A Brief Guide to Star Trek

late 1980s.
    Robert Justman’s ideas for the series included having children on the
Enterprise
, speculating that such long space voyages would include families. He also suggested that the ship should have an android among the crew ‘with all the characteristics of Spock fused with the leadership and humanistic qualities of Captain Kirk’. This character would eventually evolve into Data – with David Gerrold suggesting a golden hue to the android’s artificial skin. Justman also conceptualised the ‘holodeck’, a recreational virtual reality device that he saw as a source for many potential storylines (a similar technology had previously appeared in an episode of
The Animated Series
). He also pickedup Strangis’ thought of having a Klingon among the team on the bridge of the
Enterprise
, developing Worf, a character Roddenberry would later gleefully take sole credit for, despite initially resisting the idea. Even the depiction of a journey through the solar system that featured in the main titles was down to Justman. He left the show at the end of the first season, effectively retiring from a forty-year career in film and television.
    The involvement of key creative crewmembers from the ori -ginal
Star Trek
helped Roddenberry’s mission to give the new series some authenticity in the eyes of fans. D. C. Fontana named the new
Enterprise
captain Jean-Luc (compared to Roddenberry’s suggestion of Julien) and argued against the Great Bird’s four-breasted counsellor character with the comment (in a memo): ‘Don’t be silly’. Few of the old hands lasted on the series beyond the first season, and Roddenberry himself, due to his failing health, took a lesser role on the show as the 1990s dawned.

    The show Roddenberry and his team came up with was an extension of the
Star Trek
people knew, but with some subtle new twists. ‘Gene had to create a new television show from twenty-five years of mythology that had grown up over an old one, and he had to do it out of whole cloth’, said Rick Berman in Edward Gross and Mark Altman’s thirty-year
Star Trek
history,
Captains’ Logs
. ‘Gene felt the obsessive necessity to put his own print on everything.’
    Roddenberry was back on the Paramount lot once more, with an office in the Hart Building. He concerned himself with developing a script for the two-hour pilot movie and the following twenty-four episodes, just as he had done in the days of
Star Trek: Phase II
over a decade before. Practical production matters on the series were largely handled by Berman and his team of writer–producers. Filling the
Enterprise
with new characters would require an all-new cast.
    Casting directors and television executives always cast a wide net in trying to find just the right actor to fill a leading role. Thenew captain of the
Enterprise
was to be named Jean-Luc Picard, a man of French descent who would be a more intellectual, older figure than Kirk had been. Among the actors considered – as listed in a 1986 Paramount memo – were Roy Thinnes, the star of 1960s alien invasion series
The Invaders
; Yaphet Kotto, who had appeared in Ridley Scott’s
Alien
(1979); and Patrick Bachau, who had appeared in the James Bond movie
A View to A Kill
(1985). Also on the list was balding British Shakespearean actor Patrick Stewart. Choosing Stewart over nearest rival Bachau was a huge risk for the production. He was another important part of the series development that was down to Robert Justman, who’d seen the actor performing at UCLA and recommended him to Roddenberry and Berman.
    Roddenberry had his own thoughts about who should captain the new
Enterprise
. His preferred choice was Stephen Macht, from
Knots Landing
and
Cagney & Lacey
. Berman remembered that Roddenberry was ‘very stubborn about who he wanted to be Picard. Bob [Justman] discovered Patrick Stewart and brought him to the attention of Gene, but Roddenberry said “No”. I met Stewart and said to Bob, “We have to convince Gene to use this guy.”’ Unaware of Roddenberry’s reputation for never changing his mind, Berman nevertheless went to work on the executive producer, fighting to have Patrick Stewart as Picard. ‘I was the guy who basically bugged Gene into realizing that Patrick was the best Picard’, said Berman.
    The heroic, action-oriented first officer role of William Riker was the most Kirk-like character (given away by his near-anagram, sound-alike surname, and the fact the character shares a first