others were isolated,
mostly teenage viewers, who were happy to discover that there were other fans
out there who felt the same passion for the show that they did.
Star Trek had already taken off on college campuses, and Roddenberry had
begun lecturing at campus events to large numbers of interested students,
passing on his unique vision of the future. Coming up to fifty and essentially out
of work, Roddenberry welcomed this extra income. The organisers of the New
York convention knew they had a success on their hands when registered
attendees reached 300 by November 1971 and requests began to come in from
fans across the country (and Canada) for group discounts as they planned to
attend in large numbers. Two days before the event the front page of Variety
trumpeted the unexpected success to come under the headline ‘Star Trek
Conclave in N.Y. Looms as Mix of Campy Set and Sci-Fi Buffs’. The organisers
were overwhelmed when in excess of 3,000 fans turned up and spent the
weekend in a convention space intended to hold no more than 1,200 people.
Roddenberry threw himself into the event, happy to talk to fans about his
experiences of producing the series (for an appearance fee, of course). Beyond
the formal events, Roddenberry stayed around the convention in the evening,
holding court with fans in various bars telling tall tales of his exploits in the
military and the world of television production, especially his Star Trek battle
stories. Alongside Roddenberry was his wife Majel Barrett, the sole on-screen
representative of Star Trek. She was surprised to find herself mobbed by
enthusiastic fans seeking autographs.
Gene Roddenberry’s Great Bird of the Galaxy moniker, accorded him in
recognition of his role as creator of Star Trek, referred to a mythological creature
mentioned by Sulu in an early episode, ‘The Man Trap’. The original line was
intended as a light-hearted invocation of good luck: ‘May the Great Bird of the
Galaxy roost on your planet’. According to Stephen Whitfield’s The Making of
Star Trek, written during the show’s second year, it was Herb Solow who first
applied the name to Roddenberry, but associate producer Robert Justman began
using it in memos, such as in this one from July 1966: ‘If I don’t get those
preliminary set sketches for “Mudd’s Women”, the Great Bird of the Galaxy is
going to do something nasty to you.’
As the Great Bird, Roddenberry, saw things, the New York convention was an
opportunity to reap some of the approbation due to him that had been lacking
from within the television industry, where Star Trek was largely seen as a
failure. He took the chance to paint himself in as favourable a light as possible
and to claim primacy of creation when it came to Star Trek, effectively
sidelining all those many others who had contributed to the effective realisation
of his vision on screen. It was a pro -cess that early Star Trek fandom would
happily collude with. The New York event did much to create and fuel the myth
of Roddenberry as the sole creative intelligence behind Star Trek.
The possible return of Star Trek became a central discussion point at the
convention, something that Roddenberry himself – ever the canny television
producer – was keen to talk up. ‘I didn’t think it was possible six months ago’,
said Roddenberry to TV Guide about a revival of his show, ‘but after seeing the
enthusiasm here [at the convention] I’m beginning to change my mind. It is
possible to do it from my standpoint.’ In a prescient statement, the Los Angeles
Times agreed with Roddenberry’s view, saying of Star Trek in June 1972 that it
was ‘the show that won’t die’.
Fan-produced Star Trek newsletters and fanzines had appeared as early as
1967, with Spockanalia put together by fans Sherna Comerford and Devra
Langsam. As the title suggests, the first Star Trek fanzine was inspired by the
show’s enigmatic Vulcan character and the debut issue contained a letter from
Leonard Nimoy. The fanzine ran for five issues, through to 1970.
Many others followed into the 1970s, resulting in some significant fan
publications, notably TREK: The Magazine for Star Trek Fans and The Star Trek
Concordance. Such fan magazines would contain non-fiction articles about the
show, but would just as often publish fans’ artwork, short stories or poetry, as
well as often vibrant letters columns. With no new Star Trek on television, the
fans themselves took control of the show, telling each other new adventures
through fanzine short stories, many of which worked within Roddenberry’s
restrictions, while others set out to expand Star Trek beyond what was possible
on 1960s television. The growing fan base for Star Trek demonstrated there was
so much more to be explored in the concept Gene Roddenberry had brought to
the screen for three short years. They took on the task of producing new stories
in lieu of any new ‘official’ Star Trek, and would continue to do so even when
the show returned in a series of movies and on TV. Many of those involved in
fandom, fanzines and the various ‘Save Star Trek’ campaigns would go on to
enjoy professional media careers, some closely connected with Star Trek itself.

The success of the original episodes in syndication and the vis -ible growth of
Star Trek fandom convinced Paramount to look once again at a property they
still considered to have been something of a failure at the end of the 1960s.
An approach had been made early in 1973 by Lou Scheimer, president of the
animation studio Filmation, to adapt Star Trek into a Saturday morning TV
cartoon show. This may not have been how Gene Roddenberry had imagined
Star Trek being resurrected, but as far as Paramount was concerned it was the
only game in town: they could make some money for no outlay, while
continuing to raise the profile of Star Trek among audiences.
Scheimer, who’d produced animated superhero shows such as Superman,
Batman and Teen Titans, was a fan of the original Star Trek. However, he wasn’t
the only animation professional interested in the potential of an animated Star
Trek series. Hanna Barbera – home of The Flintstones, the most successful TV
cartoon before The Simpsons – had also entered talks with Paramount about
bringing the show back as a cartoon.
This wasn’t the first time Scheimer had pursued Star Trek. Back in 1969, just
as the series was going off air, he’d contacted Paramount with a plan for a series
of animated adventures set aboard Starfleet’s training ship Excalibur, featuring
some of the original Enterprise crew alongside new teenage recruits. Involved in
the talks then was broadcaster NBC, who expressed concern that any planned
series should be educational as well as entertaining. That project had not
advanced beyond initial discussions, but in 1973 Scheimer found himself
pursuing animated Star Trek once again.
Paramount would not sanction such a show without Roddenberry’s creative
involvement, while Roddenberry would not get involved in the project unless he
had complete creative freedom. ‘I got in touch with Roddenberry’, Scheimer told
Andy Mangels for Star Trek Magazine, ‘and we hit it off very nicely. It re-
established his relationship with Paramount. It literally brought them back
together again. Paramount was happy because they had shows to distribute and
we guaranteed the cost. Roddenberry was happy because he got to do exactly
what he wanted to do. He was the one who asked me to hire D. C. Fontana. It
was one of the easiest relationships I ever had with anybody.’ Scheimer’s
willingness to accommodate all parties seems to have allowed his bid to win out
over that of the bigger and more experienced Hanna Barbera.
With D. C. Fontana aboard as story editor, Roddenberry took up the role of
executive consultant, guiding the series and ensuring it held true to Star Trek as
he conceived it. Here was a chance to tell new Star Trek stories in a visual form,
but one not limited by traditional physical television production. Writers of
previous Star Trek live-action episodes, such as David Gerrold, Samuel A.
Peeples and Steven Kandel were hired to add to the new show’s authenticity. A
series of seventeen (later extended to twenty-two) thirty-minute shows was
commissioned by NBC Daytime, with a budget of $75,000 per episode. A total
of seventy-five artists would produce between 5,000 and 7,000 drawings for
each episode. The first eight hours of animation had to be created in just five
months so the series could meet its September 1973 transmission date. ‘Limited
animation’ was employed, which meant that instead of twenty-four drawings per
second – as in an animated feature film – the new Star Trek episodes would only
feature on average six drawings per second.
‘We made a deal with the network [NBC] that we would do it, but we had
total story control’, Scheimer said. ‘They had no input. They didn’t want any
because they were happy with what they were getting. They could talk about
how much action was in there, not about any content.’
Scheimer’s partner in Filmation, Hal Sutherland, directed the episodes, while
Don Christensen and Bob Kline designed the animated characters. Norm
Prescott handled the voice recording, and most of the original cast reunited to
voice their characters. The only character missing was Walter Koenig’s Ensign
Chekov, supposedly due to budgetary restrictions – however, Koenig was hired
to script an episode. James Doohan, a practised voice artist, would supply the
voice not just for Scotty but also for new, semi-regular alien character
Lieutenant Arex, as well as many other incidental voices. Majel Barrett returned
to the series to voice Nurse Chapel, alien Lieutenant M’Ress and the Enterprise
computer, beginning an association with Star Trek spin-offs that would continue
up to her death (and even beyond, with 2009’s Star Trek movie). Only the first
three episodes saw the core trio of Shatner, Nimoy and Kelley reunite as a group
to record their dialogue: subsequent episodes would be constructed from
individual recordings made at times that suited the artists’ availability. Nimoy
had also made a successful argument for the continued involvement of George
Takei and Nichelle Nichols when Filmation initially proposed using Doohan and
Barrett to play their roles. Nimoy recognised the growing iconic nature of the
characters and the fact that the original actors should continue to play the roles,
effectively laying the ground for the later Star Trek movies.
Scheimer set out to make his animated Star Trek a match with the original
series. Unlike most animated shows, it would not be aimed at children, with
comedy characters and simple storylines. He wanted Roddenberry’s Star Trek to
essentially carry on where it left off, but in animated form, even though it would
be appearing alongside the rest of the cheap and cheerful, child-focused
animated fare on Saturday mornings. Speaking to Show magazine in the early
1970s, Roddenberry said: ‘That was one of the reasons I wanted creative control.
There are enough limitations just being on Saturday morning. We have to limit
some of the violence we might have had on the evening shows. There will
probably be no sex element to talk of either. But it will be Star Trek and not a
stereotype kids’ cartoon show.’
Several of the episodes were sequels or follow-ups to episodes of The
Original Series, including David Gerrold’s ‘More Tribbles, More Troubles’,
‘Once Upon a Planet’ (a follow-up to ‘Shore Leave’) and the Harry Mudd-
featuring ‘Mudd’s Passion’. Koenig’s episode, ‘The Infinite Vulcan’, had ties to
the original series’ ‘Space Seed’ (itself inspiration for the movie The Wrath of
Khan). D. C. Fontana scripted ‘Yesteryear’ (a source heavily tapped for the
young Spock sequences in 2009’s Star Trek movie), which went on to win an
Emmy Award for Excellence in Children’s Programming. Great efforts were
made to ensure that the animated series looked, felt and sounded like original
Star Trek. The bridge of the Enterprise looked similar in drawn form (with the
addition of an extra turbolift), as did the major characters, while the episodes
used the same distinctive sound effects as the original series. Although the
animation was limited and shots were often repeated within episodes, the series
succeeded because of the serious stories it was telling. Fans who had come to
Star Trek through the syndication reruns now had brand new episodes to call
their own, and new sources to fuel their own fan fiction that was continuing to
expand the storytelling of the Star Trek universe.
The Animated Series had several advantages over the previous live-action
series. It was easier for writers to be sure that their outlandish notions could be
realised in the medium of animation in a way that simply couldn’t be achieved in
live-action photography with 1960s resources. If it could be drawn, it could now
be shown. Locations, aliens, monsters and starships were only limited by the
writers’ and artists’ imaginations, the strictures of the Star Trek universe – and,
of course, deadlines. It undoubtedly gave a new lease of life to Star Trek in a
most unexpected way.
The animated show also managed several Star Trek firsts that would recur in
later TV series or movies. The holodeck, so much a part of The Next Generation
and subsequent series, was first portrayed in ‘The Practical Joker’, while ‘How
Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth’ featured the first Native American character in
Star Trek (long before Voyager’s Chatokay). Even Captain Kirk’s middle name
(the initial ‘T’ was for Tiberius) was revealed in the animated episode ‘Bem’,
and it became part of the official canon thereafter (no matter what the gravestone
in ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’ might read!). The series also introduced
Commodore Robert April, a previous captain of the USS Enterprise (using the
name for the original Enterprise captain from Roddenberry’s series proposal).
The Los Angeles Times commented favourably on the new animated Star Trek
in September 1973, noting its maturity for a Saturday morning cartoon show.
‘NBC’s new animated Star Trek is as out of place in the Saturday morning
kiddie ghetto as a Mercedes in a soapbox derby. Don’t be put off by the fact it’s
now a cartoon . . . It is fascinating fare, written, produced and executed with all
the imaginative skill, the intellectual flair and the literary level that made Gene
Roddenberry’s famous old science fiction epic the most avidly followed
programme in TV history, particularly in high IQ circles. NBC might do well to
consider moving it into prime time at mid-series’.
A move to prime time never happened, but the animated Star Trek did prime
the pumps for an audience now more hungry than ever for new Star Trek
adventures. It would only be a matter of time, surely, until Star Trek returned as
a full live-action TV series for the 1970s. ‘[Animated] Star Trek was not a
children’s show’, Scheimer said. ‘It was the same show that they would have
done at night time. We did the same stories, [with] the same writers. The fans
loved it, but it was not a kid’s show.’

Gene Roddenberry was hoping for a positive outcome from The Animated Series
– and that didn’t necessarily include a full revival of Star Trek. For a few years
after Star Trek ended, and with the failure of his attempts to break into
Hollywood movies, Roddenberry was living off his not inconsiderable savings
rather than generating any new income through writing.
He wasn’t short of ideas for projects, and the success of The Animated Series
made it possible for Roddenberry to get some of these long-gestating shows into
production. He already had a new TV series pilot made and ready to air on CBS:
Genesis II, a riff on Buck Rogers that sees a twentieth-century man thrown
forward in time to the post-apocalyptic twenty-second century. Alex Cord
starred as Dylan Hunt, a name reused by Majel Barrett, now Majel Roddenberry
(who co-starred in the pilot) for the later Gene Roddenberry-inspired series
Andromeda.
Genesis II was notable for its anti-Star Trek pessimistic view of the future in
which the Earth has been ravaged by nuclear war and civilisation struggles to
survive: all very far removed from the utopia of the Federation. Aired on 23
March 1973, the show did well enough for CBS to commission a further six
scripts, including one by D. C. Fontana. When CBS eventually passed on the
series, Roddenberry interested ABC, who backed a second, reworked pilot – in a
situation very reminiscent of Star Trek’s origins. Roddenberry rewrote his
material under the new title Planet Earth, with John Saxon replacing Cord as
Hunt (mirroring Shatner replacing Jeffrey Hunter). Poor reviews for Planet
Earth killed off any prospect of an ongoing series, and the name Dylan Hunt
would be forgotten, until the debut of Andromeda, starring Kevin Sorbo, in
2000.
Also in development was Questor, a ninety-minute pilot co-written with Star
Trek’s Gene Coon for NBC, and Spectre, another pilot script that Roddenberry
worked on with Samuel A. Peeples. The pair also collaborated on The Tribunes,
another script about futuristic law enforcement that did not sell. Questor was
intended to be a series about a humanoid robot making his way in the modern
world. Featuring some of the characteristics that would later be seen in the
character of Data on The Next Generation, Questor was hunting for his creator
while enjoying a buddy relationship with human engineer Jerry Robinson.
Although written as a starring vehicle for Leonard Nimoy, the TV movie
featured Robert Foxworth – a Star Trek guest star who was a studio-imposed
choice that Roddenberry could not reject. Retitled The Questor Tapes – in
anticipation of a weekly series – an additional six scripts had been ordered in
case the series was commissioned. However, the proposed show was thought to
clash too strongly with another Universal project that was due to air on ABC:
The Six Million Dollar Man, a series eventually produced by future Star Trek
movie producer Harve Bennett.


In spring 1975 Gene Roddenberry found himself moving back into his old Star
Trek office on the Paramount lot. Although he’d made several attempts to move
on from Star Trek, Roddenberry had bowed to the inevitable and was back
working with Paramount to develop a potential $5-million Star Trek movie. The
Animated Series – concluded just seven months before – had shown there was
still life in the concept, as had the unexpected success of The Original Series in
syndication and the exponential growth of Star Trek’s creative fandom.
Roddenberry started work on a movie script called The God Thing. The story
reunited the crew of the starship Enterprise, with Kirk now an admiral and
Spock having returned to Vulcan to explore his heritage. They set out to confront
an unknown force threatening Earth – which may be God, the Devil or
something else altogether. These basics would survive through to the eventual
Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979. However, Paramount studio executives
Barry Diller and Michael Eisner rejected Roddenberry’s script treatment – an
outline of the proposed screen story – in the summer of 1975. This was followed
by the cancellation of the scheduled start of shooting, originally planned for July
1976.
Roddenberry then turned to recent film school graduate and writer Jon Povill
(who’d co-drafted a screenplay for the Philip K. Dick short story ‘We Can
Remember it for You Wholesale’ under the title Total Recall, finally filmed in
1990). Povill came up with a Star Trek time travel story in which Scotty was
transported to Earth in 1937 and changed history by introducing advanced
Starfleet technology. As a result, humanity found itself enslaved by an all-
powerful computer and the future was changed. Travelling back in time, the
Enterprise crew had to find Scotty and correct the altered timeline. Roddenberry
judged Povill’s work to be great for an episode of an ongoing TV series, but not
suitable for a would-be blockbuster motion picture. The pair then set to work
together on a new approach to Star Trek that would please Paramount’s
executives, who were seeking an epic story suitable for the big screen. In an
echo of the early days of The Original Series, other writers were also asked to
pitch ideas for the proposed movie, among them Star Trek veteran John D. F.
Black and science fiction author Robert Silverberg. Black’s story, which saw the
Enterprise save the entire universe from an all-consuming black hole, was
deemed by Paramount to be ‘not big enough’ for a movie, while Silverberg’s
plan to have the Enterprise crew battle aliens for possession of the artefacts of a
long-dead advanced civilisation was similarly rejected.
Things became so desperate at Paramount that even Harlan Ellison – still sore
at Roddenberry for comprehensively rewriting his series episode – was called in
to pitch a Star Trek movie idea. ‘Between 1975 and 1979 there was a parade of
writers through Paramount’s gates whose abilities were sought for a Star Trek
film’, wrote Ellison in Starlog in 1980. ‘I know because I was one of them.’
Ellison’s story saw a race of intelligent reptiles travel back in time to wipe out
mankind and allow lizards to evolve as the dominant species on Earth.
Distortions of the timeline result, causing the Enterprise crew to travel back to
the dawn of time to confront the reptile aliens, only to be faced with the moral
question of whether they have the right to eliminate an intelligent species simply
to ensure their own survival. ‘The story spanned all of time and all of space, with
a moral and ethical problem’, noted Ellison, suggesting it might be ‘big’ enough
for Paramount. At a meeting of movie executives and Roddenberry, Ellison was
asked if he could work in the ancient Mayan civilisation (then a hot topic in
books such as Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods?). When Ellison
pointed out that there were no Mayans at the dawn of time, the Paramount
executive claimed no one would know the difference. Ellison said he’d know the
difference. ‘I got up and walked out’, Ellison told Stephen King for Danse
Macabre, King’s book on the craft of writing, ‘and that was the end of my
association with the Star Trek movie.’
By July 1976, Chris Bryant and Allan Scott – a British writing team – had
been recruited for the stalled Star Trek movie. They had written the Nicolas
Roeg-directed thriller Don’t Look Now, drawn from a Daphne du Maurier short
story. Paramount studio executives approved their new Star Trek treatment,
entitled Planet of the Titans, in October 1976 and they set about writing the full
screenplay. This Star Trek film even had a budget and a director attached: $7.5
million and Philip Kaufman (later to write and direct The Right Stuff, an
adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s novel). Ken Adam – who’d worked on the James
Bond movies Dr. No, Goldfinger and Thunderball – was hired as production
designer. Ralph McQuarrie, fresh from working on the yet to be released Star
Wars, was working on a new look for the big screen Enterprise.
Initially the movie was written without the character of Captain Kirk, after
Paramount failed to agree terms with William Shatner to reprise the role.
However, with the film now a ‘go’ project, Shatner soon changed his position,
signing on to the project.
In the script, Starfleet and the Klingons are brought into conflict by the
discovery of the apparent home planet of a long-extinct, but legendary, race
known as the Titans. The technological secrets of this ancient race could be
valuable to whoever controls them. Two new threats emerge – a black hole about
to consume the planet, and the Cygnans, the ancient enemies of the Titans.
Attempting to escape both threats, the Enterprise plunges into the black hole.
The ship arrives in the distant past, apparently orbiting Earth. Kirk and the crew
encounter primitive man, shows them the benefits of fire, and in the process
themselves become the Titans of galactic legend.
Despite all the positive moves surrounding the preproduction of Planet of the
Titans, Paramount rejected the completed screenplay. Kaufman undertook a
drastic rewrite, trying to match the screenplay to Paramount’s notion of what
Star Trek on the big screen should be, but all he had to go on was that they
wanted more than an expanded TV episode. Kaufman set out to explore the dual
nature of Spock in some detail, teaming him up with a Klingon to be played by
Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune. ‘My idea was more of an adult movie dealing
with sexuality and wonders [with] Spock and Mifune’s characters tripping in
outer space’, claimed Kaufman. ‘I’m sure the fans would have been upset.’ By
May 1977 – after two years of development work on a Star Trek movie – Planet
of the Titans was as dead as Roddenberry’s The God Thing, and Kaufman moved
on to remake Invasion of the Body Snatchers instead. That same month saw the
release and phenomenal success of Star Wars. Paramount was worried that the
appetite for a blockbuster science fiction film had been sated by George Lucas’
super-successful space opera, so felt no one would now want to see a Star Trek
movie, not realising that Star Wars was about to kick-start a whole new era in
science fiction filmmaking. It was only the success of Steven Spielberg’s Close
Encounters of the Third Kind, later that same year, that prompted Paramount
executives to think again about Star Trek. They had one of the most widely
recognised science fiction concepts of all time, and now they were about to bring
it back where they felt it belonged: on television!

In the middle of 1977, Star Trek was promoted as the flagship show to lead a
proposed fourth US television network (alongside CBS, NBC and ABC) backed
by Paramount Studios. The network would be launched with an all-new two-
hour Star Trek TV movie in February 1978, followed by an ongoing series of
one-hour episodes. As well as a series of original TV movies, the network would
also carry mini-series based on successful epic novels such as The Winds of War
and Shogun.
Gene Roddenberry had been on the Paramount lot for almost two years,
working on the various aborted Star Trek movie ideas. Now he was back in
comfortable territory: in charge of a Star Trek television show. Dubbed Star
Trek: Phase II, the new series would take advantage of technological
advancements in television production, while recapturing The Original Series’
sense of optimism and wonder about the future in space. Unlike in the late
1960s, both Paramount and Roddenberry were now confident that new Star Trek
episodes on TV would be met by a welcoming and growing audience: the fans
were out there, and they were hungry for new stories. It was time to make the
most of this previously neglected studio asset.
Roddenberry recruited two key staff members: production executive Robert
H. Goodwin (filling the practical producer role previously held by Robert
Justman) and creative producer Harold Livingston, who would be responsible
for developing the scripts. Roddenberry attempted to poach designer Matt
Jefferies, who had worked on the original Star Trek series and had originated the
look of the Enterprise, from his job on Little House on the Prairie. Jefferies
managed to briefly work on both projects, before recommending his old Desilu
assistant Joe Jennings for the art director role. Jefferies rapidly updated the old
Enterprise design for the new series, while retaining many of its distinctive
features.
While scripts were being devised and a series ‘bible’ created, Paramount had
to negotiate once more with Star Trek’s main cast members. Most had been
signed up, paid and released in relation to Planet of the Titans, so the hope was
that an offer of a pilot TV movie plus an initial thirteen-episode television series
would be attractive to actors whose careers had not exactly blossomed since Star
Trek. The sticking point this time was Leonard Nimoy. Fearing that the actor –
who had perhaps been the most successful of the Enterprise crew post-Star Trek
– would not want to commit to a full-time series, Roddenberry offered him the
pilot and guest appearances in two episodes. It was hardly surprising he turned
that offer down. It looked like Star Trek: Phase II would launch without Spock,
so Roddenberry devised a new Spock-like replacement. A Vulcan named Xon
with many of the characteristics later echoed in The Next Generation’s android
Data would feature instead.
Similarly, although William Shatner was happy to sign up for the new show,
Paramount feared they would not be able to retain the expensive actor for
subsequent years if the series was to take off. As a form of insurance,
Roddenberry devised a second-in-command character who could become a
replacement captain if need be. Commander Will Decker was put in place as the
Enterprise’s number two (anticipating the creation of Commander Will Riker for
The Next Generation in the 1980s). Meanwhile, Shatner reportedly feared that
his role of Captain Kirk would either be reduced to cameo guest appearances in a
handful of episodes or dispensed with altogether through the dramatic move of
killing off Kirk.
While a new six-foot fibreglass Enterprise model was being constructed, The
Original Series costume designer William Ware Theiss was back on Star Trek,
developing new uniforms for the crew of the revamped 1970s Enterprise.
Roddenberry, Livingston and Povill had all contributed to the new series bible
and writers’ guide. ‘The challenge was coming up with things that weren’t
repeats of ideas already explored [in The Original Series]’, said Povill. ‘We were
definitely striving for things that were different, fresh and also Star Trek.’ Phase
II was now ready to recruit a new team of storytellers to add to Roddenberry’s
growing universe.
Among the writers signed up for the new show was USC screenwriting tutor
Alan Dean Foster. He’d adapted the animated Star Trek series episodes into
short stories for the Star Trek Logs paperbacks (just as James Blish had adapted
the majority of the live-action Star Trek episodes into short story form). Foster
was hired to adapt an old story idea from Roddenberry into a Star Trek outline.
Entitled ‘Robot’s Return’, the story was originally planned for the aborted
Genesis II series. Alan Dean Foster adapted it into a script entitled ‘In Thy
Image’.
Originally intended as the first of the regular one-hour episodes of Phase II,
‘In Thy Image’ brought the action back home to twenty-third-century Earth, a
place never visited by the original Star Trek series. The action of Phase II was to
take place in a period after the conclusion of the original ‘five-year mission’,
prompting a visit by the Enterprise to Earth for a complete overhaul. In
developing the project, it was felt that Foster’s story should become the basis of
the two-hour pilot movie, which would begin with the Enterprise refit just being
completed in Earth orbit. The crew reunion aspects of the ori -ginal planned pilot
(drawn from Roddenberry’s The God Thing movie idea) would be merged with
Foster’s version.
There was an important Phase II creative meeting in early August 1977,
attended by Paramount executives Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner. Alan
Dean Foster pitched his ‘In Thy Image’ story in some detail, at the end of which
Eisner (seemingly without any irony, given this was a Star Trek TV series
meeting) declared: ‘We’ve been looking for a [Star Trek] feature [film] for
years, and this is it!’ Those attending the crucial meeting, including Goodwin,
Livingston and Roddenberry, were stunned. For the past month Paramount
executives had been struggling in their attempt to secure advertiser support for
their fourth television network concept, which was itself to have been built
around the Phase II series. By the end of July 1977 it was clear that the time was
not right for Paramount to proceed. That decision also meant the end of Star
Trek: Phase II as a television series. The project had already incurred $500,000
in development costs and there were several significant future commitments (to
potential cast and crew) that would have to be honoured, whether the project
progressed or not. Whatever the fate of the proposed Paramount TV network,
something would have to be salvaged from the wreckage of Phase II so the
studio could recover the substantial investment already made.
The initial plan was to continue with production on the two-hour pilot movie
and see if that could be sold to one of the existing networks as a broadcast event.
If that succeeded, then perhaps a full television series could follow. However, at
the conclusion of the August meeting, Eisner decided that Star Trek would
instead become a movie – as had originally been intended when Roddenberry
had returned to Paramount almost three years earlier.
However, until the administrative requirements of switching the Phase II
project to a feature film could be completed, production would have to continue
as if Star Trek was still returning as the already-announced TV series. Having
cancelled Planet of the Titans and announced Phase II in quick succession in
recent months, Paramount did not want to suffer the embarrassment of a third
disappointing Star Trek announcement. Nothing could be said publicly until the
studio was ready to fully announce the new Star Trek feature film.

By the middle of 1977, Star Trek: Phase II was essentially a zombie project – it
was still walking around as if it were alive, but the top creatives involved knew
their new TV show was dead on its feet. The intended fate of the project would
be kept secret from those working on it – only those who were in attendance at
the August meeting knew the truth. There was still a possibility that a new Star
Trek TV series might follow the film, so any script, production art and other
material produced for Phase II might then prove to be useful (much of the
development work would actually prove to have a direct influence on The Next
Generation in the late 1980s). For the next five months (essentially the rest of
1977), development work on Phase II would continue.
Gene Roddenberry’s immediate task was to adapt the ‘In Thy Image’ story to
a movie screenplay while keeping the preproduction work on Phase II ticking
over, without giving anything away to the team putting in the creative work on
the officially abandoned show. The basic story of an unknown, artificial object
heading for Earth – clearly a potential threat – and the entanglement with it of
the Enterprise crew was retained. However, the big problem Roddenberry had to
solve was the nature of this unknown object: what is it and what does it want?
The breakthrough came when Roddenberry moved on from the object being
‘God’ to it being something in search of ‘God’ (or, at the very least, its creator).
He also noted that the creative team had discussed making the object ‘Pioneer 10
[or] a later NASA probe’.
Meanwhile, Harold Livingston was commissioning writing assignments for
Phase II, canvassing likely new Star Trek episodic storylines from writers such
as Ted Sturgeon (‘Shore Leave’, ‘Amok Time’), Walter Koenig (who’d scripted
an episode of The Animated Series), and David Gerrold (‘The Trouble With
Tribbles’). By the end of the month, building had begun on the brand new,
revamped Enterprise bridge set – with few of those involved aware that it would
not be used for Phase II but would instead feature as the central set for Star
Trek: The Motion Picture.
In September William Shatner was contracted to once again play the role of
Captain James T. Kirk, presumably contracted to a feature film rather than a TV
series. The search was ongoing for actors to portray Commander Decker and
Spock replacement Lieutenant Xon, as well as the new female character of Ilia (a
forerunner of The Next Generation’s Counsellor Troi).
The drive to commission thirteen individual episode scripts proceeded
alongside the building of the Enterprise sets, even though Livingston knew the
writers’ work would be unlikely to be used. Following ‘In Thy Image’ would be
Norman Spinrad’s ‘To Attain the All’, concerning an artificial planet that is
revealed to be a ‘living’ computer that enhances the crew’s intellectual abilities.
Other planned episodes included ‘The Prisoner’ by James Menzies, which had
the Enterprise crew lured to a planet by visions of twentieth-century icons
including Einstein and Buster Keaton. Logos, an alien, is behind the deception:
he’s so obsessed with mankind that he plans to absorb the entire species,
beginning with the Enterprise crew. Scriptwriter Schimon Wincelberg would
have returned to Star Trek with ‘Lord Bobby’ (AKA ‘Lord Bobby’s Obsession’),
an episode that dealt with honour and sacrifice while featuring a character
recalling Trelane in ‘The Squire of Gothos’ and anticipating The Next
Generation’s Q, alongside the return of the Romulans. William Lansford’s
‘Devil’s Due’ drew heavily on one of Star Trek’s predecessors, Forbidden
Planet, and was later adapted for The Next Generation’s fourth season.
Richard Bach, writer of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, had two scripts in
development for Phase II. ‘Practice in Waking’ was an alternate reality story
that put the Enterprise crew in artificial environments created through directed
dreaming. ‘Bach is a Star Trek fan’, wrote Harold Livingston in a 1977 memo,
‘[and] has submitted two stories’. The second was ‘A War to End Wars’ that saw
a repressed society annually release its emotions through starship combat
(somewhat echoing The Original Series instalments ‘The Return of the Archons’
and ‘A Taste of Armageddon’). A rewrite by Arthur Bernard Lewis replaced the
starships with combat by android and saw Kirk get romantically involved with a
female android.
‘The Savage Syndrome’ seemed to combine the titles (if not the plots) of ‘The
Savage Curtain’ and ‘The Immunity Syndrome’ from The Original Series. This
storyline, by Margaret Armen and Alf Harris, was a ship-set story designed to be
a cheaper to make episode (often called ‘bottle shows’ and made using only
regular standing sets). Alien technology would have unleashed the Enterprise
crew’s primal urges and seen them split into warring factions (one led, of course,
by Kirk). It was an exploration of the inherent savagery lying just beneath the
surface of mankind’s civilisation, and in theme and character exploration, ideally
suited to the new Star Trek.
Alongside the revised ‘Devil’s Due’, another storyline ori -ginally intended
for Phase II was later revived for The Next Generation due to the 1988 Writers
Guild of America strike. Jon Povill’s ‘The Child’ (initially co-written with Jason
Summers) saw Lt Ilia give birth to a Deltan child that attracts the interest of a
curious alien life form that wishes to study the Enterprise crew. The episode was
eventually rewritten, replacing Ilia with ship’s counsellor Troi.
Old Star Trek episodes were often the inspiration for ideas developed for
Phase II. ‘Tomorrow and the Stars’, by Larry Alexander, was a virtual retelling
of Harlan Ellison’s ‘The City on the Edge of Forever’. Thrust back in time due
to a transporter malfunction, Kirk falls in love with a married woman on the eve
of the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor. As before, Kirk has to resist the temptation
to put a woman he loves – and the lives of hundreds of others – above ensuring
history unfolds as it should. The story originated in an abandoned outline for
Roddenberry’s planned Genesis II series and had been allocated to Alexander.
‘Pearl Harbor is good because it is visual’ said the writer.
David Ambrose, author of the British 1970s conspiracy-based TV hoax
Alternative 3, wrote a teleplay entitled ‘Deadlock’, dealing with mind control. A
subversive paramilitary organisation within Starfleet plots to overthrow the
Federation by seeding mind-controlled ‘fanatics’ in key positions. It’s a very
1970s conspiracy-minded idea, like All the President’s Men or The Parallax
View. Some of these concepts resurfaced in The Next Generation episode
‘Conspiracy’, originally planned as the basis for an abandoned ongoing story
arc.
Other Phase II storylines that were ultimately dropped included ‘Are Unheard
Melodies Sweet?’, an episode that saw an alien try to capture the crew using
illusions and fantasy, an idea dating back to ‘The Cage’. Worley Thorne’s story
was distinguished by its inclusion of nudity and suggestive situations that would
never have made it to air. Theodore Sturgeon proposed a comedy episode called
‘Cassandra’, about a young, clumsy yeoman and a tiny, Tribble-like creature that
causes havoc aboard the Enterprise.
Perhaps the most promising of all the storylines was John Meredyth Lucas’
planned two-part episode ‘Kitumba’. The story would have seen the return of the
infamous Klingons, but would have explored their culture in a more serious way
than ever happened on The Original Series, and was only achieved to a greater
extent on The Next Generation. Kirk is sent on a secret mission, accompanying a
Klingon defector to the Klingon home world. Their plan is to locate the
‘Kitumba’, the rightful ruler of the planet, in order to avoid a war between the
Klingons and the Federation. ‘I wanted something we’d never seen on the series
before’, said Lucas, who’d been a producer in The Original Series’ second year
and had written ‘The Changeling’, ‘Patterns of Force’ and ‘That Which
Survives’, and directed ‘The Ultimate Computer’ and ‘The Enterprise Incident’.
He’d also both written and directed the episode ‘Elaan of Troyius’. ‘[I wanted]
penetration deep into enemy space – then I began to think about how they lived.
I tried to think what Klingon society would be like and the Japanese came to
mind’.
While Roddenberry believed writers would have no trouble getting to grips
with the new Star Trek, he failed to understand that television and its audiences
had moved on in the decade since the original show was on air and so would be
expecting a different kind of storytelling. There were also three new characters
(Decker, Xon and Ilia) for scriptwriters to contend with, and one major character
(Spock) missing altogether. There was also the question of making a new show
that appealed to the original Star Trek fans (who were desperate for their
favourite show to return) and a potentially wider audience turned on to space
opera science fiction by Star Wars.
With Shatner on board, the new character roles were quickly filled. David
Gautreaux won the role of Xon, while model–actress – and former Miss India –
Persis Khambata was signed up to play the sensitive Ilia. Despite this sign of
progress, those working on Phase II began to notice that deadlines were being
ignored, shooting dates were looming and the studio executives appeared
unconcerned. This was extremely unusual in television production, and it soon
began to become apparent to all that the show they were working on was
destined never to appear on a television screen. The shooting date was looming
for the two-hour pilot episode, and the pivotal role of Commander Decker had
still not been cast. There was even some question about whether the character
(originally a possible Kirk replacement) was needed for what was now intended
to be a movie rather than a TV series. The real priority was the feature film
script for ‘In Thy Image’ that Harold Livingston and Gene Roddenberry were
rapidly – but secretly – redrafting.
Roddenberry’s November 1977 rewrite of Livingston’s script was the first
step in a process that would cause him to once again lose control of Star Trek.
The others involved in the movie and Phase II project considered Roddenberry’s
rewrite to be too intellectual (a criticism similar to those aimed at the original
Star Trek pilot ‘The Cage’) and – more damningly – dull. It fell to Paramount
executive Michael Eisner to decide between the scripts. He dubbed
Roddenberry’s version to be ‘television’ and Livingston’s to be ‘a movie’ and ‘a
lot better’. Roddenberry’s take was not without merit, so a decision was taken to
create a third draft combining the best elements from both the competing
versions, leaning heavily on the Livingston draft.
The biggest problem came at the climax. The alien threat was now identified
as the long-lost Earth space probe Voyager (dubbed V’ger), searching for its
creator. Unconvinced that mankind, as represented by the Enterprise crew,
would be capable of creating an entity such as V’ger, the wayward probe
threatens to destroy the planet. The solution was to see the largely redundant
Will Decker merge with V’ger, thus informing the intelligent probe of mankind’s
achievements and saving Earth. Many of these core elements would be
maintained through to the eventual production of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
By December 1977, Hollywood gossip columnist Rona Barrett had gone
public with information well known within the upper echelons of Paramount:
Star Trek: Phase II was a dummy project and the space-faring franchise was
now set to be revived as a movie. Her report was business based, focusing on
Paramount’s abandonment of the planned fourth TV network. The studio
continued to deny anything had changed, except for a delay in the launch of the
Paramount network to fall 1978. Among those still in the dark about the
project’s change in nature were the series’ episodic writers, who continued to
work on scripts for a show that the studio knew was never going to happen.
Povill, Livingston and Roddenberry participated in the charade, taking the time
to read all the story outlines and offer notes as if the series were going ahead. No
one involved creatively at the lower levels of the production of Star Trek: Phase
II had any real reason to suspect otherwise. But after a decade of struggle and
false starts, by 1979 Star Trek on television was finally pronounced dead. Now,
Star Trek was going to the movies.
Chapter 6
Persistence of Vision:
The Original Cast Movies
‘The question was not whether we killed Spock, but whether we killed him
well.’ Nicholas Meyer

The story of the most successful Star Trek movies is primarily the story of three
creative individuals: Harve Bennett, Leonard Nimoy and Nicholas Meyer. They
would be the driving forces – in various capacities – behind the movies from
Star Trek II to Star Trek VI, with William Shatner carrying the can for the poorly
performing Star Trek V. However, to begin with it was down to one man to
launch Star Trek on the big screen: the series’ creator, Gene Roddenberry.
All the work done on the TV series was now repurposed for the movie, which
was not as easy as it might sound. For ex -ample, the quality of finish required
for sets (such as the new Enterprise bridge) on television was much lower than
that required for a film image that would be projected onto the big screen.
Everything – sets, costumes, props and special effects – now had to be brought
up to movie quality.
The biggest problem of all was still the script, which had gone through many
drafts with several writers alternately tackling the story ideas in the form of a TV
pilot or a would-be blockbuster movie. It’s little wonder that the attempted
November 1977 combination of all previous scripts into one satisfied no one.
There were questions of approach and tone: was this to be like an expanded
episode of the original series? Would broad comedy be suitable for Star Trek?
Should it be heroic space adventure, like Star Wars, or a more contemplative,
thoughtful film, like Close Encounters of the Third Kind or some of the better
episodes of the original Star Trek series? The questions were endless, and few
people – even Gene Roddenberry – had answers that everyone involved could
get behind and support. The only thing that seemed to be agreed on was that the
Star Trek movie should be full of ‘startling special effects’, a ‘light show’ that
would ‘dazzle the senses’, according to a script memo from Jon Povill.
What had been proposed originally as a $3-million TV movie in the mid-
1970s quickly ballooned to an $8-million feature film, then a $15-million
blockbuster (in comparison, 1977’s Star Wars had cost in the region of $9
million in direct production costs). The final tally (including all the amounts
spent in development on Phase II) would eventually be a whopping $44 million.
Although Paramount had tried to maintain the fiction that Phase II was an
active project, by March 1978 they had to come clean. The appointment of
director Robert Wise to helm what was now being dubbed Star Trek: The
Motion Picture gave the game away. Wise was an old Hollywood hand who’d
directed many classics, including West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of
Music (1965). More relevant to Paramount were his science fiction and fantasy
credentials on The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), The Haunting (1963) and
The Andromeda Strain (1971). Wise had started out as a film editor working
with Orson Welles on Citizen Kane (1941), before moving on to directing for
producer Val Lewton with Curse of the Cat People (1944). He was regarded as a
safe pair of hands to helm Paramount’s biggest movie project in years.
As the creative point man on any film project, the director is generally
regarded as the authority figure on set (sometimes for specific projects producers
or writers can hold that position, but for the majority of films the director is the
driving force). A single voice in the form of an authoritative director was exactly
what Star Trek: The Motion Picture needed to break the logjam that was
crippling the production. The problem was that this was not any run-of-the-mill
movie but Star Trek, and the series’ creative godfather Gene Roddenberry was
still very much involved. While Robert Wise was able to take command of the
creative departments (sets, costumes, props, make-up, special effects) and get
them all pulling in the same direction to realise the film, he still had to deal with
the politics of Paramount, the involvement of Roddenberry and a far from
finished script.
The first action Wise took was to resolve any outstanding issues with Spock
actor Leonard Nimoy, bringing him back on board the project (and in the process
dropping new Vulcan character Xon), as he knew it would be impossible to have
Star Trek without Spock. Secondly, Wise recalled writer Harold Livingston to
rework the ‘In Thy Image’ script from the ground up, removing all the rewriting
done by Roddenberry, Povill and others through countless confused drafts. Wise
wanted a script that contained the same ideas and action, but was written for the
big screen rather than cobbled together from failed TV pilot drafts.
From the first musings about a possible Star Trek film, by D. C. Fontana in a
fanzine called Star-Borne in 1972, through Gene Roddenberry’s 1975 script
‘The God Thing’ to Harold Livingston’s 1977 script ‘In Thy Image’, the voyage
of Star Trek: The Motion Picture to its first day of principal photography on 7
August 1978 had been a long and complicated one.
 Robert Wise started shooting barely eighteen months before the planned
December 1979 release date, with an unfinished script and no idea if the studio
could handle the special effects required by the story (which had remained true
to the basics of Phase II’s ‘In Thy Image’). With new script pages arriving on set
daily, the film was still without an agreed ending well into shooting (script
revisions were so numerous that some were noted not just by the day they were
made, but by the hour).
With scenes on the redesigned Enterprise bridge and transporter platform
completed in the studio, the production relocated for three days to Yellowstone
National Park to shoot the scenes on Vulcan featuring Nimoy. The film’s
realisation of Vulcan (easily outstripping anything seen on the original TV
show) would be augmented with the use of visual effects and matte paintings for
a convincing otherworldly feel. However, by the end of August the production
was around two weeks behind the planned shooting schedule. It would be 26
January 1979 before shooting wrapped on the film after 125 days, with a huge
amount of post-production work still to be done.
The creation of the special effects for Star Trek: The Motion Picture proved to
be the biggest headache for the production. Robert Abel and Associates were
appointed to realise the Enterprise’s encounter with V’ger, but found the work
and the tight schedule daunting. Paramount brought in effects specialist Douglas
Trumbull (2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind ) to
rescue the project and ensure it met the release date. Despite all the time and
money available, the film was barely completed in time for release, with Wise
always considering it to have been a ‘rough cut’: an unfinished project released
due to commercial deadlines. Star Trek: The Motion Picture was not audience
tested due to lack of time (something Wise regretted) and the film’s just-
completed print was delivered to the premiere in Washington DC by the director
himself. ‘I saw the completed film for the first time on December 1, just three
days before our premiere. I cut about ten minutes and had a new master printed.
The film that was ultimately shown was a rough cut, the kind of film you show
at your first sneak preview. You really never know what you have until you get
your film in front of an audience.’

The reviews of Star Trek: The Motion Picture were definitely mixed, with
Variety taking a positive view: ‘[The film] includes all of the ingredients the TV
show’s fans thrive on: the philosophical dilemma wrapped in a scenario of mind
control, troubles with the spaceship, the dependable and understanding Kirk, the
ever-logical Spock, and [a] suspenseful twist ending.’ Roger Ebert, of the
Chicago Sun-Times called the film ‘about as good as we could have expected’
but lacking the ‘dazzling brilliance and originality of 2001’. The film’s lengthy
running time – much of it taken up with special effects sequences – was heavily
criticised, resulting in the movie becoming widely known as Star Trek: The
Motionless Picture or Star Trek: The Slow Motion Picture. David Denby, of New
York Magazine, noted how much of the film consisted of characters reacting to
things on view screens, making the experience ‘like watching someone else
watch television’, perhaps intended as a veiled criticism of the movie’s
television origins.
Opening in 859 cinemas, the movie grossed $11.8 million across the opening
weekend, beating the record previously set by Superman (1978) for the same
time of year. Within a week the box office had risen to $17 million, eventually
reaching a final US total of $82.25 million. The film eventually grossed $139
million worldwide and scored three Oscar nominations (for Art Direction, Visual
Effects and Original Score by Jerry Goldsmith). Despite this, within Paramount
the long-gestating film was considered a disappointment. The costs of the
abandoned Star Trek: Phase II project were attached to the movie. Blame was
attached to Gene Roddenberry, and while the studio decided they would like to
produce a quicker and cheaper sequel film, the creator of Star Trek would not be
involved.
For his part, Leonard Nimoy was glad he’d returned to Star Trek but was
equally glad that the process had come to an end with the release of The Motion
Picture. ‘I felt liberated’, he wrote in his autobiography, I Am Spock. ‘No longer
would I have to deal with questions like “Why won’t you do Star Trek again?
Are you sick of Spock?” The hype and expectation brought out a large audience
for a short period of time – and then it was over. I felt I’d taken off the Spock
ears for the last time. That, I thought, is the end of that.’
For William Shatner, writing in his book, Star Trek Movie Memories, he came
from playing Captain Kirk again to attending the premiere believing the film
‘was gonna be nothing short of terrific. Later, watching the film with a
perspective that was a bit more honest I thought to myself, “Well, that’s it. We
gave it our best shot, it wasn’t good, and that’ll never happen again.” Shows you
what I know.’
Director Robert Wise would get the chance to revisit Star Trek: The Motion
Picture and finish it to his satisfaction in 2001, just four years before he died. An
extended TV cut of the movie had debuted in 1983 on ABC, with twelve
minutes of restored footage, but Wise had not been involved. The arrival of
DVD allowed him to return to the ‘unfinished’ movie and advances in computer
special effects allowed him to not only re-edit the movie but also revise and
complete some of the special effects. Using the script, storyboards, studio
memos and the director’s recollections, an attempt was made in this special
edition to bring the film closer to the original intentions. The re-released film
was 136 minutes, four minutes longer than the original 1979 release. The re-
edited Director’s Cut of Star Trek: The Motion Picture was better paced,
featuring a better balance between special effects and character drama, and was
better reviewed than the original.
For all its faults, Star Trek: The Motion Picture succeeded in a most
spectacular way. It not only brought Star Trek back from oblivion (thus setting
the scene for all the spin-off TV shows that followed), but it also launched a new
series of big screen adventures for the original Star Trek TV crew that would run
throughout the 1980s.

After the overblown Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the executives at Paramount
knew a very different approach had to be taken for the sequel. It had to be
produced quicker, cheaper and better, yet still serve what they now had box
office proof for: an audience that was hungry for more Star Trek. The second
movie would be a chance for those now creatively in control to get it right.
Paramount’s President of Production Jeffrey Katzenberg had been concerned
about the race to have the first movie ready in time for its locked-in release date.
He was not about to allow the same thing to happen again, so he sought out a
safe pair of hands to look after the Star Trek movie franchise. Paramount’s Barry
Diller, Michael Eisner and Katzenberg collectively decided that Roddenberry
would carry the can for the near-fiasco of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Reluctant to alienate Roddenberry completely, and worried what he might tell
the Star Trek fan base if he was cut loose from the studio, Paramount offered the
series’ creator the role of ‘executive consultant’ on the planned second movie. It
was a meaningless title with next to no creative involvement, but it came with a
fee attached (and a share of the box office). More importantly for Roddenberry’s
not inconsiderable ego, it avoided the ignominy of him being thrown off his own
creation entirely. It was not an ideal situation, but it was one Gene Roddenberry
could live with if it meant the continuation of his Star Trek-related income.
Producer Harve Bennett was handed the Star Trek movie franchise, with a
tight brief to bring the second film in on time, on budget and to quality. Bennett
had come to Paramount from TV and had been on the lot less than a week when
he was interviewed in connection with the Star Trek job. On graduating from
film school, Bennett had been an executive at CBS and ABC before moving into
television production in the late 1960s with The Mod Squad. Throughout the
1970s he’d produced several television series and mini-series, including The Six
Million Dollar Man and spin-off The Bionic Woman; Rich Man, Poor Man; The
Invisible Man and The Gemini Man.
Called to a meeting with Diller and Eisner, Bennett was surprised to also meet
Charles Bluhdorn, head of Paramount’s owner Gulf + Western. Bluhdorn had
been very unhappy with Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but recognised that the
company had a great asset in Star Trek, if used well. He quizzed Bennett about
his opinion of the film. Deciding to be truthful, Bennett told the assembled
executives that he’d found the movie ‘boring’. Could he do better with less than
the $45 million the first film had cost? Bluhdorn asked him. Without thinking,
Bennett automatically responded with: ‘Yes. In fact, I could make five or six
movies for that!’ He was tasked on the spot to produce the next Star Trek film.
One of Bennett’s first questions was about Roddenberry’s role in the new
project. The new producer was told that Roddenberry was a consultant only,
someone who’d pass comment on the script and creative elements of the film,
but not someone to whom Bennett would have to report. In fact, across the next
decade and four movies the bulk of their creative contact would be in the form of
memos rather than in person. That was enough for Bennett, who saw an
opportunity to escape his television background and make the break into feature
film production. There was one problem: Bennett had never seen the Star Trek
TV show.
The producer screened all seventy-nine episodes of the ori -ginal series, both
to familiarise himself with the show and to get a feel for the series – he was also
on the lookout for suitable story ideas for the second film. One episode stood out
for Bennett. ‘Space Seed’ starred Ricardo Montalban as a genetically enhanced
villain named Khan Noonien Singh. Khan and his followers had been exiled
upon a barren planet at the end of the instalment, with Kirk and Spock
speculating about what might become of them. An answer to that question, and
the return of the charismatic Khan, would form the basis for Bennett’s Star Trek
II.
Bennett worked out a sequel story that brought Kirk and Spock into conflict
with Khan once again – and would result in the death of the Vulcan science
officer. ‘I wanted to do it suddenly’, said Bennett of the death of Spock,
originally planned for an end-of-act-one surprise, like the death of Janet Leigh in
Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). He brought TV screenwriter Jack B. Sowards
onto the project to draft an initial screenplay from his story, while he dealt with
strong objections to the storyline from Gene Roddenberry.
Bennett was obliged to treat Roddenberry’s input in good faith. ‘I would
estimate that about 20 per cent of the points that he made were included in some
form in the next script draft’, recalled Bennett, although the central storyline and
approach formulated by the new producer changed little. Bennett believed that
the death of Spock would up the ante for the Star Trek film series and prove to
be an irresistible draw to fans and a wider audience.
Another reason for including that story development was to secure the
participation of Leonard Nimoy one more time. The actor had made it clear that
following Star Trek: The Motion Picture he was once more done with the series.
He refused to come back for the sequel, until Bennett said to him: ‘How would
you like a great death scene?’ The promised death of Spock was enough to make
the actor reconsider his position and sign on to star in the new film.
The surprise plot development was leaked to wider Star Trek fandom (almost
certainly by a disgruntled Roddenberry) and was quickly distributed through a
network of fan groups and fanzines (this was, of course, long before the days of
the internet when such information is communicated so much more easily and
widely). As a result, Paramount faced a ‘Don’t Kill Spock’ letter-writing
campaign run by Star Trek fans. Roddenberry seized on the outcry he had more
likely than not created (after all, the producer did have form) to back up his
argument that killing off such a pivotal character would be a mistake. Bennett
continued to resist, arguing in favour of the drama of the scene and its
consequences for the Star Trek universe, and concluding that he would not allow
fans to dictate the dramatic development of Star Trek. The one concession he did
make – now that the ‘secret’ plot point had leaked – was to move Spock’s death
to the climax of the film.
Hired to direct was Nicholas Meyer, whose only previous directorial credit
was Time After Time (1979), which saw H. G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell)
travel to modern San Francisco in pursuit of Jack the Ripper (David Warner). He
would later direct the controversial nuclear holocaust TV movie The Day After
(1983). Meyer was initially brought onto the project to write a further draft of
the Bennett–Sowards screenplay (he’d started his career as a novelist, and had
written a screenplay based on his own Sherlock Holmes novel, The Seven Per
Cent Solution, made into a movie by Herbert Ross in 1977). Within twelve days
Meyer delivered a reworked screenplay that was better organised dramatically
and seemed to meet the needs of all the interested parties at Paramount. He was
then confirmed as the director of the second Star Trek film.
Meyer recalled the writing process in his memoir, The View From the Bridge.
‘I worked, juggling the plots, subplots and characters we had all agreed on –
materials first imagined in bits and pieces by five disparate authors – trying to
weave them into a cohesive whole. I was not burdened by reverence for the
series. I was of the opinion that Star Trek could stand some fixing. I made up the
rules as I needed them and wrote my own dialogue. I was writing the movie I
wanted to see.’
Meyer combined the action-adventure requirements of a populist Star Trek
movie with some thoughtful themes about ageing and death. ‘This was going to
be a story in which Spock died, so it was going to be a story about death, and it
was only a short hop, skip, and a jump to realize that it was going to be about old
age and friendship’, noted Meyer.
He confronted head-on something that those involved in Star Trek could all
see, but were reluctant to acknowledge – the 1960s cast was beginning to visibly
age, despite their various Hollywood attempts to appear timeless and
unchanging. By the early 1980s, none of the original Star Trek cast looked the
same as they had in the 1960s, and Meyer felt it important to acknowledge what
would be staring movie audiences clearly in the face on giant cinema screens. He
opted to make that part of the theme of the film, a driving force for various
characters’ motivations and decision points. Meyer noted: ‘The second Star Trek
movie revolves around a training cruise aboard the Enterprise, supervised by a
reluctant Kirk, who, promoted to Admiral, is now a depressed desk jockey,
brooding about his age. Thirsting for vengeance, Khan and his band (marooned
by Kirk) hijack the Reliant and lay a trap for Kirk. The climax of the film is a
‘submarine’ battle between Kirk and his nemesis in a lightning-splattered
nebula, in which Spock sacrifices his life to save his captain and the crew of the
Enterprise.’
Complicating the thematic content of the film and heightening the dramatic
stakes, Meyer gave Kirk a long-lost old flame in the form of research scientist
Carol Marcus and a son – David – whose life he’d not been involved in. Both are
caught up in the machinations of Khan, and serve to remind Kirk of the kind of
life he has missed through his commitment to Starfleet. These were issues that
The Original Series had only occasionally been able to touch upon. Given the
prominence of death in the movie, Meyer turned to Shakespeare for a quote to
use as a title, settling on ‘The Undiscovered Country’, Hamlet’s phrase for the
world beyond death.
Leonard Nimoy had been tempted back aboard the Enterprise by the promise
of a dramatic death scene, but the ship was still without a captain, the now
Admiral Kirk. William Shatner reportedly hated the screenplay, probably
because a lot of the dramatic focus fell on the character he’d always seen as his
side-kick, Spock (although Star Trek fans had long ago decided on the
importance of Spock’s role to the franchise). While the screenplay contained
many solid, dramatic scenes for Shatner to play, the actor was predictably
uncomfortable with confronting the theme of ageing that was central to the
drama.
The sticking point seemed to be the fact that the screenplay specified an age
for Kirk, and it was this that was upsetting Shatner. ‘The revisions proved
remarkably simple’, admitted Meyer in his memoir, ‘and in the end Shatner’s
needs were easily fulfilled.’ Shatner described the resulting revised screenplay as
‘terrific’, although all Meyer had done was to delete any specific numerical
references to Kirk’s age. The rest was the same script that Shatner had
previously professed to ‘hate’.
Meyer brought in George Lucas’ special effects house Industrial Light and
Magic (ILM) to provide many of the special effects for Star Trek II. While the
majority of the work was traditional film models, especially for the climactic
confrontation of the two starships (the Enterprise and the hijacked Reliant), ILM
also pioneered the use of computer-generated imagery or computer graphics in
the Genesis Project sequence. Intended to depict the terraforming of a planet –
renewing a barren landscape to make it suitable for human habitation – in the
past the sequence would have been traditionally animated. Using computers to
create special effects would gradually become the norm in filmmaking, but Star
Trek II was one of the first to use the technique in a commercial film.
The shooting of the pivotal death of Spock scene was saved until the end of
the production process. ‘It was my job to make Spock’s death plausible,
meaningful and moving’, wrote Meyer in his memoir. ‘If we botched the job,
people would throw things at the screen. If we did it correctly and the death
proceeded organically from the material, no one would ever question it.’ After
fifteen years of living with Spock, Leonard Nimoy was nervous on the day the
scene was to be filmed – after all, he was saying goodbye to an alter-ego that had
meant a lot to him, even if the relationship had been a troubling one. During the
shooting of Star Trek II there was talk of making a third film in the series, and
Nimoy’s more commercial instincts may have been telling him he’d be silly to
distance himself from Star Trek just as it was on the verge of ever-greater
success. As it was, the atmosphere on stage during the shooting of the dramatic
sacrifice scene anticipated that which would pervade cinemas where the movie
screened: several of the production crew were observed to have tears in their
eyes as Star Trek’s Vulcan hero breathed his last. ‘It took about a day to film the
death of Spock’, relates Meyer. ‘Some of us understood the significance of that
eternal moment while it was unfolding.’
Released in the US on 4 June 1982, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan enjoyed
considerable success, garnering $97 million worldwide on a budget of around
$11 million. The film’s opening weekend – at the time the largest opening
weekend gross in movie history – brought in $14.3 million, reaching a total of
$78.9 million in the US, and becoming the sixth highest grossing film of the
year. The final total may have been less than that of The Motion Picture, but the
substantially lower production cost meant the Star Trek sequel was much more
profitable.
Critical reaction was more uniform than that in response to the first film, with
many welcoming the dramatic nature of the easy to follow storyline. The
improved pacing in comparison to its predecessor was much commented upon,
with the Washington Post and the New York Times feeling the movie was much
closer in spirit to the original TV series. The stronger storyline was welcomed by
the New York Times, while Variety praised the new movie’s stronger character
interaction. Spock’s death was deemed to have been dramatic and well handled
by the Chicago Sun-Times’ critic Roger Ebert, although he feared the film
sometimes verged on melodrama and he saw the climactic battle sequences as
tepid.
For Star Trek fans (and many critics) The Wrath of Khan would be regarded
as the film that saved the Star Trek movie franchise. It had shown that Star Trek
could fill the big screen in a dynamic and exciting way that faithfully recalled
the TV series but also pushed on to new frontiers – and was unafraid of taking
risks, such as killing off Spock.

Recognising a successful production when they saw one, the executive team at
Paramount kept Harve Bennett on board for the next Star Trek movie. Although
there were plenty of sequel movies through the 1980s, few were as heavily
serialised as Bennett would make the second, third and fourth Star Trek movies.
Star Trek III would pick up directly from the end of the second film and take the
characters and drama forward into a new adventure. There would also be a
moment of high drama to match the death of Spock in Star Trek II: the
destruction of the starship Enterprise. As with Spock’s death, Gene Roddenberry
objected to this latest development. ‘I thought it was a foolish piece of waste’, he
said. ‘I don’t know what they gained by losing the Enterprise, other than a
moment in a film. The Enterprise was really one of our continuing characters.’
Part of the climactic action of The Wrath of Khan had been cooked up
between Harve Bennett and Leonard Nimoy on set during filming. Just before
Spock takes action to save the Enterprise, thus leading to his death, he delivers
the notorious Vulcan nerve pinch to Dr McCoy, so the medic will not interfere.
Bennett had come from episodic television, and was aware that Star Trek might
well return for a third episode. Laying possible story threads that could be picked
up in the next movie, Bennett (with Meyer’s reluctant agreement: he wanted
Spock’s death to be final) had Spock perform a mind-meld on McCoy, with the
crucial line of dialogue – ‘Remember’ – suggested by Nimoy himself. This also
served to provide a response to Roddenberry’s main criticism of the film,
namely the apparent death of Spock. Few knew at that point how – or if – the
implications of that brief moment might be picked up in another Star Trek film.
Bennett had to first persuade Nimoy to return once again if they were to
seriously pursue the option of resurrecting Spock. After each Star Trek movie
Nimoy had considered himself to be finished with the character. The actor
always had a confused relationship with his Vulcan creation (to the extent that
he issued two autobiographies at different times, one called I Am Not Spock and
another titled I Am Spock). If Nimoy had not fully grasped the implications of
the brief ‘Remember’ scene, he did understand the meaning of the surprise
appearance of Spock’s burial tube on the Genesis planet (a scene added by
Paramount and not shot by Meyer) in the closing moments of The Wrath of
Khan: he would be wanted once again to play Spock.
The two key Star Trek stars who returned for The Wrath of Khan managed to
gain pay-or-play deals (meaning they would be paid whether the projects
proceeded or not) for two additional non-Star Trek acting projects from
Paramount as part of their negotiations. Nimoy knew what his deal-breaker
would be this time around: he wanted to direct. Nimoy recalled that he (and
Shatner) had campaigned for the opportunity to direct episodes of the original
Star Trek TV series back in the 1960s – but had been consistently turned down,
although Shatner was scheduled to helm a late season three instalment that was
never made due to the show’s cancellation. Now Nimoy saw his opportunity: in
return for reviving Spock in Star Trek III, he wanted to direct the movie.
Expecting to meet studio resistance, Nimoy was pleasantly surprised to find
much support for the idea among the Paramount executives, including Harve
Bennett (Nimoy had previously directed a TV movie that Bennett had produced,
The Powers of Matthew Starr). Perhaps more surprising was the support of
studio boss Michael Eisner. According to Nimoy’s I Am Spock memoir, Eisner
immediately latched on to the promotional aspects of the idea: ‘Leonard Nimoy
directs the return of Spock? I love it!’ Nimoy noted of Eisner’s reaction, ‘He was
so enthusiastic, I went totally slack-jawed.’ Eisner even asked Nimoy if he’d like
to write the script, but the actor was content to leave that task to Harve Bennett.
Picking up the story threads planted in The Wrath of Khan, The Search for
Spock reveals that the ‘Remember’ scene saw Spock implant his ‘katra’ (his
essential essence) within McCoy’s psyche during the mind-meld as a back-up, in
case he perished attempting to save the Enterprise. Realising this, Kirk and his
crew steal the Enterprise in order to retrieve Spock’s body from the Genesis
planet and reunite it with his katra. In the process they come into conflict with
hostile Klingons, led by Kruge (Christopher Lloyd), who are after the secrets of
the Genesis device. Kirk’s newly found son David Marcus is killed, and the
Enterprise is destroyed.
As far back as The Motion Picture, William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy had
enjoyed a ‘favoured nations’ clause in their contracts, meaning each would be
offered the same benefits as his co-star. Shatner therefore expected to also direct
a film in the Star Trek movie series, regarding that as a benefit to be shared.
Starting work on The Search for Spock, Shatner admitted to finding being
directed by his co-star difficult and awkward until he got used to the situation.
The absence of Spock from much of the movie allowed Nimoy to focus on his
work behind the camera. The third film in the series finally offered a prominent
role to DeForest Kelley as Dr McCoy, the incongruous and unexpected carrier of
Spock’s katra. The rest of the regular Star Trek cast all had their moments, but
none beyond the three central bridge characters really had a chance to make any
significant impact.
Once again Bennett’s TV production habits kicked in and he decided to open
the film with a series of clips from the previous movie to remind audiences of
the key story threads, the same way a TV series might open a new episode that
built on last week’s developments. The difference with the Star Trek movies was
that audiences would go years between instalments. In writing the screenplay,
Bennett had the film’s ending in mind from the beginning. It was obvious that
the crew would find and resurrect Spock, so Bennett came up with the ‘Your
name is . . . Jim’ line to signal that Spock’s consciousness had survived. As a
result the movie is perhaps rather predictable with all the dramatic high points
fairly well telegraphed, even though Bennett took the opportunity to feature the
Klingons as big screen adversaries.

Following the ageing and death themes of The Wrath of Khan, Bennett
introduced a more optimistic friendship and commitment theme to The Search
for Spock. The film would be about the central trio of Star Trek characters’
commitment to each other. Kirk is prepared to break the rules to save Spock,
while McCoy – despite his comic antagonism to his Vulcan friend – takes on the
burden of carrying his katra. For his part, Spock had enough faith in Kirk and
McCoy to trust them to bring him back from beyond death. While Roddenberry
objected to story developments such as the destruction of the Enterprise, he
remained silent about the apparent introduction of Christian sacrifice and
resurrection themes to his previously usually anti-religious series.
Produced on a slimline $16-million budget, Star Trek III: The Search for
Spock opened on 1 June 1984, competing with other summer blockbusters that
year including Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Gremlins and
Ghostbusters. Breaking the record-making weekend gross of the second Indiana
Jones movie released the week before, The Search for Spock recovered its
production budget in its opening weekend. The movie went on to gross $76.5
million in the US, reaching a total of $87 million worldwide.
The third Star Trek movie was not as widely acclaimed as The Wrath of Khan,
with critics praising its sense of grand space opera, while commenting on the
movie’s lower production values. Roger Ebert, in the Chicago Sun-Times, called
the movie ‘Good, but not great’, while USA Today praised the film as the best of
the three and the closest in spirit to the original TV series. Nimoy’s direction
was approved of by the majority of critics, with Newsweek acclaiming The
Search for Spock as the best-paced of the three movies to date. However, the
shock dramatic developments of David’s death and the destruction of the
Enterprise were criticised by some as obvious and manipulative moves. Fans
broadly welcomed the further adventures of the Enterprise crew, but for most
the third film did not trump The Wrath of Khan as the best Star Trek movie.


Many of the ideas developed for the first Star Trek movie had involved time
travel. One of the best episodes of the TV series – Harlan Ellison’s ‘The City on
the Edge of Forever’ – had seen Kirk, Spock and McCoy travel to Earth’s past
for an adventure. For the fourth Star Trek movie, which would conclude the
trilogy begun with The Wrath of Khan, Bennett resolved to send the Enterprise
crew back to contemporary Earth. This gambit would not only give the often
otherworldly Star Trek series a direct connection to its contemporary audience,
but it would also help with the budget if scenes could be shot in an environment
requiring no ‘futuristic’ set dressing.
Working on the story together, Leonard Nimoy (who would again direct
following the success of The Search for Spock) and Harve Bennett set out to
develop a film with an environmental theme: not only were environmental
problems gaining mainstream attention in the mid-1980s, but the idea seemed to
fit with one of Star Trek’s original successful ploys. The new film would tackle
a contemporary subject in the futuristic dressing of Star Trek, just as many
episodes of the original series had taken on 1960s social and political concerns
wrapped up in a space opera setting.
Another thing both storytellers agreed on was that Star Trek IV needed a more
light-hearted tone than the high drama of the previous two movies. While the
stakes would be high and there’d be plenty of incident, it was felt that the Star
Trek characters had been put through the emotional wringer in The Wrath of
Khan and The Search for Spock, so the fourth movie would go lighter on them.
All the pair had to do was settle on what the story would actually entail – they
only knew that some element from their past (the audiences’ present) would
need to be retrieved by the Enterprise crew to save their future.
Before much further progress was made on these ideas, however, the project
was dealt a body blow. William Shatner was no longer interested in playing
Kirk. ‘I was being “difficult”, at least according to the studio’, wrote Shatner in
Star Trek Movie Memories. ‘I steadfastly refused to sign on the dotted line for
our new film, holding out partially in an effort to make up for two decades’
worth of nonexistent residuals [payments for repeat screenings of TV episodes]
and merchandising revenues. [I cited] the fact that our previous three films had
earned the studio well over a quarter of a billion dollars.’
Initially it looked like Shatner’s gambit would not pay off. A change at the top
of Paramount meant that new executives were in charge of the Star Trek movies.
Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg had both left to run Disney, and Barry
Diller had gone to Fox, finally achieving the dream of Paramount’s fourth TV
network elsewhere. The new head of the studio was distribution man Frank
Mancuso, with Ned Tanen supervising motion pictures and Dawn Steele
appointed head of production. While all were committed to continuing the Star
Trek motion picture franchise, none of them was wedded to the successes and
failures of the past movies, so they were open to new directions.
Faced with a missing-in-action Admiral Kirk, Nimoy and Bennett had to come
up with an alternative plan. Bennett’s first suggestion was one that would
resurface many times over the next two decades in connection with a variety of
Star Trek projects. He suggested a prequel movie chronicling Kirk and
company’s time at Starfleet Academy, their pre-Enterprise adventures. This
would require the characters to be younger, thus entailing recasting the core Star
Trek crew, solving the Shatner problem. Nimoy could even appear in the movie
as the older Spock, either as a narrator in a narrative wraparound or through
some time travel device, allowing him to actually take part in the action. The
new executive team at Paramount was apparently open to taking the Star Trek
movies in this direction.
They also had other, more outré ideas for Star Trek. One of the biggest stars
Paramount had in the mid-1980s was Eddie Murphy. Nimoy had actually
approached Daniel Petrie Jr, writer of Murphy’s star-making movie Beverly
Hills Cop (1984) to work on Star Trek when the concept of featuring Murphy in
the Star Trek movie was tabled. Outgoing Paramount executive Jeffrey
Katzenberg described this as ‘either the best or worst idea in the world’. Nimoy
and Bennett were tempted by the notion as a way of attracting non-Star Trek
fans to the fourth movie, although they were also wary of the fact that Murphy’s
comedic presence might unbalance the film and even lead to Star Trek being
ridiculed. Murphy himself claimed to be a huge Star Trek fan and was very
positive about the idea of being included in the film. Writers Steve Meerson and
Peter Krikes worked on a Murphy-centric screenplay that would see him play a
contemporary college professor who believes in aliens and meets the Enterprise
crew in a series of comedic encounters. In the end, Murphy opted to make The
Golden Child (1986), having decided he didn’t like the Star Trek role offered,
claiming he’d rather play an alien or a Starfleet officer. It also seems that
business sense ruled the day at executive level at Paramount – there was little
point combining two multi-million-dollar franchises (Star Trek and Eddie
Murphy) into one when separately they’d bring in twice as much revenue.
 The Eddie Murphy detour cost seven months of development time in 1985,
and in the end Nimoy and Bennett returned to their ‘time travel to the past to
save the future’ idea, this time with Admiral Kirk part of the action as Shatner
was back on board, having negotiated a larger financial compensation package
(which Nimoy also benefited from, thanks to their shared ‘favoured nations’
clause). Writer–director Nicholas Meyer was brought back into the Star Trek
fold to help script the fourth movie after opting out of number three as he felt ‘I
didn’t want to resurrect Spock’ as such a move ‘attacked the integrity and the
authenticity of the feelings provoked by his death. However, by the time we got
to IV, Spock was alive, it was a de facto thing, and on top of that my friends
were in trouble.’
The first order of business was to decide exactly what the ‘MacGuffin’ –
Alfred Hitchcock’s term for an otherwise insignificant plot motivator – from the
past needed to save the future would be. Several things were considered,
including violin-makers and oil drillers, or the cure to a disease that could only
be found in the rainforests (extinct in the future). It was Nimoy’s reading of a
book about the extinction of animal species that set them on the path to whales.
Having humpback whales extinct in the future, but needing to retrieve some
from the past, seemed like an idea that would give the film a wide appeal beyond
just Star Trek fans. The addition of mysterious whale song to the film helped to
secure the story: a destructive space probe in the future threatens the Earth while
seeking an answering whale song to its signal. Kirk, the newly resurrected
Spock, McCoy and the crew use the Klingon Bird-of-Prey ship to slingshot
around the sun in an effort to travel to the past in order to bring some living
whale samples back to the future. Everyone involved in the project recognised
that the opportunity for culture clash moments between the twenty-third-century
humans and those from 1986 would allow for a lot of natural comedy without
the star casting of Eddie Murphy.
So it proved: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was released on Thanksgiving
weekend, 26 November 1986, to huge critical acclaim and astonishing box office
receipts. The first five days saw the movie gross $39.6 million in the US, against
the production budget of just $21 million. Globally, the film was a huge success,
totalling $133 million at the worldwide box office. Originally scheduled for
release at Christmas, Paramount head Frank Mancuso had suggested bringing
the film forward to Thanksgiving, a switch that gave the film greater life in the
holiday period leading up to Christmas.
The fourth Star Trek movie was a huge crossover success with the plight of
the whales, the contemporary setting and the accessible character humour all
attracting a sizeable non-fan audience to the film. The Washington Post dubbed
the picture ‘immensely pleasurable Christmas entertainment’, while the New
York Times felt the latest instalment had ‘done a great deal to ensure the series’
longevity’. Again, there was much comment on how the film was true to the
critics’ memories of the TV series, while having the characters play up to their
reputations in the popular imagination proved a masterstroke in bringing in a
wider audience. An easy to engage with contemporary issue in the possible
extinction of the whales (and other species) made the film relevant to broad
1980s audiences, without being environmentally preachy. Above all, The Voyage
Home was a great slice of entertainment that would be well remembered by all
who saw it.

Following The Voyage Home was always going to be difficult. Given that
Leonard Nimoy had directed two hugely successful entries in the franchise, it
might have been expected that he’d continue with the fifth. However, due to the
parity between Nimoy and his Star Trek co-star, it was clearly now Shatner’s
turn to be the driving force behind a Star Trek movie. It seems likely this was
part of the negotiation that had brought Shatner back on board to star in Star
Trek IV – that he’d be the one behind the camera on Star Trek V. Shatner also
took the opportunity to develop the storyline for the fifth movie, as Nimoy had
done for the fourth. Overseeing the production, as on the previous movies, was
Harve Bennett, even though he had attempted to opt out of the series after The
Voyage Home.
In developing his storyline, Shatner was inspired by the sight of growing
numbers of tele-evangelists prospering in American culture. Shatner was
entranced by the fact that people like Jim and Tammy Faye Baker and Jimmy
Swaggart were not only hoodwinking (in his opinion) millions of Americans into
believing their Christian-inspired storytelling, but also getting many of them to
part with their hard-earned cash so the tele-evangelists could live high on the
hog. Shatner combined the figure of a preacher who hears the word of God with
one of Gene Roddenberry’s earliest ideas for a Star Trek film – the Enterprise’s
quest for God – to come up with a plot for Star Trek V. The ‘God’ eventually
discovered would be an all-powerful alien being that Kirk and company would
have to defeat.
This idea, and the resulting script from writer David Loughery (Dreamscape),
did not meet the same positive reception from the studio and Star Trek cast
members as the previous movie. Under Shatner’s initial direction Loughery had
crafted a story that promoted Kirk at the expense of the other main characters:
while they fell for the proselytising of the unicorn-riding, Vulcan mystic Zar
(later revised to be Sybok, the previously unknown half-brother of Spock), Kirk
was the sole hold-out for reason and the only one who could save them all.
Specifically causing discontent were the scripted actions of Spock and McCoy,
who allow Sybok to take command of the Enterprise because they buy into his
mystical vision. In the process they betray Kirk, although he has to rescue them
from themselves by the climax. Naturally, Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley
were not impressed by this take on their characters and (as Shatner had done on
Star Trek IV ) they asked for substantial script revisions.
Having previously objected to the death of Spock in The Wrath of Khan and
the destruction of the Enterprise in The Search for Spock, this time Roddenberry
objected to the entire basis for William Shatner’s Star Trek movie in a series of
memos and letters. Writing to Shatner, Roddenberry stated, ‘I simply cannot
support a story which has our intelligent and insightful crew mesmerised by a
23rd-century religious charlatan.’ In a memo to Harve Bennett, Roddenberry
was even blunter in his assessment of the proposed storyline: ‘It is not Star Trek!
[This] will destroy much of the value of the Star Trek property.’ He also sent a
summary of his feelings on the matter to his lawyer, Leonard Maizlish, to
prepare him for any dealings with Paramount. ‘The errors of property format,
science and fact in this movie story are nothing less than shocking’, wrote
Roddenberry. In a later memo to Shatner and Bennett, he explained that in his
opinion the suggested story ‘demeans and degrades Star Trek with subject matter
that it has assiduously avoided in the past . . . Please abandon this story laden
with mesmerisation, pop psychology, flim flam betrayal, a lack of power, a lack
of humour. Please do something with the ingredient that is the hallmark of Star
Trek . . . believability.’ Roddenberry even recruited authors Isaac Asimov and
Arthur C. Clarke to his cause, but it was all to no avail. While Roddenberry
could clearly see that Shatner’s storyline for Star Trek V was in no way a
suitable follow-up to the crowd-pleasing and immensely successful The Voyage
Home, no one else at Paramount appeared to agree (or at least appeared willing
to take on the might of Shatner’s contractual arrangements and considerable
ego). Although the script went through many revisions and was improved in
Roddenberry’s eyes, the fundamental basis of the storyline was so flawed he felt
the film was beyond salvaging.
 There were other pressures on Paramount. The studio was keen to capitalise
quickly on the success of The Voyage Home with another movie, while the
looming 1988 Writers Guild of America strike was threatening to curtail any
new film’s development time. They also had a new Star Trek TV series in The
Next Generation to promote and wanted the film to drive viewers to the TV
show, and vice versa. The rush into production, with an underdeveloped script
and an inadequate budget and time scale meant that the finished film suffered
immensely, just as Roddenberry had foreseen it would. The original climax on
the ‘planet of God’, Sha Ka Ree, (meant to sound like Sean Connery, the former
James Bond whom Shatner hoped would play Sybok) was to feature an attack
upon the Enterprise crew by a rock monster. The effects used to create the
sequence were, however, considered too poor for a major motion picture and this
climax was abandoned. Shatner later admitted of his rock man, ‘Our guy in the
silly rubber suit ultimately just looked like . . . well, a guy in a silly rubber suit. I
realised that the already compromised ending of my movie was now in serious
trouble.’ In post-production Shatner attempted to save the scene: ‘My God effect
looked cheesy, and the hastily concocted light blob, designed to replace our
disastrous rock man, was truly disappointing. Harve [Bennett] and I tried to
scrape up the funds to reshoot the ending, but found the studio purse strings
tightly knotted. [This] hastily thrown together ending left us dead in the water. It
was the ruination of that film.’
As with the release of The Wrath of Khan, the new Star Trek movie was up
against sequel films featuring Indiana Jones and the Ghostbusters in the summer
of 1989. Although upon opening on 9 June Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
achieved the highest opening gross of any Star Trek film to that date, taking
$17.4 million, the film’s initial success was not to last. With a production budget
of $27 million (the highest yet for a Star Trek movie, excluding The Motion
Picture), The Final Frontier grossed just $52 million in the US and reached a
worldwide total of only $70 million, almost half of the $133 million taken by
The Voyage Home. Despite this disappointment, the movie was still the tenth
highest grossing film of the year.
A series of very critical reviews contributed heavily to the significant
underperformance of a movie Paramount had been privately projecting could
gross in excess of $200 million. The Washington Post called the movie ‘a
shambles’, while the Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert was scathing of
Shatner’s directorial efforts: ‘There is no clear line from the beginning of the
movie to the end, not much danger, no characters to really care about, little
suspense, uninteresting or incomprehensible villains, and a great deal of small
talk and pointless dead ends.’ Fans generally regard The Final Frontier as the
worst of the Star Trek movies by far, second only to 2002’s Star Trek Nemesis.

For the final Star Trek film to feature the original 1960s cast all together, the
man who’d previously saved the Star Trek movie franchise twice was called
back into action. After The Motion Picture tanked, Nicholas Meyer had revived
Star Trek with The Wrath of Khan. After The Search for Spock failed to be as
exciting as its predecessor, Meyer had written the screenplay for the most
popular Star Trek film to date, The Voyage Home. Now, after William Shatner’s
encounter with God in The Final Frontier had proved to be something of a damp
squib, the producers turned to a tried and tested storyteller: Nicholas Meyer was
once more seen as the only man who could save Star Trek.
In 1991, Star Trek’s twenty-fifth anniversary was looming, so Paramount
wanted something special. Harve Bennett had once more touted his long-
cherished idea for a Starfleet Academy movie (dubbed by detractors and
supporters alike as ‘Top Gun in space’), only for it to be dismissed once again in
the face of a hostile reception for the idea from Star Trek fans and the (no doubt
self-interested) cast of the current movie series. The rejection of his idea for the
second time resulted in Bennett quitting the Star Trek films and withdrawing
from the role of producer on Star Trek VI.
Instead, the successful idea for Star Trek VI came from Leonard Nimoy, who
– as he had done with The Voyage Home – suggested that the film should take its
theme from contemporary political or social issues, reflecting the often
successful gambit of The Original Series. In response to the fall of the Berlin
Wall in 1989 and the end of the Cold War, Nimoy asked, ‘What would happen if
the Wall came down in space?’ To this were added aspects of the Chernobyl
nuclear disaster of 1986, recrafted as the environmentally devastating destruction
of the Klingon moon Praxis. This event throws the Klingon Empire into turmoil,
resulting in the prospect of a peace treaty with the United Federation of Planets.
However, other factions are at work that will use assassination to prevent the
peace from happening in a bid to further their own aims. The story puts the
safety of Klingon Chancellor Gorkon (David Warner) in the hands of Kirk,
whose son was killed by Klingons in The Search for Spock.
The Paramount studio executives had one proviso for writer–director Meyer:
this sixth movie should serve as a swan song for the original Star Trek television
cast, who were now considered too old to front an action-adventure movie
franchise. Meyer brought in Denny Martin Flinn to co-write the screenplay,
deliberately layering in those contemporary political references. The Cold War
and Chernobyl aspects made sense, thought Meyer, as the Klingons had always
been Star Trek’s standins for the Russians. The assassination plot was felt
suitable, as leaders who sue for peace (as Chancellor Gorkon – modelled on
Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev – would do) often found themselves attacked
by their own side (or others) serving their own entrenched self-interests.
To keep costs down, much of the film was shot on the Enterprise sets then in
use by The Next Generation TV series, redressed and lit differently for the film.
Because many of Paramount’s studio stages were also in heavy use at the time of
the film’s production, much of the movie would be shot on location around Los
Angeles. Shatner, Nimoy and Kelley all agreed to cuts in their respective fees to
keep the budget low, opting instead to be paid from the film’s net profits.
Once again, as with so many of the films in the Star Trek series after The
Motion Picture, Gene Roddenberry disapproved of Star Trek VI: The
Undiscovered Country (using the title Meyer had originally intended for The
Wrath of Khan). He and Nicholas Meyer had a fundamentally different take on
the future as depicted in Star Trek. While Roddenberry had long spoken of an
idealistic future where bigotry and prejudice did not exist, Meyer believed such
traits – often the basis of dramatic conflict needed in good storytelling – would
never be eliminated from human nature. Even though Roddenberry was revered
as the Great Bird of the Galaxy and Star Trek’s originator, long-standing fans
enjoyed and approved of much of Meyer’s fresh take on Roddenberry’s creation.
Of the six original Star Trek movies, The Wrath of Khan, The Voyage Home and
The Undiscovered Country are widely regarded as the best, and all featured the
heavy involvement of natural storyteller Nicholas Meyer.
Released on 6 December 1991, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
opened to another record-breaking weekend for the Star Trek series, taking $18
million at the box office. The film went on to gross $74.8 million in the US,
totalling a worldwide take of $96.8 million overall. It was a significant
improvement over the dismal The Final Frontier, justified by a significantly
improved film, but it could not match the runaway mainstream popularity of The
Voyage Home. Critics found the movie to be a welcome step up from its
predecessor, and many saw it as a suitable sign off for the venerable Star Trek
crew of the 1960s, who by the 1990s were being eclipsed by their younger
counterparts on television’s The Next Generation. The Australian newspaper the
Herald Sun welcomed the film’s ‘suspense, action and subtle good humour’,
while USA Today commented that ‘this last mission gets almost everything right
– from the nod to late creator Gene Roddenberry to in-jokes about Kirk’s rep as
an alien babe magnet’.
The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns was the final
destination of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, shortly after he viewed a
near-complete rough cut of the film before release. Roddenberry died of heart
failure on 24 October 1991, aged seventy. He’d been in ill health for his final
years, but he had remained fully committed to and involved in his creation. A
dedication to the creator of Star Trek was added to the film before its December
release, and it brought much hearty applause across movie houses from the Star
Trek fans in the audience. While he had opposed much of the material included
in the Star Trek film series – rightly, in the case of Shatner’s misguided Star
Trek V – Gene Roddenberry knew it was the amazing success of the movies that
had allowed his return to television production with The Next Generation. While
his storytelling talents hadn’t been needed by the makers of the movies,
Roddenberry knew that he could still weave magic with his words. Challenged
by a Paramount executive who’d told him he couldn’t capture lightning in a
bottle twice, Gene Roddenberry had set out to prove the doubters wrong.
Chapter 7
Far Beyond the Stars:
The Next Generation
‘Roddenberry had created quite a complex and at times mysterious
character. Guarded, cautious, careful in showing his feelings, in expressing
his ideas about many things – I found that very interesting.’ Patrick Stewart

For years, executives at Paramount had been happy to maximise their income
from what some had termed ‘the seventy-nine jewels’, the original three years of
Star Trek episodes. The show had lost money during the years it was in
production and on the air, but the afterlife of seemingly endless reruns the series
enjoyed during the 1970s – and the growing popularity of the show – ensured
that those seventy-nine episodes generated a healthy income for the parent
company (and anyone lucky enough to be on residuals).
That surprising afterlife, and the fact that Paramount was finally convinced
there was an audience for more Star Trek, led to the hugely successful movie
series. Science fiction was in vogue again following Star Wars, and after the
tortuous diversion into the development of the Star Trek: Phase II TV series,
Paramount had finally made a commercial success of Star Trek. As the original
crew aged on screen, Paramount began to think about bringing Star Trek back to
television again, with an allnew crew in all-new adventures.
September 1986 saw the twentieth anniversary of the debut of the original
Star Trek series. Paramount celebrated with a lavish party, which many involved
thought was unusual for a studio that had never previously shown much interest
in the series. Many put the unexpected focus on Star Trek down to the upcoming
fourth movie and the fact that episodes were now being sold on videotape to a
growing audience. No one suspected that a major resurgence of Star Trek on
television was mere months away. In October 1986, a month prior to the release
of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (the most popular of the original cast Star
Trek movies), Paramount announced a new first-run syndicated TV show
entitled Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Gene Roddenberry had made several failed attempts to get a new science fiction
show on air during the 1970s, resulting in a collection of TV movie pilots. That
decade generally had not been a good one for SF TV in the US, consisting of
interchangeable adventure shows like The Six Million Dollar Man, produced by
Harve Bennett. Towards the end of the 1970s, in the wake of the success of Star
Wars, space opera shows began to appear, prime among them being Battlestar
Galactica (1978–80) and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979–81). This
boom in 1970s SF movies and TV series had led to the work on Star Trek: Phase
II resulting in Star Trek: The Motion Picture and the successful 1980s series of
Star Trek films. The early 1980s saw a TV mini-series adaptation of Ray
Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, followed by a surprisingly successful
blockbuster alien invasion TV series: V. The 1983 mini-series led to a 1984
sequel dubbed V: The Final Battle. The battle wasn’t all that final, though, as a
short-lived regular episodic series followed in the 1984–5 season. Battlestar
Galactica producer Glen A. Larson was tapping a then-unserved appetite for
fantasy adventure with series like Knight Rider (1982–6), Manimal (1983) and
Automan (1983–4), but none was particularly accomplished. It was into this
environment that the new Star Trek TV series would debut.
Since The Motion Picture Gene Roddenberry had been sidelined from any
significant creative input into the ongoing Star Trek movie series, and he
(initially at least) apparently had little interest in producing a weekly television
series again. He recalled the negative effect that producing the original Star Trek
had had on his life, at a time when his two young daughters were growing up. He
was not prepared to make that kind of exhausting commitment of time and
creative effort again. However, the temptation to reclaim Star Trek for himself,
and this time ‘get it right’ was overwhelming. The $1-million bonus (plus
ongoing salary) offered for simply signing the contract with Paramount to create
and creatively guide the series was perhaps another factor in Roddenberry’s
decision to board the Enterprise once more. ‘When Paramount came to me and
said, “Would you like to do a new Star Trek?” I said no’, Roddenberry claimed
on a 1988 radio show. ‘I wanted no part of it.’ He had previously likened
producing a new weekly television series as being the equivalent of turning out
‘half a motion picture’ every week. ‘Television is twelve hours a day, miserably
hard work’, he told an audience at an event at New York’s Museum of
Broadcasting in March 1986, just months before signing on to Star Trek: The
Next Generation. ‘I wouldn’t produce a television series again myself.’
Did Paramount need Roddenberry for Star Trek, or did Roddenberry himself
need Star Trek more? The studio’s experience with the maverick producer
during the course of the four (to that date) Star Trek motion pictures had not
been great and although the studio executive team had changed, most knew of
the problems laid at Roddenberry’s feet during the creation of The Motion
Picture. However, there was a danger fans and general audiences alike would
somehow regard a new Star Trek without Roddenberry’s approval as somehow
illegitimate – and there was the further danger that if he was not involved,
Roddenberry would be free to criticise the project from outside, as had been
feared at the time of The Wrath of Khan. It was a risk Paramount was not willing
to take, although they would not put Roddenberry in sole charge of a twenty-
four-episode series where each episode was projected to cost around $1.2
million.
Roddenberry’s involvement became a central point of the original
announcement of the return of the show: ‘Although this is a new starship
Enterprise, with a new cast and new stories, the man at the helm is still the same:
the creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry. And we’re going to have him once
again supervising all aspects of production’, said Mark Harris, then President of
Paramount Television.
Paramount had in fact begun the project entirely without Roddenberry, hiring
writer–producer Gregory Strangis to develop a new take on their old Star Trek
property. Strangis was a supervising producer on the glossy evening soap opera
Falcon Crest, hired to work out characters and situations for a show set 100
years after The Original Series – among the new characters Strangis developed
was a Klingon officer working within Starfleet. Also approached, given his
creative work on the Star Trek movie series, was Leonard Nimoy. The actor
turned the project down, citing his reluctance to get involved in the production of
a weekly TV series just at a time when his non-Star Trek feature film directing
career was taking off.
Already worried that a new Star Trek without Kirk, Spock and McCoy might
have difficulty attracting an audience, talks were reluctantly started between
Paramount and Roddenberry. It seems likely that the studio hoped the producer
would rule himself out of any involvement, as his recent public statements
seemed to imply he would. Roddenberry recalled the studio executive’s taunt
about how he wouldn’t be able to ‘capture lightning in a bottle twice’, and that
he’d probably be better off not getting involved – but this only made
Roddenberry more determined to prove that he was Star Trek, and that the new
show would require his involvement if it was to succeed. To win his support,
Paramount had to offer him full creative control of the series. ‘The reason I have
some say on Star Trek’, Roddenberry told a convention fan audience in 1989, ‘is
that Paramount is a little afraid that all of you would commit revolution.’
With Roddenberry’s arrival, Strangis was out – with a sweetheart deal to
produce a TV series sequel to the 1950s movie The War of the Worlds.
Roddenberry commented that it was just as well, as Strangis’ outline for the
series was another variation on Harve Bennett’s long-suggested Academy Years
idea, with the Enterprise crewed by a troupe of youthful space cadets. All
Roddenberry had to do now was produce a successful update of the much-loved
Star Trek concept.

Although Paramount’s first instinct was to place its new Star Trek show with an
established network, as had been done with the original series on NBC, they
initially targeted the newly established Fox network, now home of The
Simpsons, which launched just the day before the October 1986 announcement
of the new Star Trek series. Fox would only commit to thirteen episodes,
however – not enough for the producers to recover what would be enormous
start-up costs in creating the show. Terms could not be agreed, so Paramount
decided to take the further risk of debuting the new show in syndication, where
the original seventy-nine episodes had prospered. This meant placing the show
with the independent stations linked up as the second-run syndication network
on an advertising revenue-sharing basis.
In order to meet the September 1987 debut date for the series, Roddenberry
had a huge amount of work to do, with less than a year from creation to
broadcast. Roddenberry saw the new show as a chance to learn lessons from The
Original Series, to achieve some of the ambitions he didn’t manage first time
around, and to produce a show that was more in keeping with his views of the
world as the new decade of the 1990s loomed. Rather than just rely on his own
thoughts, Roddenberry took a collegiate approach, canvassing ideas from a
‘brains trust’ of previous Star Trek luminaries, including David Gerrold, Robert
Justman, D. C. Fontana and Edward K. Milkis. Out of this pro -cess came the
idea of an older, less active starship captain who would not go on ‘away
missions’ to new planets. That action role would be filled by a younger first
officer, thus presenting two strong but different characters at the head of the
show, in the hope of avoiding the William Shatner–Leonard Nimoy rivalry that
has so plagued the original.
Roddenberry went on to hire some of those pioneering Star Trek contributors,
though most would depart during the troubled first season. Paramount would not
trust their expensive flagship new show to Roddenberry alone, so placed studio
executive Rick Berman on the series with ultimate responsibility for making it
work. Previously a producer of children’s entertainment, Berman had joined
Paramount in 1984 supervising current TV programming such as Cheers and
MacGyver. Alongside producers Maurice Hurley and Michael Piller, Berman
would help rein in Roddenberry’s more outré or outdated ideas, while also
steering Star Trek towards the millennium and beyond.
Roddenberry spent some time catching up on recent science fiction TV series
and films, watching movies such as James Cameron’s Aliens (1986) in the studio
screening rooms. Drafting a series ‘bible’, Roddenberry developed some new
crewmembers to fill the Enterprise alongside the older captain and all-action
first officer. A female military figure (seemingly drawn from his viewing of
Aliens) was included, alongside Lieutenant Commander Troi, a ‘four-breasted,
over-sexed hermaphrodite’, and a wise figure similar to Yoda from the Star
Wars movies named Wesley Crusher. Although the names would be retained,
these characters were seen by others involved in the production as too radical for
a weekly television series, even in the late 1980s.
Robert Justman’s ideas for the series included having children on the
Enterprise, speculating that such long space voyages would include families. He
also suggested that the ship should have an android among the crew ‘with all the
characteristics of Spock fused with the leadership and humanistic qualities of
Captain Kirk’. This character would eventually evolve into Data – with David
Gerrold suggesting a golden hue to the android’s artificial skin. Justman also
conceptualised the ‘holodeck’, a recreational virtual reality device that he saw as
a source for many potential storylines (a similar technology had previously
appeared in an episode of The Animated Series). He also picked up Strangis’
thought of having a Klingon among the team on the bridge of the Enterprise,
developing Worf, a character Roddenberry would later gleefully take sole credit
for, despite initially resisting the idea. Even the depiction of a journey through
the solar system that featured in the main titles was down to Justman. He left the
show at the end of the first season, effectively retiring from a forty-year career in
film and television.
The involvement of key creative crewmembers from the ori -ginal Star Trek
helped Roddenberry’s mission to give the new series some authenticity in the
eyes of fans. D. C. Fontana named the new Enterprise captain Jean-Luc
(compared to Roddenberry’s suggestion of Julien) and argued against the Great
Bird’s four-breasted counsellor character with the comment (in a memo): ‘Don’t
be silly’. Few of the old hands lasted on the series beyond the first season, and
Roddenberry himself, due to his failing health, took a lesser role on the show as
the 1990s dawned.

The show Roddenberry and his team came up with was an extension of the Star
Trek people knew, but with some subtle new twists. ‘Gene had to create a new
television show from twenty-five years of mythology that had grown up over an
old one, and he had to do it out of whole cloth’, said Rick Berman in Edward
Gross and Mark Altman’s thirty-year Star Trek history, Captains’ Logs. ‘Gene
felt the obsessive necessity to put his own print on everything.’
Roddenberry was back on the Paramount lot once more, with an office in the
Hart Building. He concerned himself with developing a script for the two-hour
pilot movie and the following twenty-four episodes, just as he had done in the
days of Star Trek: Phase II over a decade before. Practical production matters on
the series were largely handled by Berman and his team of writer–producers.
Filling the Enterprise with new characters would require an all-new cast.
Casting directors and television executives always cast a wide net in trying to
find just the right actor to fill a leading role. The new captain of the Enterprise
was to be named Jean-Luc Picard, a man of French descent who would be a
more intellectual, older figure than Kirk had been. Among the actors considered
– as listed in a 1986 Paramount memo – were Roy Thinnes, the star of 1960s
alien invasion series The Invaders; Yaphet Kotto, who had appeared in Ridley
Scott’s Alien (1979); and Patrick Bachau, who had appeared in the James Bond
movie A View to A Kill (1985). Also on the list was balding British
Shakespearean actor Patrick Stewart. Choosing Stewart over nearest rival
Bachau was a huge risk for the production. He was another important part of the
series development that was down to Robert Justman, who’d seen the actor
performing at UCLA and recommended him to Roddenberry and Berman.
Roddenberry had his own thoughts about who should captain the new
Enterprise. His preferred choice was Stephen Macht, from Knots Landing and
Cagney & Lacey. Berman remembered that Roddenberry was ‘very stubborn
about who he wanted to be Picard. Bob [Justman] discovered Patrick Stewart
and brought him to the attention of Gene, but Roddenberry said “No”. I met
Stewart and said to Bob, “We have to convince Gene to use this guy.”’ Unaware
of Roddenberry’s reputation for never changing his mind, Berman nevertheless
went to work on the executive producer, fighting to have Patrick Stewart as
Picard. ‘I was the guy who basically bugged Gene into realizing that Patrick was
the best Picard’, said Berman.
The heroic, action-oriented first officer role of William Riker was the most
Kirk-like character (given away by his near-anagram, sound-alike surname, and
the fact the character shares a first name with Kirk actor Shatner). Among those
to make the shortlist were Ben Murphy, star of Alias Smith and Jones and The
Gemini Man. Perhaps considered too old for the role, he had been a regular on
The Love Boat in the early 1980s. His rivals for the part were Gregg Marx, a
soap star on All The World Turns, and Michael O’Gorman, an actor with few
credits to that date – although the memo noted him as a favourite: ‘He’s sort of
an atypical choice for the role, however a good one’. Also short of credits was
Jonathan Frakes, who finally won the part. Frakes was a frequent TV guest star
actor who’d enjoyed regular roles on soap Falcon Crest and the Civil War TV
mini-series North and South (1985). Again, Berman had to battle with
Roddenberry over this role. The series’ creator’s preferred choice was Bill
Campbell, who would go on to star in The Rocketeer (1991) – it was only when
Campbell turned the part down that Roddenberry agreed to even see Frakes.
Star Trek: The Next Generation aimed to break new ground by featuring a
character with a disability as part of the main ensemble. Geordi La Forge would
not only be blind, but he’d also be the ship’s navigator. Considered for the role
were Wesley Snipes, Tim Russ (later Vulcan Tuvok on Voyager), and Predator
actor Kevin Peter Hall. Roots (1977) star LeVar Burton won the part.
The new doctor on the Enterprise would not be Southern – like McCoy – but
would instead be female. Considered for the role of Dr Beverly Crusher were An
American Werewolf in London (1981) actress Jenny Agutter, and actress and
choreographer Cheryl (later known as Gates) McFadden, who won the role.
Security Chief Tasha Yar and ship’s counsellor Deanna Troi were originally
cast the opposite way around, with Denise Crosby as Troi and Marina Sirtis
playing Yar. According to Berman, it was Roddenberry’s idea to swap the
actresses around. Others considered for Yar were Rosalind Chao (later a regular
on Deep Space Nine) and Julia Nickson, later a featured character on Deep
Space Nine rival series Babylon 5. The part of Worf, the Enterprise’s Klingon
officer, was filled by Michael Dorn, while Crusher’s son Wesley was Wil
Wheaton, who’d featured in the acclaimed movie Stand by Me (1986). Young
Wesley Crusher would be the prime representative of the fact that the Enterprise
now carried families aboard, but he quickly came to be seen as an irritant (to the
audience as well as to Captain Picard) whose high intelligence led to him saving
the ship on multiple occasions during the first four seasons. His name was drawn
from Roddenberry’s middle name, Wesley, and the character was seen as
something of a ‘Mary Sue’ figure – a wish-fulfilment role reflecting the show’s
creator.
The most challenging part to cast was that of android Data, the series’ Spock
substitute. Among those considered was the six-foot-nine-inch actor Kevin Peter
Hall (also being considered for La Forge); Mark Lindsay Chapman, a TV movie
regular; and Eric Menyuk, later to play the otherworldly ‘Traveler’ figure on the
show. Ironically, most of the actors who auditioned for the role were well over
six foot in height, indicating that the original conception for the android was
more of a Gort-type character from The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), or the
Norman android seen in The Original Series episode ‘I, Mudd’. A change came
about when the character was perceived as more of a Pinocchio-like figure, an
artificial man who wants to be ‘a real boy’. That allowed the casting of the far
shorter, but much more exuberant Broadway musical star Brent Spiner. He
would bring a different approach to the Spock-like role of the non-human
character who spends the series discovering and exploring his own ‘humanity’.
There was a change in feel for the new Enterprise. Instead of a functional,
military-style vehicle, the new starship would be more like a flying city, carrying
families of serving officers. This would mean all the support facilities (including
leisure) that any city would have, such as schools, health facilities, entertainment
centres and so on. Even the bridge had a more ‘domestic’ make-over, with wall-
to-wall carpeting and a less functional look, giving it the feel of an upmarket
hotel foyer.
‘Some people were afraid of the new Star Trek because the old people
wouldn’t be in it’, recalled Justman. ‘I don’t think that lasted too long. People
resist change [but] the great thing about people interested in science fiction is
that they have open minds. They’re eager for new ideas.’
The Next Generation had to deliver the same but different – it had to be Star
Trek as audiences would recognise it, but brought up to date for the 1980s, and it
also had to compete to some degree with the Star Trek movies. New production
techniques and new technology, especially in the field of special effects, helped
the show look more sophisticated than the tired 1960s version. However, some
of Roddenberry’s ideas – which he held to stubbornly – got in the way of good
dramatic storylines. Roddenberry had long contended that humanity in the future
would be free of interpersonal conflict (ironically, an edict he had fought on The
Lieutenant). The problem was (as Rick Berman realised) that this does not make
for engaging drama. Conflict is at the heart of most drama, whether between the
central characters of a TV show or between ‘our’ team of heroes and some
external threat or danger. ‘We had to manufacture our conflicts from other than
interpersonal conflicts among our characters and that does make it very difficult
to write’, said Berman. ‘With Star Trek you’ve got two sets of rules: the rules of
science and the rules of Star Trek. Writers have to be willing to follow both sets
of rules. It’s difficult.’
The first thirteen episodes of the new series were widely considered to be
rather disappointing, especially given the high hopes for the show. There was a
‘revolving door’ policy towards writers as the production team – and
Roddenberry in particular – struggled to bring Star Trek up to date. Many writers
would contribute one or two episodes during the first season before their services
were no longer required. It took a while for the show to evolve into its comfort
zone, a process that did not really happen until after Roddenberry’s involvement
ended and Berman took full control.
The double-length pilot episode, ‘Encounter at Farpoint’, had to lay out the
basics of the new show. D. C. Fontana – who’d written several episodes of the
original series – scripted the opening instalment, with heavy rewriting by Gene
Roddenberry. As well as establishing the new crew of the Enterprise (and
allowing the actors to become familiar with their characters and each other), the
opening episode had to tell an engaging story – one that would bring back a
curious audience for the following episodes. The episode featured
Roddenberry’s long-running obsession with alien beings who appear God-like in
the character of the omnipotent, manipulative ‘Q’. John de Lancie’s character
would feature throughout the series (and spin-offs) as an antagonist (and
occasional ally) to Captain Picard. He would be pivotal in the series’ final
episode, which would see a return to events at Farpoint Station. The opening
episode features the maiden voyage of the Enterprise NCC-1701-D, introduces
the crew and throws them into conflict with Q, who tries to warn them that
man’s exploration of space has gone far enough. The new crew find themselves
put on trial for the wrongs done by humanity in space exploration. Picard
successfully argues that the situation at Farpoint Station should be used to test
man’s worthiness to continue venturing outward into space. It’s a talky show
that spends more time worrying about setting up the series than trying to
entertain.
Fontana and Gerrold felt badly treated by Roddenberry in the development of
The Next Generation. Gerrold had effectively written the series bible, which
Roddenberry claimed as his own, and had incorporated suggestions from others
such as Justman. Fontana essentially served as de facto story editor, alongside
Gerrold, working on developing scripts – although neither received the
appropriate credits and remuneration for those jobs (in breach of Writers Guild
rules), while Roddenberry claimed the credit for his ‘vision’ of Star Trek.
During this time Roddenberry’s lawyer Leonard Maizlish became involved in
the creative side of the series, accompanying the ‘Great Bird’ to meetings and
serving as his messenger whenever bad news had to be delivered. Over time, as
Roddenberry’s health began to fail, Maizlish would become even more
prominent, supposedly representing Roddenberry’s views on all things Star
Trek, delivering comments on scripts and even attempting his own rewrites
(again, in contravention of Writers Guild rules).
Many on the production would later tell tales of Roddenberry’s erratic
conduct during the early years of The Next Generation. The creator was rightly
protective of his creation, but to some it seemed as though Roddenberry had
taken up permanent residence in the twenty-fourth century. His poor health
contributed to temper tantrums and confused feedback on story outlines and
scripts. At other times Roddenberry seemed distant or vacant during meetings, or
sometimes did not recognise colleagues when passing them in corridors. Joel
Engel’s un -authorised biography itemises a lengthy list of drugs, prescribed and
illegal, that Roddenberry was using at this time, on top of a copious alcohol
intake. He speculates that the ‘Great Bird’ may have suffered some form of brain
damage related to his dia -betes, high blood pressure and alcoholism. Certainly,
whatever the direct causes, Roddenberry’s failing health at the end of the 1980s
contributed to his eccentric behaviour in the production offices of The Next
Generation.
Despite that, for many of the writers and young staffers on The Next
Generation, the chance to work with an idol like Gene Roddenberry was
irresistible. However, during the first three years of the series, twenty-four
different writers or writer– producers arrived at and departed the show in rapid
succession, three times as many as might be expected on any average series.
Many found it difficult working for Roddenberry, or failed to match their work
to his concepts for Star Trek. It was a shocking discovery for many of the series’
aspiring writers that their idol had feet of clay and was, in fact, an obstruction to
them getting their work done. Roddenberry re-adopted his 1960s habit of
rewriting everything that came in – after all, he was Mr Star Trek – but more
often than not he would make the script worse through his interference. Other
producers would have to rescue scripts they thought could be brought to the
screen, working around Roddenberry’s unwanted input. ‘No one but Gene could
be recognised as a contributor to ideas for the show. No one else could write a
final draft . . . Perfectly good scripts [were] rewritten by Gene into something far
less . . . in the space of nine months no fewer than eight writing-staff members
left the series’, remembered D. C. Fontana of the situation in the writers’ room.
The Next Generation would ‘live long and prosper’, surpassing its confused
origins and outliving the Great Bird of the Galaxy himself. The first season
introduced Q, the Ferengi and explored the possibilities of the holodeck in ‘The
Big Goodbye’. The character of Data was expanded, with the introduction of an
evil ‘brother’ dubbed Lore in ‘Datalore’, while Starfleet Academy finally
became a focus of Star Trek as Wesley Crusher applied to become a cadet. The
character of Worf allowed for the beginning of an exploration of Klingon culture
that would expand in later years, and a major character – Tasha Yar – was killed
off towards the end of the first season in ‘Skin of Evil’.
The second season improved dramatically on the first, with a new doctor –
Katherine Pulaski played by Diana Muldaur, who’d featured in two original
series episodes, ‘Return to Tomorrow’ and ‘Is There in Truth No Beauty’ –
replacing Beverly Crusher. Whoopi Goldberg – a huge Star Trek fan – joined the
series as mysterious Enterprise bartender Guinan. A writers’ strike cut the
episodes from twenty-four to twenty-two, with scripts originally developed for
Star Trek: Phase II revived and reshaped for The Next Generation, including the
opening episode ‘The Child’. Character development received new attention
from incoming producer Maurice Hurley, with story and character arcs meaning
that the Enterprise crew developed and changed rather than following the end-
of-episode ‘reset’ button that often returned things to ‘normal’ on the original
Star Trek series. The episode ‘Q-Who?’ introduced new alien adversaries the
Borg (derived from Cyborg, meaning artificial human). Data received a lot of
attention, as did the slowly expanding Klingon culture, very little of which had
been seen on The Original Series.
By the third season in 1989, Roddenberry had more or less withdrawn from
any creative input. For the first time Rick Berman and Michael Piller were able
to take active control of the show without Roddenberry, resulting in a maturing
of the series’ storytelling and the production of more sophisticated episodes such
as ‘Yesterday’s Enterprise’. The Next Generation was a series that had begun to
grow up. Ira Steven Behr joined the show in the third year and would go on to
become a driving force behind the second spin-off series, Star Trek: Deep Space
Nine.
 Season four saw Brannon Braga and Jeri Taylor join the show – they would
later go on to run spin-off Star Trek: Voyager. Season three had ended on a
dramatic cliffhanger – a first for a Star Trek season finale – with ‘The Best of
Both Worlds’ seeing Captain Picard captured and transformed by the Borg.
Opening episode of the fourth season, ‘The Best of Both Worlds, Part II’, both
resolved the storyline and became the episode that saw The Next Generation
pass the seventy-nine episodes produced for The Original Series. Unlike the Star
Trek of the past, the effect of Picard’s experiences was explored as the damaged
captain came to terms with his confrontation with the Borg in the next episode of
season four, ‘Family’. The series reached 100 episodes with the fourth season
finale, ‘Redemption’.
The remaining three seasons of The Next Generation extended and deepened
the new Star Trek mythology that the show had built up. Klingon and Vulcan
storylines would come to dominate, with Worf involved in a Klingon civil war,
while the two-part story ‘Unification’ depicted an attempted reconciliation
between the Romulans and the Vulcans. The episodes featured a guest
appearance by Leonard Nimoy as Spock in a promotional tie-in with the sixth
Star Trek movie, The Undiscovered Country. Nimoy’s Spock was the last of four
original series characters to appear on The Next Generation. ‘Encounter at
Farpoint’ had seen DeForest Kelley reprise the role of an elderly Dr McCoy,
giving a seal of approval to the new 1980s show. Mark Lenard later appeared as
Spock’s father, Sarek, in an episode built around his character, while ‘Relics’
would see James Doohan’s Scotty arrive in the twenty-fourth century thanks to a
transporter malfunction.
By the end of seven years on air, The Next Generation returned to its
beginning. Double-length season finale ‘All Good Things . . .’ revisited the
events of ‘Encounter at Farpoint’ with the return of the malevolent Q. In the
wake of the new Star Trek series came a new generation of science fiction
television shows, such as Quantum Leap (1989–93), Sliders (1995–2000), and
the epic Babylon 5 (1993–8), as well as fantasy series like Buffy the Vampire
Slayer (1997–2003). Of course, the show also spawned three additional Star
Trek spin-offs in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993–9), Star Trek: Voyager
(1994–2001) and Star Trek: Enterprise (2001–5).

The command crew characters of The Next Generation were closer to Gene
Roddenberry’s original ideas for the 1960s series, which had been seriously
derailed by the popularity of Spock and the dominance of the Kirk–Spock–
McCoy triumvirate. However, the characters on the bridge of the Enterprise
continued to be split down the traditional Star Trek opposition of science versus
emotion. In Picard there is something of the Vulcan in his unemotional aloofness
that often sets him apart from the rest of the crew. With Riker filling the
womanising action-hero role previously filled by Kirk (all emotion), The Next
Generation allows the captain to step back from the immediate crisis and have a
broader overview. When Picard meets Spock in the 1991 episode ‘Unification
II’, Spock sees much of his Vulcan father in the human captain of the Enterprise
(Sarek and Picard shared that most intimate of connections, the Vulcan mind-
meld). It is only through mind-melding with Picard that Spock finally
understands his father’s true feelings for his half-human, half-Vulcan son.
Picard leads the non-emotional grouping of characters: those who look to
ideas and pragmatic solutions rather than acting on instinct. Among this group
are Data (searching for a way to experience emotions that Spock suppresses,
Data discusses their opposite views of humanity in ‘Unification II’); the Crusher
family, consisting of Dr Beverly Crusher (who returned to the show in the third
season, also a long-term romantic interest for Picard), youthful prodigy Wesley
Crusher (although Picard initially dislikes having children on board his ship) and
Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge.
Riker heads up the emotional group, those who might leap before looking,
whose actions are driven by instinct and feelings. Among this latter group are (of
course) the ship’s telepathic half-Betazoid counsellor Deanna Troi, and security
chief Worf (whose Klingon aggression is a problem to be overcome, as was
Spock’s half-humanity in the original series).
The Next Generation took a more sophisticated view of encounters with other
species than the original series managed. In many episodes, the Enterprise
appears to be the space equivalent of the United Nations, negotiating disputes or
mediating between alien species in search of conflict resolution. This was a very
1990s obsession (following perestroika in Russia, the fall of the Berlin Wall in
1989 and the end of the Cold War), and departs from the cliché of 1960s Star
Trek in which Kirk was thought to shoot his phaser first and ask questions later.
This approach to storytelling was even reflected in the design aesthetic of the
new Enterprise, which appeared to be an inter-galactic conference centre, with
its colour schemes, décor and design all reminiscent of a public building or
international chain hotel.
Whereas Kirk emphasised human values as correct above all else, Picard and
co were more respectful of life (or consciousness), whatever form it might take.
A story like ‘The Devil in the Dark’ from The Original Series – in which a
‘monster’ threatening miners is found to simply be a mother protecting its young
– would not be possible in The Next Generation, since the crew would not be as
blind as Kirk and Spock initially are to the creature’s virtues just because of its
appearance and actions. The 1960s values are replaced by Roddenberry’s oft-
sought ‘perfect’ humanity, where professionalism (in exploring space and
making contact with alien species) trumps human limitations (fear of the alien
‘other’) at all times.
This is a universe seventy-five years after Kirk’s time, where the Prime
Directive of non-interference in other cultures is taken a lot more seriously, at
least by Picard. The Cold War idea of offering aid to countries that might be
allies in the fight against Communism (or military ‘advisors’ to those who need
a little ‘persuasion’, as in The Original Series episodes ‘Errand of Mercy’ and ‘A
Private Little War’) was replaced by a more understanding approach to relative
cultural values, even where these conflict with the values of humanity. Changes
to a civilisation’s mores or culture might be suggested by Starfleet or the
Federation (embodied in Picard), but were very rarely imposed through the use
of overwhelming force (or subterfuge, as might have been employed by Kirk).
In the post-Cold War world of The Next Generation, the simple oppositional
politics of the original series (Klingons = Russians) had to be rethought in a
more complex world of mosaic-like politics, where different interest groups vied
for dominance and alliances became conditional and shifting. Instead of the
Klingons and the Romulans (although both featured and were further developed
in the series), The Next Generation introduced new, more relevant antagonists
such as the Ferengi, signifiers of 1980s ‘Greed is good’ (to quote Gordon Gekko
in Wall Street (1987)) unregulated capitalism. Although intended as serious
antagonists for the Federation, the Ferengi rapidly developed into comic figures
(later rehabilitated in Deep Space Nine).
A more serious enemy – and one not susceptible to reasoned negotiation –
were the Borg. Literally single-minded (through their sharing of one hive-mind)
and not open to pleas of mercy or rational debate, the Borg’s sole purpose is to
conquer and assimilate other life forms in order to secure their spread throughout
the galaxy. Their mantra of ‘resistance is futile’ represents their unstoppable
nature. The crew of the EnterpriseD first encounter the Borg in the episode ‘Q-
Who?’, thanks to the meddling Q, who boosts the ship to an unexplored sector of
space as a warning of some of the threats awaiting humanity as they continue to
expand ever outwards (echoing the purpose of Q’s debut appearance in
‘Encounter at Farpoint’). This very act, of course, brings Picard, the Enterprise
and humanity in general to the attention of the Delta Quadrant-inhabiting Borg,
making them a target. The Borg are a riff on Doctor Who’s 1960s cybernetic
creatures the Cybermen, whose ‘You will be like us’ catchphrase and cyber-
conversion modus operandi were restated in the Borg’s process of physical
assimilation.
Communication and contact with other cultures was always central to Star
Trek and it provides the dramatic thrust to some of the best episodes of The Next
Generation. Iconic among them is ‘Darmok’, essentially a two-hander between
Stewart’s Picard and an alien starship captain, Dathon (Paul Winfield, heavily
disguised under alien make-up). In a set-up reminiscent of The Original Series
episode ‘Arena’, ‘Darmok’ sees two antagonistic captains beamed to a planet
where they must cooperate (or, in The Original Series, fight) to survive. The
Enterprise has encountered the Tamarians, a race whose language cannot be
translated sensibly by Starfleet’s universal translator (a gimmick used to get over
the question of why everyone in space speaks American English). Forced to
communicate with his opposite number, Picard deduces that the Tamarian
speaks in metaphors drawn from his planet’s heroic myths. In trying to
communicate with the representatives of the Federation, Dathon is trying to
recreate one of his planet’s mythic battles in order to give the humans a shared
reference point, and in doing so he and Picard create a new legend of their own.
It’s a complex episode, the likes of which would never have been attempted on
The Original Series, and many fans regard it as one of the best in the entire Star
Trek canon, including the spin-off shows that came after.
The original Star Trek often focused on finite resources: failing dilithium
crystals, colonies running out of supplies or in need of medical aid. The Next
Generation, however, takes place in a universe of plenty where ‘new’
technology like the replicator and the holodeck caters to everyone’s immediate
needs. Turning raw energy into matter, the replicator can provide anything
needed by the Enterprise crew, from foodstuffs such as ‘Earl Grey, hot’ (as
frequently ordered by Picard) to heavy machine parts to repair the ship. Where
the original Star Trek was outward-looking, with a willingness on Kirk’s behalf
to ignore the Prime Directive and interfere in the affairs of other planets (for
their own good, of course), The Next Generation was more inward-looking,
dealing with 1990s concerns like emotional therapy and bodily health (whether
that be the human – or alien – body or that of the Enterprise itself ).
 Screened at a time when fear of AIDS was at its height and computers were
beginning to make their way into homes and workplaces as tools regular people
could use, several episodes of The Next Generation saw the metaphor of
invasion (by biological or computer virus, alien species or unconscious
contagion) drive many episodes. Nanites, parasites and bacteria infect the
Enterprise and her crew with regularity (in episodes such as ‘Evolution’,
‘Phantasms’, ‘A Matter of Honor’ and ‘Contagion’). Counsellor Troi represented
the touchy-feely Californian ‘talk about your feelings’ strain of self-help therapy
rampant from the 1970s to the 1990s. Troi is as much about helping others as she
is about suffering mental crisis herself, thanks to her telepathic nature. Such
disruption of the crewmembers’ otherwise perfect mental states allowed for the
kind of character conflict that Roddenberry’s dictates about the twenty-fourth
century did not generally allow.
The Next Generation took ongoing character development more seriously than
the previous show had, in keeping with wider television trends across the 1990s.
Characters were treated more like real people than they had been on the
formulaic action-adventure shows of the 1970s. Television became more
serialised in nature, where incidents had consequences and characters changed
rather than reverting to type by the conclusion of any individual episode.
Babylon 5 would be the prime exponent of this in science fiction, while Deep
Space Nine would take a similar approach in its later seasons.
However, The Next Generation made its own moves in treating its characters
more like real people with emotions, wants and desires. Prime among the crew
for this serious treatment is Captain Picard. The opening episodes of the show’s
fourth season resolved ‘The Best of Both Worlds’ cliffhanger, and Picard was
freed from Borg control. However, the show then presented an episode
(‘Family’) entirely based around Picard’s emotional reaction to his experience.
In his tribute to Gene Roddenberry, Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane noted:
‘The people [on The Next Generation] were not militant cardboard soldiers, far
more they behaved like people you’d work with in your office, except they were
thousands of light years from Earth. I remember watching the famous two-part
episode where Captain Picard is captured by the Borg – it was exciting, thrilling,
beautifully put together. Then next week the writers brilliantly followed it up
with an episode that contained no sci-fi element at all: it focused on Picard
returning to his home in France to sort out the psychological ramifications of the
experience while reconnecting with his estranged brother. In two weeks I felt
like I’d gone from Star Wars to Upstairs, Downstairs – I never knew what I was
going to see, and I loved it. How many science fiction franchises are so well-
founded they can tell a purely character-based story with no pyrotechnics? Gene
knew Star Trek was about the people and the ideas.’
Another example of this in-depth character exploration of the captain came in
the late fifth season instalment ‘The Inner Light’. Picard is targeted by an alien
probe and awakens as a man named Kamin. He goes on to apparently live a full
life as part of the extinct Ressikian culture, falling in love and producing a
loving, extended family of the kind he does not have in ‘real life’. On the
Enterprise, Picard is unconscious for only a short time but in his mind he
experiences decades of this alternative life, one that is both as real to him as his
life on the ship yet as artificial as a holodeck experience. For Picard, the life he
lived and the experiences he enjoyed were ‘real’, and they and the long-gone
Ressikian culture live on within his memory. Such events were not forgotten by
the show, and served to deepen characters such as Picard, making them more
relatable among all the crowd-pleasing space hardware and alien zapping that
was a necessary part of a Star Trek show.
Other characters were also well developed, such as Worf and Data. However,
others still had episodes that focused on them, but across the show’s seven-year
run it could be argued that secondary lead characters did not fare well in this
respect – especially Riker and Troi, who more often than not were called upon to
exhibit their basic characteristics and little else. The general approach, however,
was a great step forward from the dramatic reset button of The Original Series.
The Next Generation was the most successful of all the Star Trek television
incarnations, proving a hit with general viewers and fans alike. It updated Gene
Roddenberry’s concepts about the future of humankind and put them through a
filter of the real world of the 1990s to great effect. Paramount, however, failed to
realise that such in-depth exploration of issues and characters prospered
effectively in the format of ongoing television story arcs, rather than in the less
than two-hour format of movies. Like The Original Series before it, The Next
Generation would be heading to the big screen – but with far less success than
its predecessor.
Chapter 8
Future’s End:
The Next Generation Movies
‘The Borg are the greatest nemesis of all things Star Trek. It made Star
Trek not only an action-adventure movie, but made it a horror movie as
well.’ Jonathan Frakes

The cast of the original Star Trek had signed off (literally in the end credits) with
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Age, a theme first explored in Star
Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, had finally caught up with them. Now a new crew
was waiting in the wings to take their place. After seven years of exploratory
voyages on television, the bridge crew of Star Trek: The Next Generation were
ready to step up to the movies – with a helping hand from William Shatner’s
Captain Kirk.
The baton of Star Trek on television was being carried forward by Star Trek:
Deep Space Nine (soon to be joined by Star Trek: Voyager) so Paramount
believed they could continue the big screen incarnation of Star Trek by
promoting The Next Generation crew. After almost half a decade longer on air
than the original series managed, the cast and creative crew of The Next
Generation were rather tired. The show had gone out on a high and most of the
cast were looking to move on to something new. The speed with which they
were switched to the big screen proved to be a problem for some, not least
Captain Picard himself, actor Patrick Stewart. ‘I wish we had not had to go into
the movie quite so quickly as we did. I had four days off between wrapping the
series and stepping aboard the Lady Washington in Santa Monica bay [for a
holodeck-set sequence]. Luckily, I did not have to do too much character
research’.
A movie version of The Next Generation had been gestating since 1993, when
Paramount had suggested the idea to Rick Berman, who’d been responsible for
the show from the second season following the enforced retirement of Gene
Roddenberry due to the latter’s ill health. As happened with the original pilot
episodes of Star Trek, Berman was asked to develop two pos -sible movie stories
for The Next Generation with two different writing teams. The writers going
head to head in this friendly competition were all Star Trek TV veterans:
Maurice Hurley, who’d done so much to shape The Next Generation in the early
days, and the team of Brannon Braga and Ron Moore. The only rule laid down
by the studio was that each story should feature the appearance of a character
(there was no specification as to who) from the original Star Trek series. Given
that Spock, McCoy and Scotty had all appeared in cameos in The Next
Generation, the obvious choice was Captain James T. Kirk. Sulu would feature
in an episode of Voyager two years later.
Braga and Moore won the internal screenwriting ‘contest’. They’d prepared
by watching the preceding six Star Trek movies, some of them more than once.
‘We watched IV (The Voyage Home) closely’, said Moore, ‘[and] we watched
The Wrath of Khan several times, because it’s my favourite and I think the best
as far as story and execution. We wanted to get a feel for how Star Trek
translated to the big screen.’
The writers were used to working within the limitations of television, where a
space battle requiring special effects shots would be strictly limited to a couple
of exterior shots, occasional phaser strikes and a lot of camera shake to simulate
action. The same restriction would not apply to a big-budget movie with a
different approach to special effects. Riffing on the title of one of the best-
remembered The Next Generation episodes, the writing team of Braga and
Moore set out to capture ‘the best of both worlds’ in fusing the humour of The
Voyage Home with the high drama and charismatic villain of The Wrath of Khan
in their The Next Generation movie.
They were also aware that popular though The Next Generation was on
television, the Star Trek movies had to appeal beyond those core viewers to an
even wider potential audience, who might not be as familiar with the set-up and
characters of The Next Generation as they were with the ori -ginal Star Trek
series. The movie had to be more of a stand-alone action-adventure story
featuring The Next Generation characters than a tale caught up in seven years’
worth of serialised back-story and mythology.
‘We knew Kirk was going to be in it’, said Braga of the film that eventually
became Star Trek Generations. ‘We knew what we wanted to do with Data.
Coming up with the space-time Nexus and what the villain was up to was not a
struggle. Because it is a movie you can take bigger risks with characters, because
you are not obligated to do another episode the next week. We ended up with a
lot of humour, but a dark film as well. The theme does deal with death: Picard
suffers a terrible tragedy, while Kirk is facing profound regret. There are some
sombre moments.’
Bringing the two generations of Star Trek crews together was always going to
be a narrative challenge. Their first instinct was to put the two crews in conflict,
inspired by a draft movie poster concept of two Enterprises engaged in combat.
Common sense rapidly prevailed, however, when the writers discovered that
coming up with a plausible reason for such a situation was more difficult than
they’d imagined. They also ruled out a time travel story (something they’d done
several times on The Next Generation, and a Brannon Braga speciality), and they
didn’t want The Original Series characters to appear in the twenty-fourth century
as ancient versions of themselves, like McCoy had in ‘Encounter at Farpoint’. It
was Rick Berman who suggested a story spanning both time zones, beginning in
the twenty-third century of Captain Kirk and then continuing seventy-eight years
later in the world of The Next Generation.
The one thing everyone agreed had to happen was a meeting between the two
iconic Star Trek captains, Kirk and Picard. The desire for that meeting to take
place on neutral ground led to the development of the Nexus, a kind of
‘nowhere’ place outside regular time and space within which both captains
would find themselves trapped.
Unlike the choice of an experienced Hollywood director in Robert Wise to
helm Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the first film for The Next Generation crew
would be directed by a name familiar from the TV series. David Carson was a
veteran of many TV pilots, including the $12-million opening episode of Deep
Space Nine. His selection came only after Rick Berman had approached Leonard
Nimoy. ‘We had a difference of opinion about the script’, noted Nimoy, who
was also offered a cameo role in the movie. ‘It didn’t work for me.’ The benefits
Carson brought to the project were many – he was very familiar with the Star
Trek universe, cast and crew; he was equally at home directing the actors as well
as handling the special effects requirements; and he had huge directorial
experience across a range of different television shows. The step up from the
Deep Space Nine pilot to a $26-million feature film was not that huge, and
Berman regarded Carson as a known quantity, one that would avoid all the
problems Roddenberry had faced working with Wise back in 1979.
Many of the behind the scenes crew from seven years of The Next Generation
moved smoothly onto working on Generations as the series segued directly into
the movie. Although the requirements of a feature film versus a TV episode were
often somewhat different, Berman was glad that most of his experienced team
were able to step up their game for the big screen Enterprise.
Initially, the plan was to feature the entire original series crew in the opening
sequence of Generations, but several of the actors felt they had said a more than
suitable farewell to their Star Trek characters in the more meaningful conclusion
of The Undiscovered Country. Missing from the film therefore were Leonard
Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, George Takei and Nichelle Nichols. They realised that
the story was built around the meeting between Captain Kirk and Captain Picard,
making their roles largely superfluous. In the end, joining William Shatner in the
film were James Doohan as Scotty and Walter Koenig as Chekov.
With only two hours to tell a movie story, rather than the twenty-six hours of
the average season of The Next Generation on TV, Rick Berman was clear that
story choices had to be made. The film would be primarily about Picard, Kirk
and Data, relegating everyone else from both Star Trek crews to secondary
status. Unexpectedly finding themselves sidelined by this focus were some of the
cast of The Next Generation, including Marina Sirtis (Troi) and Michael Dorn
(Worf ). Even Jonathan Frakes, as Picard’s right-hand man Will Riker, suffered.
‘It’s like a big Picard episode, with those on the Away Team being the B-story’,
said Frakes. ‘Maybe I’ll have more to do in the next movie?’
This was to be a problem for all The Next Generation films going forward:
how to translate the ensemble nature of the TV series to the big screen, with only
one two-hour story every few years, but a large group of characters to feature.
The additional decision to feature Whoopi Goldberg’s Guinan character heavily
(after all, she was a more experienced movie star than someone like Sirtis), and
the villain Soran (Malcolm McDowell), further limited the screen time of the
more incidental regular The Next Generation characters.
In the opening of the film, Kirk is teamed up with Scotty and Chekov, rather
than Spock and McCoy as had originally been planned. ‘It was very odd’, said
Shatner. ‘I felt very lonely without my two buddies.’ The three veterans of
Starfleet are in attendance at the launch of the Enterprise-B when a distress call
is received from a vessel transporting El-Aurian refugees to Earth. Proceeding to
the rescue, the new Enterprise crew witnesses an energy distortion – the Nexus –
that seemingly claims the life of Kirk as he saves the ship. Long-lived El-Aurian
refugee survivors of the distortion include Guinan and Dr Soran, who encounter
the EnterpriseD seventy-eight years later. Soran plans to enter the temporal
Nexus, at the cost of many innocent lives, so he can recreate his lost family. In
an attempt to stop Soran, Picard is drawn into the Nexus where he discovers
Captain Kirk, whom he recruits to help defeat Soran. The pair is able to leave the
Nexus at a time before they entered, thus stopping Soran, but Kirk’s life is the
price.
The death of Kirk was to be a central part of Generations from the beginning,
following the same treatment of Spock in The Wrath of Khan. Paramount
insisted the writers consult with Shatner before taking such a dramatic step, and
they were surprised when he agreed quite readily to the development (although
Shatner would later resurrect Kirk in novel form in a series of co-written stories).
Other characters were further developed too, with Picard suffering a family
tragedy and Data exploring his capacity for emotions, giving both actors
dramatic challenges and new ways to look at their very familiar TV characters.
Hoping for a Khan-like villain in McDowell’s Soran, the writers of
Generations further raided the Star Trek movie back-catalogue by lifting the
destruction of the Enterprise from The Search for Spock. This time it was The
Next Generation’s sleek EnterpriseD that would be wrecked – allowing for the
long-planned saucer separation sequence that had been little seen on TV (most
notably way back in ‘Encounter at Farpoint’). ‘It was something we always
wanted to do [more] on the series, but didn’t’, admitted Braga. ‘Saucer
separation was expensive and elaborate.’ The resulting sequence, in which the
saucer section of the Enterprise crashes to the planet Veridian III, was achieved
using somewhat old-fashioned physical model techniques at a time when many
movies were exploring the possibilities of computer-generated imagery (CGI),
ironically something Star Trek had pioneered in the second and fourth original
cast movies.
‘We wanted to explore mortality’, said Braga of Generations, ‘[but not] in the
religious way that Star Trek V [did]. The film is about time – Picard is obsessed
with what his future holds, and his impending death [while] Kirk is a man
looking at what he did or didn’t accomplish in life. The Nexus in space-time
gives both men a chance to cheat death, until they realize it’s part of life. It’s
really about how these different characters come to terms with their personal
dilemmas.’
Released in November 1994, just six months after the final episode of The
Next Generation aired on TV (compared to the decade it took The Motion
Picture to reach the screen), Star Trek Generations opened to a mixed reception
from fans, critics and the wider public alike. The film had racked up a
production cost of $35 million – having started off with a budget of $26 million:
controversial reshoots of the climactic battle to the death between Kirk and
Soran and enhanced special effects shots added $4 million, following a failed
test screening in September. However, the movie grossed $75 million in the US
and $118 million worldwide, following a $23-million US opening weekend. The
New York Times’ Janet Maslin complained that ‘Generations is predictably
flabby and impenetrable in places, but it has enough pomp, spectacle and high-
tech small talk to keep the franchise afloat’, indicating that the makers had failed
in their objective of making a film that would appeal to a non-Star Trek audience
in the style of The Voyage Home. Roger Ebert, writing in the Chicago Sun-
Times, thought Generations was ‘undone by its narcissism. [It is] a movie so
concerned with Trekkers that it can barely tear itself away long enough to tell a
story. I was almost amused by the shabby storytelling’.
Lessons would be learned from the critical failure of Generations. With the
obligation felt by The Next Generation creators to the crew of the original
Enterprise discharged by this movie, the next film would be entirely theirs and it
would involve no ‘shabby storytelling’.

One of the problems with Star Trek Generations may have been its very
proximity to the TV series that spawned it. Star Trek fans were desperate for a
new movie in 1979, as it had been a decade since the Enterprise crew had been
seen on the big screen, apart from in a two-dimensional animated form. The
struggle to revive Star Trek throughout the 1970s had been followed closely by
fans who witnessed the project mutate from a movie to a new TV series and
back to a movie again. When Generations was released in 1994, it came mere
months after the conclusion of seven years of TV adventures, while Star Trek on
television was an ongoing concern in the shape of Deep Space Nine and the
upcoming Voyager. While Paramount had been keen to trade on The Next
Generation momentum with a new movie following 1991’s The Undiscovered
Country, fans were not nearly as starved of Star Trek material in 1994 as their
1979 counterparts had been. This potential ‘franchise fatigue’ (the fear that there
was just too much Star Trek available) would become a serious problem for later
Star Trek TV shows and movies.
The second The Next Generation movie (the eighth in the series overall)
would enjoy a different reception upon release in November 1996, two and a
half years on from the end of the series. By this time, fans of The Next
Generation had seen enough time pass since their heroes beamed away from
regular television episodes to be excited about seeing Picard and his team in
action once again. In addition, this time they’d be up against one of the
television series’ iconic foes, the Borg.
Generations had been a muddled movie, trying to achieve too much in just
one film. It was yet another send-off for (some of ) The Original Series crew, an
introduction for The Next Generation team to the big screen, a chance for series’
icons Kirk and Picard to meet, and it had to tell a story of its own. Star Trek:
First Contact would be different – this time Star Trek would be an allout
blockbuster action movie.
Rick Berman was still in charge of Paramount’s Star Trek franchise, and he
turned once again to Generation’s scriptwriters Brannon Braga and Ron Moore
for story ideas, suggesting he’d like to see something involving time travel. ‘All
of the Star Trek films and episodes I have been most impressed with – The
Voyage Home, ‘Yesterday’s Enterprise’, ‘The City on the Edge of Forever’, and
I could give you half a dozen more – have all been stories that deal with time
travel’, said Berman. ‘In a way, Generations dealt with time travel. Nick
Meyer’s wonderful movie Time After Time, dealt with time travel. The
paradoxes that occur in writing, as well as in the reality of what the characters
are doing and what the consequences are, have always been fascinating to me. I
don’t think I’ve ever had as much fun as being involved with ‘Yesterday’s
Enterprise’, and having to tackle all the logical, paradoxical problems that we
would run into and figure out ways to solve them.’
It was Braga and Moore who wanted to bring the cybernetic Borg to the big
screen. Their first attempt to incorporate the time travel aspect saw consideration
being given to stories set in the American Civil War and Roman times.
However, the most developed idea was for a trip to the European Renaissance
for Picard and the Borg, under the title Star Trek Renaissance. Ron Moore
recalled the story involved Picard investigating a village under siege by hideous
monsters. ‘We begin to realize that these horrific monsters were the Borg. We
track them down to a castle near the village where a nobleman runs a feudal
society. We suspect the Borg are working in there, but no one can get in. So
Data becomes our spy, impersonating an artist’s apprentice . . . Data became
friends with Leonardo da Vinci, who at the time was working for the nobleman
as a military engineer . . . you would have sword fights and phaser fights mixed
together, in fifteenth-century Europe . . . it risked becoming really campy and
over-the-top.’
Saner heads saw the film’s setting relocated to the twenty-first century,
allowing the story to explore the origins of the Star Trek universe through the
development of warp drive technology and humanity’s ‘first contact’ with the
Vulcans. Out to foil these events would be the Borg, setting out to assimilate the
past. Brannon Braga recalled: ‘The one image that I brought to the table is the
image of the Vulcans coming out of the ship. I wanted to see the birth of Star
Trek. We ended up coming back to that moment. That, to me, is what made the
time travel story fresh. We get to see what happened when humans shook hands
with their first aliens.’
Following the elevation of Leonard Nimoy into the director’s chair for Star
Trek III and IV, Picard’s ‘number one’, Jonathan Frakes, was invited to direct
First Contact. Frakes had the innate understanding of Star Trek that Nimoy had
enjoyed (which gave the Paramount brass confidence), but in its more modern
guise of The Next Generation. He had directed a variety of the show’s episodes
on television, including the acclaimed ‘Cause and Effect’ (and would go on to
direct Deep Space Nine and Voyager episodes, as well as appearing in the series
finale of Enterprise).
The loss of the EnterpriseD in Generations necessitated the creation of a new,
more streamlined ship for use in First Contact and future movies. Long-time
Star Trek production designer Herman Zimmerman came up with the new, sleek
movie Enterprise, while the Borg were redesigned to stand up to the greater
scrutiny they’d be under on giant movie screens. After Paramount executives
criticised early drafts of the script (under the title Star Trek Resurrection) for
making the Borg come across as little more than space zombies, a leader was
created, in the style of the assimilated-Picard Locutus of Borg, seen in the
Borg’s best-known TV appearance ‘The Best of Both Worlds’. The Borg Queen
would be a figurehead for the collective, as well as an audience identification
point and a Borg with whom the crew of the Enterprise could communicate,
allowing for clear and simple exposition of major plot points that might
otherwise be difficult to get across.
Like The Wrath of Khan before it, First Contact drew its central character
from an episode of The Original Series. Zefram Cochrane had been played by
Glenn Corbett in the episode ‘Metamorphosis’, discovered by Kirk on an
isolated asteroid after having been missing for 150 years. Cochrane was an
important figure in the creation of the Federation as the inventor of the first
warp-capable ship, the Phoenix. In the episode, Cochrane’s youth has been
maintained by a female alien ‘companion’ creature. The movie would explore
Cochrane’s creation of the pivotal warp drive technology, and his encounter with
Picard’s Enterprise crew and the Borg. Although Tom Hanks – a well-known
Star Trek fan in Hollywood – had expressed interest in playing the role, he
wasn’t available due to directorial commitments, so the part went to acclaimed
actor James Cromwell. Oscar-nominated for Babe in 1995, Cromwell was a Star
Trek veteran, having previously appeared in two episodes of The Next
Generation and in an instalment of Deep Space Nine, two out of the three times
under heavy alien makeup. Cromwell would play the part of Cochrane once
again in the pilot episode of Enterprise, ‘Broken Bow’.
The action-oriented role of Lily Sloane, a twenty-first-century woman
working with Cochrane who battles the Borg on the Enterprise alongside Picard,
went to actress Alfre Woodard, another Oscar nominee. South African-born
Alice Krige filled the challenging role of the Borg Queen, who kidnaps and tries
to convert Data to the Borg point of view. Krige would reprise the role on
Voyager’s series finale ‘Endgame’. Comic relief was provided by the character
of Barclay, a clumsy, fearful Enterprise crewmember played by The A-Team’s
Dwight Schultz, and Robert Picardo as an alternate version of Voyager’s
Emergency Medical Hologram. Voyager’s Ethan Phillips also appeared in the
movie in a small, uncredited role.
Just as The Wrath of Khan was a more accessible and enjoyable Star Trek
adventure than The Motion Picture, so First Contact was an easier, more
straightforward adventure for a non-Star Trek fan audience to connect with. The
film cost about $10 million more than Generations at $45 million, but took $92
million at the US box office, a sum well in excess of Generations’ $75-million
US take. First Contact pulled in an additional $57.5 million worldwide, and
scored a $30.7-million US opening weekend, taking the number one spot in the
top ten. The reviews were widely positive, with Roger Ebert leading the charge:
‘One of the best of the eight Star Trek films’, he wrote in the Chicago Sun-
Times. ‘Star Trek movies are not so much about action and effects as they are
about ideas and dialogue. I doubted the original Enterprise crew would ever
retire because I didn’t think they could stop talking long enough . . . [Director
Frakes] achieves great energy and clarity. In all of the shuffling of time-lines and
plotlines, I always knew where we were. Star Trek movies in the past have
occasionally gone where no movie had gone, or wanted to go, before. This one is
on the right beam.’ Writing in the Los Angeles Times, critic Kenneth Turan felt
that First Contact ‘does everything you want a Star Trek film to do, and it does
it with cheerfulness and style’. James Berardinelli, of website ReelViews, wrote
that the film ‘single-handedly revived the Star Trek movie series, at least from a
creative point of view’.
The cast and creative crew could rightly bask in the appreciation being heaped
upon Star Trek: First Contact – although it wouldn’t last, with the Star Trek
movies about to enter a downward spiral.

There was considerable momentum behind Star Trek following the blockbuster
success of First Contact. Somehow, over the next two films the creative brains
behind the movies managed to squander that momentum, along with fan and
public goodwill, by turning out two very disappointing movies in Star Trek:
Insurrection and Star Trek Nemesis.
The writers of the two previous films, Braga and Moore, were unavailable for
the third The Next Generation movie as they were committed to both ongoing
Star Trek TV series, Deep Space Nine and Voyager, as well as scripting Mission:
Impossible II for Paramount. Michael Piller was brought in by Rick Berman to
work on the project after he’d lost out on the opportunity to write Generations.
Piller’s reaction to First Contact was that it was ‘too dark’ for a Star Trek movie
and he wanted to move things in a lighter direction.
Piller had explored a concept he called ‘the Roddenberry box’, meaning the
limitations that Gene Roddenberry had initially set for Star Trek and had adhered
to most strictly on the early years of The Next Generation, but which each
subsequent series had strived to work around. Roddenberry’s rules for life in the
twenty-third and twenty-fourth centuries were not fixed in stone – he often
revised them as he went along – but they were his rules. Writers trying to create
dramatic conflict often fell foul of these ‘rules’ as they seemed to inhibit many
of the standard dramatic techniques used by screenplay writers for film and
television. Unlike many, Piller quite liked the restrictions of working within ‘the
box’, believing that Star Trek fans were drawn to that universe precisely because
of the rules that Roddenberry had developed. Part of that was portraying the
future in an optimistic manner: ‘The strength of Star Trek depends upon making
people feel good about the future’, said Piller. The next Star Trek movie would,
therefore, be a ‘feel-good’ movie.
Various ideas came together in the discussions between Piller and Berman.
Piller was conscious of his own ageing process, and like the themes contained in
the earlier Star Trek movies of the 1980s, he was keen to tackle the subject
again, perhaps in the form of a quest for the ‘fountain of youth’. Berman was
also thinking in terms of a quest, but more along the lines of Joseph Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness, a loose inspiration for the structure of Francis Ford
Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979). In an interview on startrek.com, Berman
addressed Piller’s early work: ‘He wanted to tell a story of Picard ending up
being stripped of everything, losing his ship, his crew, his commission in
Starfleet, losing everything but his sense of what was right and his integrity, and
being left with nothing but that. When the studio read the story, they had the
same reaction I had, which was that it was just nothing close to what a Star Trek
movie should be.’
The problem for Piller was that First Contact had effectively used up The
Next Generation’s best villains in the Borg. He couldn’t return to them, but
neither was it wise to try and develop an even more powerful adversary. His
decision was to make a different kind of movie, something that wouldn’t try to
compete directly with the previous Star Trek film. His initial attempt – under the
title Star Trek: Stardust – had Picard pursuing a renegade Starfleet officer who’d
taken it upon himself to attack the Romulans. During the chase, the crew of the
Enterprise find themselves getting younger as they get closer to a mysterious
area of space that seems to function as a fountain of youth. Star Trek had
reverted its casts to childhood on several occasions on TV, in the episodes ‘The
Counter-Clock Incident’ (The Animated Series) and ‘Rascals’ (The Next
Generation) – as well as making them extremely aged in ‘The Deadly Years’
(The Original Series) and ‘Encounter at Farpoint’ (The Next Generation).
Script revisions resulted in the rogue Starfleet officer being replaced by Data,
in the Colonel Kurtz role from Apocalypse Now, and the fantasy-like fountain of
youth notion was dropped altogether. The idea of Picard pursuing his rogue
android friend seemed to work well, but Piller and Berman knew that Data
would have to have very good reasons for turning on Starfleet. The result of their
thinking through the problem was to posit an upcoming alliance engineered by
powerful forces between the Federation and the Romulans. This outline again
met with resistance from Paramount executives, who considered the proposed
film too political, and from star Patrick Stewart who wanted to continue the
development of Picard as an action hero as seen in First Contact.
Stewart – credited as an associate producer on the film – had some other ideas
for the movie. He agreed with Piller’s desire to produce a lighter film that would
show the crew having more fun, but he also felt that the stalled romance Picard
had enjoyed with Alfre Woodard’s Lily in First Contact had not gone far
enough. Stewart was also keen on the discarded fountain of youth idea, perhaps
feeling that Picard should face the same ageing issues as Kirk had previously.
‘The script ended up having input from Patrick Stewart, from the studio, from
me, and slowly the story started changing’, remembered Berman. ‘I think maybe
it’s a little like that old story about a camel being a horse made by committee.
Instead of setting it aside and coming up with another story, we took that story
and started bending it, twisting it, changing it and making it more upbeat. I don’t
think the script ever quite solidified.’
 Piller worked on a new script, confining Data’s rebellion to the opening of the
film only (and excusing his actions by having him really on an undercover
mission on behalf of Starfleet, investigating a rebel faction), while the villains
became the Son’i, a race persecuting the child-like Ba’ku and in league with
renegade Federation officers to steal the power of rejuvenation their planet
seems to provide. Final changes saw the Son’i become the Son’a; the Ba’ku
turned into adults; the addition of a love-interest figure for Picard in the Ba’ku
woman Anji (filling the Alfre Woodard romance role); and the action quotient
was increased dramatically.
Jonathan Frakes returned to direct the film, although he was later to express
concerns about what he saw as weaknesses in the screenplay. As the villainous
Son’a leader, Frakes cast F. Murray Abraham as Ru’afo, the latest in a series of
Star Trek movie villains who would live in the shadow of Star Trek II’s Khan.
Starfleet renegade Admiral Dougherty was played by Anthony Zerbe, while
‘love interest’ Anji was Donna Murphy. Despite a budget in the region of $58
million, Star Trek: Insurrection (as the film was dubbed after the titles Prime
Directive and Nemesis were rejected) managed to look like a very cheap film, or
– in the view of many critics – an overextended television episode.
Rick Berman later admitted that Star Trek: Insurrection was ‘a less-than-
stellar follow-up to First Contact, which had been so up and so exciting’. Critics
agreed, with the Chicago Sun-Times’ Roger Ebert dubbing the movie ‘Inert and
unconvincing. The plot grinds through the usual conversations and crisis . . .
there’s a certain lacklustre feeling.’ Ebert’s more serious criticism concerned the
basic premise of the movie: that the rights of 600 indigenous people should
outweigh the potential of immortality for all, the ‘greatest good for the greatest
number of people. The filmmakers have hitched their wagon to the wrong
cause’. Variety agreed, comparing the film unfavourably with the previous,
action-packed movie: ‘a distinct comedown after its immediate predecessor, the
smashingly exciting First Contact. [It] plays less like a stand-alone sci-fi
adventure than like an expanded episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.’ It
had long been a struggle for those behind the Star Trek movie to find stories ‘big
enough’ for cinema, compared to the often low-key (but nonetheless fascinating)
moral dilemmas faced by the various Enterprise crews on television. It had been
an issue that had plagued Paramount executives in the ten-year development of
The Motion Picture and it would be an issue that would trouble director J. J.
Abrams in the creation of his second Star Trek film. Many fans would regard
Star Trek: Insurrection as the movie that was ‘truest’ to the television series that
spawned it precisely because it came across as a television-scale instalment,
rather than an action movie like First Contact. The San Francisco Chronicle
review was a little more upbeat, describing the film as a ‘tight, highly-
entertaining spectacle’ with ‘fascinating ideas, mind-blowing visuals’, but the
Los Angeles Times thought the film was let down by a lack of ‘adrenalized
oomph’. Even without much ‘oomph’, Star Trek: Insurrection claimed $70
million at the US box office (a $22-million drop from First Contact) and $112
million worldwide (a whopping $34 million less than the previous film).

One of the rejected early ideas for Star Trek: Insurrection was a riff on The
Prisoner of Zenda, which would have seen a doppelganger of Picard threaten to
take over his role as commander of the Enterprise. The idea was revisited for
Star Trek Nemesis, even though Rick Berman had initially (under the studio’s
direction) begun to explore the possibility of the tenth Star Trek movie not
featuring The Next Generation cast at all. ‘There was an attitude that I should go
out and find a new Tom Cruise’, Berman told startrek.com of the drive to find a
younger crew for the Enterprise in response to the relative failure of Star Trek:
Insurrection. ‘I felt strongly against that for two reasons. One reason was that
when we were developing this movie, the Enterprise [TV] series was coming
out. So the Star Trek audience was about to get introduced to a whole new cast
of young characters on television. For us to simultaneously introduce them to a
whole new cast of young characters in a movie seemed to be insane to me. The
other reason was I felt that after a four-year absence from the screen, the fans
really wanted to see Patrick, Brent, Jonathan and company again.’
It was Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner who brought screenwriter John Logan
to Berman’s attention. Logan had been Oscar-nominated for his work on
Gladiator (2000) and was a very much in-demand screenwriter – but crucially he
was also a big fan of Star Trek. ‘I thought this was exciting’, said Berman.
‘Rather than going with people who’d been involved with Trek television for so
many years, here we had a fresh, A-list, Hollywood writer who happened to be a
gigantic fan of The Next Generation.’ The only strong stipulation from the studio
that Berman had to adhere to was to use acclaimed film editor and director Stuart
Baird (Executive Decision, U.S. Marshals) to direct the film, further taking the
movie away from the creative involvement of those who knew Star Trek
intimately (Frakes later directed children’s movies Clockstoppers (2002) and
Thunderbirds (2004)). The Prisoner of Zenda idea resurfaced, according to
Berman, in ‘the whole idea of a Picard clone. It went from Picard’s son to a
Picard clone that was the same age as Picard, where Patrick would play both
characters. Finally, it ended up being the Tom Hardy character that was a clone
of Picard, but not a look-alike. There was a lot of suspension of disbelief in the
choice of actor.’
Hardy – then known for the TV mini-series Band of Brothers, but later better
known for movies such as Bronson (2008) and Inception (2010) – was cast as
the movie’s villain, Shinzon. He’s a Reman clone of Picard, plotting to take over
the Romulan Star Empire and take his revenge on Picard and the Federation for
their perceived abandonment of him. In this motivation, the confrontation
between two equally matched protagonists and in the submarine-like space battle
scenes, Nemesis was heavily modelled on The Wrath of Khan, but somehow
failed to be anywhere near as engaging.
The movie’s sub-plot built on Insurrection with its focus on Data, and
originated from actor Brent Spiner (who gained a story credit on the film). The
discovery of a prototype version of Data (dubbed B-4) set the scene for the
Spock-like self-sacrifice of Data to save Picard and the Enterprise-E at the
movie’s climax. Data variants had appeared before on The Next Generation,
including evil ‘brother’ Lore (‘Datalore’, ‘Brothers’, ‘Descent’, ‘Descent Part
II’) and his ‘daughter’ Lal (‘The Offspring’, ‘Inheritance’). The introduction of
B-4 was probably intended as a safety-net way of reviving Data (through a
download of his pre-Nemesis cortex) in any future The Next Generation films, in
the same way that Spock was brought back after depositing his consciousness
within McCoy’s brain.
The production of Star Trek Nemesis did not go as smoothly as that of the
other The Next Generation films. Several of the cast members put this down to
Stuart Baird’s unfamiliarity (and seeming wilful failure to engage) with the Star
Trek mythos. ‘I’m not an aficionado’, admitted Baird to the BBC. ‘There were
little hiccups here and there when some people were offended I didn’t quite
understand the back story. It’s incredibly important to them, so some of them
would think directing this one, you surely should know it all. But God almighty,
I wasn’t going to look at 178 episodes.’
Baird was an action editor and director who saw his job as simply being to
produce a fast-paced space adventure movie. He didn’t concern himself with the
details of the Star Trek universe – he felt that was the writers’ and actors’ job.
Baird told the BBC: ‘It’s big entertainment, but I know the fans take it hugely
seriously. I took it very seriously to give you two hours of entertainment, with as
much bang for your buck, and thrills, spills, emotion, and humour. That was my
task, and not to get too precious about it.’
Logan, whether by his own design or the demands of others, had stuck too
closely to The Wrath of Khan as a template for the new movie, producing a poor
imitation of the original – just as Shinzon turns out to be a poor imitation of
Picard. The feeling that Nemesis could have been any old SF action movie
pervaded the final product, and it seemed to Star Trek fans that the film
somehow lacked that very hard to define Star Trek magic that Gene
Roddenberry had always gone to great lengths to protect.
The release of Star Trek Nemesis was a calamity, with a US box office take of
only $18.5 million over the opening weekend in December 2002 – the film was
up against the latest instalments in other franchises such as Harry Potter (The
Chamber of Secrets), James Bond (Die Another Day) and The Lord of the Rings
(The Two Towers), and was beaten to the number one spot by the Jennifer Lopez
comedy Maid in Manhattan. Total US box office take was $43 million (less than
Star Trek V, making Nemesis the lowest grossing Star Trek movie, although
totalling $67 million worldwide) – a huge collapse from Insurrection’s $70
million and First Contact’s $92 million. Apart from the strong competition from
other movies that Christmas season, Rick Berman had little to offer in the way of
explanation for the dramatic failure of Star Trek Nemesis with audiences.
‘Everyone from the studio to me thought we’d crafted a really good movie. And
nobody came to see it. It wasn’t even a question of not getting good reviews.
Any Star Trek movie opened and it’d have a huge opening weekend, but this one
didn’t. To this day, [I] have some difficulty understanding why it met with such
a poor reception. The movie backfired and there’s certainly a lot of room for
discussion of why. It was sad and a little baffling to me.’
In an interview conducted at the Atlanta, Georgia fantasy convention
DragonCon, in September 2005, both Marina Sirtis and LeVar Burton were very
critical of the final two The Next Generation movies. Nemesis failed, said
Burton, ‘because it sucked’, while Sirtis in response suggested, ‘It didn’t suck as
much as Insurrection. I fell asleep at the premiere of Insurrection.’ Burton
clearly blamed Baird, noting that for the first six weeks of production he’d
referred to Burton as ‘Laverne’ instead of LeVar, while Sirtis claimed Baird
‘didn’t even watch a single episode of Next Gen. [Star Trek: The Next
Generation]’.
Baird’s defence of his film was simple, even if the actual movie had failed:
‘My intention since I was a virgin to it all, was I wanted to make a movie that
stands alone and doesn’t rest on all the past history.’ Sirtis claimed that approach
doesn’t work on Star Trek: ‘There is a history, there is a legend. There are [The
Next Generation] characters that have been around for fifteen years and have
relationships with each other. Gene always used to say it’s a people show, it was
about the people on the ship. [Baird] didn’t really take that into account.’
The Star Trek movie series, from the arrival of The Motion Picture to the
2009 reboot, received fourteen Academy Award nominations (albeit mainly in
technical categories), but didn’t win any until J. J. Abrams’ Star Trek (2009).
The most successful and most popular of the films featuring the original
television casts had been The Wrath of Khan, The Voyage Home, The
Undiscovered Country and First Contact. The first three had Nicholas Meyer in
common (as either writer or director), while First Contact went down the
populist action movie route with the Borg as dynamic and destructive villains.
They all brought characterisation to the fore and featured ideas mixed with
action, sticking faithfully to Gene Roddenberry’s initial prescription for Star
Trek. It was to be a lesson learned by J. J. Abrams when the time came to
reinvent Star Trek once again for a twenty-first-century mainstream movie
audience.
Chapter 9
New Ground: Deep Space Nine
‘Roddenberry created characters that he purposely chose not to put in
conflict. There’s no good drama without conflict.’ Rick Berman

The creators of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the second TV spinoff from The
Original Series, deliberately conceived the show as the ‘anti-Star Trek’. David
Carson, who directed the two-hour pilot episode, said of the show’s creators: ‘I
think what they’re striving for is to look at the people in the 24th century who
are not so much at peace with themselves as the crew of the Enterprise was in
Star Trek: The Next Generation.’ Deep Space Nine would diverge considerably
from what Michael Piller called ‘Roddenberry’s box’ of restrictive storytelling
rules and would take Star Trek in a new direction. The new storytellers who
would map this unexplored territory included Ira Steven Behr and Ron Moore.
The show debuted in 1993, during the sixth season of The Next Generation,
and it was more a spinoff from that show than from the original Star Trek. Set in
the same twenty-fourth-century time period, it featured many of the same
characters, including Miles O’Brien (Colm Meaney) and, from the fourth season
onwards, Klingon Worf (Michael Dorn). The show would match its progenitor
for longevity, running for seven seasons to 1999, but would not make the step up
to feature films like the previous two series.
From the beginning, Deep Space Nine was intended to be different. Executive
producers Rick Berman and Michael Piller signalled this difference in the most
dramatic way pos -sible – the show would not feature a Federation starship
engaged in exploration. Instead, the title referred to an isolated space station to
which the drama of each episode would come. Fan jokes at the time had the
station (and potentially the series) boldly going nowhere.
Controversy dogged this ‘darker’ Star Trek series from the outset, with J.
Michael Straczynski, creator of the similarly space-station-set Babylon 5 (which
began airing mere weeks after Deep Space Nine), heavily suggesting that the
development of Paramount’s new Star Trek show had been influenced by his
proposal. Straczynski had attempted to sell his space station series to Paramount
as early as 1989, complete with series bible, pilot script and outlines for a first
season of twenty-two episodes, including development artwork and character
histories. Paramount rejected this detailed proposal, but only announced Deep
Space Nine after Warner Bros. TV picked up Straczynski’s Babylon 5. For his
part, Straczynski remained convinced that Babylon 5 must have influenced the
development of Deep Space Nine, something that all involved have long denied.
Straczynski decided to rise above the controversy, knowing that suing
Paramount would probably not help his own career. ‘[Paramount] know what
happened, and I know what happened’, Straczynski posted to his internet forum
in 1996. ‘The fact that the two shows were so similar at that time – one a nobody
show from nowhere, the other bundled with the Star Trek name – came within
an inch of killing Babylon 5. We were told “The syndie [syndication] market
can’t sustain two shows like this; you’re gonna get creamed.”’
In fact, Babylon 5 went on to secure a five-season run (although as with the
original Star Trek, renewal was always tricky, complicated by the fact that
Straczynski had set out to tell a complete five-year story). The series even
spawned its own Star Trek-style spinoffs in the form of a series of TV movies
and Crusade, a one-season follow-on. Babylon 5 deliberately set out to challenge
the Star Trek storytelling style, to overcome the end-of-episode narrative reset
button that reasserted the status quo, and to present storylines and characters that
were con -stantly changed by the narrative developments of the series. It was a
storytelling approach Deep Space Nine would itself come to embrace in later
seasons.
The new show would have the most ongoing storylines of all Star Trek series,
with character conflict at its core. Not only did it trash ‘Roddenberry’s box’ of
narrative restrictions, it made a positive virtue of ignoring them. ‘To a lot of
people [Deep Space Nine] is not what Star Trek is’, admitted producer Rick
Berman. ‘These two shows [Deep Space Nine and The Next Generation] were to
run concurrently, so there was no question we needed to come up with
something different, a little darker and with a lot more conflict.’
From first considering a second spinoff in 1991, Paramount executives knew
the new show had to be distinctive, yet somehow still Star Trek. Thoughts turned
to a series set within the Klingon Empire, explored in episodes of The Next
Generation, but the fear of exorbitant make-up costs quickly put paid to that
notion. George Takei had long been lobbying for a show of his own, featuring
Sulu as the captain of his own starship. Takei had a strong fan following, but
Paramount had already decided the new show would be set in the same time
period as The Next Generation. Other ideas explored briefly included Harve
Bennett’s old concept of Starfleet Academy, an option bolstered by The Next
Generation episode ‘The First Duty’, featuring Wesley Crusher at the Academy,
and Bennett’s lobbying for the concept to form the basis of Star Trek VI.
Another notion was for a series set on a Federation Starbase or a colony planet.
Starbases had cropped up in Star Trek since The Original Series (notably in the
episode ‘The Trouble With Tribbles’). They were re-supply and maintenance
bases, like motorway service stations or trading posts in the US old West. An
entire series set among the crew and visitors to a Federation Starbase might have
strong dramatic potential, as it would be a destination or way-station for many
non-Starfleet characters, thus allowing the writers to introduce a higher degree of
conflict than might be allowed (or expected) from among a ‘perfect’ crew on yet
another starship. The colony planet idea was discarded due to the amount of
location-based filming that would have been required, and the space station
concept was developed.
Setting the series on a space station rather than a starship had many
implications for the drama. The location implied a degree of commitment to
dealing with consequences perhaps missing from the starship shows: the people
on Deep Space Nine could not simply fly away from their problems.
Additionally, characters would get married or enjoy lengthy relationships, an
additional level of commitment and source of character drama. The fact that
non-Starfleet characters would feature heavily gave Deep Space Nine a different
feeling, too, with alternative viewpoints being explored and having an impact on
the show’s regular characters. As people lived their lives, their fixed location and
wider relationships would inform their decision-making, with galaxy-wide
consequences.
With the death of Gene Roddenberry in 1991, and his lessening involvement
in The Next Generation before that, Rick Berman was freer than ever before to
do something different with Star Trek without the Great Bird of the Galaxy
hovering over his shoulder – although Roddenberry had been involved in some
of the earliest discussions of what would become Deep Space Nine. As far as
Roddenberry had been concerned, he was the only person who could create and
cast a Star Trek TV series or movie – an argument he’d used to prevent Harve
Bennett’s Starfleet Academy proposal from proceeding. Berman took a different
view of things: ‘Before he died I worked closely with Gene for five years. I
learned his language and his religion and his outlook. I have been obsessively
true to it. Gene’s involvement in The Next Generation had been minimal since
the first year of the show. [Deep Space Nine] will be absolutely true to that
vision, it’s a show that rests on Gene’s idea of the future.’ Despite his assertion,
the storytellers working under Berman would deliberately undermine his stated
adherence to Roddenberry’s strictures, setting out to create in Deep Space Nine
the anti-Star Trek they believed modern television audiences required.
Various titles were developed for the new show, including the rather bland
Starbase 362 (most Starbases featured in various episodes of the two preceding
Star Trek series had numerical identifiers) and the oft-suggested Star Trek: The
Final Frontier. Inspiration for the exact setting and dramatic situation of the new
series would be drawn from a handful of specific episodes of The Next
Generation.

The Next Generation episode ‘Ensign Ro’ had introduced the planet Bajor and
the Maquis rebel faction, both developed further in Deep Space Nine. Bajor had
suffered under the oppressive rule of the Cardassians for generations, with the
orbiting space station Terok Nor recently vacated and reoccupied by the now
freed Bajorans alongside Starfleet personnel, led by Commander Benjamin Sisko
(Avery Brooks). ‘Ensign Ro’ introduced the character of troubled Bajoran Ro
Laren (Michelle Forbes), intended to be a regular on Deep Space Nine.
However, Forbes declined the offer, making way for the station’s First Officer
Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor). The joint control of the station was intended to pave
the way for Bajor to join the Federation, with the station renamed Deep Space
Nine.
The Maquis rebel faction grew out of The Next Generation episode ‘Journey’s
End’. That saw a group of Native American settlers refuse to leave their colony
world when it is reassigned to the Cardassians under the terms of a treaty.
Unusually for Star Trek, the Maquis (the name taken from French Resistance
guerrillas during World War II) were a human resistance group made up of
Federation citizens, many of them working within Starfleet. They would later
reappear in Star Trek: Voyager.
An additional element was the discovery of a stable wormhole, with the
station residing between the wormhole and Bajor. The wormhole offered access
to the largely unexplored Gamma Quadrant of the galaxy, so was strategically
important. This development saw the return of the Cardassians, who had stripped
the station during their withdrawal from Bajor. Interested in accessing (or
controlling) the wormhole as much as the Bajorans and the Federation, the
Cardassians would become recurring villains.
A further complication saw the wormhole perceived by the religious Bajorans
as fulfilling a long-held prophecy. The alien beings inhabiting the wormhole and
living beyond linear time and space are seen as gods by the Bajorans. In their
religion, the wormhole is the Celestial Temple, while the aliens are dubbed the
Prophets. Sisko is seen an emissary of the Prophets after he survives an
encounter with the wormhole inhabitants and he subsequently acts on their
behalf. Deep Space Nine started with a much more complicated and more
sophisticated set-up than The Next Generation had only a few years previously.
Another break with the past was taken in the casting of leading character
Commander Benjamin Sisko (the equivalent to Captains Kirk and Picard). It was
decided to spearhead Deep Space Nine with an African-American actor,
although thought was also given to casting a woman. Experienced movie names
Tony Todd (Candyman) and Michael Clarke Duncan (The Green Mile) were
considered, but the leading role went to acclaimed stage actor Avery Brooks
(known to US TV audiences for the sidekick role of Hawk on Spenser: For Hire
and its short-lived spinoff A Man Called Hawk in the 1980s). ‘Today, many of
our children, especially black males, do not project that they will live past the
age of 19 or 20’, Brooks told Michael Logan of TV Guide in 1993. ‘Star Trek
allows our children the chance to see something they might never otherwise
imagine.’ Brooks was following in the footsteps of such Star Trek role models as
Whoopi Goldberg and LeVar Burton, who’d both stated that the existence of
such characters in Star Trek’s future had fuelled their own ambitions.
The other regular roles on Deep Space Nine were filled by a variety of
television actors who were not particularly well known. Two of the most
experienced – Armin Shimerman and Rene Auberjonois – had their faces
disguised by heavy alien make-up as Quark, a Ferengi, and Odo, a shape-shifter.
Movie star Famke Janssen turned down the role of alien Trill Jadzia Dax,
allowing Terry Farrell to take the part, but only after the pilot had been filming
for over a week. Siddig El Fadil (now Alexander Siddig) played the genetically
boosted Dr Bashir, the station medic.
This ensemble cast allowed Deep Space Nine to escape from the focus on a
core triumvirate of characters (like Kirk–Spock– McCoy and Picard–Data–
Riker), allowing for a wider range of representation. Odo channelled the split
nature of Spock, being a shape-shifter living among humans, and Kira Nerys
anchored the Bajoran–Cardassian story nexus, while Sisko’s character arc
explored issues of power, responsibility and faith, especially through his relation
to the wormhole aliens and the fact that he was essentially engineered by them to
battle the evil Pah-Wraiths.
At a cost of $12 million, the pilot episode of Deep Space Nine was the most
expensive television pilot then made. The episode featured Patrick Stewart to
cement the connection to parent series The Next Generation. The fledgling show
found it difficult during the first year, with writers who’d written for a previous
Star Trek driven by exploration, having to revamp stories for a station that went
nowhere and a cast of characters who – by virtue of their circumstance – were
more reactive than active.

It always takes a new series a while to find its feet. Deep Space Nine both
benefited from and was hampered by being under the wing of The Next
Generation for its first two seasons. The show spent very little time as the only
Star Trek series on air, though, as halfway through its third year it was joined by
the more traditional (for Star Trek) Voyager.
Beyond the elements set up in the pilot show, ‘Emissary’ – Bajor, the
wormhole and the role of the Maquis – Deep Space Nine would explore areas
that made for a darker Star Trek series than any that had gone before. In many
ways the show initially struggled to find an identity, but the third season (the
show’s first without The Next Generation around) saw the development of a
strong military space opera storyline with the Dominion War arc (contrasting
heavily with Voyager’s traditional exploration-driven narrative). Writer–
producer Ira Steven Behr was a key storyteller behind this development, initially
set up by a mention of the Dominion in an otherwise comic episode of the
second season, ‘Rules of Acquisition’. The aim with the Dominion was to
clearly differentiate the Gamma Quadrant from the more familiar Star Trek
‘home turf’ of the Alpha Quadrant. Those who hailed from the Gamma Quadrant
were the ‘anti-Federation’, an alliance of alien races who were the opposite of
the ‘enlightened’ Prime Directive-following Federation, a kind of ‘axis of evil’
in space.
The second season finale episode, ‘The Jem’Hadar’, properly introduced the
Dominion, a military power from the Gamma Quadrant led by the Founders, a
race of shape-shifting changeling aliens. Odo (Auberjonois), the station’s
amnesiac alien security officer, discovers he is one of the Founders and that his
race is in a battle for dominance with the ‘Solids’, as they call creatures of fixed
form like humans. It was writer–producer Michael Piller who made the
connection between this new race and Odo, solving the existing mystery of the
character’s origins. This development gave what had previously been a rather
mysterious and underdeveloped character a strong role in stories going forward,
and built right through to the series’ overall finale. It elevated Odo to the role of
the character with split loyalties that had previously been filled by Spock and
Worf. The Founders use a pair of genetically altered races, the Vorta and the
Jem’Hadar, as their foot soldiers. Both races worship their ‘creators’ as gods.
Fear, rather than the Federation’s friendship, was the tool used to cement
alliances and hold these races together in their malevolent (at least to Federation
thinking) aims. It’s evident from their name that in developing the Founders,
Deep Space Nine’s key storytellers – Behr, Robert Hewitt Wolfe and Peter Allan
Fields – had been looking to Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy of ‘deep
history’ novels. Asimov had been a friend of Roddenberry’s and was someone
he often consulted via letter in the days of the original Star Trek. For all
involved, the development of a new iconic Star Trek villain, following the
original series’ Klingons and Romulans and The Next Generation’s Borg, had
been incredibly difficult. Wolfe admitted that they’d fallen back on the old idea
that had informed the Romulans – the history of the Roman Empire – in some of
their thinking about the nature of the Founders.
The third season not only brought the threat of an all-out Dominion attack, but
also saw Deep Space Nine acquire its own ship, the USS Defiant, a small
prototype originally created to combat the Borg. This allowed the characters to
more easily get off the station and fulfil the traditional Star Trek mission of
‘boldly going’. An influx of writing talent from the now defunct The Next
Generation also boosted the series’ storytelling from the third year. Deep Space
Nine had always embraced serialisation and the possibility that characters could
change – both strong ‘anti-Star Trek’ elements. These aspects differentiated it
from everything that had come before and were even stronger from the third
year. The original intention – according to Berman – was for the Dominion War
story to play out over a handful of episodes. So rich were the storytelling
possibilities, however, that the decision was taken to extend the plotline for as
long as good stories could be developed. It would actually run right through to
the end of the series. An additional factor was the arrival of Star Trek: Voyager
which took up much of Berman and Piller’s attention, meaning that Behr and his
collaborators running Deep Space Nine had more creative space in which to
work, allowing the series to move further away from Roddenberry’s idealistic
view of the Star Trek universe.
According to an interview with TrekWeb.com, Behr saw Deep Space Nine’s
mission as ‘getting back to telling character-oriented stories, getting back to
having conflict between human beings; plot at the service of character. We
created a much more complete universe in which you can have all these
characters with all these back stories, all these races, all these supporting
characters. You knew more about Garak or Gul Dukat, ultimately, than you
knew about Riker. We brought back money, greed, racial bigotry, war – all the
stuff that [had] disappeared [from Star Trek]. I began to see opportunities that I
hadn’t seen before. We certainly took the series where [co-creator] Michael
Piller would freely admit he hadn’t thought of [taking it].’
Building up the existing villains, the writers put the deposed Cardassians in an
alliance with the Dominion, resulting in a state of all-out war by the fifth
season’s finale episode, ‘Call to Arms’. Shifting loyalties and alliances kept the
story elements fresh, but for any Star Trek fans not enamoured with military
science fiction the strong shift in this direction was off-putting. Even Star Trek’s
long-time enemies turned friends the Klingons got caught up in the Dominion
War (on the Founders’ side), while the Romulans stuck by the Federation.
Whatever viewers’ feelings about Star Trek turning military, there can be no
doubt that this was a unique storytelling gambit and it certainly provided much
story potential that had been denied the more straight-laced The Next
Generation, which had been firmly stuck within Roddenberry’s storytelling
‘box’.
Deep Space Nine seriously explored the horrors of war more than any other
series, even The Original Series that had regularly highlighted the issue in the
shadow of the Vietnam War. Inspired by contemporary events in the Balkans,
the later seasons of Deep Space Nine deliberately set out to reflect some very
1990s concerns. President Clinton had committed American military forces to
preventing genocide in central Europe following the break-up of Yugoslavia at
the start of the decade. Ethnic tensions had increased among Bosnian Serbs and
Bosnian Croats, resulting in an international armed conflict between 1992 and
1995. The show drew on this, and the earlier Gulf War of 1990–1, to inspire
storylines of conflicting religious ideologies, the rise of international terrorism,
the role of nation-building after conflict, the threat of bio-weaponry and the
dangers of ethnic cleansing and potential genocide, all in a ‘dark’ Star Trek
context. The show took a more serious approach than The Original Series
episode ‘A Private Little War’ had managed, an analogy of the Vietnam conflict
with the Klingons representing America’s Cold War opponents. The seventh
season episode ‘The Siege of AR-558’ saw regular Ferengi character Nog
(Quark’s nephew) seriously injured in battle and lose a leg as a result. The greed
of the Ferengi is highlighted when Quark quotes the 34th Rule of Acquisition to
Ezri Dax: ‘War is good for business’. Faced with the personal outcome of war
when his nephew suffers, Quark is forced to reconsider his opinion. Sisko ends
the episode recalling that the people who lose their lives in war are all
individuals, leaving behind family and friends. ‘They’re not just names’, he says.
‘It’s important to remember that – we have to remember.’
Moral ambiguity was also more prevalent in Deep Space Nine, with the
station’s resident Cardassian character – a tailor named Garak (Andrew
Robinson), who befriends Dr Bashir – revealed as a former secret policeman
turned spy. The ending of the Dominion War largely depended upon a very un-
Starfleet-like deception enacted by Sisko with Garak’s help. In the season six
episode ‘In The Pale Moonlight’, Sisko participates in a conspiracy to bring the
Romulans into alliance with the Federation, but which also leads to Garak
committing murder on his behalf – an event covered up to preserve the greater
good. It’s a subversive take on the usually very black and white moral universe
of Star Trek. According to writer Michael Taylor, this episode ‘showed how
Deep Space Nine could really stretch the Star Trek formula. It pushes the
boundaries in a realistic way, because the decisions Sisko makes are the kinds of
decisions that have to be made in war. They’re for the greater good.’
Another sign of Deep Space Nine breaking taboos was the way in which the
series undermined the purity of the Federation, something The Next Generation
had only briefly toyed with (in the episode ‘Conspiracy’, and later in the movie
Insurrection). ‘Conspiracy’ was the penultimate episode of The Next
Generation’s first season. The first story ideas had a group of warmongering
Starfleet officers try to provoke war with the Klingons. Revised following
Roddenberry’s intervention, the episode instead featured an alien-driven
conspiracy in which Starfleet Admirals were possessed by alien parasites, as he
felt Starfleet officers themselves would never turn against the Federation. A
suggestion that the alien creatures might become recurring adversaries was never
followed up. Insurrection saw Picard turn against a wing of the Federation
Council, which was conspiring to steal the secret of long life. Neither of these
stories suggested that Starfleet had a secret intelligence wing, although it might
be supposed that despite such enlightened future times such a thing would not be
impossible. Deep Space Nine would spend several episodes exploring the
implications of just such an organisation within an organisation.
Dr Bashir was the centre of the Section 31 episodes. Introduced in the sixth
season’s ‘Inquisition’, Section 31 was depicted as a Starfleet agency operating
without oversight, represented by Sloan (William Sadler). It is clear to Bashir
that Section 31 is violating long-established Federation values, a position
defended by Sloan as ethical compromises necessary to defend those same
values in times of war. This drew on real-life 1990s concerns about the activities
of US and other intelligence agencies that used the excuse of defending liberty to
justify inhumane actions such as torture. As alien security officer Odo comments
in the episode ‘Dogs of War’: ‘Interesting, isn’t it? The Federation claims to
abhor Section 31’s tactics, but when they need the dirty work done, they look the
other way. It’s a tidy little arrangement, wouldn’t you say?’ Odo’s scepticism is
interesting, especially as it would later transpire that Section 31 both created and
provided the cure (once Bashir extracts it from Sloan’s mind) for the
‘morphogenic virus’ affecting Odo and the Founders. Sharing the cure with the
Founders helps bring about the end of the Dominion War, and it’s an action Odo
takes in defiance of Federation policy. Complex shades of grey dominate
morality in Deep Space Nine’s complex storytelling.
Gene Roddenberry’s view of Star Trek’s future would have little room for
such a covert organisation as Section 31, seeing it as unnecessary in a utopia.
The creators of Deep Space Nine, however, had truly escaped Roddenberry’s
box and had bypassed his storytelling limitations while still trying to stay true to
the heart of Star Trek. Behr limited Roddenberry’s view to Earth, refusing to
accept that things might be the same on an outpost such as Deep Space Nine in
the middle of a war. ‘We decided that Earth is paradise – we’ll buy into that
[Roddenberry notion]. I don’t quite understand it, but we’ll buy it. “It’s easy to
be a saint in paradise,” Sisko said in “Maquis, Part II”. To have a Federation
person say that as opposed to a Cardassian, Ferengi or Bajoran was telling,
because Sisko was learning. Deep Space Nine was the series that refused to play
it safe. We all knew it, every writer was behind it. It was an exhilarating place to
be creatively.’
Section 31 dealt with threats to the Federation that could not be tackled
successfully in more acceptable ways, but gave those involved plausible
deniability. For Section 31 operatives like Sloan, the end always justified the
means and if that meant breaking a few rules along the way, so be it. This was
not a viewpoint Bashir (representing Roddenberry) could agree with and he
refused to be co-opted (at least willingly) by the organisation. Despite Bashir’s
interest in espionage narratives, displayed through his James Bond-like fantasy
holodeck activities, real-world spying and betrayal was not for him. Section 31
would reappear in several episodes and the organisation’s origins would
eventually be revealed in the Star Trek prequel series Enterprise.
Deep Space Nine even looked back to the original Star Trek series for ideas to
develop, hitting upon the mirror universe of ‘Mirror, Mirror’ as ripe for
exploitation. That episode saw a transporter malfunction send Kirk, Spock,
McCoy and Uhura to an alternate universe where the benign Federation is an
evil Terran Empire. Each of the Enterprise crew has their Machiavellian
counterpart, launching the cliché that alternative universe evil twins sport
goatees.
The second season Deep Space Nine episode ‘Crossover’ provides a direct
sequel to ‘Mirror, Mirror’, revealing that Kirk’s intervention led to the fall of the
Terran Empire, with mirror Spock as a reforming leader. Deep Space Nine’s
series of mirror universe stories (encompassing the episodes ‘Through the
Looking Glass’, ‘Shattered Mirror’, ‘Resurrection’ and ‘The Emperor’s New
Cloak’) allowed actors to play alternate, more extreme versions of their usual
characters. It also allowed for even darker stories to be told, perhaps revealing
the kind of show Deep Space Nine might have been if Roddenberry’s Star Trek
restrictions had been thrown off entirely.
This time an accident within the wormhole sends the characters to the mirror
universe, around 100 years after Kirk’s intervention. Here a Klingon–Cardassian
alliance dominates and the station is still Terok Nor, with Bajor under the control
of Bajorians who own human slaves. Terrans are seen by those on Terok Nor as
the bad guys, called ruthless barbarians by Kira Nerys’ opposite number, the
sultry Intendant. With the help of the displaced inhabitants of Deep Space Nine,
the human ore miners of Terok Nor are able to form a resistance movement, led
by Sisko’s mirror alternate, and free themselves from Bajoran domination.
Deep Space Nine also rescued the Ferengi from their status as comic relief
characters in The Next Generation. Originally intended as serious villains, their
hobgoblin looks had meant that the capitalistic Ferengi instead became
caricatures. It was easy for writers to use them in a comedic way to comment on
very human traits – such as greed – that the supposedly enlightened twenty-
fourth-century humans had left behind. The Ferengi became more complex in
Deep Space Nine, with a number of regular characters – especially the bartender
Quark (Shimerman) – being well developed. Just as Worf on The Next
Generation had allowed the writers to explore and elaborate on Klingon culture
(and use it to mirror human culture and history), so Deep Space Nine gave the
Ferengi a depth previously missing, especially in the war-related fate of Quark’s
nephew, Nog. Issues of capitalism’s exploitation and perceived sexual norms
were tackled through the depiction of the Ferengi, with Quark often involved in
major events on his home world.
Initially, critical reaction to the arrival of Deep Space Nine was very positive. TV
Guide described it as ‘the best acted, written, produced and altogether finest’
Star Trek series. However, George Takei was one of many who felt that the
show had moved too far from Gene Roddenberry’s view of the future. ‘The
people that really understand and love Star Trek are no longer there’, he told iF
Magazine in 2007. ‘When Gene Roddenberry passed, that really was the end of
Star Trek as we knew it. The series that came on immediately after was Deep
Space Nine, which was the polar opposite of Gene’s philosophy and vision of the
future, so Star Trek lost its way then.’
Others viewed this controversial Star Trek rather differently. Original series
story editor and writer D. C. Fontana felt that Roddenberry would appreciate
Deep Space Nine’s war-based tales, due to his experience of World War II. ‘I
think Gene would have liked it ultimately even with the darker themes’, she told
TrekMovie.com in 2007. ‘Let’s face it, Gene lived and fought through World
War II and those were pretty dark days so he has to know they occur. He was
around when we were in the middle of the muck of Vietnam. He would like to
think that humanity would be better than that, but we made the same mistakes
over and over again and until we learned from history. I suspect we are going to
keep on doing it.’
Fan campaigner Bjo Trimble, who’d led the letter-writing campaign to save
the original Star Trek, agreed with Fontana that Roddenberry would have
appreciated the different approach. ‘I feel that Gene might have come to like
Deep Space Nine, had he lived to see it’, Trimble told trekplace.com. ‘There
might have been some changes. The only reason there were not full [space]
battles in early Trek was lack of funds to pull it off, and lack of technology to
show it. Otherwise, [Gene] would certainly have added it; he knew what
audiences liked.’
In 2002, writer–producer Ronald D. Moore (who would go on to revamp the
1970s show Battlestar Galactica) expressed the view that Deep Space Nine had
taken the Star Trek concept as far as it could go without breaking it. Interviewed
for the documentary Ending an Era on the season seven Deep Space Nine DVD
set, he noted: ‘You have The Original Series, which is a landmark – it changes
everything about the way science fiction is presented on television, at least
space-based science fiction. Then you have [The] Next Generation that, for all of
its legitimate achievements, is still a riff on the original. It’s still another starship
and another captain . . . Here comes Deep Space [Nine] and it says “OK, you
think you know what Star Trek is? Let’s put it on a space station, and let’s make
it darker. Let’s make it a continuing story, and let’s continually challenge your
assumptions about what this American icon means.” I think it was the ultimate
achievement for the franchise. Personally, I think it’s the best of all of them . . .
an amazing piece of work.’

One specific area that marked Deep Space Nine out from all the other television
versions of Star Trek was its attempted exploration of sexuality within Gene
Roddenberry’s universe. While The Original Series had been a pioneer in
depicting a mixed-race crew almost without comment (and it boasted that Kirk–
Uhura kiss), the various iterations of the franchise had been less successful in
dealing with sexuality. The original series had Kirk as the intergalactic ladies’
man and occasionally Spock would melt a woman’s heart, but it was a very
traditional, almost macho heterosexuality – very much in the image of
Roddenberry, whose attitudes to women and sex seemed more suited to the
1950s than the 1960s.
When the show branched out into its various TV spinoffs, there was a chance
to filter the sexuality of these characters from the future through the prism of the
1980s, 1990s and 2000s, while keeping within the bounds of what was
permissible on American television. Deep Space Nine was perhaps the most
successful of the Star Trek series in representing the diversity of human (and
alien) sexuality.
One of the notable achievements of early Star Trek fandom was the creation
of a genre that came to be known as ‘slash fiction’. The name came from the
‘slash’ between the pairing of Kirk/Spock. Many fans took it upon themselves to
read more into the Kirk/Spock relationship than had ever been hinted at on
screen. In the early days of fanzines, some were dedicated to amateur fan stories
that explored various facets of this non-canonical relationship. This was never
recognised on screen, and in general Star Trek has been heavily criticised for its
relative failure – at a time when the television landscape was becoming ever
more diverse – to depict lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) characters
or to craft stories dealing with the issues of LGBT rights – a hot topic in real-
world society, especially in the 1990s when Deep Space Nine was on air. Given
that Star Trek had always been a show that reflected real-world human rights
struggles – such as the 1960s racial equality and gender equality battles – why
was it shying away from the topic of non-traditional sexuality?
Despite his sometimes reactionary views, Roddenberry was enlightened
enough to promise the depiction of gay characters in The Next Generation –
although his promise was never properly fulfilled. ‘My attitude toward
homosexuality has changed’, Roddenberry admitted in an interview in the
Humanist in 1991. ‘I came to the conclusion that I was wrong. I was never
someone who hunted down “fags”, as we used to call them on the street. I would
sometimes say something anti-homosexual off the top of my head because it was
thought in those days to be funny. I never really deeply believed those
comments, but I gave the impression of being thoughtless in these areas. I have,
over many years, changed my attitude about gay men and women.’
He went on to add that ‘in the fifth season [of Star Trek: The Next
Generation] viewers will see more of shipboard life [including] gay
crewmembers in day-to-day circumstances’, although this statement came at a
time when his actual influence over the show was virtually non-existent and he
was entering the final few months of his life. Star Trek – the forward-looking,
groundbreaking, taboo-busting show that depicted a ‘perfect’ future – had fallen
way behind in television portrayals of diverse sexuality by the 1990s. The
majority of pre-1970s negative portrayals of homosexual characters had been
eliminated, with shows taking positive steps to depict gay characters as they
would any other. Spoof soap opera Soap had been more groundbreaking than
Star Trek, featuring a gay character in 1977, while other similar shows followed
suit – Dynasty in 1981 and Melrose Place in 1992. Prime-time sitcom Ellen
featured a lesbian main character from 1997, leading to Will and Grace and a
same-sex kiss in teen show Dawson’s Creek. Series that followed often featured
gay characters and relationships without comment.
Where was Star Trek in all this? The show was stuck in its own past,
refighting old battles over racism (a regular theme in Deep Space Nine, via Sisko
and other characters) and gender equality (through Captain Janeway in Voyager,
and countless other female characters). The Next Generation had made some
rather half-hearted attempts at addressing the issue, as if from a sense of duty. In
the romance episode ‘Qpid’, omnipotent alien trickster Q realises that Vash has
the key to Picard’s heart. He comments that ‘She has found a vulnerability in
you . . . a vulnerability I’ve been looking for, for years. If I had known sooner, I
would have appeared as female’, making a lame joke of his potential sexual
polymorphism. In the episode ‘The Host’, the Enterprise doctor (and sometime
love interest for Picard) Beverly Crusher strikes up a relationship with an alien
‘male’ who comes from a species (the Trill, later featured as regular characters
on Deep Space Nine) capable of co-joining with different genders. The Trill
symbiont inhabits a willing human-oid host, and so can exist within a male or
female body. When the male body is killed (and after a period inhabiting
Commander Riker), the Trill Odan is reinstalled in a female body, and Crusher
feels unable to continue the relationship she had developed with the male version
of Odan. Episode director Marvin Rush rejected the idea that this represented a
form of homophobia. ‘Some commented that they were unhappy with the ending
because it left a question. There was, or could have been, a sort of homosexual
aspect to it and we chose not to go that route. I felt it was more about the nature
of love, why we love and what prevents us from loving. To me the best analogy
is if your beloved turned into a cockroach, could you love a cockroach? Rather
than deal with the fact it was because of any homosexual bent per se, it’s just
that in our culture and our society people who are heterosexual want the
companionship of a male because they are female, [and] wouldn’t be able to deal
with that opposite situation.’
Another fumbled attempt to tackle the issue in The Next Generation
concerned the J’Naii, in the episode ‘The Outcast’. This time Riker falls in love
with a member of an androgynous race of aliens who has chosen, against
custom, to be female. The J’Naii were all played by female actors, a crucial
decision that resulted in the episode appearing to be set on a planet of lesbians.
‘We had wanted to do a gay rights story’, said teleplay writer Jeri Taylor of ‘The
Outcast’. ‘We’d not been able to figure out how to do it in an interesting science
fiction, Star Trek-ian way. As a woman, I know what it feels like to be
disenfranchised’. Despite that positive intention, Riker actor Jonathan Frakes felt
the point would have been strengthened if the role of Soren, his love interest, had
been played by a male, not a more televisually acceptable female. ‘I didn’t think
they [the producers] were gutsy enough to take it where they should have’, he
said. ‘Soren should have been more obviously male.’ Michael Piller thought the
episode had finally done the job of addressing the gay issue in Star Trek: ‘We
decided to tell a story about sexual intolerance.’ However, many fans continued
to feel that a previously groundbreaking show had simply continued to sidestep a
key issue of the late twentieth century.
Picard faced similar gender cross-dressing trouble in ‘Liaisons’, as he found
himself involved with an alien male Lyaaran disguised as a female human who
uses Picard to ex -perience the emotion of ‘love’. The episode was more of a
spoof of Stephen King’s Misery – as Picard is essentially kidnapped by an
obsessed alien – than a serious look at cross-gender relationships. It was further
watered down by the introduction of two of the same species, who spend time on
the Enterprise experiencing other human emotions via the crewmembers.
 This was the problem with Star Trek in the eyes of the LGBT community, the
majority of whom simply wanted the series to introduce an otherwise
unremarkable gay character or two. Instead, the series attempted to produce
‘issue’ stories, written (or more often ‘constructed’) by people who did not have
a clear understanding or any personal involvement in the issues.
One person who did understand from his personal experience of being gay
was David Gerrold, writer of The Original Series episode ‘The Trouble With
Tribbles’, who’d also been involved in establishing The Next Generation. He’d
developed a storyline for an early episode entitled ‘Blood and Fire’, an allegory
about the then-prominent explosion of AIDS among the gay community. The
outline featured a clearly gay male couple and the effect on them of alien
bloodworms, and Gerrold was confident of getting it made as at the time
Roddenberry was saying positive things about how the new show should
continue the diversity of The Original Series. Returning from holiday, Gerrold
found that his story was not to be made after all, as Roddenberry’s idealism had
run up against the reality of broadcasting business concerns. Paramount felt that
as the show was syndicated and could be seen in the afternoon in some markets,
such subjects were not suitable for ‘family entertainment’. This incident was a
major contribution to Gerrold’s leaving the series early in its run.
Some progress was made on Deep Space Nine with the first romantic same-
sex kiss in the episode ‘Rejoined’, further exploring the nature of the co-joined
Trill. In the mirror universe episodes the alternate Kira Nerys, the Intendant, is
clearly bisexual. Even the once comic Ferengi got in on the act, with the female
Pel disguising herself as male to progress in society, but falling in love with
Quark. The bartender rejects Pel’s advances – even when he discovers she is
female – on the grounds that having a female business partner is frowned upon
in Ferengi society. In ‘Profit and Lace’, Quark is himself surgically altered to
become female in an attempt to enlist the help of a powerful businessman in
reshaping Ferengi society. In this guise the show depicts Star Trek’s first male
same-sex kiss, although Quark’s exact gender status is ambiguous at that point.
Sometimes the issue was addressed in throwaway lines, such as the comment
that a character in the episode ‘Field of Fire’ has a ‘co-husband’ as well as a
wife, although the sexual implications of this are not explored.
Deep Space Nine writer Ron Moore suggested in an interview from 2000 that
an executive on the show was against exploring the issue of sexuality. ‘There is
no answer for it other than people in charge don’t want gay characters in Star
Trek, period . . . The studio is not the problem here. The studio is going to let
you go wherever you want to go, as long as they believe it’s good work.’
The problem with the invisibility of homosexuality among Federation
crewmembers in Star Trek, and especially in The Next Generation, is that it
leaves the viewer with the impression that by the twenty-fourth century it has
somehow been ‘cured’, ‘corrected’, ‘bred out’ or otherwise banished. Some of
the key people involved expressed their embarrassment and disappointment that
their shows had failed on this front. Speaking with The Advocate in 1995,
Patrick Stewart said: ‘It would be very appropriate if The Next Generation
movies made it their business to have gay characters.’ Kate Mulgrew, who
played Captain Kathryn Janeway, claimed to have been trying to move things
forward on Voyager, but admitted to having failed, hoping that perhaps the next
show, Enterprise, might be more successful. ‘I’ve approached [Berman] many,
many times over the years about getting a gay character on the show – one
whom we could really love, not just a guest star. Y’know, we had blacks,
Asians, we even had a handicapped character – and so I thought, this is now
beginning to look a bit absurd. And he said, “In due time.” And so, I’m
suspecting that on Enterprise they will do something. I couldn’t get it done on
mine, and I am sorry for that.’
The issue of homosexuality on Star Trek was back in the spotlight in 2005
when Sulu actor George Takei publicly confirmed his own homosexuality.
Although Takei had never hidden the fact – it had been an open secret among
Star Trek fans since the 1970s, and he was active in various LGBT organisations
– his move brought further attention to Star Trek’s failure to tackle these issues
in a satisfactory way. Takei said: ‘[LGBT people] are masculine, we are
feminine, we are caring, we are abusive. We are just like straight people, in
terms of our outward appearance and our behaviour. The only difference is that
we are oriented to people of our own gender.’ After all, for black and Asian
actors later involved in the series, seeing characters like themselves portrayed in
earlier episodes had confirmed they had a place in the future of Star Trek. To
many gay fans, it seemed as though they did not.
Deep Space Nine’s successor, Enterprise, did not significantly advance the
issue, despite suggestions that regular character Malcolm Reid (Dominic
Keating) might be depicted as gay. At a convention in Portland in 2002, Keating
confirmed the idea had been briefly discussed and quickly rejected. Eventually,
in 2011, Brannon Braga admitted that those involved in Star Trek in the 1990s
might have a different view of the topic today. ‘[There was a] constant back and
forth about how do we portray the spectrum of sexuality. There were people who
felt very strongly that we should be showing casually two guys together in the
background in [Enterprise bar] Ten Forward. At the time the decision was made
not to do that. I think those same people would make a different decision now. I
have no doubt that those same creative players wouldn’t feel so hesitant about a
decision like that.’ Whatever the producers may have felt on the subject, it is
clear that in terms of progressive depictions of sexuality on television, Star Trek
in the 1990s failed to take the kind of leading position expected of such an
apparently forward-looking show.

Deep Space Nine had never enjoyed the Star Trek televisual space to itself – its
entire run was accompanied by the last two seasons of The Next Generation and
the first five years of ‘back to basics’ Star Trek show, Voyager. This allowed the
series to do its own thing within the shadow of those other shows, something
storyteller Ira Steven Behr took fine advantage of, but it also resulted in it being
overlooked by some Star Trek fans and critics. It was also the first Star Trek
series to fail to graduate to movies, and it may have had trouble retaining more
casual viewers thanks to its heavily serialised nature, especially from the fourth
season through to the end. However, within all these restrictions, the show
offered a space for storytellers like Behr and Ron Moore to take a fresh look at
Star Trek and move the franchise in a different direction.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine cannot be faulted for its ambition and was a
concentrated attempt by a new generation of young writers and producers to do
something different with the Star Trek legacy within the shadow of Gene
Roddenberry’s creation. It may have been a series that was simply too complex
for episodic television to cope with, and it may have tried to follow too many
story strands and too many characters across seven years, but the world of Star
Trek would be far duller without it. Created in reaction to the Roddenberry
utopianism of The Next Generation and the ongoing Star Trek movie series,
Deep Space Nine took risks unlike any other Star Trek TV show or movie had
done before.
Chapter 10
Business as Usual: Voyager
‘Voyager had a different dynamic because we were not speaking everyday
to Starfleet and we had a female captain. That set this show apart from the
others . . . It had the core belief of Star Trek in terms of excitement and
action and in terms of the provocative ideas that Star Trek has always been
known to present.’ Rick Berman

Just as the creation of Deep Space Nine had been a reaction against the
successful storytelling traditions of Star Trek and The Next Generation, so the
creation of Voyager was both a reaction against Deep Space Nine’s more static
and darker take on Star Trek and to the fear that The Next Generation fans and
more casual viewers were missing a starship-set Star Trek show. Deep Space
Nine would become increasingly serialised and darker with the Dominion War
arc, but the hope at Paramount was that Voyager would recapture some of the
forward-looking optimism of the 1960s original. The show came amid a slew of
late 1990s recreations of 1960s icons, including movies based on old British TV
series (The Avengers, The Saint), a big-budget revamp of The Wild, Wild West
and a series of films based on Star Trek’s old Desilu stablemate, Mission:
Impossible. Everything old was new again, and so it was with Star Trek:
Voyager.
The fourth Star Trek television series was the second to be created without the
direct involvement of Gene Roddenberry. Despite that, Voyager would be
(initially at least) an attempt to return Star Trek to basics, with a diverse crew of
a starship exploring the unknown. The show was co-created by Rick Berman,
Michael Piller and Jeri Taylor, who would bring much to the creation of Star
Trek’s first female leading character. It would be Brannon Braga, however, who
would emerge as the prime storyteller, driving Voyager forward to the past.
Voyager – which had various working titles during development, including
Far Voyager, Outer Bounds and Galaxy’s End – was an attempt to return Star
Trek to its traditional mission to ‘boldly go where no man has gone before’. This
was achieved in an extreme way, with a Federation starship propelled to the far
reaches of the galaxy, and the journey home likely to take longer than a human
lifespan. TV shows had adopted this idea before, from Lost in Space (the clue is
in the title), to Space: 1999, but Voyager would use it in a unique Star Trek
context. As well as the survivors of the Federation crew, the ship would be
carrying Maquis rebels who would be forced to function as part of the crew if
they were all to survive, a sure source of character conflict.
Unlike The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, Voyager would not debut
in syndication but would help launch the United Paramount Network (UPN), the
long-sought dream of a network of independent stations under the Paramount
banner, which had dated right back to the mid-1970s development of Star Trek:
Phase II. Finally, in 1995, that ambition would be achieved and Voyager would
be the flagship show.
The Intrepid-class Voyager would be a smaller starship than the various
incarnations of the Enterprise, dedicated primarily to scientific exploration. On a
mission to locate a missing Maquis vessel lost in the galactic ‘badlands’,
Voyager and the Maquis ship are thrown across the galaxy thanks to the
intervention of an alien being dubbed the Caretaker. Now seventy-five years’
journey time from home, the two crews join together and attempt to find a way
back to the Alpha Quadrant.
The set-up promised much, not least a degree of Deep Space Nine’s trademark
conflict among the ship’s surviving crew, due to their diverse origins. However,
the show quickly folded the Maquis rebels (including Native American First
Officer Chakotay and half-human, half-Klingon chief engineer B’Elanna Torres)
into the Federation crew and any differences were smoothed over. The character
of Tom Paris, initially a wayward troublemaker, was quickly reformed and fitted
back into acceptable Starfleet norms. Areas ripe for exploration and many
storytelling opportunities were quickly squandered by the fledgling series
closing down these avenues so soon.
However, Voyager broke new ground by following up Deep Space Nine’s
African-American captain with Star Trek’s first female series lead in Captain
Kathryn Janeway, played by Kate Mulgrew. Producer Rick Berman saw the
decision as a breakthrough for Star Trek. ‘When it came time for Voyager, we
knew we had to do something different. The decision was to develop a show that
had a female captain’, he said on ‘Braving the Unknown: Season One’, an extra
feature on the Voyager season one DVD. ‘The feeling was that the best direction
for us to go – in terms of trying new things, being socially responsible, which
Star Trek has always been – was to go for a female captain.’ Jeri Taylor admitted
that, ‘The search for the captain was a long and difficult one. This is the person
that gets the white-hot glare of publicity as the first female ever to head [a] Star
Trek series and she had to be just right.’ Berman added, ‘We didn’t want to just
create a captain and cast it with a female. We wanted to create a female captain
who was somewhat more nurturing and a little bit less swashbuckling than
Captain Kirk, a little bit less sullen than Captain Sisko, and a little bit more
approachable than Captain Picard. And Kate [Mulgrew] delivered a feminine
nurturing side and, at the same time, a sense of strength and confidence.’
Mulgrew was a late replacement for French-Canadian actress Genevieve
Bujold as Captain Nicole Janeway, who’d dropped out of the series after just two
days’ filming. The public reason for her departure was that the actress was more
used to the slower pace of moviemaking than the more hectic production process
of weekly episodic television. Other suggested reasons were that Bujold disliked
her character and the producers may have been dissatisfied by her early
performance. In TV Guide in October 1994, Berman simply described Bujold as
‘not a good fit’ for Star Trek.
The rest of the cast was largely made up of unknowns, most of whom had
appeared in many episodic TV guest spots over the years. Robert Beltran played
Chakotay and Tim Russ was Vulcan security officer Tuvok. Russ had previously
screen-tested for the role of Geordi La Forge on The Next Generation and played
minor background roles on The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and the
movie Star Trek Generations. He was something of a knowledgeable Star Trek
fan, who came to the series well aware of Vulcan lore. Robert Duncan McNeill
played the rebellious Tom Paris, and would go on to direct episodes of the series
as well as follow-on Star Trek show Enterprise. Roxann Dawson was Torres,
and she followed McNeill’s example by moving into directing Voyager and
Enterprise episodes. The young and inexperienced Operations Officer Harry
Kim was played by Garrett Wang, while Ethan Phillips portrayed the ship’s cook
and morale officer Neelix, disguised under heavy alien make-up. Jennifer Lien
played the alien Kes during the first four seasons, while Robert Picardo filled the
Spock/Data role as the holographic ship’s doctor who would explore issues of
humanity. A later addition to the cast was Jeri Ryan, playing a freed Borg drone
dubbed Seven of Nine who joined the Voyager crew and became a key character,
also fulfilling some of the Spock/Data function in commenting on humanity.
The jumping-off point for the location of the series was ‘Q-Who?’, The Next
Generation episode that had been used to set up the arrival of the Borg.
Malevolent God-like being Q had caused the Enterprise to be propelled into
unknown space and face an encounter with the Borg in an attempt to warn
humanity of the dangers ‘out there’. When creating Voyager, Michael Piller
noted, ‘We remembered the episodes, many episodes, where Q would show up
and throw one of our ships or one of our people off to a strange part of the
universe. And we’d have to figure out why we were there, how we were going to
get back, and ultimately – by the end of an episode – we’d get back home. We
started to talk about what would happen if we didn’t get home. That appealed to
us a great deal . . . You have to understand that Rick, Jeri and I had no interest in
simply putting a bunch of people on another ship and sending them out to
explore the universe. We wanted to bring something new to the Roddenberry
universe. The fans would have been the first people to criticize us if we had not
brought something new to it. But everything new was a challenge in the early
stages of development of Voyager.’
One of the early promises of Voyager was that due to being located in an
unknown area of space, it would escape all the familiar trappings of Star Trek
beyond the ship and crew. There would be no Federation, no Starfleet, no
Klingons, Romulans or Borg. New alien species and menaces would need to be
created. Co-creator Jeri Taylor noted, ‘[It’s] a new universe. We have to come
up with new aliens, we have to come up with new situations. We knew we were
taking some risks. We decided, in a very calculated way, to cut our ties with
everything that was familiar. This is a dangerous thing to do. All that wonderful
array of villains that the audience has come to love and hate at the same time
will no longer be there.’
Although setting out with these radical intentions, the production team clearly
found them very challenging to achieve in practice. As the series progressed,
more familiar Star Trek elements gradually found their way into Voyager: the
crew itself included a (half-) Klingon and a Vulcan to start with, and Romulans
had appeared by the series’ sixth episode. By the series’ end seven years later,
the Cardassians and the Ferengi had appeared in the supposedly unknown and
unexplored Delta Quadrant, while the show itself had come to rely very heavily
on repeated reappearances by the Borg (and liberated Borg crewmember Seven
of Nine).
Another failing of the series was an unwillingness to seriously tackle
questions of resources. The ship is essentially lost at sea, with no way of
replenishing supplies or infrastructure, despite the presence of the seemingly
magical replicator device – even that must get its raw matter and energy from
somewhere. The episode ‘The Cloud’ paid lip service to this with the crew
issued ‘replicator rations’, but it was never central to the series. The holodeck
seemed to be in almost constant use, with no indication of where it was powered
from and whether this was a good use of resources, given the wider situation.
Across the series, there should have been a gradually worsening situation
shipboard for the crew of Voyager, with the search for resources being part of
the drive of the series (something both the revamped Battlestar Galactica –
under Star Trek’s Ron Moore – and Stargate Universe would tackle head-on).
Voyager addressed the concept in the radical season four two-part episode ‘Year
of Hell’ (originally planned as a season-long story arc, but nixed by Paramount).
By focusing on selected days across a period of a full year, the story explored the
impact on Voyager of a conflict with a Krenim military scientist who uses time
as a weapon. Although the use of the traditional reset button at the end restores
everything to normal, the year in which Voyager and the crew struggle to survive
provides an example of how the series might have tackled the question of
dwindling resources in a more realistic and dramatic manner.
Captain Janeway insisted from the moment the ship was lost in space that the
crew would adhere to Starfleet rules and discipline, despite their circumstances.
In the series finale, a time-travelling older Janeway would criticise her younger
self for making this choice, but it was the only one the show could make if it was
to remain recognisably Star Trek. A glimpse of what Voyager could have been if
it had taken a harder-edge look at the ‘reality’ of the ship’s situation was seen in
the two-part ‘Equinox’. The fifth season finale saw Voyager encounter another
lost Federation ship, the USS Equinox, captained by Rudolph Ransom (John
Savage). Half the crew of the Equinox are dead and the ship is seriously
damaged. Discipline and Starfleet protocol has broken down, with the remaining
crew simply focused on their own survival. As a result they have set aside the
ethical questions around using a nucleogenic life form as fuel for the ship in their
efforts to return home. Resolving the story in the sixth season opener, ‘Equinox
Part II’, Ransom and Janeway must cooperate to save the ships’ respective crews
from the wrath of the aliens. In the process, Ransom is sacrificed and his ship
destroyed, but many of his remaining crew are saved by transferring to Voyager.
With another push of the reset button, the surviving (presumably traumatised)
Equinox crew are assimilated into the Voyager crew, closing down another
potential line of rewarding storylines.
Failing to learn from Deep Space Nine, Babylon 5 or the on -going narratives
of The X-Files, Voyager regularly employed this plot reset button. Usually by the
end of each episode the status quo would be re-established, no matter what had
happened. Characters rarely evolved and changed from the opening episode
onwards, with the significant exceptions of Seven of Nine and the holographic
Doctor, whose whole purpose was to grow and change, to become more human.
Very few consequences flowed through the stories from episode to episode.
Voyager was a return to the 1960s storytelling of the original Star Trek, where
each episode was more or less self-contained and although the surrounding
universe grew through the accumulation of stories (just as it had done in the
1960s), the serialised storytelling and significant character development of Deep
Space Nine was deliberately avoided, much to the show’s detriment.
Another problem with Voyager was the way it locked itself into telling clichéd
Star Trek stories – sometimes the same ones over and over again. As the fourth
iteration of a franchise stretching from the 1960s to the 1990s, Voyager suffered
by sticking too closely to the traditional Star Trek formula that Deep Space Nine
had done so much to shatter. The show didn’t boast the sense of wonder that had
powered Star Trek and The Next Generation. Despite Janeway being a scientist–
captain, there seemed a distinct lack of curiosity about the unexplored space
through which their ship was travelling. The overriding desire of most of the
crew was simply to return home to Earth as soon as possible.
Some of the actors involved – specifically Kate Mulgrew and Robert Beltran,
the more senior members of the cast – later complained about the inconsistent
writing of their characters, while writer–producer Michael Piller had departed
the series by the end of the second year, disappointed that the show was not
living up to its potential. Jeri Taylor followed at the end of the fifth year, leaving
Brannon Braga – a writer obsessed with time warps, spatial anomalies and
gimmicky ‘sci-fi’ plots – as the driving force for the series’ final two years.
Part of the series’ difficulties may have come about due to the forced nature of
its initial creation. Voyager did not grow organically, it was created in response
to a request (or a demand) from Paramount to producer Rick Berman for another
Star Trek show – any Star Trek show. For the studio, it was about creating
product to fill airtime and sell advertising (with the addition of guaranteed
significant home video revenues by the mid-1990s). The creative team were
working within that restriction, rather than coming up with something that had
been driven by their need to express themselves and tell new Star Trek stories.
More than any other series, Voyager was just another manufactured instalment in
what was now clearly an ongoing franchise, and was recognisably the product of
a long-running – perhaps even tired and worn-out – concept.
One particular second season episode of Voyager was notorious both among
fans and the production team for being, in the words of teleplay writer Brannon
Braga, ‘a royal, steaming stinker’. In ‘Threshold’, Tom Paris investigates
whether it is possible to break the warp ten starship speed limit in an attempt to
get back home to Earth quicker. As a result, he and Janeway are mutated into
lizard-like life forms that then breed.
The idea for the episode came from a good intention: what if one of
Roddenberry’s long-ago imposed limits was changed, even if just for one
episode? Jeri Taylor noted: ‘Gene made the determination at the beginning of
The Next Generation that warp ten would be the limit, and at that point you
would occupy all portions of the universe simultaneously – which always
seemed like a wonderfully provocative notion. Then the question is “What
happens if you do go [to] Warp Ten, how does that affect you?” We came up
with this idea of evolution and thought that it would be far more interesting and
less expected that instead of it being the large-brained, glowing person, it would
be full circle, back to our origins in the water. [We’re] not saying that we have
become less than we are, because those creatures may experience consciousness
on such an advanced plane that we couldn’t conceive of it. It just seemed more
interesting.’
The explanation of those bizarre final images in the episode was apparently
lost in the rewriting process, according to Braga. The result was a confused and
confusing script that baffled series star Robert Duncan McNeill. ‘When you try
to tell the story – [Paris] breaks Warp Ten, starts shedding skin, kidnaps the
captain and then he becomes one with the universe, [he and Janeway] are
salamanders, and have a baby – it sounds ridiculous.’
Brannon Braga said of his much-derided work on ‘Threshold’: ‘It’s very much
a classic Star Trek story, but in the rewrite process I took out the explanation, the
idea behind the ending, that we evolve into these little lizards because maybe
evolution is not always progressive. Maybe it’s a cycle where we revert to
something more rudimentary. That whole conversation was taken out for various
reasons. That was a disaster because without it the episode doesn’t even have a
point . . . none of [the evolutionary theorising] came across. All we were left
with were some lizard things crawling around in the mud. It was not my shining
moment.’
‘Threshold’ was symptomatic of many of the problems with Voyager’s
storytelling in attempting both to recapture the 1960s glory of the original Star
Trek and, in some ways, continue Deep Space Nine’s self-declared mission of
breaking Roddenberry’s taboos. The result was that the show was neither
innovative nor progressive (in terms of Star Trek), nor was it simply a nostalgic
replay of the adventures of Captain Kirk (something that would be attempted,
with some success, in franchise prequel series Star Trek: Enterprise).
Voyager did get some things almost right, though. Its third year on air
coincided with Star Trek’s thirtieth anniversary, allowing both that show and
Deep Space Nine to celebrate with special episodes. Deep Space Nine produced
the innovative ‘Trials and Tribble-ations’, an imaginative sequel to the original
Star Trek fan favourite ‘The Trouble With Tribbles’. Incorporating much
footage from that 1960s episode featuring the original Star Trek cast, the episode
cleverly worked several of the Deep Space Nine characters into the background
of the ori ginal adventure as they pursued an independent adventure of their own.
Television technology had progressed far enough that through a combination of
video effects, clever shooting and the use of doubles and specially built sets, the
integration of the Deep Space Nine crew with that of the original Enterprise is
almost seamless.
One major member of the original cast was missing from ‘The Trouble With
Tribbles’, so could not be featured in Deep Space Nine’s ‘Trials and Tribble-
ations’. George Takei was off shooting a role in the movie The Green Berets
alongside John Wayne when the episode went before the cameras at Desilu
Studios in the 1960s. Little could Takei have known the kind of afterlife that
particular episode would enjoy with fans and casual viewers alike. As part of
Voyager’s contribution to Star Trek’s thirtieth anniversary, it was decided to
make up for this by building an entire episode around the further adventures of
Takei’s Sulu, thus also answering a growing clamour among some Star Trek
fans to see Sulu with his own command.
The resulting third season episode was cheekily entitled ‘Flashback’, and took
the shape of a flashback story experienced by Vulcan Tuvok of his time serving
aboard the USS Excelsior alongside Captain Sulu. The episode also tied in
closely with the events of the last original cast movie Star Trek VI: The
Undiscovered Country. Rather than use another time travel plot to have the
Voyager characters involved with original series characters as Deep Space Nine
was doing, the writers drew upon an already existing idea for a story that would
explore problems with Tuvok’s failing memory. Brannon Braga recalled the
team wanted to ‘to do a time travel story without doing time travel, by doing a
[mind-] meld. Tuvok’s old enough that we can go way back, to Sulu’s ship and
events that happened in Star Trek VI. That was what we combined.’
Having lobbied for a return to the series in some form, and helped foment the
fan calls for the same, Takei was only too happy to play Sulu once more. ‘I
thought it was a very imaginative idea to bring a connection between Sulu and
Tuvok. It turns out that he was on the bridge of the Excelsior when the Praxis
incident [in Star Trek VI] happened, and so there we had a story, making Captain
Sulu, Tuvok and Janeway all organic parts of the same episode.’
After all the high hopes that Voyager would be a return to the exploration of
the unknown, the writers and producers had quickly fallen back on the use of
races, characters and situations developed in previous incarnations of Star Trek.
Chief among them was the Borg, lifted from The Next Generation and taken to
the next level of development in multiple Voyager episodes.
By the middle of season three, the decision had been taken to bring the Borg
into Voyager. The aim was to create an event episode for the February 1997
‘sweeps’ period, when ratings would determine the value of ad slots for the
series, and capitalise on the anticipated success of First Contact in cinemas.
Staff writer Kenneth Biller began working on an episode – eventually entitled
‘Unity’ – in May 1996, with the aim of bringing the Borg back to Star Trek. He
also felt it was an opportunity to expand upon what had been done with the Borg
in The Next Generation and the then-upcoming movie First Contact. ‘When you
think about the Borg’, he told The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine,
‘they’re interesting and cool, but they’re just relentless and keep coming at you.
How do you get under their skin? That was the question I had to ask.’
Realising that the Borg were a hive-mind community, Biller wondered if a
group of Borg could be freed from the collective together, and if so, what would
become of them once their individuality returned? He also saw resonances with
fairly recent contemporary events on the world stage, namely the disintegration
of the Soviet Union into smaller individual sovereign states at the end of the
1980s. By the mid-1990s there was an odd nostalgia for the old, unified
Communist super-state among those who’d gained independence, so Biller
wondered if the same would apply to a group of ex-Borg: would they miss the
collective experience of being a Borg, despite gaining their individual freedom?
The result was his script for ‘Unity’ that saw Chakotay trapped on a planet
after answering a distress call. Tended to by a benevolent community, he
discovers they are de-assimilated Borg drones, survivors of the Battle of Wolf
359 (as featured in The Next Generation’s ‘The Best of Both Worlds’ and the
Deep Space Nine pilot ‘Emissary’). An electro-kinetic storm had broken their
link with the Borg hive-mind, leaving them to cooperate and survive on their
own. Helping to heal Chakotay (who is separated from his own ‘collective’ on
Voyager) with a neural link, he experiences their memories. In an attempt to re-
establish their collective nature, the survivors reactivate the crashed Borg ship
and awaken its still-Borg inhabitants. With the help of Voyager, the ship is
destroyed but the planet’s ex-Borg survivors are able to retain their newly
restored collective nature without being part of the wider Borg collective.
‘Unity’ raised a series of thoughtful issues, and paved the way for the Borg to
become a major part of Voyager through to the end of the series, nicely set up by
the discovery of a Borg corpse by the Voyager crew in the immediately
preceding episode, ‘Blood Fever’. A line in ‘Unity’ speculates whether this
group of Borg were defeated by an even more powerful enemy, which would
lead to the reveal of Species 8472, an inter-dimensional ‘fluidic’ race, in the
third season finale, ‘Scorpion’. This episode grew out of a discarded idea from
‘Unity’, with Brannon Braga keen on the concept of a ‘Borg graveyard’ with the
Borg eventually re-animating and posing an ongoing threat to Voyager, while
building on both ‘Unity’ and the movie First Contact (as well as providing an
economical opportunity to reuse costumes and set pieces from the movie).
In ‘Scorpion’ parts I and II, episodes that spanned the end of Voyager’s third
year on air and the start of the fourth, the crew of Voyager travel through ‘Borg
space’ in their continuing attempt to return to Earth. Encountering fifteen Borg
cubes, only the intervention of an unknown alien race saves the ship. Realising
the cubes were fleeing this deadly new race, Voyager explores the wreckage of
the Borg battleships in order to learn more about such a formidable opponent.
Discovering the Borg refer to the aliens as Species 8472, Captain Janeway is
forced into an uncomfortable alliance with the Borg to save Voyager. This
proved to be one of the series’ most popular end of season cliffhangers with
fans. The second episode introduced the Borg fully designated as Seven of Nine,
Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 01 (Jeri Ryan), the envoy between the humans
and the Borg. Based on the human ship, Seven helps the crew confront Species
8472 by introducing Borg technology to the vessel. Afterwards, Seven attempts
to assimilate Voyager, but is defeated thanks to forward planning by Janeway:
having escaped the Borg, the ship now has a disconnected Borg drone as a
member of the crew.
Future episodes would give Seven of Nine a poignant back-story (assimilated
at the age of six, she’d grown up Borg), and explored her Spock or Data-like
attempts to blend in with the human crew in sometimes serious, sometimes
humorous ways. With the majority of her cybernetic implants removed, Seven
still retained the appearance and manner of a Borg, a most unsettling
development for those on Voyager’s crew who had to work alongside her (an
issue not widely explored by the series). However, she would prove to be an
undoubted asset in the crew’s future battles with both the Borg and Species 8472
and in their eventual return home to Earth. Jeri Ryan also proved to be an asset
to the show: producers emphasised her sexiness by putting her in a series of
skin-tight uniforms. Ryan undoubtedly brought a degree of sex appeal to Star
Trek that had largely been missing since the short skirts of The Original Series.
Of course, some critics and fans saw this as nothing more than a blatant attempt
to boost the ratings of a flagging show . . .
Voyager drew further on the success of First Contact by reintroducing the
character of the Borg Queen. The Borg continued to be a nuisance for the crew
of Voyager through a variety of episodes, appearing as hallucinations or
holograms in a handful (‘The Raven’, ‘Living Witness’, ‘One’) before making
proper appearances in fourth season finale ‘Hope and Fear’, fifth season
episodes ‘Drone’ (exploring the life cycle of a Borg drone) and ‘Infinite
Regress’ (exploring multiple personality disorder through Seven of Nine). A
two-part tale, ‘Dark Frontier’, in the middle of season five saw actress Susanna
Thompson take over from First Contact’s Alice Krige as the Borg Queen. While
filling in the back-story for Seven, the episodes revolve around a daring heist by
the Voyager crew to steal Borg technology that might allow them to speed up
their return to Earth. Captured by the Borg, the Queen attempts to convince
Seven that she was deliberately infiltrated into Voyager’s crew by the Borg, and
now they intend to study her in order to devise a successful way of assimilating
humanity. Janeway is able to rescue Seven, but only after the former drone
suggests a way of disrupting the Queen’s control. A very popular feature-length
tale, ‘Dark Frontier’ helped give the final seasons of Voyager a new dramatic
energy as the Borg Queen became something of a regular nemesis for the
Voyager crew, creating an almost maternal struggle between her and Janeway
for control of their wayward child, Seven.
More Borg-centric episodes followed, each exploring different aspects of the
collective. ‘Survival Instinct’ saw Seven of Nine encounter a trio of Borg
connected with her past, while ‘Collective’ explored the lives of a group of
isolated Borg children. The two-part ‘Unimatrix Zero’, from the end of the
show’s sixth season and the beginning of the final year, returned the Borg Queen
to centre stage, and introduced a utopian, rebel faction of Borg who share a
realm of the unconscious called ‘unimatrix zero’. Janeway and the Queen once
more clash over Seven of Nine, leading to the seeds of civil war being sown in
the previously united Borg collective.
All of this eventually culminated in the final double episode of Voyager,
‘Endgame’, broadcast in 2001. That the series finale should feature the Borg and
their Queen can have come as little surprise to fans, given the prevalence of
Borg stories throughout the second half of Voyager’s existence. Whereas The
Next Generation, which spawned the Borg, featured only six Borg episodes,
Deep Space Nine just one and the subsequent Enterprise also only one, Voyager
clocked up a whopping twenty-two Borg-centric instalments. For a series that
had declared its intention to set out to explore new frontiers and introduce new
ideas into Star Trek, Voyager had come to rely pretty heavily on some very old
concepts and characters for its storytelling.
For the finale, Alice Krige returned from First Contact to take over the role of
the Borg Queen from Susanna Thompson. Although she didn’t want to watch
Thompson’s take on the role, Krige did read the scripts of previous Borg Queen
episodes in order to get up to speed on story developments. ‘I read all of the
Voyager episodes that the Borg Queen was in’, she told startrek. com, ‘but I
didn’t watch them. I didn’t want something in my head, in my imagination. I
needed my performance to happen in the moment, and I didn’t even watch First
Contact again.’
‘Endgame’ had an unusual structure, beginning in a future in which Voyager
has already successfully made its way home to Earth. It’s now 2404 – the tenth
anniversary of the ship’s return from its twenty-three-year journey back to the
Alpha Quadrant. The older Admiral Janeway uses adapted Klingon technology
to travel back in time to a period when Voyager was still lost in space, hoping to
help her younger self use stolen Borg technology to speed up Voyager’s return
home. She’s trying to change the past because in her original return, Seven of
Nine, Chakotay and twenty-two other crewmembers were killed while Tuvok
suffered an irreversible neurological condition. The younger Captain Janeway
prefers to use the technology from the future her older self has provided to
destroy a major Borg transwarp hub (a kind of Borg transit station that will allow
them to spread across the galaxy). In an attempt to achieve both aims – destroy
the Borg and get the ship back home – Admiral Janeway allows herself to be
assimilated by the Borg Queen, only to infect the Borg with a neurolytic
pathogen she has been carrying in her bloodstream (an echo of the climax of the
Founders story arc on Deep Space Nine). At the same time, Captain Janeway
uses the Borg’s transwarp corridor to blast the ship back to Earth, destroying the
last Borg sphere in the process.
Alongside that main story, several other characters have varying degrees of
closure with the birth of a daughter for Paris and Torres, and a late-blossoming
romance for Seven of Nine and Chakotay, while Tuvok continues to suffer from
a degenerative brain disease. In the aborted future shown at the beginning of the
episode, Harry Kim is in command of his own starship, the USS Rhode Island,
while the holographic Doctor has finally chosen a name for himself: Joe. In an
echo of The Next Generation, the series ends with the same line delivered by the
same character that closed the pilot episode, ‘Caretaker’. Captain Janeway says:
‘Set a course . . . for home.’
Actor Robert Beltran was an outspoken critic of the way Voyager ended, and
was clear where – in his view – the responsibility for the relative creative failure
of the show lay. ‘Frankly, I don’t think [the writers] really cared what happened
at the end. Voyager has been the ugly stepchild of the Star Trek family, and
that’s the way we’ve been treated. From mid-season onwards I kept waiting for
them to start making a move towards wrapping up some of these story arcs, but
they didn’t. [This] was meant to be about nine people on the ship, trying to get
through some really extraordinary circumstances. Frankly, I’m not sure what it
ended up being about. [They] had a whole year to prepare, but they waited until
the final two episodes to fix things. To me, that’s just a symptom of their
uncaring cavalier attitude towards the show.’
Although it has its followers and fans – as do all the individual incarnations of
Star Trek, even the once-derided The Animated Series – Voyager is largely
regarded as a creative failure. Ratings-wise, the show did all right and managed
to support an entire network for seven years.
So what went wrong? Voyager quickly abandoned so much that had been set
up in ‘Caretaker’. The rebel Maquis faction was quickly assimilated into the
crew, while the vast, unexplored region of the Delta Quadrant managed to
feature many friends and foes from Star Trek’s collective past. Beltran was
probably right to complain about the poor development of his character. Despite
his rebel origins and ethnic difference, Chakotay became – in the long run –
simply another Starfleet officer. In Gene Roddenberry’s utopian take on the
future, that was probably the right outcome, but it doesn’t make for great drama
when a potentially long-running series almost immediately neuters one of its
more rebellious characters. A similar fate befell Tom Paris and even half-
Klingon B’Elanna Torres. Unfortunately, Voyager’s characters were more
inconsistent than those of previous Star Trek shows, prone to suddenly
developing specialist interests just when the theme of a particular episode
needed it, never to mention them again. Harry Kim was a bland character with
little to do, who became increasingly annoying and irrelevant as the series
progressed (like South Park’s Kenny, he was repeatedly killed off, but kept
coming back).
 None of this character underdevelopment was helped by the arrival of Seven
of Nine, who came to dominate the later seasons of the show at the expense of
some of the regulars who’d been around much longer. The arrival of the Borg,
following the smash success of First Contact on the big screen, can have been
no surprise, but the fact that they and Seven of Nine came to dominate the
show’s final three years and were instrumental in the series finale can have been
part of no one’s original plan for the show.
When episodes were not Borg-focused, they often replayed various concepts
from other Star Trek series. Many Voyager characters seemed concerned with
extending their lives or in seeking a form of immortality, such as recurring
villains the Vidiians. Suffering from the genetically disruptive ‘phage’, the
Vidiians were like biological Borg, stealing organs from other species to ensure
their own survival and prolong their lives. Of course, the Borg themselves were
a species who had artificially extended the lives of their individual members in
the service of the overall collective.
Ron Moore quit the show after the fifth season, and was clear on why it had
failed: ‘It’s not about anything. It is a very content-free show, not really
speaking to the audience. It’s very superficial, there’s not really very much
underneath the surface. The show doesn’t have a point of view, it doesn’t have
anything to say really. It simply is just wandering around the galaxy and doesn’t
even really believe in its own premise, which is to me its greatest flaw.’
Rick Berman admitted that Voyager may have suffered due to a glut of Star
Trek ‘product’ in the mid-1990s. He told startrek. com in an in-depth interview
covering his eighteen years at the helm of Star Trek: ‘[Voyager] allowed us to do
some new stuff, which was important. We were all aware that these things could
get stale. We didn’t want to do The Next Generation again. We were also writing
and producing Generations and then, two years later, First Contact. So we were
doing movies with The Next Generation crew, we had Deep Space Nine in its
last three or four years, and all of a sudden we were asked to do another show,
which was Voyager. It was a very, very busy time and it was imperative for
everybody to try to keep things from getting stale and repetitive, but it got more
and more difficult.’
Was there simply too much Star Trek in the 1990s? Certainly, Voyager was
the first time that the fans and the storytellers involved in the various shows
began to think that the Star Trek franchise had played out. After all, there’d been
four TV series, from the 1960s to the 1990s, as well as eight successful big
screen movies. The ideas and creative juices among the long-serving Star Trek
storytellers were running dry. Yet, as Voyager drew to a close, Paramount was
insisting that there be yet another return to the Star Trek well. There would be a
new Star Trek show for the twenty-first century, and this time it really would go
where no Star Trek show had gone before – back in time to the years before even
Kirk and Spock. Enterprise would depict mankind’s faltering first steps on his
epic star trek . . .
Chapter 11
Yesterday’s Enterprise: Enterprise
‘I think my eighteen years of Star Trek had some great highs and some
definite lows. It was not a big concern of mine, if we screwed up, if things
fell between the cracks [on Enterprise]. It was unfortunate, but we did our
best. I can’t imagine that there won’t be a new series on television.’ Rick
Berman

The fifth and to date final live-action Star Trek TV series was the first to dump
the Star Trek name, initially at least. Enterprise would rely on the viewers’
recognition of the classic starship’s name. Rick Berman, co-creator of
Enterprise, noted: ‘We’ve had so many Star Trek entities that were called “Star
Trek-colon-something”. Our feeling was, in trying to make this show
dramatically different, that it might be fun not to have a divided main title. If
there’s one word that says Star Trek without actually saying Star Trek, it’s
Enterprise.’
The title sequence and theme tune were also radical departures from Star Trek
tradition. Rather than the usual trip through space, Enterprise opened with a
montage of historical flights, craft and aviation pioneers, leading up to the iconic
first spacecraft to bear the title. A Star Trek theme tune featured vocals for the
first time, from opera singer Russell Watson. The chosen song, ‘Faith of the
Heart’ by Diane Warren, had been used previously (in a performance by Rod
Stewart) in the Robin Williams movie Patch Adams.
This radical iconoclasm was deliberate on the part of Star Trek’s long-serving
producers, who were keen to differentiate Enterprise from all the Star Trek
shows and movies that had come before – especially Voyager, a show widely
regarded as a failure. This Star Trek would ‘belong’ to Berman and Brannon
Braga, completely free of any of Gene Roddenberry’s forty-year-old trappings.
Even though the pair had the opportunity of putting their unimpeded stamp on a
new Star Trek show, Berman was not initially enthused by the idea. ‘You could
take too many trips to the well, you could squeeze too many eggs out of the
golden goose, but [it was] made very clear to me that if I did not do this they
would ask someone else to.’
From the beginning, the new show failed to connect with the majority of fans
and more casual viewers alike, rapidly losing almost half of the first episode’s
12.5 million audience. ‘Enterprise was embraced, but by a smaller audience’,
admitted Berman, talking to startrek.com. ‘Whoever came up with the term
“franchise fatigue” was right, there was definitely some of that. There was just
too much going on at the same time. By then, Deep Space Nine had ended,
Voyager was still on the air, a third The Next Generation movie was coming out,
and there was definitely a feeling that maybe we were pushing it. It was the
fourth Star Trek series in a decade. The prequel idea was good – going back and
learning something about what went on for the very first people who were
stepping out into space . . . it seemed to us to be a great idea.’
When the time came to create a fifth live-action Star Trek series, all those
involved were certainly aware that it would not be possible simply to dish up
more of the same formula that had gone out under the Star Trek banner for
twenty years. Since the debut of The Next Generation, Star Trek had grown ever
more dense. This complexity of the fictional universe was a key attraction for
many of the series’ die-hard fans, who were deeply involved with it, but it was
equally off-putting for the large, more casual viewing audience who felt it might
now be difficult to understand Star Trek after twenty years of previously
accumulated storytelling. Each subsequent series following The Next Generation
had played to diminishing returns, with ratings falling and cultural impact
lessened. It was never likely that either Deep Space Nine or Voyager would
follow the first two Star Trek series to the big screen. Many people knew the
characters of Star Trek and The Next Generation – often through the clichéd
perception of their catchphrases – but few had the same knowledge of, or
affection for, Sisko or Janeway and their respective crews and antagonists.
Arguably, it was only the frequent appearances of the Borg on Voyager that had
kept the show afloat for its final three years, rather than any intrinsic liking for
the characters among viewers.
It was clear that any new Star Trek show would have to be radically different,
yet would have to still retain those core elements that made it the Star Trek of
popular perception. Neither a series featuring the adventures of Captain Sulu or
the repeatedly suggested Starfleet Academy idea were deemed to have the
potential popular impact required. To avoid entanglements with the rich, deep
and detailed twenty-fourth century back-story, Berman and Braga decided to go
back to basics, to recreate what had made the original 1960s Star Trek such a
long-lasting cultural phenomenon. They would go one step further than simply
having a starship crew in space, as Voyager had done. Their idea was to build a
similar mix of characters as seen on the original Enterprise, but move the time
scale further back, pre-Kirk and nearer to contemporary Earth. A show set in the
near future – about 150 years from now – would be more accessible to a wider
audience than the technobabble-driven tales of the twenty-fourth century. It
could show the events that led to Kirk and crew embarking on their five-year
mission. What came before: how did humanity progress from the strife-riven
twenty-first century to the creation of Starfleet and membership of the United
Federation of Planets?
Using a scene from the conclusion of the movie First Contact as their
jumping-off point, Berman and Braga set out to explore what happened after the
Vulcans made contact with humanity. This key event would launch mankind on
a larger voyage, one that would take the crews of the first starships out into the
depths of space where Kirk, Picard, Sisko and Janeway would eventually follow.
Radical and different were the key words for Enterprise. Berman considered
setting the entire first season of a hoped-for seven-year run on Earth. The drama
would take place in and around the first space dockyard where humanity’s first
ever warp-capable starship was being constructed. The main characters would
include those involved in the creation and construction of the ship, as well as
those in training to become the crew of the first ever ship named Enterprise.
Eventually it was felt this approach was too far removed from what might be
expected from a show within the Star Trek universe, so the series would start
with the ship already operational, crewed and beginning to explore the universe,
following Vulcan contact.
Perhaps the makers of Enterprise were too slavish in their attempt to recreate
what had worked on the original 1960s Star Trek, especially when it came to the
central characters. Captain Archer was certainly no Kirk, but he filled the
leadership and man-of-action role in a way that no other Star Trek captain had
since the 1960s. Casting Quantum Leap’s Scott Bakula in the role, following in
the footsteps of Shatner, Stewart, Brooks and Mulgrew, seemed to owe as much
to studio politics as to artistic choices. ‘Bakula had a good relationship with
Kerry McCluggage, who was running the studio at that point’, admitted Berman,
‘and he was the first big name that seemed to be interested. He was an actor who
I’d enjoyed [and] we thought [we were] putting together something that was
fresh and unique and with some wonderful new actors.’
Archer would find himself surrounded by avatars of the key characters of the
1960s Enterprise. There’s the logical, unknowable, inscrutable Vulcan – but this
time she’s female, in the shapely form of T’Pol (Jolene Blalock). There’s a
crusty, ornery Southern character who can advise the captain, but instead of
being the doctor like McCoy, he’s Trip Tucker (Connor Trinneer), the ship’s
engineer. Linda Park as Hoshi Sato faced a task almost as thankless as that
handed to Nichelle Nichols’ Uhura, as the ethnic communications officer. The
ship’s doctor has been dramatically different on each version of Star Trek:
Southern, female, genetically engineered, sentient hologram and now alien.
Doctor Phlox (John Billingsley) would largely provide the series’ comic relief as
the Denebulan doctor unafraid of flaunting his alien ways. The callow youths –
the equivalents of Chekov or Wesley – were Malcolm Reed (Dominic Keating)
and Travis Mayweather (Anthony Montgomery). Perhaps the most interesting
and dramatically different addition to the Enterprise cast – and something no
other Star Trek had yet featured – was the captain’s pet dog, Porthos.
Like the original Star Trek (and it is unclear whether this was a deliberate
echo or not) Enterprise focused on its trio of central characters – Archer, T’Pol
and Trip – at the expense of most of the others. Everyone had their storylines
and occasional episodes would focus on them, but for the most part the central
trio would dominate events, just as they had back in the 1960s.

Enterprise effectively dropped the complicated and convoluted Star Trek back-
story by locating itself in the fertile ground before any of the previous Star Trek
series had even happened. In doing so it set up an entirely different problem:
how to make sure the stories told worked within the established future continuity
of the 1960s Star Trek and beyond. It was an issue that would receive varying
degrees of attention from the show’s writers and pro -ducers, but sometimes-
fanatical attention from many of the franchise’s die-hard fans. Many initially
regarded the latest series as a betrayal of all the Star Trek material that had come
before it.
Well-established aspects of Star Trek were largely missing altogether from
Enterprise, such as matter transporters (in their infancy and only used for
inanimate cargo) and the holodeck, while others were actively explored by the
series. The origins of starship force shields – intrinsic to Star Trek from its 1960s
debut – were explored through the work of Malcolm Reed, while Captain
Archer’s ethical considerations about interfering with new species would lay the
groundwork for the idea of the Prime Directive that would so tax Kirk and
Picard.
As well as exploring old Star Trek ideas, Enterprise was wise enough to throw
some brand new elements into the mix. One of the most significant was the
‘temporal cold war’ concept, in which a mysterious entity (only ever depicted in
shadow or silhouette) from the far future of the twenty-seventh century attempts
to manipulate the timeline to his advantage. The Suliban – a species new to Star
Trek – were the pawns of this temporal manipulator whose true identity (much
speculated over by fans) was never satisfactorily resolved on screen. Archer’s
dealings with the mysterious ‘future guy’ would be aided (or hindered) by
another time-travelling character, Agent Daniels (Matt Winston). Having
infiltrated Archer’s crew, he then reappeared several times across the series.
Daniels took Archer into the future to experience a galaxy without the United
Federation of Planets (in first season finale ‘Shockwave’), to visit a future
Enterprise-J (‘Azati Prime’), and on trips to the past (Earth in the year 2004 in
‘Carpenter Street’; World War II in ‘Storm Front’).
Widely explored during the first season – and one reason for the prominence
of T’Pol – was the relationship between humanity and the Vulcans. For almost
100 years since the ‘first contact’ incident depicted in the movie, the Vulcans
had been nurturing mankind to become a space-faring race. While this involved
offering assistance, it also meant withholding much useful knowledge, creating
tension in the relationship. With the first steps into the wider universe taken by
the Enterprise, the Vulcans never seem to be far away, seemingly keeping watch
on Archer’s initial explorations. This aspect created a more interesting conflict
between T’Pol and the other Enterprise crewmembers than that depicted
between the alien Spock and his crewmates, which was more often played for
incongruous laughs. T’Pol was assigned to the ship explicitly to keep an eye on
what the humans get up to, as well as to aid Archer in his explorations.
Complicating the situation, T’Pol eventually seems to ‘go native’, leaving the
Vulcan High Command to properly accompany Archer in his battles with the
aggressive warmongering Xindi, joining Starfleet in the process.
Following an outcry from fans, and in an effort to perhaps label the series in a
clearer way, Enterprise’s producers decided to re-establish the Star Trek prefix
for the show’s third season. The series set out in a new direction, exploring a
single season-long story inspired by the events that struck America on 11
September 2001 (when the series was shooting its first few instalments). The
Enterprise equivalent of the attack on the Twin Towers in New York was an
attack on Earth by a mysterious alien assailant, when an unknown probe cuts a
deep swathe across the planet from Florida to Venezuela, killing over 7 million
people (with Trip’s sister a victim, giving at least one member of the Enterprise
crew a personal connection to events). The final episode of the second season,
‘The Expanse’, sees the Enterprise recalled to Earth and refitted as a warship.
The ship and its crew is now tasked with travelling through an unknown area
(shades of Voyager) known as the Delphic Expanse to discover the home world
of the Xindi, the malevolent alien race believed to be behind the unprovoked
attack. This unsubtle echo of real-world contemporary events – the attack on
9/11, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq – was a return to the kind of direct
political comment that had fuelled so many of the ori -ginal Star Trek episodes
of the 1960s and featured in many of Deep Space Nine’s best episodes, and it
gave Enterprise a new sense of purpose and a clear direction. It also served to
distinguish the show from the other Star Trek incarnations, something the
producers had been keen to do from the start.
The temporal cold war storyline was effectively woven into that involving the
Xindi – a distinctive alien species who did not just exhibit one distinguishing
feature as so many previous Star Trek aliens had. Instead, the Xindi came in a
variety of ‘flavours’, including aquatic, insectoid, reptilian, arboreal (tree-
dwelling) and even an extinct avian variety. The Xindi included a primate
branch that appeared more humanoid than the others. This imaginative approach
to an alien species was unusual, with many other alien races falling foul of what
fans had dubbed the ‘bumpy forehead’ syndrome in which the only
distinguishing feature between species was a make-up-based cosmetic change to
the forehead area.
The Xindi, it transpires, have been used by a race of time-travelling sphere-
builders to attack the Earth in the hopes of preventing the establishment of the
United Federation of Planets. Making Captain Archer’s activities key to the
future survival of the rest of the Star Trek universe (already depicted in the
various series and movies) gave Enterprise a little more weight than a simple
space exploration theme might have done. As the Xindi regard the sphere-
builders, whom they know as ‘the guardians’, as gods (akin to the wormhole
dwellers of Deep Space Nine), they are quick to act on their behalf. The season
built to an event-packed finale in ‘Zero Hour’ in which Archer and his crew
defeated the sphere-builders and destroyed the Xindi super weapon that had
loomed as a season-long threat. In an unexpected development, the Enterprise
returns to Earth only to discover the ship has somehow travelled in time to
World War II – a weird, out of left-field Star Trek cliffhanger.
During its third season, Enterprise had shown a willingness to explore some
strong science fiction ideas, such as the sphere-builders and the nature of the
alien Xindi, an approach more often found in literary science fiction than on
television. The fourth season saw this continue, but also saw the show delve
much more into Star Trek lore under the direction of new chief storyteller
Manny Coto. For the fourth year, Enterprise moved from its previous
Wednesday night slot to Friday – long regarded as a ‘death slot’ for many
television series, not least of which was the original Star Trek. Coto rapidly
resolved several long-running story arcs, moving attention away from the fan-
troubling (due to increasingly complicated continuity concerns) temporal cold
war arc and resolving the outstanding Xindi story elements by the third episode
of the fourth year.
These moves allowed Coto and his writers to introduce a new storytelling
focus connected strongly with the nature and style of the original 1960s Star
Trek. Characters, themes and concepts explored in Enterprise’s fourth year
would draw heavily on the original tales of Captain Kirk’s time period. One
main area explored was that of human (and alien) genetic engineering, resulting
in ‘improved’ people known as ‘Augments’. The cre -ation of people with
genetically resequenced DNA was used to explain both the Eugenics Wars and
the existence of Khan Noonien Singh from The Original Series episode ‘Space
Seed’ and the movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, as well as the changing
features of the Klingons between the 1960s TV show and 1979’s Star Trek: The
Motion Picture (covered in the Enterprise episodes ‘Affliction’ and
‘Divergence’). The forehead ridge-less Klingons seen in The Original Series
were explained away as victims of an Augment virus plague, an event that Worf
in Deep Space Nine’s ‘Trials and Tribble-ations’ describes as a long story
Klingons do not discuss with outsiders.
Three episodes (‘Borderland’, ‘Cold Station 12’ and ‘The Augments’)
featured The Next Generation’s Brent Spiner as an ancestor of Data’s creator,
who is laying the groundwork for sentient androids. This was a transparent
attempt to bring disenchanted fans of The Next Generation back to the show by
featuring actors and characters they were more familiar with.
Such ‘ret-conning’, or retro-active continuity – providing ex -planations or
origins of things already seen in the Star Trek universe – became something of a
fetish during Enterprise’s fourth year, much to the pleasure of many fans of the
franchise. The series also explored long-standing discrepancies in the ongoing
depiction of the Vulcans throughout Star Trek history, attempting to explain
variations by creating a splinter Vulcan society who follow the teachings of
Surak, a mythical guru who developed the race’s penchant for logic (as seen
through Spock). This allowed the Vulcans of Enterprise to be more emotional,
even war-like.
 The mirror universe of The Original Series and Deep Space Nine was
revisited – again, a fan-pleasing gambit. The two-part story ‘In a Mirror Darkly’
was a prequel to The Original Series’ ‘Mirror, Mirror’ episode and saw the show
sport a darker title sequence depicting the rise of the Terran Empire. The familiar
Enterprise characters were reshaped as the most barbaric members of the evil
Empire. Other episodes saw a return to the shuttle diplomacy practised by the
1960s Enterprise, featuring races such as the Tellarites and Andorians, drawing
on The Original Series second season episode ‘Journey to Babel’ (which had
also introduced Spock’s parents). Although these connections were pleasing to
Star Trek fans, it seems that was the only audience the show was reaching. This
trio of episodes (‘Babel One’, ‘United’ and ‘The Aenar’) received the lowest
Nielsen ratings for the show to date, leading network UPN to cancel Enterprise
in February 2005. It was the first Star Trek show to have been cancelled by the
network rather than wrapped up by its producers since the original series in
1969. The termination of Enterprise brought to an end eighteen years of
continuous Star Trek on television and effectively finished off the franchise for
the next four years.
Even so, Manny Coto still had to wrap up the show. The result was a final set
of episodes exploring terrorism (a thematic follow-up to the real-world driven
Xindi attack storyline of season three). RoboCop actor Peter Weller starred as
the leader of an anti-alien faction attempting to use an artificially created half-
alien baby (using DNA from T’Pol and Trip) to rouse alien-fearing humans
living in dread since the Xindi threat. This anti-immigration storyline was ripped
from the day’s headlines, but was also seen by the producers as a dramatic
narrative stepping-stone, taking humanity towards the utopian depiction that Star
Trek creator Gene Roddenberry had intended in his original conception. The
episodes were additionally packed with fan-pleasing references to other Star
Trek shows, but came far too late to do anything to save the series from the
ignominy of cancellation.
As the end of Enterprise was announced before the writing of the final
episode, and with the producers’ awareness that this was likely to be the last Star
Trek seen on television for a while, the decision was taken to broadcast an
unusual finale. Not only would ‘These Are the Voyages . . .’ be the final episode
of Enterprise, it would also function as a franchise finale for the whole eighteen
years of modern television Star Trek, from The Next Generation through Deep
Space Nine and Voyager to Enterprise. This decision was yet another taken by
Star Trek’s long-serving producers that would be extremely controversial with
fans of the venerable franchise.
The setting of the episode was not Enterprise’s time period of the twenty-
second century – instead, events featuring the NX-01 crew were part of a
holodeck recreation experienced on the EnterpriseD in 2370, observed by The
Next Generation’s Riker and Troi. The events were even tagged as having taken
place during a particular The Next Generation episode, season seven’s ‘The
Pegasus’.
Faced with a decision about whether to make a difficult admission concerning
a cover-up to Captain Picard, Riker (a returning Jonathan Frakes) visits a
simulation of the final mission of the original Enterprise, commanded by
Captain Jonathan Archer. He sees the creation of the Federation, within which
all following Star Trek captains will operate.
Although co-writers Berman and Braga intended the episode to be (in Braga’s
words) ‘a valentine’ to the fans, its intended recipients reacted badly, especially
to the surprise death of ship’s engineer Trip Tucker. Fans of Enterprise in
particular felt short-changed that their series’ final episode had been essentially
hijacked by The Next Generation to form a coda to the overall Star Trek
television franchise. That the episode did not feature the actual characters from
Enterprise but merely holographic re -creations on board the Enterprise from
The Next Generation also rankled with loyal fans of the series. Although, across
its four years on air, ratings for Enterprise had fallen from over 12 million to
around 3 million, many fans appreciated an increase in storytelling quality across
the last two seasons – mainly because the show became more Star Trek-like. For
his part, final-year writer– producer Manny Coto regarded the penultimate
episode, ‘Terra Prime’, as the end of the Enterprise story, as it wrapped up the
final narrative arc he’d been producing.
As previously with The Next Generation and Voyager, the final episode ended
with the same words that had opened the show’s debut four years previously –
‘To boldly go where no man has gone before’ – concluding a montage of
opening narration lines from Captains Picard, Kirk and Archer (working
backwards in time, narratively).
‘I would have never done it if I had known how people were going to react’,
admitted producer Rick Berman to startrek. com. ‘We were informed with not a
whole lot of time that this was our last season. We knew that this was going to
be the last episode of Star Trek for perhaps quite some time . . . It was a very
difficult choice, how to end it. The studio wanted it to be a one-hour episode. We
wanted it to be special, something that would be memorable. This idea, which
Brannon and I came up with – and I take full responsibility – pissed a lot of
people off, and we certainly didn’t mean to. Our thought was to take this crew
and see them through the eyes of a future generation, see them through the eyes
of the people who we first got involved [with] in Star Trek eighteen years
before: Picard, Riker and Data. [We wanted] to see the history of how Archer
and his crew went from where we had them to where, eventually, the Federation
was formed, in some kind of magical holographic history lesson.
‘It seemed like a great idea, [but] a lot of people were furious about it. The
actors, most of them, were very unhappy. In retrospect it was a bad idea. When it
was conceived it was with our heart completely in the right place. We wanted to
pay the greatest homage and honour to the characters of Enterprise that we pos -
sibly could, but because Jonathan (Frakes) and Marina (Sirtis) were the two
people we brought in, and they were the ones looking back, it was perceived as
“You’re ending our series with a The Next Generation episode.” I understand
how people felt that way. Too many people felt that way for them to be wrong.
Brannon and I felt terrible that we’d let a lot of people down. It backfired, but
our hearts were definitely in the right place. It just was not accepted in the way
we thought it would be.’
Equally, in later years Braga was just as candid about what had gone wrong
with the Enterprise finale: ‘I do have some regrets: it didn’t quite creatively
align with the rest of the season. It had some great stuff in it and it was a cool
concept, but I don’t know if it fully delivered and it really pissed off the cast.
Rick [Berman] and I were involved in the franchise for years, Rick for eighteen,
me for fifteen. We felt like we wanted to send a valentine to the show, but I do
concur it was not a complete success.’
T’Pol actress Jolene Blalock called ‘These Are the Voyages . . .’ ‘appalling’,
while Anthony Montgomery felt ‘there could have been a more effective way to
wrap things up for our show as well as the franchise as a whole. It seemed to
take a little bit away from what the Enterprise cast and crew worked so
diligently to achieve’. Even Jonathan Frakes recognised the folly of bringing in
his character from The Next Generation: ‘It was a bit of a stretch having us shut
down [their] show.’
Critical reaction to the episode was the most negative that a Star Trek finale
had ever received. Objections ranged from the inclusion of The Next Generation
characters getting in the way of the Enterprise characters’ farewell, to the
suggestion that The Next Generation cameos simply served as a painful reminder
of a time when Star Trek on television had simply been better than it was in the
twenty-first century. The Toronto Star claimed that the way Enterprise ended
robbed ‘the characters (and their fans) of a significant long-term development or
satisfying sense of closure’. Most critics laid the blame for the botched episode
at the feet of Berman and Braga, while acclaiming Coto’s popular take on the
Enterprise prequel idea.
The unexpected death of Trip Tucker was seen as a pointless stunt that had
been pulled with little impact. Again, the Toronto Star noted ‘a major character
is pointlessly killed off in service of a pointless plot device’. Even Tucker actor
Connor Trinneer said he felt that the death of his character was ‘forced’ and was
simply a device to manipulate the fan audience. In general, Enterprise was the
most poorly regarded of all the Star Trek TV series, even after Voyager. Melanie
McFarland, writing in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, noted that the series ‘never
found the sense of uniqueness within the Star Trek universe that every version
that came before it possessed’.
What Berman and Braga failed to recognise was that in re -creating the Star
Trek of the 1960s, they were sticking with storytelling techniques that were slow
and old-fashioned. Television – and science fiction shows in particular – had
developed and changed hugely over the years, drawing inspiration from
contemporary movies and science fiction literature of more recent decades. Star
Trek had almost stopped being television science fiction and had become a
period genre unto itself, with The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and
Voyager all being variations within that fixed, 1960s style of storytelling. For all
its attempts to do something ‘different’, because it was still essentially Gene
Roddenberry’s Star Trek, Enterprise was doomed almost from the outset to
contain all the positives and negatives of every other Star Trek TV series and
movies that had come before it. It couldn’t help itself, and it wasn’t possible for
it to be any other way. Those in charge, however, didn’t seem to realise they
were not making science fiction television, they were specifically making Star
Trek television, a sub-set all its own.
According to Brannon Braga, ‘If Enterprise had continued, we would have
kept going with Manny Coto’s unique vision of the show. Also, we would have
explored the temporal cold war to its conclusion. We all felt that there were
many more Trek stories to tell with that crew, and we were saddened by its
premature end. Manny and I speak often about this – the show had really caught
fire in seasons three and four.’
Among the ideas planned for the aborted fifth season of Enterprise were the
origins and birth of the Federation (partly covered in ‘These Are the Voyages . .
.’) and the first moves in the war with Romulus described in The Original Series
episode ‘Balance of Terror’, with the Romulans developing as the season’s
major villains. Braga even hinted that he and Berman had considered making the
mysterious ‘future guy’ of the temporal cold war a Romulan, to fit in with
Coto’s proposed story arc.
Following his work on year four, Coto planned to continue to strengthen the
connections between Enterprise and the other Star Trek shows. One planned
episode was a sequel to ‘The Slaver Weapon’, an instalment of The Animated
Series featuring the alien Kzinti race, created by renowned science fiction author
Larry Niven. The construction site of the first ever Starbase and the cloud city of
Stratos, previously seen in The Original Series episode ‘The Cloud Minders’,
were also under consideration as settings to be further explored. An origin story
for Voyager’s Borg Queen was also in the works, as was the revelation that
T’Pol’s father was a Romulan agent (perhaps tying in with the Romulan war
arc). Another mirror universe story was also in preparation, perhaps to focus on
Hoshi Sato in her alternate role as Empress of the Terran Empire. This may have
taken the shape of a four-or five-episode mini-series spread throughout the
season.
Coto even planned for an addition to the Enterprise crew in the form of
Andorian Commander Shran (Jeffrey Combs), a recurring character who’d
already appeared in ten episodes of Enterprise. The character might have joined
the crew, in the words of Coto, as ‘an auxiliary or adviser’.
The cancellation of the series meant that none of these ideas would come to
fruition, although in response to the fan outcry about the death of Trip Tucker,
tie-in novels were published by Pocket Books, beginning with Last Full Measure
and The Good That Men Do (both by Andy Mangels and Michael A. Martin),
which revealed the holographic depiction of his demise was a fabrication
covering up Tucker’s involvement with the shadowy Section 31 intelligence
agency. According to the novels, Tucker faked his own death in order to be sent
undercover to infiltrate Romulan space, aiming to prevent an interstellar war.
These novels, and further follow-ups, presented an opportunity for the authors to
expand upon the back-story and future of one of Enterprise’s most loved
characters. It was an unusual example of those who police the expansion of the
franchise in licensed spin-off material allowing an on-screen development to be
superseded by ancillary material, a development that played well with Trip
Tucker fans.
Almost immediately after the demise of Enterprise, Rick Berman attempted to
further prolong the Star Trek franchise by beginning development work on a
new film to take place after the events of Enterprise but before those of the
original Star Trek TV series. An executive reshuffle at Paramount put paid to
Berman’s efforts and he was finally removed from controlling the Star Trek
franchise after eighteen years in charge, the most influential person on its
development after creator Gene Roddenberry himself.
Berman was a television production professional, responsible for delivering
hundreds of hours of technically complicated television on time and to broadcast
standard over a period of eighteen years – no mean feat. He was not primarily a
creative storyteller himself, but he’d been surrounded by key figures who’d used
the Star Trek format in various ways to tell modern, meaningful stories. Key
among those whom Berman had supported in their project to reshape Gene
Roddenberry’s universe were Michael Piller, Ron Moore, Ira Steven Behr, Jeri
Taylor, Brannon Braga and Manny Coto.
The opening episode of Enterprise in 2001 had attracted 12.5 million viewers,
but the number of people watching regularly dropped to less than 6 million very
quickly. By the final season that number had halved again to under 3 million
viewers, with a series low of just 2.5 million in January 2005, resulting in
cancellation. Based on the number of viewers alone, the show must be
considered a failure, whatever narrative achievements may have been made. It
was a downward spiral Rick Berman could not deny. ‘The show certainly had a
great start. It got very good reviews and it had a huge audience for the first half
dozen episodes and then it started to slip’, he said. ‘I could take the blame for it.
I could put the blame into the scripts. I could put the blame into franchise
fatigue. I don’t know why it didn’t work.’ Brannon Braga suggested that the
reason for the cancellation was viewer fatigue, noting that ‘after 18 years and
624 hours of Star Trek, the audience began to have a little bit of overkill’.
It would take almost exactly four years from the transmission of the final
episode of Enterprise, but Star Trek would return – not on TV, but back on the
big screen once more – and it would become bigger and more successful than
ever before.
Chapter 12
Hollow Pursuits: Unmade Star Trek
‘I think there is a need for the culture to have a myth. People look to Star
Trek to set up a leader and a hearty band of followers. It’s Greek classical
storytelling.’ William Shatner

With the creation of so many stories for the ongoing Star Trek universe, it was
inevitable that many often fully developed ideas for scripts would fall by the
wayside. From the earliest days of the original Star Trek pilots through to the
abandoned plans for the fifth season of Enterprise and beyond, to series ideas
that were never progressed, storylines, characters and plots were developed that
would never see the light of day. Perhaps the largest body of abandoned work
came during the development of Star Trek: Phase II and The Motion Picture
(discussed in chapter 5), but there have been many more untold adventures of
Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, Archer (and several other captains) through the
years that now only exist as scripts filed away in Paramount’s archives.
There were enough abandoned episodes from the three years of the original
Star Trek series between 1966 and 1969 to have filled two additional seasons on
air. Almost sixty storylines and script ideas were developed, some not far
beyond just the basic idea stage, while others were fully written storylines,
meaning that writers and producers put some significant effort into trying to
shape and prepare the material for production.
Gene Roddenberry’s initial outline for Star Trek contained several episode
ideas that were little more than one-or two-line concepts, some of which were
developed into finished episodes (such as ‘President Capone’, which became ‘A
Piece of the Action’ in the second season, and ‘The Mirror’, sowing the seeds for
‘Mirror, Mirror’).
Many of the more developed ideas that have since come to light were from
David Gerrold, writer of ‘The Trouble With Tribbles’ and one of the co-
developers of The Next Generation. Although he only scripted the single episode
for the original Star Trek (and provided the story for ‘The Cloud Minders’), he
also supplied two scripts for the 1970s Animated Series and story-edited much of
the first season of The Next Generation.
Although ‘The Trouble With Tribbles’ (itself developed from an idea
originally called ‘The Fuzzies’) was his only Star Trek episode actually to be
produced, Gerrold had worked on a var -iety of other ideas. Among them was a
1967 idea entitled ‘Bandi’, which probably influenced his Tribbles concept. The
title character is a critter brought on board the Enterprise as a kind of mascot,
but which causes much disruption among the crew due to its empathetic nature,
leading to the death of a crewmember. Spock eliminates the creature and frees
the crew from its malign influence. Gerrold later adapted the story for a Star
Trek manga (Japanese comic).
Gerrold was also behind the never-produced episode ‘The Protracted Man’.
During an experiment to establish a faster than ever ‘warp corridor’, the pilot of
a shuttlecraft is beamed to the Enterprise just in the nick of time. However, the
man is ‘protracted’ – split in time. The concept was to be depicted by having
three images of the man moving seconds apart, and displayed in the primary
colours, blue, red and yellow. The affected man maintains himself by drawing
energy from the Enterprise itself, thus becoming a threat to the ship. As the ship
travels at warp speed, the man’s triple images become further adrift in time from
each other. Eventually, the protracted man has to be reintegrated using the ship’s
transporter. Gerrold claimed he had been influenced by a similar graphic
sequence of images in Robert Wise’s movie West Side Story (1961).
This was certainly a strong, original science fiction idea, but one that would
have been complicated to realise on screen with 1960s television technology
(although not impossible, just time-consuming and expensive). It would perhaps
have been more suited to The Next Generation era, when scientific puzzles and
easier to achieve special effects were more in vogue.
One of Gerrold’s earliest outlines was a sixty-page storyline called
‘Tomorrow Was Yesterday’ (unrelated to the episode ‘Tomorrow Is Yesterday’).
Planned as a two-part tale, in order to ration the show’s resources, the story saw
the Enterprise discover a long-lost generation starship (a ship sent into space
long ago in which generations of crew have grown, lived and died due to the
slow pace of early space travel). Those on board have long forgotten their
origins and have even lost the knowledge that they are on board a spacecraft.
The idea was similar to one Trek writer Harlan Ellison would develop (and then
disown) in the 1970s TV series The Starlost. Gerrold reused the idea himself
several times, in his 1972 novel Starhunt and again in the 1980 Star Trek novel
The Galactic Whirlpool.
It had always been Gene Roddenberry’s intention from the beginning of Star
Trek to involve science fiction prose authors in the creation of stories. This ideal
was often hard to achieve, as many novelists were unable to adapt their ideas to
the limited format of a weekly television show. However, several did get
involved and made multiple, ultimately futile, attempts to crack Star Trek.
A. E. van Vogt had been high on Roddenberry’s wish list to work on the
series. He developed at least two story ideas – ‘Machines Are Better’ and ‘The
Search for Eternity’ – that ended up on the shelf. There has been much
speculation that van Vogt’s Voyage of the Space Beagle from 1950 was an
influence on Roddenberry when he created Star Trek, especially given this
speech from a character called Von Grossen: ‘The Beagle is going to another
galaxy on an exploration voyage – the first trip of the kind. Our business is to
study life in this new system’. It’s close to the opening narration of Star Trek as
a mission statement, and the episodic novel includes a crew embarked on a
perilous exploration of unknown space. However, the author himself found it
difficult to tailor his ideas for Star Trek.
Philip José Farmer was another science fiction author who contributed a
variety of story ideas, but failed to get an episode on air. His first proposal was
titled ‘Image of the Beast’ (a title he also used for an erotic horror novel with no
connection to his Star Trek idea). That, and another called ‘Mere Shadows’,
didn’t get past the story outline stage. However, a third attempt, ‘The Shadow of
Space’, appears to have progressed further. Farmer’s idea saw the Enterprise
escape the confines of the physical universe altogether – truly going where no
man had gone before. Although the outlandish idea was rejected, Farmer
published it as a short story, stripped of all the Star Trek content. It appeared in
the magazine Worlds of If and later in one of Farmer’s short story collections. He
did the same with a fourth rejected idea, ‘Sketches Among the Ruins of My
Mind’. According to Farmer, his ideas were rejected as Gene Roddenberry found
them ‘too sophisticated’ for the general television audience. He told Starlog
magazine in 1990: ‘[Roddenberry] said his criterion is what his little old maiden
aunt in Iowa would understand, and he said, “She would not understand these.”
“Sketches Among the Ruins of My Mind” originally involved a little idol that
Captain Kirk had picked up in the ruins of a planet. It turns out to be a device
that makes you lose memory two days in a row and you keep going backwards . .
. eventually it’s a year before, and he’s in a new situation . . . I don’t think they
could put “Sketches” across’. These ideas, and a fifth known as ‘The Uncoiler’,
all remained unproduced.
Authors Norman Spinrad and Theodore Sturgeon did succeed in getting
episodes on air (‘The Doomsday Machine’ for Spinrad, the Hugo Award-
winning ‘Amok Time’ and ‘Shore Leave’ for Sturgeon). Spinrad’s other script,
co-written with writer–producer Gene L. Coon, was titled ‘He Walked Among
Us’ and concerned a health food fanatic from the Federation taking over a planet
and breaching the Prime Directive by reshaping its society according to his
beliefs. As the inhabitants perceive the man as a god, Kirk finds it very difficult
to remove him without also disrupting the planet’s society. It was an idea that
would be returned to in The Next Generation instalment ‘Who Watches the
Watchers?’ and the Deep Space Nine story ‘Accession’.
Spinrad recalled he’d built the episode around an available standing set of an
old village on the studio back lot. Additionally, the instalment was conceived by
its co-author Gene Coon as a vehicle for entertainer Milton Berle, who would
probably have fitted right in as one of Star Trek’s long list of would-be God-like
beings, although Spinrad wasn’t keen on the casting. ‘I had Milton Berle and this
village’, he explained. ‘I know that Berle can be a serious actor, but he likes
weird get-ups. [Coon] rewrote a serious anthropological piece into something
played for laughs.’ Unhappy with Coon’s rewrite, Spinrad asked Roddenberry to
drop the script: ‘I killed my own script rather than have it presented in that way.’
He’d also eventually write a script for the aborted Star Trek: Phase II series.
Sturgeon’s third script for The Original Series was to be ‘The Joy Machine’
(also called ‘The Root of All Evil’). Although based on a story outline by
Sturgeon, the full teleplay was eventually written by Meyer Dolinsky, also the
writer of ‘Plato’s Stepchildren’ and three episodes of the 1960s anthology show
The Outer Limits. In a tale similar to ‘This Side of Paradise’ (which probably led
to the abandonment of ‘The Joy Machine’), Kirk and co visit a ‘perfect’ world
where hard work is rewarded by a regular ‘payday’ session with the ‘joy
machine’. Induced to abandon their ship, the Enterprise crew are co-opted into
the society of the joy machine. The unmade tale was written up as a novel by
James Gunn for Pocket Books in 1996. Also outlined by Sturgeon in 1968 but
never made was the self-explanatory ‘Shore Leave II’.
Jerome Bixby wrote four episodes for Star Trek in the 1960s (‘Mirror, Mirror’
– introducing the mirror universe concept and a Hugo Award-winner – ‘By Any
Other Name’, ‘Day of the Dove’ and ‘Requiem for Methuselah’), but even he
had other ideas rejected, including ‘For They Shall Inherit’, ‘Mother Tiger’ and
‘Skal’, about which few details survive.
George Clayton Johnson, one of the few regular writers for The Twilight Zone
other than Rod Serling, developed a story under the imaginative title ‘Rock-a-
Bye Baby, or Die!’ following his initial episode, ‘The Man Trap’. His second
attempt at a Star Trek script saw a juvenile alien being enter the Enterprise’s
computer system, where it incubated and grew to adulthood. Kirk would have
become a father figure to the entity, coaching it through its life trapped within
the computer. Gene Coon was not keen on the idea and it was rejected.
However, both he and Roddenberry liked Johnson’s ‘The Syndicate’ (drawn
from Roddenberry’s ‘President Capone’ idea) well enough to develop it into ‘A
Piece of the Action’ (originally called ‘Mission into Chaos’ and written by Coon
and David P. Harmon).
Other science fiction authors didn’t fare as well. Comic science fiction writer
Robert Sheckley had several ideas rejected, including ‘Rites of Fertility’ and
‘Sister in Space’, although he did write a tie-in Deep Space Nine novel in 1995.
Larry Niven eventually wrote an episode for The Animated Series (‘The Slaver
Weapon’, linked to the author’s own ‘Known Space’ stories), but he first
submitted ideas to the 1960s show. ‘The Pastel Terror’ concerned a ‘star beast’
plasmoid life form that fed off the energy of stars. The Enterprise was to be
enveloped by the creature, which was intent on draining the ship’s energy. One
method of escape suggested by Spock was to separate the saucer section of the
ship (a possibility built in by Roddenberry, but not seen until the 1987 The Next
Generation pilot episode ‘Encounter at Farpoint’ and in the 1994 movie Star
Trek Generations). Spock replaces Kirk and proceeds with the saucer separation,
destroying the secondary hull in an attempt to wipe out the plasmoid life form.
The saucer section of the Enterprise lands on a remote planet and the crew
prepare to establish a colony. Aided by the planet’s giant dragon-like
inhabitants, however, they are able to return to the Federation.
Niven himself realised that the special effects required by his story made it
virtually unproducable, while Spock’s betrayal of the captain did not go down
well with Roddenberry. The rather apocalyptic storyline puts the Enterprise
crew in a desperate situation and virtually destroys the ship (as eventually seen
in The Search for Spock and Generations). Niven’s outline was eventually
published in the Star Trek fanzine T-Negative#17 in 1972. Niven would go on to
contribute to the syndicated Star Trek newspaper strip, pitting the Enterprise
crew against his own Kzinti once again.
Even those most closely involved with writing and producing the original Star
Trek had ideas that failed to be produced. Story editor D. C. Fontana made
several attempts to give Dr McCoy a daughter called Joanna, but each story was
rejected. The first, simply entitled ‘Joanna’, was heavily rewritten to become the
episode ‘The Way to Eden’ (an infamous episode featuring space hippies). The
original outline saw McCoy’s free-spirited daughter having a romantic fling with
Captain Kirk, much to the horror of her father. Another Fontana script
introducing Joanna McCoy and intended for the unmade fourth season of Star
Trek was called ‘The Stars of Sargasso’.
Associate producer Robert Justman tried his hand at an ori -ginal story with
‘The Deadliest Game’, a riff on the 1932 movie The Most Dangerous Game
about an insane hunter who pursues the most dangerous game of all: man.
Justman gave the setting as a ‘hell planet’, with the Enterprise crew trapped
aboard a ship like the Mary Celeste and on a quest for something akin to the
Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which turns out to be the fountain of youth.
John Meredyth Lucas, producer of the second season of Star Trek from
‘Journey to Babel’ to ‘The Omega Glory’, wrote four episodes (‘The
Changeling’, ‘Patterns of Force’, ‘Elaan of Troyius’ and ‘That Which Survives’)
and directed three (his own ‘Elaan of Troyius’, plus ‘The Ultimate Computer’
and ‘The Enterprise Incident’). Even with all those credits, his script for ‘The
Godhead’ found itself stuck in development hell in the Star Trek production
office in 1968. It concerned the last two representatives of an ancient race out to
absorb the entire universe within their brains. Another idea, ‘The Lost Star’,
echoed the episode ‘The Apple’, in that an entire race of people are held in
subjugation by either a priestly elite or a malfunctioning computer, as seen in
several Star Trek episodes.
Even the cast of Star Trek got in on the act, developing or suggesting ideas for
storylines, more often than not revolving around dramatic events concerning
their own characters. Gene Roddenberry seriously entertained a few of these
ideas, including one by William Shatner, another by Nichelle Nichols and one by
DeForest Kelley. Shatner’s 1966 idea was called ‘The Web of Death’ and was
described in TV Guide of October that year as having a ‘good flow’. The story
outline saw the Enterprise discover the long-missing ship Momentous, encased
in a web-like substance from a massive ‘space spider’. The spider attacks the
Enterprise, but is repelled by a poison developed by Kirk, who uses the dead-in-
space Momentous as a decoy to save the Enterprise (a gambit later used in ‘The
Doomsday Machine’).
DeForest Kelley’s story idea was to feature him as McCoy and Nichelle
Nichols as Uhura trapped on a planet dominated by a dark-skinned race who
subjugated the lighter-skinned people. Kelley noted, ‘there was a great racial
problem, only reversed. The fact that I am a Southerner and she is black, and that
we’re trapped on this planet together’ would provide the drama. According to
David Gerrold, in The World of Star Trek, the script idea was ‘written, rewritten,
and rewritten. Either the premise was too touchy for television or nobody could
quite make it work. The script never reached a form where Roddenberry or Coon
wanted to put it into production.’ A similar idea would be eventually explored in
the conflict between the half-white, half-black and half-black, half-white Cheron
race in ‘Let That Be Your Last Battlefield’.
These were by no means all the unproduced ideas for the original Star Trek.
Many did not get beyond thoughts or writer pitches that were never followed up.
What they do show, though, is the depth of thought and experimentation that
was going into The Original Series, that so many workable ideas did not
progress to the screen in that initial three-year period of invention.

While there are not as many surviving unproduced story ideas for The Next
Generation as there were for the original Star Trek, across its seven years on air
there seem to have been at least enough unrealised ideas for an entire additional
season.
Michael Piller began writing for The Next Generation during its second year,
becoming the show’s lead writer during its third. Uniquely across the Star Trek
series he implemented an ‘open door’ policy, inviting anyone who thought they
could write a Star Trek teleplay to have a go. This led to a huge number of
submissions, the vast majority of which were quickly rejected. However, the
policy did pay some dividends, resulting in several episodes including the very
popular ‘Yesterday’s Enterprise’. Writers who got their start from Piller’s policy
include Ronald D. Moore (Carnivàle, Roswell, Battlestar Galactica), René
Echevarria (The 4400, Medium, Castle) and Brannon Braga (Threshold, 24,
FlashForward ).
One teleplay that resulted was ‘Deadworld’, from journalist (and Star Trek
chronicler) James Van Hise. ‘I wrote the story in 1987 at the behest of a mutual
friend of Gerd Oswald’, said Van Hise. ‘Oswald had directed a couple of Star
Trek episodes in the 1960s (“The Conscience of the King”, “The Alternative
Factor”) and I’d spoken to him while he was directing an episode of the new
Twilight Zone for CBS when I visited that studio in 1986. Oswald was looking
for a story he could take to Paramount for The Next Generation which he could
attach himself to as director. He read this outline but rejected it as being “too
depressing”. I told my friend that Gerd, who was then in his 70s, was obviously
a man who had never come to terms with his own mortality’.
The Next Generation creative consultant Greg Strangis tried to get an original
story of his own on air. Although much work was done on his script for ‘The
Neutral Zone’ (unrelated to the season one finale of the same title, although
some of Strangis’ ideas did surface in ‘Too Short a Season’), the episode failed
to be produced. The story featured a misanthropic, wheelchair-bound Federation
security expert called Billings, who was charged with opening negotiations with
the antagonistic Romulan Empire. All the Enterprise crew who have had contact
with Romulans are assigned to the mission, including Worf, who dislikes them.
A sabotaged transporter causes tension among the two groups, while Dr Crusher
works on a cure for Billings.
Even ‘the Great Bird of the Galaxy’ himself had story ideas rejected by his
replacements at Paramount. ‘Ferengi Gold’ was a two-part tale by Gene
Roddenberry intended for the second season of The Next Generation. Many of
Roddenberry’s tried and tested themes featured in the draft screenplay, including
an alien world, a developing civilisation that parallels one from Earth’s history,
and the ultimate perfection of the Federation. His idea of the Ferengi posing as
gods and lording it over a less developed civilisation (an idea that would have
fitted right in with the 1960s Star Trek) later turned up in the third season
Voyager episode ‘False Profits’.
Sometimes ideas or concepts defeated the combined efforts of the writing staff
of The Next Generation, as was the case for René Echevarria and Jeri Taylor on
‘Q Makes Two’, an episode planned to feature the mysterious Q (John de
Lancie). During the fifth and sixth seasons of The Next Generation, various
writers on the staff wrestled with the idea. The story featured Q duplicating the
Enterprise crew for his own nefarious ends. According to Brannon Braga:
‘There was a sense of doom from the moment we started “Q Makes Two”. I
think we broke it [worked out the basic elements of the story] three times. René
[Echevarria] wrote two drafts and it was ultimately abandoned. It’s an interesting
notion that Q comes onboard and Picard’s saying people are inherently good and
we have managed to get rid of our darker elements in the twenty-fourth century,
we’re better people. Q says, “So you don’t think you have dark com -ponents
and you think you’re better without them? Well, I’m going to show you a thing
or two.” He extracts the darker components and puts them into doubles. The
clean, good components suffer and so do the darker components and neither
function without the other. We see that dramatically, but for some reason we
made it more complex than it needed to be. The image in my mind that we never
really got to was the two Enterprises shooting at each other – that’s what you
want to see!’
Taylor described the experience as a ‘nightmare’, dragging attention away
from important work on other episodes for which the deadlines were more
imminent. The idea of dividing the starship in two later came to the screen in an
episode of Voyager called ‘Deadlock’. To some, the plot also recalled the early
original Star Trek series episode ‘The Enemy Within’, which saw Captain Kirk
divided into his ‘good’ and ‘evil’ halves due to a transporter accident.
Another rejected Q episode had the clever title of ‘I.Q. Test’. It would have
seen Q going to war with another member of the Q Continuum, drawing the
Enterprise and her crew into the conflict. The episode would have seen the two
Qs pitting their own teams in a metaphysical Olympics, putting the humans from
the Enterprise up against the alien Zaa-Naar species. It was even hoped that
Terminator actor Arnold Schwarzenegger would appear as a representative of
the superhuman Zaa-Naar race. Although it was a story from a new writer,
Michael Piller killed it off. Ron Moore later noted in an internet Q and A, ‘In
defence of Michael, the Q-Olympics story was ludicrous and needed to be deep-
sixed.’
Actress Vanna Bonta (The Beastmaster) pitched a time travel story to The
Next Generation, perhaps in the hope of being cast in a role in her own episode.
The Enterprise receives a distress signal from a starship lost in the space
equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle. This area is made up of ‘energy rings’, with
each ring enclosing a different period of time. Travelling through the rings, the
Enterprise crew experience different variations of their own history that include
a beard-wearing Picard, Beverly Crusher’s husband Jack still alive, and a
married, sighted Geordi La Forge living and working outside Starfleet. Data, as
an android, is the only one aware of the different realities, and manipulates
Picard into saving the ship. Crusher attempts to stay behind in one of the
alternative timelines, but is persuaded to return to ‘normality’.
Happy to deal with important contemporary themes, The Next Generation
often dealt with environmental issues, including in a rejected story idea by René
Echevarria. Working through many drafts, Echevarria admitted the idea ‘never
got off the ground’. Speaking in Captains’ Logs, Echevarria recalled
‘smokestacks [were] the cause of blindness and mutations in a tribe kept on a
little island called the Island of Tears. They were hidden from view in order for
the rest of the society to be able to maintain its mode of production, which was
highly exploitive and environmentally unsound. The audience would have
guessed at the end of the first act what was going on. What I came up with was a
Federation colony that mined dilithium and they’re natives to the planet. The
twist was that what was causing the problems were these organisms that had
evolved in the presence of electromagnetic fields of dilithium. Its removal was
creating mutations.’ His clever idea tied the environmental damage into a core
need of the Federation, the dilithium crystals which powered starships – a clear
analogy for the Western world’s reliance on fossil fuels. The episode, however,
did not progress any further.
So Piller’s open door policy did bear fruit (other episodes that got made
included Ron Moore’s ‘The Bonding’ and ‘Hollow Pursuits’, which introduced
the character of Reg Barclay), but it also led to a whole lot of extra work for the
writing staff in sifting through thousands of submissions in search of something
that would work on Star Trek.

After The Next Generation, there were far fewer rejected storylines and scripts
that progressed to the stage of substantial written material. There are several
potential reasons why both Deep Space Nine and Voyager had very few unused
storylines. By that stage the writers and producers were far more comfortable
with modern Star Trek and knew the kind of concepts and stories that would
work, so didn’t waste time and effort developing stories that did not stand a
chance of reaching the screen. Also, after seven years in production, the writers
had run through many of their best ideas on The Next Generation, so material
that might previously have been rejected was heavily reworked until it actually
made it to the screen.
Certainly, Deep Space Nine was a harder show for outside writers to break
into, especially in later years when the war story arcs meant that the show
became far more serialised and by necessity the majority of the writing was by
staff writers. Even so, there were a couple of ideas that didn’t progress beyond
rough storylines, including one dealing with a day in the life of bartender Quark
(‘Day at Quarks’) and a seventh season story dealing with Ezri Dax having the
Dax symbiont removed (‘Dysfunctional’). Ron Moore’s fifth season episode
‘Soldiers of Fortune’ began life as ‘Klingon Hell’, a very different episode that
saw Worf and the crew of the Klingon Bird-of-Prey ship Rotarran enter
Gre’thor, the Klingon Hell where dishonoured Klingon souls are consigned. The
concept lived on, later forming the basis of the Voyager story ‘Barge of the
Dead’, this time with B’Elanna Torres in a near-death experience instead of
Worf.
Perhaps drawing on the abandoned ‘Q Makes Two’, Voyager had in
development a storyline concerning duplicates of the lost crew of that starship.
The duplicates are actually the biometric life forms featured in the episodes
‘Demons’ and ‘Course: Oblivion’, and they would complete the voyage back to
the Alpha Quadrant long before the real Voyager, arriving to great acclaim at the
Deep Space Nine station. Jeri Taylor recalled, ‘Everybody thinks Voyager is
home and there are celebrations, and they see their loved ones . . . it turns out to
be an invasion or a dark plot of some kind.’ Although never fully scripted, the
idea hung around through the whole of Voyager’s seven-year run. The closest it
came to being made was as the third season finale, later replaced by ‘Scorpion’.
In order not to waste a good idea, it was revived again for the possible fourth
season finale, but the writers couldn’t make it work, feeling the return of a ‘fake’
Voyager crew would undermine the return of the real team later.
The arrival of Enterprise saw a return to a looser commissioning structure and
so resulted in a higher number of well-developed ideas that never made it to the
screen, most of them apparently coming from Star Trek cast members past and
present.
According to Hoshi Sato actress Linda Park, her co-star Connor Trinneer
proposed a story inspired by the Quentin Tarantino movie Pulp Fiction, told
from the point of view of an alien race. The alien perspective would have been
depicted through the Enterprise crew talking incomprehensible gibberish until a
method of communication was discovered (some might say many Enterprise
episodes were ‘incomprehensible gibberish’ anyway).
Following up on his story pitch of 1966, William Shatner was set to return to
Star Trek by appearing in an Enterprise two-parter. Fourth season showrunner
Manny Coto recalled that the plan was to feature Shatner in a mirror universe-set
tale written by Shatner’s friends and novel co-writers Judith and Garfield
Reeves-Stevens, who were also staff writers on the final season of Enterprise.
The story pitch came from Shatner himself over lunch with Rick Berman, Coto
and Brannon Braga. The mirror universe featured a device called the Tantalus
Field that disintegrated targets remotely. The writers wanted to revise this,
making it instead a time travel device that sent prisoners back in time to a penal
colony. The Enterprise discovers the prison colony, finding mirror-Kirk (called
Tiberius) imprisoned. Tib -erius sees the ship as an opportunity for escape, but
he discovers that in this time period the mirror universe does not yet exist.
Tiberius and Archer work together to investigate what creates the mirror
universe, only to find that it is their own actions that bring it about. Although the
ideas were well received, Berman had an alternative take from Mike Sussman,
one of the producers on both Voyager and Enterprise, that would see Shatner
playing the chef (perhaps riffing on his presenter role in TV show Iron Chef ) on
board the earliest Enterprise, a comic equivalent to Voyager’s Neelix. As neither
Shatner nor Paramount could agree terms for his appearance, the ideas
progressed no further, although ‘In a Mirror, Darkly’ saw the return of the mirror
universe with an alternative explanation of its origins. Coto’s exploration of the
links between his show and the 1960s Star Trek resulted in a handful of other
aborted ideas. Coto became fixated on returning a little known character,
Colonel Green – an eco-terrorist involved in the third world war and seen in the
episode ‘The Savage Curtain’. Coto planned to have his Odyssey 5 star Peter
Weller (best known as RoboCop) play Colonel Green in an episode that returned
to some of the issues explored in the earlier 1960s instalment. Both Weller and
(briefly) Colonel Green would appear in the Enterprise episode ‘Demons’. That
same episode featured the idea of terraforming Mars, home of rebel separatist
Paxton (Weller), which had its origins in a Coto story dealing with the
independence of the Earth colony on the red planet. Coto envisaged an attempt
to change the atmosphere of Mars using comets that would instead be aimed at
Earth by terrorists, an incident Coto described as the Cuban Missile Crisis in
space.
Some of the more unusual unused ideas for Enterprise featured Captain
Archer’s dog, Porthos. Stories pitched included Porthos becoming intelligent and
conversing with the crew, the dog being the only one able to communicate with
an alien canine race and Porthos becoming captain of the Enterprise. While
these stories were inherently silly, the official reason for their rejection was that
the showrunners did not want Porthos becoming the star of the show, in the way
that some robotic sidekicks of the 1970s (such as Twiki on Buck Rogers in the
25th Century or robot dog K-9 on Doctor Who) had done. Many of these story
claims came from Andre Bormanis in a DVD extra on the box set of Enterprise
season four, resulting in some fans believing he’d actually just invented them . . .
The lost voyages of Star Trek, from the 1960s birth of the show to its final end
(on television at least) at the beginning of the twenty-first century, provide a
secret history of the series. It’s a glimpse into an alternative world – a kind of
mirror universe of Star Trek storytelling – in which everything is not quite as we
know it in the stories we experienced across four decades as Star Trek viewers.
It’s certainly a fascinating byway in Star Trek history.

Unmade scripts and story ideas were not the only unseen alternative Star Treks:
alongside and beyond the airing of Enterprise, several prominent creative people
proposed new takes on the series’ basic concepts to Paramount (which became
CBS Paramount in 2006 as a result of a corporate merger) to continue the
franchise beyond Enterprise. The fact that their ideas were quickly rejected
suggests the studio focus was on bringing Star Trek back to cinemas rather than
television. Jonathan Frakes, Commander Will Riker on The Next Generation,
was behind one failed pitch: ‘I had a Star Trek [series idea] that I developed for
TV’, Frakes told website UGO in 2011, ‘and we were told in no uncertain terms
that they said no to a Bryan Singer television Star Trek, they said no to a
William Shatner television Star Trek. They feel at CBS Paramount that they
don’t want to make the same mistake that’s been made before, which was
watering down the brand by having a TV show and a movie [at the same time].
That’s what happened with Star Trek Nemesis, and that’s why I think Star Trek:
Enterprise didn’t last the way they expected it to. It was the classic corporate
greed of “we’ve got something good, so let’s continue to milk it” and [they]
milked it so dry that the fans had no appetite for a movie. So I think what
they’ve done by taking time off before the Abrams’ Star Trek, and they’re doing
it again [with] the second one, is a much smarter business plan. Much to my
chagrin! Not that I wouldn’t love the Titan, or the Rikers in Space, or any of
those shows on the air.’
Star Trek: Titan was a spin-off series of novels published by Pocket Books,
starting in 2005, that drew on the fact that Riker ended Star Trek Nemesis as
captain of his own ship, the USS Titan. It seems likely that Frakes’ idea for a
new Star Trek TV show was based around these further adventures of Riker.
As mentioned by Frakes, both The Original Series star William Shatner and
film director Bryan Singer (X-Men, Superman Returns, Valkyrie) had also
developed new Star Trek series ideas. Shatner’s notion would have sounded very
familiar to Star Trek movie producer Harve Bennett. Called Star Trek: The
Academy, his proposed series would have followed the adventures of teenage
versions of Kirk, Spock and McCoy. The actor had worked up his proposal with
Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, but this time he bypassed Rick Berman,
pitching directly to Paramount chief Sumner Redstone. Once the concept was
rejected, the Reeves-Stevens instead turned it into a planned two-novel series,
but only the first (Star Trek Academy: Collision Course (2007)) ever appeared.
In the novel, the first meeting between Kirk and Spock takes place in a strip club
where Kirk is hiding out while Spock is trying to sell off Vulcan artefacts.
Facing time in a penal colony, Kirk and Spock opt to join Starfleet Academy
instead, with Kirk giving his Vulcan friend the nickname ‘Stretch’.
 Movie director Bryan Singer was a lifelong Star Trek fan who’d made a minor
cameo appearance in Star Trek Nemesis as a Starfleet officer on the bridge of the
Enterprise. He’d been involved in a stalled attempt in 2001 to revive Battlestar
Galactica (a feat eventually achieved by The Next Generation’s Ron Moore in
2003). Singer claimed his proposed version of Star Trek would have been ‘Big .
. . it would be very big’, according to an interview with iseb.net in 2005. Set just
beyond the thirtieth century, Singer’s proposed TV series would have been
called Star Trek: Federation. It would have featured a less warrior-like and more
political depiction of the Klingons, while Vulcans and Romulans would be
pursuing their reunification away from human contact. The Federation would
have spread far and wide across the galaxy, making communication a difficult
and time-consuming process. Distant areas of the galaxy would therefore
provide new frontiers for exploration, cut off from the support that Starfleet and
the Federation normally supply (echoing the set-up of Voyager – although unlike
Voyager, Singer seemed intent on exploring genuinely new and unknown
worlds). Singer’s Star Trek essentially proposed a fresh start for the franchise,
devoid of any connections with the previous series, while also being a back to
basics, ‘starship facing the unknown’ show. It would have one clear connection
to The Original Series, the Star Trek founding myth. The sole survivor of the
USS Sojourner (a victim of the mysterious ‘scourge’) would have been Lt
Commander Alexander Kirk, co-opted onto the crew of an allnew Enterprise
(the first in 300 years), sent out in search of the unknown malevolent enemy.
Other crewmembers would have included The 76th Distillation of Blue, a
gaseous alien who uses a ‘motion suit’ to interact with humans and goes by the
name Diz, and M.A.J.E.L., the ship’s sentient computer (named after
Roddenberry’s wife – and voice of the Enterprise computer – Majel Barrett).
A proposal document for the series was drawn up after a lengthy dinner
conversation between Singer, writer Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual
Suspects, which Singer had also directed) and Robert Meyer Burnett (director of
Free Enterprise). The document recognised that television storytelling had
changed since Star Trek had originally been created, promising ‘more complex,
serialized stories . . . compelling stories about our world today. Let Star Trek
breathe. Let’s grapple again with the issues of the day – diversity, government
power, gender frictions, a controversial war on foreign soil’. The proposal sets
out to ‘acknowledge what’s come before, [but] turn the Star Trek universe
upside down’.
Burnett claimed the first draft outline was never submitted to Paramount as
the J. J. Abrams movie was announced instead. ‘It was meant to be a jumping off
point for further discussion’, he told website i09, ‘not to ever be sent anywhere,
certainly not to any network. There are things in the pitch I still quite like. I
wanted to see more “hard” sci-fi concepts addressed directly in Trek.’
There was another big-name, more fully developed Star Trek pitch dating
from 2004. Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski and UFO-conspiracy series
Dark Skies creator Bryce Zabel co-authored an unsolicited TV series pitch en -
titled ‘Star Trek: Re-boot the Universe’. The fourteen-page document was sub-
headed ‘A Proposal For ReImagining the First Five-Year Mission’.
The pair had met when sharing a flight between Los Angeles and Vancouver
(where many American TV shows are shot). Later, when working together on an
ultimately unmade TV mini-series called Cult, their conversation turned to the
current state of Star Trek, as Enterprise was reaching its final stages. ‘We
wanted to start over, use Kirk, Spock and McCoy and others in a powerful new
origin story about what it was that bonded them in such strong friendship, and
show them off as you’d never seen them before. It was, admittedly, pretty
audacious’, Zabel later wrote on his website.
In their resulting document – after singing the praises of Star Trek as a
concept – the authors then lamented the state of the franchise in 2004. ‘There’s
trouble in the Star Trek universe. Ratings have declined, demographics have
stagnated . . . Can Star Trek be saved?’ The difficulty of telling new stories
within the overgrown, complicated, established Star Trek universe was summed
up with the following responses to proposed story ideas: ‘It’s been done, it’s
being done or it would never be done’. The most recent Star Trek spin-off shows
were characterised as ‘a copy of a copy of a copy’, and the blame for Star Trek’s
decline lay with the fact that ‘the all-too-reasonable desire to protect the
franchise may now be the cause of its stagnation’.
The answer proposed by Straczynski and Zabel? ‘The best solution is to go
back to the original and start again. It’s time to re-boot the Star Trek universe.’
Their concept for twenty-first-century Star Trek was a return to the 1960s setting
and characters but combined with ‘the kind of storytelling that audiences of 2004
are used to seeing in modern prime-time television. Hard-hitting. Exciting.
Character-driven. Innovative.’ Straczynski had demonstrated his undoubted
ability to achieve all of that with the groundbreaking Babylon 5 during the latter
half of the 1990s. Now he wanted to apply those storytelling techniques to Star
Trek.
His starting point would have been ‘the three best things in the Star Trek
universe: Kirk. Spock. McCoy’. These three characters would be reimagined and
sent off on a brand new five-year mission to explore strange new worlds and
new civilisations, free of all the baggage that Star Trek had built up over almost
forty years. ‘It is time to go boldly back to the original’, the authors wrote,
‘reborn and retooled for a new millennium’.
Straczynski and Zabel firmly believed that audiences would be happy to
accept new actors playing the much-loved classic characters of Kirk, Spock and
McCoy in new television adventures, characterising the trio as ‘the warrior, the
priest, the doctor’. The plan was also to reinvent the second-tier characters from
The Original Series, with new takes on Scotty, Sulu, Uhura and Chekov.
The ‘creative plan’ for the series proposed an opening two-hour pilot TV
movie depicting the meeting of the central trio (no strip clubs here), their
discovery of a lost city on an uncharted world and their encounter with the
ancient advanced race who had built it (shades of Philip Kaufman’s Planet of the
Titans movie project). The pilot would end with Kirk (the youngest starship
captain in the Federation), Spock and McCoy aboard the Enterprise, poised at
the edge of known space and ready for exploration.
A revamp of Star Trek’s technology, such as the communicators and
tricorders, was proposed, although the classic silhouette of the Enterprise would
be retained. More complex and adult relationships would drive the drama on a
more human level, while action-oriented plots would form the core of the series.
Straczynski and Zabel’s proposed series would have an on -going narrative
arc at its core: throughout the series, Kirk and crew would be seeking the ancient
race encountered in the pilot. They would not be the only ones searching for the
aliens’ ancient knowledge, though, with ‘forces of darkness’ also on the hunt.
Buried deep within the DNA of all species is a mathematical code, an ‘artist’s
signature’ that could not have occurred by chance. The series’ new Prime
Directive would be ‘to do whatever is necessary to find this long-lost race and
discover the truth about the common origin of life’. These – and other mysteries
– would be woven into the story of the week episodes of the proposed series.
Although individual episodes of the proposed show would stand alone, ‘these
explorations do not exist in a vacuum, there’s a reason and a mystery behind it
all’.
The document criticised the existence of the holodeck in modern Star Trek,
stating that The Original Series’ characters had no need of such artificial
distractions as there were more than enough adventures and more than enough
excitement in their real world. The series was planned to run for exactly five
seasons, with the overall story having a beginning, a middle and an end (just like
Straczynski’s Babylon 5). At the end of the five-year story arc, the Enterprise
and her remaining crew would return to Earth, allowing any follow-up series to
‘move the franchise into new territory’. The writers proposed returning to one of
Star Trek’s earliest habits – buying in short stories from top science fiction
authors to adapt to the Star Trek format. The modern equivalents to Richard
Matheson, Robert Bloch and Norman Spinrad were (according to Straczynski
and Zabel), Neil Gaiman, Dean Koontz and Stephen King.
Straczynski and Zabel’s document proposed that all preexisting Star Trek
material should be relegated to ‘Universe A’, permitting their rebooted Star Trek
to be free of previous con -tinuity ties and dubbed ‘Universe B’. This would
allow for ‘the unshackling of all the pent-up talent and ideas that are precluded
from expression by virtue of what has gone on before’.
The series would simply be called Star Trek and would be a ‘bold new
interpretation . . . a fresh start’. Symptomatic of this fresh start was the
suggestion that in this version, Scotty should be a woman (a similar tactic had
been used by Ron Moore in 2003’s Battlestar Galactica, recasting the role of
Starbuck as female).
The document included a sparse breakdown of a proposed first season, mainly
a structure with rough story points promising a mix of stories adapted from The
Original Series, tales from well-known writers and stand-alone original stories,
all serving the larger mystery arc of the long-lost ancient race. The writers
promised this series would spark an all-new wave of Star Trek excitement,
something they dubbed ‘the coming buzz’. The search for actors to fill the iconic
roles of Kirk, Spock and McCoy would be a major showbusiness story in itself,
while the prospect of an all-new five-year mission for those classic characters
would generate broad audience re-engagement with the legend of Star Trek.
‘No one can ever compete with Gene Roddenberry’s original series’, the
writers concluded. ‘We can, however, stand on his shoulders and see things from
a different perspective.’
While developed with good creative intentions, the Star Trek reboot proposed
by J. Michael Straczynski and Bryce Zabel went nowhere. ‘We held back from
putting everything we were thinking into [the document] because, if we did,
what would be the point of hiring us? So we suggested and prodded and
explained and held some of the point-by-point work back for a meeting or an
opportunity that never came’, Zabel wrote.
When the team of writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman and director J. J.
Abrams were faced with the same challenge of reinventing Star Trek in 2007,
their lengthy considerations led them to very similar story solutions to those
proposed by Straczynski and Zabel almost three years earlier.

The challenge after Enterprise was how to return Star Trek to big screen
popularity without either the cast of The Original Series or that of The Next
Generation. There was no appetite (even among fans) for Deep Space Nine,
Voyager or Enterprise to become movies, but studio executives at CBS
Paramount believed there was still life in Star Trek, despite the relative failures
of Voyager and Enterprise on television. Indeed, there was still much fondness
among the wider general cinema-going public for Star Trek, especially the
simpler, less complicated days of Kirk, Spock and McCoy. It was also true that
those original Star Trek characters continued to be the most impactful, with the
widest recognition factor globally, even after the success of The Next
Generation.
The Star Trek movie franchise appeared to have died with the amazingly poor
box office performance of Nemesis, while on television the franchise had also
ground to an ignominious halt. Was Star Trek over by 2005? Rick Berman didn’t
believe so, and in the wake of the failure of Enterprise he began exploring new
possibilities for a Star Trek movie unconnected to either The Original Series or
The Next Generation.
With the support of CBS Paramount’s new studio executives, Berman
developed a movie to take place in the one unexplored area of the Star Trek
timeline, between the end of Enterprise and the period of The Original Series.
He saw the film as both a sequel to the most recent TV series and a prequel to
everything else that would come after.
Writer Erik Jendresen, riding high on the success of the Steven Spielberg-
produced Band of Brothers TV mini-series, was brought in to write the new Star
Trek screenplay. The result was a 121-page script delivered with the working
title Star Trek: The Beginning, echoing the successful 2005 Christopher Nolan-
directed blockbuster reboot Batman Begins.
Jendresen set his story in 2159, chronicling the origins of Starfleet and the
launching of the first warp-eight-capable starship, the NX-Omega (the previous
Enterprise managed just warp five). Essentially a space war movie, the story
sees an antagonistic Romulan fleet heading for Earth with only rookie pilot
Tiberius Chase and his untested crew standing in their way. An added twist sees
Chase come from a long-standing Earth isolationist family, fearful of alien
contamination. Extending this theme, the Romulans are demanding that the
Earth give up its population of Vulcans, who they regard as an illegitimate
offshoot of the Romulan race. Chase steals a ship – the USS Spartan – and he
and his space cadet friends confront the approaching threat.
‘The notion was to do a prequel to The Original Series’, explained Jendresen.
‘[We would] fill that void with a trilogy which would all deal with Kirk’s
progenitor. We wanted to reveal the actual cause of the [Earth–Romulan war],
which was sur -prising to all involved at the time. We simply wanted to reveal
the truth behind that startling incident.’
The inspiration for the tone and approach of this new Star Trek were the
movies Top Gun and Starship Troopers, making it more of a military adventure
in space than ever before, something Gene Roddenberry had never been keen on.
While the screenplay hit many of the Star Trek touchstones (the name Tiberius,
the Romulans, Vulcans, Andorian Commander Shran from Enterprise and so
on), it told the story in a very free-flowing and decidedly un-Star Trek-like way.
This was exactly what Berman was looking for: a fresh take on the core Star
Trek ideas, in the hope of attracting a new audience to the long-running
franchise.
Jendresen’s script had strong support from CBS Paramount studio president
Donald DeLine, but fell out of favour with the studio brass when he exited the
project to be replaced by Gail Berman (no relation to Rick). Jendresen blamed a
‘classic case of Hollywood regime change’ for the death of his ‘big and epic’
Star Trek movie: ‘A project is greenlighted [sic] by one regime, and by the time
it is delivered there’s a coup d’etat.’ Even before the screenplay was dropped,
Rick Berman had confirmed studio reservations that the new Star Trek outing
featured no established Star Trek characters.
Even though Star Trek: The Beginning proved to be a false start, the name of
Chase recurred as the lead character in another unseen Star Trek project.
Believing that the cost of any new live-action TV series or movie was holding
back the development of a new Star Trek outing, a trio of professional fans,
David Rossi, Doug Mirabello and comic book artist José Muñoz, proposed a
new animated Star Trek series. CBS Paramount declared some interest in the
project and allowed the trio to develop concept artwork and write scripts for five
‘mini-episodes’. The idea, under the title Star Trek: Final Frontier, pushed the
Star Trek timeline further forward into the future, post-Star Trek Nemesis. A
new Enterprise was to be captained by Alexander Chase, embarking on a new
mission to ‘seek out new life and new civilisations’ in an unknown region of
space. An entire crew complement, complete with artwork representations, was
developed for the proposed series. The idea was shelved, however, when studio
head Gail Berman declared her preference for a radical new Star Trek movie –
and this one would genuinely go back to the beginning . . .
Chapter 13
Future Imperfect: Star Trek (2009)
‘Gene [Roddenberry was] asked, “What’s going to become of Star Trek in
the future?” He said that he hoped that some day some bright young thing
would come along and do it again, bigger and better than he had ever done
it. And he wished them well.’ Richard Arnold, Gene Roddenberry’s
assistant

Among the three biggest science fiction entertainment franchises of the twentieth
century, Star Trek had the shortest time out of production, cumulatively. The
four-year wait between the end of Enterprise and the arrival of J. J. Abrams’
2009 movie was surprisingly short compared to those endured by fans of Doctor
Who and Star Wars.
The earliest, Doctor Who, began in 1963 in the UK and ran uninterrupted until
1989. A one-off TV movie followed in 1996 before a full ongoing TV series
started in 2005. The gap between the original series and its continuation was
sixteen years.
Star Wars began with a trilogy of movies between 1977 and 1983. A series of
bestselling novels by Timothy Zahn in the early 1990s relaunched then-dormant
Star Wars fandom and led to the release of CGI-upgraded special editions of the
original trilogy in 1997, with a brand new prequel trilogy of movies released
between 1999 and 2005. Those were followed in 2008 by a hugely successful
weekly CGI-animated TV series, The Clone Wars.
Star Trek had a mere ten-year break (with the exception of the short-lived The
Animated Series) between the last episode of The Original Series and the arrival
of The Motion Picture in 1979. From then until 2005 Star Trek was in
continuous production, either as movies or TV series.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, prequels to existing film and
television entertainment properties were in vogue, especially in the worlds of
science fiction and fantasy. The first use of the term ‘prequel’ in movies is
connected to the sections of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 film The Godfather
Part II, which were set before the events of the previous film. The 1979 movie
Butch and Sundance: The Early Days was a prequel, but it was the work of
filmmakers George Lucas and Steven Spielberg that was to popularise the
concept and cause Hollywood to indulge wholesale in the prequel process.
Lucas and Spielberg used the term ‘prequel’ to chronologically position the
second Indiana Jones movie, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
before the first movie in the series, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). It was with
the Star Wars prequel trilogy, however, that the concept really entered the
mainstream of blockbuster filmmaking. The urge to go back and explore the
origins of characters or events already seen was the narrative driving force
behind many sequels (such as Red Dragon (2002) and Hannibal Rising (2007),
both prequels to 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs), while several sequel films
since the year 2000 numerically tagged as ‘2’ were looks back at events before
those of the first movie (Vacancy 2, The Scorpion King 2, Internal Affairs II . .
.). Following Star Trek: Enterprise, Caprica (setting up the rebooted Battlestar
Galactica) and Spartacus: Gods of the Arena were prequel TV series. Origin
stories or major franchise reboots would also provide fertile ground for sequels
and re -imagining, especially of comic book characters, as in Batman Begins
(2005).
For his part, Gene Roddenberry had first mentioned the notion of making a
film that took place before his Star Trek TV series as early as 1968, at the World
Science Fiction Convention. Star Trek movie producer Harve Bennett had
repeatedly promoted the idea of an origin story for Kirk, Spock and McCoy as
part of his Starfleet Academy concept. Although a Star Trek prequel idea (with
all-new characters) had come to fruition in the Enterprise TV series, it had been
deemed a failure. The idea of setting up the universe fans were familiar with was
still seen as fertile ground, though, with Rick Berman pursuing development of
Erik Jendresen’s Star Trek: The Beginning script.
Most of these concepts had steered clear of the most obvious Star Trek
prequel concept of them all, one most likely to have popular appeal to
mainstream audiences: the reinvention of Kirk, Spock and McCoy (as boldly
suggested in J. Michael Straczynski and Bryce Zabel’s Star Trek ‘reboot’
concept for television from 2004). It had taken a long time for the executives at
Paramount to accept that the time was right for this approach, but with the
failure of Enterprise they almost immediately embarked upon the search for a
new creative team who could reinvent classic Star Trek from first principles as a
blockbuster movie.
By 2006, due to corporate takeovers and restructuring, the rights to make new
Star Trek were held by two different com -panies. Essentially, Paramount
Pictures (owned by Viacom) retained the movie option, while CBS now
controlled the Star Trek television franchise. Paramount chief Gail Berman
decided that the right place for a dramatic reinvention of Star Trek – despite the
failure of Nemesis – was on the big screen, not on television, following the
declining fortunes of Voyager and Enterprise. Part of her approach was to
remove the control of big screen Star Trek from those who’d been making the
television version. Her aim was to turn over Paramount’s valuable property to
experienced blockbuster moviemakers, rather than exhausted television
producers. Berman negotiated with CBS to give Paramount a clear eighteen-
month run at developing a new Star Trek feature film before the television
company could even think about developing a new television series (as part of
the deal, CBS retained all Star Trek merchandising rights). The question was,
what kind of film would the new Star Trek be and who could Berman task with
creatively driving the project?
Writer, director and producer J. J. Abrams already had strong connections
with Paramount, having directed 2006’s Mission: Impossible III to great critical
acclaim and box office success. Abrams had a track record creating cult TV
series that also had broad mainstream appeal in spy-thriller Alias (2001–6) and
the mystical island castaway drama Lost (2004–10). Abrams had previously
written screenplays for the movies Regarding Henry (1991), Forever Young
(1992) and Armageddon (1998), as well as an unproduced Superman script in
2002. He’d followed Mission: Impossible III with the weird science TV series
Fringe (from 2008). To Gail Berman, Abrams was just the right kind of
maverick left-field talent needed to bring new life to the moribund Star Trek
franchise.
Abrams himself was a casual Star Trek fan. He was born in June 1966, just
two weeks after the final draft script for Harlan Ellison’s acclaimed episode ‘The
City on the Edge of Forever’ had been completed. For Abrams, Star Trek was
Kirk, Spock and McCoy – the core characters he’d grown up watching during
syndication reruns throughout the 1970s and into the first series of Star Trek
movies in the early 1980s. He regarded everything else as ‘separate space
adventures with the name Star Trek’.
Abrams felt that the later incarnations of Star Trek had turned inwards. ‘At a
certain point it seems like Star Trek stopped trying to reach a bigger audience’,
he said to SFX magazine. ‘They decided, “let’s just cater to our fans”. This
movie is not meant to be a continuum of that way of thinking, this is very much
“let’s start over”.’ The director had also admitted to a strong preference for the
action-adventure format of the first Star Wars trilogy to Star Trek’s more
cerebral content. Abrams signed on as producer of the Paramount Star Trek
reboot, turning over the development of the script to his team of Lost and Fringe
writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (who’d also scripted Mission:
Impossible III and Transformers (2007)).
According to Abrams, his interest in Star Trek came from the fact that it was
‘about exploration of the stars, not about conquering worlds, but discovering
them, exploring them and understanding them’. He told Empire magazine, ‘[The
Original Series’] problem was they had a space adventure, but never had the
resources to actually show the adventure. Doing this movie with the resources
we had and the technology that exists now gave us the chance to make
something fast-paced, full of action and visually stunning, but also tap into what
made Star Trek great.’
All concerned felt that the best approach would be a ‘clean’ reboot of Star
Trek, returning to first principles as outlined by Gene Roddenberry in his
creation of The Original Series. However, as fans of the original show, Orci and
Kurtzman knew how important actors like Shatner, Nimoy and the late DeForest
Kelley were to Star Trek fans. With that in mind, they set out to develop a reboot
of Star Trek that would allow for the re -invention of the classic Kirk–Spock–
McCoy trio for a new twenty-first-century audience, but would also in some way
manage to incorporate all that had gone before. They were not prepared to
simply dump over forty years of storytelling.
For Abrams, the characters were key to his reinvention of the franchise.
‘[There’s a] feeling of broken and interesting characters in Kirk and Spock’, he
told SFX magazine. ‘[We show them] coming together in a way that is
unexpected and ultimately throw them into a massive adventure. The approach
was to take inspiration from what was in The Original Series and then filter it
through what is relevant and vital for now. The goal was not to make it cool or
different, but to make it real, with characters that feel true and emotional, like
there’s a piece missing from them and they’re up against something significant
and the stakes are high. It was fun to figure out a way to make the relationship
between Spock, Kirk and Bones [McCoy] come to life.’
The writers hoped that the possible involvement of someone from The
Original Series would put the seal of approval on the new Star Trek for many
sceptical fans. From the original key trio, due to the death of Kelley in 1999,
Orci and Kurtzman were left with Shatner and Nimoy, and they felt that Spock
was the more iconic and useful of the two remaining characters. The presence of
the character they dubbed ‘old Spock’ or Spock Prime would also tie into
Nimoy’s last appearance on The Next Generation in the two-part ‘Unification’
story from 1991, although Nimoy himself professed not to recognise the
connection. That storyline had also featured the Romulans, now chosen by
Abrams as the villains for the new film in preference to the Klingons, whom he
considered overused as well as problematic due to their non-villainous status
from The Next Generation onwards. At that point Abrams was unaware that the
Romulans had featured as the major villains in the most recent Star Trek movie,
Nemesis, and that the film had been a huge box office failure. He claimed he’d
been ‘disconnected’ from the franchise when that movie was released.
According to Abrams, the casting of Leonard Nimoy was ‘critical if we’re
going to look at reintroducing these characters . . . [this film must] both please
the fans and those who have never seen Star Trek. Having Leonard in the film
shows that this film exists in a continuum of Trek history, as opposed to an
absolute page one reinvention.’ Nimoy, who had retired from acting in 2000 to
pursue photography, claimed he was happy to play Spock once more as he
admired the work of Abrams and the film offered an ‘essential and interesting
Spock role’. Re-energised by his work on the movie, and continuing to work
with Abrams and his team, Nimoy would go on to guest star regularly in the
pivotal role of William Bell on Abrams’ Fringe.
Although it had been much used throughout Star Trek, the writers of the new
movie decided that time travel would be the best device they could use to begin
a new story built around Kirk, Spock and McCoy and yet involve a character
from The Original Series. Time travel would bring Spock Prime into contact
with younger versions of Kirk, Spock and McCoy, allowing the old and new
storylines to connect, and could then be forgotten in any subsequent films which
would follow the adventures of the new characters without any overt
connections to the past. ‘One of the reasons we wanted to break with the original
Star Trek timeline was it felt restrictive’, Abrams told MTV.com. ‘The idea, now
that we are in an independent timeline, allows us to use any of the ingredients
from the past – or come up with brand new ones – to make potential stories.’
Orci and Kurtzman drew inspiration from many elements of past Star Trek in
working out their new approach, including spin-off novels not always thought of
as canon by fans. Knowing that the continuity of The Original Series had itself
been inconsistent, the writers set out to cherry-pick the elements they felt they
needed to launch a new version of classic Star Trek without necessarily being
slavish to established details. For example, it had long been established that the
Enterprise had been constructed in Earth orbit, but the movie would instead
depict the ship being built on the ground in Kirk’s home state of Iowa.
In order to appeal to a mainstream audience perhaps un -familiar with the
detailed universe created over many decades, Abrams and his creative team
deliberately set out to simplify Star Trek, stripping out the technobabble of The
Next Generation and replacing it with the action-adventure appeal of the first
Star Wars movie. Humour and sex appeal were also key to Abrams’ recreation
of Star Trek, elements that had been missing from some of the spin-off shows.
The central characters – Kirk, Spock and McCoy – were reduced to archetypes,
almost fulfilling the popular clichés that resided in the mainstream imagination.
The characters of these new versions of the core Star Trek trio were easily
delineated through their chief characteristics, summed up by their well-known
catchphrases used in the 1987 novelty song ‘Star Trekkin’’ by The Firm.
The question was, who could play these iconic characters? Which modern
film stars or character actors could fill the well-worn roles of Kirk, Spock and
McCoy and stand the comparisons with Shatner, Nimoy and Kelley – especially
as whomever was playing young Spock would be acting directly opposite the
original. While it wasn’t quite the big show-business event predicted by
Straczynski and Zabel’s reboot proposal, there was much media interest in the
casting process for the all-new Star Trek.
‘It was hard in ways I didn’t anticipate’, said Abrams to SFX magazine of
casting the movie. ‘I thought [finding the right actor for] Spock would be
impossible, yet he was the first person we cast.’ Although the film would feature
three versions of Spock (including Jacob Kogan as child Spock and Nimoy as
Spock Prime), the focus was heavily on actor Zachary Quinto, who secured the
task of reinventing the half-human, half-Vulcan Enterprise science officer.
Quinto, who’d come to prominence as Sylar in the superpowers TV series
Heroes, came to Abrams’ attention thanks to an interview in which he expressed
interest in the role. Many commentators had pointed out Quinto’s curious
physical resemblance to the young Nimoy. Quinto wore a blue shirt (reflecting
Spock’s usual outfit on The Original Series) and flattened his hair to more
resemble Spock for his audition. He was aided in taking on the persona of Spock
by make-up and hair tricks that emphasised his Nimoy-lookalike characteristics,
although he did claim, ‘There’s no question I was born to play the Spock role’.
The only other actor who’d been publicly connected with the part was Oscar
winner Adrien Brody.
The most prominent candidate to inherit William Shatner’s role as the captain
of the Enterprise was Matt Damon, who met with J. J. Abrams to discuss the
role. Deciding that Damon was too old for the role of Kirk as written, the pair
discussed having him play Kirk’s father in the opening section of the film, a part
that Damon turned down and went to Thor’s Chris Hemsworth instead. The new
Captain Kirk was to be played by Chris Pine, then best known for romantic
comedies like The Princess Diaries 2 (2004) and Just My Luck (2006). Abrams
had not seen Pine’s initial audition for the part (a performance Pine had
described as being awful), so re-auditioned him alongside Quinto (by now
already cast as Spock). Quinto and Pine already knew each other as they
frequented the same Los Angeles gym. Having won the role, Pine sought (and
obtained) the approval of Shatner, and then immersed himself in studying Star
Trek history. He finally gave up researching and watching old episodes, as he
feared his performance would become an imitation of Shatner’s when what he
wanted to do was explore Kirk’s ‘humour, arrogance and decisiveness’, while
bringing a touch of Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford to the character.
One of the last parts to be filled for the movie was the final piece in the puzzle
of the central Star Trek trio, Dr McCoy. Among those considered for the role
were Oscar-nominated Gary Sinise, who, like Damon, was eventually deemed
too old for the role. Abrams chose The Lord of the Rings star Karl Urban, who’d
previously worked with writers Orci and Kurtzman on the TV series Xena:
Warrior Princess. Urban had been a fan of Star Trek all his life, setting out not
to provide a ‘carbon copy’ of DeForest Kelley’s McCoy but instead to honour
Kelley while ‘bringing something new to the table’. For Abrams, Urban was a
man of previously hidden talents: ‘Karl Urban surprised the hell out of me by
coming in and being crazy good and funny in a way I never thought or knew he
could do and blew my mind. He is far more versatile than anyone knows.’
The second tier of characters was filled by a range of actors, including Zoe
Saldana as Uhura (she’d never seen The Original Series, although her mother
was a fan, and the actress had played a Trek fan in The Terminal (2004));
English writer–actor Simon Pegg as Scotty (who based his Scottish accent on
that of his Glaswegian wife); Asian-American John Cho as Japanese Sulu (his
casting was approved of by George Takei as he said Sulu represented all of Asia
on the Enterprise); and Anton Yelchin as Russian Pavel Chekov (whose
character hadn’t appeared on the Enterprise until the second year of The
Original Series). The villain of the piece was Romulan Nero, played by Eric
Bana heavily disguised under a series of facial tattoos.
Star Trek opens with the Federation starship USS Kelvin investigating a
‘lightning storm’ in space. The vessel comes under attack by the Romulan
mining ship Narada, which emerges from the spacial disturbance. During the
battle, first officer George Kirk replaces the dead captain, evacuates the ship and
loses his life taking the ship on a collision course with the Narada, just as his son
– James Kirk – is born aboard an escaping shuttle.
Years later, troubled Jim Kirk joins Starfleet at the urging of Captain Pike,
who challenges him to live up to the example set by his father. Kirk falls in with
half-human, half-Vulcan Spock, cantankerous medical man McCoy and
languages specialist Uhura. A distress signal sees an under-prepared Enterprise,
led by Pike, embark on a mission to investigate a new space ‘lightning storm’.
Recognising the phenomena from the time of his birth, Kirk finds his way onto
the ship. The Enterprise discovers the Romulan ship attacking Vulcan. The
planet is destroyed, killing most of the population, including Spock’s mother. An
argument sees Kirk marooned on Delta Vega, where he encounters Spock Prime.
Both he and the Narada have travelled from the future, where Nero’s planet
Romulus was destroyed before Spock could prevent a supernova. Blaming
Spock and the Federation, Nero is out to change the future and save his planet.
Picking up Scotty, Kirk returns to the Enterprise, takes command and with
Spock’s help attacks the Narada and defeats Nero. Kirk is unexpectedly
promoted to captain of the Enterprise, and he, Spock, McCoy and the rest of the
crew are ready for new adventures . . .
Shooting on the movie – under the dummy title Corporate Headquarters –
took place between November 2007 and March 2008, with J. J. Abrams taking
up the option to direct as well as produce (Spider-Man’s Sam Raimi had been
considered by Paramount as a possible alternative director). Designing a new
Enterprise for the twenty-first century proved a challenge. Abrams appointed
Scott Chambliss, his production designer on Alias and Mission: Impossible III,
to envision the new starship. Given that so much modern technology had
apparently either been inspired or influenced by that depicted on The Original
Series – such as mobile phones, computers and iPads – it was going to be
difficult to come up with a new idea for the future of the twenty-third century
while still staying true to 1960s Star Trek. New communicators were designed
with the help of mobile phone manufacturer Nokia, while medical tricorders
were made smaller and more portable and the phasers were designed with
revolving barrels that could switch from ‘stun’ to ‘kill’ settings.
The biggest challenge was the bridge of the Enterprise. While the original
layout was retained, the whole space had a brighter, whiter feel, drawing
inspiration from the 1968 Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey and
modern high-tech retail environments, like the Apple stores. This new Enterprise
bridge was built on gimbals, meaning that when the ship was attacked the actors
would not have to try so hard to fake being thrown from side to side, as had
often been the case on the Star Trek TV shows. The ship’s engine room had a
very different feel, being filmed in a real Budweiser factory in Van Nuys rather
than built from scratch in a studio. The film was shot on a variety of locations in
and around Los Angeles, but one of the main ones was the infamous Vasquez
Rocks formation featured in several episodes of The Original Series (‘Shore
Leave’, ‘Arena’, ‘The Alternative Factor’, ‘Friday’s Child’) as well as episodes
of The Next Generation, Voyager and Enterprise, and also Star Trek VI: The
Voyage Home. The jutting rock formation has become known as ‘Kirk’s Rock’,
thanks to this frequent use, and was featured in the movie as Spock’s home
planet of Vulcan.
Wrapping on the film, Abrams told Empire, ‘I’ve come to know these
characters through working on this movie, and I’ve come to understand what the
world of Star Trek is. It’s not so much that I feel that I’ve bought into a pre-
existing world as much as I’ve come to know and appreciate personalities and
history I didn’t even remember. The [TV] series just assumed you cared, but I
never felt that until now.’
Although originally intended for release on Christmas Day 2008, J. J.
Abrams’ Star Trek was delayed until 8 May 2009 as Paramount believed the
film would find a larger audience during the summer blockbuster season than the
Christmas holiday period. It was a reflection of the wider appeal the studio
executives believed Abrams and his team had brought to the reinvented Star
Trek.
The first public screening was a surprise sneak peek at the Alamo Drafthouse
theatre in Austin, Texas on 6 April 2009. Billed as a screening of Star Trek II:
The Wrath of Khan with a ten-minute preview of the new Star Trek movie, the
print of the earlier film appeared to melt after a few minutes, followed by an
appearance by Leonard Nimoy, who asked the audience if they wouldn’t rather
see the new Star Trek movie. The official premiere of the film took place at the
Sydney Opera House on 7 April. Following a request from astronaut Michael R.
Barrett, the movie was uploaded to the International Space Station for a
screening on 14 May.
Star Trek took $4 million at the US box office on its opening day, clocking up
a total opening weekend figure of $79.2 million in the US and another $35.5
million internationally. The film topped First Contact as the biggest opening
Star Trek movie and would go on to become the highest grossing Star Trek film
to that date, with an overall US box office take of $257.7 million (making it the
seventh highest grossing film of 2009 and beating The Voyage Home’s $109.7
million). International takings of $127.7 million brought the overall worldwide
total to $385.5 million.
The reviews for the new Star Trek movie were hugely positive, with the film
having largely succeeded in the tricky task of bringing a new audience to the
classic Star Trek characters of Kirk, Spock and McCoy, while also pleasing the
majority of the franchise’s long-term fans. Entertainment Weekly called J. J.
Abrams’ Star Trek ‘clever and infectious’, while the Boston Globe dubbed the
movie ‘ridiculously satisfying’. While most critics accepted the new film in the
style of a Hollywood summer blockbuster, the Chicago Sun-Times’ Roger Ebert
worried that Gene Roddenberry’s more thoughtful Star Trek had ‘been replaced
by stories reduced to loud and colourful action’. Some reviewers came to the
conclusion that this reintroduction to Star Trek lacked some of the ideas-driven
narratives that had frequently been featured in the best TV episodes and films in
Star Trek’s past. Many held out the hope that free of the need to relaunch the
concept, any sequel films would be better able to introduce an element of the
cerebral Star Trek so central to Gene Roddenberry’s original conception of the
show.
Among the strong points of J. J. Abrams’ Star Trek was the emotional core in
the relationship between Kirk and Spock. Kirk has a strong personal reason for
tackling Nero and his Romulan band: they were responsible for the death of his
father on the USS Kelvin. Having been born into conflict, Kirk has grown up
with a huge challenge hanging over him – could he ever live up to the example
set by his father? It’s what Pike uses to lure Kirk into signing up with Starfleet.
Of course, Nero’s presence in this universe is due to the activities of Spock
Prime in the original Star Trek universe.
Spock faces a similar series of emotional challenges. His home world is
attacked by Nero in revenge for Spock Prime’s failure. Attempting to rescue
several Vulcan leaders, Spock witnesses the death of his mother as the planet is
vaporised. As seen in the young Spock scenes, the Vulcan has long struggled
with his human emotions, so the loss of his human mother further complicates
his struggle between logic and emotion.
Kirk and Spock are connected by more than just being in Starfleet, and finding
themselves aboard the Enterprise at a moment of crisis. They’ve both lost
parents in violent incidents, and both parental deaths were caused by the same
antagonist: Nero. Spock’s role is to counterbalance Kirk’s rash nature and over-
emotional involvement in events, while Kirk’s passion serves to temper the
Vulcan’s cold logic and allows him to see the value of human feelings. It is only
through pushing Spock to display his anger that Kirk gains the captaincy of the
Enterprise at the crucial moment. It all faithfully harks back to the positioning of
the original characters in The Original Series along an emotional continuum.
Both characters have older mentors who guide them in their actions: Pike for
Kirk and Spock Prime for both Kirk and Spock – they are both essentially
surrogate parental figures. The third wheel – Dr McCoy – is an enabler for both
characters. It is McCoy who brings Kirk aboard the Enterprise, a ship he is not
supposed to be on, but it is also McCoy who challenges some of Kirk’s planned
actions.
These characters and the emotional connections between them were wrapped
up in a cracking plot that was simple for audiences to understand and engage
with, with a series of action set-pieces (the opening battle, an assault on a
drilling platform, an attack on Nero’s ship) that impressed more casual viewers.
While the movie set out to appeal to non-Star Trek fans, it was equally loaded
with touchstones that reached out to fans of all of Star Trek’s previous
incarnations. The use of Vasquez Rocks was a prominent visual shout-out to The
Original Series, but there were many more, covering much of the Star Trek
canon. During the opening bar fight, Kirk uses a bottle of Saurian Brandy as a
weapon. The Kobayashi Maru test sequence (lifted from Star Trek II: The Wrath
of Khan) sees Kirk eating an apple, something Shatner’s Kirk is seen doing in
The Wrath of Khan when he confesses how he beat the same test – although this
apparently came about as Pine simply happened to be eating the apple during a
break in filming. There are other Khan references, such as Spock quoting
Sherlock Holmes and Spock Prime telling Kirk he ‘has been and always shall
be’ his friend. Sulu was able to put his fencing training into practice during the
assault on the mining rig – he was also seen displaying his fencing skills in the
early Star Trek episode ‘The Naked Time’. The same sequence sees the
unfortunate Chief Engineer Olsen wear a red-tinged space suit, dooming him to
die during the fight (a necessary event, so Scotty can take over). A tribble even
turns up, purring contentedly in Scotty’s workshop. And there’s some love for
Porthos, Captain Archer’s dog in Enterprise, when Scotty references ‘Admiral
Archer’s beagle’ as an unfortunate victim of a transporter prank. By the film’s
finale, Pike is confined to a wheelchair; however, it is not as high-tech (nor is he
as disfigured) as his counterpart in the two-part The Original Series episode ‘The
Menagerie’. Most of these references would have been unnoticed by the majority
of casual viewers – many of whom were content with the big character moments
reinforcing the idea that this Kirk, Spock and McCoy were the same as those
they recalled. That audience was happy just to hear the well-worn catchphrases
and character comments, such as Scotty’s ‘I’m giving it all she’s got’, McCoy’s
‘I’m a doctor, not a physicist’ and his ‘Are you out of your Vulcan mind?’
However, for fans of the series, these little in-jokes and throwaway moments
showed a reverence (and knowledge) of the long-running Star Trek franchise on
the part of those who’d made the 2009 movie.
‘The themes that got me excited honestly had less to do with Star Trek and
space and more to do with optimism and humanity, of finding your purpose
through unity’, said Abrams of his first Star Trek film. ‘It ends up being a
guiding principle of the movie – it needed to be faithful to the optimism that
Gene Roddenberry wrote with during a time of fear and hate and suspicion. He
was writing of our future where we were not just surviving it, but by cooperating
and collaborating, we actually thrived. That to me is, more than ever, a relevant
idea.’
Given the huge box office numbers of Star Trek, a follow-up film was
inevitable. All the major cast members were already signed up for at least two
sequels, but given the triumphant reinvention of the whole Star Trek franchise, it
is possible there may be many more. The second movie was scripted during
2010–11, with shooting following towards the end of 2011. Release was set for
the summer of 2012. This Star Trek was set to go on for a while . . .

Former Deep Space Nine and Voyager writer Bryan Fuller had publicly talked
about his desire to bring Star Trek back to television since at least 2008. Fuller
followed his Star Trek experiences with his own series – Dead Like Me and
Pushing Daisies, and a role as consulting producer on Heroes – but felt that Star
Trek belonged on television, even with the J. J. Abrams film then entering
production. ‘I would love to return to the spirit of the old series’, Fuller told iF
Magazine. ‘[The later series] seem to have lost the 1960s fun and I would love to
take it back to its origin.’
Of course, that’s exactly the approach taken by Abrams with his movie,
although Fuller wanted to feature Men in Black II and Sin City actress (and well-
known Trekkie) Rosario Dawson as a lead in his proposed TV show. Even if he
might not be the one to do it, Fuller remained convinced that Star Trek would
eventually return once more to its natural home on television. ‘I think after the
second [ J. J. Abrams] Star Trek movie comes out, they will start to have serious
conversations again about a TV show. I think Star Trek always has a home on
television. It is the defining piece of science fiction for the United States, [as]
Doctor Who is for the UK. It’s all about the vision of the storyteller.’
Chapter 14
Legacy: Can Star Trek
Live Long and Prosper?
‘Why does Star Trek continue to survive, to touch people, to intrigue? One
of the major reasons is that Trek is a meritocracy. It doesn’t matter who or
what you are, your colour or race. None of that matters.’ Leonard Nimoy

Star Trek has been a pop cultural phenomenon for over forty-five years, given
new life by the huge success of the 2009 movie. That reinvention – and its
sequels – succeeded where the later television series had failed, by returning to
Star Trek’s iconic characters and thrilling storytelling.
Although the original show finished in 1969, the continual airing of episodes
in syndication and the reappearance of the original cast in movies meant that the
first incarnation of Star Trek was ever present. The new ensemble cast of
characters of The Next Generation had to establish themselves alongside the
originals for much of the time. It was only the later trio of spinoffs – Deep Space
Nine, Voyager and Enterprise – that were not overshadowed by the iconic
characters of Kirk, Spock and McCoy. That’s when the rot set in . . .
Star Trek had three hugely successful periods before its re -invention by J. J.
Abrams: The Original Series, the 1980s original cast movies and The Next
Generation. Ask the average television viewer who they remember from Star
Trek, and the answer will invariably be Kirk, Spock and McCoy, with a smaller
but significant number remembering the bald Captain Picard and Data, the
yellow-faced android – and even those two characters were arguably versions of
Kirk and Spock.
Gene Roddenberry developed all three successful incarnations, but many of
the best individual instalments of Star Trek came after he had stopped having
any creative involvement. The Original Series was his brainchild, seen in its
purest form in the failed pilot ‘The Cage’. This was Star Trek as the Great Bird
of the Galaxy saw it, unadulterated by the concerns of networks, sponsors or
fandom – yet it failed to sell. It was the more action-adventure based second
pilot – Roddenberry’s Star Trek filtered through writer Samuel A. Peeples – that
sold the series to NBC, launching the first flight of the Enterprise. And it was
only when other storytellers (like Fontana, Gerrold and Coon on The Original
Series) got their hands on Roddenberry’s Star Trek that the concept truly came
alive.
A decade after that show’s cancellation, when the storytellers had all but
departed the show, Roddenberry once again had the chance to realise his version
of Star Trek – this time for the big screen. The Motion Picture is a slow-moving,
lumbering film that dazzles with its visuals, but fails to engage on a human level
– ironic, given that the marketing slogan was ‘The human adventure is just
beginning’. But once again, the successful and satisfying original cast movies
only came after Roddenberry’s forced departure, involving Harve Bennett,
Nicholas Meyer and Leonard Nimoy in their creation: The Wrath of Khan, The
Search for Spock, The Voyage Home and The Undiscovered Country. The
movies that failed were The Motion Picture (under Roddenberry) and The Final
Frontier (largely the creation of Kirk actor William Shatner).
Finally, there was The Next Generation. Roddenberry’s new take on Star Trek
for the 1980s – in which he hoped to achieve a better representation of his
original intentions for the 1960s version – was most fully achieved during the
show’s rather inert, lacklustre and undramatic first season. The Next Generation
debuted in syndication and managed to survive due to a unique business
arrangement. In order to persuade the independent stations of the syndication
network across the United States to run The Next Generation, Paramount made
taking the new show a condition of renewing the right to rerun The Original
Series, Paramount’s ‘seventy-nine jewels’. Even in the late 1980s, the original
Star Trek was still a significant show for many stations. The deal guaranteed The
Next Generation a safe environment in which to debut. It is doubtful the series
would have survived its first rocky couple of seasons as a network show. But it
did survive – and outlived its creator – only to really flourish in the third year,
which culminated with the invasion of the Borg in ‘The Best of Both Worlds’.
That 1990 cliffhanger gave dramatic new life to Star Trek, although it is
arguable whether Roddenberry would have recognised that storytelling as true to
his perception of Star Trek. Yet, this two-parter is one of the series’ best
remembered, over two decades later, and one of scripted dramatic television’s
true events.
Gene Roddenberry failed to create anything as successful as Star Trek. He
spent much of the 1970s making one failed pilot TV movie after another and his
attempts to break into film were unsuccessful. His biggest post-Star Trek
television successes came with Andromeda and Earth: Final Conflict, shows
sold by Majel Barrett Roddenberry, using her husband’s name prominently, long
after his death. Roddenberry seemed more content as a figurehead for Star Trek
fandom, revelling in his Great Bird of the Galaxy status, promoting his own
myth and the legend of his creation of all-things Star Trek. Only much later did
it become clear that he was not above shamelessly exploiting those same fans (in
the 1960s and 1970s his Lincoln Enterprises sold copies of Star Trek scripts,
without authorisation from either the individual writers or Paramount). For a
man whose utopian vision of the future did not include cash, it was often money
that was his main motivation, not propagating a future-focused philosophy. ‘I
had to get some money from somewhere’, Roddenberry said of his claim to half
the royalties on sales of Stephen Whitfield’s 1968 The Making of Star Trek book
and Alexander Courage’s theme tune (to which Roddenberry wrote unneeded
lyrics). ‘I’m sure not going to get it from the profits of Star Trek!’ This Great
Bird had feet of clay.
Until the 2009 movie, nothing in Star Trek was ever again as successful as
The Next Generation. The Borg-based First Contact was a huge blockbuster, but
the other movies featuring The Next Generation cast failed to capture the same
energy and intensity. Deep Space Nine embarked on an interesting anti-Star Trek
experiment in hard-hitting storytelling and serialisation – and it succeeded,
especially when executive attention was elsewhere with the launch of Voyager.
The space station series was probably the furthest removed from Roddenberry’s
view of Star Trek, escaping quite decisively from Michael Piller’s concept of
‘Roddenberry’s box’ of storytelling limitations. Producer Rick Berman ensured
that Roddenberry’s utopian vision of the future was faithfully adhered to in all
the follow-up series, with both Deep Space Nine and Voyager faithfully
following The Original Series’ liberal humanist creed, featuring an African-
American and a woman as their leading characters. However, with Voyager (and
the final series, Enterprise), a step backwards was taken in an attempt to recreate
elements of The Original Series within the template of The Next Generation-
style Star Trek. Now the original cast was gone from cinemas, the new television
shows could cannibalise the past to recreate what had worked in terms of
characters and stories. Star Trek was continuing without the original icons of
Kirk, Spock and McCoy or Picard and Data, those that had successfully emerged
from The Next Generation into popular consciousness. The last years of Voyager
and Enterprise attempted to draw upon the past, without the character archetypes
that had captured the world’s imagination.
Star Trek could now be ruthlessly satirised due to its creative stagnation.
There had always been comedy skits and sketches making fun of Spock’s
pointed ears and the danger of donning a red shirt. However, 1999’s Galaxy
Quest was of a different order. This mainstream movie affectionately spoofed
the on-screen icons of Star Trek, the reported behind the scenes squabbles
among both cast members and fans, while also delivering a great comedy
science fiction adventure story in its own right. For this movie to succeed it
required the audience to be familiar with Star Trek’s image, but also for that
image to be fixed and unchanging. The failure to innovate within Star Trek itself
opened the door for Galaxy Quest to exist.
As the producer of Star Trek for eighteen years between 1987 and 2005, Rick
Berman used the term ‘franchise fatigue’ to describe what happened to Star Trek
after Deep Space Nine. That show had run in parallel with The Next Generation
and Voyager for its seven-year duration, meaning that there were always two
Star Trek shows on air between 1993 and 2001. That period also saw the release
of three big screen movies – Generations, First Contact and Insurrection – only
one of which was creatively successful. After Voyager, and with Enterprise in a
lacklustre second season, Nemesis made its abysmal debut at cinemas in 2002,
killing off the Star Trek movie franchise for seven years.
Berman saw the problem as simply too much Star Trek, with movies and
television shows exploring the same concepts and with similar characters
competing with each other. Not only was the new product saturating the market,
the old series and movies were widely available, first on VHS tape, then on
DVD, as well as in endless television reruns around the world. If current Star
Trek wasn’t to your liking, then your favourite show or movie from the series’
long history was easily available to you at the flick of a switch.
That issue may have been a factor, but there is no denying that Star Trek had
become trapped within a static formula: its later years were missing characters
that audiences could believe in and storytelling they found accessible. Berman
and his various creative teams were struggling with how to create not only new
science fiction television shows, but also new Star Trek, with all that the concept
implied.
With the end of the original cast movies and the arrival of the Borg, The Next
Generation had finally found itself and successfully created a new way of telling
Star Trek stories that succeeded with a mass television audience. After that, it
was a case of rapidly diminishing returns. Each new series would debut to huge
viewing figures as a curious public were seduced into checking out what the
latest version of Star Trek was like. They then discovered each show and its new
characters simply didn’t match up with their vivid memories of the originals or
The Next Generation. Without exception, every series after The Next Generation
suffered a catastrophic fall in viewing figures across each full run, culminating
in the ignominy of cancellation for Enterprise in 2005. The franchise had turned
inwards and begun to service only the die-hard fans – often with very well-told
stories – but it failed to reach beyond the fan base. Each subsequent series
featured either characters from The Original Series or The Next Generation in an
attempt to bring back the mass audience and appeal to fans of those individual
shows. The Next Generation’s Worf became a regular on the later seasons of
Deep Space Nine, while the Borg (and even Sulu) appeared on Voyager, and
Enterprise fell back on regular appearances by Klingons and Vulcans (and even
controversially concluded with a story built around The Next Generation’s Riker
and Troi).
Television science fiction had changed in the 1990s, following the success of
The Next Generation. The show had opened the doors to a new breed of darker
science fiction and fantasy shows such as The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
Babylon 5, Farscape, Stargate SG-1 (and its spinoffs, Atlantis and Universe),
Firefly and Battlestar Galactica. Many of these shows successfully reacted
against the edicts of Star Trek storytelling (in the way that Deep Space Nine had
attempted) and fitted much better with television in the 1990s and 2000s when
stories became darker and serial television was much more willing to deal in
long-running story arcs. Characters would change and develop, often in dramatic
ways. Star Trek told great stories, but apart from in Deep Space Nine, few of the
long-running characters were very different at the end of a series than they had
been at the beginning. The result was that the later Star Trek shows – especially
Voyager and Enterprise – began to look old-fashioned, like something from the
1960s, in fact. That echoing of the past may have worked well for fans in the
final season of Enterprise (showrunner Manny Coto said he felt the fans were all
that was left watching, so why not cater to them?), but it failed to engage the
mass audience needed to keep such an expensive show on network television.
Without the archetypal characters they remembered, and with many other better
choices available, audiences began to desert new Star Trek.
Once seen as the saviour of Star Trek, Rick Berman was – by the time of the
cancellation of Enterprise – enemy number one to fans. The perception was he’d
destroyed the franchise he’d done so much to create and shepherd – after all,
eighteen years of continuous television production of very complicated shows is
not to be discounted. He seemed to believe that serving up more of the same,
sometimes modelled on the character dynamics and dramatic situations from The
Original Series, would be enough to see the lucrative franchise continue.
Berman was wrong, and by 2005 Star Trek on both the big and small screens
was dead, slowly strangled by a failing formula and killed by creative
complacency. The Star Trek franchise had simply not adapted – Borg-like – to
the twenty-first-century television environment, and so it ultimately failed.
There was one lesson to be learned from all this: Star Trek worked as an
event. The Next Generation had succeeded as a series with mass appeal, drawing
an average of 10–11 million viewers per season, but none of the other series
enjoyed the same success. Yet, each had begun with massive viewing figures.
Deep Space Nine had drawn almost 12 million viewers to its spectacular debut
episode, but had ended its seven-year run with less than 4.5 million watching
regularly. Similarly, Voyager had begun with around 8 million but concluded its
seven years on air with fewer than 3.5 million tuning in to see if the ship got
home or not. Enterprise had an even better start, surpassing Deep Space Nine
numbers with around 12.5 million, such was the attraction of a Star Trek
prequel. The show was cancelled, however, because those bothering with the
adventures of Captain Archer and crew had collapsed to a low of 2.5 million.
Those ‘first nights’ demonstrated one thing – a mass audience would come to
new Star Trek as a one-off event, but only a core of dedicated fans and other
open-minded casual viewers of around 3 to 4 million would stick with an
ongoing TV series.
That’s why J. J. Abrams’ dramatic back to basics reinvention of Star Trek in
2009 was a movie that celebrated the iconic ori -ginal triumvirate and the rest of
the original Enterprise crew. To the mass audience, these lovingly remembered
characters were Star Trek, and that’s why the movie was a huge success.

There is no doubt that Star Trek has been influential beyond just television and
movies. Nichelle Nichols tells a famous story of how she was persuaded to stick
with the show when Dr Martin Luther King Jr explained how important her
appearance on mainstream television was. ‘You changed the face of television
for ever’, he told her, ‘you are a role model for everyone’. Star Trek’s racial
diversity and (mostly) positive depictions of women in important roles of
responsibility was part of the show’s positive view of the future.
The technology of Star Trek has led to the look and feel of many of today’s
gadgets, used daily by millions of people. The incredibly popular Apple iPhones
and iPads bear more than a passing resemblance to Star Trek’s communicator
and The Next Generation’s PADD (Personal Access Display Device). Kirk and
many of the crew of the first Enterprise were often seen using small hand-held
computing devices. Similarly, Bluetooth in-ear phones match with Uhura’s oft-
mocked communication device. Five years after the show was cancelled, Ed
Roberts launched the build-it-yourself Altair 8800 computer, named after a
galaxy featured on Star Trek (and its progenitor, Forbidden Planet). That
machine in turn inspired Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak to improve upon
Roberts’ innovation with their own Apple computer, launching a computing
empire that led to the iPhone and iPad.
The Original Series featured other devices that have since become reality.
Tricorders – portable scanning devices that assess the local environment – don’t
quite exist in that form, but many personal phones are now mini-computers,
which through GPS technology can provide information on nearby shops,
museums or other attractions. The medical tricorder and sick bay monitors are
much closer to reality with the rapid development of medical technology, to the
extent that a modern ER can be a very high-tech place. Even more extreme
technology, such as tractor beams, the holodeck, warp speed and deflector
shields, are seen now as less like science fiction and more realistic in the future
due to advances in the understanding of quantum physics. Work in the robotics
and artificial intelligence fields is moving closer to a Data-style android.
While Star Trek itself was inspired by the 1960s space race between the
United States and the Soviet Union – it was the reason NBC decided to go with
the show – many modern scientists have in turn been inspired by Star Trek to go
into science. One such was the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Steve Matousek,
who was involved in the 1990s Mars Pathfinder mission, among others. ‘Star
Trek gives you a way to see ahead, to look into the future’, he told Jeff
Greenwald in Future Perfect. ‘I wanted to be an aerospace engineer because I
knew that they were the ones that designed the things that went out into space.’
Of the 6,000 who worked at JPL, Matousek estimated that up to 75 per cent had
been inspired by Star Trek. In 1996, physicist Lawrence Krauss wrote an entire
book devoted to the science of Star Trek and its real-world impact in The
Physics of Star Trek. The first NASA prototype space shuttle – which
unfortunately never journeyed to space – had even been named Enterprise,
thanks to fan pressure.
While waiting for scientists to invent the future, most fans thought the only
way they’d ever get to live the Star Trek experience would be to visit the studio
sets at Paramount in Los Angeles where the episodes were made. Indeed many
fan-journalists, a few privileged guests and a handful of competition winners got
to do just that. Even so, many fans did get a chance to experience a little of the
twenty-third and twenty-fourth centuries, Star Trek-style. Interactive exhibitions,
including recreations of the Enterprise bridge, props and costumes, toured the
world, touching down in Edinburgh, Berlin, and the Science Museum and Hyde
Park in London. A more extensive venue was the Star Trek Experience, located
in the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel for a decade between 1998 and 2008. This
provided a much more immersive encounter, allowing fans to fully enjoy as
much of Star Trek’s visionary future as could be recreated here on Earth. A
steady stream of spinoff novels and a variety of computer games fed fans’
imagination and participation in the worlds of Star Trek.
Star Trek has been a pervasive part of the cultural environment worldwide for
over forty-five years. It has developed and changed, prospered and failed and
become part of the identity of millions of people. The return of the archetypal
Star Trek trio of Kirk, Spock and McCoy has given the concept new life in new
stories on the big screen. Star Trek has always prospered when true storytellers
have been able to make the series their own. Now, a new generation of
storytellers is charged with re -vitalising the series’ iconic characters and
ensuring that Star Trek will truly ‘live long and prosper’.
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Additional resources

All the Star Trek TV series and movies, from The Original Series to 2009’s Star
Trek are available on DVD (and increasingly on Blu-ray).

Online episode guides are available at fan site Memory Alpha (www.memory-
alpha.org) and the official site www.startrek. com
An invaluable resource – and highly recommended – is the official Star Trek
Magazine, edited by Paul Simpson (titanmagazines.com/t/startrek/)
Index
Abel (Robert) and Associates 102
Abraham, F. Murray 162
Abrams, J. J. 246, 253–61, 264
Academy Awards 167
Adam, Ken 87
Agutter, Jenny 134
Alexander, Larry 95
Allen, Irwin 15
Altman, Mark 132
Ambrose, David 95
Anderson, Darrell 25
Anderson, Poul 17, 54
April, Robert (character) 26, 83
Archer, Captain (character) 212
Armen, Margaret 94
Arnold, Richard 250
artificial intelligence 64–5
Asimov, Isaac 2, 3, 60, 121, 176
Auberjonois, Rene 174, 175

Babylon 5 (TV series) 169–70

Bach, Richard 94
Bachau, Patrick 133
Baird, Stuart 164, 165, 166–7
Bakula, Scott 212
Ball, Lucille 16, 49
Bana, Eric 258
Bar-David, S. (Schimon Wincelberg) 44, 94
Barrett, Majel see Roddenberry
Barrett, Michael R. 261
Barrett, Rona 98
Behr, Ira Steven 139, 168, 175–7, 180
Beltran, Robert 194, 197–8, 206, 207
Bennett, Harve 85, 105–7, 111–17, 119, 123, 127, 170, 252
Berle, Milton 229
Berman, Gail 248, 249, 252–3
Berman, Rick 168, 188, 223–4, 272
Star Trek: The Beginning (proposed film) 247, 248
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 169, 170, 171–2, 176
Star Trek: Enterprise 209–210, 211–12, 219, 220
Star Trek: First Contact 155–6
Star Trek: Generations 149, 150, 151, 152
Star Trek: Insurrection 159–61, 162
Star Trek: Nemesis 163–4, 166
Star Trek: The Next Generation 131, 132, 133, 134, 136, 139
 Star Trek: Voyager 191, 192, 193, 194, 198, 208
Bester, Alfred 3
Biller, Kenneth 201–2
Billingsley, John 213
Bissell, Whit 10
Bixby, Jerome 4, 40, 229–30
Black, John D. F. 42, 48, 86
Blalock, Jolene 212, 221
Blish, James 2, 3
Bloch, Robert 17, 40, 54
Bluhdorn, Charles 105
Bonta, Vanna 235–6
Boone, Richard 10
Borg 143, 201–6
Bormanis, Andre 239
box office earnings
Star Trek (film, 2009) 261
Star Trek: First Contact 158
Star Trek: Generations 154
Star Trek: Insurrection 163
Star Trek: The Motion Picture 103
Star Trek: Nemesis 166
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan 110
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock 114
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home 118
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier 122
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country 125
Boyce, Phillip (character) 28–9
Bradbury, Ray 127
Bradley, Truman 4
Braga, Brannon 159, 189
Star Trek: Enterprise 210, 211, 219, 220–21, 222, 224
Star Trek: First Contact 155–7
Star Trek: Generations 149–50, 153–4
Star Trek: The Next Generation 140, 233, 234–5
Star Trek: Voyager 192, 198, 199, 200–201, 202
Bridges, Lloyd 34
Brooks, Avery 172, 173
Bryant, Chris 87
Bujold, Genevieve 193–4
Burnett, Robert Meyer 242
Burton, LeVar 134, 166, 173

‘Cage, The’ (pilot episode) 19, 20–32, 49–50

campaigns (fans) 53–4, 60, 107
Campbell, Bill 134
Campbell, John W. 2, 62
Carabatsos, Steven W. 41
Carson, David 151, 168
casting see individual headings for series or films
catchphrases 37–8
Chambliss, Scott 259
Chao, Rosalind 134
Chapman, Mark Lindsay 135
characters
see also individual headings for characters, series or films
catchphrases 37–8
core triumvirate 36–8, 114, 254–5
homosexual 183–9
Chekov, Pavel (character) 59–60, 81, 152
Cho, John 258
Christensen, Don 81
‘City on the Edge of Forever, The’ (episode) 55–9
Clarke, Arthur C. 2, 3, 121
Cochrane, Zefram (character) 157–8
Cold War 66–8, 123
Combs, Jeffrey 223
Comerford, Sherna 78
computers 64–5
conventions 76–8
Coogan, Richard 3
Coon, Gene L. 42–3, 55, 57, 67, 70, 84, 228–9, 230
Corbett, Glenn 157
Cord, Alex 84
costumes 25
Coto, Manny 216, 218, 219, 222–3, 238, 239
Courage, Alexander 47, 269
critical reaction
Star Trek (film, 2009) 261–2
Star Trek: The Animated Series 83
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 182
Star Trek: Enterprise 221
Star Trek: First Contact 158–9
Star Trek: Generations 154
Star Trek: Insurrection 162–3
Star Trek: The Motion Picture 102–3
Star Trek: The Original Series 49
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan 110–111
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock 114–15
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home 119
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier 122
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country 125
Cromwell, James 158
Crosby, Denise 134
Crusher, Beverly (character) 134, 139, 141
Crusher, Wesley (character) 131, 134, 141

Damon, Matt 257

‘Darmok’ (episode) 144
Data (character) 131, 135, 139, 141, 165
Dawson, Rosario 265
Dawson, Roxann 194
de Lancie, John 136–7, 234
Decker, Will (character) 90, 97
del Ray, Lester 54
DeLine, Donald 248
Denby, David 103
‘Devil in the Dark, The’ (episode) 70–71
Dick, Philip K. 2
Diller, Barry 85, 104–5, 116
diplomacy 69–70, 142
Doctor Who franchise 250
Dolinsky, Meyer 229
Doohan, James 81
‘Scotty’ (character) 37, 46, 81, 140, 152
Dorn, Michael, Worf (character) 132, 134, 139, 142, 152, 168
Duncan, Michael Clarke 173
Dunn, Michael 28

Ebert, Roger 102, 111, 115, 122, 154, 158–9, 162, 261
Echevarria, René 233, 234, 236
Eisner, Michael 85, 91, 92, 97, 104–5, 113, 116
Ellison, Harlan 2, 18, 40, 53–4, 55–9, 86–7, 227
‘Encounter at Farpoint’ (pilot episode) 136–7
‘Endgame’ (episode) 204–6
Engel, Joel 138
Enterprise (starship) 24–5, 111, 113, 135, 259–60
EnterpriseD (starship) 153
environmental themes 115, 118, 236
‘Errand of Mercy’ (episode) 69

Fadil, Siddig El 174

fans 48–9, 74, 76–9, 274–5 campaigns 53–4, 60, 107
fanzines 78–9
Farmer, Philip José 54, 228
Farrell, Terry 174
Felton, Norman 11, 12, 15
Ferengi 143, 181–2
Fields, Peter Allan 176
Flinn, Denny Martin 124
Fontana, D. C. 84, 101, 182
Star Trek: The Animated Series 80, 82
Star Trek: The Next Generation 130, 132, 136, 137, 138
Star Trek: The Original Series 41, 43, 44, 57–8, 231
Forbes, Michelle 172
Forbidden Planet (film) 5–6
Foster, Alan Dean 91
Foxworth, Robert 85
Frakes, Jonathan 134, 148, 157, 162, 164
William Riker character 133–4, 141, 147, 152, 186, 219, 221, 240
Freiberger, Fred 61, 62
Fuller, Bryan 264–5
future series 264–5

Galaxy Quest (film) 269–70

Gautreaux, David 96
Geller, Bruce 10
Genesis II (pilot script) 84
Gernsback, Hugo 2
Gerrold, David 80, 82, 93, 130, 131, 137, 187, 226–7, 232
Glenn, John 14
God-like beings (theme) 65–6, 119–20
Goldberg, Whoopi 139, 152, 173
Goldstone, James 35
Goodwin, Robert H. 89
Graves, Peter 26–7
Gross, Edward 132
Guinan (character) 139, 152–3
Gunn, James 229

Hall, Kevin Peter 134, 135

Hanna Barbera 79
Hardy, Tom 164
Harmon, David P. 230
Harris, Alf 94
Hemsworth, Chris 257
Herbert, Frank 2, 54
Holman, Rex 28
homosexuality 183–9
Hopper, Dennis 13
Hoyt, John 29
Hunter, Jeffrey 26, 33–4
Hurley, Maurice 131, 139, 149

‘In Thy Image’ (storyline) 91, 93, 97–8, 101

Janeway, Kathryn (character) see Mulgrew, Kate

Jefferies, Walter ‘Matt’ 24–5, 89
Jendresen, Erik 247–8
Jennings, Joe 89
Johnson, George Clayton 18, 40, 230
Justman, Robert 78
pilot episodes 21, 31, 34
Star Trek: The Next Generation 130, 131–2, 133, 135
Star Trek: The Original Series 47–8, 55–8, 231
Kandel, Stephen 33, 80
Katzenberg, Jeffrey 91, 104–5, 116, 117
Kaufman, Philip 87, 88
Keating, Dominic 189, 213
Kelley, DeForest 10, 28–9, 124, 255
Dr McCoy character 36–8, 46, 81, 113, 114, 120, 140, 151–2, 232, 254
Kemmer, Ed 3, 27
Kenney, Sean 49
Khambata, Persis 97
King, Martin Luther, Jr 273
King, Stephen 87, 186, 245
Kirk, James T. (character) 34
see also Shatner, William
in core triumvirate 36–8, 114, 254–5
death 153
relationship with Spock 59, 184, 262–3
Star Trek (film, 2009) 257–8, 262–3
Star Trek: Generations 151, 152–3
‘Kitumba’ (storyline) 96
Kline, Bob 81
Knight, Damon 2, 3
Koenig, Walter 59, 81, 82, 93, 152
Kogan, Jacob 257
Koontz, Dean 245
Kornbluth, Cyril 3
Kotto, Yaphet 133
Krauss, Lawrence 274
Krige, Alice 158, 205
Krikes, Peter 117
Kulik, Buzz 12
Kurtzman, Alex 246, 253, 254–6

La Forge, Geordi (character) 134, 141

‘Landru’s Paradise’ (pilot episode) 20
Lang, Fritz 5
Langsam, Devra 78
Lansford, William 94
Larson, Glen A. 75, 127
Lenard, Mark 44, 67, 140
‘Let That Be Your Last Battlefield’ (episode) 70
Lewis, Arthur Bernard 94
Lien, Jennifer 194 Lieutenant, The (TV series) 11–14
Livingston, Harold 89, 90, 93, 94, 97, 98, 101
Lloyd, Christopher 113
Lockwood, Gary 12, 34
Logan, John 164, 165
Logan, Michael 173
Loughery, David 120
Lucas, George 75, 109, 251
Lucas, John Meredyth 96, 231–2

McCluggage, Kerry 212

McCoy, Dr (character) 258
for main entry see Kelley, DeForest
McCoy, Joanna (undeveloped character) 231
McDowell, Malcolm 152, 153
McFadden, Cheryl 134
McFarland, Melanie 221
McFarlane, Seth 73, 146
Macht, Stephen 133
McNeill, Robert Duncan 194, 199
McQuarrie, Christopher 242
McQuarrie, Ralph 87
magazines (fanzines) 78–9
Maizlish, Leonard 121, 137
Mancuso, Frank 116, 118–19
Mangels, Andy 80, 223
Martin, Michael A. 223
Maslin, Janet 154
Matheson, Richard 17, 39, 43, 54
Matousek, Steve 274
Meaney, Colm 168
Meerson, Steve 117
Melchior, Ib 4
Méliès, Georges 4–5
‘Menagerie, The’ (episode) 49–50
Menyuk, Eric 135
Menzies, James 94
Meyer, Nicholas 99, 107–110, 112, 117–18, 123–4, 167
Mifune, Toshiro 88
Milkis, Edward K. 130
Mirabello, Doug 248
‘Mirror, Mirror’ (episode) 68–9
mirror universe 68–9, 180–81, 217, 238–9
Montalban, Ricardo 106
Montgomery, Anthony 213, 221
Moore, Ronald D. 149–50, 155–6, 159, 168, 183, 188, 208, 233, 235, 236, 237, 241, 245
moral ambiguity 178–80
Muldaur, Diana 139
Mulgrew, Kate 188
Kathryn Janeway character 193, 197–8
Muñoz, José 248
Munsey, Frank 2
Murphy, Ben 133
Murphy, Donna 162
Murphy, Eddie 117

Nazism 68
Neuman, E. Jack 9
newsletters (fans) 78–9
Nichols, Nichelle 13
Nyota Uhura character 37, 46, 51, 81, 151–2, 232, 273
Nickson, Julia 134
Nimoy, Leonard 266
see also Spock, Mr
mixed feelings about Spock character 19, 52, 103, 112
other acting roles 10, 28, 85, 255
pilot episodes 27–8
and Spock’s death 107, 110, 111–12
and Spock’s resurrection 112
Star Trek (film, 2009) 255
Star Trek: The Animated Series 81
Star Trek: Generations approach 151
Star Trek: The Motion Picture 101, 103
Star Trek: The Next Generation 129, 140
Star Trek: The Original Series 46
Star Trek: Phase II 90
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan 107, 110, 111–12
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (director) 112–13
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (director) 115–18
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier 120
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country 123, 124
Niven, Larry 222–3, 230–1
Nolan, William 18
Number One (character) 27, 34
O’Gorman, Michael 133
Oliver, Susan 29
Orci, Roberto 246, 253, 254–6
Oswald, Gerd 233

parallel worlds concept 40–1

Park, Linda 212, 238
Parker, William H. 9
Peeples, Samuel A. 17, 19–20, 33–4, 35, 80, 84–5
Pegg, Simon 258
Petrie, Daniel, Jr 117
Phillips, Ethan 158, 194
Phillips, Fred 38
Picard, Jean-Luc (character) see Stewart, Patrick Picardo, Robert 158, 194
Pike, Christopher (character) 26–7, 33–4
Piller, Michael 131, 139, 159–62, 169, 175, 186, 192, 194–5, 198, 233, 235
pilot episodes 19–35
‘Cage, The’ 19, 20–32, 49–50
‘Encounter at Farpoint’ 136–7
‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’ 19–20, 33–5
pilot scripts 84–5
Pine, Chris 257–8
Planet Earth (pilot script) 84
Planet of the Titans 87–8
politics 68–9, 123, 143, 215
Povill, Jon 86, 90, 95, 98, 100
prejudice 70–1, 142–3, 232
prequels 251–2
see also Star Trek: Enterprise
Prescott, Norm 81
Pulaski, Katherine (character) 139

Q (character) 136–7, 234–5

Questor (pilot script) 84–5
Questor Tapes, The (pilot script) 85
Quinto, Zachary 257

racism 70–1, 232

Raimi, Sam 259
Rand, Janice (character) 46
Redstone, Sumner 241
Reeves-Stevens, Garfield 238, 241
Reeves-Stevens, Judith 238, 241
Reisman, Del 13
Rexroat, Eileen (married name Roddenberry) 8, 21, 75
Riker, William (character) see Frakes, Jonathan
Robert Abel and Associates 102
Roberts, Ed 273
Robinson, Andrew 178
Roddenberry, Eileen (née Rexroat) 8, 21, 75
Roddenberry, Gene ix, 1, 36
affairs and marriages 8, 12, 13, 21, 75
attitude to homosexuality 184
attitude to women 71
birth of Star Trek 14–18
character 137–8, 268–9
death 125
early life 7–9
and fans 48–9, 53–4, 60, 74, 77–8
Great Bird of the Galaxy title 77–8
influences 5–6, 17
other writing work 9–14, 74–5, 84–5, 268
pilot episodes 19–35
rights to Star Trek 75
social and contemporary themes in Star Trek see themes
Star Trek: The Animated Series 80, 82
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 171, 182
Star Trek: The Motion Picture 85–6, 93, 97, 105
Star Trek: The Next Generation 127–34, 136–8, 234
Star Trek: The Original Series 38–45, 47–9, 53–4, 55–8, 60–2, 227–8
Star Trek: Phase II 89, 93, 96, 98
 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan 105–6, 107
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock 111, 114
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier 120–1
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country 124
Roddenberry, Majel (née Barrett) 12, 21, 28, 75, 84, 268
actress 27, 31, 34, 77, 81
Rolfe, Sam 10
Ross, Herbert 107
Rossi, David 248
Rush, Marvin 185–6
Russ, Tim 134, 194
Ryan, Jeri 194, 203

Sadler, William 179

Saldana, Zoe 258
Savage, John 196
Saxon, John 84
Schallert, William 10
Scheimer, Lou 79–82, 83–4
Schneider, Paul 44
Schultz, Dwight 158
Schwimmer, Alden 14, 15, 16, 32
science fiction 1–6, 15, 127
Scott, Allan 87
Scott, Montgomery ‘Scotty’ (character)
see Doohan, James
Serling, Rod 15
Seven of Nine (character) 203
Shatner, William 225
see also Kirk, James T.
desire to direct 112, 113
pilot episodes 27, 34
series and story ideas 232, 238–9, 241
Star Trek: The Animated Series 81
Star Trek: Generations 152, 153
Star Trek: The Motion Picture 87, 93, 103
Star Trek: The Original Series 46, 232
Star Trek: Phase II 90
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan 109
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock 113
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home 116, 117
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (director) 119–22
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country 124
Sheckley, Robert 3, 230
Shelley, Mary 1
Shimerman, Armin 174
Siddig, Alexander 174
Silverberg, Robert 86
Singer, Bryan 241–2
Sirtis, Marina 134, 166–7
Deanna Troi character 131, 134, 142, 145, 147, 152
Sisko, Benjamin (character) 172, 173
Smith, E. E. ‘Doc’ 2, 17
Sohl, Jerry 18, 40
Solow, Herb 5, 16–17, 18, 21, 31, 75, 78
Sowards, Jack B. 106
space race 14–15
‘Space Seed’ (episode) 106
special effects 25, 109–110
Spectre (pilot script) 84
Spielberg, Steven 88, 251
Spiner, Brent 135, 164, 165
Spinrad, Norman 40, 93–4, 228–9
Spock, Mr (character)
see also Nimoy, Leonard
character 50–52, 65
in core triumvirate 36–8, 114, 254–5
death 106–7, 110, 111–12
pilot episodes 27–8, 31, 33, 34–5
relationship with Kirk 59, 184, 262–3
resurrection 112–13
Star Trek (film, 2009) 255, 257, 262–3
Star Trek: The Next Generation 140, 141
Star Trek: The Original Series 43–4, 47, 50–2
Star Trek (entire franchise)
beginnings 14–18
influence of 273–4
summarized 266–73
Star Trek (film, 2009) 252–65
casting 256–8
core triumvirate of characters 254–5
critical reaction 261–2
earnings 261
sequels 264
shooting 259–60
Star Trek references 263–4
storyline 255–6, 258–9, 263–4
Star Trek: The Academy (proposed series) 241
Star Trek: The Animated Series (TV series) 79–84
Star Trek: The Beginning (proposed film) 247–8
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (TV series) 168–90
and Babylon 5 169–70
casting 173–4
critical reaction 182
depiction of homosexuality 183, 187–8
storylines 170–3, 174–82, 199–200
themes 177–81
unused material 236–7
Star Trek: Enterprise (TV series) 209–224
 see also prequels
cancellation 218, 224
characters 212–13
critical reaction 221
final episode 218–21
shortcomings 221–2
storylines 210–212, 213–18
unused material 222–3, 238–9
Star Trek: Federation (proposed series) 241–2
Star Trek: Final Frontier (proposed series) 248–9
Star Trek: First Contact (film) 155–9
casting 157–8
critical reaction 158–9
earnings 158
storyline 155–7
Star Trek: Generations (film) 148–54
critical reaction 154
earnings 154
storyline 149–51, 152–3
Star Trek: Insurrection (film) 159–63
critical reaction 162–3
earnings 163
storyline 160–2
Star Trek: The Motion Picture (film) 92, 99–104
cost 100
critical reaction 102–3
Director’s Cut 104
earnings 103
ideas for 85–8
‘In Thy Image’ storyline 91, 93, 97–8, 101
shooting 101–2
Star Trek: Nemesis (film) 163–7
earnings 166
storyline 164–5
Star Trek: The Next Generation (TV series) 126–47
casting 132–5
characters 130–2, 138–9, 141–2, 145–7
depiction of homosexuality 185–7
ideas for 130–2, 136
pilot episode 136–7
syndication 130
themes 142–5
unused material 233–6
Star Trek: The Original Series (TV series) 36–71
cancellation 62–3
first season 36–59
casting 46–7
‘City on the Edge of Forever, The’ (episode) 55–9
critical reaction 49
fans 48–9, 53–4
 opening narration 47–8
parallel worlds concept 40–1
shooting 45–6
viewing figures 53
writing 38–40, 41–5
pilot episodes 19–35
‘Cage, The’ 19, 20–32, 49–50
casting 26–9, 33–5
‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’ 19–20, 33–5
rights 75
second season 54, 59–60
social and contemporary themes see themes
syndication 75–6
third season 60–3
unused material 225–33
Star Trek: Phase II (proposed series) 89–98
abandonment 98
script ideas 90–1, 93–6
Star Trek: Re-boot the Universe (proposed series) 243–6
Star Trek: Voyager (TV series) 191–208
Borg-centric episodes 201–6
casting 193–4
shortcomings 195–6, 206–8
storylines 192–3, 194–9, 200–206
unused material 236–8
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (film) 104–111
ageing cast 108–9
critical reaction 110–111
death of Spock 106–7, 110, 111–12
earnings 110
special effects 109–110
storyline 106–9
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (film) 111–15
critical reaction 114–15
earnings 114
storyline 111–12, 113–14
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (film) 115–19
critical reaction 119
earnings 118
ideas and storyline 115–18
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (film) 119–22
critical reaction 122
earnings 122
storyline 119–21
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (film) 122–5
critical reaction 125
earnings 125
storyline 123–4
Star Wars franchise 88, 250, 251
Steele, Dawn 116
Stewart, Patrick 71, 164, 188
Jean-Luc Picard character 126, 133, 141, 145–6, 148–9, 151, 161, 174
Straczynski, J. Michael 169, 242–6
Strangis, Gregory 129–30, 132, 233–4
Sturgeon, Theodore 17, 40, 44, 54, 93, 96, 228, 229
Sulu (character) see Takei, George
Sussman, Mike 238–9
Sutherland, Hal 81

Takei, George 182, 189, 200

Sulu character 46, 81, 151–2, 170, 200–201, 258
Tanen, Ned 116
Taylor, Jeri 140, 186, 192, 193, 195, 198–9, 234–5, 237
Taylor, Michael 178
technology, Star Trek’s influence on 273–4
terrorism 215, 218
Theiss, William Ware 25, 90
Thomas, Frankie, Jr 3
Thompson, Susanna 204
Thorne, Worley 95–6
‘Threshold’ (episode) 198–9
Todd, Tony 173
Tors, Ivan 4
Tribunes, The (pilot script) 84–5
Trimble, Betty Joanne (‘Bjo’) 53, 182
Trimble, John 53
Trinneer, Connor 212, 221, 238
Troi, Deanna (character) see Sirtis,
Marina
Trumbull, Douglas 102

Uhura, Nyota (character) see Nichols,

Nichelle
unused material 225–49
Star Trek: The Beginning (proposed film) 247–8
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 236–7
Star Trek: Enterprise 222–3, 238–9
Star Trek: The Next Generation 233–6
Star Trek: The Original Series 225–33
Star Trek: Voyager 236–8
unmade series ideas 89–98, 240–46, 248–9
Urban, Karl 258

Vadim, Roger 74
Van Hise, James 233
van Vogt, A. E. 2, 39–40, 54, 227–8
Verne, Jules 1
Vietnam War 66–8, 69
Visitor, Nana 172
Vulcans 214

Wang, Garrett 194

warfare 66–8, 177–8, 182
Warner, David 123
Warren, Diane 209
Watson, Russell 209
Weller, Peter 239
Wells, H.G. 1
Wheaton, Wil 134
‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’ (pilot episode) 19–20, 33–5
Whitfield, Stephen 78, 268
Whitney, Grace Lee 46
Wincelberg, Schimon (S. Bar-David) 44, 94
Winfield, Paul 144
Winston, Matt 214
Wise, Robert 100–101, 102, 104
Wolfe, Robert Hewitt 175–6
women, contradictory attitudes to 71–3 ‘Women, The’ (pilot episode) 20
Woodard, Alfre 158
Worf (character) see Dorn,
Michael Wozniak, Steve 273

Xon (character) 90, 96, 101

Yar, Tasha (character) 134, 139

Yelchin, Anton 258

Zabel, Bryce 243–6

Zahn, Timothy 250
Zerbe, Anthony 162
Zimmerman, Herman 157