A Brief Guide to Star Trek

seems likely that the studio hoped the producer would rule himself out of any involvement, as his recent public statements seemed to imply he would. Roddenberry recalled the studio executive’s taunt about how he wouldn’t be able to ‘capture lightning in a bottle twice’, and that he’d probably be better off not getting involved – but this only made Roddenberry more determined to prove that he was
Star Trek
, and that the new show would require his involvement if it was to succeed. To win his support, Paramount had to offer him full creative control of the series. ‘The reason I have some say on
Star Trek
’, Roddenberry told a convention fan audience in 1989, ‘is that Paramount is a little afraid that all of you would commit revolution.’
    With Roddenberry’s arrival, Strangis was out – with a sweetheart deal to produce a TV series sequel to the 1950s movie
The War of the Worlds
. Roddenberry commented that it was just aswell, as Strangis’ outline for the series was another variation on Harve Bennett’s long-suggested Academy Years idea, with the
Enterprise
crewed by a troupe of youthful space cadets. All Roddenberry had to do now was produce a successful update of the much-loved
Star Trek
concept.

    Although Paramount’s first instinct was to place its new
Star Trek
show with an established network, as had been done with the original series on NBC, they initially targeted the newly established Fox network, now home of
The Simpsons
, which launched just the day before the October 1986 announcement of the new
Star Trek
series. Fox would only commit to thirteen episodes, however – not enough for the producers to recover what would be enormous start-up costs in creating the show. Terms could not be agreed, so Paramount decided to take the further risk of debuting the new show in syndication, where the original seventy-nine episodes had prospered. This meant placing the show with the independent stations linked up as the second-run syndication network on an advertising revenue-sharing basis.
    In order to meet the September 1987 debut date for the series, Roddenberry had a huge amount of work to do, with less than a year from creation to broadcast. Roddenberry saw the new show as a chance to learn lessons from
The Original Series
, to achieve some of the ambitions he didn’t manage first time around, and to produce a show that was more in keeping with his views of the world as the new decade of the 1990s loomed. Rather than just rely on his own thoughts, Roddenberry took a collegiate approach, canvassing ideas from a ‘brains trust’ of previous
Star Trek
luminaries, including David Gerrold, Robert Justman, D. C. Fontana and Edward K. Milkis. Out of this pro -cess came the idea of an older, less active starship captain who would not go on ‘away missions’ to new planets. That action role would be filled by a younger first officer, thus presenting two strong but different characters at the head of the show, in the hope of avoiding the William Shatner–Leonard Nimoy rivalry that has so plagued the original.
    Roddenberry went on to hire some of those pioneering
Star Trek
contributors, though most would depart during the troubled first season. Paramount would not trust their expensive flagship new show to Roddenberry alone, so placed studio executive Rick Berman on the series with ultimate responsibility for making it work. Previously a producer of children’s entertainment, Berman had joined Paramount in 1984 supervising current TV programming such as
Cheers
and
MacGyver
. Alongside producers Maurice Hurley and Michael Piller, Berman would help rein in Roddenberry’s more outré or outdated ideas, while also steering
Star Trek
towards the millennium and beyond.
    Roddenberry spent some time catching up on recent science fiction TV series and films, watching movies such as James Cameron’s
Aliens
(1986) in the studio screening rooms. Drafting a series ‘bible’, Roddenberry developed some new crewmembers to fill the
Enterprise
alongside the older captain and all-action first officer. A female military figure (seemingly drawn from his viewing of
Aliens
) was included, alongside Lieutenant Commander Troi, a ‘four-breasted, over-sexed hermaphrodite’, and a wise figure similar to Yoda from the
Star Wars
movies named Wesley Crusher. Although the names would be retained, these characters were seen by others involved in the production as too radical for a weekly television series, even in the