David Gerrold on Roddenberry, the "authorized" biography, and Star Trek

David Gerrold began his professional career as a writer in 1967 with "The Trouble with Tribbles," one of the most beloved and popular episodes of the Star Trek franchise. Since those early days with Trek, he has published more than forty books, including The Man Who Folded Himself, When HARLIE Was One, and the many books in The War Against The Chtorr and the Dingilliad series. After being nominated repeatedly throughout his career, he won the Hugo and Nebula in 1995 for The Martian Child, an autobiographical story about his son's adoption.

Having written episodes for over a dozen different television series, including Star Trek, Star Trek: The Animated Series, The Twilight Zone, and Babylon 5, while simultaneously establishing himself as a master in the genre of science fiction literature, Gerrold has become an authority on science fiction writing, as well as Star Trek.

In fact, many of his critical insights on Trek, first published in his 1973 The World of Star Trek, were directly incorporated into the writer's "Bible" of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which is not surprising considering Gerrold wrote the first draft while working closely with Roddenberry and others. Over a decade before TNG premiered, Gerrold brainstormed a Klingon and counselor on the bridge, families on the Enterprise, and the role of the first officer in leading away teams to planetary surfaces, among other notable ideas that defined TNG as different from TOS.

Arguably, David Gerrold deserved the title of "co-creator." Yet, after a fall-out with Gene Roddenberry during the first season, his Trek legacy has been whitewashed, particularly by official Paramount entities, like startrek.com (which does not credit Gerrold as part of TNG's creative staff) and especially by David Alexander's "authorized" biography of Gene Roddenberry, a book that paints a very unflattering and unfair portrait of Gerrold.

With his consent, we at Trekdom are posting a letter that Gerrold wrote to David Alexander in 1994. Not only does this letter clear the air about his experiences during that chaotic and hurtful first season of TNG, but it also demonstrates that Roddenberry's "official" biography is neither objective nor accurate.

We present this letter so that Gerrold's contributions to Star Trek will elicit further celebration, while also demonstrating how his predictions have proven correct.

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Dear Mr. Alexander,

For nearly seven years I refused all requests for interviews about my association with ST:TNG and the problems that the staff had with Gene Roddenberry. I refused to talk to Joel Engel for nearly six months, and only changed my mind AFTER several close friends urged me to do so to put closure on this whole business.

I began by giving Joel Engel copies of all the memos from the first seven months of ST:TNG. I waited to see what his reaction would be. After he read the memos, he came back to me with questions. The first question he asked was,"What did Gene write?" In the first seven months of the show, Gene wrote one 16-page draft of the bible, and less than a dozen memos, several of which were embarrassing for their sexual content.

As I have said elsewhere, I was Gene and Majel's friend for over twenty years. I taught Gene how to use his first computer. I remained loyal to him when others had abandoned him, I remained loyal when there was nothing to gain, when too many others considered him a has-been -- I remained loyal to Gene because I cared about him.

My problems on the show were not with Gene as much as they were with his lawyer who consistently violated WGAW rules in Gene's name. The lawyer also convinced Gene that he couldn't trust any of his old friends including me, DCF, Bob Justman, and others; thereby isolating him from information that might have helped the show. Remember, I WAS THERE. I saw what happened. Your star witness, as you yourself have acknowledged, was losing his facilities. And as many have noticed, Gene's grasp on truth was slipshod at best...

Most of us on staff knew there was something wrong with Gene. Most of us loved him enough that we were desperately trying to find ways to make sure that he could do his best; but when the lawyer declared war on the staff, he turned the place into an armed camp. I quit rather than participate.

I never sued Gene. The Guild brought an arbitration on my behalf against Paramount for wages owed. Gene took it personally, because the lawyer told him it was a personal attack. It was not. I admit to some anger at the lawyer, and at Gene for allowing the situation to happen; but I also had direct evidence-- Gene lied to my face, and then asked Herb Wright to cover for him -- that Gene had lost touch with his affection for his old friends. Even after I left, I was hesitant to speak to the Guild. It was only when two people on the Star Trek staff started telling people (erroneously) that I had been fired that my agent asked me what I had done on the show. I showed him the stack of work I had written, including the *first* Writer's/Director's Guide, and he sent the material over to the Guild.

My agent made the claim for co-creator credit, not me. And he did so without my knowledge. The Guild looked over the matter and said that Gene's rights to the created by credit were protected because the show was a spinoff of Star Trek. I never argued with that because I never wanted to take anything away from Gene. I only wanted to be fairly paid for writing the bible and doing additional producer-level work.

What Gene obviously did not tell you was that on the day he brought me on staff he told me that he believed I understood the nature of Star Trek better than anyone else in the world, perhaps even better than he did. He said I would be his Creative Consultant and later, a producer. He said I would attend every meeting and make sure his wishes were met throughout the staff. During those first few weeks, I helped bring aboard Andy Probert who designed the ship, wrote a memo suggesting Wil Wheaton for the character of Wesley, created the character of Geordi LaForge (including his name), and other aspects of the show.

BTW, Gene read every Starlog column before it was turned in, and signed off on every one. When I asked him what title I should use, he said, "Head Writer."

When the lawyer came aboard, he began restricting my authority and my title, and even denied me a parking place on the lot. At that point, Gene's relationship with all the staff members began to deteriorate because the lawyer became Gene Roddenbarry's Iago.

After I left the show, for seven years, I had to listen to Star Trek "loyalists" tell stories about me that weren't true and that were obviously designed to hurt me personally as well as hurt my career. One individual told conventions not to bring me in as a guest. Another was telling people that I was mentally ill. A third loyalist destroyed a book deal for me at Pocket Books. And so on. The characterization was created that I was going around badmouthing Trek and Gene, when in fact, I was trying very hard to get on with my life as a novelist. It was difficult to refute the charges when Gene had access to 10,000 people at a time and I was saying "no comment" so the lies about me began to take on a terrible life of their own.

FYI, facts that you failed to mention in your book: I've written over thirty books, at least that many TV scripts, and story-edited three TV series. I created Land of the Lost for Sid & Marty Krofft, and have done episodes for Logan's Run, Twilight Zone, Babylon 5, Star Trek, Star Trek Animated, and other series. I've written Writer/Director's Guides for six series, three of which have been produced. I've written nearly a hundred short stories and nearly a thousand columns and articles. Your book seemed to indicate that I had no other career than Star Trek, when in fact my novels routinely make the Locus and B. Dalton Best-seller list. Again, your research was either flawed, or you deliberately withheld information.

During the summer of 1992, in preparation for the adoption of my son, I did a course in personal effectiveness, and one of the exercises was about forgiveness. Forgiveness was defined as "giving up the right to resent you in the future for events that happened in the past." After considerable soul searching, I wrote a note to Gene, which you referred to in your book. It seemed to me that by that act, I could finally put Star Trek behind me once and for all and focus on the real joys in my life, my writing and my son. Plus, I knew that Gene's health was failing, and it seemed like a good idea to give him some measure of peace before he died. It was a way of acknowledging the good times and thanking him again for them. It was a difficult note to write because I knew that it would be misinterpreted by those who insisted on seeing me as a villain.

(BTW, perhaps Richard Arnold didn't tell you about the times he came into Gene's office and found him weeping at his desk that "all his friends had left him" and he didn't know why. So even Gene was aware that something awful was happening around him.)

Your discussion of The Trouble With Tribbles is inaccurate. Robert and Ginny Heinlein were friends of mine from 1971 until the time of his death. After Ginny gave up the house, she entrusted me with Robert's cat, Pixel, because she couldn't keep him anymore. If Ginny regarded me as anything less than a friend, do you think she would have trusted me with one of the most famous cats in SF literature?

Your reportage of the matter of the Guild arbitration is also erroneous. It was to Gene's advantage to downplay the settlement because it made my claim look frivolous, but in point of fact, there were over twenty witnesses prepared to testify against Gene and his lawyer's behavior. After the testimony of the first five was fully heard, Paramount's lawyers began stalling the hearings. What we were told (unofficially) was that Paramount saw the validity of the claim and wanted to settle it, but that Gene's lawyer had turned it into a grudge match.

At that point, the Executive Director of the WGAW had a private meeting with Gene Roddenberry in which he explained several very good reasons why Gene should encourage a settlement. Not the least of these reasons was that Gene's own reputation would be sullied if the testimony continued. A settlement was made shortly thereafter.

What I find most amazing, however is your bald-faced assertion: "It was Gerrold's choice with Engel to open that old matter, thinking that there was a confidentiality agreement in place...."

The terms of the agreement with Paramount were that I would not discuss the terms of the *settlement. There was nothing in the agreement to prohibit me from talking about the *causes* of the grievance. That I withheld public discussion of Gene's failings for so long was partly out of respect for Star Trek and my affection for the show and its fans, and partly because there was so much more happening in my life of much more importance.

In actual fact, it is you who violated the terms of that confidentiality agreement in place by appearing to discuss the monetary terms of the settlement in your book. The numbers you quoted were not even equal to my income tax refund for that fiscal year. That's as much as I can say without breaching the confidentiality agreement.

I do find it outrageous that you claim you were given the information you were given by a studio attorney, because that puts the studio in the position of knowingly violating their own confidentiality agreement. The WGAW will be very interested in that fact. Thanks. Whoever the attorney was, he lied to you about the facts. Unfortunately, I cannot give the correct information without violating the part of the confidentiality agreement that is in effect. The dilemma here is that others are free to lie about me. I am prohibited from refuting those lies with the documentation.

Even more disingenuous, is your justification that because I spoke to Joel Engel, you were free to hash out the matter in your book. Because your book was published near-simultaneous with Engel's, you had no idea what I might or might not have said to Joel Engel. Therefore you had to have been planning your scurrilous assault on my reputation from the git-go. Indeed, I have it on the authority of someone who is in a position to know that you were given specific instructions to portray me as Gene's enemy. It was only after I was informed of this information that I agreed to speak candidly with Joel Engel.

Now I do want to talk about Gene. Many people have said a lot of things about him. I knew him better than most. I'm certain that I knew him better than you ever did. I saw him at his best and his worst. I saw him stand up to a studio exec about an issue of unconscious racism. But I also heard him say sexist and stupid things about women in general and Majel in specific. I heard him make inspiring speeches about challenging writers to tell the best stories they could, but I also heard him rage against good people who he felt had betrayed him. The day we moved into our offices he said, "I'm going to lose a lot of friends before this is over." (I should have taken that as a warning.) I knew him when his mind was so sharp he could cut a seven page scene down into four lines of dialogue. And I knew him when he was so fuzzy that he couldn't remember how a scene had begun when he got to the end of it.

At his best, Gene could inspire people to be better than they believed they were capable of. That was his greatest virtue. He was a man who could sell ice to penguins.

His greatest failing was that he didn't fully believe in his own vision himself. Once he'd inspired people, he couldn't trust them; perhaps because on some level he was so insecure about his own beliefs, or perhaps because he thought people had fallen for his vision too easily, he never believed that they were as deeply enrolled or as deeply committed as they were.

People believed in Gene and in Star Trek. Nobody believed in him and the show as much as Dorothy and myself. We have our careers as demonstration of that. But Gene never allowed himself to believe that anyone was in it for anything but the money and the glory, and he was unwilling to share the credit. As a result, he was a terrible manager. He hurt people, he betrayed them, he left a trail of broken promises. And he always made sure he had someone to blame when things went wrong. NBC. Harlan Ellison. The studio. Harve Bennett. Robert Wise. And finally me. If it hadn't been me, it would have been someone else.

Gene was like the blind man with the lantern. He lit the path for many others, but he flailed in darkness himself.

I do not believe that you understand what Star Trek really meant to many of us who worked on the show. It was a wonderful dream for Dorothy and myself and almost every writer who came in. In our eyes, it was the best TV show in the world.

We worked as hard as we could. We wanted to make Gene happy. We wanted to make him look good. And then we were told that our work was sh!t and we had to do it over again. So we did. Again and again and again. Then the weird stuff got weirder. Credit-grabbing. Lying. Unjustified temper tantrums and bawlings-out. Vilification. Lies to us about how the studio hated us. Lies to the studio about how we were disloyal. We were getting so much conflicting information, we had no idea what was going on.

Eventually, I was approached privately by a major studio exec who asked me what was going on. I didn't want to be disloyal to Gene. I tried to beg off. He promised me confidentiality. He told me that the studio was thinking of pulling Gene off the show. I said that would kill him. Even in the midst of it, I was still trying to be loyal to Gene, thinking that he was still loyal to his staff. At another point, even Majel asked me if everything was all right. I was afraid to tell her the truth because I didn't want to hurt her feelings. (I have always had a great deal of affection for Majel, for reasons I won't discuss here.)

When I finally realized just how sick Gene was -- and just how unworkable Star Trek had become -- I became physically ill. From March until shortly after I quit, I was seeing one doctor after another trying to find out why I hurt allover, why I had no energy, why I couldn't eat. I was diagnosed as hypoglycemic, suffering from Epstein-Barre, and was going to be tested for other neurological conditions as well. I left the show in June, and started working on Trackers at Columbia and by the end of August most of my symptoms had disappeared. The therapist's conclusions were that I had been under terrible emotional stress, and that quitting Trek had been the cure.

You have deeply misrepresented who I am in your book; you have no idea who I am, what my work is, or what I did for TREK. I was deeply hurt by Gene and his lawyer. Promises were made and broken. After seven years of silence, I spoke to Joel Engel because I wanted the truth told at least once. Part of what I told Engel was favorable to Gene. Part was not. That was Gene. Warts and all.

Frankly, I am tired of after-the-fact explainers adding additional bullsh!t to the pile. Gene spoke out regularly about how I had betrayed him. He did this at one convention after another. Friends sent me tapes and clippings. I filed them and tried to get on with life. His speeches were reprinted in fanzines. He gave interviews to newspapers all over the world -- I have clippings from England and Australia where he railed on about me. Then the fans started repeating it. Now you. I have been saddled with a burden of lies by Star Trek's true believers, and your book is just another shovelful of the same old crap, and Joel Engel is the first reporter in seven years who bothered to call me up and ask, "Is this true? Do you have anything to say?" After seven years of calumny, abuse, and unofficial blacklisting, I do not feel I need to apologize for finally speaking up. Enough is enough. A responsible reporter would have checked his facts before printing them. You did not. You have not hurt me. You have hurt the credibility of your book, and your credibility as a biographer.

As I said before ... I have a life beyond Star Trek, and I have focused my attention where it belongs, on my writing and on my son.

My son and I have traveled all over the world together, we're a joyous family. I've been Guest of Honor at five conventions in the past twelve months, with two more to go this year. I had a novel published last November, another one just this May, and a new one scheduled for next June. I've had nine books published since I quit Trek. I have a story coming up in next month's F&SF. I just had a script aired on Babylon 5. I have my column in PC-Techniques. And I've done over a hundred thousand words of short stories for Resnick's anthologies in the past 18 months. I'm doing some of the best writing of my career since I've freed myself of the burden of the past.

Why do I tell you this?

Because I've been around long enough to know that what counts in science fiction is science fiction, not hype, not mythology, not lies.

Ten years from now, twenty years, whatever, I'll still be here writing science fiction, I'll still have the credential of my own work to speak for me. Whatever lies have been told or repeated, regardless of who has authorized them, I am confident that the body of my own work will stand as a suitable rebuttal to the steamroller of lies, and I can live with that final resolution. The readers will see for themselves.

Those who have made Star Trek a mythology, who have elevated Gene to Godhood, and who feel that the appropriate worship of the Great Bird involves the destruction of others have clearly missed the real point of Star Trek -- that we can only solve our problems when we learn to deal fairly with each other. This is the real tragedy of Gene's life -- that he himself never fully respected or trusted his own lifelong friends. This is what ultimately brought him the most sorrow. And this is the point that you missed in your book. What a pity. That would have been one helluva biography.

David Gerrold

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Exclusive Interview: Trek Insider Susan Sackett Remembers Gene Roddenberry

Susan Sackett worked as Gene Roddenberry’s executive assistant for 17 years. She also served as his assistant for Star Trek: The Motion Picture and as Production Associate for the first five seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as co-writing (with Fred Bronson) several TNG episodes. Additionally, she has written a number of books about the entertainment industry and Star Trek, including her autobiography Inside Trek, a tell-all book that reveals her “secret life” as Roddenberry’s lover and close friend.

She kindly agreed to an interview with Trekdom.

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Trekdom: Your autobiography, Inside Trek: My Secret Life with Star Trek Creator Gene Roddenberry, is quite touching, and it gives readers a fascinating look into your career as a writer and Trek insider, as well as your professional and intimate relationship with Gene Roddenberry. Can you tell us what motivated you to write this book? Was there a central message about Roddenberry or Trek that you wanted to convey?

Susan Sackett: After Gene died, I was naturally devastated. He had been the center of my world. I never considered my working with him a “job.” It was who I was and what I did in life. I felt a need to work out my thoughts. For years, I had kept a notebook of my feelings and experiences. But there was still more in my head that I needed to put down on paper, so I began by simply writing something for myself, so I would never forget our conversations, my feelings and my personal experiences. Many pages later, I had the germ of a book. It was then that I decided to create a complete book, still for myself. I put it away for many years while I completed other writing assignments.

In 1999, I had a friend with whom I wanted to share my private thoughts, and so I showed him the manuscript. Being a web designer, he thought we could perhaps serialize the chapters on a web site we ended up calling “Inside Trek.” I also posted a quotation from Gene Roddenberry each week for 52 weeks -- many from interviews I had done with him for a 25th anniversary book that was never published, many from memory, or other interviews over the years, and some from public sources. Also on the site were photos from my private collection, as well as a few one-of-a-kind personal souvenirs I hoped to sell in order to maintain the upkeep costs of the site.

We sold low-cost “memberships” for people who wanted to read the chapters online. One member was William Bernhardt, a mystery writer who had just launched his own publishing company in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He contacted me and asked if he could publish a printed version of the book. I knew of his work and was very flattered! I worked with him for many months polishing the manuscript, and in 2002 the trade paperback was released by Hawk Publishing. I have copies for sale on my web site, and it can also be ordered online through Amazon, B&N, and other stores.

Long story short, writing it was therapy for me!

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Part two of the question – was there a central message about Gene that I wanted to convey? Well, yes, every piece of writing should have a message. Mine was that Gene Roddenberry was one of the most gifted people of our time, but he also had demons that haunted him. He was, after all, human. I see him as an Ernest Hemingway type of creative writer – brilliant in his work, but also plagued by doubts, depression and addictions. Sometimes these things drive genius. I also wanted people to see more than just the legend or the public persona. As a writer myself and one of the people closest to him, I felt I was qualified and had an obligation to do that.

Trekdom: He was such a complex and complicated man. Since his death, several books, yours notably, have exposed his “darker side,” especially his drug and alcohol abuse and his less than progressive views toward women. Having known Roddenberry so well, were there times when you saw him as a walking contradiction, meaning that his voiced philosophy clashed with his lifestyle and personal beliefs? Or, would that characterization be unfair?

Sackett: In some ways, that would be a fair characterization. You have to remember that he was a product of his time. He had a healthy libido. He was a man who was passionate about everything he did – his writing and producing, eating, drinking, and yes, enjoying women. He saw nothing wrong with acting on his passions while writing about equality or temperance. These were ideals and goals, and he was a human, not a robot or god who was some sort of perfect icon.

And I wouldn’t use the term “darker side.” I think he had some of those Hemingwayan demons that drove him to “self-medicate.” He might have benefited from prescribed drugs such as anti-depressants, but at what cost? Would it have dulled his mind? Was he an addictive type personality? I leave that to the psychologists to decide (although I do offer some of his doctors’ commentary in my book, for the record, to show that he was chemically challenged). He had that kind of genius that people of his generation dealt with by turning to drug use such as alcohol and cocaine (oddly, for a long time in this country, cocaine was legal and alcohol wasn’t!). It had to have been maddening to be so creative and to have the product of your blood, sweat and tears hung out there for the world to love and the critics to tear apart… to have to defend yourself against the inevitable onslaught of nay-sayers. I’m not defending what he did, just trying to realize what might have driven him to do things the way he did.

TD: Some fans believe that Roddenberry’s vision was also contradictory. Star Trek represents a future in which cultural diversity and tolerance are celebrated. Yet, at the same time, Roddenberry’s personal intolerance for “superstitious” and “backwards” religious beliefs finds expression in Star Trek. To the best of your knowledge, did he ever see any tension between his respect for diversity and his anti-religious iconoclasm?

Sackett: Diversity and religious belief are entirely different areas when it comes to tolerance. One cannot adhere to two contradictory ideas at the same time. His non-belief in religious illogic was true to his own philosophy. That does not mean he did not grant others the right to their beliefs. He merely commented upon them from his own standpoint. In fact, when his son was given a “Welcome to the World” party (shortly before I began working for him), Gene proudly invited a rabbi, and Christian minister and a Catholic priest, all personal friends of his, to participate in the festivities. I think because of his high hopes for humanity, he was impatient with the superstitious beliefs that religions do sell. He wanted to see humanity progress, and, as many people today such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens will point out, being bogged down in these petty beliefs (my god can beat up your god and we have the only true way) holds humanity back from greatness. It is too bad he didn’t live to see the beginning of this new enlightenment, this new humanistic movement that is beginning to awaken in this country.

So yes, he valued cultural diversity, racial diversity, even galactic diversity if you will – but had his opinions on what he felt would hold us back as an enlightened species. And I very much agree with him here.

TD: Interesting... It was unfortunate that his professional relationships with several Trek insiders deteriorated, especially during the first season of The Next Generation. Would it be fair to say that, after losing control of Trek in the early 80s (while disliking many aspects of Harve Bennett’s films), Roddenberry became so overly protective of TNG that he unintentionally alienated others?

Sackett: It is quite possible. He became very protective of the “new” spin-off, because his name was out there as the creator of the series. No matter who got the writing credit week after week, it was his name, “Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek,” that was on the line. As Donald Trump says, “It’s nothing personal, it’s just business.”

It was his reputation and his legacy that were at stake, whereas the writers could always find other jobs. Not that I’m condoning what he did. In the prior years that I had known him, he had always spoken extremely highly of the many writers whose friendships he lost during that first year of TNG. But when forced to chose between what he saw as substandard (i.e., sub-Gene-standard) writing and friendship, he opted for protecting his baby, TNG. So he rewrote their work, and this displeased the writers, who naturally banded together against what they saw as an injustice. Don’t forget, everyone had challenged Gene to do this new version of Trek, and everyone said it couldn’t be done: “Roddenberry can’t catch lightning in a bottle twice” was one of the phrases that was tossed about quite frequently. The gauntlet had been thrown down. So he had a lot of pressure on him, and this fed into his insecurities.

The Harve Bennett part of the question is one that is too complex to delve into here. Many things in the Bennett-era films worked quite well. But in a creative business like writing and producing, you are always going to have a lot of people with egos, and sometimes there are going to be clashes. Gene admired some things in the films and was unhappy about others. So yes, this might have led to his being insecure and overly protective of his creation, his legacy and his Star Trek ideals.

TD: “Everybody’s human,” Kirk said in Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country. Despite Gene's character flaws, he was a great man, and he inspired so many of us. Readers of your book will also realize how special he was to you as a companion and a lover. Can you leave us with a few thoughts about how he and Star Trek have inspired you and enriched your life?

Sackett: It is so much easier to talk about others than oneself! I’ll try, though. Gene totally changed my life! I had admired his work before meeting him, as a fan of the genre and Star Trek in particular. What amazed me after working with him for so many years is that he came to respect me and my ideas, and this did wonders for my own self-confidence. To be able to dialogue with a person of his intellect, and to be taken seriously – this opened up a world of discovery to me that I had never known. It has led me to explore a life of reason and understanding, to question everything, and to take the path I have chosen to be on today. Gene introduced me to Humanism, and this has become my lifelong passion. In the years since Gene’s death, I have done much volunteer work for the promotion of this cause, including being president of our local 250-member chapter, the Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix, and being on the board of directors of the American Humanist Association. I often give talks about “Humanism in Star Trek,” so Star Trek is never far from my thoughts. Gene set me on that path, so he is never far from my thoughts either.

TD: Thank you so much for your time!

Sackett: My pleasure!

*An autographed copy of Inside Trek can be purchased at Sackett’s website (http://www.insidetrek.com/) Trekdom highly recommends this book.

** This interview may not be reproduced without Trekdom's consent.

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Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and JFK: The Rejected Roddenberry Pitch for Star Trek II, III, and IV

by Jack Klause.


In the spring of 1980, Gene Roddenberry sat down to write a 60-page outline for a sequel to the first Star Trek feature film. Unlike The Motion Picture, the next one, he hoped, would be a Gene Roddenberry script, not a creative mishmash that went through the hands of countless other writers and studio executives. This would be the film that he wanted to make, and no one could claim co-writer credits or file grievances with the Writers' Guild. Committees be damned! Trek was his baby, and he was confident that Paramount would welcome his storyline with open arms and open wallets.

What was his grand idea? It involved time-travel, Klingons, and a beloved American president: JFK. After losing ships to V'GR, Klingons locate the "Guardian of Forever" (seen in "The City on the Edge of Forever"), and they diabolically use the time portal to travel back to 1963. These rogue Klingons succeed in stopping the assassination of JFK. Perhaps they kidnap Lee Harvey Oswald, or maybe they abduct the president and feed him Gagh! Somehow... they keep JFK alive. Only the insiders who've read the unpublished script know the full details. But, apparently, this change in the timeline is extremely detrimental for the future of humanity, and by the 23rd century, the Klingons reign supreme as an unstoppable intergalactic imperial force.

Fortunately, Captain Kirk once again saves the universe... by letting someone die. Travelling back in time, the noble captain ensures that JFK gets his head blown off in Dealey Plaza. "The climactic moments of the film," according to William Shatner, "would find Spock standing on a grassy knoll in Dallas, firing that infamous `phantom shot'... thereby guaranteeing a brighter future for all of mankind."

Prior to this cinematic climax, viewers are treated to Captain Kirk and JFK fighting, arguing, and then becoming close friends as the handsome and young commander-in-chief tours the spaceship Enterprise.

According to Trek insider Susan Sackett, this idea wasn't as hokey as it sounds, because the script contained many sensitive and tender moments, as well as interesting scifi concepts. And, in all fairness, was it really that worse than Kirk going back to the 1980s to save whales?

Paramount rejected the idea, and they soon turned to Harve Bennett to produce The Wrath of Khan. Roddenberry felt extremely hurt, and he took the rejection and demotion to "executive consultant" personally. An ensuing period of intense depression was accompanied by increased alcohol and cocaine abuse.

But, he didn't give up on the idea. He polished and resubmitted it for Star Trek III. It was immediately rejected without explanation. Roddenberry claimed that they just didn't like the idea of time-travel. So, when he learned that the fourth film would involve time-travel, he submitted yet another draft only to face yet another rejection.

Paramount insiders have not spoken publicly about those rejections, but we can guess their reasons. The idea WAS hokey. However nostalgic it may have been to see characters from Star Trek living in the actual sixties ("Double Groovy on You too!" Kirk screams), it was not an entertaining premise, especially when audiences were asked to applaud the death of JFK, because it safeguarded a future of human spaceflight!

It was also not original. Despite Roddenberry's assumption that no one else could claim writing credit, one can imagine an irate Harlan Ellison jumping on every soapbox he could find to denounce yet another bastardization of his original script, "City on the Edge of Forever." Roddenberry was simply combining the plot of "City" with the embarrassingly bad season 3 TOS episode "The Savage Curtain," in which Kirk hobnobs with none-other-than Abraham Lincoln (who calls Uhura "a charming Negress").

Any fan who attacks Harve Bennett's movies as "not in the spirit of TOS" should take a few moments to imagine the Star Trek film that Roddenberry would have made: Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and JFK

*Sources Consulted: Susan Sackett's Inside Trek, Robert Justman and Herb Solow's Inside Star Trek, and Joel Engel's The Man and the Myth Behind Star Trek: The unauthorized biography of Gene Roddenberry.

*Author's note: Some sources claim that Kirk and Spock attempt to stop the assasination of JFK. It is possible that different versions of Roddenberry's script contained different narratives.

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Saving Star Trek from Gene Roddenberry: The Legacy of Harve Bennett

by Jack Klause.

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Television producer Harve Bennett had been on the Paramount lot for barely a week when he was summoned to chairman Barry Diller’s office. Bennett, known best for The Six-Million-Dollar Man, The Mod Squad, and The Bionic Woman, expected a “debriefing” of sorts. Hopefully, he thought, they would give him something meaningful to work on, since he had just finished a made-for-TV movie about former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. All hopes aside, Bennett likely had no idea what to expect. His next project could be a dramatic and tearful mini-series or perhaps something involving bikinis and volleyballs. A television producer’s career is notoriously unpredictable.

When he entered Diller’s lavish office, he found himself suddenly cornered by Paramount’s top-brass: President Michael Eisner, television head Gary Nardino, and the legendary Gulf & Western chairman Charles Bluhdorn. After a few seconds of uncomfortable chitchat, Bluhdorn asked, “What did you think of Star Trek, the movie?” Bennett’s heart began to race. He had long hoped to move into feature films, but his success as a television producer had worked against that goal. Were they, he thought, about to hand him the keys to Star Trek, a product that brought the studio 100 million dollars in profit the previous year? Were they really asking him to produce the sequel?

“I thought it was boring,” Bennett responded bluntly.

Bluhdorn nodded in agreement, while chiding Eisner for the botched job. He then turned back to Bennett: “Can you make a better movie?”

“Yes,” Bennett answered, “I can certainly make a better movie.”

“Can you make it for less than forty-five fucking million dollars?”

“Where I come from I could make five or six movies for that.”

“Fine, do it.”

Harve Bennett then left the chairman’s office thinking, “I’d better watch some Star Trek.” He had never watched an episode on television. His familiarity with Kirk and crew amounted to carrying his sleeping children out of a movie theater in 1979. He knew Gene Roddenberry as a producer who kicked him off a television set in 1965 after calling him a “meddling network executive.” Otherwise, he hadn’t worked with Roddenberry, and he was not a Star Trek fan.

At the time, it was unclear to Bennett what role Roddenberry would play. When he later asked about it, Eisner clarified, “Just consult with him; give him that to do.”

Studio execs had decided the Great Bird’s fate behind closed doors: Roddenberry was out. He was difficult to work with, and his role as executive producer on Star Trek: The Motion Picture had been detrimental. A coup d’état in the Star Trek franchise was in order. Considering that Paramount wanted to make the next film for a fraction of the first film’s budget, Harve Bennett was a good choice. Yet, they couldn’t simply fire Gene Roddenberry. The fan reaction would be brutal, and the publicity could be increasingly negative. So, Roddenberry was given the title of “executive consultant,” implying that he had tremendous input on the script and production process. He did not.

When Bennett sat down to watch a sampling of original Star Trek episodes, he began receiving the infamous “Roddenberry memos.” Rarely did they speak face to face. Instead, after exchanging awkward greetings in parking lots, Roddenberry would fire off memo after memo to Bennett, who responded politely in writing. Over the next few weeks, the memos became increasing bitter and confrontational. “Gene cast me immediately as an interloper,” Bennett reflected in Joel Engel’s unauthorized biography of Gene Roddenberry. “There wasn’t a single issue… that was not resisted in memo by Gene… He thought I was trying to do a revisionist Star Trek, whereas I perceived it as trying to replicate what had worked in the show, and thereby pay homage to the founder.”

When Bennett latched on to “Space Seed” as the basis for a new film, Roddenberry objected, promoting his own idea of a time-travel movie in which Kirk and Spock attempt to stop the Kennedy assassination. The idea seemed ridiculous to Bennett, but he responded kindly while thanking Gene for his input.

After Roddenberry read the script for The Wrath of Khan, he was livid. He accused Bennett of militarizing Star Trek and glorifying violence. Bennett had to remind Roddenberry that Starfleet was clearly a military organization in the original episodes. Adamantly, Roddenberry also protested the death of Spock. It would kill Star Trek, he asserted.

While Bennett worked to placate Roddenberry, something unexpected happened: Word of Spock’s death leaked out to fanzines, and Star Trek fans everywhere were up in arms. Nimoy’s fan-mail turned into hate-mail with many fans blaming him for the imminent death of Star Trek: “Good for you. Do not return to Star Trek… I look forward to your wrecking the greatest show of all time with you fucking tactics. Big man, big money, big book, I Am Not Spock… I hereby put a curse on your miserable future career. May 100 million hands turn dials when you appear on the TV screen!”

There was no proof, but many people suspected that Roddenberry leaked the script to fans. Having little official control over Trek, he resorted to underhanded tactics while happily collecting his paychecks. Meanwhile, Harve Bennett gained a reputation for ignoring fan criticisms, because he turned a blind eye to Roddenberry’s most vocal “agents.”

Pushed out of the creative process, Roddenberry could do nothing but stew and scheme, using the fans to do his own bidding just as he had done in 1966-68 with the letter-writing campaigns and the “spontaneous” student march on NBC’s Burbank headquarters. It must have irked him to no end that The Wrath of Khan became the most beloved of all Trek films, while his former contribution earned the nickname of “The Motionless Picture.”

When Gene Roddenberry read the script for The Search for Spock, he bitterly objected to the destruction of the Enterprise. Almost immediately, the details of its destruction leaked out. Paramount knew that Roddenberry was the culprit, because his script had been secretly coded. It is unclear if Roddenberry was threatened or reprimanded by the studio, but he stopped leaking the details of new scripts.

Despite his silence, the Great Bird grew convinced that, with each new film, they were making Star Trek worse. Piece by piece, he felt, they stripped it for profit and mass consumption. According to long-time friend Richard Arnold, Roddenberry was “just fighting as hard as he could to preserve what was left.”

In 1987, as Roddenberry began working on Star Trek: The Next Generation, he became determined to undo the "damage" that Harve Bennett had done. Consequently, TNG was Roddenberry’s open rejection of the Star Trek films. It was not surprising that, in the process of jealously protecting TNG as his “sole” creation, he alienated many Trek insiders, such as D.C. Fontana and David Gerrold.

In 1991, Harve Bennett met Gene Roddenberry for the last time.

“Gene, can I say something to you?”

“Sure,” Roddenberry replied.

“I’ve been a sharecropper in your plantation for almost ten years. I’ve had a great time, but I’m leaving now. In ten years I have never, ever, said anything in public that would in any way distress you or reflect badly upon our relationship.”

“That’s true,” Roddenberry admitted.

“I have listened to everything you had to say. I have honored you and respected you. I know how much money in profits I’ve put in my pockets and yours these ten years… I really would love to see somewhere that Gene Roddenberry said Harve Bennett did a good job. As I leave, I would really like to feel that I was a member of the Star Trek family – and that only comes if you say so.”

“Absolutely, of course,” Roddenberry promised.

The Great Bird never uttered a kind word about Harve Bennett, who has become one of the least celebrated torch-bearers of the Star Trek franchise. Praise is long overdue. Without Bennett, Trek may have flopped into oblivion with Roddenberry or someone else at the helm. Although it is probably a good thing that Paramount never ran with his script about Kirk and Spock’s academy days, Bennett still deserves much credit for saving Star Trek from the abyss. Under his leadership, Trek became hugely popular in the 1980s, breaking into the mainstream with much beloved movies, especially The Wrath of Khan and The Voyage Home.

Throughout all of his triumphs, he stood by graciously as fans and the press congratulated Gene Roddenberry while attributing the strength and profitability of Star Trek to him alone. It must have infuriated Bennett, particularly when Roddenberry took credit for others’ contributions. Yet, just as he had done amidst the onslaught of vicious memos, Bennett remained professional and respectful. And, in his own way, he must have felt that he was honoring Roddenberry’s Star Trek by ignoring and resisting Gene Roddenberry.

*For a more complete account of these events, see Joel Engel's 1994 Gene Roddenberry: The Man and the Myth behind Star Trek. The contents of this article were constructed with Engel as a main reference text.

**Other sources consulted: Shatner's Star Trek Movie Memories and James Van Hise's History of Trek.

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Saving Star Trek: An Inside Job

by Jared B.

By the middle of season 2, the writing was on the wall. The Nielsens had yet to climb. The ratings were moderate to bad. NBC's high-risk investment in Star Trek had flopped.

This "brain child" of Gene Roddenberry was not only expensive to produce, but it also failed to produce anything for NBC except a small and vocal fandom. The network was justifiably concerned. They were losing money. The gamble hadn't paid off, and it didn't make sense to renew the show for a third year, at least from a network point of view.

Yet, instead of cancelling Star Trek, NBC renewed the show for a third season. Without those final 24 episodes, it is doubtful that Trek would have lived on in syndicated reruns.

The story has been told and retold. With an almost religious fervor, many fans continue to recite the "official" and "canonical" version of events:

The fans saved the show! It was a glorious grassroots campaign! Two "Trekkers" in particular, Bjo and John Trimble, used mailing-lists to spread the word about the Trek's cancellation. They encouraged others to send petitions and letters of protest directly to NBC headquarters:

"We want to combat the good ol' traditional American attitude of 'well my one vote won't count much...' because your one tiny letter just may be THE letter that topples the scales in the right direction. If thousands of fans just sit around moaning about the death of Star Trek, they will get exactly what they deserve: GOMER PYLE! (Yetch!) But if thousands of fans get off their big fat typers and W*R*I*T*E letters, and do it soon (like NOW), it could happen that the man in charge of this sort of thing will be more impressed with our letters, than with the damned Nielsen ratings." (Shatner, Memories, 250)

An unprecedented show of support followed. By some accounts, Bjo Trimble was overwhelmed with offers of assistance, calls from volunteers, and donations of stamps and money. What started as hundreds of letters from a small number of hardcore Trek groupies blossomed into a hugely successful chain-letter movement.

According to several insiders, over a million letters and petitions flooded the offices of NBC, mostly addressed to executive Mort Werner. At that time, company policy demanded that each letter be personally opened, read, and documented. Also, it was NBC policy to respond to each piece of mail. Secretaries could not cope with so many letters.

Several weeks later, NBC announced that Star Trek would return for a third season: "And now an announcement of interest to all viewers of Star Trek. We are pleased to tell you that Star Trek will continue to be seen on NBC television. We know you will be looking forward to seeing the weekly adventure in space on Star Trek." (Shatner, Memories, 254)

This was the first time that a network directly informed its audience that a show would be renewed the following year.

The fans had saved the show! At least, that is the myth.

What really happened? The "Save Star Trek" campaign was an inside job, orchestrated and financed by Gene Roddenberry and Desilu/Paramount. The letter campaign was just one of many behind-the-scenes schemes to keep Trek on the air.

It began during the first season, when Roddenberry approached science-fiction celebrity Harlan Ellison with the idea of launching a "Save Star Trek" campaign. At the time, Ellison was still on good terms with Roddenberry, and he agreed to initiate a write-in effort. A "Committee to Save Star Trek" was formed behind closed doors, mostly in old Desilu (and soon to be Paramount) offices.

On Dec. 1st, 1966, Ellison pleaded with Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA). "Star Trek's cancellation," he argued, "would be tragic, seeming to demonstrate that real science fiction cannot attract a mass audience. We need letters! Yours and ours, plus every science fiction fan and TV viewer we can reach through our publications and personal contacts." (Justman and Solow, Inside Star Trek, 299)

Meanwhile, Roddenberry was meeting directly with fans, especially students of Cal-tech, who "spontaneously" participated in a torchlight march on NBC studios in Burbank. As they demonstrated their support for Star Trek, Roddenberry watched from a nearby park while disguised in leather and perched on his new Harley Davidson motorcycle.

Shatner recalled what happened next:

"Gene ordered a hit on NBC headquarters. Gene, Majel, Bjo and John then met over drinks, and Gene pitched his idea... to dig up a handful of local supporters who'd lead the assault on NBC's Burbank offices, and to also find one exceptionally gutsy fan who'd fly to New York and infiltrate the network's Rockefeller Center digs. Once inside, their mission would be to roam the network halls, spreading the word about Star Trek's unwarranted, unwanted demise, then offering bumper stickers and a printed call to any employees who seemed the least bit supportive." (Shatner, Memories, 251)

This small group of fans plastered every car in the NBC Burbank executive parking lot with bumper stickers that read "I Grok Spock!" and "Mr. Spock for President." Roddenberry paid $303.52 for these stickers, and the studio's business department reimbursed him. He also personally paid for Wanda Kendall to fly to New York to distribute more stickers at NBC studies there. As Joel Engel explains in his unauthorized biography of Roddenberry, Kendall later covered for him, telling the New York Post that she was a representative of other classmates who collectively paid for the trip.

According to William Shatner, Roddenberry also participated in late night raids on the studio mail room, carrying away the names and addresses of thousands of fans to add to a master mailing-list. Over the next few years, this master list of fans and science-fiction convention attendees would be guarded by those who orchestrated other campaigns, such as the write-in movement to name the first space shuttle Enterprise.

How effective were these efforts to generate publicity and create headaches for NBC? It is unclear. Over the years, more realistic estimates have surfaced. It is not true that NBC received over a million letters. NBC insiders have dropped the figure to as low as 12,000. It is also doubtful that bumper sticker terrorism endeared NBC executives to a show that was already causing headaches. Most likely, Roddenberry's efforts further annoyed and angered NBC.

So then, why did the show get renewed for a third season? In Inside Star Trek, producer Bob Justman and Herbert Solow present the most convincing explanation. NBC was owned by RCA, and RCA sold color televisions. While many existing programs still filmed in black and white, Star Trek was not only presented in full color, but it was also presented in vivid, futuristic color contrasts.

Despite the fact that the ratings were unimpressive, those at the very top had a vested interest in seeing Trek continue, if only for one more season. Back in 1966, three months after premiering, Star Trek became the highest rated color series on television. Although that honor was soon eclipsed by other programs, Star Trek was still a valuable resource to a network that was marketing itself as the only "full color network."

Comments and Reviews

Gene Roddenberry's Atheism: In his own words

Trekdom invites readers to read and react to the following quotes from a 1991 interview with Gene Roddenberry. Is Roddenberry being fair to religion or Christianity? Are his criticisms valid? Did the Star Trek universe reflect those beliefs?

Gene Roddenberry's Atheism: In his own words



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My family was from the South. My mother was very religious. Every Sunday we went to church, Baptist church. I didn't really take religion that seriously. It was obvious to me, almost from the first, that there were certain things that needed explaining and thinking on, but why bother about them? I was a child. Life was interesting and pleasant.

I think the first time I really became aware of religion, other than the little things you do as a child because Mom says to do it (it was mostly Mom) was when I went to church. In my early teens I decided to listen to the sermon. I guess I was around 14 and emerging as a personality. I never really paid much attention to the sermon before. I was more interested in the deacon's daughter and what we might be doing between services.

I listened to the sermon, and I remember complete astonishment because what they were talking about were things that were just crazy. It was communion time, where you eat this wafer and are supposed to be eating the body of Christ and drinking his blood. My first impression was, "This is a bunch of cannibals they've put me down among!" For some time, I puzzled over this and puzzled over why they were saying these things, because the connection between what they were saying and reality was very tenuous. How the hell did Jesus become something to be eaten?

I guess from that time it was clear to me that religion was largely nonsense, largely magical, superstitious things. In my own teen life, I just couldn't see any point in adopting something based on magic, which was obviously phony and superstitious.

I don't remember ever being serious about any of those things. When I sang in the choir, we made up cowboy words to the choir songs. The rest of the choir would be singing "Holy, Holy Jesus," and we would be singing something entirely different.

At five years old I was serious about Santa Claus, but at five and a half I learned it was nonsense. Writers often write these as weighty moments, but in my experience they're not. Santa Claus doesn't exist. Yes, I think back now that there were all sorts of reasons he could not exist and maybe have a little sadness that he is gone, but then I think the same thing about Jesus and the church.

So my thinking about religion sort of stultified at that time and I just decided not to pay any attention to it. I stopped going to church as soon as it became possible for me to do things on my own as a teenager. I made up my mind that church, and probably largely the Bible, was not for me. I did not go back to even thinking much about it for years. If people need religion, ignore them and maybe they will ignore you and you can go on with your life.



I can't say I didn't care about it or examine it; I just let it pass lightly over me. Religion was so full of inconsistencies that I could see no point in arguing each inconsistency out. It was background noise that you ignore.

I've been thinking about how I said that religion seemed pretty foolish to me for most of my life. Indeed, it did, but then comes the question of why didn't I take a stand against it? I used religion several times in Have Gun, Will Travel. Once in a penitentiary where a pastor was trying to keep a fellow from being hung, I wrote that the pastor grabbed a hacksaw blade, was cut by it, and was bleeding. I had him make some comment about blood and salvation. It's not that I actually believed in blood and salvation being connected, but that was the way the audience believed and I can remember going out of my way not to deal directly with what my thoughts were for several reasons.

There will always be the fundamentalism and the religious right, but I think there has been too much of it. I keep hoping that it is temporary foolishness. Some of it will always be around because there will always be people who are so mean-spirited and such limited thinkers that their religious beliefs seem so logical: that there is a god, and so forth, that nothing else in their limited concept can explain what the existence of a god can. There's been a lot of it lately: Youth for Christ and that sort of thing. I'm hoping that this is just a bump in time.

Of course, the only thing that will keep such things from continuing and growing is education. Dewey was right about that. Unless we have an educated populace, there's no telling what may come along. The pressures of life are so great that a certain percentage of all these uneducated people will come up with strange ideas. Strange, violent ideas. They seem to have good answers for all of our problems. I don't think life's problems are such that we have to rely on simplistic answers instead of thinking things through. I think these things will be found in proportion to and in reverse order of how well we educate ---populace.



Source: Humanist 1991 interview by David Alexander.

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