Assignment Earth: series spin-off

[Gary7]

I remember reading somewhere that at some point, Gene Roddenberry wanted to start a series spin-off based on the Gary 7 character from "Assignment Earth". Of course, it never happened... but I wonder if there was ever a back story or script written for it, aside from the "double duty" of the Star Trek episode being used as a surrogate pilot episode.

Also, was it ever determined as to who the aliens were that trained Gary 7 for the mission he was on? They were never revealed in the episode... but I'm curious to know if Gene had ever come up with an idea about it.

One of these days I'll have to track down a book on the Star Trek universe that tries to tie everything together... I'm sure a few have been written.

 

[Maurice]

I remember reading somewhere that at some point, Gene Roddenberry wanted to start a series spin-off based on the Gary 7 character from "Assignment Earth". Of course, it never happened... but I wonder if there was ever a back story or script written for it, aside from the "double duty" of the Star Trek episode being used as a surrogate pilot episode.

Also, was it ever determined as to who the aliens were that trained Gary 7 for the mission he was on? They were never revealed in the episode... but I'm curious to know if Gene had ever come up with an idea about it.

One of these days I'll have to track down a book on the Star Trek universe that tries to tie everything together... I'm sure a few have been written.

You can use the SEARCH function here to find threads and posts on the subject, but here are a couple from the past year:

Click for the topic "Assignment Earth" might've been a cool show

Click for the topic Operation Earth?

There's also these sites:

This Analysis

And this site about the proposed show.

Hope that helps!

 

[Christopher]

I remember reading somewhere that at some point, Gene Roddenberry wanted to start a series spin-off based on the Gary 7 character from "Assignment Earth". Of course, it never happened... but I wonder if there was ever a back story or script written for it, aside from the "double duty" of the Star Trek episode being used as a surrogate pilot episode.

Roddenberry initially developed Assignment: Earth as a pilot script for a half-hour adventure series unrelated to Star Trek. It was about 24th-century native Gary Seven travelling back to the 1960s to battle time-travelling Omegans who wanted to change history (an idea not unlike ENT's Temporal Cold War). After the networks rejected this premise, GR reworked it into the ST episode "Assignment: Earth," using the episode as a backdoor pilot for a spinoff series -- presumably hoping that an actual pilot film would win someone over where the script alone had failed.

Also, was it ever determined as to who the aliens were that trained Gary 7 for the mission he was on? They were never revealed in the episode... but I'm curious to know if Gene had ever come up with an idea about it.

Probably not, since there were no such aliens in the original pilot proposal. Years later in the DC comics, Howard Weinstein named Gary's organization the Aegis and gave them a mission similar to the original pilot premise -- they were charged with preserving history from being altered by factions seeking to change it (and this was still a decade before ENT came along and used a similar idea in the TCW). The Aegis name has been picked up on in other Gary Seven fiction including Greg Cox's novels Assignment: Eternity and The Eugenics Wars. I don't know if John Byrne's recent Assignment: Earth comics miniseries uses the term.

 

[Gary7]

You can use the SEARCH function here to find threads and posts on the subject, but here are a couple from the past year:
"Assignment Earth" might've been a cool show
Operation Earth?

Thanks, DS9Sega... I should have tried Search first; I was suffering from knee jerk thought-->post syndrome.

Thanks for that insight Christopher. It's interesting to see how the idea for the series was conceived first and THEN worked into a ST episode.