A Brief Guide to Star Trek (15 page)

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.