Gene gets much bad talk around here....

If it isn't, you might want to refrain from making boldly declarative and statements like the aforementioned "extreme faith".

 

Fuck that. Stop trying to moderate this thread.

 

Desilu was producing both The Lucy Show and You Don't Say! at the time.

Star Trek was a pretty ambitious project at the time, so any uncertainty NBC may have had is understandable. As far as CBS, it's been often reported that CBS was already developing Lost In Space when Star Trek was pitched to them and it was a case of the early bird getting the worm.

 

I had forgotten You Don't Say! — thank you for the correction.

Still, that was an inexpensive gameshow made for daytime television. Star Trek and Mission: Impossible were worlds apart from that program—and The Lucy Show, for that matter—in terms of the scale and expense of the production. And for the previous two broadcast seasons (1964-65, 1965-66) Desilu had no one hour dramas on the air.

Gene first made that claim in The Making of Star Trek (1968) and it's been repeated in many other places since. According to production documents cited in two different Irwin Allen books published in the past 3-4 years, however, it's not true. Allen and his partners didn't pitch Lost in Space to CBS and the network didn't buy the show until well after Roddenberry's disastrous pitch meeting for Star Trek.

I brought up CBS in the context of Mission: Impossible, though, not Lost in Space. Because of Star Trek's longevity, Mission tends to get sidelined in this history, but it's important to remember that Mission was equally as ambitious and expensive as Star Trek (day-to-day, it was actually more expensive to produce than Star Trek). The objections of some Desilu board members were as much about that show going forward as they were about Star Trek.

 

There's a lot of conflicting information about that, including that Lost In Space (or originally "Space Family Robinson") was in development first and indeed pitched to CBS programmer James Aubrey, but that Lost In Space won out over Star Trek in the end. Maybe that was when the show was officially bought by CBS.

Well, my initial post was more about Ball deciding to go against those Desilu board members and go forward with Star Trek anyway. We can only speculate why Ball had such extreme fai--sorry--"a desire" to see Star Trek through when those around her were telling her to let it die.

 

I watched the Desi-in-the-helicopter video somebody linked to in another thread, flying a new sponsor over and around the RKO studio he and Lucy had bought. There was a lot of personal pride coming through that.

So if it was the bean counters saying not to do Trek and MI, Lucy might have wanted to show that her baby could run with the big dogs.

Also, it makes business sense if you can smell a merger in the air, to demonstrate to Gulf+Western you are worth buying out.

When it comes to GR, so many people are quick to play the money card. Why did he [write/produce]? "Cuz he was a money-hungry asshole." But we are complicated critters. We often do things for other reasons than money, and Lucy might have had her reasons (Carole Lombard's visitations, for sure) to persevere. Go big or go home.

 

The center of that nefarious, world-ending GR plot that gave her a minor recurring role in the series a year and a half after her original role was axed by NBC?

 

or the female actor who returned and continued to have a role in Star trek for decades just happened to be the one who slept with the producer

 

Nepotism, in Hollywood? Say it isn't so.

 

She was axed by NBC, her role was axed by Roddenberry, he could have recast, NBC liked Number One, the just didn't want Barrett as a lead.

 

I know; it's the mole hill turned mountain I'm tossing stones at.

 

ORLY? Was it Gene Roddenberry's 'creative instincts' that led him to write lyrics for the opening theme to the Star Trek TV series, which were ultimately never used?

All sources say no. The reason Gene Roddenberry did it was so he could claim 50% of the royalties for use of the theme on the series. And he didn't even talk to Alexander Courage about this before he did it, he just added the lyrics and then inform Courage that It meant he would be getting 50% of the royalties.

 

Irwin Allen signed a joint venture agreement with his partners for Space Family Robinson on August 3, 1964. Then they pitched and sold the idea to CBS. Roddenberry and Desilu made their development deal with NBC for Star Trek in May of 1964. The CBS meeting was sometime before that.

 

I'm so glad that he created Star Trek, but people that prop him up like some kind of L Ron Hubbard diety freak me out.

 

Yes but unsuccessfully by himself. (And I am talking about the actual pitch not the pilot that was made after the pitch). If not for Herbert Solo It probably would never have been made.

The name's spelt Solow, not Solo, but yeah, you got the rest right. And not only did Solow have a successful career after Star Trek, Dorothy Fontana did too, even though she never created her own TV show.

Again, you nailed it. And the sad thing is, both Justman and Solow (IIRC) said that they felt Majel Barrett couldn't act.

 

Whoa. Way to cherry pick. That was for money. Also, I've addressed how common this was, above. Clearly he was a flawed human, like me, and maybe like others here who don't like examining the planks in their own eyes, ha ha.

The flaw is when ppl, not you luckily, are quick to assume money or sex are the ONLY reasons the guy wrote teleplays and helmed wickedly complex endeavors like Hollywood productions.

Of Course he also created and produced for money.

Art and commerce are intertwined, rignt?

"But sometimes he was a jerk!"

Welcome to the human race.

 

It already is doing so.

 

This is how I also feel about Jack Lord and how he was on the original Hawaii 5-0; I used to believe in his image, until I read a 1971 TV Guide article on him, Jack Lord, Superstar, which described the way he is on the set of the show; after that, I now despise him for how he was, as well as for what he did to co-star Gilbert Lani Kauhi, aka Zulu (Zulu was dismissed from the show after an unfortunate incident in which he delivered an anti-Semitic insult to the producer in anger due to Lord copping a military honor that was due to Zulu, who had served in the Coast Guard.) Due to that,I don't like the original series that much anymore; I prefer the recent one, and the actor who pays the recent version of Steve McGarrett, Alex O'Loughlin.

 

For sure. And on top of that, this attitude completely overlooks Gene L. Coon and Dorothy C. Fontana, both of whom, in my opinion, added as much to Star Trek as Roddenberry did. Star Trek is a mix of ideas and a co-creation - sure Gene Roddenberry came up with the initial idea, but that initial idea doesn't account for what all that is essential to Star Trek. Just my two cents.

 

Gene Roddenberry was a deeply dichotomous human being. He undoubtedly had vision and the passion to realise that vision, and I’m immensely grateful he brought Star Trek to the world. But he also a lech who most likely saw himself as “love instructor” for a number of attractive younger actresses. He should thank his lucky stars he lived so long before the #Metoo era because he’d most likely have become a pariah (or maybe even in jail alongside Harvey). While the situation with Grace Lee Whitney will probably never truly come to light, based on what she wrote in her autobiography it’s quite easy to join the dots and once I did I found my view of Roddenberry forever tarnished.