Matthew Continetti’s column in the Washington Free Beacon this week reviews The Fifty Year Mission, a two-volume history of Star Trek that chronicles the tumultuous story of the science-fiction franchise from the perspective of the cast and crew.
One of the prevailing themes: Creator Gene Roddenberry had the idea for his universe, but it managed to succeed only despite him. In the appropriate lingo (“technobabble”, as it’s been called), writers, producers, and directors were constantly rerouted to the latest Trek project’s life support systems to keep the franchise viable—and, ultimately, good. Continetti writes about the period in-between the end of the first Trek TV show and the feature film it eventually spawned:
For whatever reason … the phenomenon would not die. The original series flourished in syndication and led to the publication of fanzines, to fan conventions. The Star Trek episodes novelized by science fiction eminence James Blish were extremely popular. Roddenberry saw a financial opportunity. He established a company, Lincoln Enterprises, selling props and frames of celluloid that had been used on the show. College lecture gigs paid well. “Gene had a big part in the conventions early on,” says film producer Jon Povill. … What he was not so terrific at was writing. The first attempt to resurrect the show, Star Trek: The Animated Series, lasted two seasons before being cancelled in 1975. Roddenberry had nothing. So he made a deal with Sir John Whitmore, an eccentric former racecar driver who wanted him to write a screenplay about a group of extraterrestrials, the “Council of Nine,” who Whitmore believed were bound to return to Earth any day now. Roddenberry set to work. He shared his draft with friends. “I read this script and the hair began to rise on the back of my neck,” says writer Harold Livingston, “because that’s his, Gene’s, story. He was totally unaware of what he was writing. He was also writing his various sexual perversions, which I certainly don’t hold a grudge against, because I’ve got my own problems. But there’s something very, very amiss there.”
A recurring incident throughout Trek’s history, according to the books, was Roddenberry’s tendency to commandeer creative ideas for the worse, rewriting scripts and creating drama behind the scenes. In many cases, it was only when the studio brought in outsiders that the drama in front of the camera was of top quality. Here’s Continetti on the franchise’s crucial decade in the 1980s:
When Paramount went ahead with a sequel (to The Motion Picture, the first film), it sidelined Roddenberry in favor of producer Harve Bennett and writer-director Nicholas Meyer, who assumed the role Gene Coon had played in the 1960s: making Roddenberry’s concept work as drama. The two films on which they collaborated, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, are the best of the series. (Meyer also wrote and directed the excellent Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, produced by Leonard Nimoy.) … The first year of Next Generation was filled with infighting, antagonism, and abrupt departures. Many producers, writers, and crew left the show in frustration. So did two members of the cast. The petty psychological games played on the staff by Roddenberry and his attorney and business manager, Leonard Maizlish, were legendary. According to Altman and Gross, firings or resignations would follow “verbal abuse, a shift to increasingly worse office spaces, being denied parking spots, and worse.” Picard never denied Worf a parking spot. It was not until poor health limited Roddenberry’s involvement that the situation began to improve. Michael Piller was brought on as co-executive producer and lead writer. Like (original series producer Gene L. Coon) and Meyer before him, Piller used Roddenberry’s universe not as the pedagogical instrument for a monolithic, quasi-spiritual doctrine, but as the backdrop for storytelling.
Read the rest here.
