TODAY IN STAR TREK HISTORY: "Great Bird of the Galaxy" Gene Roddenberry's 100th birthday

Gene Roddenberry with a model of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Image credit unknown

AUGUST 19, 2021 - 100 years ago today, on August 19th, 1921, The Great Bird of the Galaxy, Eugene Wesley Roddenberry, was born in El Paso, Texas. Two years later, Gene’s family would move to Los Angeles, California. Gene loved to read as a child, especially pulp magazines and stories like John Carter of Mars and Tarzan, which would influence much of his later work.

Gene matriculated at Los Angeles City College, where he majored in police science, at the same time fostering an interest in aeronautical engineering. He obtained a pilot’s license through the United States Army Air Corps-sponsored Civilian Pilot Training Program, ultimately enlisting in the USAAC. A year later he married his college sweetheart, Eileen-Anita Rexroat, and two months later he graduated from USAAC to be commissioned as a second lieutenant.

While in the military, after being involved in a plane crash for which he was absolved of responsibility, Gene flew all over the country as a crash investigator. When he left the service, he began flying for Pan American World Airways and was involved in another plane crash in the Syrian Desert, in which he broke two ribs. Even with his own injuries, however, he was able to drag two other injured passengers to safety before leading the group to get help.

His piloting career ended a year later, when he resigned from Pan Am to pursue his dream of writing. To be able to afford luxuries like food while he was getting started, he joined the Los Angeles Police Department, ultimately joining the Public Information Division and becoming the Chief of Police’s Speech Writer. This position turned out to be somewhat providential, allowing him to become the technical advisor to a new television version of Mr. District Attorney, which led him to begin writing for the show using the pseudonym “Robert Wesley.” He went on to write for the shows Highway Patrol and I Led Three Lives, and in 1956, as his writing career was taking off, he resigned from the police force.

Gene took a position as Head Writer on The West Point Story and pitched a number of series concepts, none of which went anywhere. He continued writing television scripts and his script for Have Gun - Will Travel, “Helen of Abajinian,” won the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) award for Best Teleplay in 1958. One of his pitches, for a series entitled The Wild Blue, went to pilot, but was ultimately not picked up to go to series. The names three main characters of The Wild Blue will be familiar to Star Trek fans, however: Philip Pike, Edward Jellicoe and James T. Irvine.

Throughout his early writing career, Gene penned scripts for DeForest Kelley, Gary Lockwood, Leonard Nimoy, Nichelle Nichols and Majel Barret, among other future Trek luminaries. After his popular show The Lieutenant was cancelled, he wrote a 16-page outline for a new television series, sending 3 copies and 2 dollars to the WGA to register it. The series’ title was Star Trek.

The Star Trek pitch was turned down by MGM and then went to Desilu Productions, run by Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. There’s no need to recount the whole story here, as it’s a familiar one, but suffice it to say the first pilot was made and turned down, an unprecedented second pilot was ordered and the rest is Star Trek history.

After three years of seeking out new life and new civilizations, the five year mission ended prematurely and Gene went on to do other things. When a Tarzan project he planned to work on wound up getting the ax, he wrote and produced a sexploitation film entitled Pretty Maids All In a Row, which starred, among other well-known faces, James Doohan and William Campbell.

In 1969, while scouting locations for Pretty Maids in Japan, Gene, now divorced from Eileen, proposed to Majel Barrett via telephone and they were soon married in a Shinto ceremony. The union produced a son, Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry, in February of 1974.

Eventually Gene sold pilots for series Genesis II, The Questor Tapes and Planet Earth, science fiction ideas with varying amounts of merit and little success, and Spectre, an occult detective drama with a duo inspired by Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, which became a TV movie, but went no further.

Star Trek came back from the dead as an animated series in 1973 and ‘74 and then as a series of theatrical releases beginning in 1978 with Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which began life as a new Trek TV series, and in 1987 a new series with new characters premiered with Gene as a producer. Star Trek: The Next Generation was met with trepidation by fans who had grown up watching Kirk, Spock and McCoy and could not imagine how they could be replaced. The show survived a rocky first couple of seasons, though, and became as iconic in its own way as the first Trek series had.

In 1989, Roddenberry suffered a stroke at a family reunion in Florida and a second one in 1991, paralyzing his right side and necessitating his use of a wheelchair. He began to lose the eyesight in his right eye and found it difficult to communicate. On October 24 of that year, he viewed a cut of the forthcoming Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Two days later he suffered cardiopulmonary arrest and passed on to that “undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveler returns.”

Gene created a universe of stories that not only entertain but teach. Star Trek examines the human condition and asks questions about morality, and although he has been gone from this mortal coil for thirty years, his spirit and legacy live on as new Star Trek television series are produced. So the next time you watch an episode of Star Trek, whether it’s an old favorite or the latest episode of Lower Decks, pour a glass of Romulan Ale and raise it in a toast when you see those words: “Based Upon ‘Star Trek’ Created By Gene Roddenberry.”