GENE RODDENBERRY, PHILOSOPHER, JUNIOR GRADE
The creator pontificates from on high about setting the Trek unwerse in motion, wondering where it’s all headed?
By Sheldon Teitelbaum
The man is not well. | am told Gene Roddenberry, STAR TREK's creator, has suffered a small stroke. There are other infirmities. He gets about with a cane, wheelchair, and the big yellow limo that alerts the peopleat Paramount to hisarrival. He has a driver named Ernic Over, who wears a suit and a western tie. Over escorts him everywhere, including through the expanses of his Bel Air home. For someone who once piloted a jet for Pan Am until he crash-landed in Syria, who roared through the Hollywood Hills on a Harley and roamed the galaxy on a starship, the ‘Ws are a mixed bag.
After two decades spent securing his claim as a pop icon alternately ignored and revered, the man is finally getting some recognition. Theyare naminga building for him at Paramount. He is finally making the opulent living one would have imagined for him 25 years ago. His wife, Majel Barrett, is as adept at taking care of business, | hear, as she is of him.
He’s got a coffee table book commemorating the 25th Anniversary of his brainchild which hit stores in September. His quotes, Iam told, are in boldface. Why not? To the others now charged with managing the day-to-day operation of his franchise, it’s a business, For the erstwhile “Great Bird of the Galaxy.” STAR TREK is a life. “Iam an old fart,” he says. But he doesn’t really belie
Gene Roddenberry’ s life
Roddenberry in 1979, with William Shatner, DeForest Kelley and Leonard Nimoy on the set of the first STAR TREK movie, a curtain to be rung down in December.
began in Texas during the Great Depression. To understand STAR TREK, and to fathom the depth of Roddenberry’s oft-ridiculed faith ironic given his present circumstances—in a better future, you have to understand the effect that searing economic event had ona child growing up during the "30s,
For Americans, this was the last true Holocaust. Itendowed most who endured it as adults
with bitter pessimism. Many who lived it as children, however, became optimists. Roddenberry’s optimism was hardcore. Though by no means graced with fortune, his father, a cavalry officer stationed at Fort Bliss, spared his family the decade's worst degradation. Who could know that his child's rosy-eyed vision of things to come would run rampant, three decades later, ina TV show that would rocket
around the world.
“My father would take me outside and say ‘Gene, all this won't be here 50 years from now. A big hunk of the city won’ be here.”
“Dad always assumed we could—and would—do things better. You could hardly have been children of the Depression without thinking things could be better, This is why SF appealed to so many people who grew up then. We didn't believe it was going to be the same old world, Ours would be one without munitions manufacturers and armies. We would be taking care of all the problems we have today.”
The affliction, however, was not strictly Roddenberry’. Itis impossible to imagine his career had he been raised in France, Poland or Israel. Wide-eyed exuberance doesnt play in those places. It doesn't even occur to those who live there. Roddenberry and STAR TREK are strictly American phenomena: dreams from an American dreamer.
How did you get started in this business?
1 was a hot-free lance writer before lever thought of STAR TREK. Years ago, | was the head writer of HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL. It wassort of an SF credit— Palladin was as close to being SF as you could get. [Richard] Boone was a marvelous person asactors go. 1 was a policeman and learned to write as a speechwriter for [LAPD chief] William H. Parker. I learned to write long
before that, though, with the idea that if you write 800 words aday, soon you will be a writer. It took me cight years or so. Once I quit Pan American[asa pilot], it seemed to me that, yes, I'm a writer, whether people believe that or not.
Did you miss flying?
Being a pilot is taking off from strange airports and countries and not sleeping regularly. It’s good if you want to build an image. Nice todrop in on a cocktail party and say, “Ah, yes, London, I was there two days ago,” or even more exotic places. But writing isan exciting life. It introduces you constantly to new subjects and makes you think in new and different ways. I'd like my son to bea writer. He won't, particularly since I have suggested it.
You seem to regard writing more as an opportunity to get educated than to assert your beliefs.
I can say for 25 years I've been growing. The variety of
subjects we've attacked on STAR TREK really has been as close to a school of philosophyas Ican think. Thesubjects are a variety that men should address themselves to. | think by coming into TREK and pushing myself into these molds, I've forced myself to attack a variety of subjects. You can hardly name a major subject we haven't done a show on, I finally feel Ihave become
With story editor Ron Moore on the bridge of THE NEXT GENERATION, eclipsing the popularity of the original.
STAR TREK PHILOSOPHER
&6| can say for 25 years I've been growing. | finally feel |'ve become a philosopher, junior
grade. You can hardly name a major subject | haven't spent time thinking out a show on.?” |
Roddenberry with series regulars James Doohan and George Takei, Enterprise rebuilt by Paramount in 1979 to cash-in on the success of STAR WARS.
a philosopher, junior grade. There’s hardly a subject you could mention I havent spent time thinking out because of the need to set a script in a strange world on that subject. You need to go to the roots. Would the Klingons be happy with that kind of government or philosophy? You spend years dreaming them up, and they begin to build up into a rather real thing.
How real?
I don't for a moment think they are real subjects, but they have a reality for me. I take the fact of their fictional existence very scriously. If lam going to write someting about them, and they are going to be seen by Arthur C, Clarke or Ray Bradbury, people I loveand respect, I have to pretend that they are real, and that this is serious.
How did you develop the idea for the original STAR TREK series?
It came about very slowly,as everyone who was with me at the timecantestify. lwasso tired of writing about what | considered nothing, I was tired of writing for shows where there was always a shoot-outin the last act and somebody was killed. | do not consider that the “ending” of anything. I
the would watch a whole show in those early days and, at the end, would feel like # had wasted time on nonsense. STAR TREK was formulated to change that.
What direction would you like to see THE NEXT GEN- ERATION head into?
lam the moving force behind the show, that’s true. But, Ido have a lot of lovely people who keep coming up with good ideas for the show, too. Lwould like STAR TREK to continue to go in the direction we have been heading—the direction of people-centered storylines With the main emphasis on humanity—that is, people who are going to go out there and change things, and not machines. Machines will be a wonderful help. But, it is the people who run them who will dominate. As longas lam with STAR TREK, the focus will always be on the people.
How involved are you inthe current series?
There are many stories, rewrites written by other people, and I just hover in the background to make surcit fits with my imagined reality on several key points. | have marvelous people, among them [executive producer] Rick Berman,
and I thank God he walked into the office.
How involved were you in the daily business of the original series?
I was very involved when we dreamed up the first series. I knew Kirk and Spock before anyone else knew them. It’s true in the writing game thatas the years went by and other people put their imprimatur on the show, I had to sit back and loosen up my parameters. I am not going to turn down great things that other people and actors think of. Their imaginings press you further back into a supervisory role.
I finally cut loose and thought I was through with STAR TREK. You can only stand so much of sevencharacters. | was reasonably sure I'd not get so involved again. Paramount thought otherwise, and I said, “No, you cannot pay meenough. I have a little nest egg, and there’s nothing new and fresh in what you're proposing.” This was seven years after the original series ended. | knew I'd been caught when Paramount said, “Suppose you're the boss?” Initially | was always having it out with network VPs. And | don't embitter easily. | was involved in the first movie, but never deeply.
So why the appeal of doing THE NEXT GENERATION? Why hadn't you been more deeply involved in making the features?
I guess | was reaching my majority—I said, “Fuck ‘em these people don't know as much about STAR TREK as me.” You can't work full-time on the movies and on a TV series. And I'd rather do TV. I'm a creative person and don't need to write something, and under Hollywood's present way of doing things, youhavea director do a show his way. Some of that happened in STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, I saw then I didnt care for the arrangement. | thought it was a good movie, and that it went downhill until STAR TREK IV.
Did you have any input?
By contract they [Paramount] couldn’ do them if I said that’s not TREK, and I used my veto sparingly. STAR TREK V 1! would not have done that way. I suggested the
On the set of STAR TREK Ili (1984) with the movie cast and (I to 1) producer Harve Bennett, executive producer Gary Nardino, director Leonard Nimoy, and Roddenberry
idea that saved it in a small way—let what they find be a powerful alien who thought it was God. Originally the alien was God, a very bad idea. | came within an inch of telling Paramount I wouldn't make V. No one person made it terrible, and no one wanted it to be terrible
What was your problem with producer Harve Bennett's idea to make STAR TREK V1 a prequel?
1 didn't like it. Who going to cast the new Kirk and Spock? No one has ever cast a TREK character besides me that’s worked. Braggadocio or whatever, that is the history of TREK. | could have done so had I thought it was a good idea, but it didn’t fitin with the rest of TREK. It wasn’t good Some of it was like Police Academy. You could hardly do this without the magic of a characters tailored
TREK, which this
was
group ol for STAR was not ind vet vou cast the second series. Why not a movie? I didn’ want to do it again
The second series, oh, Jesus,
was it hard! They said do a series but find a way todo Kirk and Spock, and I said, “Absolutely no.” And I'm sitting in my office putting together characters, and the fans are saying without Kirk and Spock you won'thave me. I finally decided we needed new characters, a new crew, that our production crew could regard as theirs You can see that pride in them today. So I had to have new characters and new underpinnings. That seemed so simplistic at first. Have the Captain go down on missions? No, that’s not the way it would be. Gene Roddenberry had grown an extra 25 years
Someone suggested to me that THE NEXT GENERA- TION was your vindicationfor having been kept at arm's length from the films and the latter two-thirds of the original Series
The revival of THE NEXT GENERATION had no emotional import for me. I dont live from despair to vindication, I never say it’s justa TV show because it was once my center of concentration
What do you recall of the four or so months after vougot the go-ahead from Paramount for the new series? Why did you choose the people you did?
I brought in people like [writer David] Gerrold and[D C.] Fontana because I knew them. But eventually we ended up with a new show and a new group. Some, like [producer] Bob Justman, who has been with me since day one, suggested Picard’s identity. He had gone to UCLA and had seen this man he wanted as Picard. He presented him to me, and my first reaction was, “Jesus Christ, Bob. | don't want a bald man.” In his wisdom, Justman kept his mouth shut and let me grow accustomed to him
Why did you put out the word that you weren't terribly interested in having science fiction writers write for the show?
In the cighteen years since we had done TREK, the writers have been living a life, and there wasnt room in this to have them go back to square one. The newer people we have acquired in the job of imagining things were the right people. Some of our best scripts were done by non-science fiction writers. You don't need a good science fiction writer to write good science fiction you need a good writer. Is hea writer? Does he or she have the boldness, the imagination? You don't need someone who has actually written science fiction. I never did
Is STAR TREK actually science fiction, or has it become something in its own right
I think TREK is science fiction, but a brand of science fiction. STAR TREK will always work as long as you have imagination. We have never had anyone in TREK who wasn't into growth. During my first TREK, forinstance, I didn’t pay any attention to women. In the years I have grown into something of a strong feminist. | was the product of a southern family background. My parents never spoke of any race with contempt. They encouraged me to try strange ideas and philosophies, I never grew up withany-
thing but great curiosity about aliens.
Why have vou insisted that the characters in THE NEXT GENERATION always get on famously? Didnt you realize the constraints this would place on you writers?
Yes, it can tie your hands, but I saw it was necessary. You can hardly have people from this ideal world with the same smallness people have today. We have no violence. Our peopledontallowit, which sounds like death in a series, People have learned to live with hatred. Our people get along beautifully, but have you ever heard that THE NEXT GEN- ERATION goes slowly?
Actually, yes. The series sometimes seems a bit shorton passion,
In their future, they've learned to accept we are all creatures of passion. But they have evolved into people who can live with each other, which we are trying to do today. Perhaps there are things that can't be solved witha shootout inthe last act. There's excitement and challenge in life without those things.
And yet we've just been involved in a shoot em up in Iraq. Will we see these events reflected in some way on THE NEXT GENERATION?
1 wish this war hadn't happened, that people didn’ dic. I am as much moved by Saddam’s people dying as by ours. lam helped in that Idon'tconsider this as a divided world. I am very fond of humans. | believe from a combination of what I have seen and heard about Saddam that he is a bad man, but I have believed that before without it being true. War isn't just. You may go to war to protect yourself. Iraq pushed awfully close some-
Barrett with Leonard Nimoy in 1964,
as “Number One” in the original pilot for STAR TREK, rejected by NBC.
CULTIVATING NEW TREK
_ | don’t think | have the perfect solution for | everything. There is so much in the show's fourth year that | never dreamed of. It's because
very bright people carved something out of it.??
Roddenberry with wife Maje! Barrett, as Nurse Christine Chapel in the movies, a role she created on the original series after being dropped by NBC trom the pilot.
times. It’s more difficult to relate to the war in this series. We do in an episode in which everybody says you must goto war and kill to protect this and this. I think you'll know what the answers are—look at [fourth season] “The Wounded.” I've found STAR TREK to be a voice of sanity in that regard,
In fact, 1 recollect one of your cast members from the original series suggesting a STAR TREK peace missionto troubled spots on this planet.
1 think it’S a remarkable comment on STAR TREK that one of the actors, after 25 years, could believe it was possible to lead a TREK peace mission. By the time you sign up forindoctrinationin STAR TREK, you get indoctrinated.
Is something inherently cultish in the TREK format?
I don't permit the cultish aspects of TREK to become a concern, | have heard great arguments among fans, but I have kept STAR TREK pretty much my own. Kirk or Picard is not going to do something that I disagree with, sotheycan argue till they are blue in the face. | thank people who think passionately enough about TREK to form cults. If TREK were just a blah series with no
meaning, they would not be. But it’s nota movement. Idon't like to think I have the perfect solution to everything.
How do you recall your struggles with writers during THE NEXT GENERATIONS Jirst season?
In the first year you need someone who will unerringly write the character data that I want to write. | wrote or rewrote the first fourteen scripts so the Captain and all the people in the show would be the images of the people | wanted to carry on. With the mold cut, | certainly don't think of the best way of doing everything. I let the new writers come in and say, ‘Gee, that
writer saw somethingexciting.”
There is so much in the show’s fourth year that I never dreamed of. It's because very bright people have carved something out of it. If there isa facet of my character, itisthatl think humans are exciting and interesting child creatures. The problems with the Writer's Guild [first season] weren't serious. The problems were more with writers. Maybe if I were a director it would have been casier, but to have yourself rewritten by a fellow writer! There were a lot of
bloody noses and | received some punches, but I'm a stubborn person, and the dust is all settled now. Itis possible for us to improve our show, our writers to use their brainpower to create shocking things.
What are your future plans for THE NEXT GENERA- TION and the movie series?
This [STAR TREK VI] will be the last STAR TREK movie with the original cast. The next movice, if there is one, will probably be with the present series cast, We mightintroducea new cast about every six years. We will also introduce new characters into the series as we go along who might replace present members as they move on. Denise Crosby returned in another role in the series, as a Romulan. There are many possibilities. We hope to keep the production value up on the series and hopefully carry that over into the movies.
Whither Gene Roddenberry?
I dont know. My grandmother, who guided an early part of my life, said keep yourself pure—what she meant was more than just Baptist purity— and good things willcome your way. You just sit and wait and pick themas theycome., I don't worry about it. I'm not readyto die, but that hasnt troubled me since I was 45.
You will likely be remembered for STAR TREK. Is that enough for you?
To anyone acquainted with the variety of things lam proud of, subjects if approached on the Broadway stage or in a serious movie people will laud, can be found in the newshow. I think STAR TREK hasalways been a slow bloomer, The mass audience is only slowly becoming aware of the new show.
Do you believe that TREK can endure?
Well, I'd be very surprised if in two or three years they are not working ona feature, probably after the show stops running. We are guilty of strange feelings of TV not interfering with movies. Some years after the features I can see a new TV series too, Unless someone botches it up by saying the Enterprise is a war ship and there are dirty, rotten people out there, I think someone will make it into something Ican be satisfied with. oO