Star Trek - TV's Newest (June 26, 1966)

[alensatemybuick1]

from a column written by Gene Roddenberry and published in the Independent Star News of Pasadena on Sunday, June 26, 1966:

 

[Greg Cox]

Very cool!

 

[Balok's Decoy]

"And wardrobe? Try a simple experiment on this -- sit down with pencil and paper, sketch what you think we'll all wear a few hundred years hence."

Velour. The answer is velour.

Seriously though, very cool post. What a great writer he was. I also like the sidebar tv guide: The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Addams Family. Weird!

 

[alensatemybuick1]

Thanks. There is a follow-up article 7 days later (July 3, 1966, page 103) on newspapers.com, but apparenlty I can only save once for free.

 

[alensatemybuick1]

OK, I can't download the image of the second article from Newspapers.com, but I figured out that I can cut and paste the "OCR" (optical character recognition?) text from the Jul 3, 1966 follow up article below - much of the same text (and more) from these two articles appear in a 6 page MSEI press release from September 1966 I found on Ebay (screenshot of P1 follows):

Star Trek -- Part II By GENE RODDENBERRY, Producer 'This is the last of two parts of Gene Roddenberry's Guest Column, in which he is discussing his new fall television series for NBC, Star Trek. Star Trek emphasizes believability. We started with the premise that the American audience is a lot more intelligent and perceptive than the so-called "experts" insist. We feel you can shortchange the audience only at your own peril. Thus our people, our vessel, everything seen and heard, must seem honest, real, and as totally believable as if we were watching cops, cowboys, interns, or what-have-you. Are we doing "science fiction"? If by that one means "space pirates" or "the monster that gobbled up Tokyo," the answer is no. But if you mean how you and I would feel, and act if we were actually in space a few centuries from now, if you mean the believable adventures that (like it or not) man now faces, the answer is yes. One of our early episodes is first contact with another race, a civilization so advanced that our own giant starship could be smashed as we on Earth today swat a fly. How do you communicate with such aliens? How do you convince them of your intentions? Or are our morals and ideals sufficiently advanced even to interest them? As an example of scientific problems, our weapon is called a "phaser". It is capable of anything from gently tranquilizing^a victim to explosively disintegrating matter. Why the term "phaser"? Simply because the more common "laser", as scientifically advanced as it is, may become household knowledge before our series gets on the air next September. Another example of Star Trek trying to anticipate scientific devices is our "inventing" a language-converter which in conjunction with a small hand communications instrument computes and translates English into an alien tongue and vice versa. Much to our surprise, following our "invention", a news item appeared announcing a current government project that is developing a similar device. Still another example of having to stay enough ahead of science is a hospital bed we used in the pilot film of Star Trek. This bed continually checks all body functions, in addition to having the patient under closed-circuit visual observation at all times. Upon congratulating ourselves on our "genius" in "inventing" this, we discovered that Mayo Clinic is already doing this and is also working on further improvements. We had to sit up nights to figure how to go further. Mars? We have instructed all writers they must avoid Mars stories. Why? We expect to be on the air for some' time and we're afraid our country's astronauts might actually reach Mars while we're still on the air, and prove us wrong in some detail. To stay ahead of them, we have to reach out farther into our galaxy. While Star Trek is science fiction, our stories are basically about people. This is not a series where you invent a machine and then fit a story around it. Our stories will always involve believable people in believable conflict, but with outer space as a background. Incidentally, regarding "space age" hairdos for females, we still haven't beat it. Our women on the show are willing to accept our design for a 190,000 ton spaceship, but they're still being very difficult about where we want to put their curls and bangs. But then, maybe this is as accurate and futuristic as anything else. Let's hope they'll never change!