TODAY IN STAR TREK HISTORY: Writer George Clayton Johnson Is Born
Image: Paramount / JaSunni Productions
JULY 10, 2023 – While he only penned one aired episode of Star Trek, he counts among the well-known science fiction writers who contributed to The Original Series, including Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Bloch, and Harlan Ellison. Today in Star Trek history, we celebrate the birthday of George Clayton Johnson.
Johnson was born in 1929, in Cheyenne, Wyoming. He dropped out of school, joined the Army, briefly attended what is now Auburn University, and traveled around the country before becoming a writer. His career began to take off in 1959 with a story for Alfred Hitchcock Presents and regular magazine appearances. He would eventually become best known for co-writing the novel, Logan’s Run and for his television scripts, especially those for The Twilight Zone.
Johnson would, however, write what became the first aired episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, ”The Man Trap.” He tells the Television Academy Foundation in an interview that he attended a screening with other writers of the second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” and he began to think about the idea of shape-changers, a concept he has used in the story that became his first Twilight Zone episode, “The Four of Us Are Dying.”
After Johnson had written his story, and Gene Roddenberry, a “compulsive rewriter,” according to Johnson, had done his rewrites, and the episode was finally ready, it was viewed by studio executives along with a number of other episodes in order to decide which one would be the premiere episode of Star Trek. The studio chose “The Man Trap” because, according to Johnson, of the relationship between Spock and Kirk and, through the dialogue and the visuals, it becomes clear who the characters are and what is happening and where. “You don’t need the show to explain it.”
And Johnson says, “In the course of this, I wrote an immortal line…. I am the man who first wrote the wonderful line, ‘He’s dead, Jim.’”
Johnson was nominated for Hugo and Nebula awards, and won a Lifetime Achievement Inkpot Award from Comic-Con International, in 1976, and a Balrog Award, in 1982, for “All of Us Are Dying,” the basis for his first Twilight Zone episode.
Please join us in remembering George Clayton Johnson, on what would have been his 94th birthday.
David is a contributing writer for Daily Star Trek News on the Roddenberry Podcast Network. He is a librarian, baseball fan, and book and movie buff. He has also written for American Libraries and Skeptical Inquirer. David also enjoys diverse music, but leans toward classical and jazz. He plays a mean radio.
