GR's Biggest Inspiration for Star Trek

[Harvey]

Unless I recall the wrong source for this, Inside Star Trek has GR and Herb Solow borrowing a print of Forbidden Planet and screening it while they were roughing out the series premise. Supposedly they wanted to ensure they weren't accidentally copying a film that neither man was very familiar with. So they viewed it and were satisfied that it was nothing like their ideas for Star Trek.

There are memos at UCLA that show they not only screened the film, but they sought out its crew and also inquired about frame enlargements from the movie. I can't recall, off the top of my head, what Inside Star Trek has to say about it. What you recall doesn't sound like it, though.

I wrote about this some time ago, actually:

http://startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com/2013/07/gene-roddenberrys-cinematic-influences.html

 

[J.T.B.]

All the basic concepts -- faster-than-light travel, military or quasi-military space explorers, an age of space exploration and colonization analogous to Earth in the 18th and 19th centuries -- were well established in written sci-fi by the time Forbidden Planet was made.

That's the heart of it. As a kid in the '70s my libraries had plenty of books from the '50s or even '40s with much of that sort of thing. I remember reading stories from A. E. van Voght, Robert Heinlein and Andre Norton that had a lot of recognizable pre-Star Trek elements in them, and I'm sure there were a lot more, especially in the magazines.

I'm not sure about the Hornblower novels. The idea of the captain character, certainly, is central. But the novels are basically war adventures, usually leading to a climactic battle. I have wondered if the Gregory Peck movie was more of an inspiration than the books, with Hornblower starting on a diplomatic mission. But, that is taken directly from a novel. So I don't know, I would welcome more information.

I'm annoyed that the C-57D doesn't have a name, seems like an oversight.

"C-57D" is its name!

 

[KirkusOveractus]

All the basic concepts -- faster-than-light travel, military or quasi-military space explorers, an age of space exploration and colonization analogous to Earth in the 18th and 19th centuries -- were well established in written sci-fi by the time Forbidden Planet was made. So it's more like FP's writers and Gene Roddenberry were both drawing on the same source material.

There is no doubt of that, and Roddenberry said that when he was little and was sick, those Sci-Fi pulp magazines or early Sci-Fi novels kept his imagination going.

However, Forbidden Planet takes those elements and combines them, so much so that in the look, feel, even banter between the crew members can lead to you watching it, then TOS and it is quite a smooth transition.

You can't always do that with Wells, Verne, etc.

 

[E-DUB]

Take a quick gander at the trailer for FP and you'll see Roddenberry wasn't the only one to get inspiration from that source.

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies