I’m on a two-week holiday vacation, and I’ve been spending a lot of time reading, “The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek,” by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman. It’s a two-part volume that is over 50 hours in length in audio format. Here is just a small sliver of what I learned about Star Trek:
• Star Trek owes its existence as much to Lucille Ball as anyone. She owned the studio that first produced the series. She backed the show when no one else believed in it. She eventually had to sell the show to Paramount because she ran out of money, but she’s the one who got it off the ground financially. If you ever come across reruns of I Love Lucy, give her a good old Vulcan salute.
• Even though Gene Roddenberry conceived the premise of Star Trek, Gene L. Coon was the real creative power behind the original series. Roddenberry hired him after the initial 13 episodes had been written. Coon invented many of the hallmarks that came to define the series, including the Klingons, the Spock/McCoy friendly feud, the Prime Directive and the humor in Trek. If Roddenberry had gotten his way, “The Trouble With Tribbles,” would never have been made. Roddenberry hated humor on Star Trek. D.C. Fontana, Bob Justman, Coon and Roddenberry were known as, The Fab Four, by the crew. Coon quit 2/3 of the way through the show’s second season due to burn-out. He was the first casualty of a recurring pattern by Roddenberry of endearing himself to his associates, then subsequently abusing, misusing, alienating and ultimately burning them out. Later, after the passage of time, he would re-endear himself to them and the cycle would begin again. Writers are a hungry lot.
Gene L. Coon was born in my mom’s home town of Beatrice, NE. His father was a member of the KKK. My mother’s father served under General George Patton in World War II. Coon had an African-American secretary, Andreea Kindryd, who spoke very well of him. She used to answer his office phone by saying, “Coon’s Coon.” This was circa 1968. Coon would occasionally freelance for Roddenberry until his untimely death from cancer in 1974.
• William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy were a couple of divas. As they continued to work on Star Trek and their popularity grew, they were notorious for interfering with the writing and directing of each Trek story on set in an effort to get more screen time. This partially contributed to the departure of Gene L. Coon. Roddenberry wrote a stern letter to Nimoy and Shatner during Season Two, including DeForest Kelley only as a matter of form. In the letter, he asserted himself as the sole controller of the series and forbad them from switching character lines, rewriting dialogue and second guessing the episode directors. The letter was taken seriously by both actors until Roddenberry stepped back from the series in season three.
• DeForest Kelley appears to be the nicest guy who worked on the original cast. No one trashed him in the book. Everyone spoke well of him, from his costars to members of the crew to the writers to the fans. Apparently, he used to carry pictures of his children and his dogs in his wallet and he loved showing them to anyone who seemed interested. This validates my love of Dr. Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy, who was always my favorite character on original Trek.
• Sci-fi authors are the most thin-skinned of all writers. They absolutely hate criticism. This may be part of the reason that Harlan Ellison was so critical of Trek after his story for, “City on the Edge of Forever,” was heavily rewritten by Roddenberry and Coon. This is due to the fact that sci-fi is a concept-driven genre that is often light on characterization in favor of ideas. Star Trek served as a departure from this reality in many respects.
• Roddenberry was a notorious pervert who became more open about his preferences as his fame grew. His uninhibited lusty side came out during the development of Star Trek: Phase Two, when Captain Kirk was swimming nude with a Starfleet admiral’s daughter. Andreea Kindryd spoke of Roddenberry’s open discussion of his private sex life with his wife and other women.
During story consultations on TNG, Roddenberry wanted to know about things like Romulan sex. In the episode, “Captain’s Holiday,” when Picard goes on vacation to the pleasure planet of Risa, Roddenberry wanted scenes of same-sex couples holding hands, couples openly having sex in public, and orgies. The closest Trek ever got to Roddenberry’s lecherous fantasies was the on-screen debauchery during the early TNG episode, “The Naked Now.”
• Ronald D. Moore was one of the very few fans who loved Star Trek: The Motion Picture. He wrote a letter to a Trek fanzine defending the movie after it was panned by critics and fans alike. Later, he would be hired as a staff writer on TNG after submitting a spec script. He would go on to be a regular writer on DS9, as well as a writer on Voyager before an acrimonious exit in 2000 after creative differences with Brannon Braga. There is no better way to endear yourself to Gene Roddenberry than by kissing his ass.
Moore later said he felt cheated when they brought Spock back from the dead in the movies. He felt it was merely avoiding the consequences of death. This is the same dipshit who would go on to kill off Starbuck in his reimagined Battlestar Galactica, then brought her back from the dead three episodes later.
• “I’m going to take these characters more seriously than anyone has ever done.” Nick Meyer, director and coauthor of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. He wouldn’t criticize The Motion Picture because, “Making movies is damn hard work. They showed us what not to do.” Ouch! I’d call that a backhanded slap.
• The Wrath of Khan went through many drafts, some at the hands of veteran Trek writers. At one point, Roddenberry had Spock killing JFK to restore Earth’s correct timeline. Ultimately, Nick Meyer, Jack B. Sowards and Harve Bennett began ignoring Roddenberry and hammered out what would ultimately be considered the best movie in the entire Trek franchise. This was a cycle that would repeat itself for the remainder of the original Trek movies.
Paramount was able to castrate Roddenberry without firing him by promoting him to the job of, Creative Consultant. Let’s call this revenge for the spirit of Gene L. Coon, as well as D.C. Fontana, David Gerrold and all of the other writers who were maltreated by Roddenberry.
• Kirstie Alley did not reprise her role as Saavik for Star Trek 3 because, of course, she wanted more money than Harve Bennett was willing to pay her. I’ve always felt that The Search for Spock was underrated by fans and critics. Nothing revealed in this book changes my view. Say what you will about Shatner as an actor, but his reaction to the death of his son gets me every time.
• Bennett wanted Eddie Murphy to guest star in Star Trek 4. Murphy was a Trek fan and strongly considered it, but ultimately passed and filmed The Golden Child instead. Later, he admitted that he should’ve done Star Trek. The Voyage Home was the first Trek movie I ever saw in the theater. Even though I don’t think it holds up as well over time, I’ll always have a nostalgic fondness for it. It sure as hell holds up better than The Golden Child.
• William Shatner gives many reasons why Star Trek 5 was a bomb. They are all irrelevant. The story was flawed from the start. In short, Star Trek and God don’t mix.
• It’s not a coincidence that the return of Nick Meyer resulted in Star Trek 6 being a creative rebound. My only complaint is that Meyer went a little heavy on the Shakespeare, which he deliberately did because he was writing dialogue for Christopher Plummer.
• Roddenberry got his revenge for being cast aside by Paramount by assuming full creative control over Star Trek: The Next Generation. Roddenberry established a Chinese wall between the writers and actors, forbidding them to have contact unless he deemed it absolutely necessary. This is why the first two seasons of TNG are mediocre to bad television. The writer turnover was extremely high due to the toxic work environment under Roddenberry and Maurice Hurley, who served as assistant showrunner on the second season.
One of the greatest difficulties for the writers was Roddenberry’s fluid rules for writing Star Trek. His standard objection to any good story idea was, “They wouldn’t do that in the 24th Century.” It didn’t matter if these rules were inconsistent or contradictory from one episode to the next. Roddenberry also used his lawyer as both a sword and a shield in the TNG offices. He would blatantly violate WGA rules by rewriting scenes, threatening writers and actors, then protect Roddenberry from the objections of Paramount and the cast and crew.
• As was the case in the original series and movies, an external force beyond Roddenberry proved to be the savior for TNG. It came in the form of Michael Piller, who was hired at the beginning of the third season in the wake of constant writer turnover. Piller was responsible for the noticeable uptick in quality of the stories and character development. By the fourth season, the writers had firmed up to a regular group of people who were committed to doing quality television. It didn’t hurt that Roddenberry’s health was failing due to years of drinking, cocaine use and probably crotch rot that spread to his brain after he got infected by god knows who, causing him to pull back from the show. Rick Berman served as Roddenberry 2.0 and would stay at the helm until the death of the franchise in 2005.
• One of my criticisms of later TNG and subsequent Trek series was the departure of composer Ron Jones after the fourth season. Jones’ music was interesting and lent itself to the unique nature of TNG. Watch “The Best of Both Worlds,” and tell me that the thematic music isn’t superior to most of what came after. Jones’ successor, Dennis McCarthy, is incredibly dull and lifeless. This was a deliberate choice by Rick Berman, who ordered McCarthy to score the shows with, “Droning non-music.”
• Unlike the turbulent writers room, the cast of TNG has proved to be the happiest cast in all of Trekdom. They never trash each other in the press, they worked well together and all available behind-the-scenes footage shows a lot of laughter and joy on the set. All reports indicate that Jonathan Frakes was universally beloved by everyone in all series that he acted in and directed. He may be the DeForest Kelley of modern Trek. Patrick Stewart tried to start off as the serious, no nonsense leading man, but he found it impossible in the face of on-set antics by Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner and others.
Gates McFadden and Marina Sirtis have been openly critical of the stories given to Crusher and Troi in the series and movies, but that isn’t a matter of on-set discontent. The criticisms are absolutely justified. There was little to no discussion of why Denise Crosby left the series before the completion of season one, or why Gates McFadden left after season one and then came back for season three. My theory is that it had to do with Roddenberry and his predatory nature, or maybe Rick Berman and his misogynistic ways. (See DS9.) Whoopi Goldberg was barely referenced at all. Diana Muldaur said she preferred working on the original series to TNG.
There was something in the book about Wil Wheaton, but damned if I can remember what it was. Ahh well.
• My theory that the final season of TNG was subpar because the creative talents were stretched too thin was born out in the book. At the same time that TNG was wrapping, they were also writing Generations, plus DS9 was in development. Moore and Braga both admitted that both the 7th season and the movie suffered as a result. What a shame.
• Proving that Star Trek fans and good writers don’t always turn out a good script, Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga wrote Generations. Their original draft had Captain Kirk being shot in the back. They reshot the ending after it tested horribly in early screenings.
• First Contact was the best TNG movie, both in front of and behind the camera. It was also the movie in which Geordi La Forge stopped wearing his visor.
LeVar Burton: “80 percent of my vision was cut off when I wore the that thing. And it physically hurt, which was one of the more important reasons I wanted to get out from underneath it. We held on to it for so long because, as Rick says, it was one of the ways we established, in the minds of the audience, the technology of the 24th century. On the series, it became problematic, because it was cost prohibitive. We were never able to show the audience what Geordi saw, because it was too expensive and we were on a tight budget. So it became a barrier to storytelling, physically painful for me, and on a spiritual level, it’s really just a sin to cover an actor’s eyes. I wasn’t really aware of how much of a barrier it had become until we shot this movie. And in the absence of the visor, I noticed that the actors were relating to me very differently. They were engaging me in a way that they never did in scenes. So the visor is dead. Long live the visor.”
Good to know, LeVar. It sure must be nice to take it off at the end of the day. Did you know that I’ve written more about Geordi here than was written in the book? Even Gates and Marina had more to say than did LeVar. The blind guy gets screwed again.
• Insurrection was shit from beginning to end, even though it was written by Michael Piller. It shows what happens when actors interfere with the writing. It was intended to be a serious story, but Patrick Stewart wanted something lighter and more fun.
• Patrick Stewart broke down and cried on Jonathan Frakes’ shoulder during Picard and Riker’s final scene in Nemesis. The book didn’t specify whether Stewart was emotional because it really was goodbye for the cast, or because he knew that the movie stunk worse than the bathrooms in Quark’s bar.
• Would Gene Roddenberry have approved of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine? The apparent answer is, probably not. Rick Berman and Michael Piller pitched it to him at his home sometime in 1991. Berman tells a story of how they wheeled Gene in for a private screening of Star Trek 6 shortly before his death. He was mostly checked out and barely registered it. My uneducated guess is that he was in a similar state when they pitched DS9 to him. After the meeting, Rick said, “Well, that wasn’t a hard no, so let’s go for it!”
• If the TNG cast was the happiest cast in all of Trekdom, then DS9 had the happiest writers room in the Trek universe. Forces that worked against TNG during Season seven worked in DS9’s favor from Season 3 onward. Paramount and Rick Berman didn’t hover over their shoulder because they were more concerned with the TNG movies, plus the development and launching of Star Trek: Voyager.
A lot of the quality stories on DS9 also had to do with the return of Ira Steven Behr, who quit TNG in exasperation after the third season. Michael Piller took him to a baseball game, pitched the show to him, then promised that he would be the showrunner after two years if he agreed to come back. Ira did come back, Piller kept his word, and the rest is history.
• The DS9 cast, on the other hand, weren’t particularly happy. There weren’t a lot of stories in the book, but Michael Dorn has confirmed that DS9 was night and day from TNG in terms of cast morale. Apparently, Avery Brooks was an eccentric dude who always carried an angry undercurrent that would often boil to the surface.
• Andrew Robinson claimed that he played his relationship with Alexander Siddig with a homoerotic subtext. This was as close as Star Trek ever got to a gay character pre-reboot. Too bad Roddenberry didn’t live longer, or we might have gotten to see some steamy human-on-Cardassian gay sex.
• Does anyone remember the third season two-parter, “Past Tense?” This is the one where Sisko and Dax go back to the old United States when homeless people were held in so-called, sanctuary districts. Well, that was to have taken place in 2024. I’m sure many people in New York, Chicago and San Francisco are longing for those sanctuaries right about now. It’s always fun to compare real history with Star Trek’s predictive history, like the eugenics wars that were to have taken place from 1992 to 1996. The next thing we have to look forward to is first contact with the Vulcans, which will happen on April 5, 2063. Maybe Star Trek is actually real and we’re just living in the mirror universe. President Trump and President Biden do seem more like evil mirror characters.
• The addition of Worf to Deep Space 9 was not a creative decision that happened organically. Rick Berman wanted it in an attempt to increase ratings, which were never good for DS9. The Klingon conflict that was featured in Season 4 was done in the hopes of bringing over fans from TNG. It didn’t really work. For my money, Worf’s addition was unfortunate. I felt the character was neutered on DS9. On TNG, Worf was always the angry outsider. On DS9, everyone was an angry outsider. Worf didn’t hurt DS9, but he didn’t really help it. The real benefit of the Klingon conflict was the addition of J. G. Hertzler as General Martok.
• Was Rick Berman a misogynist? According to Terry Farrell, hell yeah! He berated her for her breast size and other aspects of her physique on multiple occasions. This was one of the reasons she chose to leave after DS9’s sixth season. She would’ve been willing to continue her role in a limited fashion, appearing in a hand full of episodes in the final season, but Rick Berman said all or nothing, so they killed her character off.
• When Nog was injured in the final season, the writers wanted to blow off both of his legs. Rick Berman didn’t want him injured at all. So, they compromised, blowing off one leg below the knee. After all, you can’t have a recurring character be *too* disabled, right?
• One thing noticeably absent from the book was the assertion that Deep Space Nine was a rip-off of Babylon 5. Anyone remember that one? Rumors swirl on the internet that the powers that were stole the idea, and there’s some pretty convincing evidence to back it up. I’m a bit surprised that this wasn’t addressed in the tome.
• When it’s all said and done, why wasn’t DS9 more popular than it was? There’s a lot of, “Wah wah! We were Star Trek’s middle child,” talk from the writers. Some of it comes off as overly defensive and petulant. Sometimes, it was true, but it worked in their favor. They were given more creative freedom than the folks on TNG or Voyager ever got. They also got a full seven seasons despite tanking ratings, unlike Enterprise.
Truthfully, they were indeed more ambitious than TOS or TNG. The serialized stories probably didn’t help. This was the 1990’s, when you were screwed if you forgot to set your VHS timer and missed an episode. The darker themes of war and the grittier characters probably played a role in the lack of fan accessibility.
But my feeling is that it goes deeper than that. I wrote earlier that Star Trek and God don’t mix. Religion plays a large role in DS9. Some viewers were likely turned off by it. Also, politics can turn people off, and there is more political intrigue than usual on DS9. Folks like me dig that kind of thing, but many other people don’t like it. If you don’t like Worf’s Klingon story on TNG, just wait till the next episode. But on DS9, politics and religion are baked into the cake from the pilot onward.
My final verdict is that, yes, DS9 is Star Trek…barely.
• Star Trek: Voyager was meant to be TNG with an edge. It turned out to be the opposite. Michael Piller headed the show for a while and it should’ve been edgier with a Federation starship flung far from home. One of the cornerstones of the show was supposed to be the conflict between the Starfleet and Maquis crew, and how they learned to work together to find a way home. Because of Rick Berman’s interference, the idea of crew conflict was abandoned early in season one and Voyager became TNG light. Piller left Voyager after two seasons, choosing to focus on other projects. He died of cancer in 2005.
• Paramount was finally able to launch their own TV network using Voyager as the flagship show. They’d wanted this for 20 years since the conception of Star Trek: Phase Two in the ‘70’s. I’ll leave it to my gentle readers to decide whether or not UPN was worth the bother.
• Robert Beltran badmouthed Voyager openly. He did it on set. He even did it while the cameras were rolling so the producers would see exactly what he thought of the cheesy dialogue and plots. He still talks trash about it to this day. When the show was in its final season, Beltran would say, “I’m just counting down the days until we’re done.” Brannon Braga straight up called him unprofessional. The book never makes clear why he wasn’t fired, with the character of Chakotay going the way of Tasha Yar and Jadzia Dax.
• Rick Berman confirmed that Jeri Ryan got her gig in Season 4 for the same reason that Worf went to DS9. Paramount wanted to drive up ratings by introducing a Borg babe. For obvious reasons, Kate Mulgrew resented the hell out of her. It only made things worse when Jeri had an affair with head writer Brannon Braga. Kate felt that Captain Janeway was a role model for girls and women everywhere and the addition of the T&A factor would only hurt her cause. For the record, I am totally, 100 percent on Kate’s side here.
Sidebar: As a blind guy, I don’t get the cat suit deal with Jeri Ryan. I’m gonna need some sighted person to explain this one to me. This is a serious request.
• Producer Mike Sussman on Star Trek: Enterprise. “It gets back to the people running the franchise saying, we’ve got to do something different. We’ve got to shake it up’, then kind of shaking it up in many of the wrong ways. Let’s say…all the wrong ways.”
He’s right. Anyone remember the Diane Warren power ballad as the theme song, recycled from goddamn Patch Adams? Anyone remember the decontamination jell that they rubbed all over each other after beaming? Anyone remember the ridiculous temporal war, or the enemy aliens never mentioned on original Trek? Anyone remember the hideous series finale that was just a glorified episode of TNG? Their reward was that Enterprise was the first Star Trek series to be canceled prematurely since the original series in 1969.
In fairness, Season 4 got better when they chucked Brannon Braga and brought in Manny Coto as the new showrunner, but it was too little, too late. They wanted to bring William Shatner back as evil Kirk from the mirror universe, but of course, he was too expensive.
• By all accounts, Scott Bakula is the nicest leading actor from all of Trekdom. I think it was because he already had a cult following from Quantum Leap, so he was kind of prepared for the insane fans and pace of shooting a series.
• Enterprise was the first Star Trek series that was substantially impacted by the internet. Producers became annoyed when story spoilers and behind-the-scenes happenings would leak on to fan sites, sometimes instantaneously. They never came up with effective methods of securing their show.
• So why did Star Trek finally die? There are many explanations, but I think that Trek fatigue was probably the best one. Starting with TNG, Trek fans constantly had something in the pipeline for 18 years. I think they had just hit their saturation point.
• As for the resurrection of Star Trek four years later, there is a section in the book on the J. J. Abrams films, but I didn’t bother to read it. My enthusiasm died with the death of the Rick Berman era. Abrams did have a quote admitting that he connected more with the Star Wars characters than those of Star Trek. Given the way he’s interpreted the franchise, I believe it.
I also have no interest in the new streaming shows. With the exception of Picard: Season 3, which was an overdue reunion of the entire TNG cast, those shows aren’t Star Trek to me. As far as I’m concerned, Star Trek was at its creative peak from the original series through the end of Deep Space 9. However, I may have to give Enterprise another shot.
• Speaking of the Picard show, the third season (which was by far its best) was produced and run by Terry Matalas. His name did appear in the book. It seems that he served as assistant to Brannon Braga during the production of Enterprise. No wonder he understood Star Trek so well.
• Leonard Nimoy passed away on February 27, 2015 at age 83. When all is said and done, Spock is still the most popular character in all of Star Trek lore. Thank you, Mr. Nimoy, for your dedication to Star Trek and the character of Spock.
• Finally, circling back to Gene Roddenberry, there’s been a lot of shit talking about him over the years. From all that I’ve read, from multiple sources over multiple time periods, it seems mostly justified. His son Rod is quoted at length in the book and he says the negative sentiments about his dad hurt him. I respect that. On the other hand, Gene hurt a lot of people while he was alive. He typified everything that makes a bad boss. He was greedy, manipulative, predatory, dishonest, self-indulgent and he was happy to take credit for ideas that weren’t his own. He was a lousy writer, a lousy showrunner, a lousy husband and father and generally, a lousy human being. Yes, he gave us Star Trek, but he really just got lucky. Every other show he tried to create was a major flop. I have no doubt that TOS would have been canceled after the first season if others hadn’t protected him from himself. And that was the story for the duration of his career. Gene Roddenberry will be remembered for Star Trek, but at the end of the day, the way you treat other people is far more important than the professional legacy you leave behind. If that notion isn’t pure Star Trek, I don’t know what is.
As for me, Star Trek will always be my happy place. Enough said.
Happy New Year, all. Live long and prosper.