A Brief Guide to Star Trek (14 page)

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.