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Posted: |
Sep 3, 2016 - 1:20 AM
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By: |
Mike_J
(Member)
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Growing up, Gene Roddenberry was my very first behind-the-cameras hero. I absolutely revered the guy, for having created Star Trek, a show I was utterly obsessed about from a very young age.
I remember getting the Inside Star Trek LP one Xmas and playing it non-stop, totally enthralled by what Roddenberry had to say. The guy was, in my view, a genius.
Over the years though, I started to hear rumours from fellow fans that Roddenberry was actually nowhere near the creative genius that he promoted himself to be, and that he actually wasn't a particularly nice person either. The more I got involved in Trek fandom, the more I learned, including the fact that, for all the public bonhomie shown to Roddenberry by cast and crew, the Great Bird of the Galaxy was actually not well liked or respected by his actors or production crew.
The over-riding thing that seemed most prevalent was that Roddenberry actually was a bit of a hack who largely lucked into creating Trek and habitually would take credit for other people's contributions.
I've recently read a couple of books about Roddenberry - Susan Sackett's Inside Trek (dreadfully written by the way) which paints Roddenberry as a sexist crackhead and the superb The Fifty Year Mission which chronicles the development of TOS and the original movies. The latter is basically comprised of a number of extremely frank interviews with actors and crew and clearly demonstrates a number of things:
1. Roddenberry gets way too much recognition for "creating" Star Trek when others -notably Gene Coon - have had their vast contributions massively diminished.
2. Pretty much everyone who worked with Roddenberry felt he was actually a very bad writer.
3. Despite this, Roddenberry insisted on re-writing scripts himself. This was especially true on ST:TMP (Harold Livingston and Alan Dean Foster have a LOT to say about this).
4. Roddenberry really wasn't very well liked or respected by the actors or production team, or by Paramount.
Since reading those books, I think I have a fairly good assessment of my former hero. Part of me kind of wishes I didn't.
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What I don't get is how he's either got to be your hero, OR he's got to be a bum. Those are two unrealistic extremes, and no human being can really be all one or all the other. The reality is somewhere in between, where the real, flawed human being resides, and that makes for a much more interesting character than either of the other two made-up characters.
The way I see it, the Great Bird myth was created, along with Lincoln Enterprises, by a desperate, unemployed man to keep himself and his family from starving. At least he didn't "go all the way" and create a sci-fi-religion/racket like L. Ron Hubbard.
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Posted: |
Sep 3, 2016 - 1:26 PM
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By: |
ScottyM
(Member)
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I think most of the opinions against Roddenberry are extreme because of the years of pent up frustration. Remember, aside from Ellison, almost NOBODY published any trash talking books or interviews about him until after he died. So, 25 years after Trek ended, everyone came out of the woodwork after it was impossible for Roddenberry to respond.
I think the truth lies close to what Robert Justman and Herb Solow wrote in their book Inside Star Trek: The Real Story. Roddenberry wasn't the strongest writer of his own material, but he was a great re-writer. A lot o what worked on Trek came from his typewriter. However, Coon, Fontana, Justman and Lucas had a great deal to do with it as well.
Roddenberry was complex man with very strong tastes. However, he had a long, successful career as a TV writer before he created Star Trek.
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Posted: |
Sep 3, 2016 - 8:52 PM
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By: |
Browny
(Member)
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Mike as a huge Star Trek fan I encourage you to read the three volumes titled "THESE ARE THE VOYAGES" written by author Marc Cushman and published by Jacobs Brown Press. There is one volume per each original season of the series.
Cushman has done an excellent job of writing the definitive history of the first Star Trek, which provides documentation never before shared with the public. It literally does put the reader into the Producer's offices, the writer's room and on the soundstages. Included are hundreds of memos between Gene Roddenberry and his staff, production schedules, budgets, network censors, fan letters and tv ratings reports.
Surprisingly we have always been told that the show's third season was the least popular, showed a drop in quality and never rated. Whilst any series has some less than stellar episodes, the author takes great pains to reveal the reasons why the third season suffered and the undeniable fact that NBC cancelled the series in 1969 for the wrong reasons. It wasn't because of low ratings as history has continued to tell us.
Embellishing all of this, the people involved with the show (actors and behind the scenes personnel) paint the true picture of Gene Roddenberry's creation which gives a fascinating insight into the man who was dubbed 'The Great Bird of the Galaxy'.
I believe Roddenberry was much maligned over the years but I think once you delve into these thoroughly researched volumes the image of Roddenberry as your hero will remain untarnished. These books should be the holy grail amongst Trekkies forever. Happy Reading!
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Posted: |
Sep 6, 2016 - 8:40 PM
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By: |
ScottyM
(Member)
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Mike as a huge Star Trek fan I encourage you to read the three volumes titled "THESE ARE THE VOYAGES" written by author Marc Cushman and published by Jacobs Brown Press. There is one volume per each original season of the series.
Cushman has done an excellent job of writing the definitive history of the first Star Trek, which provides documentation never before shared with the public.
Not to put a damper on your enthusiasm, but a lot of the stuff Cushman wrote was pretty inaccurate. He embellishes, and misrepresents a great deal, as well as confusing the ratings (and just not understanding them), and misquoting people and putting in his own personal views as facts. He even misreported a piece of fan art of a mock cover of an novel basedon the episode "Arena" as having actually been published. When told it was fake, he didn't admit to being wrong and in the second edition of the first volume kept the art and still left it to the readers to decide if it's fake. He gets a lot of the music info wrong, too. There's a blog that is devoted to getting the real facts correctly reported called Star Trek Fact Check. I really recommend it to fans who would like accurate behind the scenes info.
http://startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com/
There are a lot of entries at this point, but they are all well worth the read.
I enjoy his books and there is a lot of good info in there, but once you realize how much of it he willfully gets wrong, it throws everything into doubt. Sadly, a lot of people take his work as gospel and he has found such success he is now the go-to guy for behind the scenes biographies. He just put out one on Lost in Space, with a second volume coming soon, plus one on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea due in December. I don't expect them to be any more accurate.
These books should be the holy grail amongst Trekkies forever. Happy Reading!
Oh dear God, I hope not.
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Posted: |
Sep 7, 2016 - 6:51 AM
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By: |
Jeyl
(Member)
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Has anyone mentioned the lyrics yet, or is that all common knowledge here on FSM? What the heck. I'll just repeat it here.
For all the preachiness of Gene's vision of a humanity where there will be no hunger and no greed, he was a pretty greedy person. Not only did he want to make as much money off of Star Trek that he could, he actually found ways to take other people's money as well. Enter Alexander Courage, THE creator of the Star Trek theme. Gene managed to get him to sign some contract that stipulated if the theme had lyrics written by someone besides Alexander Courage, they would get part of the royalties. Guess what Gene did? Yep! He submitted the Star Trek theme with lyrics that he wrote even though he never intended the lyrics to be used in anyway. As a result, Gene Roddenberry now gets half of the theme's royalties even though none of his contributions are in the actual work. To add more salt to the wound, it wasn't until a few years ago that every time the Star Trek theme is credited, Gene Roddenberry is now listed as a co-creator of the theme.
Say what you want about George Lucas' tampering of his own films, at least I've never heard him trying to rip people off who are simply using their unique talents to make a living.
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Nearly finished the first volume of The Fifty Year Mission and have absolutely loved it. I thought I knew most of the behind the scenes manoeuvring and bickering, but this has been very enlightening. Thanks for the recommendation Mike.
I'm halfway through the second volume- it's all good stuff.
ST II- oh, man...
What Roddenberry did to his staff going into TNG is no different than his money and merchandising dealing the first time around.
Roddenberry thought he deserved a certain payday, and he made sure it happened even at many others expense.
He was also not so good at dealing with other people. He def did not like giving bad news (unless it helped him specifically). He simply could be a right bastard when he felt he deserved something.
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Posted: |
Sep 12, 2016 - 2:58 PM
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By: |
Jeyl
(Member)
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Outside of his bad business practices and suffocating writers in his box*, "Assignment: Earth" has the honors of being my go-to Episode if I need to be reminded how on much Gene was always about the business and never about the message.
Incase you haven't heard of the episode, 'Assignment: Earth' has the honor of being a Star Trek episode that, outside of featuring the series characters has absolutely nothing to do with Star Trek. Really. The opening teaser with the Captain's log showcases just how backwards the episode is. To give you some perspective, here is part of the Captain's Log from the opening teaser compared with the mission statement of the Opening Title.
Teaser: Our mission, historical research. We are monitoring Earth communications to find out how our planet survived desperate problems in the year 1968.
When the teaser ends....
Opening Credits: Space, the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. It's five-year mission, to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before!"
Are we watching a different show? Why is a Starship that's supposed to be seeking out the unknown reaches of space hanging around Earth's past and listening in on people's conversations? Unless there was some huge, world wide destruction event that humanity survived in the 60s that they have since long forgotten, why is this important?
Because this isn't a Star Trek episode. It's about some guy named Gary Seven. When the threat of Star Trek being cancelled after it's second season, Gene thought it would be a good idea to take all that work, all those stories and all the love the fans have given and do something something special with what could be Star Trek's last episode... ever. What did he do? Turn Season Two's finale into a backdoor pilot for another series that has nothing to do with anything that Star Trek is about. Even the idea that this Gary Seven series being labeled as a spinoff is being disingenuous. Gene created a show where humanity has accomplished amazing social and technological feats only to now reveal that it was thanks to some alien bred human who was sent to Earth to make sure we didn't blow ourselves up.
This is in some ways worse than the Enterprise finale "These Are The Voyages" because at least that episode is still technically a 'Star Trek' thing. Here, Gene was perfectly fine with using his beloved series he created as a life reserver to start something else. Looking back at all of TOS's first two seasons, this is a real slap in the face of everyone involved who made this unique science fiction show work.
*'Fade In' by Michael Pillar
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