Star Trek as ''Wagon Train''.

[Lance]

We discussed on here a while back my theory that the three second pilot episode scripts commissioned after ''The Cage'' was turned down -- ''Where No Man Has Gone Before'', ''Mudd's Women'', and ''The Omega Factor'' -- all seem to be going for a more 'Western' feel, apparently to satiate network concerns that they thought they'd ordered a 'Space Western' series, but that ''The Cage'' hadn't delivered on that. To summerise: all three of those stories, in different ways, play to tropes typical to Westerns: ''Where No Man...'' to the pioneering spirit, ''Mudd's Women'' to the not uncommon trope of lonely farmers on the frontier being matched up with brides, and most overtly ''The Omega Glory'' is just about as Western as it gets after Kirk and crew beam down to the planet.

But what of the sales pitch? ''Wagon Train To The Stars'', Gene Roddenberry called it, which was a punchy way to convince studio heads to take his idea, but how accurate is it in reality? Star Trek isn't an Oregon Trail In Space, it's most commonly associated with Horatio Hornblower adventure fiction, if anything. Sure, the Enterprise encounters 'frontiersmen' battling it out in desperate conditions, but seldom does the series actively show the Enterprise blazing a trail into the unknown. Many of her missions are routine work -- ferrying supplies from colony to colony, looking after alien dignitaries, protecting the space lanes, keeping up 'our' side in a cold war with hostile species -- a far cry from the premise at the heart of Wagon Train.

But, what if? Of the three proposed pilots, the one ultimately chosen, ''Where No Man Has Gone Before'', is the most Wagon Train-ish of the lot. The Enterprise is forging ahead out of our solar system, on what is (apparently) intended to be a long range mission into the unknown, leaving behind everything that is familiar. This is much more like Wagon Train than almost anything we get in the following TV episodes and movies. And yet, they largely dropped it once the network agreed to green-light the series. Episodes like ''The Corbomite Maneuver'' pay lip service to Enterprise mapping unknown areas of space, but it's hardly the bundle-everybody-up-in-a-stagecoach-and-forge-through-the-desert adventure that Wagon Train proposes. It isn't too long before Enterprise's mission is redefined as something much more..... 'ordinary'.

But yet, again, when The Next Generation came along, they returned to this premise..... for five minutes. ''Encounter At Farpoint'' works on the assumption that the new Enterprise is starting at the edge of known space and heading outwards on a decades-long journey into the unknown. Heck, this time they've embraced the Wagon Train philosophy even more by bringing families along with them, assuming that the ship won't make contact with Earth again in a looooong time. This was all sewn into the DNA of the 'new' Star Trek, but again it wasn't too long before they were doing routine work in familiar space lanes, and even returning to Earth on occasion. The 'space politics' plotlines for which TNG is remembered would have been an anathema to the original idea that 1701-D was heading away from all of that.

So where does this leave the remaining spin-offs? DS9 is the Star Trek which most overtly feels like a Western, a frontiers-town on the edge of space, but it isn't exactly Wagon Train. VOY has something closer to it in reverse: the crew in unfamiliar territory, but instead of forging forward to a new life, they crave to return home to the life they knew. So it doesn't exactly fit. ENT mired itself in 'local politics' again with all the Earth/Vulcan stuff.

Do any of us think that a Star Trek series that truly does Wagon Train in space would be an interesting idea?

 

[Christopher]

The way I understand it is that when Roddenberry invoked Wagon Train in his pitch to the networks, he wasn't just saying he wanted to do a space Western. After all, there were dozens of Westerns on TV at the time; he could've picked any of them if that were all he intended. Heck, Westerns were to '60s TV what crime procedurals are to current TV. They're so ubiquitous that picking any single procedural wouldn't necessarily suggest "procedural" to an executive, but rather would suggest what's distinctive about that particular procedural vs. all the others. So when Roddenberry said "Wagon Train to the stars," he wasn't just saying "space Western." "Western" was practically a given back then. He was talking about other aspects of Wagon Train that he wanted to emulate.

Specifically, Wagon Train was known for a couple of things in particular -- one, it was a prestigious, successful adult drama, and two, it had a pseudo-anthology format with each episode being built around a guest character's story in which the leads would participate (sort of like what The Fugitive did, but in a different way). So by invoking that particular show, Roddenberry was saying he wanted to do Star Trek in a similar way -- first, that it would be a classy adult drama rather than a kids' show like most SFTV before it, and second, that it would have continuing leads but nonetheless follow a somewhat anthology-like format where each episode could revolve around a new guest character or a new setting or situation unique to that episode.

And a lot of the early episodes do revolve more around guest characters than the leads -- "Where No Man" is mainly Mitchell and Dehner's story, "The Corbomite Maneuver" is largely Bailey's story, "Mudd's Women" is mainly about Eve and Harry, "Charlie X" is about Charlie, "Balance of Terror" is about the Romulan Commander, etc. The leads play significant roles, but the stories are largely about the guest stars' emotional arcs and journeys. That's the real Wagon Train influence. This changed later due largely to Spock's breakout popularity and the network's desire to base more stories around him, balanced by Roddenberry's and Shatner's desire to keep Kirk central, so that the show became mostly about the two of them.

 

[Melakon]

Christopher is pretty much correct on this. For those not around when Wagon Train aired, it's easy to misinterpret GR's network pitch, but he was trying to illustrate how guest stars could play an important role in his series concept. Wagon Train was in its final season when "The Cage" was filmed in December 1964, and ended the following May, after 8 seasons, when I was 14.

 

[J.T.B.]

I think Christoper has it right, it was about format, not genre. Wagon Train was almost perfect that way: It was always moving, so not only could you have a new guest star with an adventurous or mysterious or romantic story every week, you could also have a new setting. And instead of being, say, a roving buttinsky like Cheyenne, the cast had good reason to get involved with the lives of their guest stars every week, because they were helping them cross the plains.

To me, the most Wagon Train-ish feeling episode is "Conscience of the King."

 

[Nerys Myk]

I've only seen a hand full of "Wagon Train" episodes, all when I was kid via reruns. Might have to change that. We were more of a Gunsmoke/Bonanza family.

 

[Christopher]

The problem is that Wagon Train, despite its prominence at the time, has been largely forgotten, so people don't realize what's being referenced. You find so many references to the pitch as "wagon train to the stars" rather than "Wagon Train to the stars." It was decades before I learned it was the latter, a reference to a specific TV show and its format. It's the same Hollywood shorthand still used in pitches today, like, say, "It's Veronica Mars with zombies!" or "It's Game of Thrones on the Moon!"

 

[stardream]

I vaguely remember people talking about Wagon Train but no no details. I did know GR was speaking about a specific show.

I remember DS9 being referred to as 'Fort Apache' in space.

 

[Christopher]

I vaguely remember people talking about Wagon Train but no no details. I did know GR was speaking about a specific show.

I remember DS9 being referred to as 'Fort Apache' in space.

I read that Michael Piller was inspired more by The Rifleman, in that it was a show about a single father raising his son in a frontier setting.

 

[mos6507]

The problem is that Wagon Train, despite its prominence at the time, has been largely forgotten, so people don't realize what's being referenced.

Lots of shows operated that way, though. Gunsmoke was also a very guest-driven anthology-like show. It's probably better to look to that rather than Wagon Train. In a lot of Gunsmoke episodes it's shocking how little screentime James Arness has. He tends to come in like a force-of-nature to mop things up and pontificate at the tail-end.

 

[Melakon]

Gunsmoke was also a very guest-driven anthology-like show. It's probably better to look to that rather than Wagon Train. In a lot of Gunsmoke episodes it's shocking how little screentime James Arness has. He tends to come in like a force-of-nature to mop things up and pontificate at the tail-end.

Gunsmoke centered around Dodge City though, it wasn't always moving like a wagon train. And that show ran 20 years. Arness became famous for it, stayed through the entire run, and gradually tapered off his appearances during its final years. I think by the end he had enough clout to only come in for work three days a week.

 

[GNDN18]

GR clearly envisioned an anthology program; he even named Gunsmoke in "Star Trek Is…" at page 12:

Specifics on the SS Yorktown …

As with GUNSMOKE’s Dodge City, KILDARE’s Blair General Hospital, we may never get around to exploring every cabin, department and cranny of our cruiser. The point being — it is a whole community in which we can anytime take our camera down a passageway and find a guest star or secondary character (scientist, specialist, ordinary airman, passenger or stowaway) who can propel us into a story.

http://50yos.tumblr.com/post/79244934260/original-star-trek-pitch-1964

 

[Christopher]

GR clearly envisioned an anthology program...

Well, not literally an anthology program, but a continuing-characters series that nonetheless had an anthology-like quality. A lot of '60s and '70s dramas aspired to that, with things like The Fugitive and its knockoffs -- a continuing character travels from place to place and gets involved with different people's stories every week -- or something like Mission: Impossible, where the leads are impersonating different people every week and thus might as well be different characters.

The thing is, in the early days of TV, the drama anthologies were the classiest shows that everyone aspired to emulate, while serialization was the purview of soap operas and children's programming, so it was seen as more disreputable -- the opposite of today's mindset where we see serialization as intrinsically superior. Also, without as many reruns or home video or the like, people who missed an episode might never see it, and past episodes would be harder to remember and rewatch. So it was preferable to make each episode stand entirely on its own, rather than being part of a larger whole. Thus, the anthology format was what most shows aspired to. But the ongoing-series format had advantages that pure anthologies lacked: a continuing cast that an audience could be loyal to and come back to every week, and standing sets, props, and costumes that could be reused every week more cheaply than building new ones or going to new locations every week. So you could get the best of both worlds by coming up with a continuing-series format that had an anthology-like structure. That's why so many '60s and '70s shows were in that vein. Heck, even into the '80s we were still seeing it -- Quantum Leap is a notable example, a show with a continuing lead essentially becoming a different person in a different setting every week.

 

[Melakon]

Star Trek is Route 66 on a starship.

 

[GNDN18]

Melakon brought up another great example. Buzz, Tod, and Linc certainly explored the nature of humanity in all its varied shades.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Of the three proposed pilots, the one ultimately chosen, ''Where No Man Has Gone Before'', is the most Wagon Train-ish of the lot. The Enterprise is forging ahead out of our solar system, on what is (apparently) intended to be a long range mission into the unknown, leaving behind everything that is familiar. This is much more like Wagon Train than almost anything we get in the following TV episodes and movies. And yet, they largely dropped it once the network agreed to green-light the series. Episodes like ''The Corbomite Maneuver'' pay lip service to Enterprise mapping unknown areas of space, but it's hardly the bundle-everybody-up-in-a-stagecoach-and-forge-through-the-desert adventure that Wagon Train proposes. It isn't too long before Enterprise's mission is redefined as something much more..... 'ordinary'.

Even without getting into the details of the specific show Wagon Train, which others have done, there's a fundamental flaw in this argument. There's a difference between wagon trains and Lewis & Clark. Wagon trains were taking settlers into a frontier that had already been surveyed, along a trail that had already been blazed. While one can certainly argue that TNG-era Trek came to feel a lot more cosmopolitan, TOS definitely had that frontier feel. They were visiting remote colonies and small outposts, following up on lost expeditions from as much as a century earlier, etc.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, "Where No Man" is much more of a science fiction plot than a Western plot. It falls into the subgenre of SF stories like Dimension X's "The Outer Limit" or The Twilight Zone's "And When the Sky Was Opened" or any number of '50s B-movies -- stories where probing into the mysterious unknown exposes explorers to strange and deadly phenomena unlike anything encountered before, because there's no telling what lies out there. It substitutes the first probe outside the galaxy for the first probe outside Earth's atmosphere, but otherwise it hits a lot of the same beats as those earlier "first astronaut" cautionary tales. So no, it was not imitating Westerns, but rather was following in the footsteps of multiple sci-fi stories that preceded it.

Now, "The Omega Glory" does portray the Yangs similarly to the way Westerns portrayed Native Americans, but mainly it's a post-apocalyptic story, a degenerated aftermath of the Cold War between East and West. Its antecedent in Roddenberry's original series prospectus was "100 A.B. or 'A Century After the Bomb' -- a terrifying parallel as we examine what might be our own world a few decades after an atomic holocaust." (An idea he would return to in Genesis II/Planet Earth and in the "Post-Atomic Horror" from "Encounter at Farpoint.") So that one is also based on an established and familiar science fiction trope. Of the three scripts developed for the second pilot, "Mudd's Women" is the only one that's actually derived from a Western trope.

It's important not to read too much into Roddenberry's presentation of the series in Western terms. Again, Westerns were to '60s TV what procedurals are today -- the one surefire genre, the type of show that network execs trust the most. So presenting ST as a Western was just a way of making it appealing to the suits. What Roddenberry really wanted was to make a science fiction show, a real SF show based in the ideas of the SF literature he'd read growing up. He didn't just want to make a Western dressed up with spacey trappings; he wasn't George Lucas. He drew on his experience writing Westerns, and on the experience other TV writers, directors, etc. had with Westerns, but that was just one idea that went into the mix on occasion, in the same way that Trek episodes emulated a variety of genres like courtroom dramas, horror, gangster shows, Roman epics, and the like.

 

[Melakon]

We're lucky Roddenberry thought of using science fiction. I saw Majel at a convention, and she said he only wanted a successful show. It didn't matter if it was a cop show, a western, or whatever. He saw science fiction as a way to focus on stories about issues he wanted to tell, that could be disguised enough to get past the network censors. But mostly he just wanted a successful series.

 

[Christopher]

He saw science fiction as a way to focus on stories about issues he wanted to tell, that could be disguised enough to get past the network censors.

Following Rod Serling's lead there.

 

[Trekkin]

'And When The Sky Was Opened' was attempting to do something other than just thoroughly creeping me out?

 

[Harvey]

He saw science fiction as a way to focus on stories about issues he wanted to tell, that could be disguised enough to get past the network censors.

Following Rod Serling's lead there.

With shows like The Defenders, East Side/West Side, Slattery's People, and The Bold Ones all on the air at some point in the sixties, the threat of network censors against thoughtful, relevant stories, especially by Roddenberry, but also by Serling, has always struck me as a tad exaggerated.