The Unauthorized History of Trek

Voyager

THE UNAUTHORIZED

HISTORY OF

TREK

JAMES VAN HISE

COPYRIGHT

Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek Deep Space Nine are registered trademarks of Paramount Pictures Corporation. This book was not prepared, approved, licensed or endorsed by any entity involved in creating or producing the Star Trek television series or films.

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Copyright © 1991, 1995 Pioneer Books, Inc.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780006482925

Ebook Edition © December 2016 ISBN: 9780008240257

Version: 2017-01-05

A TREK THROUGH HISTORY

This unauthorized history of Star Trek is the complete and inspirational chronicle of a legend from its original conception to its phenomenal effect on millions of viewers across the world. America’s leading science fiction television historian JAMES VAN HISE takes you where no Trek fan has ever gone before—from the meeting in which Gene Roddenberry first pitched his idea for the Star Trek series to the lean years when die-hard fans kept the show alive to the continuing sequence of successful feature films and new television series which have secured Star Trek’s enduring importance in popular culture, and in our lives. The origins of the series are revealed through in-depth interviews with the original cast and creative staff, offering not only a wealth of Trek trivia but speculations as to what the future may hold.

Here are the facts behind the science fiction, the historical journey that goes beyond what you can see on the screen and covers three decades of voyage and on-going discover.

CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

FOREWORD

GENE RODDENBERRY (1921–1991)

INTRODUCTION

A PHENOMENON UNEXCELLED

CHAPTER ONE

A DREAM IN THE MAKING:

A brush with death alters Gene Roddenberry’s career choices and leads him to Hollywood, where he creates Star Trek.

CHAPTER TWO

A NEAR MISS AND A SOLID HIT:

NBC loves “The Cage” but wants Roddenberry to produce a second pilot.

CHAPTER THREE

ONWARD TO THE STARS, WITH HOPE (THE FIRST SEASON):

Star Trek makes stars of William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy as the series is launched successfully, albeit with some trepidation.

CHAPTER FOUR

STEADY AS SHE GOES (THE SECOND SEASON):

The strong scripts in the second season aren’t enough to satisfy the mysterious Nielsen ratings, but Star Trek is brought back from the brink of cancellation, only to suffer a bitter loss.

CHAPTER FIVE

AN AREA OF TURBULENCE (THE THIRD AND FINAL SEASON):

A lackluster third season, marked by numerous indifferent scripts and few bright lights, marks the inevitable end to the first voyage of the starship Enterprise.

CHAPTER SIX

MOVING THROUGH LIMBO AND BEYOND (THE LOST YEARS … TO STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE):

The seventies prove that Star Trek is anything but dead, as rumors of a revival become a reality by decade’s end.

CHAPTER SEVEN

SAILING THE SILVER SCREEN (THE MOVIE TRILOGY):

One successful motion picture leads to another.

CHAPTER EIGHT

A NEW GENERATION EMBARKS:

The seemingly impossible task of creating a new version of Star Trek is accomplished.

CHAPTER NINE

THE OLD GUARD STUMBLES; THE NEW WAVE TRIUMPHS:

Star Trek V goes down for the count while The Next Generation gets better and better.

CHAPTER TEN

THE TORCH IS CARRIED ON:

The fourth season of The Next Generation produces some of the finest episodes yet and further demonstrates how different the new Star Trek really is.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE END OF A GENERATION:

After seven outstanding years, The Next Generation ends its successful run on television—but still the voyage continues.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE FUTURE BECKONS, BRIGHT AND BOLD:

Whither Star Trek?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHECKLISTS:

Star Trek: The Classic Years, The Animated Voyages; The Next Generation.

KEEP READING

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALSO BY

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

FOREWORD

GENE RODDENBERRY (1921–1991)

It came as a surprise to many when Gene Roddenberry died of a heart attack on October 24, 1991. While the news that he had suffered a series of strokes during the year had leaked out, the full extent of his illness was not known.

There had been rumors, though, when a gala twenty-fifth anniversary celebration for Star Trek at Paramount was scaled down in September because he was too ill to attend. A couple of actors from the original series had long been rumored to be in frail health, but no one ever thought Roddenberry would be the first to depart.

While some fear that with Roddenberry’s passing the light of Star Trek will die, it has been known for some time that he was all but retired, having stepped down from his on-line duties on The Next Generation more and more as each year passed, until for the last two years he had been little more than a consultant. His involvement with the motion pictures has been minimal since the first one, the only one on which he worked full-time.

Star Trek was a synthesis of many talents. While it was created by Roddenberry years ago, it was developed by such people as Gene Coon, Dorothy Fontana, and others whose contributions added much to the legend. While Roddenberry had the original vision and steered the ship on a true course, he was not the only one to dream the dream, and his biggest gift was to inspire others. The many forms of Star Trek over the years serve as living testimonial.

When people die there is the danger of their being elevated to a role they never had in life or never aspired to. One should not suddenly elevate Roddenberry to godhood. Gene was a man, with the foibles of a man, but he should never be forgotten for his many abilities, and most of all for his dream, a dream he shared with so many of us. This dream will insure that Gene Roddenberry will never be forgotten.

JAMES VAN HISE

INTRODUCTION

A PHENO MENON UNEXCELLED

Star Trek. These two simple words bring forth a vast web of mental associations to millions of people. For more than twenty-five years, a remarkable and widely varied group of characters has seemingly taken over a sizable portion of our collective consciousness and made it its own. Perhaps the late science fiction visionary Philip K. Dick saw this when he had a character in his novel A Scanner Darkly refer to the latest entertainment extravaganza as a “captainkirk.”

More than thirty years after Gene Roddenberry first envisioned the world of the starship Enterprise, the traces of the original series are everywhere. Kirk and crew have become icons in American popular culture, representing the best of our dreams: adventure, exploration, the triumph of the human spirit over all kinds of adversity. Current films and television series continue to refer to Star Trek, and in the 1991 feature film Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey William Shatner is honored as a guest star when the movie’s heroes are seen watching “The Arena.”

Clearly, Star Trek has risen above the fate of other past television programs. This is a show to which some people have dedicated more than twenty-five years of their lives, often making Star Trek a centerpiece of their own personal philosophies and mythologies. This is a show that has refused to die. Battling network muddleheadedness in the sixties, creator Gene Roddenberry thought that his dream had died after its third season.

Fortunately, nothing could undermine or destroy Star Trek’s unique appeal. Rather than fade gracefully away into the dusty attic of quaint and anachronistic conceits, Star Trek continued to live and breathe. With only seventy-nine episodes aired, the myth of Star Trek built around the dedication of its fans as well as an undying fascination with a television show that had shown viewers such strange new worlds. Even Roddenberry was somewhat taken aback by the support his creation gathered as the years went by; it began to seem inevitable that Star Trek would return someday, and overcome the many impediments that blocked its path.

Star Trek brought fortune and fame to a handful of actors who had for years been laboring in obscurity: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Nichelle Nichols, James Doohan, George Takei, and Walter Koenig. Without their talents, this unique television legacy would never have survived. Instead of fading into celluloid, these actors became a surrogate family, a group of faithful and fascinating friends to a generation, and, now, to that generation’s children.

Though some found the 1979 release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture to be disappointing, the movie’s tepid reviews could not slow down the rampaging phenomenon of Star Trek’s popularity. Fans remained as involved as ever, and were irate at Spock’s death in The Wrath of Khan and the destruction of their beloved Enterprise in The Search for Spock. No amount of irritation or criticism could keep Trekkers out of the movie theaters, however, and hard-core fans began to share seat space with a new generation, born in the time since Kirk’s last journey. Disgruntlement among the fans was overcome by loyalty, and eventually passed into the legend of Star Trek.

The original Enterprise crew had been busy in the intervening years. In 1986, when the fourth, and most successful, movie was released, fans were thrilled to find Leonard Nimoy in the director’s chair. The lighthearted approach, combined with a compelling and timely Enterprise mission to Earth’s history, served to bring yet more new fans into the Star Trek fold.

Rumors of a new Star Trek incarnation abounded for nearly twenty years, and 1987 finally brought the debut of the Enterprise D, a Galaxy-class starship, in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Launched on Stardate 2363, some one hundred years after the last voyage of the now legendary Captain Kirk, the new Enterprise was a sleek beauty that never forgot her roots in rough-and-ready adventure. Captained by Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard, the new Enterprise would have strong ensemble acting by Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, LeVar Burton, Denise Crosby, and Michael Dorn. Like their predecessors on the bridge, the names of this crew rapidly became household words, their characters and actions debated, analyzed, applauded, and criticized.

The launch of the Enterprise D set off a raging, still-unresolved debate about which captain and crew best exemplified the dream of Star Trek. Fans took sides immediately and began fantasizing about a meeting, and an inevitable fight, between the two captains. If some fans found the new product unpalatable. Star Trek: The Next Generation widened the fold, and in its seven-year run garnered its own acclaim, awards, and admirers.

Gene Roddenberry’s dream continued to explore strange new worlds, and in 1993, two years after its creator’s death, Star Trek gave birth to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, a new weekly series set in a permanent orbiting space station. The world of Trek met Avery Brooks as Commander Sisko, with actors Rene Auberjonois, Nana Visitor, Terry Farrell, Siddig El Fadil, Armin Shimerman, and Colm Meaney to man the station.

Two more movies, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1988), and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), kept fans in the theaters, when they weren’t home watching Picard in first-run shows and Kirk and Spock in popular reruns.

Star Trek: The Next Generation saw its final broadcast in 1994, but fans had been promised a movie. The autumn release of Star Trek: Generations may have been weak critically, but fans were treated to a long-awaited meeting of Picard and Kirk. The long-debated “battle of the captains” did not materialize, as the movie showed the two Enterprise captains working together in a spirit of cooperation, not conflict. Like other Trek movies, Generations itself was born in conflict, and fans missed the presence of Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley.

If Kirk seemed to be passing the torch, although with chagrin, to Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation found its own child in the launch of yet another weekly series. In January 1995, Paramount launched its own broadcast network, UPN, with the maiden voyage of Star Trek: Voyager. The starship Voyager is thrown nearly eighty million light-years from home, and the new series chronicles the ship’s travels as it makes its way back to Federation space. Captain Kathryn Janeway has already been compared to both James T. Kirk and Katharine Hepburn. Actress Kate Mulgrew and crew, confident and excited, are gearing up for the inevitable scrutiny of Star Trek’s legendary fandom.

On inheriting Gene Roddenberry’s formidable responsibility and vision, Executive Producer Rick Berman told TV Guide in the spring 1995 special edition, “We would be crazy if we always sat around saying to ourselves, ‘Now what would Gene have done about this?’ I owe him a great deal, and part of that debt is to keep his vision as true as I can—but not so rigidly that Star Trek doesn’t grow.”

All Star Trek fans owe Roddenberry a great deal of love and admiration for his creativity, dedication, and integrity. While Star Trek began as a concept that few thought would ever get off the ground, the starship Enterprise became the flagship of a fleet of wondrous ships and stories that after nearly thirty years continue, almost unbelievably, to boldly go where no one has gone before. This book will take you on that journey, from Roddenberry’s first idea to the final frontier.

GUS MEYER

CHAPTER ONE:

A DREAM IN THE MAKING

Gene Roddenberry was a science fiction aficionado from childhood. It all started with a battered copy of Astounding magazine and took off from there. Still, he never considered writing in any genre or medium until much later in life.

In the late forties he worked as an international airline pilot for Pan Am, and it was at this time that he began to write pieces for flying magazines. In 1948, he was one of only eight survivors of a plane crash in the Syrian desert, an experience that profoundly shaped his attitude toward life.

The writing bug soon led him to quit the airline and move to Los Angeles, where he met with absolutely no success in the new field of television writing. The industry was, at the time, still centered on the East Coast. This led him to become a Los Angeles policeman, a job which would provide him with insights no office job could ever hope to offer. At the same time, he continued to write, and sold his first script, pseudonymously, in 1951.

More sales followed, including “The Secret Defense of 117,” a science Fiction story which aired on Chevron Theater and starred Ricardo Montalban. During the same period, he wrote speeches for L.A. police chief William Parker, and even ghosted most of Parker’s book Parker on Police, still regarded today as a classic of police philosophy.

Roddenberry managed to slip a bit of his own more liberal views into right-wing Parker’s texts; Parker was often perplexed when people he regarded as left-wingers would enthusiastically applaud his Roddenberry-penned speeches. Despite Parker’s strong political stance, there was a side to him that impressed Roddenberry even more: he was always open to new ideas, and had wide-ranging intellectual interests, traits which Roddenberry would later incorporate into the character of Spock.

By 1954, Roddenberry’s moonlighting was earning him four times his policeman’s salary, leading him to resign from the force and devote all his energies to writing. After freelancing for a variety of series, including Dragnet, Naked City, and Dr. Kildare, he became head writer of the Richard Boone Western series, Have Gun Will Travel.

He began to realize that freelancing left the final product of his mind in the hands of others. To retain control over his ideas (and to retain greater profits), he decided to become a producer. He had seen too many pilots written but left unmade; it was time for him to see one all the way through to completion.

His first series was thus created: The Lieutenant, which ran for the 1963 television season. Starring Gary Lockwood as a newly commissioned officer in the peacetime Marine Corps, this was an intelligent, dramatic series which unfortunately failed to draw much of an audience. (Ironically, another Marine-centered series which premiered the following year was successful enough to last through the rest of the decade. Gomer Pyle was not, however, noted for its intelligence!) One episode featured an actor named Leonard Nimoy as a flamboyant Hollywood director; Roddenberry would eventually employ him again in the new series he was already creating.

By the time The Lieutenant went off the air, Roddenberry had submitted a proposed Star Trek format to MGM, the studio behind The Lieutenant. The basic premise was the one now familiar to millions, but the characters were radically different.

The Captain was one Robert T. April, his executive officer was the logical female Number One, and the navigator was one José Tyler. The doctor was nicknamed Bones but was otherwise an older, completely different character. Mr. Spock was in the proposal, but was described as having “a red-hued satanic look” and, according to one source, absorbed energy through a red plate in his navel!

The Enterprise and its mission are perhaps the only things that made it to the screen unchanged from this original format. One other thing Roddenberry insisted on was that the science fiction in the show be ordered and logical, without falling on convenient fantasy resolutions having no basis in reality.

MGM said it was interested, but not at the present time. Other studios followed suit, providing Roddenberry with a fileful of politely worded brush-offs. A shift in the prevailing winds occurred when he learned that Desilu Studios was looking for series ideas. Desilu, the studio behind I Love Lucy and Lucille Ball’s later shows, was hurting financially; Lucy was its only viable property, and it frequently rented out its facilities to other studios to make up for the monthly overhead costs. Desilu was impressed with Roddenberry and his ideas, including the Star Trek proposal, and signed him to a three-year pilot development deal. (Desilu’s interest in Star Trek would pass over to Paramount Pictures when Paramount bought the television studio out.) Things seemed to pick up steam almost immediately, as Roddenberry was called in to pitch Star Trek to an assembly of CBS’s highest-ranking network executives.

They listened for two hours. Roddenberry was convinced that he’d sold them on it. They were certainly interested in his thoughts on saving costs and designing ships, among other things, but their questions turned out to have another motive entirely. When he was finished, they thanked him politely, but passed on the proposal, as they already had a science fiction series of their own in the works. Roddenberry may very well have inadvertently helped them launch Lost in Space, which even, by some coincidence, had the Robinson family embarking on a five-year mission of exploration. Lost in Space premiered in 1965 and, like Star Trek, ran for three seasons.

Roddenberry, even though disheartened by CBS’s cavalier treatment of him, kept on trying. In May of 1964, NBC offered Roddenberry twenty thousand dollars in story development money. The deal was that Roddenberry would develop three story ideas for a Star Trek pilot, then write a pilot script based on the idea chosen by the network. NBC chose the story entitled “The Cage.” Roddenberry set to work on a shooting script. In September of 1964, the script was approved: the first Star Trek episode had received the green light.

Roddenberry had already been laying the groundwork for this. Of primary importance was the starship Enterprise itself, which he hoped to have avoid all previous spaceship clichés.

The final design of the U.S.S. Enterprise was largely the work of assistant art director Matt Jefferies, who had a strong background in aviation.

During World War Two, Jefferies flew B-17 missions over Africa, and later devoted much of his spare time to restoring vintage airplanes. The starship and its various sets were drawn from Jefferies’s own familiarity with aeronautics.

As a member of the Aviation Writers’ Association, Jefferies was able to collate a large number of designs from NASA and the defense industry … all as examples of what not to do. All previous science fiction spaceship designs were also held up as things to be avoided.

Hundreds of sketches were made for the design of the Enterprise; the main hull was, at one point, going to be spherical, and even the now-familiar final design almost wound up being shot upside down. (Admittedly, this wouldn’t make much difference in space.) As a final touch of authenticity, red and green lights were added on the port and starboard sides, a time-honored nautical practice. Finally, a three-foot and fourteen-foot model of the Enterprise were constructed.