Gene Roddenberry
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Wesley Eugene Roddenberry (1921-1991) (back to Star Trek section)
When I was working in Los Angeles radio in the early 1970s, I produced a documentary series about the original Star Trek on the occasion of the debut of the Saturday morning animated spinoff on NBC-TV.
I first met Gene Roddenberry in 1973. I somehow persuaded him to agree to an interview for the radio documentary that I was producing. You can hear one segment (less than 3 minutes) from that multipart radio documentary featuring comments from Gene Roddenberry here. Another segment from my radio documentary series presented surprisingly honest comments from actor Walter Koenig, who joined the crew of the starship Enterprise as Pavel Chekov in the second season (1967-1968) of the original series.
At first, Roddenberry did not want to talk with me. He told me that he had been “burned” by the media previously. So, I came up with the idea of using two tape recorders simultaneously while interviewing him at his office in Burbank. I assured him that if I used those two tape recorders, I could then hand him his own copy of the taped interview before I even left his office. And so he agreed to talk with me! Only small portions of the recordings I made of Roddenberry’s comments in his own words were ever broadcast on Los Angeles radio, but you can hear everything he told me right here.
He wrote me a letter to say how much he liked the radio documentary that I produced about Star Trek:
Into The Next Decade
In 1982, when Roddenberry was on the college lecture circuit, he came to New Haven, Connecticut, where I was a college professor. That night I was honored to introduce him to the crowded auditorium. He gave a speech in which he explained the power of Star Trek, and showed the original pilot, “The Cage,” which was rare in those days since it was not yet available to the public as it is today. Hear what Roddenberry said in this rare audio excerpt from his comments that night in Connecticut.
A New Haven newspaper covered Roddenberry’s appearance and my research interest in him and Star Trek:
Professor studies ‘Star Trek’ impact
By Randall Beach, Staff Reporter
New Haven Register, March 19, 1982“If anyone has a hero, Gene Roddenberry is mine. I really respect what hes done.” Woody Goulart (pictured above) was honored and a little frightened to be introducing his idol, the creator and producer of “Star Trek,” Thursday night (March 18, 1982) at the University of New Haven. Goulart, an assistant professor of communications at UNH, has practically made a life study of the TV series and the man behind it. He even did his doctoral dissertation on the subject.
“But I’m not a ‘Trekkie,’ he emphasized. “I’d be the last one to wear Spock ears, even in private. I’m more of a Star Trek researcher. I’ve read all the Star Trek books, and I really believe that no one has come up with a complete explanation of why the formula worked.”
Goulart hopes to be the one to do this, by writing a book on Roddenberry. Last year, aided by a $1,440 grant from the UNH faculty research fund, Goulart bought video equipment and studied the show’s episodes (he has seen all 78 of them.) While engaged in this, he expanded his theory of “disguised mass persuasion.”
“Roddenberry admits there are hidden covert messages in the show. There’s an anti-war message, with the United Federation of Planets as an ideal United Nations. The series was made from 1966-69, during the Vietnam War. But you couldn’t just come out on TV and say we shouldn’t be imperialistic. He did it in an allegorical way with science fiction. This is the legacy that Roddenberry made possible: TV is a producer’s medium, and you don’t have to resort to explicit violence and sexuality.” Goulart conceded “Star Trek” did have its share of warfare.
“But they (the starship Enterprise crew) dealt with the enemy from the standpoint of protecting society: defensive, not offensive. “The show was basically optimistic service to one’s society, learning to get along with all different kinds of people and not have constant prejudice. It was also pro-feminist.”
Goulart said Leonard Nimoy’s character of Spock embodies “all those values worth emulating.” He is calm, peaceful, decidedly non-violent. But he’s always in a struggle to fight his alien nature. He’s like all of us, fighting our animal instincts.That’s why he was the most popular character.” Indeed, Goulart considers Spock “the most unique character in television. Who did you have before? Ben Cartwright (Lorne Greene of ‘Bonanza’)? TV producers think the audience would rather watch characters who are shallow. The people on ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ are talented, but John Schneider’s acting is just secondary. That credibility is missing. You know these people don’t really exist, but you knew Captain Kirk could exist.”
“Roddenberry knew his audience. He decided to appeal to that audience, and he assumed people were intelligent. Other TV producers thought people would not sit still for messages, ideas. So they made ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ and ‘Gilligan’s Island.’ ‘Dukes’ proves that this hasn’t changed.” Goulart, now 31, came by his obsession gradually. He was 16 when the show was first aired, and he only watched it then because his teacher assigned it as a project. His interest really took hold when he pursued his Ph.D. at Indiana University. It was then that he first developed his theory on disguised mass persuasion. But the faculty there didn’t consider a TV science fiction show fit material for a doctoral dissertation. “They thought I was absolutely bonkers. But when I got to them on the level of disguised mass persuasion, they were more receptive.”
Goulart went on to write and produce a 22-part documentary series on “Star Trek” for a Los Angeles radio station in 1973. That was when he first met Roddenberry. “He believed the United Federation of Planets was a model of what we could become. He told me, ‘We’re not very advanced. We’re not like the characters in “Star Trek,” who are 200 years in the future. That’s a model of how things could be in the future. We’re only in our adolescence now.’”
Goulart said if he goes forward with the book, “I’ll try to show that television is not mere entertainment. Even accidentally, you can persuade people.” Meanwhile, Goulart is anxiously awaiting the second “Star Trek” movie (due for release this summer) though he was disappointed by the first. “It wasn’t as well-conceived as the TV show. But I have HBO, and whenever that film is on, it’s irresistible. I want to spend time with the characters. But that’s absurd. I’m a grown person and I’m spending time with TV characters. I guess I shouldn’t be embarrassed. A lot of people feel that way about characters.”
Despite this affection, Goulart is not concerned about the rumors that Spock will be killed off in the second movie. “I’m sure it’s a promotional thing. It’s hype, like ‘Who shot J.R.?’ If you thought there was a furor when they cancelled the TV show, this would be incredible. Trekkies with Speck ears storming Paramount Studios. That’s the formula–don’t do something the audience would reject.”
I interviewed Roddenberry once again in 1982 and he told me several things I had never seen attributed to him before.
During my 1982 interview of Roddenberry, he told me, “I think the three things that made Star Trek different from other things that have been done are, first, it said we have a future, and an optimistic future. Secondly, we had very much old-fashioned heroes, who believed it’s not necessarily the coolest thing in the world to rip other people off. And, third, were the comments Star Trek made on humans in society.”
Roddenberry noted that he wasn’t convinced that 1980′s Western civilization would necessarily survive for hundreds of years into the future. He told me that he fully expected very tough times for humanity in the coming decades, but explained, “I think the human creature will survive.”
Roddenberry also explained that he believed humanity’s values systems and attitudes and ways will so change in the future that it would “frighten today’s audiences probably no less than twentieth-century humanity would frighten an eighth or ninth-century audience.”
Roddenberry told me that he believed although the 1960s were over, many of the aspects of American society that the original Star Trek television series had commented on were still evident in the 1980s. “Our public life is full of thieves,” he said, and added, “Religion is full of con men. We have enormous problems with crime.”
Roddenberry gave me his perspective on how he thought aliens who visited Earth would view humans: “I suspect if aliens visited us they would see us as infants, who do a lot of destruction as infants will. They would see us as infants who are sometimes cruel, but with a sort of ‘divine spark’ too, very precocious infants that are really going to be something when they grow up!”
Later that night in 1982, Roddenberry and I shared a quiet steak dinner together–just the two of us–where we talked about his work and plans for the future. At the time, I was a 31 year-old college professor. Even though I was a professional and not “merely” a fan of Star Trek, I certainly was blown away by the fact that Roddenberry (who didn’t know me well, personally) would offer to take me to dinner and spend time talking with me. I knew that Roddenberry could have as easily opted for some quiet time on his own, away from everyone, where he didn’t have to think or talk about Star Trek.
I shared with Roddenberry my dream of writing a book about him and his creation. He made it clear that he was very disinterested in having anyone write a book about him. He said he would help me get the necessary approvals. That could have been a polite way of telling me that this book would never happen. But, Roddenberry eventually gave his full cooperation to David Alexander, who wrote Star Trek Creator, the essential biography. Other books about Roddenberry have subsequently been published, though not all remain in print.
Although my interest in studying Roddenberry and his creation remained strong through the years, I ultimately set aside my dream of writing a book about him. Gene Roddenberry died in 1991 and during that same decade I produced this site to share with you what I learned over the years. Writing a book about Roddenberry and Star Trek is no longer a professional interest of mine, and besides, the Internet now makes it possible for writers to reach a far wider audience than most books can.
His son, Wesley Eugene Roddenberry, Jr., writes and produces Roddenberry.com, which contains material that any Star Trek fan will want to see.
After Roddenberry
Gene Roddenberry told me in 1973 that he thought NBC had made a business decision to cancel the marginally-rated series and he quashed the rumor that it was his personal disagreements with the network brass the led to the end of Star Trek the original series. But, it’s clear that NBC did not fully realize the value of Star Trek while it was on the air. After Star Trek was cancelled by that network, the methods of measuring television audience became more sophisticated than they had been in the 1960s. It was too late to save Star Trek the original series, but while the 79 episodes certainly performed poorly in a strict head count of viewers, in the 1970s, audience demographics research proved that Star Trek was the perfect vehicle to attract and maintain viewer loyalty–precisely what advertisers want. Because this proven demographic power suggested an equally powerful financial return for the studio, Star Trek was brought back into production by Paramount Pictures.
In 1973, the animated series premiered on Saturday mornings on NBC, with episodes that featured the voices of the original series cast. Roddenberry got creative control of this series. There are 22 animated half-hour episodes that featured a collection of highly credentialed writers, such as Samuel A. Peeples, D.C. Fontana, Marc Daniels, Margaret Armen, and David Gerrold, who never before had written scripts for a Saturday morning animated network series. Yet, an animated series was insufficient to satisfy a growing audience demand for more Star Trek on television.
Paramount Pictures then decided to do a Star Trek motion picture for theatrical release instead of producing a new television version. In the 1970s, Paramount was considered creating a fourth television network and a Star Trek reborn on the new network certainly must have given the studio executives at that time visions of dollar signs. United Paramount Network (UPN) ultimately was launched in 1995, but plans moved forward in the 1970s to produce Star Trek as a movie for worldwide theatrical release instead of a television series. In 1979, ten years after the NBC cancellation of the original series, Paramount Pictures released Star Trek: The Motion Picture, directed by Robert Wise, produced by Gene Roddenberry, and starring all of the original series cast members.
The film’s plot is built upon themes of death and rebirth, which can be evaluated as a metaphor for the entire Star Trek franchise. Although produced by Gene Roddenberry, this film marks a departure from the clear idea content direction for Star Trek that had first been fixed by Roddenberry in the mid-1960s. Also, since the movie ran over two hours in its original release in 1979, a change of pace compared to the television series was necessary in how a story is told on screen. While visually this movie was a delight for Star Trek fans, the story seems at times bloated and not very focused.
This writer concludes that the Star Trek franchise was changed in fundamental ways starting with this movie. Then, throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, the total output from the entire Star Trek franchise only occasionally lives up to the original ideological vision upon which Roddenberry and other producers and writers had initially won an intense audience following and loyalty in the 1960s.
Star Trek has always had an innate ability to embed idea content to persuade an audience about religion, politics, sexual behaviors, and other controversial themes. But, has this proven power been used as deliberately or as effectively after the 1960s?
This is a complex question, but the simple answer is no.
Once Paramount Pictures chose to go with the production of a major motion picture in the late 1970s, it was inevitable that sequels would follow. The first of many sequels was released by Paramount Pictures in 1982 entitled Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. It was followed in 1984 with Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, with Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home in 1986, and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier in 1989.
The production and release of major motion pictures for a business such as Paramount Pictures is a very expensive proposition. So, Star Trek as a franchise of major motion pictures out of business necessity had to be shifted to a focus on getting a return upon investment rather than focusing on the use of science fiction in movies to put forth ideas for adults to ponder.
Compared to all subsequent Star Trek productions, the original series in the 1960s had been produced without a lot of money, and the original intent in the 1960s was to get away with controversial ideas by embedding them witin science fiction characters and stories. All of that changed starting in the 1970s. Star Trek was shifted because of business priorities from a primary focus on presenting controversial or provocative idea content to presenting spectacular action and adventure on screen. And who can blame Paramount Pictures for doing this, especially when everyone in those days could look at how financially successful the James Bond motion picture franchise was.
Creator Effect
There is also the important matter of the man with the prime idea, Gene Roddenberry. He created Star Trek and guided its development and production personally at the outset. He was involved–in varying degrees–in the production of the first six Star Trek motion pictures for theatrical release.
He also created Star Trek: The Next Generation, which premiered in 1987 as a syndication Paramount release, giving Roddenberry a “second chance” with a Star Trek television series.
The studio intended to keep producing Star Trek also as major motion pictures with the cast and characters from the original series. Roddenberry also was involved with Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the last motion picture to feature the cast and characters from the original series.
Roddenberry reportedly felt that certain elements of the fifth and sixth Star Trek movies were not true to his original creation. But, it should not surprise anyone that other creative influences inevitably would change Star Trek over the decades. One person cannot retain control over an entire television and motion picture franchise as decades pass, unless they start their efforts at a very young age. In 1964, Roddenbery was in his 40s when he first developed ideas for what would become Star Trek on NBC-TV in 1966. He was in his 60s when Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted. He died at age 70 in October 1991. In his final years, Roddenberry remained involved in the production of the first four seasons of his creation, Star Trek: The Next Generation, but others took over after his death, and the series ran a total of seven seasons until 1994.
There have been three other television spinoffs of Star Trek in the post-Roddenberry years. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ran for seven seasons (1993-1999). Star Trek: Voyager ran for seven seasons (1995-2001). Star Trek: Enterprise ran four seasons (2001-2005).
There also have been four post-Roddenberry Star Trek motion pictures. Star Trek Generations (1994) features a time travel story in which both Captain James T. Kirk and Captain Jean-Luc Picard appear together. Three other Star Trek movies complete the set of ten, including Star Trek: First Contact (1996), Star Trek Insurrection (1998), and Star Trek: Nemesis (2002), the last movie to feature the cast and characters from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
