Roddenberry's Worst Ideas

Did Roddenberry have much to do with Star Trek by the time "Turnabout Intruder" was made?

 

He wrote the episode's story outline, so in the case of that episode, yes.

 

The Wiki says the story is by Gene Roddenberry...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnabout_Intruder

But he didn't write the final draft of the script, so we really don't know where the no female captains thing came from.

 

Yep, that line could be Singers or someone else involved with writing the script.

 

The "no female Starfleet captains" would also tend to make the Federation look ass-backwards when we saw a female Romulan commander a few episodes earlier.

 

That's why the Romulans laugh at them.

 

Here is a relevant portion from Roddenberry's story outline, dated May 8, 1968:

Although Roddenberry's story is rampant with sexist assumptions and pomposity over his work, I do not believe the idea that woman cannot be Starship Captains is ever explicitly stated in the outline. That line must be Arthur Singer's.

 

Thanks for doing the research Harvey.

 

Thanks Harvey! It may shift the blame off of Roddenberry's shoulders but it doesn't make me like the ep any better...

 

Not liking that episode is MMMMMMUTINY! MMMMMMUTINNNYY!

 

May have been mentioned already, Roddenberry's prohibition against conflict amongst the series' regulars on TNG. I never understood it especially considering the success and dynamics of the Spock-McCoy relationship.

 

No. I was just going by the Star Trek Chronology, which makes a note that the line about no female starship captains seems unusually sexist for Star Trek and offers alternate ways of interpreting (eg, Lester may have meant Kirk's duties as a captain didn't allow him to spend time with her) before finishing off with saying Roddenberry's intent was the line was to mean that there are no female captains.

 

There is an especially good 1960s memo from Roddenberry encouraging the inter-crew conflict he would later prohibit in the 1980s. I will see if I can turn up the relevant bit later this week.

 

Never mind later this week -- found it!

Of course, Roddenberry reversed his position on inter-character conflict twenty years later, which, ironically, caused quite a bit of inter-personal conflict behind the scenes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

 

Love the memo excerpts. Is there an online source or some type of collection available to the public? Would enjoy reading more.

 

A Few documents are available in various places online -- the teleplays to a few episodes, a couple of memos, the original pitch, a few story outlines -- but I haven't been able to find a hell of a lot. The great treasure troves are in archival collections: the Gene Roddenberry, Bob Justman, and Harve Bennett papers at UCLA; the DeForest Kelley papers at the Academy Library; the Nick Meyer papers at the University of Iowa. You have to make an appointment to see these, but they are all available to the public.

I have transcribed or scanned between two and three hundred documents from these collections, and occasionally remember a bit pertinent to the conversation here. I have been thinking about starting a website or blog to share some of this stuff, actually, but I am hesitant because of copyright issues. (Not to mention that it would be hard work!)

 

That's right. The truth as I understand it went like this:

- Gene gave a plum co-starring role to one of the women he was cheating on his wife with, Majel, who wasn't very good on screen.

- NBC execs liked the idea of putting a woman in such a prominent spot, but said a better or more charismatic actress would be needed.

- Gene lied to Majel to spare her feelings, saying that NBC wouldn't allow a woman to hold a high rank.

- In order to keep up that pretense, Gene had to nix the idea of a female executive officer. This ended up being very good luck for Leonard Nimoy-- and searingly bad for gender equality in STAR TREK going forward.

- Gene's lie to Majel, which had to be preserved for the sake of their relationship, took on a life of its own, becoming a well-publicized and self-aggrandizing story of Roddenberry fighting the male chauvinist pigs at NBC as much as he could, but just not winning. The actual executives, who had been all in favor of a strong female co-star on STAR TREK, felt slandered by this, but they apparently never tried to make their case publicly. The fan community just wasn't high enough on their radar, I'd guess.

 

Right-on. Excellent post.

 

Great information, thank you. And thank you for sharing what you can - all very interesting.

 

He was 100% right the first time! It was bad that, in order to depict more normal interactions between people, Voyager had to have a half-Maquis crew, Deep Space Nine had to be set on a frontier space station where humans are the minority and Enterprise had to be set 200 years before this evolved TNG vision of humanity.