FACT TREK—The Great Bird Of the Radio, 1974

[Christopher]

He apparently had a different view of what a future policeman would be in his STAR TREK II (aka THE GOD THING) script. He called them Mediators, who were unarmed.

There was also his Tribunes pilot proposal, in which futuristic police had more sophisticated techniques and counseling training and stun weapons and such for less violent resolutions, yet also had on-the-spot judge-and-jury power in a way that seems fascistic to me.

 

[Maurice]

BACK ON TOPIC: Roddenberry and police

He apparently had a different view of what a future policeman would be in his STAR TREK II (aka THE GOD THING) script. He called them Mediators, who were unarmed.

For the record, that STII script was in 1975. The name "The God Thing" appears to have been coined for the abandoned novelization of same.

I'd be curious to know how much the idea of "Mediators" relates to his Tribunes future cops.

Our $$$ Variety Ultimate account is a worth every penny because we can look at any issue of Variety ever published, and I just recently ran into mention of his Tribunes show pitch, but I suspect none will get into this sort of detail.

But "lost" Roddenberry of this era is "fascinating," hence our sharing this.

Also what I found interesting in these "lost interviews" was how Roddenberry did give credit where credit was due. He knew that Trek succeeded with the help of others. However, I don't care for the current trend of diminishing his own contributions.

All GR's memos show a man who really understood the show he created, and he knew good story.

Exactly. Whatever his weaknesses as a writer, any in-depth reading of his memos concerning scripts makes plain he understood what made Star Trek Star Trek, and his feedback kept the show on track.

 

[Maurice]

Thanks for the article. Interesting to get a look at a Roddenberry interview from the time his post-Trek sci-fi pilots were coming out.

You're welcome.

Incidentally, has your research turned up anything about who the makeup artist was on Planet Earth?

After you mentioned that I looked back through Variety specifically for mention of the crew on that telefilm but the only credits I see mentioned are Above the Line stuff.

Incidentally, whilst looking for that I found that the same date that Roddenberry gave that interview and stated he didn't know what the title of the Genesis II re-imagining would be, the name "Planet Earth" was used in the trades. So maybe the title was a working title at that point.

Daily Variety, January 24, 1974​

 

[Christopher]

Incidentally, whilst looking for that I found that the same date Roddenberry gave that interview and stated he didn't what the title of the Genesis II re-imagining would be, the name "Planet Earth" was used in the trades. So maybe the title was a working title at that point.

Makes sense. I never thought about it before, but it is a really generic title. Makes sense as a placeholder they never got around to changing. That happens sometimes. (I think it was The Making of Deep Space Nine that asserted that Deep Space Nine was a working title that nobody really liked but that got publicized before they had a chance to come up with something better.)

Interesting that Eisner said Planet Earth had no connection to Genesis II. I mean, it is a soft reboot with some tweaks to the concept and characters, but I find the two films similar enough that I can gloss over the variations in detail and see them as two stories in the same universe. It's not "a new concept," just a refinement of the same concept.

 

[diankra]

I need to find that book.




You mean Bruce Geller, right?




Wow, now those are antiheroes! That seems to be a riff on The Dirty Dozen, very different from what we got. I'm not surprised the network didn't go for this version.

Cox's Terry Targo was in the pilot, but as a safe-cracker, not a hit man. And he suffered damage to his hands that, in addition to creating suspense by requiring Rollin to do his job instead, ensured that he would have to retire permanently from his life of crime. I assume the censors insisted on that because the rules of the day required that crime must not be shown to pay.




See, that's what I always figured, that they were a private, off-the-books operation to give the government deniability. A huge contrast with the movies where the IMF is an integral part of the CIA's bureaucracy, pretty much missing the entire point of disavowable operatives.

Of course, the show itself undermined this idea as soon as it started showing the team working hand-in-hand with law enforcement to go after mobsters or other stateside threats, something that was occasionally done as early as the first season, then became the regular focus in seasons 6-7.

The idea that they might occasionally be hired by law enforcement rather than the government is an interesting twist, although it wouldn't have fit with the formula of the Voice on Tape and the Secretary's disavowal in every episode. I guess the Voice could've been the broker assigning their missions, but then not all of the missions would've had the Secretary's oversight.




The first season did pretty much work this way, even more so than this description. Not one cast member appeared in all 28 episodes, because there was one that Briggs was written out of during the dispute with Steven Hill. Dan supervised in 27 episodes and was on the mission in 20. Rollin was in 26 episodes, Barney 25, Cinnamon 24, and Willy only 21. Early on, the guest agents tended to be fairly prominent actors/characters (Wally Cox, Albert Paulsen, Mary Ann Mobley), but became smaller supporting players as the season went on, the main exception being Eartha Kitt in the penultimate episode. The full five members of the main team are present in 15 episodes, and the greatest variation in team size and composition is toward the middle of the season. There are a few four-handers with guest agents, several three-handers, a couple of episodes with only two team members (Rollin and Cinnamon in "A Spool There Was," with offscreen help from Barney, and Rollin and Barney in "The Reluctant Dragon"), and one, "Elena," that's a solo mission for Rollin, albeit with the help of a guest character.




No, Rollin was effectively a regular throughout the whole season, well before the problems with Hill started. The only episodes he wasn't in were numbers 12 and 14 in broadcast order. But once the problems with Hill began, Rollin was upgraded to the de facto series lead. He was always the central player on the missions where Briggs was not on the field team and appeared only in the initial briefing. And Rollin ran the whole mission in the episode that Briggs was written out of completely.

I believe they offered Landau a promotion to lead in season 2, but he didn't want to commit to more than one season at a time, so they brought in Peter Graves instead.




Hunh. I always figured Phelps was meant to be the same as Briggs, a retired intelligence agent. (The Voice on Tape in the pilot said "Welcome back" to Briggs, implying he'd left the CIA and been brought back into the game unofficially to lead the IMF.)

And... oh, man... Phelps was an airline pilot? That's something that plays very, very differently in the wake of Airplane! Oh, man.

IIRC that's unofficial, a background Graves came up with to keep in his mind as backplot.