Star Trek TNG Showrunner Hated His Best Episode
While the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation is filled with awful episodes, there are some interesting diamonds in the rough, including the episode “Conspiracy.” This is the story where Picard discovers alien parasites are trying to take over Starfleet, and the whole episode is filled with paranoia that culminates with some bloody violence and the smoking corpse of a guy whose head was blown off. Most fans consider this one of the best episodes from Maurice Hurley’s time as showrunner, but he actually hated this episode so much that it forever soured his relationship with writer Tracy Tormé.
Tracy Torme
For some context, Gene Roddenberry was the original showrunner for Star Trek: The Next Generation, but by the end of the season (“Conspiracy” was the penultimate episode of season 1), Maurice Hurley was running the show.
He butted heads with several different people while in this position. One of those people was Tracy Tormé, whose “Conspiracy” script was so unlike anything TNG had done before.
Hurley Felt Conspiracy Didn’t Conform With Roddenberry’s Vision
Interestingly, the main reason that Star Trek showrunner Maurice Hurley hated “Conspiracy” so much is that he was very devoted to the original vision of franchise creator Gene Roddenberry. In a later interview with Starlog, Hurley admitted that he personally disagreed with Roddenberry’s “wacky doodle…pollyanish view of the future where everything is going to be fine,” but he still expected writers on the show to “get with his vision…or you get rewritten.”
Because of his desire to only create TNG episodes that met with Roddenberry’s vision of the future, he initially refused Tracy Tormé’s script.
Hurley Was Overruled
Why did the Star Trek: The Next Generation showrunner hate “Conspiracy,” specifically? According to Tormé, Hurley thought the episode was “not Star Trek,” and he went on to offer a litany of complaints: “It’s too dark, it’s got a dark ending, it’s unhappy,” all of which was why he initially turned the episode down.
While Tormé never learned exactly who his benefactor was (he speculated that it might be Rick Berman), he said that “Somebody overruled [Hurley]…somebody loved the script and thought it’s exactly what we should be doing.”
Conspiracy Turned Hurley And Torme Into Enemies
As Star Trek fans ourselves, we have to take Tormé’s side here: “Conspiracy” is good enough to hold its own against some of TNG’s best episodes, and it stands out all the more in a first season filled with episodes that ranged from boring to insanely offensive. From the outside looking in, we would have imagined that Hurley was quite proud to create an episode that so many fans loved. However, Tormé later said that he and Hurley “had a very bad relationship from that point on.”
It All Worked Out For The Best
Because of the beef between these two, it may be for the best that they both left the show after season 2. Before that happened, though, their relationship soured even further: as Star Trek showrunner, Hurley (perhaps still angry over “Conspiracy” getting greenlit last season) made so many changes to Tormé’s script for “The Royale” that the writer used the pseudonym “Keith Mills.”
This kind of petty script-changing caused Torme to leave after season 2, and he declined a personal invite from Rick Berman to return for a third season that would ultimately be run by Michael Piller instead of Maurice Hurley.
While we still think it’s crazy that the Star Trek showrunner hated his best episode, there’s something weirdly fascinating about Hurley’s hatred of “Conspiracy.” This is a guy so devoted to Gene Roddenberry and his vision that he kept pushing away others trying to bring that vision to life. Because of that, he left behind a complex legacy for fans and a show that got infinitely better once he was no longer in charge of it.
