Adventure and utopianism: the original series

Abstract

In Star Trek: The Making Of The TV Series (1968) Gene Roddenberry describes his difficulties in getting the NBC network to back the concept of a science fiction show that would reflect his vision of a utopian, egalitarian future. SF was largely thought of by TV programmers as low-budget ‘kids stuff’. The most successful SF show before Star Trek had been Captain Video and His Video Rangers, an extremely juvenile drama with very simplistic ‘black and white’ morality and unexplained science which ran for six years between 1948 and 1954. This series established SF TV as a children’s medium, and was followed by similar productions as Tom Corbett, Space Cadet (1950–2), Buck Rogers (1950–1), Johnny Jupiter (1953–4) and The Adventures of Superman (1951–7). More recent adult-orientated SF shows such as The Twilight Zone (1959–64) and The Outer Limits (1963–5) had achieved some success, but these series were anthologies of different stories. The idea of launching a more ‘serious’ SF show with regularly recurring characters was thought to be both a risky and an expensive one, and Roddenberry’s insistence that his cast would include at least one alien character as a regular member of the Starship crew seemed to some network executives to be a recipe for disaster.

I guess it was the thought that under the terrible restrictions of television it might be a way to infiltrate my ideas, and that’s what it’s been all the time. You see, it’s difficult for people to understand that even in the barren vineyards of television you might do these things. Actually you can do them better because you reach more people with more impact … The power you have is in a show like STAR TREK, which is considered by many to be a frothy little action-adventure — unimportant, unbelievable and yet watched by a lot of people. You just slip ideas into it …

(Gene Roddenberry, quoted in Asherman, 1986, p. 78)