Gene Roddenberry Revealed As The Worst Star Trek Fan?
Because Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek, one would generally assume that he was its biggest fan. However, in a 1976 Penthouse interview, he revealed that he was once invited to a Star Trek convention where attendees had to pass a quiz about The Original Series. Roddenberry took the multiple-choice test and only got four questions right out of 100, but he felt that the franchise he had built was about much more than trivia.
Gene Roddenberry Went To A Star Trek Convention
Even though Star Trek: The Motion Picture was still three years away at this point, Roddenberry was already hard at work bringing the film to life. As such, he was busily immersed in watching reruns of The Original Series, bringing him up to speed on the very show that he created. Before that, though, he hadn’t watched the show in years, and that ended up biting him in the aft when he was invited to a convention.
According to Gene Roddenberry, he had previously been invited to a Star Trek convention in New York City, and fans naturally expected him to know plenty about his franchise. Roddenberry claimed that visitors couldn’t even get into the convention unless they could pass a multiple-choice test. He recalled the questions going well below surface level, asking fans to identify things like “the name of Captain Kirk’s brother, Spock’s uncle who saved from death by what man, and all of that.”
Failed The Fan Exam
Again, Gene Roddenberry hadn’t watched Star Trek for “years and years” before he went to this convention, and he failed the very test that was designed to grill his biggest fans. He scored an abysmal four out of 100 on this tricky exam. However, as the rest of the interview revealed, he didn’t fret too much about bombing a test of his trivial knowledge.
Roddenberry Explained He Had A Team Of Experts
The interviewer wisely asked Gene Roddenberry if “by getting involved in such trivia you lose what [Star Trek] is really all about”…in other words, whether the franchise creator had different priorities than the fans.
Roddenberry agreed with this, pointing out that he had the help of a “research service” to keep these little details straight. He praised the research team he had as “remarkable people” who could even calculate approximately how long it would take the Enterprise to reach certain planets at various warp speeds.
Might Have Passed After The Movie Came Out
The Gene Roddenberry who bombed this Star Trek test designed by fans no longer had access to that research team, and he hadn’t watched the show he created for years. Understandably, he was caught flatfooted by a convention that required attendees to memorize all these weird little facts just to celebrate Star Trek. Of course, if he had taken the test again after watching all those reruns while working on The Motion Picture, chances are that he would have done far better.
No Need To Pass A Test To Be A Fan
Fortunately, the Star Trek fandom has learned to welcome fans with open arms, and nobody has to pass a weird trivia quiz to take part in official events like the various official cruises and other major events.
Over the years, the fandom learned to embrace the IDIC idea as it applied to fans and not just the heady philosophical concepts. Once upon a time, though, even Gene Roddenberry wasn’t immune to the worst part of sci-fi fandom: gatekeepers eager for any reason to keep prospective new fans at bay.
