Hello, is there a good book on the other shows Roddenberry worked on, such as Genesis II, Spectre, and the Questor Tapes? Thank-you.
Roddenberry's Other TV Shows
- Thread starter nothinglikesun
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I don't know about original fiction but Dorothy Fontana write the adaptation of "The Questor Tapes" put out by Ballantine Books back in October 1974.
If you mean a nonfiction book about the making of those shows, I don't know of any that focused on them specifically. David Gerrold's original edition of The World of Star Trek discussed some of them in brief. And here's a pretty nifty article about Questor, preserved on the Internet Archive.
Planet Earth and Genesis II were basically the same story, even using the same name for the lead character -- Dylan Hunt.
He must have liked the name quite a bit, as it turned up again in Andromeda.
He must have liked the name quite a bit, as it turned up again in Andromeda.
Questor Tapes? I think that the whole "sentient android searching for what it means to be human" trope has been done to death.
Not the same specific story, but two tries at the same premise, much like Star Trek's two pilots. Genesis II was made for CBS, setting up the premise of Dylan Hunt (Alex Cord) being frozen, awakening in a post-apocalyptic world, and joining a group working to rebuild society. When it was rejected, ABC asked for a new pilot with some changes, and that was Planet Earth, with John Saxon now playing Dylan and almost every other role reacst. Instead of retelling the origin story, it opened with Dylan already in his new role, so it essentially works as a sequel, aside from the recastings and some other conceptual tweaks. More at my blog here.
Roddenberry himself had nothing to do with that. Majel Roddenberry tried to shop around some of Gene's old concepts long after his death, and she offered the Genesis II/Planet Earth concept to Tribune Entertainment, but they chose to develop two possible versions of it, one that was fairly faithful to the original Earthbound premise and one that reworked it as a space-based premise, combining it with elements of another unsold Roddenberry concept called Starship. And Kevin Sorbo wanted to do a space show, so that's the version they went with. Although a lot of the concepts in Andromeda were original to its developer Robert Hewitt Wolfe (formerly of Deep Space Nine), based in part on his informal thoughts about what kind of Star Trek show he'd create given the chance (which would've been a story set after the fall of the Federation, in which the main character came upon the sentient Enterprise-K and worked with her to try to rebuild civilization).
There's a nifty making-of book about Andromeda called Sailing the Slipstream, written by its former staffer Jill Sherwin, but it was a limited-edition self-published book (actually spiral-bound!), so it would probably be hard to find a copy, except maybe on eBay or something.
It is now, but it wasn't so much in 1973. Really, TNG's Data is a reworking of Questor.
And really, Questor found his answers at the end of the pilot. If the series had gone forward as Roddenberry intended, it would've been more like what Assignment: Earth would've been if it had gone to series -- a cool, intellectual lead with alien technology and special gifts working with a more empathetic human sidekick to help humanity avoid its worst mistakes and survive to build a better future. Although the network wanted to retool it into more of a Fugitive knockoff and undo the ending of the pilot, and Roddenberry killed the series rather than compromise it to that extent.
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Isn't Andromeda just a reworking of Planet Earth/Genesis II with some of Robert Hewitt Wolf ideas added, rather than an original idea of Roddenberry's.
Massive thanks to everyone! And yes, I did meant the "making of" those shows. Thanks again!
Some of the Roddenberry biographies have a bit of info about his other creations. As far as a guide/making of book for a series of failed pilots... it's hard to imagine how well a book about failures most people don't even remember would sell.
It's been ages since I last saw Questor, Spectre, Genesis II, Planet Earth, or Strange New World (the third attempt at doing the same idea, but made without Roddenberry). But the way I remember them, for the most part, they didn't fail because the networks or audiences were too shortsighted to appreciate them, they failed because they weren't particularly good.
It's been ages since I last saw Questor, Spectre, Genesis II, Planet Earth, or Strange New World (the third attempt at doing the same idea, but made without Roddenberry). But the way I remember them, for the most part, they didn't fail because the networks or audiences were too shortsighted to appreciate them, they failed because they weren't particularly good.
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I thought The Questor Tapes was quite good and had a lot of potential. Robert Foxworth and Mike Farrell had a great rapport, and it could've been as good a relationship as Kirk and Spock, certainly if Gene Coon had stayed around as producer. And it's notable as the only one of Roddenberry's post-Trek pilots that actually got a series order. As stated, Roddenberry himself pulled the plug because the network wanted to dumb it down.
Genesis II was a very flawed pilot, and I can certainly see why it didn't sell. Alex Cord wasn't a very appealing lead, and the PAX group he ended up working for was cold and forbidding, plus the portrayal of Ted Cassidy's "white Comanche" character was pretty racist. Planet Earth was a lot better; John Saxon was a far more likeable lead, his team had more potential as an ensemble (though no ethnic diversity), the society seemed more worth fighting for, and future Rockford Files producer Juanita Bartlett's contributions to the script made it better and funnier (and probably a lot less sexist than if Roddenberry had written it solo). I think the idea did have series potential; heck, Filmation got a whole season out of the similar Ark II on Saturday mornings. As for Strange New World, I don't remember it.
Spectre was an interesting idea, a supernatural take on Holmes and Watson, and Robert Culp was very good in the lead, naturally. But Gig Young lacked chemistry with Culp and didn't work so well in the "Watson" role -- and the show would've been screwed if it had gone to series with him as the co-star, since he killed himself and his new wife just a year after the pilot was made. The movie's also steeped in Roddenberry's sexual preoccupations, which may be part of what the network had an issue with.
I think there'd definitely be mileage in a book on Roddenberry's wilderness years looking at all the pilots he made and tried to make. On top of the trials of his lowpoints there's probably a pretty interesting look at the mechanics of Hollywood to be had.
I was always surprised that, when old ideas of his were being dusted down to be revived on TV that Assignment Earth never got the treatment. In the post-X-Files 90's a show about a male and female working on weird SF cases that had as format old enough for the showrunners to go "We're not ripping off Mulder and Scully". If Paramount were behind it (and I guess the rights to that one would be bound up with Trek anyway due to it being used on that show?) they could even give the two lead characters new names and present it as a sequel to the original and thus a Trek spin-off if they were so inclined.
I was always surprised that, when old ideas of his were being dusted down to be revived on TV that Assignment Earth never got the treatment. In the post-X-Files 90's a show about a male and female working on weird SF cases that had as format old enough for the showrunners to go "We're not ripping off Mulder and Scully". If Paramount were behind it (and I guess the rights to that one would be bound up with Trek anyway due to it being used on that show?) they could even give the two lead characters new names and present it as a sequel to the original and thus a Trek spin-off if they were so inclined.
I think I may have heard about an attempt to revive it once. Majel Roddenberry pretty much put all of Gene's unrealized ideas on the market as part of the process that led to Earth: Final Conflict and Andromeda getting made. But lots of series pitches never get picked up, for various reasons. There have been at least a couple of attempts to reboot The Questor Tapes over the years; there was one that would've been from TNG veteran Herbert Wright, who would've been a producer on the original show in the '70s, but I think that fell through when Wright died. Then, back in 2010, Tim Minear took a stab at a revival, but that didn't work either.
The most intriguing one for me was the time that Roddenberry's Starship series proposal was being developed by the media company that Stan Lee owned at the time, as an animated series produced by Leiji Matsumoto of Space Battleship Yamato/Star Blazers and Captain Harlock. That's gotta be one of the most remarkable convergences of genre legends ever. But it fell through when Lee's company went bankrupt.
Well, I wasn't talking about 1973. I was under the impression the OP wanted new novels published now, and the intention of the post wasn't clarified until after I made mine and after you quoted it.
Buy coincidence, I just discovered that there was apparently a novelization of SPECTRE published back in 1979, two years after the tv-movie aired.
Who wrote it?
Keep in mind that the 'network wanted to dumb down the Questor Tapes so I walked away' was GENE's statement on why it didn't get picked up on the show. Given Gene's unfortunate history, it's far more likely that the 'powers that be' didn't want a repeat of 1968 and just said 'screw it'.
Got that one when it was published. I don't think it added much to the story; it was pretty thin, only 154 pages.
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