INSIDE THE ENTERPRISE
Then the noble captain of the ship, Captain Kirk, appeared; fearless, yet touched by every death. McCoy, the ship’s doctor and the captain’s close friend, acted as his devil’s advocate, offering the voice of traditional humanity. At the perimeter stood Spock, cool and austere, always logical. Spock was the enigma. He was second-in-command and possessor of an alien heritage.
The stories offered reality. People thought and bled; they made mistakes and expressed personal beliefs. Many episodes, including “The Naked Time,” forced deeply rooted doubts of the day to the surface. No other cast of science fiction characters had ever tried this before.
Space: 1999 arrived in 1975. Audiences waited for something good. It didn’t have to be Star Trek; it just had to be enjoyable. The dreadful series triggered a violent backlash. One critic aptly dubbed it Space: 1949. It was so relentlessly awful that audiences felt betrayed.
Much the same expectations and resentment would also accompany the arrival of Battlestar Galactica.
Star Trek characters, on the other hand, took on lives of their own. Each script added bits of characterization. Viewers felt they recognized the humanity of the characters on screen.
ALWAYS ETHICALLY CORRECT
Captain Kirk and his crew were idealizations. When push comes to shove, they do the right thing: Kirk, Spock, and McCoy don’t possess normal human foibles. They might get angry, but then they meekly apologize. They always make the right ethical choice.
In Harlan Ellison’s “The City on the Edge of Forever,” Harlan wanted Kirk to try to save Edith despite knowing the disastrous consequences of her continued life. Kirk would have failed but he would have tried. This was Harlan’s version for which he won the Writer’s Guild Award. Gene Roddenberry thought Kirk would do the right thing when the time came, no matter how painful. Ellison insisted that bringing Edith to the future would bring the same result as letting her be run down in the street. Roddenberry (with an assist from Gene L. Coon) rewrote Ellison’s screenplay. Captain Kirk deliberately prevented McCoy from saving Edith. Kirk experienced great anguish, but he did the right thing.
Although the characters in Star Trek are enduring, and certainly more believable than those on Lost in Space, Space: 1999, and others, they are still idealizations. Trek characters look like human beings only by comparison with other TV series from that period. They are noble and unblemished, but they agonize over decisions such as in the above example from “The City On the Edge of Forever.”
EARLY EVALUATIONS
After the cancellation of Star Trek in 1969, a revival wasn’t dreamed. Fans were grateful for any mention of their favorite show, however tepid. One example is the brief dismissal given it by John Baxter in his 1970 book Science Fiction in the Cinema, where he devotes only three paragraphs to the series.
Baxter praises “The Menagerie” but drop-kicks stock sets with formula situations, discussing “Patterns of Force” (Nazi Germany) and “A Piece of the Action” (Chicago in the thirties) while ignoring such key episodes as “City on the Edge of Forever,” “This Side of Paradise,” “Mirror, Mirror” and others far more representative of Star Trek. He singled out “Charlie X” for praise, but never mentioned the obvious inspiration of Stranger in a Strange Land.
Baxter never mentions the series’ characters, even though fifteen years before Hill Street Blues, and half a decade before M*A*S*H, Star Trek presented an ensemble cast representing wide interests and appeals.
A SAFE PORT
Although both the original Star Trek and its offspring, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, have been accused by some critics of science fiction of avoiding current social issues, the entire Star Trek family continues to express hope for the future, hope that mankind’s possibilities are endless. And this, if nothing else, leads to a safe port in a troubled modern world.
“We grew beyond the original show. We love the original and those actors, but we see the world differently now and our show reflects that.”
—Gene Roddenberry USA Today November 1, 1990
In 1987 something controversial was done. Star Trek was brought back to weekly television without any of the familiar faces who had graced the name since 1966. Gene Roddenberry was still at the helm, and the universe portrayed was not so different from what we had first been introduced to years before.
When Paramount announced that Gene Roddenberry was creating the first Star Trek spin-off series, and that it would be set seventy-five years beyond the Trek universe we were all familiar with, it was inevitable that this meant changes. How sweeping would those changes be? Clearly the technology would be updated, just as it had been for the motion pictures. Would the philosophy behind the show be retooled as well?
NOT AGAIN …
“When Paramount originally approached me to do a new series, I turned them down. I did not want to devote the tremendous amount of time necessary to producing another show. In order to keep the original series going, I practically had to disown my daughters. I had no time for them when they were school age. I did not want to do that to my life again. There is only one way I know to write and produce and that is to throw my energy at the project all the time. So when they began to think about a second series, I said I would not do it. Then they said, ‘Well, suppose we figure a way that it could be done so you would be in charge?’ I thought they were kidding. The studio said that I could be in full control of the creative standard. I asked a few questions, and they said, ‘Yeah, sure, you must know these things because you’ve been doing them anyway under network guidance.’
“I told the studio that if they went the syndication route I would go for it. Not only would I go for it, I would go for it full blast. I told them I would find ways of doing Star Trek that would give them extra elements. I think we have done that.”
A Star Trek series would be launched with an all new cast, set (somewhat vaguely) seventy-five years after the original series, and featuring the Enterprise of that farther future, the fifth of its line, NCC 1701-D. Paramount was banking that a syndicated show would generate revenues. It seemed impossible, but … it happened. Gene Roddenberry worked hard to produce a new Star Trek that would be true to the ideals of the original but still have its own flavor.
Not having to deal with network or studio interference was a major load off him, and he made certain that no one broke that promise. Early in the new show’s production, a group of junior executives walked into Gene’s office and began going over a script demanding changes. He pointed out they had no right to do this under the terms of his contract and threw them out!
In discussing what the most difficult aspect was of creating Star Trek: The Next Generation, Gene quoted one of the original cast members who had commented on trying to create a new version of a classic. “The most difficult aspect?” Gene replied. “Leonard Nimoy said it. You can’t catch lightning in a bottle twice. I was thinking, yes, he’s probably right.”
RECAPTURING