I do wonder how much of TNG was actually Roddenberry's, and how much was other people? We know he had TOS production folks (Fontana, Gerrold, Justman, Milkis) on the early part of season one. We also know his attorney was running a lot of interference between Gene and the production, and even allegedly was rewriting scripts.
So let's see, breaking out my copy of
The TNG Companion, supplemented with other stuff I've read elsewhere:
-The characters of Will Riker and Deanna Troi were more or less recycled from the concepts of Will Decker and Ilia in the Phase II Writers' Guide. The character of Jean-Luc Picard likewise took a fair amount from Phase II's older, wiser Captain Kirk.
-David Gerrold suggested that the first officer lead the landing parties/"away teams." This originated in his book The World of Star Trek.
-Robert Justman suggested having a Klingon on the bridge, the new Enterprise having families aboard, and having an android as a regular character (who Justman suggested could provide a Spock-like mystique for the new series).
-Bob Justman was also the person who really pushed for Patrick Stewart to play Picard, eventually overcoming Roddenberry's objections.
-Data was a mashup of the character of Questor from the TV movie pilot The Questor Tapes (co-written by GR and Gene Coon, with a novelization from D.C. Fontana) and the Phase II concept of Spock's replacement Xon experimenting with human emotions in order to better work with humans.
-The character of Geordi La Forge was inspired by a quadriplegic fan named George La Forge, who got to know Roddenberry and many other Trek creatives at cons in the 70s. (Significantly, David Gerrold's 1970s ST novel The Galactic Whirlpool has a passing mention of a Starfleet admiral named after George La Forge.)
-The character of Tasha Yar was inspired by the space marine Vasquez from the 1986 movie Aliens.
-Although Wesley was originally conceived as a boy (using Roddenberry's middle name), Justman pushed for the character to be a girl, Leslie, instead. The backstory of Wesley's father being killed on a mission that Picard commanded came from "Justman and the staff."
-Roddenberry was the one who insisted that the new phasers could not be pistol-shaped, eventually resulting in the TNG "Dustbuster" look.
-Roddenberry was also the one who said that the Starfleet characters could not have personal conflicts with each other, maintaining that humanity had evolved past that by the time of TNG. (This was possibly a remnant of his "New Humans" concept from the Phase II Writers' Guide and his TMP novelization.)
-Roddenberry wanted the Ferengi to all have huge penises (indicated by large codpieces on their costumes) and for Deanna Troi to have four breasts. (D.C. Fontana talked him out of that one, saying, "Gene, most women have trouble enough with just two.")
-Most of the series bible was written by David Gerrold, with certain bits being obvious Roddenberry touches (The description of Beverly Crusher having "a walk like a striptease queen" was recycled from the bio of Yeoman Rand in the TOS Writers' Guide, IIRC).
-D.C. Fontana wrote the initial hour-long version of the pilot "Encounter at Farpoint," dealing with the mystery of Farpoint Station. When Paramount insisted on a 90-minute or two-hour pilot, Roddenberry rewrote Fontana's script, adding in the character of Q (an updated version of Paul Schneider's Squire of Gothos from the TOS episode of the same name, but a godlike being judging the Enterprise crew was one of GR's go-to stories to the point of monotony.)
So
LOTS of people contributed to TNG's development. But I personally find it very telling that the pilot episodes that sold for
both TOS and TNG were written or largely written by people other than Roddenberry.
BTW, there was a lawsuit from Gerrold and Fontana about creator credit on the TNG series, and considering their contributions to the series bible and the series pilot, I'd say that they had an excellent case. The case was eventually settled and I believe that neither Gerrold nor Fontana are allowed to talk about the terms of the settlement. (If someone else here knows more about this, please correct me.)
And yes, GR's lawyer L
eonard Maizlish was rewriting scripts and ghostwriting memos in GR's name, neither of which he was allowed to do since he was not a producer, a staff writer, or a member of the Writer's Guild. He was pretty universally loathed by everyone except Roddenberry and he's a big reason most of the TOS staffers left TNG within a year. If IIRC, Maizlish was one of the people escorted off the Paramount lot the day after Roddenberry died, but I may be mixing him up with Richard Arnold or Susan Sackett there.
Since David Gerrold wrote the Series Bible, I like to think of him as more the creator of TNG than Gene Roddenberry. In a TNG to Batman analogy, I think Gene Roddenberry is Bob Kane to David Gerrold's Bill Finger. I bet most of what Gene Roddenberry contributed was just carried over from Phase II and re-purposed.
Seems like a pretty good reading of the situation to me. GR started the process, but most of the stuff that really set TNG apart came from other people.
)
SC at all.
