A Brief Guide to Star Trek

and untested quantity as
Star Trek
was always going to throw a regular test audience more used to generic Westerns, cop shows or sitcoms than challenging space adventures. So it proved.
    With mixed results from the audience tests, NBC were still unsure about whether to back
Star Trek
. There was a lot about the show – as exhibited in ‘The Cage’ – that they liked, but there were other areas they were concerned about. Their primary worry was that if they failed to develop the show, they could be losing a potential hit series.
    Roddenberry now felt he and the team had ironed out many of the problems they expected to encounter in creating and mounting a dramatically different TV series like
Star Trek
: he and the others involved wanted to capitalise on the lessons learned and get stuck in to producing the series proper. Throughout February 1965 Roddenberry felt trapped in a kind of limbo in which the fate of his show lay in the hands of a group of nervous NBC executives who, reluctant to make the wrong decision, were thus delaying making any decision at all. If an answer wasn’t forthcoming very soon Roddenberry knew the series would not be able to enter production quickly enough to make the forthcoming fall 1965 NBC schedule. Just as it started to look like
Star Trek
would be an ignoble failure, Gene Roddenberry was given a unique second chance.

    Against usual practice for the time,
Star Trek
was afforded the unexpected luxury of a second attempt at creating a viable pilot episode. NBC itself accepted some of the blame for the failings of ‘The Cage’, in that they had selected that storyline from thethree on offer. Additionally, the network had already spent $630,000 making ‘The Cage’ (at that point,
Star Trek
’s initial pilot was the most expensive ever made) and while the expense of failed pilots was a recognised part of the television business, they saw enough potential in the
Star Trek
concept to let a frustrated Gene Roddenberry try again.
    In
Inside Star Trek
, Desilu executive Herb Solow and associate producer Robert Justman offered their take on the reasons for NBC’s rejection of ‘The Cage’: ‘The NBC party line was that it was “too cerebral”. The unspoken reason, however, dealt more with the manners and morals of mid-1960s America. NBC was very concerned with the “eroticism” of the pilot and the ensuing series. Their knowledge of Roddenberry’s attitude toward [women] didn’t help. NBC sales was equally concerned with the Spock character, [fearing he’d be] seen as demonic by Bible Belt affiliate-stations and advertisers. Their concern presented a serious stumbling block to the sale of the hoped-for series.’
    Roddenberry discussed his view of the rejection of ‘The Cage’ at a
Star Trek
convention in 1986. ‘The reasons [for NBC’s rejection] were these: too cerebral, not enough action and adventure,’ said Roddenberry, creating his legendary explan -ation for the first pilot’s failure. ‘“The Cage” didn’t end with a chase and a right cross to the jaw. Another thing they felt was wrong was that we had Majel [Barrett] as a female second-in-command. In the test reports, the women in the audience were saying, “Who does she think she is?” They hated her. It is hard to believe that in twenty years, we have gone from a totally sexist society to where we are today.
    ‘We also had what they called a “childish concept” – an alien with pointy ears from another planet [Spock]. People in those days were not talking about life forms on other worlds. It was generally assumed that this [Earth] is the place where life occurred and probably nowhere else. It would have been all right if this alien with pointy ears, this “silly creature,” had the biggest zap gun in existence, or the strength of 100 men, that could be exciting. His only difference from us was [that] he had an alien perspective.’
    In a letter from February 1965 to his agent Alden Schwimmer, Roddenberry had defended ‘The Cage’ from the criticisms of NBC. ‘Whether or not this was the right story for a sale [to the network], it was definitely [the] right one for ironing out successfully a thousand how, when and whats of television science fiction. It did that job superbly and has us firmly in position to be the first who has ever successfully made TV series science fiction at a mass audience level and yet with a chance for quality and network prestige too. I have no respect or tolerance for