Gene Roddenberry Agreed To Develop STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION in a Fit of Anger and Rage

Star Trek: The Next Generation is considered one of the best Star Trek series that has been produced, and the way it actually came about is a very interesting story.

Star Trek: The Original Series was canceled in 1969, but as the show continued to play on TV with reruns, the show found a massive fanbase. A few years later Star Trek conventions started popping up and creator Gene Roddenberry started showing up for them and connecting with the fan base.

With the popularity of Star Trek on the rise, Roddenberry started playing with the idea of rebooting the show with Star Trek: Phase II, which started production in 1977. That series ended up being reworked and turned into Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979. Now, while the film was successful, the reviews weren't to the studio’s liking and Roddenberry was no longer allowed to work on any of the other Star Trek movies.

However, the studio did want to make a new Star Trek series with a whole new cast of characters and they wanted Roddenberry to lead the charge on that. The problem was, Roddenberry wasn’t interested. In the 2016 book "The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years: From The Next Generation to J. J. Abrams: The Complete, Uncensored, and Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek," Roddenberry admitted that he made agreed to make Star Trek: The Next Generation out of anger and rage.

As you might imagine, Roddenberry was feeling a little bitter about not being able to be involved with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan or its other follow-up films. So, when the studio asked him to make a new Star Trek series he said no. He wanted full control of the franchise and he also didn’t feel like taking on such a big time-consuming project again, especially in his mid-60s. Roddenberry said:

"When Paramount originally approached me to do a new series, I turned them down. I did not want to devote the tremendous amount of time necessary to produce another show. There is only one way I know to write and produce, and that is to throw my energy at the project all the time. So when they began to think about a second series, I said I would not do it. When I turned them down, Paramount had someone else work on a new 'Star Trek.' It had a Vulcan captain and a lot of space cadets who seemed to mainly say, 'Gee whiz, Captain.'"

Paramount hired Greg and Sam Strangis to oversee the project. They previously worked on The Six Million Dollar Man and a reboot of War of the Worlds. The problem was, they admittedly weren’t fans of Star Trek. They didn’t really care about the franchise and said: "It's not like I was a Star Trek atheist, but I was agnostic.” He went on to share his concept for the show, saying:

"My premise was relatively simple: It was a time when, in the future in the existing 'Star Trek,' the Klingons weren't enemies anymore and were allies. I wanted to create Starfleet Academy on a ship. You'd have a lot of younger players and older, senior leaders, and it was going to be the naval academy on a starship. I did some preliminary work and shared it with [Paramount Television executive] Lucie Salhany and whoever else was running syndication then, and it was going along swimmingly ... until I got a phone call that said, 'You're out, Gene's gonna do it.'"

Roddenberry finally ended up agreeing to make a new Star Trek show because Paramount gave it to someone that didn’t care about the franchise! Strangis said that he did eventually see Gene's work, “which mostly consisted of drawings, hardly any written words, that didn't really mean much. And that was it. I was done." All of Strangis’ ideas were thrown out.

Roddenberry went on to say that it was his anger that pushed him to make a new Star Trek series. He said: "I really feared doing it until I got angry enough to try." He just did not like the idea of someone else making another Star Trek project without him.

According to "Star Trek" archivist Richard Arnold, Roddenberry set up a meeting with Paramount to threaten legal action if they moved forward with a new Trek show without him. He left that meeting having agreed to make Star Trek: The Next Generation. Arnold shared:

"Someone said ... that you couldn't get lightning to strike twice in the same place, to which Gene responded, "Damnit, I could!" He walked out of that meeting having agreed to produce a new 'Star Trek' series ... hardly what he had planned going in. He was approaching his 65th birthday and he had intended to retire and spend more time with his son, Rod, who was still very young at the time."

David Gerrold, who was a creative consultant on Next Generation believes that Roddenberry's anger was actually manipulated by the studio from the start. When Roddenberry initially refused to develop the show, they implemented a plan that would push him to actually do it. The studio never intended on making the series that Strangis was brought in to develop. It was all just part of the game to get Roddenberry on board.

In the end, Roddenberry made one hell of a great show with The Next Generation! That’s my favorite Star Trek series.

Via: /Film