Eugene Wesley Roddenberry was born in El Paso, Texas, on August 19, 1921. He spent World War II at the controls of a B-17. After the war he flew for Pan Am, joined the Los Angeles Police Department, and wrote for television on the side until the side job paid better than the badge.
I’m a Star Trek fan, and this site marks Star Trek Day, First Contact Day and Captain Picard Day. All three exist because of one man’s pitch document from March 1964 and his refusal to accept a network’s first no.
He died on October 24, 1991, in Santa Monica, at seventy. Some of his ashes have since gone to space more than once. For a former bomber pilot who spent his career selling a future where people traveled out there for a living, it’s a fitting end.
How did Gene Roddenberry’s early careers shape Star Trek?
They gave him a chain of command, and he put it on the bridge of a starship.
He served with the Army Air Forces in the Pacific, in the 394th Bomb Squadron, flying B-17s first as copilot and then as pilot. He flew 89 combat missions and came home with the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal. On August 2, 1943, a B-17 he was flying crashed on takeoff and two crewmen died. The official report cleared him. He was twenty-one years old, and he’d already seen what happens when a crew trusts a pilot and the pilot gets it wrong.
Then came Pan Am. On June 18, 1947, the Clipper Eclipse came down in the Syrian Desert. Fourteen or fifteen people died, depending on the count. Roddenberry, the ranking flight officer, took charge of the survivors with two broken ribs. That’s twice in four years he’d walked away from a crashed aircraft, and both times he came out of it in command of the people who were left.
He applied to the LAPD in January 1949. After sixteen months in traffic he moved to the department’s newspaper unit, wrote speeches for the police chief, and served as the department’s liaison to Dragnet. He resigned on June 7, 1956, to write television full time.
Look at the original Enterprise with that history in mind. The captain makes the call and owns it. The officers trust the chain of command. The ship runs like a bomber crew that’s flown together for years.
Roddenberry had lived inside two disciplined organizations by thirty-five, and he knew how they talked, how they gave orders and how they handled a man who broke ranks. He wrote what he knew and set it among the stars. Kirk’s bridge is a cockpit with a bigger window, and Starfleet is a military that wants to be an exploration service.
Which shows trained Gene Roddenberry as a television writer?
Westerns and cop shows, and he got good at both.
He wrote for Highway Patrol and for Mr. District Attorney, the second under the pen name Robert Wesley, while he was still on the police payroll. He wrote for Have Gun Will Travel, and his episode “Helen of Abajinian” won a 1958 Writers Guild award for best teleplay. He also wrote for Bat Masterson, Jefferson Drum and The West Point Story. Episodic television taught him to tell a complete story in under an hour with a fixed cast and a fixed budget, and Star Trek demanded that skill every week.
His first series as creator was The Lieutenant, a Marine Corps drama that premiered on NBC on September 14, 1963. It set a ratings record for its time slot and still didn’t come back for a second season. The show matters to Star Trek for the people it gathered. Gene L. Coon and D.C. Fontana both worked with Roddenberry on The Lieutenant, and both followed him to the Enterprise. A television creator builds a crew before he builds a show, and Roddenberry’s crew was already forming in 1963.
How did Gene Roddenberry pitch Star Trek in 1964?
With a comparison any network executive could understand in five seconds.
His first draft described the show as “Wagon Train to the stars.” Wagon Train was a hit western anthology about settlers crossing the frontier, meeting a new story at every stop. Roddenberry promised the same engine with a starship in place of the wagons. That line did more selling than the rest of the document.
The proposal, titled “Star Trek is,” is dated March 11, 1964. It describes a cruiser-class starship called the U.S.S. Yorktown with a crew of 203, commanded by a Captain Robert M. April. It lists characters, themes, production needs and a short run of episode ideas. On April 24, 1964, Roddenberry registered the series with the Writers Guild under the name it kept.
Almost every detail changed. The ship got a new name and the captain got a new name. The comparison stayed, because it worked.
Anyone who pitches anything should study that move.
A buyer can’t picture your original idea, however good it is, because nothing like it exists yet. A buyer can picture a hit they already know, moved somewhere new. Roddenberry gave NBC a western they recognized, with a regular cast and a fresh town every week, and let the stars do the rest. A book proposal works the same way. The ones that make an editor do the imagining sit in the pile.
Roddenberry didn’t sell NBC a space show. He sold them a western they already understood and moved it to the stars. Every good pitch borrows a map the buyer owns.Share on X
Why did NBC order a second Star Trek pilot?
Because the first one failed, and somebody at the network thought the idea was still worth a second shot.
The first pilot, “The Cage,” starred Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike, with Majel Barrett as a cool, competent first officer called Number One. Roddenberry had written the part with her in mind. Test audiences didn’t respond, and NBC executives reportedly called it too cerebral, too slow and short on action. Desilu, the studio making it, was run by Lucille Ball, and she’d been instrumental in getting the pilot made at all.
On March 26, 1965, NBC did something it rarely did. It ordered a second pilot. “Where No Man Has Gone Before” put William Shatner in the captain’s chair as James T. Kirk, added more action, and sold the series.
Star Trek premiered on September 8, 1966, with “The Man Trap.”
“The Cage” didn’t go to waste. Most of its footage became the frame for the two-part episode “The Menagerie.” The lesson is old and true. A first draft that fails gets rewritten, and Roddenberry kept the idea while cutting the parts the buyer couldn’t use. For the man who took over the captain’s chair, see William Shatner’s Birthday.
Who else built Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek?
A lot of people, and the credits don’t tell the whole story.
Gene L. Coon joined in the first season and left partway through the second. In “Errand of Mercy” he introduced the Klingons, and in “Space Seed” he wrote in Khan Noonien Singh. He defined the Prime Directive in “The Return of the Archons” and “Bread and Circuses,” and his script for “Arena” gave the United Federation of Planets its name. He also built up the bickering between Spock and McCoy. He left after disagreements with Roddenberry over “Bread and Circuses.”
D.C. Fontana came on as Roddenberry’s assistant, wrote and rewrote scripts, and later ran The Animated Series in all but title. Harlan Ellison wrote “The City on the Edge of Forever,” and Roddenberry rewrote it to fit the budget and the series. The two men fell out over it for good.
Roddenberry rewrote constantly. Some of those rewrites saved episodes, and some cost him writers.
None of that shrinks him, though it changes the picture. A television creator’s job is to hold a vision steady while dozens of writers feed it, and Roddenberry held it. He also took the public credit for a show other people invented large parts of, and a fair account of him names them.
Why did Gene Roddenberry write lyrics for the Star Trek theme?
For the money, and he didn’t hide it.
Alexander Courage composed the theme. In December 1965 Roddenberry wrote lyrics for it. The lyrics were never sung on the show, but writing them gave Roddenberry a share of the theme’s royalties, and Courage’s half got cut accordingly. Courage was angry about it, and he had every reason to be. It’s an ugly little story with a practical lesson buried in it. Every piece of a production is a rights question, and whoever understands the paperwork collects. Roddenberry knew how television money flowed, and he used that knowledge against a colleague.
Writers working with collaborators should read the contract before the first draft and know exactly who owns what. That advice applies to a theme song, a screenplay or a ghostwritten book.
How did fans keep Star Trek on the air in 1968?
By writing letters, in numbers nobody at NBC had seen before.
Ratings were never strong. When cancellation loomed after the second season, a fan named Bjo Trimble organized a letter-writing campaign. NBC received about 6,000 letters a week. On January 8, 1968, roughly 1,000 students from twenty schools marched on the studio. On March 1, 1968, NBC announced a third season.
It bought one more year. NBC announced the cancellation in February 1969, and the last episode aired 47 days before Apollo 11 landed on the moon. The show ended with 79 episodes across three seasons, and syndication turned it into an international hit through the 1970s.
That campaign changed television. It proved an audience could organize and push back, and every fan movement since has run some version of it. The show that Roddenberry couldn’t keep on the network kept itself alive on reruns, and the reruns built the audience that brought it back.
He married Majel Barrett in 1969, the same year the show died, in a Shinto ceremony in Japan.
What did Gene Roddenberry’s no-conflict rule do to The Next Generation?
It made the writers’ jobs harder, and the first season shows it.
The Next Generation premiered on September 28, 1987, with “Encounter at Farpoint.” Roddenberry insisted the main characters wouldn’t fight with each other. By the twenty-fourth century, in his view, people had outgrown pettiness, and a Starfleet crew would work together like professionals. He also kept religion and mysticism out of the scripts.
Drama runs on conflict, and the rule took away the easiest source of it. Writers had to find every bit of tension outside the ship, in aliens, anomalies and ethical puzzles. Several of them complained on the record later, and William Shatner’s documentary Chaos on the Bridge covers the turmoil of those first two seasons.
Roddenberry’s health was failing by then, and his involvement shrank after the first season. The show got better as the writers found ways around the rule. I cover that run in my Star Trek: The Next Generation review.
As philosophy, the rule holds up fine. As a storytelling constraint it failed, and the difference is worth learning. A writer can believe people will get better and still let characters argue on the way there.
What can a writer take from Gene Roddenberry?
Three things, all practical, and none of them involve starships.
Pitch with a comparison. Roddenberry’s “Wagon Train to the stars” line sold a show nobody could picture by pointing at one everybody had seen. It works for a book proposal as well as for a network.
Treat a rejection as notes. NBC told him the first pilot was too cerebral and too slow. He kept the idea, added action, swapped the cast and sold the second version. He didn’t argue with the buyer about whether the first one was good, and he didn’t shelve the idea and start over from nothing. Most writers who get a no on a manuscript do one of those two things, and both of them waste the work.
Build a room and give credit. Star Trek’s best ideas came from Coon, Fontana, Ellison and the rest, and Roddenberry’s gift was holding it all together long enough to get on the air. He was worse at the credit half, and his reputation took damage from that. A writer who takes help and names nobody finds the help drying up fast.
How should you mark Gene Roddenberry Day?
Watch “The Cage” and then “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” back to back. You’ll see a creator take a network’s notes and rebuild his idea in a year.
Then watch “Errand of Mercy” and “Space Seed” and notice how much of what people call Roddenberry’s universe came from Gene L. Coon.
If you’re pitching anything, a book or a show or a business, write your one-line comparison today. Name the hit your buyer already knows, then say where you’re moving it.
Roddenberry was a bomber pilot, a cop and a television writer before he was a legend, and every one of those jobs shows up on the bridge of the Enterprise. For more writers’ birthdays, see the literature-related holidays calendar. If you’ve got a story that needs a pitch someone will buy, that’s work I do in my professional writing services.