Star Trek: The Next Generation Only Exists Because Gene Roddenberry Threw A Tantrum
Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry is undoubtedly a legend, and if you’re going to make a show set in his universe, it would make sense that you would want his input. However, Roddenberry was almost left out of the process of making Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Paramount made him angry enough that he agreed to do the show despite wanting to retire at the time.
Slash Film detailed the process that was taken to get Roddenberry onboard, which was detailed in the 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.
As the story goes, after the original series was canceled, a reboot of Star Trek was underway with Gene Roddenberry in 1977 that eventually became Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The movie didn’t reach massive levels of hype or positive reception from fans, so Paramount decided that new films with the expensive cast from the original series weren’t the profitable decision and that it would start up a new TV series with a new cast instead.
While Paramount additionally approached Roddenberry to make a new Star Trek series, he refused and didn’t want to put the time and effort forward. So, Paramount decided to move on with the process with outthe input of Gene Roddenberry. The studio called up the father-son producing team of Greg and Sam Strangis, best known for The Six Million Dollar Man at the time, to make the series instead.
“I really feared doing it until I got angry enough to try.”
-Gene Roddenberry on creating Star Trek: The Next Generation
It’s fortunate that this version of Star Trek never came to be, as Greg Strangis has admitted that he wasn’t really a fan and was “agnostic” about the franchise, with plans to go for more of a Starfleet Academy-based series with a younger cast and older characters serving as instructors.
However, all of his ideas were scrapped when Gene Roddenberry agreed to do the series.
Strangis has admitted that he wasn’t really a fan and was “agnostic” about the franchise, with plans to go for more of a Starfleet Academy-based series with a younger cast and older characters serving as instructors.
Despite not initially wanting to do Star Trek: The Next Generation, Gene Roddenberry said, “I really feared doing it until I got angry enough to try.”
Roddenberry called a meeting with the Paramount execs to threaten legal action if they moved on and made the show without him, and that meeting led to him agreeing to do the show himself. However, TNG creative consultant David Gerrold indicated that this was pretty much exactly what Paramount wanted.
Paramount Used Strangis To Get Roddenberry
As Gerrold sees it, Paramount was never actually going to make Strangis’ Star Trek show, and the studio just wanted to create a scenario where Gene Roddenberry was irritated enough to just make the show himself.
While studio meddling is usually a bad thing, and the studios certainly aren’t making themselves look good nowadays, this is one of the rare examples where corporate trickery may have led to the creation of one of the best sci-fi series of all time. Of course, you have to kind of feel bad for Strangis, but it’s hard to imagine anyone doing a better job on The Next Generation than Roddenberry.
