A Brief Guide to Star Trek

1960s had seen science fiction continue to feature in television and film. Movie audiences had visited
The Angry Red Planet
(1959), journeyed to the past and the future in
The Time Machine
(1960) and saw the world survive
The Day the Earth Caught Fire
(1961). Irwin Allen had begun his
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
(1961, developed into a TV series in 1964). Television had brought viewers such fantasy shows as
The Twilight Zone
(Rod Serling’s weird tales had begun in 1959 and would run until 1964), and
One Step Beyond
(1959–61).
    Schwimmer felt sure he could sell a Roddenberry-devised serious science fiction drama. Discussing the idea with others, including Schwimmer and Norman Felton (his executive producer on
The Lieutenant
), Roddenberry soon took to calling his space exploration series ‘
Wagon Train
to the stars’ as a form of shorthand (after ABC’s Sunday night hit Western series
Wagon Train
).
    Roddenberry’s March 1964 sixteen-page pitch outline sum -marised the show: ‘
Star Trek
is a “
Wagon Train
” concept – built around characters who travel to worlds “similar” to our own, and meet the action-adventure-drama which becomes our stories. Their transportation is the cruiser
USS Yorktown
, performing a well-defined and long-range Exploration-Science-Security mission which helps create our format. The time is “somewhere in the future”. It could be 1995 or maybe even 2995. In other words, close enough to our time for our continuing characters to be fully identifiable as people like us, but far enough into the future for galaxy travel to be thoroughly established.’
    However, Roddenberry’s space-set
Wagon Train
looked to be an expensive proposition, requiring new planetary settings every episode: it was easy to create a new earthbound setting for each episode of
Wagon Train
(another town or desert oasis), but much harder to come up with convincing alien planets on a weekly television series budget and schedule.
    Schwimmer had an ace up his sleeve. His company had become the agent for Desilu Studios, which had once produced the hit series
I Love Lucy
(1951–7) and now made
The Lucy Show
(1962–8). Star Lucille Ball had become the sole owner of the studio, following her divorce from husband Desi Arnaz. The extensive studio facilities (inherited from old Hollywood studio RKO, makers of
King Kong
and
Citizen Kane
) built up during the heyday of
I Love Lucy
, now stood largely empty, except for their once a week usage for
The Lucy Show
and occasional external space rentals. Desilu Studios were keen to find projects to utilise the studio space and their agent – Schwimmer – was keen for his client Roddenberry to launch a science fiction television series. It was a marriage of convenience from which all parties could benefit enormously.
    As a result of her ongoing deal with CBS for
The Lucy Show
, Ball had access to a $600,000-per-year development fund. Schwimmer was tasked with finding new projects to spend the money on, in the hope that they’d develop into new hit shows. Pilots that eventually resulted from this development fund included
Mission: Impossible
(the series began in 1966, in the same season as
Star Trek
) and
Mannix
(which debuted the following year).
    The Desilu development money allowed Roddenberry to further build on his ideas for ‘
Wagon Train
to the stars’, which may not have happened otherwise without a firm series commission from a broadcaster. It was expected any resulting series would be produced by Desilu and would air on CBS, as they were providing the initial funding.
    Roddenberry had a partner working with him on developing his new series proposal, Herb Solow – Desilu’s in-house executive who would decide which projects would be pitched to the broadcasters. Solow saw Roddenberry’s proposed series as another anthology show, like
The Lieutenant
, with new characters and settings every week, something he feared would be prohibitively expensive. Solow also worried that reintroducing the series concept each week would take up too much of theshow’s running time. His proposed solution was a voiceover from the spaceship’s captain explaining the set-up, allowing the episode to get on with the drama. Later in life Roddenberry was reluctant to share the credit for the success of
Star Trek
, especially in the creation of the key elements that went into making up the series. In a memo from 1966 Roddenberry erroneously credited the captain’s voiceover idea