Gene Roddenberry and Lieutenant Tyler actor Peter Duryea between takes on the set of ‘The Cage’.
When Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek he brought to life a world that would become iconic for decades to come. But he was far from being a perfect man or storyteller. Now with Alex Kurtzman in the big chair we have a worthy successor.
The original pilot to Star Trek was a demonstrable failure, leading to an unprecedented re-casting and re-shooting of the pilot episode, so while Gene may have left NBC impressed he didn’t strike command gold it until the second time around.
By the second season of The Original Series NBC was considering cancellation, but a letter writing campaign by fans was able to keep the series on the air, again it was an unprecedented action, this time taken by fans to keep the show they loved.
For the third season NBC had moved Star Trek to the 10pm Friday time slot, known in the industry as ‘The Death Slot’ as it is often the final nail in the coffin for a show to be placed there, and sure enough immediately after the third season, despite another aggressive letter writing campaign by fans the show was cancelled for good.
Star Trek Phase II
Motion Pictures and Phase II
In 1975 Paramount announced that they would be making a Star Trek Movie along with Gene Roddenberry and the original cast of Star Trek, however following a major fight between the writers, Gene Roddenberry and the studio the plans for the movie called Star Trek The God Thing were cancelled. The story in which the Enterprise would be sent on a mission to essentially explain and prove the existence of God to the Vulcan’s. It’s likely a good thing this was cancelled.
When Star Trek Phase II was ordered Gene was brought back in to breathe life into it, but the designs he approved, characters he created and overall story were not especially strong, much like the pilot for the original series Gene was on to something, but he was just off the mark.
These elements have all since been reused, with his leading couple becoming Captain Decker and Ilia, and later also becoming the basis for Commander Riker and Councillor Troi. His storyline was torn apart and became several things including Star Trek The Motion Picture and several episodes of Star Trek The Next Generation, his ship designs essentially became the USS Discovery.
Star Trek Phase II was cancelled as quickly as it was announced and plans began once again for a film adaptation which this time would become Star Trek The Motion Picture. The script was based upon one of the pre-written entries for Star Trek Phase II entitled In thy image, notice the thread of religious elements Gene attempted to infuse into this iteration of the series?
During the filming of The Motion Picture Gene again battled with other writers and the studio, attempting to get himself the sole writers credit despite the work of others going into the project. The budget also ballooned from the original $5 million to a final cost of $35 million, this lead to Harve Bennett taking over control of the movie franchise.
By the time Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan came into pre-production Gene’s behaviour had him moved into the role of Creative Consultant, essentially meaning that he no longer had any say in the direction of the franchise, he wasn’t happy about it and began to cause issues for the production, allegedly he was even responsible for the leaked information about Spock’s death during the movie.
Star Trek The Next Generation Patrick Stewart and John De Lancie
Protesting the Next Generation
When Star Trek The Next Generation went into pre-production Gene was brought in by necessity, the studio simply couldn’t create a new series without Gene signing off on it, Gene was unlikely to sign off if he wasn’t involved. Moreover many fans were actively protesting the creation of a series without the original crew of the Enterprise aboard.
Some questionable decisions lead to a pretty well universally panned first season, there was also noted turmoil during the second season all of which has been well documented in a series of behind the scenes documentaries such as Chaos on the Bridge. The Studio eventually installed Rick Berman as a supervising producer, he was later promoted to Executive Producer and finally took over the entire franchise.
LOS ANGELES – JULY 20: (L-R) Rick Berman and Scott Bakula attends “UPN’s TCA Party” at Shutters at the Beach July 20, 2004 in Santa Monica, California. (Photo by Mark Mainz/Getty Images)
The Berman era
Rick Berman was initially brought on board to keep Gene and his people in check, he was a good studio politician and known for being on top of the budgets. He also had no vested interest in keeping to Gene’s formula or ideals, only to the betterment of the series.
The studio requested a second spin-off series from Rick, it eventually became Deep Space Nine, a series Gene would have never signed off on due to it’s very nature, however no longer beholden to Gene’s vision as long as it could be set in the same universe with a similar guiding principle it was good enough.
Over the years there were many notable disagreements between Rick and the cast, he did not have a very good reputation with regards to the actors and actresses he hired. This notably lead to the loss of such stars as Will Wheaton and Terry Farrell.
As the studio continued to ask new properties, the Next Generation movies, Star Trek Voyager and Star Trek Enterprise were all created by Rick. He maintains that he was against the timeline of creating both series and blames the studios pressure to produce both series for the supposed franchise fatigue which put Star Trek into its long sleep from 2002 to 2009.
Star Trek TOS Space Seed
The question of fatigue vs. dimension
There has been some question over the years as to whether franchise fatigue was truly the cause, personally it’s not a theory I’ve ever subscribed to. We had movies, and series on the air all the time, the end of Enterprise was not overload when we were down to a movie every few years and one show on TV. The truth is it was all about quality.
As much as I am a fan of all the series there was always something about Voyager, the characters felt shallow and along the way focus was only put on a few of them. We had a beautifully realized hologram, a deep and tortured Borg and a captain who would stop at nothing to protect her crew and get herself a cup of coffee, but who were they really?
Sure you know Chakotay was a spiritual man who respected the beliefs of his ancestors, but how deep did we really go into his mind?
Not very far, and he is actually a character whose mind we literally spent a whole episode inside. Pick a situation, it can be anything, the first day of school, the plot to Die Hard, a fight on a street corner, anything, now imagine Commander Riker walking into that situation. You have a pretty good idea of what he does right? Now imagine Chakotay in the same situation. Does he do anything or just stand there? Dimension.
Deep Space Nine had dimension, but by Voyager Rick Berman had settled on his formula and it wouldn’t change, you can see evidence of the same in the Next Generation movies, the only difference was a cast that fought for the characters they had spent over a decade establishing. In 2002 Rick’s formula had stalled the series In much the same way as Gene’s had almost done so in the 1970’s and 80’s.
J.J. Abrams directs Star Trek (2009)
Copyright © Paramount
J.J. Abrams and the USS Kelvin
When J.J. came aboard to make Star Trek 2009 he was truly awakening the giant, it was a monumental task, during the long sleep the rights to Star Trek got a little complicated with Viacom. Paramount, the new Viacom and CBS. It was a lot easier when all of it was under one roof.
J.J. faced more problems than just licensing though tasked with not only reviving Star Trek with its fan base, but also bringing in a whole new group of fans took a delicate balancing act, to get the original fans on board his take on it was to go back to. The Original Series, something fans had asked for many times over the years, but he couldn’t go back to the original series without risking damaging canon and causing himself a whole new problem for the series.
By creating an alternate timeline through the use of time travel and the destruction of the USS Kelvin he actually came up with a pretty elegant solution, the original, or Prime, timeline was maintained in its entirety and he gained a whole new sandbox to play in.
Don’t like the new sand box? no problem, stick to the prime. It works, it allowed for a new series of movies with a different tone and a different take while keeping a somewhat familiar footing and for three movies it was successful.
Star Trek Discovery Production Still
Copyright © CBS
The return to the small screen, or the small stream.
Brian Fuller was brought on to develop a new series for CBS, but this time it would be as a kickstart to their streaming service CBS All-Access. However before the first episode ever aired Fuller was somewhat mysteriously removed from the project and replaced with two show-runners Gretchen J. Berg and Aaron Harberts.
Berg and Harberts were noted for creating a hostile work environment and were removed as show-runners at the end of the first season, replaced by Alex Kurtzman who had some level of involvement since Fuller had first been brought onboard.
Star Trek Discovery Season 1 Preview.
Copyright © CBS All-Access
CBS All-Access is doomed anyways…
Simply put, no, it’s not. CBS has doubled down on the service and will continue to invest in its growth and prosperity, as more shows are added the value of the service will only increase.
Disclaimer: I don’t live in the United States, I don’t have access to All-Access, I get my Star Trek on a traditional cable connection, on basic satellite and available free streaming on my local carrier channel. The rest of the world gets their Star Trek in a similar way or via Netflix.
CBS draws their funding for these shows through deals with distributors internationally, and through their subscription service, and as we’ve previously discussed, the budgets are outstanding. You don’t spend $120 million on a 15 episode season of anything without stable funding, hate all you want, budgets are business and these people aren’t business rookies.
Now this isn’t to say that the shows won’t eventually find a home on traditional television, or on a secondary streaming service in the US, I firmly believe that they will, but Streaming isn’t something they forced on us, it’s something WE demanded. Let’s not pretend otherwise just to feign outrage over a few dollars a month, we shell out a lot more for other things, even things that are bad for us, and cable was never free.
Star Trek Discovery Season 1 Promo
Copyright © CBS
A Star Trek for everyone
When Star Trek was on the verge of cancellation following its second season the fans stood united to save it, when it was cancelled after the third season the fans stood united to save it, but with each subsequent change, addition, new property new location some piece of fandom has stood against it.
"It’s not true to Gene’s vision, I’ll stick to [Insert favourite series here] -Fans"
But once you know the history, you know that nothing outside of the original series was true to Gene’s vision, and even that was tempered by extremely tight budgets, a studio that didn’t believe in them and a weekly shooting schedule they had to follow. Gene’s vision has never truly been on-screen, at least not how he envisioned it.
This is the positive behind Alex Kurtzman’s promise of creating a series of new shows and concepts to appeal to a wider variety of fans, don’t like Star Trek Discovery? No problem, that’ll be over here, you can watch Star Trek Picard, not sure its light-hearted enough for you? No problem, we also have Star Trek Lower Decks for your comedy fix.
While some fans will bemoan this as quantity over quality, it’s simply not the case, there’s enough talent, creativity and budget to go around and have each series live in its own ecosystem. And if one or two don’t find their audience, or lose a key figure there’s still a strong behind the scenes community built around the franchise to keep it healthy.
Gone are the days when UPN could decide to dump the show in the death slot and kill the franchise.
Gone are the days when one thing ending after its seven season run left us on edge wondering if there would be another.
Gone are the days without Star Trek.
And as a fan I couldn’t be happier with the direction we’re headed.