A Brief Guide to Star Trek (22 page)

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.