TODAY IN STAR TREK HISTORY: Gene Roddenberry's First Televised Sci-Fi Story Airs

Los Angeles Police Officer and Television Writer, Gene Roddenberry.

MARCH 6, 2023 – More than ten years before Star Trek premiered in 1966, Gene Roddenberry was still a cop. At the same time, he was writing television scripts and doing other TV-related work. In 1954, he took the LAPD sergeant’s exam (and placed among the top candidates on his first attempt). Around the same time, he was selling Mr. District Attorney scripts. He then transferred to the police department’s Hollywood Division to get field experience on the street during a six-month probationary period as a new sergeant.

In December of 1954, near the end of his probation, Roddenberry wrote a science fiction script. It was the story of alien agents on Earth and how love defeats their nefarious purposes. He sold the script as “The Secret Defense of 117.” According to biographer David Alexander, the story bounced around for almost two years before being included in a syndication package when the series it had originally been sold to was cancelled. Then it happened.

On March 6, 1956 – today’s date in Star Trek history – Gene Roddenberry’s first science fiction story to be broadcast on television aired as “The Secret Weapon of 117” on Chevron Hall of Stars. It was written under Roddenberry’s pen name, Robert Wesley – a name which would show up in season two of Star Trek: The Original Series as that of the commodore leading war games against Richard Daystrom’s M-5, in “The Ultimate Computer.” It was also Roddenberry’s first script for which he received professional notice. Daily Variety called it “ a tongue-in-cheek science-fictioner which takes off on a romantic comedy tangent [which] proves a gay little romp with sharp philosophical overtones.” Oh, and the episode starred the future Khan Noonien Singh, Ricardo Montalban, who, according to Robert Jay, replaced Alan Young, at least based on earlier reporting in the Los Angeles Times.

Unfortunately, we have to leave you merely wishing you could watch this early effort from Gene Roddenberry, but attempts to find it online have not been successful. It sounds, though, like some of the ideas that would later show up in Star Trek were germinating in this obscure half hour of television.

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