Gene @ 100

Pioneer, visionary, genius, drug taker, womaniser...

All things that have at some time (whether true or false) been aimed at the famed Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.

If you buy into all the stories or not, Roddenberry would have turned 100 in August and even though he died in 1991, we are still talking about him and his seminal influence on pop culture three decades later.

If you want to read a detailed biography then there are a ton to pick from so I'm not going to be simply recounting the life of the Star Trek creator but rather exploring my own thoughts and opinions on a man that, while I never met him, has technically been a part of my life for nearly 40 years.

Odd to think about it like that but Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future is a concept that will have affected in some way millions of people across the globe. If you've watched Star Trek and taken any interest in it then that's going to be the case.

Roddenberry was hardly a saint which might almost seem hypocritical given his affinity for the vision of Star Trek. Women and drugs were fuels to his fire with both taking a toll on his life but in amongst it all were his shows. Only Star Trek succeeded in breaking out beyond an initial run. Before he broke the the big time there was The Lieutenant, a military legal series and after 1969 there were pilots and concepts but yet nothing would ever top Star Trek.

Many of the concepts and pieces used in The Questor Tapes, Genesis II and Planet Earth would be built into The Next Generation alongside embers of the stalled Phase II although Roddenberry would only be involved once he realised it was going ahead with or without his involvement. 

Many of his ideas in that ‘wilderness’ period from 1969 to 1979’s The Motion Picture are filled with some fairy outlandish plans. God complexes and Kennedy assassinations crop up regularly either within Star Trek concepts or alternative pilots with them being equally regularly shot down at the earliest stages.

The tragedy is that this at-odds attitude with the studio ultimately fractured his relationship with the franchise and by that his own creation. Go back to the 1969 season and producer Feed Freiberger was in much more control as Roddenberry's interest in Star Trek wained as he came to terms with the realisation that it was almost certainly going to end. His early heavy involvement with The Next Generation was gradually scaled back once attorney Leonard Maizlish was out of the picture and placed into more stable and constructive supervision with the Rick Berman era. That involvement in itself was a hand forced by the studio who were going to be making new Star Trek with or without it's creator.

But while you might mock some of Gene Roddenberry’s apparently crazier and more extreme views and unwavering belief in the ideals of Star Trek, his impact on pop culture is undeniable. Gene passed in 1991, managing to see the 25th anniversary of his creation in September of that year as well as attending the dedication of the Roddenberry Building on the Paramount Lot. It means that Star Trek has been around a lot longer than Gene may well have ever expected and perhaps not in the form that he might have desired.

That need for the elimination of conflict between his Starfleet characters or the strong opinion to keep away from established races and stories was something that was soon toyed with in the 90s following his passing and has certainly been placed on ice for Discovery and Picard. Recently William Shatner openly stated that Roddenberry's optimistic vision of the future is something that is very far off, possibly unobtainable which would ally to the more dystopian universe envisioned in the more recent shows. But does that mean that they aren't Star Trek? 

Roddenberry's vision was for that bright future, reaching to the stars and exploring to further humanity (just as Picard states himself in First Contact in discussion with Lily Sloane) and we have to be thankful for that. Perhaps it's better that we view anything from Deep Space Nine onwards just as it says at the beginning of every title sequence since - Based On Star Trek created by Gene Roddenberry. 

Gene knew of Deep Space Nine and neither that nor The Undiscovered  Country were high on his approval list at the end of his life. While the former was full to the brim with conflict thanks to the inclusion of non-Federation characters in the cast, Star Trek VI charted racism, the crumbling of a superpower and no sign of a Kennedy assassination conspiracy anywhere. Gene’s desire to get his story onscreen was a battle to the end and one that he had lost in the cinema in 1982. But both show something that is continued through into Voyager and Enterprise in that humanity of the 22nd, 23rd and 24th Centuries had put aside its differences and moved on. Truly Gene had created something to be proud of however the new Kurtzman era has certainly moved beyond that. Although it still attempts to tell stories, it is based on a more grounded, modern realm complete with all its challenges therein.

Star Trek - maybe even specifically The Original Series, The Motion Picture and early The Next Generation are the best examples of Roddenberry's more hands on period of involvement. The trouble was that it became more difficult to get away from that bubble and his ideas weren't where movie producer Harve Bennett wanted to go and nor were they where later season TNG writers decided to head either. While he was the spark, by the mid-1980's Star Trek was barely his property, twisting and turning away from Gene's idyllic dream.

It would only be after Roddenberry's death that two more of his shows, Andromeda and Earth: Final Conflict would see the light of day on TV. They would come to fruition thanks in no small part to the assistance of his widow and Star Trek guest regular Majel Barrett-Roddenberry. Neither of these shows however would even come close to a fraction of the power and attraction that Star Trek generated - and that as we all know got cancelled. Oddly both lasted for 110 episodes if you check on IMDb but that's it. Star Trek really did dominate everything Roddenberry did.

But let's just bring this together. Gene Roddenberry had an idea, a concept to go where no one had gone before and ran with it. He inspired other producers and writers to play within the universe he initially created. In the 25th Anniversary celebration he even notes that others will take over and add their own twists to Star Trek. Whether he would approve is another matter entirely but Gene set them on a path of discovery. He inspired others to create their own series, novels and movies because of the revolutionary, united vision of Earth he proposed through Star Trek. Perhaps Shatner's opinion is brutally realistic that we won't reach the bliss of the 23rd Century given the "wokeness" of the modern age, the damage of a pandemic and in some cases our own global stupidity. 

However, Star Trek represents the expansive and contagious optimism of one Eugene Wesley Roddenberry. Over 50 years since his show debuted and now 100 years since his birth it's still growing and adding new fans by the day. Now that's one heck of a legacy to be proud of whether you like every piece of it or not.