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(1921–1991). American producer and writer.
Wrote: "Charlie X" (story, screenplay D. C. FONTANA)
(and provided voice), "Mudd's Women" (story, screenplay Stephen
Kandel), "The Menagerie" (two parts) (1966), "The Return of
the Archons" (story, screenplay Boris Sobelman) (1967), "A Private
Little War" (story Judd Crucis), "Return to Tomorrow," "The
Omega Glory," "Assignment: Earth" (story with Art Wallace, screenplay
Wallace) (1968), "The Savage Curtain" (story, screenplay with
Arthur Heinemann), "Turnabout Intruder" (story, screenplay Arthur
Singer) (1969), episodes of Star Trek; "Encounter at
Farpoint" (with D. C. FONTANA), "Hide
and Q" (with C. J. Holland; story Holland) (1987), "Datalore"
(with Robert Lewin; story Lewin and Maurice Hurley) (1988),
episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation; "Decision"
(1997), episode of Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict.
Created: Gene Roddenberry's Earth:
Final Conflict (tv series) (1997–2002).
Films and series based on his work: Strange New World (tv movie) (Butler
1975); Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (Nicolas MEYER
1982); Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (Leonard NIMOY
1984); Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (Nimoy 1986); Star
Trek V: The Final Frontier (William SHATNER
1989); Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (Meyer
1991); Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (tv series) (1993–1999);
Star Trek: Generations (David Carson 1994); Star Trek:
Voyager (tv series) (1995–2001); Star Trek: First Contact
(Jonathan FRAKES 1996); Star Trek: Insurrection (Frakes
1998); Ultimate Trek: Star Trek's Greatest Moments (tv
special) (1999); Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda (tv series)
(2000- ); Enterprise
(tv series) (2001- );
Star Trek: Nemesis (Stuart Baird 2002).
While Roddenberry had experience as a pilot and police officer before turning
to television writing, it was his military service during World War
II that had the greatest impact on his creations. After a one-season
series about contemporary military life, The Lieutenant, Roddenberry
developed a proposed science fiction series to be called Star Trek.
The original pilot (now called The Cage to distinguish it from
a later Star Trek episode that incorporated its footage and
appropriated its actual title "The Menagerie") displays how skillfully
its producer had distilled decades of written space opera into a reasonably
thoughtful future universe to serve as an ideal setting for a variety
of interesting stories; but the first story that Roddenberry came
up with, politely dismissed by NBC executives as "too cerebral," might
have been better described as tedious, a slow-moving saga of telepathic
aliens that engenders stale homilies about human freedom and the differences
between illusion and reality. But credit NBC with seeing the series'
potential and requesting a second pilot, at which point the series
was saved by decisions made by persons other than Roddenberry: when
listless leading man Jeffrey Hunter declined an invitation to reprise
his starring role, Roddenberry was obliged to hastily grab the first
suitable actor who was available, who fortuitously happened to be
William SHATNER, and the network's directive
to ditch the series' female second-in-command forced Roddenberry to
elevate into the co-starring role a supporting actor portraying a
half-human alien, who fortuitously happened to be Leonard NIMOY. The
rest, as they say, was history.
Roddenberry had done a serviceable job of launching the starship
Enterprise, but he had to depend on others to keep it soaring.
Shatner and Nimoy were continually inspired to further develop their
characters and the societies they represented; talented science fiction
writers—Richard MATHESON, Harlan ELLISON,
Theodore STURGEON, Jerome BIXBY,
Norman Spinrad—contributed good scripts; and the series was sustained
by the superlative work of producer Gene COON and the sappy but crowd-pleasing
efforts of D. C. FONTANA. Roddenberry's own
scripts and story ideas were consistently dreary; significantly, when
Roddenberry offered NBC three possible scripts for the second pilot,
they chose the only one that Roddenberry hadn't written. Roddenberry
burdened his series with ludicrous alternate Earths ("The Omega Glory,"
"Bread and Circuses"), leaden allegories ("The Return of the Archons,"
"A Private Little War"), and lame domesticated dramas ("Charlie X,"
"Mudd's Women"). A nadir of sorts occurred in his "The Savage Curtain,"
where Kirk teaches advanced aliens about the difference between good
and evil with the help of Abraham Lincoln.
According to the standard mythology
of Star Trek, the series declined in the third season when Roddenberry
withdrew from active producing to protest a disastrous scheduling change.
Actually, the decline began in the middle of the second season, when Coon left
the series and forced Roddenberry back into the role of producer, promptly
leading to some of the series' very worst episodes. If anything, the third
season was slightly better, in that hands-off producer Fred FREIBERGER, content
to film whatever scripts he received, offered a mixed bag of scattered
masterpieces, numerous mediocrities, and several embarrassments.
Even while Star Trek was on
the air, Roddenberry was thinking about other series, and made one Star Trek
episode, "Assignment: Earth," as a pilot for a proposed series about an
alien-educated man on contemporary Earth starring Robert Lansing and Teri Garr,
continuing the pattern of combining a dire star with a superlative supporting
player. The similarly disastrous casting of Alex Cord doomed Roddenberry's
first post-Star Trek pilot, Genesis II, whose well-realized
post-holocaust world didn't work much better when the marginally better John
SAXON came aboard to headline a second pilot. (A failed third attempt to get
the series off the ground, also with Saxon, was made without Roddenberry's
participation.) It is harder to explain why his more promising pilots, The
Questor Tapes and Spectre, never became series, but perhaps Roddenberry
was earning a reputation among network executives as someone who couldn't be
trusted to come up with a winner. Still, the phenomenal popularity of Star
Trek in syndication salvaged Roddenberry's career, first leading to an
animated series and then to plans for a second Star Trek series, to
include Shatner but not Nimoy, which advanced to the stage of developing
scripts before Paramount decided to a make a big-budget Star Trek movie
instead. This might be interpreted as Paramount's device to bring in some
high-powered talent to maintain the Star Trek franchise and to
marginalize Roddenberry, which is precisely what occurred after the modest
success of the first film.
Having lost control of his original characters, and reduced to the meaningless
role of "executive consultant" for later Star Trek films, Roddenberry
resolved to make himself master of another universe by creating another
Star Trek series, set one hundred years after the original
series and featuring an all-new cast, which would serve as the ideal
vehicle for the accumulated wisdom of Gene Roddenberry now so esteemed
by loyal fans. The result of his efforts, Star Trek: The Next Generation,
could best be described as a bizarre amalgam of Star Trek and
Jerome BIXBY's story and Twilight Zone episode "It's a Good
Life," where an unseen juvenile presence is forcing a group of normal
adults to act like perfectly well-behaved, constantly happy people.
Although the stifling presence of miscast Shakespearean actor Patrick
STEWART made the series superficially seem
more mature than the original series, the essential immaturity of
Roddenberry's insipid feel-good philosophy is conveyed by Wil WHEATON's
boy genius Wesley Crusher (who proved so insufferable that even Roddenberry
soon sanctioned his removal) and Brent SPINER's Pinocchio-like android
Data, striving to become a Real Boy. All one can say in favor of Star
Trek: The Next Generation is that, as an aging Roddenberry devoted
less and less time to the series, it could occasionally sputter to
life.
Like Elvis Presley's death in 1977,
Roddenberry's death in 1991 was a great career move, replacing the increasingly
problematic person with a beloved and profitable icon. There have been four
more Star Trek movies, three new series, innumerable original novels,
and several video games, all struggling in various ways to escape the
stultifying legacy of Star Trek: The Next Generation and rediscover the
flair and energy of the original series. Widow Majel Barrett RODDENBERRY, more
impressive as a businesswoman than as an actress, has been more imaginative in
exploiting his name. First, she dug up one of his old ideas for a series and
developed Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict, which plodded on for
five years without ever distinguishing itself. Then she dusted off his
post-holocaust Genesis II concept, completely refashioned it as a Star
Trek-like space opera, and mislabeled the results Gene Roddenberry's
Andromeda, which might be a harbinger of worse abuses to come (such as,
say, taking The Lieutenant, transplanting it into the future, and
calling it Gene Roddenberry's Space Soldier). There are plans to revive The
Questor Tapes, and a second look at Spectre seems inevitable. But
these posthumous products of varying quality will have little impact on
Roddenberry's enduring reputation as the creator of the single most popular and
influential science fiction narrative in the history of the genre. With that
achievement under his belt, criticisms of his flaws and foibles will inevitably
diminish with time, leaving only a few impolite commentators to continue
speaking ill of the dead.
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