THESE WERE THE VOYAGES

“SOMETIMES PAIN CAN DRIVE A MAN HARDER THAN PLEASURE.”

In reflection, 1966 was a time of unprecedented pop-culture phenomena dominating the media, planting seeds that would still be flourishing many decades later. There was The Beatles, winding down their time as the Fab Four and preparing to become something more … substantial. James Bond had single-handedly launched the spy craze that dominated that decade (and continues to this one). The ABC gothic soap opera Dark Shadows had launched and was about to revolutionize the genre with the introduction of vampire Barnabas Collins. In prime time, Adam West and Burt Ward became the Dynamic Duo, Batman and Robin. And on September 8, 1966, Star Trek made its debut “in living color” on NBC.

At the time, it was a show that, even as it coalesced in terms of its cast and on a creative level, spent its lifetime struggling. Struggling to meet its budget, struggling for production time, struggling to create visual effects unlike anything that had been attempted in the medium before, struggling in a never-ending battle between Gene Roddenberry and the network, both of which were united in their goal to create a first-rate series, but divided in their views on how that could be achieved. And most of all, it struggled to find an audience.

But all of that paled in comparison to the primary struggle: to provide the high-quality scripts that held the key to Star Trek’s potential by offering up episodes that differed from anything that television had ever presented. It was a challenge that plagued the show right through the end of its network run.

OSCAR KATZ (vice-president of programs, Desilu)

The secret of its success was its attention to detail. Up until that point, science fiction on television was all Irwin Allen–type shows, whereas Gene’s concept was science fiction in the true sense of those words. It was like what things might be about in the future, not only in the size of the concept and the ship and the problems they face, but in the smallest details. And Gene was a stickler for details.

One of the earliest decisions Roddenberry made to avoid the show seeming dated was the cut of the men’s sideburns, which were to be shaved in a point, including extras, rather than reflect the fashions of the mid sixties. It was a source of consternation to many of the series leads, who tried to avoid having their sideburns groomed for the twenty-third century. On June 10, 1966, Roddenberry shot out a memo to Shatner. “Dear Bill. You’re cheating. See Freddie.” Of course, Freddie was Freddie Phillips, the head of makeup and hair who was waiting in the makeup trailer with razor in hand to shear the squared sideburns on Shatner. As Roddenberry asserted in a memo of May 20, 1966, “This is mandatory for all actors appearing in our show.”

Roddenberry’s attention to detail extended to each and every square foot of the starship Enterprise. He wrote in a May 24, 1966, memo to Walter “Matt” Jeffries, “Much pleased with our Enterprise sets, Matt. However we will shortly be getting two scripts which call for other Enterprise sets. Referring now specifically to the need for ‘Engineering Deck’ or ‘Engine Room,’ we should definitely think in terms of creating an illusion of a room of considerable size. We’ve got a huge ship and I definitely feel the audience will ultimately be disappointed if they are not taken occasionally into a set or sets with some feeling of vastness. Perhaps some of this can be done in cohort with Anderson Company, letting them create the extra space with some form of optical matte.“

In another memo, Roddenberry told Jeffries, “I’m sure you’ve already thought of this, but I think we should be medically accurate on which instruments we decide to show on the bed, and then very carefully label each of them so the audience can easily read it and know exactly what these gizmos are doing.”

Roddenberry even weighed in on the appearance of Kirk’s quarters. “Suggest interesting set dressing in captain’s quarters, possibly in some other places too. Might be barbaric odd-shaped shields, lances, maces, etc. collected on various planet expeditions, used as colorful wall dressing. Also would it be possible to make use of what appear to be animal pelts taken from strange creatures?”

GENE RODDENBERRY (creator, executive producer, Star Trek)

I didn’t want only science-fiction writers, because many of the science-fiction writers available to me then talked about objects, about science, rather than about people. Over half the writers we used are just good, regular writers, because I wanted my show to be about people, not objects, and if you think back, the things you remember are the characters.

JOHN D. F. BLACK (executive story editor, associate producer, Star Trek)

I joined the show about two months before we shot anything. Harlan Ellison and I had [each] won an award at a Writers Guild ceremony and we were cheering each other and racing toward each other to exchange congratulations. As I neared Harlan, Gene Roddenberry—who neither one of us knew from a bar of soap—was standing there. Harlan and I had both talked to him once, separately, in regards to his upcoming show Star Trek. Gene said, “We’re having a party at my house for the winners, so come on over.”

So we went to Roddenberry’s house for a rather laid-back, dull party, but there were many people there and a lot of Scotch. At the party, I found out, because my agent just happened to be there, that I had an assignment on Star Trek. GR took me into the den and asked me if I would like to come onto the show as executive story consultant and associate producer. It was the first offer of its kind that I had ever gotten, so I said, “What have you got?” And he said, “I’ve got six assignments out, and your job would be to work with the writers and learn whatever production you want to learn.” I went away, discussed it with my agent, and took the gig.

I can’t remember specifically which writers were on line, but I went in with an ultimate respect for writers. I insisted, as any credible writer would, that I get the opportunity to give shots to young writers who had a great story. Here I was talking with Theodore Sturgeon, Ray Bradbury, and those kinds of heavyweights. And it was an awesome thing to confront. I was not talking to anybody like Edgar Allen Poe, but at that moment in time, I was already aware that Theodore Sturgeon was the most anthologized writer in the history of the English language, which is pretty spooky. And now I’m “Johnny the Black Space Bear” in Theodore Sturgeon’s books. I was also in one of Harlan Ellison’s books as John D. F. Black. So that was my introduction to Star Trek.

JOSEPH SARGENT (director, “The Corbomite Maneuver”)

My episode was the first one they shot, and during it Leonard Nimoy was unhappy because his character was without emotion. He said, “How can I play a character without emotion? I don’t know how to do that. I’m going to be on one note throughout the entire series.” I agreed with him and we worked like hell to give him some emotional context, but Gene said, “No way, the very nature of this character’s contribution is that he isn’t an earthling. As a Vulcan, he is intellect over emotion.” Leonard was ready to quit because he didn’t know how he was going to do it.

LEONARD NIMOY (actor, “Mr. Spock”)

Spock is not a character without emotions; Spock is a Vulcan who has learned to control his emotions, and in his particular case it’s even more difficult because he is half human and he has that side to control as well. Believe me, twelve hours a day, five days a week of controlling your emotions can have some strange effects on you. I remember one time in a meeting room having a conference with a couple of writers and suddenly finding myself crying for no reason at all. The emotions just had to come out somewhere, sometime. So I welcomed opportunities to do scenes or episodes where Spock had some kind of emotional release.

Although it has been suggested elsewhere that NBC was reluctant to embrace the multicultural aspect of the Enterprise crew, that could hardly be farther from the truth. In fact, NBC encouraged the casting of non-Caucasian actors. In a letter to Gene Roddenberry sent by network VP Mort Werner on August 17, 1966, Werner points out NBC’s interest in championing diversity and presenting “a reasonable reflection of contemporary society,” noting that “NBC’s pursuit of this policy is preeminent in the broadcasting industry,” citing such shows as I Spy, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Run for Your Life as being indicative of their progressive casting. “While we have made noticeable progress we can do better, and I ask for your cooperation and help.”

NICHELLE NICHOLS (actress, “Nyota Uhura”)

I tried to put into Uhura the qualities that I admire and demand of myself. Discipline, a forward attitude toward life, and high demands. She’s head of all communications on that ship, so she’s not just sitting there pushing buttons. For her or anyone to be entrusted with that kind of responsibility I felt she had to have a strength and dignity and a command of authority very much like Spock has.

JOHN D. F. BLACK

In some ways, Uhura was a difficult character to deal with. Nichelle was breathtakingly gorgeous, a skilled actress, and limited to “I’m hailing them, Captain.” We could open it up a little, but not much. George Takei, when he came in and became the helmsman, had that marvelous stentorious deep voice that very few people are even aware that he has, although they heard it over and over again. That voice really gave strength to that chair, so that when the captain said whatever to George, and he said, “Aye, Captain,” the audience knew he was going to do his best and that it was going to be enough. Scotty … if he got an awful lot of repetition because the engines had to go out a number of times, Jimmy Doohan never lost that characterization that he walked in with on the first day. The dialect stayed in place, as did the amount of smile he permitted. He was a very gifted actor.

GRACE LEE WHITNEY (actress, “Yeoman Janice Rand”)

Rand had a lot of strength and a lot of guts. I think her character could have been further developed. Rand was on the same card of credits as McCoy in the beginning. She was to be the major female character. All the early publicity shots were with Bill, Leonard, and me in the middle. The thing about this business is that you have to survive no matter what they do to you. Taking her out of the show has made Rand somewhat of an underdog and the fans have always rallied behind her all this time. I feel cheated.

I was supposed to do thirteen episodes of Star Trek. I was not in all thirteen, but I was contracted to do thirteen. I did seven where I had a major part and then there were two or three where I did walk-ons to fulfill the contract. I actually did nine out of thirteen. They did use me in some of those, though. I remember one time in the episode “Conscience of the King,” I just walked across and handed Bill Shatner a clipboard and winked and walked away. But there was no dialogue. I knew at that time that I had been let go. I was let go because of several reasons. The main reason was that they told me they wanted Captain Kirk to have more female friends. They felt Rand and Kirk were getting too close and they didn’t want that. They were going to write Scotty out, too, but decided to keep him. They even had a clause in Leonard’s contract that said if his ears didn’t go over they could get rid of him.

GENE RODDENBERRY

The mistake I made with Rand, and I’ve regretted it many times, was the network said to me, “We’ve been meeting on this and we think what you should do is get a different, exciting young lady every week, rather than the same one.” And I had said no so many times to the network that I thought I maybe should give them a yes this time. But looking back now, I would’ve kept Rand on the show and I’m sorry I didn’t. I know what a disappointment it was to Grace Lee Whitney as it was to Majel to be the number two in line and then be gone. But producing is not a science and sometimes we make mistakes.

JOHN D. F. BLACK

DeForest Kelley was as experienced an actor as you could ask for. He had gone from juvenile to character juvenile to young leading man to leading man and there he was on Star Trek with an enormous amount of training. He had his character in hand, although it changed slightly during the first five or six episodes, where he became a tad more earnest. The conflict built in between Spock and him was electric. Even the extras who would run in and out with their little zap guns were into their characters and into the show. I think that was relevant to the audience. It triggered their emotional responses.

DeFOREST KELLEY (actor, “Dr. Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy”)

The character was laid out by Roddenberry, of course, and there was a guide that went into a good deal of detail about each character. But I remember having long discussions with Gene about McCoy. One thing we had both arrived at, and which was indicated in the breakdown, was that McCoy was supposed to be something of a future-style H. L. Mencken. So I went to the library and read about him and tried to work some of the more personal writings about Mencken into the characterization of McCoy.

The character began to really take shape after about six or seven of the episodes. It’s always difficult to step onto a set and fall immediately into a character—with the exception of the captain, of course. His attitude is not as complicated as Spock’s or McCoy’s, but that’s how the character actually began. As it was originally written, McCoy was even to be dressed differently. He would often be seen, for example, in an oversized-type sweater or something of that nature. He was to be the least military of all; he was described that way in the guide. But we never got to that part about the dress.

That was the beginning of him. In addition to that sardonic-type wit, I tried to inject as much warmth as I could give to him at the proper times, and also a sense of great caring. Bill and Leonard being the fine actors they are, there seemed to be a certain chemistry that fell into place among us. It all came together, and each of us had in the beginning of Trek this feeling of unity, of trying to make it as fine a show as possible. We were generous with each other in the discussions of the characters, among ourselves. I might say to Bill, “I don’t think that line is mine. I think it’s yours. It sounds like a captain’s line.” Or we might suggest some other line that seemed more appropriate than what was in the script, and then, with the producer’s permission, of course, they might put it in. It was kind of a team effort.

NICHELLE NICHOLS

I had a car accident on the way to the set on the first day. I went to the hospital and the doctor put stitches in my lip and in my knee. He gave me a shot and some pills and it kept the swelling down and I didn’t feel the pain. He told me the medicine would wear off about three or four in the afternoon. Later, I was doing my last scene of the day and we were moving right along. I was standing up by my communications panel and Captain Kirk is standing down by his chair, and the director, Joe Sargent, said, “Well, we’re going to get this shot and we can call it a day. We’ve done really well.” While I’m standing there by the railing, I remember somebody saying, “You know what I mean, Nichelle? Nichelle? Oh my God!” And all I remember was Bill Shatner leaping across to catch me, because I had passed out and was falling straight for him. I fell over the railing and he caught me. Captain Kirk to the rescue! My first day was almost my undoing.

DeFOREST KELLEY

We all made suggestions concerning our characters all the way through. The longer you live with it, the more comfortable you become with the role. Every bit of input that you give to the creator he will buy. He knows that you’re beginning to get with it. The Spock–McCoy situation is a thing that started with a very small moment. It was just a line that he threw at me and I, in turn, threw the line back in a certain manner. Nobody thought much about it at the time. But when it hit the screen, it created an uproar. So they started to build on it and put more of that in. We all gave a great deal of input to our characters, but Gene Roddenberry laid them out for us in the beginning and tried to keep us on track.

JOSEPH PEVNEY (director, “The City on the Edge of Forever”)

I loved the characters. Gene was constantly trying to give it a universal aspect, because that’s what’s going to be in the theory regarding the future when we go to other worlds. There will be all kinds of things out there. Some will not be completely humanoid, but that was okay. He was quite convincing about that. So he wanted some more nationalities in the show. He had an Oriental, a black, eventually a Russian.… The sixties were boiling over with this out here. At that time we had all kinds of college things going on. The beginning of the ERA and so on. Civil rights were tumbling all over the place. In the second season, Gene was saying, “Let’s put a Russian in there.” Wow, what a shockeroo that was!

STEVEN JAY RUBIN (author, The James Bond Films: A Behind-the-Scenes History)

Whatever influence Forbidden Planet had on it, Star Trek was very much a series of the 1960s in that there was a certain diversity in the cast. You had the Russian; Mr. Sulu, who was Japanese; and the African communications officer. Very much an international element. Forbidden Planet was very white bread, but that was typical of the fifties, so probably was very typical of the navy. As the navy integrated, so did the space operas.

THOMAS DOHERTY (professor of American studies, Brandeis University)

I think the multiculturalism in World War II is there: the Italian, the Jewish guy, the guy from Texas, and the guy from the farm, and later on it gets more open with the Asian guy and the Hispanic guy. That kind of works like the Enterprise being a B-17 in space.

JAMES GOLDSTONE (director, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”)

Right back from when we did the second pilot, we had the idea that it would be a multiracial crew. We were doing this at a time when racial violence in the United States was rampant, and we were saying that in the future that it will not be a pressing problem, that we will have transcended that.

MARC DANIELS (director, “The Man Trap”)

Right from the beginning it was easy to see that the characters were extremely well drawn. There was some trial and error with the peripheral characters, but the main ones—Kirk, Spock, and McCoy—were excellent. With that many characters, it was difficult to give each of them their due. There was a very good contrast between them, because you didn’t have the same thing going on between any two of them.

ROBERT H. JUSTMAN (associate producer, Star Trek)

They all added to their characters. For instance, as Nimoy added to the character of Mr. Spock, we saw certain things in the portrayal that Gene thought could be taken advantage of and expanded, which we did. You have to learn in making film to deal with the film and not necessarily with what the original conception was. Film has a life of its own, and if you try to bend it toward what you originally intended and it didn’t turn out that way, it’s going to turn out to be quite awkward. You have to learn to take advantage of what’s there, to perhaps give it a new shape. It’s an interesting problem. You have to have a good concept for a character to begin with to enable the actors to do something with it.

GENE RODDENBERRY

The three-star billing between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy was the one that you would see a lot of. Plus science fiction wasn’t “in” in those days, and we were going to do a lot of things we knew people might not understand. I wouldn’t have stream of consciousness. In novels, stream of consciousness goes inside the hero’s head and you can read what he’s thinking. You don’t have that in television, and so I thought that if I took a perfect person and divided him into three parts, I could have the administrative, courageous part that would be the captain, the logical part who is the science officer, and the humanistic part with the doctor. Then, when something comes up, the captain could say, “I don’t know, fellas. We must do it,” and Spock would say, “However, the logical thing is,” and the doctor would say, “Yes, but the humanity of it,” and I could have them talk about it without having stream of consciousness, and it worked.

DOROTHY FONTANA (story editor, Star Trek)

There was a very good team feeling. Gene had put together an extremely good team, between the cast, crew, and staff, who were united in the feeling that this is a good show, we’re doing a fine show and let’s keep it up. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered such a great team spirit on any other show I’ve ever worked on, although I’ve had good working relationships with other crews. But that whole unity of everybody, from the top to the least important production person, was right there.

JOHN D. F. BLACK

The show was meaningful for many people. Bill Shatner had just done the TV pilot Alexander the Great. He was good, but it was not a hit. On the night of the first shoot, I left the office and found him leaning against my car. He had a look of enormous innocence on his face. I said, “How’s it going, Billy?” and he said, “Fine.” I figured there was something going on. And he just looked at me and said, “It’s just so damned important to us.” And I said, “Yeah, we’ve got a hit.” That’s what you say to everybody when it’s in the fan and you don’t know what’s going to happen next, particularly to actors who are so vulnerable. And he said, “I hope so,” and walked away. The sense I had was that we were all doing the best we could and we were giving it everything we had.

On May 4, 1965, Gene Roddenberry wrote to Shatner to express how happy he was so far with the way the show was progressing while also foreshadowing future difficulties with the star. “You must know how delighted I am that our arrangement together on Star Trek seems to be working out. Recalling our conversation and aiming in that direction, I already have three scripts at work which emphasize the captain in the dominant central role with powerful personality spiced with personal warmth. These three stories, each against an entirely different background and situation, are designed to combine believability with great personal jeopardy to firmly establish the man. Although I can make a number of guesses from your many performances I have seen, it would really be valuable at this early stage to have your comments, suggestions, and points of view. Can we get together for lunch soon? I’m enthused and pleased at the prospect of working together, particularly on a project with this much potential and challenge.”

JERRY SOHL (writer, “The Paradise Syndrome”)

Gene Roddenberry knew that I was a science-fiction writer from people evidently telling him I was. So he called me up one day and asked me if I would like to go down to the studio. I met him there in, like, 1965, and he said, “I have this idea for a science-fiction TV show, which I think the networks are going to buy, and wanted to talk to you about the possibilities of stories. Would you be available? I’m meeting with other science fiction writers like A. E. van Vogt, Ray Bradbury, Fredric Brown.” He would meet with them down there and really sort of drained them by lunch of any ideas. We all did the best that we could, suggesting what to do. We hoped that it wouldn’t be like Truman Bradley’s Science Fiction Theatre. We wanted something more than that. He told us that it would be a good thing, but nobody believed that it would be.

I spoke to some writers afterward and they said, “Well, what did he do? Gene Roddenberry has only done The Lieutenant series and he was a police officer. What the hell does know about science fiction? It’s just going to be a pile of shit.” So we all agreed that, yes, it would be a pile of shit, but we would all work for it anyway. But it didn’t turn out to be that way and we wound up being very friendly with him.

HARLAN ELLISON (author; writer, “The City on the Edge of Forever”)

In the beginning, I was very optimistic about Star Trek. I was vice president of the Science Fiction Writers of America, and I was the one who set up the West Coast banquet. I showed the pilot the first time it was shown to the science-fiction community. I said, “This is our chance to get good science fiction on the tube. It’s being run by people who seem to know what they’re doing and they want us.” That was how Roddenberry came to hire Ted Sturgeon and the others, because of my intercession. Everybody else takes credit for it, but all of these people were friends of mine, and I got them to go in on the show.

JOHN D. F. BLACK

What Star Trek always strived to do, from my perspective, is to take things people can relate to now because it’s real in our own lives, and move them. What happens if somebody burns down your building? It’s the same thing as a monster showing up in your building. So they used the monster. The parallel was clean. The way television was, there was a hell of a lot that you couldn’t do, but there was also a hell of a lot that you could do then, but nobody was noticing. So when a show like Star Trek came along, it was a marvelous advantage. There was no writer I knew who didn’t want to work on that show. We were looking for the most acute science-fiction minds it was possible to acquire, because we were doing something new. But our dilemma was, first of all, that every plant that we showed had to be made. Every weapon or device had to be invented. What the hell did a plant look like on Rigel 9? Dilithium crystals were a rock which one of my kids brought home. It had a beautiful crystal-like shine, and I really fell in love with the look of it and took it into the office. Somebody asked me what it was and I said, “It’s a Dilithium crystal.” I didn’t know what the hell it was, but it became the power source of the Enterprise.

We were creating everything. Conceiving an idea was one thing, getting it on film was another. Cost is relative in doing any series. And I wasn’t that familiar with science fiction. I had read a great deal of it, but science fiction is playing tennis without a net. You could do anything you wanted, and if you look at the one segment I wrote, “The Naked Time,” you’ll see what I did, purely and simply, was take drunkenness and remove the slurs and staggers from it.

ADRIAN SPIES (writer, “Miri”)

In those days, Gene told the writers he called that this was “really an anthology. This is a chance to write about anything you want.” I didn’t know what he was talking about. But we were two professionals and we worked out the story for “Miri” together. He had good ideas. I had gone to Gene and offered him the idea of a bunch of kids in this place where they are permanently young, but are really very old. I do remember that he said, “You have to develop a language for these people.” I said, “What the hell are you talking about?” He said, “The kids would talk differently.” In that conversation he made up the word grups for grown-ups. I immediately liked it. That’s an example of a creative producer at work.

JOHN D. F. BLACK

There was no limit to what we could do. We could have villains that you could see and villains you couldn’t see. You could have any character do a complete turnaround simply because there was a difference in oxygen somewhere. We jumped right in there without one single solitary thing in terms of theatricalism that we couldn’t do. We could have done Oedipus or anything, although the censors wouldn’t allow us to do the Oedipus story. Nor would they allow it anytime you got into those overtly sexually driven stories at that point in time. One exception was the episode “Mudd’s Women,” which was basically prostitution at large, which was in the papers every day. We were not promoting it or coming out against it. All we were saying is that it happens here and it happens in outer space, and the censors let us go.

NORMAN SPINRAD (author; writer, “The Doomsday Machine”)

I thought it was a genius thing Roddenberry did. The anthology was dead on television as a doornail, and he devised a format in which you could do a self-contained anthology story every week. All you had were these people on a spaceship who could go to any damned planet they felt like. It was a genius concept, because it literally left them open to do anything at all.

JOHN D. F. BLACK

The Star Trek offices at the Desilu Studio were directly below those of Mission: Impossible, which was gearing up for production at the same time. At the end of the day, we would gather together and talk. Everybody was going crazy. You know, how the hell do you do a science-fiction series? How the hell do you do Mission: Impossible? We would bat the day’s story problems back and forth, so there’s no way to tell who came up with what about what at what time. It was all madness. It was a great deal of work, more work than I had ever done in so compacted a time. It was twelve to eighteen hours a day. I can remember many nights wandering around the sets at midnight, trying to figure out story logistics.

ROBERT H. JUSTMAN

To mount an episode of Star Trek, just imagine the most incredibly difficult process you can imagine and double it. The gestation is very, very difficult. We had to satisfy many masters. I can’t begin to tell you. Add to that the time constraints—you never had enough time to write the episodes properly, much less produce them properly. The world of series television is an arcane sort of work, an arcane art. In essence, you really can’t do anything in a way that’s true. You can only do the best that you can do. You have a finite amount of time and you need to sleep at least a few hours every night, so you accomplish what you can accomplish within those constraints. That’s it. It’s not easy. The reward every now and then is perhaps turning out a show that affects people, causes them to think, and perhaps changes their lives. There was a feeling that we were all together, doing something that was different. Not only different, but worthwhile. That was the feeling.

HERBERT F. SOLOW (executive in charge of production for Desilu)

There were more freedoms on television, and there was more of a challenge by a lot of the aggressive young writers to challenge the authority of the network censors; to see how far they could push the envelope. That was Gene.

ROBERT H. JUSTMAN

It was all we could do just to do the show. Forget about worrying about anything else. It was a new show, and because of that, the network programming department was understandably nervous about what we could show and what we couldn’t show, and what subjects we could deal with. Luckily, the fact that the show was allegorical in nature, sometimes the content escaped the network’s notice. They took the content of the show for what the content purported to be. Allegory oftentimes is not about what’s there, but what’s not there. You see, when you’re doing a show for a network, you not only have to deal with programming departments and development, but also with what in NBC’s case was called the Broadcast Standards Department, which was the censors. Programming might accept a story that Broadcast Standards might find objectionable. It was quite difficult to satisfy three masters, two of them being the network and one of them being ourselves.

MARC CUSHMAN (author, These Are the Voyages)

It was a bad relationship between NBC and Roddenberry. It’s like a bad marriage—two people who don’t belong together, who are just not going to make a go of it. Neither one of them is a bad guy, it’s just that Gene Roddenberry couldn’t live within the network system. His relationship with NBC went sour with The Lieutenant, before Star Trek ever went on the air. The only reason they did Star Trek was because of Herb Solow, who was a former NBC man. And the fact was that they wanted to do business with Lucille Ball, who was CBS’s golden girl. They needed a science-fiction show (they’d never had one) and ABC was doing well with Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. CBS was doing well with Lost in Space, both of which had debuted the year before.

So NBC took the show for three reasons: to change their look, to be in business with Lucille Ball, and because they liked Herb Solow. They just didn’t want to do business with Roddenberry, and then once the show came on, the relationship got worse and worse. The stories were making commentary on Vietnam, on racism, sex, hookers in space, guys that were half white and half black, and things like that. The network is saying, “We’re getting too many letters; we’re getting too many people who are offended.”

HERBERT F. SOLOW

For years, Gene had painted NBC as the diabolical, evil-spirited, evil rich people who were always fighting against him, and that just wasn’t so. NBC put up a lot of money, had a lot of patience, and put up with a lot of crap from Gene and a lot of other people, and were always there, ready to help us put it on the air. They did two pilots, and for all those years, no one ever mentioned NBC in any decent light.

MARC CUSHMAN

In the speeches he would make during the time Star Trek was on the air, Gene would get in front of audiences all the time, or give interviews to the press, and he was constantly rapping the network. You can’t do that unless you’re number one, but even the Smothers Brothers, which was a top-ten show, got canceled by CBS because they were constantly giving the network a hard time in the press. Back then you did not do that.

GENE RODDENBERRY

I remember once when I was a freelance writer and I was sent out to a place and they said, “We’ve got a show called Riverboat. Would you like to write it?” And the price was right and it was an adventure thing, so I went out and it was Mississippi 1850s and I talked a story and they said, “Fine. You’ve got an assignment. Oh, uh, just one thing: No Negroes.” Mississippi, 1860? We got into an argument and I lost the assignment on that one. That is patently false. That is lying to both children and adults, and I think things like that are immoral. It’s those immoralities that are my principal fight with the networks.

Within the limits of their commercial system, where television exists only to sell products, they probably do the best they can. I, for one, am waiting for the whole system to be changed so that when we make a show, that our appeal is directly to the audience. If the audience doesn’t watch it, then fine, I goofed and I’m willing to admit my blame; it is this present strange system when you never get an appeal to the audience, you go through so many committees and agencies and vice-presidents that make the decisions that most of us, most dramatists, object to so strongly.

ROBERT H. JUSTMAN

NBC wanted as many “planet” shows that they could get. Of course that was very difficult for us to achieve. They, as anybody does, wanted more for their buck. The more things you could cram in a show, the more action you could cram into a show, the happier they were. Their need was to achieve good numbers. In a way, I guess that was our need, too, but we were more concerned with the content of the shows. The network was concerned with content, too, but it was their kind of content and the kind that would, in their mind, attract viewers.

TRACY TORME (creative consultant, Star Trek: The Next Generation)

Gene and I had many golf-cart rides across the Paramount lot. We would go from one end of the studio to the other, taking these long meandering drives. He would wave at people he knew, saying hi to the security guards, and he used these times to talk to me about a number of things; personal things, professional things, great stories about the old Trek, stories about Shatner, stories about Majel, stories about his ex-wife, his divorce, his relationships with women.

He told me he thought I would be running my own show one day and things I needed to know about how to work with the network executives, how sometimes they will give you the stupidest notes in the world and you would have to choose when to nod your head and say, “That’s kind of interesting”—and then hope that it never comes up again.

JERRY SOHL

Right from when the show got going in September 1966, it was obvious that Gene Roddenberry had done a good thing in having little moral lessons in most of the episodes, and it seemed to be that pointed kids in the right direction. Not only that, it made the show entertaining. I don’t think it was sugarcoated particularly, because some of those episodes had some pretty racy things in them. On a whole, I think it was, in its time, about the best thing that existed as far as science fiction on-screen was concerned. Just the idea of going where no man has gone before is very good.

JOHN D. F. BLACK

As far as the scripts for the show were concerned, Gene was working from the position that he had created the show so it was his. GR’s approach was that he was in control of the show and he approached the scripts in that way. My deal going in was that if I was going to get really good heavyweight writers, I know that they don’t want anybody to screw with their material. They want it to be their concept. The only reason they’re going to take television money, which is short and it was shorter than short-story money at that time, and the only way that I will talk to them about it, is if they can rewrite their own material without interference. We could give them all the input we want, but we can’t put pencil to paper on their material. Gene said okay, and the head of the studio said yes, and that’s the way I took the deal.

This is the reality. When stories came in on Thursday or Friday, I would read them, make my notes, copies would be made, and GR would take them home on the weekend. And instead of notes, he would come in on Monday with a rewrite. He would have rewritten everything. God knows how much. And it would never, in my judgment, have been that much for the better. In some cases he got closer to the pattern that the show was becoming, because it was evolving while I was there. But GR has never been the writer that Harlan Ellison, Jerry Sohl, or Teddy Sturgeon were. He isn’t it. That’s no knock. Very few people are up to that standing, but Gene couldn’t keep his hands off a script. God knows what he would have done with “to be or not to be, that is the question,” but there’s one thing that’s absolutely certain: what would have been in the script and what was shot would not have been “to be or not to be, that is the question.”

ROBERT H. JUSTMAN

When we were doing the original show, the well-known science-fiction writers came up with all kinds of marvelous concepts, marvelous premises. But just because you have marvelous premises when you deliver a teleplay doesn’t mean that you’ve written a proper drama. They didn’t write anything that could actually be photographed or made. Whereas you might accept it in the world of prose, you’re not necessarily going to accept it in TV drama.

GENE RODDENBERRY

During the first year, I wrote or rewrote everybody, even my best friends, because I had this idea in my mind of something that hadn’t been done and I wanted to be really there. Once we had enough episodes, then the writers could see where we were going, but it was really building people to write the way I wanted them to write. I lost a lot of friends, writer friends, because writers don’t like to be rewritten, but the whole thing was in my head and I couldn’t say, “Mr. Spock, write him like you would write so-and-so,” because there’d never been anyone like that around. So I rewrote them and lost friendships.

JOHN D. F. BLACK

After Gene would do his rewriting, I’d get the script back, try to satisfy him and get it back to as close a shape to the writer’s work as I possibly could. The writer would come in, we would have a story conference, we would discuss changes, the writer would go away, and, generally, I would get the writer to do the polish … if there was time. The dilemma with Star Trek was that what seemed to a writer to be something that could be done easily inside the context of the starship, became impossible. So alterations were made in a lot of things. They were slight, but necessary.

The writers, I think, deserve credit for everything good in everything they did … while I was there, anyway. Any faults you could find in any material can be blamed on me and GR. The stuff we got was, by and large, brilliant. I cannot remember one instance where I sat across a table from a writer and said, “Why is this happening?” and they couldn’t explain it to me. There was always a reason.

ROBERT H. JUSTMAN

A lot of the writers suffered from bruised egos, and I can’t say that I blame them. Nobody wants to be rewritten, because you put a lot of thought and emotion into what you’re writing. You believe it’s correct or you wouldn’t have written it that way. But Harry Truman used to say, “If you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.” No use determining that you’re going to work in a certain medium if you’re not willing to accept the rules that go with it, the restrictions that apply. This may surprise you, but people don’t like to rewrite because it’s hard work. You’d much rather get in a script that you can put right to work, but that’s not necessarily the way things happen.

JOHN D. F. BLACK

When I wrote “The Naked Time,” I delivered my first draft and gave a copy to GR. I figured, “Here I am, I’m working on the show, and if anybody knows the show besides GR, it’s me.” And GR brought back a rewritten script. I couldn’t cope with it. That was not something I could suck up. The question in my mind, and I put it to GR, was what the hell am I doing here if I don’t know the show? And I asked him what his problem was with it. He told me and I said, “Okay, I will rewrite it.” And I rewrote it from my original—then he rewrote my second draft. So nobody got their show on the air.

ROBERT H. JUSTMAN

I guess I’m prejudiced. I think Gene Roddenberry is a genius. Not only in creating Star Trek. I know him and have known him for years when he has said and done some amazing things. He’s an original thinker. His background was very humble, but he’s a man who educated himself and he’s found that his mind is fertile ground. It’s an astonishing mind. You don’t jump into a pool and swim without making waves.

DIANA MULDAUR (actress, “Return to Tomorrow”)

A lot of people try to diminish his genius in order to put themselves up there, and I have said to them, don’t ever forget his genius, because none of us would be here without him, period. That’s just the way it is whether you like it or you don’t like it. He created this. There is no question in my mind that Roddenberry is a genius.

JOHN D. F. BLACK

GR had a view that nobody liked him. When Gene would come up with an idea, I would say there was an 80 percent chance he was right; he was right about the characters, the crossover between outer space and inner space, he was right about a lot of things. And I don’t like to say that. I was one of the ones who didn’t like him.

ROD RODDENBERRY (son of Gene Roddenberry)

My father does get all the credit and others are often overlooked. Not Nimoy and Shatner, but the significance of others’ contributions sometimes are overlooked, and I think that hurts them. It was a collaborative effort. A lot of people make Star Trek what it is. Yes, my father brought it to the table, he built the team and made mistakes along the way. He deserves plenty of credit, but I do feel for all the ones that feel wronged or don’t feel like they’ve been listened to or recognized. I think they should be … but they should also stop bashing my fucking father.

JOHN D. F. BLACK

It’s always mattered to me that my word was good, and if I told somebody that they would be permitted to rewrite their own work, that nobody would touch it, and then I would get it back already diddled with, that was not going to move us into a very happy state of mind. I was there because I could talk to those writers. Those writers respected me and I respected them. Integrity mattered, and I couldn’t bear to see quality work changed to the point where the dialogue did not have the sharp edge that it had, and GR would use the word “fast” at least once a page as in, “We’ve got to get there … fast.” I was watching too much good material getting screwed up, and I couldn’t take it. I confronted an executive at the studio and I said, “I can’t really continue if my word does not remain good,” and he said, “It’s GR’s show.” So I said, “Would you like my resignation or would you like to fire me?” And he said it could be one or the other. There was no alternative, so I left the show.

STEVEN W. CARABATSOS (story consultant, Star Trek)

I came in as story consultant for about fifteen weeks after John Black left. The show hadn’t been on the air yet. By the time I came on, there were about six episodes in the can. I’m sure today it’s even more frantic, because the stakes are higher, but at the time, on the shakedown year of a show, everyone was trying new things and was concerned about it being a success, as well as being the kind of show they wanted it to be.

ROBERT H. JUSTMAN

While this was going on, Gene was very fatigued and so was I. We both nearly didn’t make it through the first season because of overwork. We were at our wits’ end. I was so tired that first season that I came unglued one night at home. My wife called Gene and said, “That’s it, I’m taking him away.” You try working for about six months, seven days a week, and averaging three or four hours of sleep a night, with enormous pressure. Eventually something’s going to give. It happened to be me that night, and Gene was next. We were both basket cases. As a result of that, that’s how Gene Coon came to be on the show. Gene Roddenberry just couldn’t do it by himself. He was excellent, Gene Roddenberry wrote wonderful scenes, but it took its toll.

As Gene Roddenberry left on a desperately needed shore leave of his own, he dashed off a memo along with his completed pages to “The Menagerie,” which repurposed the original “Cage” pilot as part of an inspired two-part episode. Wrote Roddenberry playfully to Bob Justman, “As indication of my vast and sincere regard for you, I leave behind while I am on vacation in the High Desert, some fifty or sixty pages of sheer genius. Read and weep as did Alexander when he beheld the glories of Egypt.”

On August 8, 1966, one month before the series would make its network debut, Star Trek underwent something of a seismic shift, when Gene L. Coon was brought on to the show as producer. To a large degree, it would be Coon who would ultimately define the show creatively in the coming months.

Born Eugene Lee Coon on January 7, 1924, in Beatrice, Nebraska, he was educated within the public school system in both Nebraska and California. In 1942 he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, where he spent four years. During that time he was stationed in the Pacific and the Far East. Taking part in the initial occupation of Japan, he was ultimately sent to China, ostensibly to help repatriate the Japanese, but he ended up editing and publishing a small newspaper. For eight months he remained in northern China, and then went stateside, where he became a radio newsman, member of the National Association of Radio News Editors, and a freelance writer.

He wrote the novels Meanwhile Back at the Front and The Short End, both of which dealt with the Korean War. Writing for film and television came next, beginning in 1957 when he wrote the screenplays for The Girl in the Kremlin and Man in the Shadow, and, then, in 1964 he wrote Don Siegel’s remake of The Killers, which starred Lee Marvin and Ronald Reagan, in his last on-screen role. Meanwhile, on television he wrote scripts for shows such as Wagon Train, Bonanza, Have Gun—Will Travel, Rawhide, Alcoa Premiere, The Eleventh Hour, Hotel de Paree, Riverboat, Suspense, General Electric Theater, Mr. Lucky, Peter Gunn, and many others.

MORT ZARCOFF (producer, writer)

At Universal we had a charge to come up with new projects. We would develop new concepts, new ideas, bring them on to script form, and hopefully we would create little units that would then produce the shows. The spark to it all in terms of sheer energy and ability to turn out work was Gene.

LESTER COLODNY (writer, producer)

They had a series on the boards called McHale’s Navy and Jennings Lang, who was the VP of television, loved the idea, but the script didn’t work. The original version was a one-hour drama and it was terrible. Jennings said, “How do we make this work?” I brought Gene in and made a deal for him to write two pilots. Gene took a dramatic series and made it into a half-hour comedy, and they started making the pilot.

MORT ZARCOFF

He was an incredible source of creative energy. We would all work and write scripts, but it was a question of degree. Most of us could turn out so many pages a day, but Gene would lock himself in the office and the pages would just pour out. We reworked a little bit of it, but he would get into that fourteen-cylinder typewriter of his and whip the pages out. They were, without a doubt, some of the cleverest, most craftsmanlike work that I’d seen in a long time.

LESTER COLODNY

Jennings Lang said to me, “We own all these Frankenstein movies. How do we make a series out of this?” Gene and I started watching the Frankenstein movies, and the more we watched them, the more we were falling on the floor screaming. We were laughing and I turned to him and said, “Wouldn’t this make the funniest series in the whole world?” We put our heads together and between the two of us we came up with the concept of The Munsters. We took the idea back to Jennings Lang and he said, “You’re out of your mind.” Later, the head of the studio, Lew Wasserman, said, “We sold your crazy, goddamned series. We don’t understand it, but we sold it.”

They gave it to other people and they made it into a kid’s show. Our version was very funny and very hip. We were doing a satire of The Donna Reed Show with monsters, because we wanted to do something very adult. The first two scripts were a very sly, tongue-in-cheek, and arch takeoff on The Donna Reed Show, but The Munsters never became that.

MORT ZARCOFF

During this time, they would get Gene to fix everything. Whenever there was something going wrong, they would call Gene Coon. He would fix scripts, he would fix pilots. He was a jack-of-all-trades. That is what he brought to Star Trek.

Gene L. Coon was a progressive in many ways, ranging from his general attitude toward life to hiring Ande Richardson—a young African-American woman who counted among her friends Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Maulana Karenga—as his secretary and assistant. She had been hired a couple of years earlier to serve as a “floor secretary” at Desilu before she began working for Coon at Star Trek.

ANDE RICHARDSON (assistant to Gene L. Coon)

Desilu, after Watts exploded, realized that they had no black staff. Just the black actors who would come in, but they had nobody working on the lot that was black other than the janitors. So they called the Urban League and asked them to send over a couple of people. I went over and interviewed as a secretary, which I was not and never was. Anyhow, I worked in all the different departments all over the lot, including the desk on the Gower Street entrance.

Then Gene Coon came along and he had me come in and work with him. Then one day he asked me if I’d like to work for him and give up the other job. It took a little bit for me to decide that, because I had come from working with Malcolm and Karenga and all those people, and to work for a white dude named Coon was not exactly what I planning. But we worked it out and Gene became my heart.

DAVID GERROLD (writer, “The Trouble with Tribbles”)

If you look at the episodes that Roddenberry was responsible for in the beginning, which was pretty much the first ten episodes, there’s not a lot of Star Trek’s noble purpose there. There’s a bumbling around trying to find out what the show is about, yet at the same time they did some great episodes. Because no one knew what Star Trek was, they were continually inventing it. You see stuff like “Charlie X,” “The Enemy Within,” and they also did a lot of rip-offs—“The Galileo Seven” was Flight of the Phoenix, “Balance of Terror” was The Enemy Below—and so they didn’t really know what they could do with the show yet.

When Gene L. Coon first came on board in the second half of the first season, you start getting things like the Prime Directive and a lot of the stuff that was later identified as the noble parts of Star Trek. Gene L. Coon created the noble image that everyone gives Roddenberry the most credit for.

JACKIE COON FERNANDEZ (Gene L. Coon’s widow)

Science fiction per se was not a particular choice for him. It was a genre he did, but he didn’t think of himself as a science-fiction writer at all. If you hadn’t had that name on it, it was just another drama which Gene was interested in. Another thought, another quest, another way to look at a situation from a different angle. It just happened to fall into that category.

GENE RODDENBERRY

I had no choice. The only way I could get people like Gene Coon to come in and produce—and I needed a producer, more helping hands—was to become executive producer. Actually a supervising producer. Today it would be different. No one would object to a very complex show having two, three, or even four line producers with a supervising producer over them. In those days, it was unheard of, but I just had to get some extra people in any way I could. I had found myself working twelve or fourteen hours a day, and I could no longer do it. Everyone on our staff was in the hospital at least once during those three years just from total exhaustion. We were doing half a science-fiction movie every week. Imagine what a burden that is. Science-fiction movies usually take twenty weeks to do. We were doing one every week.

LESTER COLODNY

Gene Coon could work on many projects at the same time because he taught himself something called “automatic writing.” He had this crazy thing in which he hypnotized himself, and he was convinced that he could put himself in a state of almost disembodiment in which once he was ready to write, after having thought out the story and worked out what he was about to write, he would go into a room, put on some jazz music, and sit down at his typewriter. His fingers flew like you never saw in your life. He would be in a state of self-hypnosis, which he called automatic writing. His mind was only focused on one single thing: that script. The most astonishing thing you’ve ever seen in your life.

ANDE RICHARDSON

I used to go to the most unethical doctor you could find. I could buy jars of amphetamines from him. Then I’d take them back and give them to Gene. He’d give me some and off he’d go to write, and at night I’d go dancing.

JACKIE COON FERNANDEZ

His way of writing was going to bed with the thought in his head of what he had to come up with, and then it was there when he got up. It was just there. He went from sleeping soundly to getting up feeling fresh, and it just came out of his fingers onto the typewriter and he just never had to think about it.

JOHN FURIA JR. (writer/producer/former president of the Writers Guild of America)

Gene was an extremely prolific writer. He wrote novels and lots of television in lots of genres. A lot of prolific writers tend to be sloppy, facile, and not very good. Gene was not that. He just happened to be a writer who wrote fast. He cared a great deal about writing. I think there were a lot of things he cared about. He loved to talk, he loved writing. A lot of writers kind of write defensively and hate the process. I sometimes say I have a love-hate relationship with writing. I hate to be doing it, but I love it when I’m finished. But Gene really relished the process of writing itself.

JACKIE COON FERNANDEZ

I never once heard him complain about writing. It would have been unthinkable for him to be anything else but a writer.

DOROTHY FONTANA

He had a delicacy of writing that was really remarkable. A subtlety of relationships that showed in the writing. His secretary was a young black woman who had very much gotten into Malcolm X’s philosophy, and she was telling Gene about it. Gene said, “Well, I don’t know. Is he going to be speaking? I’ll go down and listen to him talk.” And they had these discussions on the black movement and all that involves, the philosophy of life that involves, the determination of the black people to be more equal. Gene was always an open-minded and fair man. I always liked that about him, because it showed up in his writing and I think it made him a good writer.

ANDE RICHARDSON

Gene wanted to go to the mosque and I said, “Sorry, mate, you can’t come to the mosque. No white folks allowed.” Gene came from a background where his dad was a Klansman, and Gene was the opposite of that. Remember, he was a war correspondent. He had to go back again to World War II and then back to Korea. He was no lover of war, and he was open to all opinions. He was just a good man.

While we were working together, Gene didn’t really share his feelings about Star Trek. I’d get a script and he’d come in and say, “Oh, how is it?” And I’d say, “Second act needs work,” or whatever. I’d gotten so used to reading them and analyzing them, and then he would take it, look at it, and put it all together. So it wasn’t so much that we would talk about Star Trek as we would talk more about the world. About politics, what was going on. And then I would see all of that in Star Trek. Look, I had been working with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, and working with Gene was as normal as being with them.

LESTER COLODNY

Gene was always a commentator in everything he wrote. Everything had a message. He was very tuned in to things. You know how many years ago you’re talking about? Gene was so aware of the ozone layer or forests being decimated. If you go over the episodes he did, so many of them have an underlying message that were very apropos to our culture. Whatever he wrote—he could write the funniest comedy—there was always a sociological point of view that had to do with the betterment of mankind. He was very dedicated in that way. Of all the people that I’ve met in my life, I would say he was one of the most guileless people I’ve known. There were no hidden agendas. No bullshit.

JACKIE COON FERNANDEZ

Gene was kind of like a grown-up Huckleberry Finn. It was a great quality, because everybody knew where they stood and didn’t have to do any tap dancing. Gene Roddenberry’s personality, even though he was a very soft-spoken man, was a very expansive, huge personality, bigger than life, so to speak. That ran true to form when it came to the show. Gene Coon’s personality was quite the opposite. He was introspective, he was quite content to let others shine—Roddenberry, me, or anyone else who wanted to shine. He would let them and just be there.

DAVID GERROLD

There was no performance. I have to contrast him with Gene Roddenberry on this. Gene Roddenberry was always doing the performance of a great man, and people were awed because they would go into his office wanting to see the great man, and of course he would do the performance. Gene L. Coon just did Gene L. Coon. He was very accessible, very straightforward, and very unpretentious. He had a very nuts-and-bolts attitude about the fact that we were doing a television show. That was very refreshing, because what we’ve got now is that Star Trek has become this whole religion. People argue about this, that, and the other thing; there’s a significance about it. With Gene Coon there was an understanding, first, that what we’re doing is television. Good television. We’re not on a mission from God, we’re here to entertain the audience.

ANDE RICHARDSON

There were certain people who had my respect, and Gene Roddenberry didn’t really get in that group. I mean, he came to my wedding and I went to his and Majel’s wedding party after they’d gotten married in Japan. We were all friendly, but Gene Coon was my heart. I always say it was Malcolm, Martin, and Gene Coon. Those were the people I valued, admired, and I had respect for their integrity. But Gene Roddenberry was a sexist, manipulative person who disregarded women. I didn’t value and respect him. He was funny in his own way, but he was a man of no substance. No integrity … well, I can’t say no integrity, but he was paper-thin. He wasn’t substantial. Having hung out with those three men, I have no hesitation putting them together and saying that Roddenberry came nowhere near them. Sure, he may have been the Great Bird, but he wasn’t a great person.

He would have women walking from Bill Theiss’s fitting rooms through to his office in the skimpiest outfits so he could perv them. He was really such a sexist. I remember him telling me something and I thought, “Why is he telling me this?” Just personal kind of stuff I couldn’t really care to know about him. Disregarding people’s private space. I remember seeing him with Nichelle in his office, which is when I realized, “Oh, he’s been banging Nichelle.” But he moved Majel into an apartment just down the street so he could go for nooners. I don’t know why he had to be lecherous, looking after every woman. He came back from Japan with Majel and he said to me, “You know, Ande, you can go from the front to the back but you can’t go from the back to the front. Majel’s got a heck of an infection.” Again, why are you telling me this? But that was him: freaky-deaky dude.

ROBERT H. JUSTMAN

Gene Coon shaped a lot of the individual shows, but he didn’t shape the concept. It was Gene’s concept and it was never changed. Gene Coon rewrote the episodes while he was there. He wrote some originals and he was a workaholic. He would push himself to the limit and was marvelous. But the concept of the show had been established early in the first season. It was always Gene’s concept. He shaped the show the way he wanted it to be. Then Gene Coon did his best—and his best was really very high—to make the show live up to that concept.

WILLIAM SHATNER (actor, “James Tiberius Kirk”)

In my opinion, Gene Coon had more to do with the infusion of life into Star Trek than any other single person. Gene Roddenberry’s instincts for creating the original package is unparalleled. You can’t even discuss it. He put it together, hired the people, and the concept was his and set in motion by him. But after thirteen shows, other people took over. Gene Coon spent a year and set the tenor of the show. Gene Roddenberry was more in the background as other people actively took over.

ROBERT H. JUSTMAN

Gene Coon was almost totally involved with story and script. He did some casting, but he had nothing really to do with the editing of the show or the scoring. I did all of that, as well as the props, the set dressing, and all the other garbage. Honestly, Gene Roddenberry would have died if he didn’t have Gene Coon or someone to do this. Gene Coon was a brilliant find; you couldn’t find anyone better. The problem is that we wore him out, which is why he ultimately left in the middle of the second season.

HARVE BENNETT (executive producer, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan)

Gene Roddenberry was the Douglas MacArthur of this particular campaign, the George Patton. And guys like Gene Coon were the Omar Bradleys.

GLEN A. LARSON (producer, It Takes a Thief, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century)

My whole introduction to television came through working with Gene Coon. I think he was the spirit and soul of the show. I don’t think the show would have gone in the direction that it did nor had its enormous credibility if not for Coon. Gene had a good sense of drama in addition to strong concepts.

DAVID GERROLD

When Gene L. Coon came in, one of the things that happened is that by then they knew what they could do, and he would concentrate on those areas. The episodes he did were more sure of themselves, but they weren’t as adventurous in the same way as the early shows. The characters by then were more established, so Coon let the characters have the relationships with each other. The advantages were that when he took over, the characters locked into place very tightly and crisply. And it became Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. Before that time, there was a vagueness because Roddenberry didn’t know who or what the show was about. After Gene Coon took over, he decided it was about Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, and the other characters were ancillary. That became kind of the formula, which was successful.

DOROTHY FONTANA

Gene Coon’s writing influenced the writers who came in, who were structuring their stories. You could see this kind of flow happening. Another thing that happened is that the humor between the characters began to become more and more developed, particularly the Spock and McCoy relationship became a lot more fun. It evolved into what it ultimately became, which was a basic friendship. It was a friendship conducted with little insults and jabs, but the verbal fencing matches were always fun. It was fun to create those conversations once we started getting into that. I think Gene Coon led the way on that.

STEVEN W. CARABATSOS

Gene Roddenberry worked very hard. I’ve got to give the man a lot of credit, he busted his butt. But he had taken on executive-producer responsibilities and the line producer was Gene L. Coon, who was actually making sure the scripts got into the right form for shooting, and physically produced the show. He’s the one I reported to once I came to work.

DAVID GERROLD

Roddenberry always took the show too seriously and everybody preached. I think Roddenberry wanted to be a preacher and couldn’t make it or something. Everybody preached and Gene said, “No, in the future our people work together,” but what he would write would be sermons.

ROBERT H. JUSTMAN

It didn’t take long for Gene Coon’s personality to almost overwhelm me because after a few days, and especially after I read the first thing he wrote for us, I was thrilled, because, number one, no one else of the writers that we had been using up until that time had the concept of Star Trek within his grasp, but Gene Coon did. It didn’t take him long, and I knew how good he was, because I read the work and realized as I was writing my notes to him on his script or a story that he had just turned in that I was highly entertained. He understood the characters that the actors were playing, and it went on like that. The more I worked with him, the better I liked him, both personally as someone that was after the same things that Gene Roddenberry and I were after, and also because he was a very likable fellow.

DAVID GERROLD

In Gene L. Coon’s scripts, people interacted with each other in a whole different way and didn’t preach, although it was mandatory to do a little preaching at the end of the script where the captain explains—the captain being the father figure. Gene L. Coon’s characters joked with each other. I think that’s why the fans loved the show so much. While our people were having an adventure, they were never too busy to snipe at each other, which was the way they showed their affection. There was never a question of how much Spock and McCoy loved each other, and that was shown by how vicious they would get when they would start sniping at each other. I think a lot of that was Gene L. Coon.

ANDE RICHARDSON

Gene would make comments in his scripts, and then he put in a joke so that you can laugh. And it keeps the balance. He keeps you laughing and learning. If they’re laughing, they’re breathing and they’re learning. They can listen, hear, and take stuff in. That was Gene. He mixed it up so beautifully.

ROBERT H. JUSTMAN

One day I was almost stunned by the sight of him writing a script, and I watched him. He was pounding the keys for all they were worth and churning out what seemed to me to be reams of material. To my knowledge, he was the only person who ever wrote for Star Trek who gave you more than you were looking for. His scenes were highly playable, and he had lots and lots of ideas. He was like someone who comes in scattering happiness wherever he goes, because his work was so superb.

STEVEN W. CARABATSOS

Like I said, some scripts could be put before the cameras quickly, but others required substantial rewriting, which Gene Coon and I handled. It was an exciting time for me, because I was really just a kid, and this was a big opportunity. I also remember being impressed by the fact that Roddenberry was enlisting a writing corps of experienced science-fiction writers. All of them came to their assignments with great enthusiasm and a sense of excitement to do their kinds of stories done in the way they wanted them done. My problem is that I didn’t share that background; I didn’t feel that I had the same preparation for it.

ROBERT H. JUSTMAN

With both Gene Coon and Gene Roddenberry, their major function was not necessarily to write originals, although they both did. Their job was to ride herd on the writers that we had corralled and get something wondrous out of them, which seldom happened, because it was a difficult show to write. You had to have an interest and a knowledge not only of the world of SF but also the way Gene predicted the future. That’s a tough call. He was so skilled and enthusiastic that he would sit there typing with a cigarette between his lips, the smoke curling in front of his nose and just jamming out ideas, the richness of which never ceased to make me happy.

JAMES DOOHAN

The gorgeous thing about Gene Roddenberry was that he recognized Gene Coon. I worked with Jackie Gleason before he became famous and what’s amazing to me is how he recognized the genius in Art Carney. He knew real talent when he saw it, because he was a real talent himself. That was also Gene’s talent in picking people like that.

DOROTHY FONTANA

After Steven, I became script consultant. I had dealt with the scripts all the time and had my own opinions about them. I just never put them down on paper, although I spoke to Gene and Gene Coon secretly about the shows they were doing. I got involved with the show first as a writer, so I had my own story conferences with them about it. I felt I could do that same job [of script consultant] and so did Gene, so he let me have it.

Under the sure hands of Star Trek’s fab four of the time—Coon, Roddenberry, Fontana, and Justman—the scripts for the show began to rapidly improve as the first season went on, focusing heavily on the interaction of the characters, increasingly addressing social commentary, and laying the groundwork for what would become the most memorable aspects of the concept such as the non-interference Prime Directive and the introduction of the Klingons as our heroes’ primary antagonists. At the same time, the ratings, although initially fairly strong, were not consistent or high enough to guarantee a continuation of production. There were rumors that NBC was considering cancellation and, in desperation, Roddenberry turned to Harlan Ellison for help.

In a time before things turned acrimonious between them as a result of the extensive rewrites on Ellison’s script for “The City on the Edge of Forever,” the legendary author wrote a letter on December 1, 1966, to the Science Fiction Writers of America saying, in part, “Star Trek’s cancellation would be tragic, seeming to demonstrate that real science fiction cannot attract a mass audience. We need letters! Yours and ours, plus every science fiction fan and TV viewer we can reach through our publications and personal contacts.”

The word got out, helped in no small way by a science-fiction fandom that had been waiting for genuine science-fiction television series and finding it in Star Trek. As noted above, it was never a certainty that cancellation was possible, but it was already becoming obvious that the show had touched a chord with many—even if they weren’t Nielsen families.

BJO & JOHN TRIMBLE (authors, On the Good Ship Enterprise)

When the first hint of cancellation wafted through Desilu, Harlan Ellison went into action with a plea to science-fiction writers to help save the show. For the most part, Harlan went to the people whose main interests in Star Trek were in potential sales of scripts. The fans got wind of the plan and sent letters also. It was enough of a flurry to convince NBC that someone out there in the Vast Wasteland actually watched Star Trek. The network renewed the TV series and everyone breathed easier.

DEVRA LANGSAM (writer; publisher of Spockanalia, the first Star Trek fanzine)

During that first season, my cousin, Debra Langsam, picketed NBC and walked around passing out “Save Star Trek” flyers in Manhattan, and had people telling her that that “Dr.” Spock was a commie. They were a little confused. So we were definitely handing out flyers and buttons, and NBC kept sending secretaries down, and they’d report, “They’re still there; there’s four of them, they’re still picketing us.” It was only a very small number of people, but we kept handing out those flyers and buttons and writing them letters, not petitions. A petition isn’t as good; it’s a lot less effort, but writing them letters is stronger. They sent what we called “Thank you very much and please drop dead” letters. You know, “Your opinion has been noted and logged.” But it really did surprise them that there was so much interest in the show, and eventually they said, “All right, we’ll do it again,” but it was a lot of effort. I don’t know in the end if we really made that much difference, or whether it was that they decided it would make them money, but we were in there digging.

I will say that Roddenberry encouraged them and sent out little presents from the show in support. They were sending out cutting-room clippings, actual pieces of film. You know, “Here it is, it’s pictures of Mr. Spock and it’s the real film!” He was sending them out as presents to say thank you, and then there was the fact that the network was sort of reacting to the protests. People started to find each other and get together more.

JACQUELINE LICHTENBERG (founder, Star Trek Welcommittee)

At the time, the attitude of the general public in the U.S.A. prior to Star Trek was total rejection of science fiction as just for people who were completely out of touch with reality. Being in touch with reality was the litmus test for being trustworthy. Science-fiction readers were not respected, and the literature was viewed by English teachers as toxic to a student’s development of good taste. The same was true on TV (and radio, for that matter). The writers, producers, and audience all agreed “that” is nonsense. Of course detective series, westerns, and others were admired even though they contained more fantasy than any science-fiction story.

The first real break in this attitude came at the time when the TV series My Favorite Martian hit its peak. There is an underlying truth behind this that still works today. Comedy can make serious, deep philosophical points that drama cannot. Put the popularity of I Love Lucy against the feminist movement, and you will see the connection. Lucy struck a blow against the tyranny of “the husband” by using slapstick comedy. It may have become popular because it made fun of the subconscious bitter resentment of a generation of women. Likewise, My Favorite Martian introduced to prime time the Saturday-morning kiddie-show idea of “a visitor from another planet,” only more like the Doctor [Doctor Who], a kid comedy in prime time.

So My Favorite Martian let the kids who had grown up on Johnny Jupiter laugh in prime time, and Star Trek brought the concepts to the level of adults who watched Wagon Train.

ELYSE ROSENSTEIN (organizer of early Star Trek conventions)

Science-fiction fandom has been around since about 1939. It was quiet, unpublicized. You only knew of a gathering if you knew someone else was going. It was all word of mouth. Science-fiction fans by their nature are intelligent, often involved in or at least very interested in science. They’re loners by nature, they’re not generally joiners, they are vocal when it’s appropriate, they’re very devoted to their genres. There were fan magazines out there in which people debated small stuff ad infinitum, but they did it intelligently. It wasn’t just, “Well, I think it should have been this!” or “Why didn’t they do that?” The thing about Star Trek is it was intelligent and hopeful. It wasn’t your typical “let’s see if we can kill the aliens” kind of thing. And that appealed to a lot of people. Roddenberry was very upbeat, and it really came across as making sense. Why would we necessarily kill every alien we saw?

DEVRA LANGSAM

From the very beginning science fiction was very male-focused or male-controlled. There were a few women involved, but an awful lot of them were just the wives of the fans. So when Star Trek started, it had a very large female component, which I think the networks never really understood. They had these three sexy guys as heroes and they didn’t expect that women would say “Oh, wow!”? But they persisted in feeling that all Star Trek fans were sixteen-year-old guys with acne who wore eighty-seven buttons on their shirts. I mean, we tried to tell them, but they never listened. A lot of people were drawn into fandom because of Star Trek, many of them women, and the old-line fans started to feel like they were losing their grip on their own hobby. Look, I’m sure it must have felt like an invasion, just as when Star Wars came out and lots of people switched over from Trek to Star Wars.

Then there was the added problem that many of the old-line science-fiction fans were … less than perfect in regards to socialization. So if they saw a girl and they came up to you, they had a little difficulty perhaps socializing, and that annoyed the hell out of them because they thought, “Well, she’s here and she’s a girl, she must be interested in science fiction and me.” I’m not being very polite about this, but, again, it was just a question of “I want to talk about Asimov and you’ve never even heard of Asimov, so why are you trying to take over? There are so many of you!” I mean, we had about four thousand attending the Worldcon in 1967, and then when Elyse Rosenstein and I decided to do our convention, it was so many more people. So the science-fiction fans sort of felt overwhelmed, and there was a certain amount of hostility.

BJO TRIMBLE

A close friend, Luise Petty, had volunteered to put together a “Futuristic Fashion Show” for Tricon 2, the 1966 World Science Fiction Convention in Cleveland. Luise involved me, and we contacted fans from all over the country for science-fictional costume designs. After a nice selection of those costumes was chosen, we contacted other fans to construct and model the outfits at a special fashion show during Tricon.

Seems a new science-fiction TV show was to be introduced and some SF writers suggested to the producer that it would be nifty to show this series pilot to a bunch of SF fans. What better place than a convention? Aha! Even better idea: why not take some of the costumes from some of the episodes already “in the can” and put them on models? Contact was made with the convention committee in Cleveland, and someone else came up with an even niftier idea: put those costumes in the Futuristic Fashion Show! Plans were made to do so. Gene Roddenberry hired some Cleveland models and brought the costumes to the convention. There was one serious problem: nobody told me that a carefully coordinated, even more carefully timed fashion show was being enlarged by three costumes neither Luise nor I had ever seen! One member of the convention committee thought of asking the producer to reason with me. And that’s how I met Gene Roddenberry.

After meeting him, I said I’d have to see the costumes. I didn’t even know what show he was talking about—something to be introduced on that season’s schedule called Star Trek, which he claimed was good science fiction. We’d had several seasons of other shows that were supposed to be good SF and weren’t, so I was dubious, and rather resentful that my fashion show was turning into nothing but an advertising stunt for a stupid new TV show. But Roddenberry had the models parade them for my reaction. I agreed to put them in the fashion show and, with a little subtle urging from GR, even to make a specific mention of Star Trek. There’s a type of Irish charm that can, as they say, charm the birds out of the trees. GR had that. Everyone liked the Star Trek costumes, and it certainly—as it was intended to do—stirred up great curiosity about the show itself.

YVONNE CRAIG (actress, “Whom Gods Destroy”)

I’ve never stolen anything from a set ever, but I’m so sorry that I didn’t say, “Could I have my costume?” from Star Trek, because it was done by a woman who made costumes for the Folies Bergère and it had one hook and an eye that held it up. She designed it like a bridge and it never moved. It was really comfortable and wonderful. There were a lot of women who want to dress up as Marta [season three’s “Whom Gods Destroy”]. I saw someone on the dance floor who was in that costume once, and I went down to meet her and she was a he. A hairdresser who did a beautiful job. The wig was there and he had made the costume and it was just gorgeous and he was wonderful.

JACQUELINE LICHTENBERG

The first time I heard of Star Trek was way before the debut at Worldcon, because I knew people in fandom. I knew this show would be real science fiction. But I still didn’t “get” the whole Spock thing. I just did my write-in letter begging them to keep it on the air until I could see it. In those days, canceled shows became inaccessible. No Netflix or Amazon Prime.

In its first season, Star Trek had a remarkably successful run of episodes as the writers continued to try and discover the show and mine the richness of its characters. Among those episodes that would eventually define the series as a television classic were “The Enemy Within,” in which Kirk is split into “good” and “evil” versions of himself, with the discovery that one cannot survive without the other; “Space Seed,” which served as the introduction of the genetic superman Khan Noonien Singh, a character that would return in the feature films Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) and Star Trek Into Darkness (2013); “A Taste of Armageddon,” one of TV’s first true allegories for the Vietnam War; “This Side of Paradise,” which gave viewers one of its earliest insights into the human side of the Spock character; “The Devil in the Dark,” and its not-as-obvious-as-it-seems-on-the-surface tale of not judging by appearances; and “The City on the Edge of Forever,” the poignant and heartbreaking time-travel story in which Kirk must decide whether or not to sacrifice the universe for the love of a woman.

RICARDO MONTALBAN (actor, “Khan Noonien Singh”)

As an actor, I thought it would be great fun to do it. Khan was not the run-of-the-mill sort of portrayal. It had to have a different dimension. That attracted me very much. When they sent me the script, I thought it was a fascinating character and I loved doing it.

Khan was a character that was bigger than life. He had to be played that way. He was extremely powerful both mentally and physically, with an enormous amount of pride, but he was not totally villainous. He had some good qualities. I saw a nobility in the man that, unfortunately, was overridden by ambition and a thirst for power. I saw that in the character and played it accordingly. It was very well received at the time and I was delighted. Then I forgot about it and went on to the next thing … until the second Star Trek film.

DOROTHY FONTANA

Gene Coon did a rewrite on “A Taste of Armageddon.” Some of the things he added really had a lot to do with the character of Kirk. It was Gene who wrote the speech at the end that man has a reputation as a killer, but you get up every morning and say, “I’m not going to kill today.” It was one of those things that began to identify Kirk far more solidly than we had before.

DAVID GERROLD

I would have to point to “Devil in the Dark” as being the best episode Gene L. Coon ever wrote, because it really gets to the heart of what Star Trek was. Here you had this menace, but once you understood what the creature is and why it’s doing what it’s doing, it’s not really a menace at all. We end up learning more about appropriate behavior for ourselves out of learning to be compassionate, tolerant, and understanding.

HARLAN ELLISON

The idea of “City” came from the image of the City on the Edge of Forever, and it was an image of two cities, which is what it says in the script. The City on the Edge of Forever is the city on this planet. It was not a big donut in my script; it was a city. That was a city that was on the edge of time, and it was where all of the winds of time met. That was my original idea. All the winds of time coalesce, and when you go through to the other side, here is this other city which is also on the edge of forever, which is New York City during the Depression. They’re the mirror image of each other. In that time, all I was concerned about was telling a love story. I made the point that there are some loves that are so great that you would sacrifice your ship, your crew, your friends, your mother, all of time, and everything in defense of this great love.

That’s what the story was all about. All of the additional stuff that Gene Roddenberry kept trying to get me to put in, kept taking away from that. The script does not end the way the episode does. Kirk goes for her to save her. At the final moment, by his actions, he says, “Fuck it. I don’t care what happens to the ship, the future, and everything else. I can’t let her die. I love her,” and he starts for her. Spock, who is cold and logical, grabs him and holds him back and she’s hit by the truck.

The TV ending, where he closes his eyes and lets her get hit by the truck, is absolutely bullshit. It destroyed the core of what I tried to do. It destroyed the art; it destroyed the drama; it destroyed the extra human tragedy of it.

JOSEPH PEVNEY

“City on the Edge of Forever” was toward the end of the first season. Harlan was very happy to get his story on Star Trek. He was down on the set thanking me. It’s great that Gene rewrote it though, because Harlan had no sense of theater. He had a great sense of truth, which was very nicely placed in there—all of the 1930s stuff was well documented. It was a well-conceived and well-written show, but in the original script’s dramatic moments, it missed badly.

HERBERT F. SOLOW

We got a lot from Theodore Sturgeon and George Johnson and Harlan Ellison and Gene Coon, who without a doubt was the one who masterminded most of what Star Trek is today, not only inventing and developing the Klingons and their culture, but Gene produced and was in charge of writing all the shows, I think from number seven on until the middle of the second year. It was Gene [Roddenberry] who agreed to bring in some of these science-fiction writers, as opposed to the usual available television writers, who were very good but were not versed in science fiction, fantasy, or fascinating alien characters.

We could have brought in people who wrote horror shows, but I think we would have gone off the air in the first year. In the first season we built into it a fascinating subculture, if you will, of alien life. We used writers who did a lot of work for Rod Serling on Twilight Zone, because we wanted to get that feeling, and we did, and the audience picked up on it, and that what makes Star Trek today.

We did not do monster shows per se, we didn’t have blatant heavies on the show. I think what we did was very introspective stories. We did people stories. I think we dealt with alien life on a very fair basis—just because you were an alien doesn’t mean you’re bad. We dealt with benevolent dictators, we took various sides on issues, and I think that’s what the audience picked up and has liked all these years, but I must tell you, that wasn’t what we had in mind when we first started. It was an action-adventure series in outer space, and NBC felt it could be a very successful adventure show, RCA felt it could sell color television sets, and we felt it would make Desilu important again as a supplier of quality television.

JIM RUGG (special-effects chief, Star Trek)

The first year on Star Trek was the most exciting year I’ve ever spent in the business. It was all new and we were all experimenting and nobody knew where we were going. We fumbled our way through and sometimes lost and sometimes won … it was the only show, before or since, where the effects men got fan mail.

SCOTT MANTZ (film critic, Access Hollywood)

Think about it: back in the sixties nobody knew what Star Trek was. It was an expensive show. It’s easy for us to lose sight of this now. Every time they were doing something with regards to a visual effect, it had never been done. Compare the look of the first season of Star Trek to Lost in Space. [Director of photography] Jerry Finnerman was a genius. That is art. I love how in “Charlie X,” after Charlie makes the crewman disappear for laughing, Kirk steps into the shot, the light is on his eyes, and he goes, “Go to your quarters before I pick you up and carry you there.” It’s brilliant. You look at an episode like [season two’s] “Metamorphosis” with a purple sky and the way when they went to Cochrane’s home you see the clouds above. They never really did that before. And they turned off all the fans and said, “Nobody move.” So that the clouds would look stationary. The cinematography of that episode with the purples and pinks is beautiful. By the time [Director of Photography] Al Francis took over halfway through the third season, it was too light and bright.

GERALD FINNERMAN (director of photography, Star Trek)

I felt the pilot looked a little too lush. We had discussed a look on the show that they wanted but didn’t get. It was a ratio of lighting. We didn’t want it to look like just people and no background, of course we wanted to see the background, but they didn’t want everything so full, musical-looking. The pilots were rather full. I brought my camera crew over from Warner Bros. and we started Star Trek and it was very ambitious. I took a look at the sets and they were tremendous. There were these big cycloramas, and I talked to the producers and said, “Wouldn’t it be nice for each planet to have a different atmosphere? Who’s to say that Planet 17 isn’t purple or orange or magenta?” And they really liked that idea.

DOUG DREXLER (scenic artist, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)

I watched the entire first season in black-and-white, which I tell people all the time. Try watching the original series shows with the color off and you’ll be really impressed. And then watch an episode of Enterprise with the color off. It’s mud. In those days, most people had black-and-white television sets. The DP shot for black-and-white and color. He had to know it was going to look good in both. So the use of shadows and contrast and the graphic quality of it was all very important. If you watch the original series of Star Trek, the episodes look great in color and black-and-white. No one ever looks at them in black-and-white anymore. I can’t imagine why anybody would, but if you’re interested in film or television, you should.

GERALD FINNERMAN

The network would say, “Don’t use color on the people.” We had a sequence, I believe it was on the first show, where they go into a red alert, and it was wonderful. It gave me the opportunity to try something different. There we were on the bridge of the Enterprise and they’re being attacked, and I went to this red alert and took out all of the white light and came on with the red. I had a little crosslight of white for a source for the lab, and I would have the red around for backlighting and process. It was very effective, and everybody loved it. Then that got me into using more and more colors. I may have gone overboard on it possibly, but it was so much fun. I look at the episodes today, and they’re terrific.

GENE RODDENBERRY

Star Trek was considered a silly fantasy, because man had not yet landed on the moon. My own father went out and apologized to the neighbors. He said, “I know the boy’s up to something silly, but he’ll come back and write a good American western.”

At the end of the season, Star Trek won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Series. Gene Roddenberry quickly dispatched a telegram to Mort Werner at NBC: “Hugo Award was given to Star Trek for the Pilot #1 combined two-parter (referred to internally as ‘The Envelope’). ‘The Menagerie’ won over Fantastic Voyage and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Hope you are pleased too. Is it too late to make use of voice announcement on Star Trek promotional spots over the next few days?” Apparently it was, as such promos were never created.

GERALD FINNERMAN

I was only thirty-two years old, and it was my first job as a cinematographer. I made a lot of artistic decisions without sharing too much information in advance. Otherwise, I’d have ended up playing it safe. On a show like Star Trek, you have to push the envelope. The result of playing it safe is a diet of pabulum. I was always pushing the directors to go a little further. I’d say, “On this two-shot, when Kirk walks away from McCoy, we can dolly over and take him over to the bridge.” They weren’t comfortable with that. I liked to see a scene flow for three or four pages rather than shoot a straight master and then break it into close-ups.

I think much of the look also came from the placement of lights and the use of colored gels. We also saved the company a lot of money, since they didn’t have to paint sets to make them look different. We painted them with light. We changed walls from gray to blue to green, depending on the mood and what we wanted to say about the planet. One day we created a purple sky. Another day, the same set looked like a hot desert in March. A third day, it was deep blue. We did it with filters and lights.