A Brief Guide to Star Trek

to ‘my cousin in Ohio’. For him, it made for a better story.
    There was another writer involved in developing ideas for
Star Trek
in addition to Roddenberry. Samuel A. Peeples, a prolific television screenwriter in the 1960s, had written for many Western series, including
Wanted: Dead or Alive
,
The Rifleman
and
Bonanza
. Roddenberry knew that Peeples had a significant collection of pulp magazines. Roddenberry had read some of the same story magazines – including
Amazing Stories
– as a teenager, but was not an expert or a particularly big fan of the genre. He remembered reading E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith’s
Skylark
series and the Buck Rogers newspaper comic strip, as well as listening to the exciting radio serial. However, as a kid during the depression he’d been far more interested in the adventures of the Lone Ranger and the Shadow. He needed help putting his dramatic ideas into a plausible science fiction context.
    Peeples recalled, ‘[Roddenberry] was trying to start a science fiction series and he knew that I had one of the largest science fiction collections in the world. He was researching his show and asked if he could go through my magazines and get some ideas for the
Enterprise
. Gene went through all the covers, and that’s really how the
Enterprise
was born.’
    Roddenberry felt he needed a crash course in science fiction and borrowed some books from Peeples – among them Olaf Stapleton’s
First and Last Men
– to get a feel for what the genre encompassed. Peeples suggested other writers that Roddenberry should sample, including Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Bloch, Poul Anderson and Richard Matheson. From the beginning Roddenberry was keen to involve serious science fiction storytellers in his series to give the show authenticity.
    One of the first television writers Roddenberry arranged to meet was Jerry Sohl, whose credits included
The Twilight Zone
,
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
and
The Outer Limits
, as well as several science fiction novels. He had the ideal combination of science fiction credentials and TV scriptwriting that Roddenberry would look for in the initial batch of
Star Trek
writers. Sohl clearly understood that the meeting was a fishing exercise on Roddenberry’s part, with the putative showrunner asking for the names of other West Coast writers he could contact, as well as sounding out Sohl’s opinion of his
Star Trek
idea. Among the names Sohl added to Roddenberry’s growing list of writers to contact were William Nolan, George Clayton Johnson and Harlan Ellison.
    Desilu’s Herb Solow was charged with selling
Star Trek
to the studios. It was quickly rejected by CBS, despite them having initially funded development through the Desilu fund. Solow had more luck with NBC, who offered to finance the writing of a pilot script (subject to a choice from three outlines) that might result in the broadcaster funding the shooting of a pilot. Gene Roddenberry’s
Star Trek
was about to blast off.

Chapter 2

First Flight: The Two
Star Trek
Pilots

‘
I am Spock!
’ Leonard Nimoy

    Gene Roddenberry was first and foremost an accomplished storyteller, and
Star Trek
was the ideal vehicle for telling stories about the modern world that happened to be set in space, in a far-off future that seemed strangely to echo the present. He wasn’t alone in creating
Star Trek
in its lasting incarnation: he drew on the talents of many other individuals who contributed key elements that went in to making the concept durable.
    Unusually for television in the 1960s,
Star Trek
was allowed two pilot episodes to demonstrate to NBC that the show could work. The story of the two
Star Trek
pilots is the story of the two writers involved, Gene Roddenberry and Samuel A. Peeples. For the 1964 pilot, Roddenberry flew solo. In the script for ‘The Cage’ he brought to life the concepts that had featured in his March 1964 series outline in a dramatic form. For his critics, it was not dramatic enough and simply too thoughtful for American television in the mid-1960s.
    For the show’s second pilot in 1965, NBC chose Samuel A. Peeples’ script, ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’. Peeples brought action and adventure to
Star Trek
, elements that Roddenberry later admitted had been missing from his effort. Between them, the two storytellers used their
Star Trek
pilots tolay down the template for a franchise that would ‘live long and prosper’ for the next forty-five years and beyond.

    Gene Roddenberry had three