Gene Roddenberry

Early life and career

Eugene Wesley Roddenberry Sr. was born on August 19, 1921, in his parents' rented home in El Paso, Texas, the first child of Eugene Edward Roddenberry and Caroline "Glen" (née Golemon) Roddenberry. The family moved to Los Angeles in 1923 after Gene's father passed the civil service test and was given a police commission there. During his childhood, Roddenberry was interested in reading, especially pulp magazines, and was a fan of stories such as John Carter of Mars, Tarzan, and the Skylark series by E. E. Smith.

After completing high school in 1939 at Franklin High School in Highland Park, Los Angeles, Roddenberry majored in police science at Los Angeles City College, where he began dating Eileen-Anita Rexroat and became interested in aeronautical engineering. He obtained a pilot's license through the United States Army Air Corps-sponsored Civilian Pilot Training Program. He enlisted with the USAAC on December 18, 1941 and married Eileen on June 13, 1942. He completed training on August 5, 1942, and was then commissioned as a second lieutenant.

He was posted to Bellows Field, Oahu, to join the 394th Bomb Squadron, 5th Bombardment Group, of the Thirteenth Air Force, which flew the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. On November 15, 1942, the unit flew to Viti Levu in Fiji, where they patrolled the seas surrounding the island. A short time later Roddenberry and his unit was assigned to Espiritu Santo. During this time, Roddenberry initially served as a B-17 copilot and then as a first pilot.

On August 2, 1943, Roddenberry was piloting B-17E-BO number 41-2463, nicknamed "Yankee Doodle," when the plane had a malfunction during takeoff. He attempted to abort the takeoff but the B-17 was unable to stop and overran the runway by 500 feet (150 m) and crashed into trees, crushing the nose and starting a fire as well as killing two men: bombardier Sgt. John P. Kruger and navigator Lt. Talbert H. Woolam. The official report absolved Roddenberry of any responsibility. Roddenberry spent the remainder of his military career in the United States and flew all over the country as a plane crash investigator. He was involved in a second plane crash, this time as a passenger. In all, Roddenberry flew 89 combat missions and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal.

In 1945, Roddenberry began flying for Pan American World Airways, including routes from New York to Johannesburg or Calcutta, the two longest Pan Am routes at the time. Listed as a resident of River Edge, New Jersey, he experienced his third crash while on the Clipper Eclipse on June 18, 1947. The plane came down in the Syrian Desert, and Roddenberry, who took control as the ranking flight officer, suffered two broken ribs but was able to drag injured passengers out of the burning plane and led the group to get help. Fourteen (or fifteen) people died in the crash; eleven passengers required hospital treatment (including Bishnu Charan Ghosh), and eight were unharmed. Roddenberry resigned from Pan Am on May 15, 1948, and decided to pursue his dream of writing, particularly for the new medium of television.

Career as full-time writer and producer

Early career

Roddenberry was promoted to head writer for The West Point Story and wrote ten scripts for the first season, about a third of the total episodes. While working for Ziv, in 1956, he pitched a series to CBS set aboard a cruise ship, Hawaii Passage, but they did not buy it, as he wanted to become a producer and have full creative control. He wrote another script for Ziv's series Harbourmaster titled "Coastal Security" and signed a contract with the company to develop a show called Junior Executive with Quinn Martin. Nothing came of the series.

He wrote scripts for a number of other series in his early years as a professional writer, including The Jane Wyman Show, Bat Masterson and Jefferson Drum. Roddenberry's episode of the series Have Gun – Will Travel, "Helen of Abajinian", won the Writers Guild of America award for Best Teleplay in 1958. He also continued to create series of his own, including a series based on an agent for Lloyd's of London called The Man from Lloyds. He pitched a police-based series called Footbeat to CBS, Hollis Productions, and Screen Gems. It nearly made it into ABC's Sunday-night lineup, but they opted to show only Western series that night.

Roddenberry was asked to write a series called Riverboat, set in 1860s Mississippi. When he discovered that the producers wanted no Black people on the show, he argued so much with them that he lost the job. He also considered moving to England around this time, as Lew Grade wanted Roddenberry to develop series and set up his own production company. Though he did not move, he leveraged the deal to land a contract with Screen Gems that included a guaranteed $100,000, and became a producer for the first time on a summer replacement for The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show titled Wrangler.

Screen Gems backed Roddenberry's first attempt at creating a pilot. His series, The Wild Blue, went to pilot, but was not picked up. The three main characters had names that later appeared in the Star Trek series: Philip Pike, Edward Jellicoe, and James T. Irvine. While working at Screen Gems, an actress, new to Hollywood, wrote to him asking for a meeting. They quickly became friends and met every few months; the woman was Majel Leigh Hudec, later known as Majel Barrett. He created a second pilot called 333 Montgomery about a lawyer, played by DeForest Kelley. It was not picked up by the network but was later rewritten as a new series called Defiance County. His career with Screen Gems ended in late 1961, and shortly afterward, he had issues with his old friend Erle Stanley Gardner. The Perry Mason creator claimed that Defiance County had infringed his character Doug Selby. The two writers fell out via correspondence and stopped contacting one another, though Defiance County never proceeded past the pilot stage. The project finally wound up as the NBC series Sam Benedict with Edmond O'Brien in the title role, produced by MGM. E. Jack Neuman took the creator's credit, claiming the character was based on real-life San Francisco lawyer Jake Ehrlich.

Star Trek

When Roddenberry pitched Star Trek to MGM, it was warmly received, but no offer was made. He then went to Desilu Productions, but rather than being offered a one-script deal, he was hired as a producer and allowed to work on his own projects. His first was a half-hour pilot called Police Story (not to be confused with the anthology series created by Joseph Wambaugh), which was not picked up by the networks. Having not sold a pilot in five years, Desilu was having financial difficulties; its only success was The Lucy Show. Roddenberry took the Star Trek idea to Oscar Katz, head of programming, and the duo immediately started work on a plan to sell the series to the networks. They took it to CBS, which ultimately passed on it. The duo later learned that CBS had been eager to find out about Star Trek because it had a science fiction series in development—Lost in Space. Roddenberry and Katz next took the idea to Mort Werner at NBC, this time downplaying the science fiction elements and highlighting the links to Gunsmoke and Wagon Train. The network funded three story ideas and selected "The Menagerie", which was later known as "The Cage", to be made into a pilot. (The other two later became episodes of the series.) While most of the money for the pilot came from NBC, the remaining costs were covered by Desilu. Roddenberry hired Dorothy Fontana, better known as D. C. Fontana, as his assistant. They had worked together previously on The Lieutenant, and she had eight script credits to her name.

Roddenberry and Barrett had begun an affair by the early days of Star Trek, and he specifically wrote the part of the character Number One in the pilot with her in mind; no other actresses were considered for the role. Barrett suggested Nimoy for the part of Spock. He had worked with both Roddenberry and Barrett on The Lieutenant, and once Roddenberry remembered the thin features of the actor, he did not consider anyone else for the part. The remaining cast came together; filming began on November 27, 1964, and was completed on December 11. After post-production, the episode was shown to NBC executives, and it was rumored that Star Trek would be broadcast at 8:00 pm on Friday nights. The episode failed to impress test audiences, and after the executives became hesitant, Katz offered to make a second pilot. On March 26, 1965, NBC ordered a new episode.

Roddenberry developed several possible scripts, including "Mudd's Women", "The Omega Glory", and with the help of Samuel A. Peeples, "Where No Man Has Gone Before". NBC selected the last one, leading to later rumors that Peeples created Star Trek, something he always denied. Roddenberry was determined to make the crew racially diverse, which impressed actor George Takei when he came for his audition. The episode went into production on July 15, 1965, and was completed at around half the cost of "The Cage", since the sets were already built. Roddenberry worked on several projects for the rest of the year. In December, he decided to write lyrics to the Star Trek theme; this angered the theme's composer, Alexander Courage, as it meant that royalties would be split between them. In February 1966, NBC informed Desilu that they were buying Star Trek and that it would be included in the fall 1966 television schedule.

1970s projects

After the cancellation of Star Trek, Roddenberry felt typecast as a producer of science fiction, despite his background in Westerns and police stories. He later described the period, saying, "My dreams were going downhill because I could not get work after the original series was cancelled." He felt that he was "perceived as the guy who made the show that was an expensive flop." Roddenberry had sold his interest in Star Trek to Paramount Studios in return for a third of the profits but this did not result in any quick financial gain; the studio was still claiming that the series was $500,000 in the red in 1982.

He wrote and produced Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971), a sexploitation film directed by Roger Vadim, for MGM. The cast included Rock Hudson, Angie Dickinson, Telly Savalas, and Roddy McDowall alongside Star Trek regular James Doohan and notable guest star William Campbell, who had appeared in "The Squire Of Gothos" and "The Trouble with Tribbles". Variety was unimpressed: "Whatever substance was in the original [novel by Francis Pollini] or screen concept has been plowed under, leaving only superficial, one-joke results." Herbert Solow had given Roddenberry the work as a favor, paying him $100,000 for the script.

Faced with a mortgage and a $2,000-per-month alimony obligation as a result of his 1969 divorce, he retained a booking agent (with the assistance of his friend Arthur C. Clarke) and began to support himself largely by scheduling appearances at colleges and science fiction conventions. These presentations typically included screenings of "The Cage" and blooper reels from the production of Star Trek. The conventions began to build the fan support to bring back Star Trek, leading TV Guide to describe it, in 1972, as "the show that won't die."

In 1972 and 1973, Roddenberry made a comeback to science fiction, selling ideas for four new series to a variety of networks. Roddenberry's Genesis II was set in a post-apocalyptic Earth. He had hoped to recreate the success of Star Trek without "doing another space-hopping show." He created a 45-page writing guide, and proposed several story ideas based on the concept that pockets of civilisation had regressed to past eras or changed altogether. The pilot aired as a TV movie in March 1973, setting new records for the Thursday Night Movie of the Week. Roddenberry was asked to produce four more scripts for episodes, but before production could begin again, CBS aired the film Planet of the Apes. It was watched by an even greater audience than Genesis II. CBS scrapped Genesis II and replaced it with a television series based on the film; the results were disastrous from a ratings standpoint, and Planet of the Apes was canceled after 14 episodes.

Star Trek revival

Lacking funds in the early 1970s, Roddenberry was unable to buy the full rights to Star Trek for $150,000 ($1.24 million in 2025) from Paramount. Lou Scheimer approached Paramount in 1973 about creating an animated Star Trek series. Credited as "executive consultant" and paid $2,500 per episode, Roddenberry was granted full creative control of Star Trek: The Animated Series. Although he read all the scripts and "sometimes [added] touches of his own", he relinquished most of his authority to de facto showrunner/associate producer D. C. Fontana.

Roddenberry had some difficulties with the cast. To save money, he sought not to hire George Takei and Nichelle Nichols. He neglected to inform Leonard Nimoy of this and instead, to get him to sign on, told him that he was the only member of the main cast not returning. After Nimoy discovered the deception, he demanded that Takei and Nichols play Sulu and Uhura when their characters appeared on screen; Roddenberry acquiesced. He had been promised five full seasons of the new show but ultimately, only one and a half were produced.

Vociferous fan support (6,000 attended the second New York Star Trek convention in 1973 and 15,000 attended in 1974, eclipsing the more established array of approximately 3,600 fans and industry professionals who attended the 32nd World Science Fiction Convention in Washington, D.C. in 1974) led Paramount to hire Roddenberry to create and produce a feature film based on the franchise in May 1975. The studio was unimpressed with the ideas being put forward; John D. F. Black's opinion was that their ideas were never "big enough" for the studio, even when one scenario involved the end of the universe. Several ideas were partly developed including Star Trek: The God Thing and Star Trek: Planet of the Titans. Following the commercial reception of Star Wars, in June 1977, Paramount instead green-lit a new series set in the franchise titled Star Trek: Phase II, with Roddenberry and most of the original cast, except Nimoy, set to reprise their respective roles.

It was to be the anchor show of a proposed Paramount-owned "fourth network", but plans for the network were scrapped and the project was reworked into a feature film. The result, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, troubled the studio because of budgetary concerns, but it was a box-office hit. Adjusted for inflation, it was the third-highest-grossing Star Trek movie, with the 2009 film coming in first and the 2013 film second.

Personal life

While at Los Angeles City College, Roddenberry began dating Eileen-Anita Rexroat. They became engaged before Roddenberry left Los Angeles during his military service, and they married on June 20, 1942, at the chapel at Kelly Field. They had two daughters. During his time in the LAPD, Roddenberry was known to have had affairs with secretarial staff. Before his work on Star Trek, he began relationships with Nichelle Nichols and Majel Barrett. Nichols wrote about their relationship in her autobiography Beyond Uhura only after Roddenberry's death. At the time, Roddenberry wanted to remain in an open relationship with both women, but Nichols, recognizing Barrett's devotion to him, ended the affair as she did not want to be "the other woman to the other woman".

Barrett and Roddenberry had an apartment together by the opening weeks of Star Trek. He had planned to divorce Eileen after the first season of the show, but when the show was renewed, he delayed doing so, fearing that he would not have enough time to deal with both the divorce and Star Trek. He moved out of the family home on August 9, 1968, two weeks after the marriage of his daughter. In 1969, while scouting locations in Japan for MGM for Pretty Maids All in a Row, he proposed to Barrett by telephone. They were married in a Shinto ceremony, as Roddenberry had considered it "sacrilegious" to have an American minister in Japan perform the ceremony. Roddenberry and Barrett had a son together, Eugene Jr., commonly and professionally known as Rod Roddenberry, in February 1974.

From 1975 until his death, Roddenberry maintained an extramarital relationship with his executive assistant, Susan Sackett.

Religious views

Roddenberry grew up a Southern Baptist; however, as an adult, he rejected religion, and considered himself a humanist. He began questioning religion around the age of 14, and came to the conclusion that it was "nonsense". As a child, he served in the choir at his local church, but often substituted lyrics as he sang hymns. Early in his writing career, he received an award from the American Baptist Convention for "skillfully writing Christian truth and the application of Christian principles into commercial, dramatic TV scripts". For several years, he corresponded with John M. Gunn of the National Council of Churches regarding the application of Christian teachings in television series. However, Gunn stopped replying after Roddenberry wrote in a letter: "But you must understand that I am a complete pagan, and consume enormous amounts of bread, having found the Word more spice than nourishment, so I am interested in a statement couched in dollars and cents of what this means to the Roddenberry treasury."

Roddenberry said of Christianity, "How can I take seriously a God-image that requires that I prostrate myself every seven days and praise it? That sounds to me like a very insecure personality." At one point, he worked a similar opinion, which was to have been stated by a Vulcan, into the plot for Star Trek: The God Thing. He had a similar disdain for Judaism. Despite working closely with Jewish writers and stars such as Shatner, Nimoy, and Koenig for the series, Nimoy said of Roddenberry, "Gene was antisemitic, clearly," qualifying that Roddenberry was anti-religious, seeing Jews as a religious group, adding "but I saw examples not only of [Roddenberry] practicing antisemitism, but of him being callous about other peoples' differences as well.” As with Christianity, Roddenberry similarly dismissed that there were any deliberately Jewish principles or allusions included in Star Trek, telling a journalist, "You Jews have a lamentable habit of identifying those characteristics in a society that you deem positive and then taking credit for inventing them.”

Before his death, Roddenberry became close friends with philosopher Charles Musès, who said that Roddenberry's views were "a far cry from atheism". Roddenberry explained his position thus: "It's not true that I don't believe in God. I believe in a kind of God. It's just not other people's God. I reject religion. I accept the notion of God." He had an ongoing interest in other people's experiences with religion, and called Catholicism "a very beautiful religion. An art form." However, he said that he dismissed all organized religions, saying that for the most part, they acted like a "substitute brain... and a very malfunctioning one". Roddenberry was also critical of how the public looked at certain religions, noting that when the King David Hotel bombing took place in 1946, the American public accepted it as the action of freedom fighters, whereas a car bombing by a Muslim in Beirut is condemned as a terrorist act. While he agreed that both parties were wrong in their use of violence, he said that the actions of both were undertaken because of their strong religious beliefs.

Decline in health and death

In the late 1980s, it was likely that Roddenberry was afflicted by the first manifestations of cerebrovascular disease and encephalopathy as a result of his longstanding recreational use of legal and illicit drugs, including alcohol, methaqualone, methylphenidate, Dexamyl, and cocaine (which he had used regularly since the production of Star Trek: The Motion Picture). Roddenberry also used cannabis for many years, although its cumulative impact on his health remains unclear. Throughout much of his career, he had routinely used stimulants to work through the night on scripts, especially amphetamines. The effects of these substances were compounded by deleterious interactions with diabetes, high blood pressure, and antidepressant prescriptions.

Roddenberry had a stroke at a family reunion in Tallahassee, Florida, in September 1989. His health declined further, ultimately requiring him to use a wheelchair. His right arm was paralyzed after another stroke in early October 1991, causing him ongoing pain as the muscles began to atrophy. It also caused problems with the sight in his right eye, and he found communicating in full sentences difficult. At 2:00 pm, on October 24, he attended an appointment with his doctor, Dr. Ronald Rich, in Santa Monica, California. He arrived in the building with his staff and began to travel up to the ninth floor in the elevator. As they reached the fifth floor, he began struggling to breathe and was wheeled into the doctor's office, where he was reclined, and a nurse administered oxygen. Barrett was sent for. Upon her arrival, she held Roddenberry while encouraging him to breathe. He suffered cardiopulmonary arrest in the doctor's office shortly afterwards. CPR was attempted with no effect, and paramedics arrived to take him across the road to the Santa Monica Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. He was 70 years old.

The funeral was arranged for November 1, with the public invited to the memorial service at the Hall of Liberty, within the Forest Lawn Memorial Park, in Hollywood Hills. It was a secular service; Roddenberry had been cremated before the event. More than 300 Star Trek fans attended and stood in the balcony section of the hall, while the invited guests were on the floor level. Nichelle Nichols sang twice during the ceremony, first "Yesterday", and then a song she wrote herself titled "Gene". Both songs had been requested by Barrett. Several people spoke at the memorial, including Ray Bradbury, Whoopi Goldberg, E. Jack Neuman, and Patrick Stewart. The ceremony was closed by two kilted pipers playing "Amazing Grace" as a recorded message by Roddenberry was broadcast. A four-plane flypast, in the missing man formation, followed some 30 minutes later. After his death, Star Trek: The Next Generation aired a two-part episode of season five, called "Unification", which featured a dedication to Roddenberry.

Spaceflight

In 1992, some of Roddenberry's ashes were flown into space, and returned to Earth, on the Space Shuttle Columbia mission STS-52. On April 21, 1997, a Celestis spacecraft with 7 grams (1⁄4 oz) of the cremated remains of Roddenberry, along with those of Timothy Leary, Gerard K. O'Neill and 21 other people, was launched into Earth orbit as part of the Minisat 01 mission aboard a Pegasus XL rocket from a location near the Canary Islands.

On May 20, 2002, the spacecraft's orbit deteriorated and it disintegrated in the atmosphere. Another flight to launch more of his ashes into deep space, along with those of Barrett, who died in 2008, was initially planned to take place in 2009. Unlike previous flights, the intention was that the flight would not return, burning up in the Earth's atmosphere. The payload would include the ashes of James Doohan in addition to the Roddenberrys' and several others and was scheduled to fly in 2016 on the Sunjammer solar sail experiment, but the project was canceled in 2014. Celestis rescheduled their launch for 2020, then later rescheduled for June 2022, the next available commercial mission to deep space. A sample of the couple's cremated remains was sealed into a specially made capsule designed to withstand space travel. The flight also contained the ashes of Nichelle Nichols and Douglas Trumbull. The Celestis "Enterprise Flight" was successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida on January 8, 2024, very fittingly on a rocket named Vulcan.

Legacy

In 1985, Gene Roddenberry was the first television writer to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. When the Sci-Fi Channel was launched, the first broadcast was a dedication to two "science fiction pioneers": Isaac Asimov and Roddenberry. The Roddenberry crater on Mars is named after him, as is the asteroid 4659 Roddenberry. Roddenberry and Star Trek have been cited as inspiration for other science fiction franchises, with George Lucas crediting the series for enabling Star Wars to be produced. J. Michael Straczynski, creator of the Babylon 5 franchise, appreciated Star Trek amongst other science fiction series and "what they had to say about who we are, and where we are going."

David Alexander collaborated with Roddenberry on a biography over two decades. Titled Star Trek Creator, it was published in 1995. Yvonne Fern's book Gene Roddenberry: The Last Conversation detailed a series of conversations she had with Roddenberry over the last months of his life. In October 2002, a plaque was placed at Roddenberry's birthplace in El Paso, Texas. The El Paso Independent School District named the 40-foot, 120-seat Roddenberry Planetarium in his honor. The planetarium was recently upgraded and relocated to northeast El Paso. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted Roddenberry in 2007, and the Television Academy Hall of Fame in January 2010.

Commemorating Roddenberry's 100th birthday in August 2021, NASA used its Deep Space Network to transmit a 1976 recording of Roddenberry towards the direction of the star system 40 Eridani (the host of the fictional planet Vulcan). The signal will reach the star in early 2038.

In September 2023, a genus of spiders, Roddenberryus, was named after him. The two researchers stated thet he "inspired generations of kids to pursue scientific careers".

Posthumous television series

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was already in development when Roddenberry died. Berman said that while he never discussed the ideas for the series, he was given a blessing by Roddenberry to pursue it. Berman later said, "I don't believe the 24th century is going to be like Gene Roddenberry believed it to be, that people will be free from poverty and greed. But if you're going to write and produce for Star Trek, you've got to buy into that." In early 1996, Majel Barret-Roddenberry uncovered scripts for a series called Battleground Earth. The project was sent to distributors by the Creative Artists Agency, and it was picked up by Tribune Entertainment, which set the budget at over $1 million per episode. The series was renamed Earth: Final Conflict before launch, and premiered in 1997, six years after Gene's death; it ran for five seasons and 110 episodes until 2002.

Two further series ideas were developed from Roddenberry's notes, Genesis II and Andromeda. After an initial order for two seasons, 110 episodes of Andromeda were aired over five seasons from 2000 to 2005. Tribune also worked on another Roddenberry series. Titled Starship; the production company aimed to launch it via the network route rather than into syndication. Rod Roddenberry, president of Roddenberry Productions, announced in 2010, at his father's posthumous induction into the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame, that he was aiming to take The Questor Tapes to television. Rod was developing the series alongside Imagine Television. Rod would go on to create the two-hour television movie Trek Nation regarding the impact of his father's work.

Awards and nominations

The majority of the awards and nominations received by Roddenberry throughout his career were related to Star Trek. He was credited for Star Trek during the nominations for two Emmy Awards, and won two Hugo Awards. One Hugo was a special award for the series, while another was for "The Menagerie", the episode that used footage from the original unaired pilot for Star Trek, "The Cage". In addition, he was awarded the Brotherhood Award by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for his work in the advancement of African American characters on television. Star Trek, ended in 1969; he was nominated for Hugo Awards for Genesis II and The Questor Tapes. in 1974 and 1975, respectively. After his death in 1991, he was posthumously awarded the Robert A. Heinlein Memorial Award by the National Space Society and The George Pal Memorial Award at the Saturn Awards, as well as the Exceptional Public Service Medal by NASA.