A Brief Guide to Star Trek

while ‘How Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth’ featured the first Native American character in
Star Trek
(long before
Voyager
’s Chatokay). Even Captain Kirk’s middle name (the initial ‘T’ was for Tiberius) was revealed in the animated episode ‘Bem’, and it became part of the official canon thereafter (no matter what the gravestone in ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’ might read!). The series also introduced Commodore Robert April, a previous captain of the USS
Enterprise
(using the name for the original
Enterprise
captain from Roddenberry’s series proposal).
    The
Los Angeles Times
commented favourably on the new animated
Star Trek
in September 1973, noting its maturity for a Saturday morning cartoon show. ‘NBC’s new animated
Star Trek
is as out of place in the Saturday morning kiddie ghetto as a Mercedes in a soapbox derby. Don’t be put off by the fact it’s now a cartoon . . . It is fascinating fare, written, produced and executed with all the imaginative skill, the intellectual flair and the literary level that made Gene Roddenberry’s famous old science fiction epic the most avidly followed programme in TV history, particularly in high IQ circles. NBC might do well to consider moving it into prime time at mid-series’.
    A move to prime time never happened, but the animated
Star Trek
did prime the pumps for an audience now more hungry than ever for new
Star Trek
adventures. It would only be a matter of time, surely, until
Star Trek
returned as a full live-action TV series for the 1970s. ‘[
Animated
]
Star Trek
was not a children’s show’, Scheimer said. ‘It was the same show that they would have doneat night time. We did the same stories, [with] the same writers. The fans loved it, but it was not a kid’s show.’

    Gene Roddenberry was hoping for a positive outcome from
The Animated Series
– and that didn’t necessarily include a full revival of
Star Trek
. For a few years after
Star Trek
ended, and with the failure of his attempts to break into Hollywood movies, Roddenberry was living off his not inconsiderable savings rather than generating any new income through writing.
    He wasn’t short of ideas for projects, and the success of
The Animated Series
made it possible for Roddenberry to get some of these long-gestating shows into production. He already had a new TV series pilot made and ready to air on CBS:
Genesis II
, a riff on
Buck Rogers
that sees a twentieth-century man thrown forward in time to the post-apocalyptic twenty-second century. Alex Cord starred as Dylan Hunt, a name reused by Majel Barrett, now Majel Roddenberry (who co-starred in the pilot) for the later Gene Roddenberry-inspired series
Andromeda
.
    Genesis II
was notable for its anti-
Star Trek
pessimistic view of the future in which the Earth has been ravaged by nuclear war and civilisation struggles to survive: all very far removed from the utopia of the Federation. Aired on 23 March 1973, the show did well enough for CBS to commission a further six scripts, including one by D. C. Fontana. When CBS eventually passed on the series, Roddenberry interested ABC, who backed a second, reworked pilot – in a situation very reminiscent of
Star Trek
’s origins. Roddenberry rewrote his material under the new title
Planet Earth
, with John Saxon replacing Cord as Hunt (mirroring Shatner replacing Jeffrey Hunter). Poor reviews for
Planet Earth
killed off any prospect of an ongoing series, and the name Dylan Hunt would be forgotten, until the debut of
Andromeda
, starring Kevin Sorbo, in 2000.
    Also in development was
Questor
, a ninety-minute pilot co-written with
Star Trek
’s Gene Coon for NBC, and
Spectre
, another pilot script that Roddenberry worked on with Samuel A. Peeples. The pair also collaborated on
The Tribunes
, anotherscript about futuristic law enforcement that did not sell.
Questor
was intended to be a series about a humanoid robot making his way in the modern world. Featuring some of the characteristics that would later be seen in the character of Data on
The Next Generation
, Questor was hunting for his creator while enjoying a buddy relationship with human engineer Jerry Robinson. Although written as a starring vehicle for Leonard Nimoy, the TV movie featured Robert Foxworth – a
Star Trek
guest star who was a studio-imposed choice that Roddenberry could not reject. Retitled
The Questor Tapes
– in anticipation of a weekly series – an additional six scripts had been ordered in case the