)No one's posted here, eh? Guess I'll be the first.
According to Justman and Solow's book, Inside Star Trek, around 1970 or so Roddenberry was offered a chance to buy all rights to Trek from Paramount for $150,000. Roddenberry, because he simply did not have $150,000 at that time, had to pass on what could have been the deal of a lifetime.
Too bad he couldn't, then he could have had complete creative control. One wonders what would have happened, what direction Trek would have taken. Would Vermin and Blaga have been able to get their hands on Trek?
Alas, we'll never know.
Then again, season one of TNG suggests that it might not have been so hot... ;-) (Though admittedly, I doubt that was COMPLETE creative control...)
Well, TNG was still finding it's way at that point, then, later that season, there was a writer's strike. However, the show did get better in S2 and S3.
Season 3, really. S2 was slugged by the writer's strike, but had a couple of standouts -- "The Measure of a Man" and "Q Who" (hello, Borg). Lowlights were plenty -- "Samaritan Snare" (the Pakled), "Up the Long Ladder" (space Irish), and of course the clip show "Shades of Gray".
We know something for sure. Trek II - Trek VI would have been completely different. One of them would have been about Spock killing Kennedy.
In contrast,poor Rod Serling did own the rights to his Twilight Zone TV show but sold them in the 60s for a low sum.He had no idea,as many others in the TV field also didn't,that the TZ would become a huge favorite with audiences to this day.Nor did he & others know that TV shows would be rerun heavily in the coming years & gaining new generations of audiences year after year.Back then,once a TV show ended the people connected with it thought that was that.They did not anticipate that canceled series would end up being repeated as often as they eventually were.And the videotape market of former TV series was years away,DVDs years after that.
The True Story: Star Trek:
The True Story is a documentary series and these remarks are about the episode that focused on Star Trek.
Quite intriguing story of how Star Trek came about including Gene Roddenberry had been a cop before quitting to work on television.
Leonard Nimoy is the only Star Trek cast member to be interviewed for this programme but I was impressed with Herb Solow when he recalled how hard he fought to get Star Trek made.
It was also intriguing to hear from Solow the measure that Bob Justman employed took to get Gene Roddenberry to deliver some scripts on time.
I perhaps heard it before but it was interesting to hear that Jeffrey Hunter did not return for the second pilot because he wanted to do movies instead of television.
Also interesting to hear from Roddenberry’s son Rod including how negative stories about his father, who is perceived to be like a god-like figure, humanised his father to him.
Somewhat fascinating about the technological innovation that were made because of what was on Star Trek.
The programme only looks at the original series and the first movie Star Trek: The Motion Picture. However the programme seems to ignore the existence of the animated series with it giving the impression that the next Star Trek that came along after the original series was The Motion Picture even though the animated series was sandwiched between them. Since Rod Roddenberry was on this programme he probably asked the makers of it to overlook the animated series since his father would not have made it if he had known that it would come back in live action form.
It was interesting to hear that Jeffrey Hunter did not return for the second pilot because he wanted to do movies instead of television.
quote:
More like his wife at the time wanted him to do movies instead of TV. In an old episode of the E! series Mysteries and Scandals that focused on Jeffrey Hunter, Herb Solow was interviewed. Solow stated that Hunter's wife at the time, nicknamed "Dusty", came to the studio to screen the first Star Trek pilot. Dusty, who was acting as Hunter's agent, told the suits involved with Trek that "My Jeffrey is a movie star and does not do television". That may have been the moment Hunter's career collapsed. Hunter soon afterward divorced Dusty, and with ex-wives and kids to support, took just about anything to pay the bills.
It's also mentioned in The Real Story: Star Trek, a documentary on the Smithsonian Channel. You can see it for free here.
Here's Bob Justman's letter of resignation, tendered after production of "That Which Survives", and Gene Roddenberry's very cordial reply.
Nice to see that some of Gene's later ideas, like Earth Final Conflict and Andromeda, got made.
Hard to believe that we're only three years away from the centennial of Gene Roddenberry's birth (1921).
While I respect Gene Roddenberry, I also feel that he made some poor choices in casting Star Trek.
I'm sorry, if he wanted it to be taken seriously then he shouldn't have cast his girlfriends as the three main female leads.( True--they all could act, but it still would make it hard to take seriously).
What in the dead gods of Krypton are you talking about!?
If you mean Majel Barrett, I'd hardly called Nurse Chapel a lead character. She was, at most, a secondary supporting character.
If you mean the character she played in The Cage (Number One), well the suits at NBC put the kibosh on that idea pretty fast. Their 1964 minds couldn't wrap themselves around the idea of a woman First Officer.
While I agree with you--they seem to think they were costars not supporting characters, so I phrased it this way.
As for who I'm talking about, over the years I've seen stories linking all three female regulars with Roddenberry romantically either before or during the series.
If I were a studio head I'd have serious doubts about anyone pushing a new show--and then casting three "girlfriends" as recurring roles.
He really should have cast others in the roles to prevent it looking like a conflict of interests.
Just my take on the matter.
over the years I've seen stories linking all three female regulars with Roddenberry romantically either before or during the series.
Do you have any documentation to back this up?
I mean we know Gene and Majel ended up together, that is a solid fact.
As for the others, I'm gonna treat it like the rumours they probably are.
Even if it was true, the "Casting Couch" was an old well-known situation at the time that I doubt any studio would have done anything about it.
As for the others, I'm gonna treat it like the rumours they probably are.
Gene Roddenberry did have an affair with his assistant, Susan Sackett. While he was married to Majel. (Sackett was also one of the writers on the not-so-well-regarded Next Gen episode "The Game".) And, there is documentation to back up the affair.
As I've said on another page here, I had a good, long conversation with Ms. Sackett at a Trek convention in September, 1977. Their affair could have been going on at that point; I don't know.
Have you actually read that book, Adam? It sounds very interesting.
Anyway, Susan Sackett was worked with Gene for a long time (she had a cameo appearance in the TNG episode, The Neutral Zone, she's the female officer exiting the turbolift as Offenhouse is looking for the bridge). In fact, she worked with him right up until he died.
However, to go back to Jep's post, I would hardly call he a "lead". She wasn't even an actress.
"and then casting three "girlfriends" as recurring roles."
Correction; 'mistress', not 'girlfriend', and just ONE; Majel. As much as I hate the fact, Gene was cheating on his wife with Majel.
The other two, I'm assuming you're speaking about Nichelle Nichols and Grace lee Whitney, were NOT his girlfriends. There's nothing to back that up, from what I've read, and I've read every Trek biography out there.
IIRC Grace Lee's autobiography mentioned an unnamed executive, or higher up, who used his position to force her have sex with him and some have jumped to the conclusion it was Roddenberry.
So that's probably the source of JEP's assuming she was Gene's "girlfriend", although I believe the encounter happened before she was fired, not hired.
IIRC Grace Lee's autobiography mentioned an unnamed executive, or higher up, who used his position to force her have sex with him and some have jumped to the conclusion it was Roddenberry.
No doubt this added to the rumours. And since Ms. Whitney is now deceased, we can only guess who that executive was. Was it Roddenberry? We'll never know.
While Gene Roddenberry had his flaws, including an affair here and there, I doubt he was the Harvey Weinstein of his time.
Have you actually read that book, Adam? It sounds very interesting.
No I haven't, Tim. By the time I found out about the book, it was out of print. Not having a Kindle, I couldn't even buy a download. (Or, can I?)
I have no idea. I don't do Kindle, I read books the old fashioned way.
I'm glad Gene is not alive to see what the CBS Swindlers have done to his creation.
Really Tim? You don't like Discovery? You kept that pretty much to yourself....
From Memory Alpha:
In his twilight years, mellowed over time, Courage downplayed the incident to some extent, "There wasn't any rift, really, with Gene. What happened with Gene was a I got a phone call once...it was Gene’s lawyer, [Leonard] Maizlish. He said, "I'm calling you to tell you that since you signed a piece of paper back there saying that if Gene ever wrote a lyric to your theme that he would split your royalties on the theme." Gene and I weren’t enemies in any sort of way. It was just one of those things...I think it was Maizlish, probably, who put him up to doing it that way, and it’s a shame, because actually if he'd written a decent lyric we could have both made more money.
Leonard Maizlish strikes again!
Why did Gene keep this guy around. He ruined Gene's relationships with both Dorothy Fontana and David Gerrold (in the last few months of Gene's life, he and Gerrold seemed to be patching things up.
However, he and Fontana never spoke again.
Gene Roddenberry had more on his plate in 1965 besides Star Trek. More on that from MeTV, including a pilot that featured DeForest Kelley, here. (Imagine if one of the others sold, and Trek didn't. On the other hand, forget about that. )
Giant Freakin' Robot reports that a biopic of Gene Roddenberry is in the works. More on that here. Casting suggestions, anyone?
I would have suggested William Shatner, had he been younger.
That would be kind of fitting, since we just reached the centennial of his birth (it was on the 19th, last Thursday).
Unfortunately, Gene never made it age 90 like Shatner-- he died at 70 years and 2 months. What kind of biopic could be made if the actor playing Roddenberry can't pull off age 30 or 40 or 50?
I'm going to suggest Jon Favreau, since he's a little husky in build like Gene, even if he is 55 at the moment.
I'm assuming the biopic would follow a young Roddenberry into his 20's and time working on Trek (age 43 to 48), and post-Trek, so the actor would have to be reasonably young and aged realistically.
Make up and such have come a long way. The right actor could pull it off, IMO.
In this article is the text of a letter Gene Roddenberry wrote to both Shatner and Nimoy during production of the series, as a result of their spiraling out of control egos.
Being a fly on the wall to watch them read this letter would have been priceless. 
Fixed your post, Francois.
As for te article, to coin a phrase: Fascinating.