[Gates McFadden] For more than half a century and counting
Star Trek has beamed its way into our living rooms and into our hearts
Warp one, Mr. Sulu.
[McFadden] With a staggering quantity of high-quality science fiction,
a fact that's proven with nine TV series,
13 movies, countless books, comics, and toys,
it's safe to say as a human collective, we love Star Trek.
[laughs]
[McFadden] And in this series we'll cover all 55 years' worth.
We'll hear the stories of the pioneers who blazed a trail
and upended television as we know it.
So beam aboard and hold on tight
as we boldly go into the depths of Star Trek.
And you can see it all from here in the center seat.
Since the USS Enterprise blasted to space in the '60s,
it's been on a five-year mission, exploring strange new worlds,
seeking out new life and new civilizations,
and of course...
[Captain James T. Kirk] To boldly go where no man has gone before
[McFadden] And that five-year mission has turned into a 55-year one,
which is, of course, why we're here.
But before we loved Star Trek, we loved Lucy.
And we really can't tell the story of Star Trek without her.
Lucy absolutely is the reason Star Trek exists.
She was the one who put her studio on the line for Star Trek.
[McFadden] But Lucille Ball didn't invent Star Trek
That honor goes to this guy.
No, not him. This guy, Gene Roddenberry.
But long before the stars aligned for Roddenberry and Star Trek,
Lucy was busy becoming a star in the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Lucy went out to Hollywood to be a Goldwyn girl.
Aw, cut it out, fellas.
[McFadden] However, Lucy was destined to be more than just another leggy blonde
After a stint at MGM, someone had a bright idea.
They dyed her hair red, and that became her trademark.
[McFadden] And somehow a carrot top made her perfect for television comedy,
even in black and white.
In the '50s, television was still inventing itself.
[McFadden] In fact, Lucille's radio show at the time, My Favorite Husband,
was pegged as a possible TV show starring Lucille.
[Tom Gilbert] Lucille, she said to CBS,
"I'll only do this TV show if you cast Desi as my husband."
Honey, I'm home.
[McFadden] Lucille Ball's real husband was Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz,
and people were lining up to work with him.
Desi introduced the conga line.
And so that became a craze.
[McFadden] And Desi Arnaz became Lucille's on-screen husband...
eventually.
They kind of didn't like the idea of a Cuban being married
to, you know, a red-blooded American gal.
[McFadden] And redheaded, of course.
Not that you could tell.
Now, look, I'm serious.
[McFadden] And so was CBS,
because that pilot for a show called I Love Lucy was a legitimate hit
I Love Lucy became number one, six months after it debuted in 1951.
When I'm out on the street, people point me out.
They say, "There he goes."
[Gilbert] And it was huge.
It was like 67 million people are watching this.
You know, at the time, not everyone owned a television set.
I mean, people were watching in appliance stores.
She was a big star, and she ran the show.
It's so tasty too.
[McFadden] The taste of success was sweet.
Lucille and Desi and their aptly named studio, Desilu,
were now producing the biggest show in America.
But what Desi planned to do next
would be one of his greatest contributions to television,
even more so than the conga line.
Desi Arnaz wanted...
Rerun rights.
[McFadden] To which CBS said...
"What's a rerun?"
No one thought of reruns. There was no such thing.
Something aired and it was disposable. You never saw it again.
[McFadden] Unless, of course, it's I Love Lucy.
And suddenly, reruns were a very valuable commodity.
CBS doesn't want to stop airing it during the summer.
They say, "Can we have those reruns back?"
-Lucy! -Yeah?
-Lucy, guess what! Look! Look! -What?
[Marc Cushman] And they had to pay Desi Arnaz a million dollars
to get the rerun rights back for that summer.
[McFadden] And with that cool million, Desi and Lucy...
...use that money to buy RKO.
[McFadden] Much more than three little letters,
Lucy and Desi now owned...
It was 35 sound stages in three locations. It was huge.
[McFadden] And ultimately important to Star Trek,
but not quite yet.
Because before the USS Enterprise could get its NCC registration number,
Desilu needed another kind of enterprise,
the money-making kind.
[Gilbert] Once I Love Lucy was off and running,
they had all of this equipment to shoot I Love Lucy.
And money was to be made if they could come up with another show.
[McFadden] Either that or...
Everybody came to film at Desilu. The Andy Griffith Show.
My Three Sons.
[Cushman] The Dick Van Dyke Show.
[McFadden] Which generated a lot of money.
I don't discuss money anymore.
You'll have to talk to my business manager.
[McFadden] Just not for Desi and Lucille.
[Gilbert] People just automatically assumed that Lucy owned the world
because she had all these shows on the air with the Desilu logo,
but they weren't necessarily owned by her.
[McFadden] But on the home front, Lucy was feeling owned by Desi.
And that arrangement wasn't working.
'58, '59, Lucy and Desi divorce.
So, uh, I'll see you later.
[McFadden] And suddenly, Desi didn't want to own much of anything.
And he gave up the presidency of Desilu.
And so Desi had to sell his part to her.
Keep the change.
Lucille Ball, divorced from Desi, but still calling it Desilu.
Lucy's queen of TV.
[McFadden] But Lucy wanted to be more than television royalty.
Their stages were very busy, filming everybody else's shows.
[McFadden] She wanted to be in charge of it
because Lucy knew...
...that the true way to have success is to own it.
She said, "Bring me a show that can rerun as long as I Love Lucy."
[McFadden] The USS Enterprise was about to take flight.
But before we get to that, where did this obsession
with flying ships come from in the first place?
To answer that, we need to touch down in Texas,
but only briefly.
Eugene Wesley Roddenberry was born on August 19th, 1921
in El Paso, Texas.
Like any genius, uh, he's a complicated individual.
[McFadden] Oh, we'll definitely get to that.
But first, we have to get him out of Texas.
He would find his escape inside of science-fiction books,
adventure books, the stories of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.
[McFadden] He dreamed of faraway airborne adventures,
and a certain major conflict was about to make that a reality.
He was a bomber pilot in World War II.
[John Tenuto] He flies in 89 combat missions
and wins numerous awards.
[McFadden] And when the war ended, Gene continued to spread his wings
as a pilot for Pan Am, where his career was set to change course dramatically.
[Cushman] He was on a Pan Am jetliner that crashed in the Middle East.
He wasn't flying that one. He was riding with the passengers.
And everybody in the cockpit was killed.
[McFadden] So Gene gravitated towards a more grounded uniform.
And then he became a Los Angeles police officer.
[McFadden] But Gene was less interested in arresting people
and more interested in arresting stories.
So much so...
Gene Roddenberry, this budding writer producer,
wrote a script for Have Gun - Will Travel
[theme music playing]
He's like every other up-and-coming writer.
He's trying to get his own show. That's where the money is.
He wrote a ton of scripts,
and he does land his own show called The Lieutenant.
It's about a Marine Corps officer who's a lawyer.
It's not fiction, Mr. Sanders. I mean, you just don't rewrite history.
[Larry Nemecek] Gene Roddenberry, he wants to do hard-hitting adult themes.
One of his episodes is about racism.
But the world has gotta change first.
It's gotta be made to change.
It brings him head-to-head battle with the network, with the studio.
[McFadden] This hard-hitting episode was ahead of its time.
NBC wouldn't give it the time of day, or even a time of day in its schedule.
It winds up not being even shown.
You can't say, "Well, let's not really talk
about anything serious on television."
That... That is a criminal statement.
He's in trouble for writing this racism script.
So he's like, "Fine, guys, fine.
I love science fiction, and that's how we'll get it out to the people."
Here was a chance to do the kind of drama I had always dreamed of doing.
[McFadden] A sophisticated sci-fi drama
that could ask the big questions of the time.
Questions about who we are and what we're up to in the world.
[McFadden] Deep questions like...
Was it you who spoke?
[McFadden] "What if vegetables could talk?"
He doesn't want Lost in Space.
Sure, that's what they all say.
[McFadden] Gene had higher goals for the fledgling TV sci-fi genre.
Be able to talk about love, war, nature, God, sex,
all those things that go to make up the excitement of the human condition.
A dazzling display of logic.
And maybe the TV censors would let it pass
because it all seemed so make-believe.
He actually wanted to address some social issues.
[McFadden] But he couldn't do it alone.
1965, he finally puts the ideas to paper. He's going around to the networks.
[McFadden] Which didn't take long, actually, because...
In the early '60s, there were only three networks.
[McFadden] And they all passed.
He gets turned down everywhere.
[McFadden] But just when all hope seemed lost,
Gene landed a meeting with Desilu.
Remember them? Lucy was still looking for the next big thing to own.
This frumpy guy, very soft-spoken, very mild-mannered,
came in with this single piece of paper and his memo about what Star Trek is.
[McFadden] And then he delivered the killer blow.
Gene's famous pitch line...
A wagon train to the stars.
[McFadden] Which he might not choose today.
But back then...
Westerns were big.
Wagon Train being a very popular western anthology series.
[McFadden] This was right on point.
It was a big wagon train, slowly going west.
Headed to new frontier.
[grunting]
Running into different obstacles.
It's gonna be a western.
But it's gonna be in outer space.
Zap guns instead of six-shooters. Spaceships instead of horses.
[McFadden] Lucy liked what she heard,
and Desilu decided to board this wagon train.
So that put Desilu back in business, as far as owning properties.
[McFadden] Hoping it would lead not just to the stars, but to riches.
This wasn't just for Gene Roddenberry.
This was something that could be the salvation of Desilu.
[McFadden] Suddenly, the future looked very bright.
[McFadden] In the fall of 1964,
a pilot for what would become Star Trek was commissioned.
NBC finally agreed to back Desilu's production
because who could say no to this face?
They wanted to do business with Lucille Ball
because Lucille Ball was CBS's golden girl.
[McFadden] Oh, and there was one other little sweetener for the network.
[Gilbert] Lucy had a development fund.
She gave the money from the development fund
to develop Star Trek.
[McFadden] With Lucille's own money,
Gene began scripting his wagon train to the stars,
starting with his lead character.
James Kirk.
No. [laughs]
In the original drafts for "The Cage,"
the captain of the Enterprise was going to be called Robert April.
[McFadden] Robert April?
That fact isn't in the history texts.
And it was just a matter of finding the name
the network responded the most to.
[McFadden] For some reason, they preferred the name...
Christopher Pike.
My name is Christopher Pike.
[McFadden] Now, if Christopher Pike looks like a completely different captain
that's because he's a completely different captain.
But more on that later.
Whatever his name, NBC thought
this captain needed more than just the right name.
NBC was saying, "You gotta find a way to make Americans feel comfortable in space.
Well, let's build something around them that all America is familiar with."
[McFadden] That was something the entire nation had lived through.
World War II was less than 20 years earlier.
[McFadden] And it was now a part of the American story.
[Cushman] We've all seen the movies on American submarines.
Half of the American men fought in that war.
[McFadden] Including Gene himself,
who drew from experience to design the costumes
-and even the radio signals. -[radio whistles]
Mr. Spock here.
'Cause that's what you would hear on ships and aircraft carriers
when they would signal the captain.
This is the captain.
He wanted the terminology.
Evasive maneuvers, sir?
Steady as we go.
[McFadden] And of course, a ship.
Enterprise.
[McFadden] Which is a whole story unto itself.
But for now, Gene had to find the right man
to take the helm.
He had his wish list of who he wanted
to play the captain of the Enterprise,
and right at the top of that list was William Shatner.
[McFadden] So cast as Captain Pike...
No. They couldn't get William Shatner
because William Shatner had another series on at that time
that he was starring in on CBS.
If you want facts, Jameson, I'll give you facts.
[McFadden] Well, the fact was they had to look elsewhere.
And so they had to look down the list,
and that's when they found Jeffrey Hunter.
[McFadden] Jeffrey Hunter was a dreamboat leading man
for the matinee era.
So they were happy to get him.
[McFadden] But Captain Pike could hardly make sense of the universe
without a science officer.
Spock here.
[Cushman] Roddenberry always wanted Leonard Nimoy to play Spock.
That was the first person he thought of
'cause Nimoy had been in an episode of The Lieutenant
which Gene Roddenberry produced.
[McFadden] Not that Mr. Nimoy cares to recall.
There was stuff before Star Trek?
[McFadden] There sure was.
[laughs]
[McFadden] Nimoy had just finished
perfecting his contemplative demeanor on The Lieutenant.
[Leonard Nimoy] I did the job.
A week or two later, my agent called me and said, "Gene Roddenberry,
he's interested in you for his science-fiction pilot
that he's gonna produce."
He said, "A character with pointed ears," and that set me back a bit.
[McFadden] If Spock's ears raised an eyebrow,
what Gene had planned for his first officer
was positively revolutionary.
I can't get used to having a woman on the bridge.
No offense, Lieutenant. You're different, of course.
[Gilbert] Majel Barrett was a student of Lucy's at the Desilu workshop,
where she would train them and give them experience.
[McFadden] And although she had little experience taking orders,
featuring in an episode of The Lieutenant...
Aye aye, sir.
[McFadden] Casting a woman as second-in-command,
even in an imagined future, was ahead of its time.
That was a position of authority, and women just didn't have that position.
It's very much a man's world in those days.
Yes, it is, isn't it?
It is remarkable that a woman is the first officer
of the flagship of the Federation in 1966.
That is unbelievable.
[McFadden] Oh, don't worry. If you think that's unbelievable...
[laughs]
I'm Sandy Gimpel, or Sandra Gimpel.
I played a Talosian.
[McFadden] That's Sandra on the left
and Meg Wyllie on the right.
I think they hired women because they wanted a sleeker line,
and they can make us look tall and thin,
so we look more alien.
[McFadden] And that they did.
Now, last but not least, Gene sent for the doctor.
Gene Roddenberry wanted DeForest Kelley.
[McFadden] Bones, of course.
-[buzzer sounds] -Ooh, or not.
That was because DeForest Kelley had over ten years
working as the heavy in westerns.
[McFadden] So the only cure for this ailment
was a stiff shot of veteran actor John Hoyt.
Who wants a warm martini?
[McFadden] So with the cast in place,
Desilu Studios began filming the pilot on November 27th, 1964.
But instead of delivering a space western the first episode, entitled "The Cage,"
dealt with more abstract themes.
[Roddenberry] The enormous power of imagination.
I didn't quite understand how it was gonna work as a television show.
[McFadden] But despite the muddy plot, the special effects were crystal clear.
Star Trek was the first TV series to shoot against a blue screen.
[McFadden] And although it seems primitive now,
back then...
Nobody was doing moving stars.
[McFadden] Providing a sense of realism that was missing from other sci-fi shows.
He doesn't want Lost in Space.
[McFadden] We remember.
But one of Star Trek's signature special effects
was actually a cost-saving measure.
The reason we have the transporter is because they couldn't afford
to land the ship in every episode.
[McFadden] But the pilot didn't look cheap,
and that's because it really wasn't.
The pilot had cost, I think, almost $600,000,
which would be like six million today.
And NBC only put up half the money. Desilu put up the other half.
[McFadden] An excellent investment.
Or maybe not because NBC rejected the pilot.
Some of their executives were outraged.
They didn't like the pointy-eared guy.
What do you call those?
I call them ears.
[McFadden] They feared parts of America
might think Spock's pointy ears pointed to Satan, somehow.
Hello, 1964.
[McFadden] But mainly...
They felt the plot was too cerebral.
It appears that the intelligence of the specimen is shockingly limited.
Aliens using illusion to do what they wanna do.
[McFadden] It was simply too brainy, too wacky, and too much for advertisers.
"We can't use this to sell it to advertisers
'cause it's not reflective of what we would want the series to be."
And that's it.
[McFadden] The USS Enterprise was caught in a negative force field...
for now.
[McFadden] Star Trek's first brave sortie to the television cosmos had failed.
The door was closed on "The Cage."
But the network wasn't ready to abandon the mission.
It's very rare for there to be a second pilot.
[McFadden] But money talks.
They actually funded a second pilot.
[McFadden] And once again, Lucy was happy
to put her money where her famous mouth was.
Lucy reached into her pocket to refinance the pilot, do a new one.
[McFadden] The network was only too happy to split the bill,
with conditions.
This one had better be familiar, action-adventure, or else.
[McFadden] They didn't just take issue with the plot
They also had problems with the personnel
Gene does famously say, "Well, I had to give up the woman..."
No offense, Lieutenant.
"...or the guy with the pointy ears."
[McFadden] And when push came to shove, Gene gave in to his Vulcan side.
Gene really liked the character of Spock.
He would find something else for Majel later on.
[McFadden] The job of casting was a matter of military precision.
Steady as we go.
[McFadden] Thanks to a military drama.
That is real drama.
Gene and I really were in sync on the casting because...
Stealthy approach.
...the easiest place to go was people that we were both familiar with
that we had both used on The Lieutenant.
And then... whammo!
[McFadden] And if he couldn't have a female first officer,
there had to be another way to get a woman on the bridge.
Michelle Nichols was a true discovery.
[McFadden] Thanks again to The Lieutenant.
Because Gene said that he wanted a woman in the command center.
[McFadden] Meanwhile, Gene suddenly found himself in need of a doctor
because John Hoyt had gone off to do movies.
Oh, that sounds exciting.
[McFadden] Opening the door for Gene's first choice, DeForest Kelley,
who finally landed the role of Bones by giving execs a look beneath his hat.
Fill me in.
[Maria Jose Tenuto] Gene had the idea that if he got a haircut
that would subliminally say "good guy,"
that the studio would come around and warm up to having D on the show.
You look just fine, Doctor.
Well, I don't doubt it.
That haircut was based on John F. Kennedy.
[McFadden] He nailed it.
Just like the good doctor's hair,
Jeffrey Hunter would also be brushed aside.
Jeff Hunter was offered a movie.
[McFadden] And so the door slid open for the guy he wanted all along,
William Shatner.
Because We the People had just been canceled.
[McFadden] But his new captain would need a new name.
This is Captain James T. Kirk.
[McFadden] But we wouldn't find out what the "T" stood for until much later.
There'll be no discussion of this.
[McFadden] Evidently, NBC wanted the "T" to stand for "tough."
They wanted something a little more action-oriented.
[McFadden] So Star Trek started to get physical,
like the Olympics.
And then NBC said, "We love it."
[McFadden] With boxing, karate, wrestling,
and possibly shot put.
And one of the lesser-known sports.
The Vulcan neck pinch was Leonard Nimoy's creation.
[McFadden] That's right.
One of the series' most beloved moves came not from the writers' room,
but from the mind of Spock himself.
Spock was supposed to give a karate chop
to the back of that Kirk's neck and knock him out.
So he went over to the director of that episode,
Leo Penn, who's Sean Penn's father,
and said, "A Vulcan would not resort to this kind of violence
unless he had to.
Unless he was just being attacked unprepared,
he would find a more civilized way to do it."
And Leo said, "Well, what do you mean? What? Like what would he do?"
And Leonard Nimoy, just making it up on the spot,
says, "Vulcans understand the electromagnetic nervous system of humans.
They would know that there's a pressure point
that you can put your fingers to and cause a person to go unconscious."
[McFadden] But director Leo Penn needed a little more convincing.
Nimoy looks over at William Shatner and says,
"Bill, can I borrow you for a minute?"
Shatner comes over, and they're just waiting to shoot the scene.
The lights are being tweaked.
Shatner comes over and he says,
"You know that thing I was telling you about
of how Vulcans can knock you out?"
Shatner had never heard this before. [chuckles]
But he goes, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was really interesting."
He says, "Leo doesn't think it'll work, and I wanted to demonstrate it on you."
"Sure."
Nimoy goes over and presses Shatner's shoulder at the base of his neck,
and Shatner rolls his eyes up into his head
and just collapses to the floor.
And Leo Penn is just stunned.
"Bill, are you okay? Are you okay?"
"Oh, yeah, I'm a little little woozy."
"That's amazing! We gotta do that."
So that's the first neck pinch on Star Trek.
[McFadden] But thanks to Gene Roddenberry nearly the last.
Gene Roddenberry sent a memo out to Leonard Nimoy,
scolding him for doing this
and saying, "Don't ever do anything like this again.
But, by the way, we're going to keep this
and we're going to start writing this into the scripts."
So he got scolded for coming up with that brilliant idea.
[McFadden] So Nimoy had given them the pinch, but then came the twist.
"They also wanted to see if you can make it a little cheaper."
[McFadden] The pilot cost a whopping $450,000.
NBC felt the budget should be more in the orbit of 185,000.
Very low budget. It was undersold.
[McFadden] And even at that price,
the network wouldn't be footing the entire bill.
It's deficit financing.
The networks do not pony up all the cost of a show.
[McFadden] NBC would only back Star Trek
to the tune of 100 grand per episode.
So Desilu's going into the hole 85 grand with every episode they're making.
[McFadden] At such a heavy price,
the board of Desilu convened to consider its options.
The old guard, so-called...
...told Lucy, "Don't do it. You'll put the studio out of business."
[McFadden] But Lucille Ball still held the deciding vote.
She said, "Let's go ahead and produce the whole thing."
She's like, "I'm putting the fate of the studio in your hands, guys."
[McFadden] With all that pressure, Gene decided to recruit a Gene 2.0,
coincidentally also called Gene.
Here comes Gene Coon, a great writer.
He'd written some scripts on Have Gun - Will Travel
that Gene Roddenberry had worked on.
Didn't have a big science-fiction background,
but he could...
He could tell a story.
He was really in charge of the writing room,
and he was very interested in making sure
that the characters were the most important and central thing.
[McFadden] Evident from the very first episode to air,
which placed its diversity of characters at the forefront.
Tell me how your planet, Vulcan, looks on a lazy evening when the moon is full.
[McFadden] Suddenly, network television
had a glamorous new look and a breath of fresh air.
I was born acting, my father said.
[McFadden] Nichelle had come from the theater.
And since her episode of The Lieutenant never made it to air,
Star Trek would be her first on-screen credit.
Thank you, God. [laughs]
[McFadden] And as the communications officer,
she was sending a clear message which had the execs screaming...
"What are you doing?"
Gene believed in diversity.
He said, "I want all ethnic choices to be considered. Period."
[McFadden] And he was happy to test the limits by casting a Japanese American
even as memories of the Second World War remained fresh.
He says, "By the time we're out in space, borders have disappeared.
People interreact in a natural, comfortable way."
[McFadden] When Star Trek finally broadcast,
it confirmed that America was ready for a fresh vision of the future,
and a bit of action, of course.
The very first episode, "The Man Trap," 47% of the TVs in America were tuned in.
[McFadden] Nearly half of America was seeing something
they'd never seen before.
It was a pioneer show that was creating things every inch of the way.
[McFadden] But delving into whole new worlds every week
soon took a toll on its cast and crew.
Yeah, I'm here usually about 6:30 in the morning.
We actually start shooting at 8:00. The crew arrives around 7:30.
It takes me about an hour and a half to get into the rig.
It was an uphill battle. They were under the gun constantly.
It was taking a toll mentally.
[Roddenberry] Our schedule was 12 to 14 hours a day,
and the production staff worked six days a week.
During the first two years, there was not a member
of our production staff that was not in the hospital
at one time or another from exhaustion.
It was the hardest show to make on television.
[McFadden] Along with monsters,
the original series ranged across monster themes.
Pain!
[McFadden] Colonization.
Crying... for the children.
[McFadden] The ethics of war.
We have the right!
To wage war, Captain? To kill millions of innocent people?
[McFadden] Hairdressing.
Along the way, Spock fell in love.
I love you.
[McFadden] And almost fell out of a tree.
I told Leonard to grab hold of the branch
and hang from it like a monkey and play the scene that way.
The first line of Kirk's was...
You were told to report to me at once.
And Spock, with this glorious grin on his face, said...
I didn't want to, Jim.
And it just worked beautifully.
Yes, I can see that.
And became an iconic Spock scene.
[McFadden] But one iconic episode above all
would come to embody Star Trek as top-shelf science fiction.
And it came from one of sci-fi's finest practitioners.
Harlan Ellison.
Who has written some of history's most important science-fiction books.
[McFadden] Harlan pitched an idea for a time-traveling Star Trek episode,
which he called...
"The City on the Edge of Forever."
I am the Guardian of Forever.
I wrote that script before the show ever went on the air.
[McFadden] But Harlan's gritty story
was not what Gene Roddenberry thought Star Trek should be.
Harlan's original version of "The City on the Edge of Forever"
involved a drug dealer on the Enterprise named Beckwith.
And he was trying to escape.
And escapes through a portal to the planet Earth.
And I wrote what I thought was a dynamite script.
Which, by the way, everybody said was a great science-fiction story.
It just wasn't a Star Trek.
[McFadden] So Roddenberry ordered rewrites.
It needed to be hammered into that formula, that box.
[McFadden] Just like his time-traveling script,
Harlan was on a different timeline too.
It was hard to get Harlan to discipline himself
to turn out pages at the rate that you need it.
[McFadden] So Gene Coon made a bold executive decision.
Producer Gene Coon locked him in a room.
So he couldn't get out.
[McFadden] A defiant Ellison began to blast music,
as he was known to do while he wrote.
And at one point, the record started skipping.
-They got suspicious. -[record scratches]
[McFadden] So they opened the door, only to find...
...that the window was open and Harlan had gone out the window,
and he was on the set taking pictures with Shatner and Nimoy.
[McFadden] "The City on the Edge of Forever" took forever,
but Harlan's long-overdue script was considered brilliant.
It's a brilliant script.
[McFadden] In more ways than one.
It's brilliantly overwritten.
His script would have cost as much as a major motion picture.
Science-fiction writers very often
are people who have wonderful imaginations
and wonderful ideas which cannot be expressed in other forms.
[McFadden] Gene Roddenberry finally had
the kind of serious science-fiction script
he always wanted to make,
and it was completely unshootable.
[McFadden] While Harlan Ellison's magnum opus
created a headache for Star Trek producers,
it created an opportunity for the young story editor tasked with fixing it.
I worked on the show, obviously, from the very beginning
as Gene Roddenberry's production secretary.
[McFadden] While also moonlighting as one of the show's writers.
I had written, at that point, two scripts and had rewritten "This Side of Paradise."
[McFadden] But sensing potential in his young writer
he gave her a challenge.
"If you rewrite "This Side of Paradise" to my satisfaction and NBC's satisfaction,
I will hire you as my story editor," and I did, and he did.
[Tenuto] When she's working on Star Trek,
she's actually the youngest story editor in the history of television,
and she's one of the very few female story editors.
[McFadden] Which made her job even more intimidating.
'Cause Harlan scared her to death. She was just terrified.
She said, "I'll do a rewrite, but don't tell him."
She didn't tell him for like three decades that she had done the rewrite on it,
and she let him blame Gene. [laughs]
One of the things she did was take each character
and do something special.
[McFadden] That included doing a special on the character of Bones.
I'd better risk a few drops of cordrazine.
Dorothy Fontana came up with the part about McCoy accidentally injects himself.
Bones!
And goes deranged.
Killers!
[McFadden] Which is how D.C. feared Harlan would react
when he found out that they changed the script.
No, he couldn't be mad at her.
Nobody could be mad at Dorothy.
[McFadden] But that didn't mean he was happy about it.
The core of it is that the Joan Collins character...
I'm Edith Keeler.
[Nat Segaloff] ...is going to prevent the United States' entry into World War II.
This would allow Hitler to take over the world.
[McFadden] But if that wasn't horrifying enough...
I'm in love with Edith Keeler.
[McFadden] This was history versus love.
Harlan was probably one of the greatest romantics in science fiction.
[McFadden] Although let's just say it doesn't end well for the lovebirds.
[Cushman] Kirk has to let the woman he loves die.
[screams]
To save the world.
[McFadden] Which might be why Gene felt the need to soften the blow.
Of course, he wrote that speech for Edith.
Now, I don't pretend to tell you how to find happiness and love.
One day, man is going to be able to harness incredible energies.
[McFadden] If nothing else, it was a speech about...
Hope.
[McFadden] But Gene's two cents gave anything but hope to Harlan Ellison.
It's the old French joke
about the chef who has made a great soup,
and all the other chefs come in.
They say, "Well, we must make it just a little bit better,"
and they all piss in it.
Everybody pissed in my script.
[McFadden] Which naturally...
...pissed Harlan off.
[McFadden] So Harlan washed his hands of it.
And so by the time they filmed it, Harlan didn't want his name on it.
[McFadden] Which Gene couldn't afford to lose.
If he lost the name Harlan Ellison, he would have lost all legitimacy.
[McFadden] So Gene gave Harlan an ultimatum.
"If you don't let us put your name on this,
I'm gonna do everything I can to see
that you never work in this industry again."
[McFadden] And surprisingly, that line worked.
They ended up putting Harlan's name on the screen,
with Harlan's permission, but it took a lot of fighting.
[McFadden] But ironically, there came a point
where Harlan Ellison was quite pleased to have his name on the script.
Harlan won a Writers Guild Award for his original script.
[McFadden] That's right.
The way things worked back then, it really paid to be a writer.
In those days, the days of Star Trek and in live and early television,
the writer kept the rights to his script after the show was made.
They always reverted to him or her.
[McFadden] Well, in this case, definitely not for her.
Harlan, therefore, was able to keep the complete rights
to his full script for "The City on the Edge of Forever."
[McFadden] Which was sweet for Harlan.
But for others, uh, it left quite a bad taste.
Harlan, when he won that award at the Writers Guild Awards ceremony,
he held the script up over his head and said, "Don't let them rewrite you."
And Herb Solow...
[McFadden] Then head of TV production for Desilu.
He said, "I zoomed down to my plate, my knife and my fork and my spoon,
and I was thinking, which of these utensils should I use
-when I murder Harlan? -[record scratches]
Which one will take longer and hurt the most?" [laughs]
[McFadden] Long before Herb contemplated knife-and-fork crime,
those onset when shooting began may have been starting on the entree,
but they were already worrying about the bill.
Harlan Ellison's "The City on the Edge of Forever"
would come with a hell of a price tag,
putting the whole series on the edge of forever.
It was the most expensive episode of Star Trek ever.
[McFadden] That meant season two of Star Trek
really needed to turn those thrusters on.
[announcer] William Shatner stars as Captain Kirk
and Leonard Nimoy as Science Officer Spock
on Star Trek in color.
[McFadden] Luckily, it was not only in color,
but in a prime slot.
NBC had promised Gene the 8:00 time slot on Monday,
and then they gave it to Laugh-In.
Hey, you got anything on tonight?
-I certainly hope so. -[audience laughs]
[David Gerrold] Because Laugh-In had gotten such strong ratings,
they didn't wanna lose the time slot.
[McFadden] And so a comedy sketch show sent Star Trek to a distant galaxy.
[Gerrold] 10:00 on Friday nights.
That was a bad time slot for Star Trek.
Gene knew nobody stays home and watches television on Friday night.
That's movie night. That's date night.
But it was still their top-rated show of the night.
[McFadden] Partly because Gene Roddenberry's characters
-had started to click. -[switch clicks]
[Gerrold] You have something very magical with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.
Kirk is the decider. He's the action.
But over here, you have the logic, the rationality.
And over here, you have the emotions.
[McFadden] And although the cast was shaping up nicely,
NBC wanted to add one more piece.
Navigator.
[switch clicks]
We should be there in seconds.
The network wanted a young character to appeal to the younger audience.
You know this man, Captain?
[McFadden] So they brought in Walter Koenig,
apparently due to his passing resemblance to a monkey.
-[monkey screeches] -Yeah. [laughs]
[McFadden] Or more precisely, Davy Jones of The Monkeys.
The Monkeys was the only show
that was getting more fan mail than Star Trek at that point.
[McFadden] With one clever difference.
This is vodka.
[McFadden] Thanks to a classic Roddenberry twist.
"Let's make him a Russian."
Just like Russia.
And this was huge for 1967.
It was the Cold War going on.
The Garden of Eden was just outside Moscow.
A very nice place.
I know Gene's thinking is that, Star Trek,
you mixed all races, erase all borders.
[Koenig] All nationalities could get together.
We could all work together and bring that sense of humanity,
which was really what Star Trek was about.
[McFadden] And so Walter Koenig became an unwitting ambassador for peace,
right from the first episode of season two.
I do not understand.
Gene felt, "If we're gonna survive,
we have to learn to work with our enemies."
There was some social commentary going on,
particularly on issues that occurred at that time,
the late... the mid to late '60s.
The civil rights situation, the Vietnam War...
[McFadden] But Gene's appetite for the big issues
was causing big issues with NBC.
[Gerrold] Let's put it this way, the network did not love Roddenberry.
He was difficult to deal with.
He had no concept in his mind of why it shouldn't be the way he saw it.
If there is a truism in television, it is that no successful show
has ever given a network exactly what it wanted.
[McFadden] In fact, Roddenberry was giving NBC exactly what it didn't want.
"A Private Little War" is all about the hopelessness of Vietnam.
If this planet is to develop the way it should,
we must equalize both sides again.
Jim, that means you're condemning this whole planet to a war that may never end.
It could go on for year after year, massacre after massacre.
All right, Doctor!
Obviously about Vietnam.
We were the only show that ever talked against Vietnam.
NBC didn't like it.
[McFadden] But a much bigger fight was in the cards.
There was some concern that the show might not be renewed.
[McFadden] Fans were aghast.
None more so than...
Bjo Trimble and and John Trimble.
[McFadden] And they had a question for the creator of their favorite TV show.
"Is there something we can do?
Perhaps we could organize a letter campaign."
[McFadden] Gene saw an opportunity to marshal his troops against NBC.
He was girding for a fight, and he wanted to have
as much public support behind him and the show as possible.
And so the letters started coming in, and then this thing balloons.
[McFadden] With Star Trek seemingly on life support,
thousands of fans picketed NBC, demanding they not pull the plug.
We got a million letters.
[McFadden] A million letters was one thing,
but with production costs approaching a similar number,
fan fury wasn't enough.
It was much more expensive than the average show.
They were trying to shoot half a science-fiction movie every week.
[McFadden] The financial pain was unbearable for Desilu.
They were now making the two most expensive shows on TV.
It was actually a tie between Star Trek and Mission: Impossible.
[Gilbert] Star Trek and Mission: Impossible
were so costly to produce that they couldn't make up the money
that it was costing to produce them.
[McFadden] With Star Trek now one of the most expensive shows on the air,
Desilu had a mountain to climb with every episode.
Lucy's big gamble, Lucy's big risk did break the studio. It did break Desilu.
[McFadden] But here to help was a studio that knew a thing or two about mountains.
Paramount didn't have a real presence in the television industry.
[McFadden] But they really wanted to.
Because now that old wall between movie and TV has come down,
and all the big movie studios are getting into content creation.
[McFadden] So Paramount decided to shop around for a studio.
And they didn't have to look far.
Right next door, here is Desi Lou. Physically next door.
[McFadden] And Desilu was ripe for the picking.
Paramount makes them a plum offer.
[McFadden] Even though it was a sweet offer,
Lucille Ball was reluctant to take it.
The day she was supposed to sign the contract, she ran away.
And they found her in Miami Beach.
That's how torn she was
because this was the studio that she and her husband built,
and it's all she had left of her marriage
[McFadden] But ultimately, this was an offer she couldn't refuse.
Tears in her eyes, she signed the contracts,
and she flew back and cut the ribbon, merging the two studios.
[McFadden] But no sooner had Lucy cut the ribbon
than Paramount began cutting something else.
And then the first thing Paramount did was cut the budgets.
They slashed everything across the board.
[McFadden] On top of increasing budget constraints,
Gene Roddenberry found himself falling out of love...
with his own show.
[laughs] What is it?
What is it? Why, lovely lady, it's a tribble.
[McFadden] There was trouble, and it had something to do with tribbles.
Roddenberry had been away for a few weeks and he came back.
-[crew laughing] -And he heard laughter
coming from Stage 9, which is the Enterprise stage.
[McFadden] Now, why would people be laughing
during a serious thing like a Star Trek taping?
He went in there, and again a big burst of laughter.
[crew laughing]
The scene where Kirk gets the cargo bay
and all the tribbles bury him up to his neck.
[crew laughing]
The crew couldn't help it.
The take was so funny and Shatner was so funny.
[McFadden] But to Gene, this was no laughing matter.
Gene never wanted Star Trek to become silly.
This is my chicken sandwich and coffee.
Fascinating.
He didn't want it to feel like they were acting camp.
This project is ruined.
[McFadden] But not everyone saw it that way.
Just ask the writer.
I thought it was pretty good.
I set out to write the very best Star Trek I knew how to do.
[McFadden] And the episode did connect with a broader audience.
"The Trouble with Tribbles" is a very different episode.
Very carefully contrived.
Instead of saving the galaxy this week,
Kirk's problems are the minutia of everyday life,
which is how most of us live life.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a ship to tend to. Au revoir.
[McFadden] Star Trek was exploring new directions,
and Gene wasn't happy to find his writers dancing to a different tune.
And Roddenberry said, "I can't let Star Trek become like Lost in Space."
Moisture! I need moisture!
[McFadden] So he called in his showrunner to course-correct,
but Gene Coon wasn't exactly receptive.
Gene Coon said, "If I can't run the show, I'm walking."
[McFadden] However, Gene wasn't going to let
one of Star Trek's most creative voices just walk out the door.
The original series wouldn't have been what it was without Gene Coon.
Everything from Klingons...
Ridiculous.
...to General Order Number One.
The Prime Directive is in full force, Captain?
No identification of self or mission.
No interference with the social development of said planet.
[McFadden] Gene knew that Star Trek was on thin ice with the network,
so he struck a deal with his other Gene.
So Roddenberry said, "I'll let you out of your contract..."
[McFadden] "But if we get renewed for a third season
you have to come back and write four episodes."
And Gene Coon agreed to that.
[McFadden] Given the problems with NBC and Gene Coon's departure,
many of the writers weren't optimistic about keeping their jobs.
We believed Star Trek was in trouble.
[McFadden] That was until NBC announced...
"Star Trek is coming back next year."
[McFadden] And no one was happier
than the fans who had written in to save the show.
Really, the point of that announcement was to get people to stop writing letters.
You know what? More letters came in saying, "Thank you."
[McFadden] Having survived the kiss of death from the network,
Gene pulled out all the stops for season three with a kiss of his own.
I'm so very frightened.
This is the first interracial kiss on television.
That's the way they want you to feel.
And everybody was nervous about it.
[McFadden] That included the studio heads in New York.
They were worried about the South.
[McFadden] But undeterred, Gene insisted the time was right
for this singular moment in television.
[McFadden] While embracing a chance to make history,
Gene Roddenberry was facing some pushback
[Nichelle Nichols] The head of the studio came out from New York.
Big deal.
I wish I could stop trembling.
When he came out, they said, "Are you coming out because of...?"
He says, "No, I wanna meet Nichelle Nichols.
She's one of my favorite actresses, and I wanna see her.
I wanna meet her."
[McFadden] Surprising even Nichelle herself.
He just adored Uhura.
And that settled that.
[McFadden] And so Star Trek made history
with a simple, if slightly awkward, meeting of the lips.
Where I come from, size, shape, or color makes no difference.
[McFadden] However, there was still no meeting of the minds
between Gene Roddenberry and the network.
And when NBC decided to move Star Trek to Friday night,
Gene drew a line in the sand.
"If you put it at this time slot, I'm gonna step back.
I'm not gonna be as involved as I was."
He drew a line in the sand like Picard would do later on.
This far, no further!
But they still did it.
And said, "Well, okay, they called my bluff. I'm out of here."
[McFadden] NBC had drawn its own line in the sand around ratings.
And if you didn't get a 30 share, as big as that was,
you faced possible cancellation.
[McFadden] So with Star Trek stuck in the gallows of Friday night...
That's date night.
[McFadden] ...Star Trek's ratings suffered.
And so that made it more inviting for NBC to wanna cancel the show.
[McFadden] Thus, after a lackluster third season...
[Nemecek] Here's Star Trek being canceled, 1969.
The last episode airs 47 days before Apollo 11 lands on the moon.
[McFadden] But as they say in the business,
timing is everything.
Star Trek: The Original Series comprised just 79 episodes.
And although no longer on NBC, its television run was just beginning.
Star Trek gained momentum after it went off the air.
It's a really unique situation.
[McFadden] And it was all thanks to Desi and Lucy's revolutionary idea.
The rerun rights.
[McFadden] Which by now had become standard practice.
The model for television in the '60s was syndication,
and that is, once your program had come off of the first-run network,
it would then go into syndication and be sold to local stations.
[McFadden] Freed from the clutches of NBC,
Star Trek went forth to seek out new civilizations...
of viewers.
It was immediately picked up by about 50 stations across America.
A few years later, it was on 100.
A couple years later, it's on 150, then up to 200 by the end of the 1970s.
[McFadden] But as program manager,
Lucie Salhany wouldn't just play it once a week.
We ran Monday through Friday,
and sometimes Monday through Friday and Saturday.
[McFadden] It was as if it was on all the time.
We kept running it and rerunning it.
[McFadden] This shocked everyone.
Gene used to tell the story of how the ratings people
come running in to the suits at Paramount TV and say,
"My God, you've got the perfect show!
Look at this, it's hitting all the demos, everything we want to hit!
It's getting to the right audience!"
[McFadden] And the name of the show was...
"Star Trek? Oh, we canceled it last year."
[McFadden] As the number of stations that carried Star Trek grew,
so did Paramount's profits.
Paramount was going, "Oh, my God, we've got this moneymaker here."
[McFadden] So much so that secondhand Star Trek
was proving more valuable than brand-new TV shows.
The ratings are actually better, and it continued to grow,
and people are watching the show now
for the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh time.
[McFadden] Redefining how television worked for everyone.
And if somebody loves this show,
they're just gonna keep watching this thing.
[McFadden] But it wasn't just old fans who flocked to Star Trek.
[Tenuto] Star Trek captures a whole new audience.
Even when they were up to their fifth and sixth reruns,
Star Trek was pulling in ratings of 375,000 people,
beating first-run network television shows.
[McFadden] Star Trek became one of the first entertainment properties
to transform from a show to a show-of-force.
The very first Star Trek convention in New York, 3,000 show up.
It's on the front pages of Variety. It's in TV Guide.
It's in the New York papers.
It makes the term "Trekkie" a household word.
[McFadden] And it stars began a legacy
that would define their careers and their lives.
When I look at all the fans
and the people that I talk to in signing autographs,
it's just amazing to me what an impact it's made on so many people.
I'm just so proud of that, I can't tell you.
It sounds funny for saying this, but it's never been canceled.
We were just off longer than we wanted to be. [laughs]
[McFadden] Star Trek's popularity stems from Roddenberry's revolutionary take
on a genre, leading to an epic franchise that's showing no signs of slowing down.
But without the bravery and determination of Lucille Ball,
who defied Hollywood and expectations,
well, Star Trek probably wouldn't exist at all.
So she's the hero behind Star Trek. She deserves that credit.
Lucy took a risk on two TV pilots, Mission: Impossible and Star Trek,
that wind up being the two huge franchises
in Paramount's back pocket that in some years
were the two franchises, especially Star Trek,
that kept the whole damn studio afloat.
[McFadden] But back in 1969, the studio was in a bit of a quandary.
Having killed its golden goose,
Paramount was left wondering how it could be resurrected.
What do you do with that? Do you pull all those actors back?
I mean, what would that take?
"Do we do a movie? Do we do a TV movie?
Do we launch a season with a TV movie?"
[McFadden] The answer to that was destined to be... drawn out.
[theme music playing]