An Interview with Fred Freiberger

Interviews by Fans
Title:
Interviewer:	Mike Clark and Bill Cotter for Starlog
Interviewee:	An Interview with Fred Freiberger
Date(s):	October 1980
Medium:	print
Fandom(s):	Star Trek: TOS
External Links:	An Interview with Fred Freiberger, part one An Interview with Fred Freiberger, part two
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An Interview with Fred Freiberger was a two-part interview in Starlog #39 and #40. The first part had a Star Trek: TOS focus and the second part on Space: 1999 and the challenges of producing a TV series in England.

first page of the first half of the interview

Parts of this interview were reprinted in B.A. News #55 (February 1993) and in Beyond Antares #39 (February 1981).

David Gerrold, a long-time regular columnist for Starlog, replied to this interview in Starlog #41 in a column in such a way that caused several fans to write letters in response. See excerpts below. The entire letter is here.

D.C. Fontana personally responded to this interview in a very detailed, lengthy letter to Starlog #41 in which she systematically refutes nearly every statement made by Freiberger. She provides detailed dates, page numbers, and more. Several short excerpts are below. The entire letter is here.

Gerry Anderson also replied in a long letter about Freiberger's remarks about Space: 1999. See Starlog #42.

Some Topics Covered In Part One

• taking over as the producer of Star Trek: TOS in its third and final season
• his disdain for David Gerrold ("amateur") and D.C. Fontana ("unprofessional" and "strange girl")
• his views on some fans' complaints about the lack of people of color on the show
• how Roddenberry wanted to hire him in the very beginning, but Freiberger told him he'd have to wait six weeks until he got back from a European vacation; Roddenberry hire Gene Coon instead

Excerpts from Part One

[taking over the show from Roddenberry]:

FF: My agent brought me up to Gene's office, and Gene said he would like me to produce the show. John Meredyth Lucas had produced it the second season and I assumed Roddenberry wanted to change personnel every year. Perhaps he got freshness of thought; I don't know. Gene said, "Would you write a script so we can see what you can do?" l said, "Gene, I've got a lot of credits as a writer and I don't audition scripts. I'm not up here to audition as a writer. I'm here as a producer." I think Gene appreciated that point of view and hired me to do the show.

SL: Some people believe that NBC hired you, instead of Gene.

FF: Anybody who knows Gene Roddenberry has got to be crazy to think that anybody could make him do anything he doesn't want. I watched him in operation with the network, the heads of the net work, and he intimidated them! They didn't intimidate him. So that statement is a fabrication on somebody's part.

SL: Was Gene Roddenberry active on Trek's third season?

FF: Roddenberry had very little to do with the third year. He was too busy; he had all sorts of personal things going for himself. If there was a problem, I'd call him and he'd come over very quickly. Roddenberry was an excellent businessman, involved in many areas, like fan mail, the merchandising. . .all that. Roddenberry is one of the few creative people who is also a good businessman. So if there was anything at fault, it would certainly be my responsibility.

SL: What were your priorities as the new producer?

FF: The ratings on the show were not sufficient to keep it on the air. The Trekkies and the fans, God bless 'em, created such a fuss that NBC put the show on again for a third year. The ratings were the same all the time. Sometimes a show would go a little higher, some of them would go a little lower.

SL: Even in the Friday night, 10:00 p.m. slot, the ratings were the same.

FF: Yes. Star Trek became the legend it's become when it went into syndication, airing at 6:00 p.m. or so. Never in prime time. 7:00 p.m. maybe would have made it because that's really not prime time yet. The problem i was facing was how to broaden the viewer base. . .do a science-fiction show but get enough additional viewers to keep the show on the air. I decided to do what I would hope was a broad canvas of shows, but I tried to make them more dramatic and to do stories that had a more conventional storyline within the science-fiction frame. Now, if some science-fiction fans didn't like it because it went too dramatic,.. [I'm] guilty. That was deliberate.

SL: How was the third season budget compared to the budgets for seasons one and two?

FT: The third year, the licensing fee came down from the network, which means they're paying us less money. The studio then came down on whatever their budget was for Star Trek. In addition to this, the stars got a raise. This meant I had even less money to go with. So, naturally, the special effects got cut down... .your sets too. It meant that about every fourth program had to be done exclusively on the Enterprise.

[regarding the script writers]:

FF: When I went on Star Trek, Roddenberry, who had thought the show was dead after the second season, had given out 17 story assignments... for whatever reason. I honored those assignments, two of which were for Dorothy Fontana and a lot for writers who had already written for the show.

I may have cut off a couple of them because Ihey didn't workout, so let's say there were 15 out of 22 that were not mine. Gene Roddenberry wrote two of the remaining seven. The third one David Gerrold wrote. The fourth one Jerry Bickel wrote. The fifth was done by the late Gene Coon, who was under contract at Universal at the time and could not have his name on his three scripts. His pseudonym was Lee Cronin.

[Freiberger addressed his working relationship with D.C. Fontana]:

SL: Why was Dorothy Fontana not used as story editor on Star Trek's third season?

FF: When I came up to see Gene about producing the show, I was talking to him and a girl knocked at the door, came into the office and Gene introduced me to her; I didn't catch her name. She sat in a chair facing away from me. She would not look at me. Finally, she walked out. I said to Gene, "Who was that strange girl?" Gene said,' 'That was Dorothy Fontana. She was story editor last year." I said, "Oh." We went on to talk and Gene started talking about how we would staff the show. Gene said he'd been talking to a story editor named Albert Aley, who was a friend of mine—a very competent guy. Gene also said, "Of course, I'm not gonna foist anybody on you. You get whoever you want." I said, "Well, I've been thinking of Arthur Singer."

SL: Did you suggest Dorothy for the job at any time?

FF: No. That girl may have thought I was responsible for her not working; I don't know. I didn't ask Gene why he didn't suggest her for story editor because I knew John Meredyth Lucas was available. I assumed he probably just wanted to change staff every year.

SL: What about Dorothy's scripts?

FF: Two of the 17 assignments were for Dorothy. She came in with one story ("The Enterprise Incident"). The story, dramatically, I felt, didn't work. I wanted to get dramatic stories. There were some very good elements in it. She probably had a better grasp of Spock's character than I did. One of the things I really wanted to do with Spock's character was to explore the areas Gene had built into the character about a Vulcan father and an Earth mother, which I didn't see too much of. He was just playing that cool guy all the time from what I saw. I wanted to use the other aspects of the character... which were not germaine [sic] to her [Fontana's] script. So we kept working on trying to get her to rewrite that script. She was very resistant. She was not at all cooperative. She wrote it and then we rewrote the script... extensively. Now she had a choice. If she didn't like what was there, she could use a different name, which is a procedure the Writer's Guild has set up for writers who feel this way. She didn't have to put her name on it. I'm not putting her down as a writer. She's a pretty good writer. I'm talking about professionalism. So we rewrote the script, and I think we got pretty good reactions on it.

SL: What about Dorothy's second assignment?

FF: Now, she had assignment number two. We were desperately trying to get it. We were picked up late for the third season, and she was told, 'We need it, please, quickly.' She disappeared. We couldn't find her. We checked with everybody. I called Gene Roddenberry. We finally got to her agent, and I told my story editor, 'You tell her agent if we don't get her back here, this assignment's gonna be vacated!' Her agent told us she went to Hawaii! We said to get her back. We finally had to vacate that assignment to another writer. I called Roddenberry and said, 'We can't be the victims of this kind of non-professionalism.' And he said, "Okay, let her go."

[Freiberger addressed his working relationship with David Gerrold]:

SL: Could you tell us about David Gerrold's script, "The Cloud Minders?"

FF: Gerrold called one day and said he'd like to bring in a story. I didn't know him, but Bobby Justman said, "This is the guy who did 'Trouble with Tribbles'." I said, "Gee, let's have him in." He came in with a story and I liked the concept very much... and we gave him the assignment. He wrote the story, and my story editor, Arthur Singer, said, "Cut him off. Terrible. Amateurish job." I said to Bobby, "How many credits has this guy had?" Bobby says he thinks the only other show he wrote that was produced was the 'Tribbles'. I said, "Well, he is kind of an amateur, but let's try to work with him." Again he came in. Gerrold talks about that brilliant thing he did... how Kirk stood by and let everybody solve their problems. That's basically a violation of everything dramatic in any of my training in terms or doing a series. Anyway, he brings in the script again, and if I can recall my story editor's words.. .it was "a dull, polemical tract and boring philosophical discourse—" .He said, "Cut him off." I said, "No, let's work with him. He did that other show." So Gerrold did another version, which, in our opinion, was still very bad. Both Bobby Justman and my story editor said, "Why waste any more time?" I said, "Let's go with him, "and pulled in Ollie Crawford. I figured if I put a good dramatic writer together with a kid who had a good science-fiction concept, it could work.

Ollie worked with him. Finally, it didn't work out. We brought in Margaret Armen who did the final script. It never came out as well as... it's one of those concepts that I felt was just wonderful... just didn't work out all the way.

[Freiberger addressed the criticism about the lack of people of color in the show]:

FF: Nonsense. The second or third show I did starred Frances Nuyen, who is an oriental ("Elaan of Troyius"). We did "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," about racial prejudice. Sticking to this racial thing, if we were going to other planets, to see black people up there would be kinda nutty, right? We would see green or blue. It wouldn't be see science fiction if they were black. If you're talking about a show where you have six or eight format characters, you're talking about putting some guy who is black in a Star Trek uniform in the background somewhere? A part that has some meaning, that's something else again. Fred Williamson was one guy who made his first TV appearance on Star Trek ("The Cloud Minders").

SL: Why was a black actor not used on "Let that Be Your Last Battlefield"?

FF: We wanted to use a black actor and we had continual discussions with the makeup department. Bad enough to get the minstrel effect on a white guy with the black makeup, but they said they'd go crazy and it would look terrible if we had a black guy and tried to put white makeup on him. I would really look like a clown situation.

Star Trek went off over 10 years ago, right? At the time, it was anathema for a white man to kiss a black woman. I did a show in which we had Michael Dunn ("Plato's Stepchildren"). These people on a planet were so decadent they had no way amusing themselves, so they were going to humiliate Kirk. We had Uhura, and somebody would be forced bv these aliens to kiss her. We said, "Gee, it would be interesting to have Spock do that." But l said, "God, that's all we need is for everybody to say we didn't have the guts for a white man to do it!" On the other hand, we wondered about getting past NBC's standards and practices department. We said, "To hell with it... we'll have Kirk do it." And, of course, Shatner was delighted. And we did the scene. As Kirk, he said, "It's not that I don't want to do it," he was just resisting to beat those guys.

Excerpts from D.C. Fontana's Response Letter

The whole incident he relates [regarding the meeting in Roddenberry's office] is quite unreal. I was not in the habit of dropping into Gene's office, except on business, in the third season. Further, even if I had dropped in for some reason, I would never have interrupted what was obviously a meeting Gene was having with someone else. If at any time, during any meeting, Mr. Freiberger felt I was paying more attention to Gene than to him, perhaps it is because when Gene Roddenberry talks, one listens. I do admit that, during script conferences. I have a habit of keeping my head down—because I am frantically scribbling notes on the suggestions and changes producers are making and I am also assessing where and how these will work into the script. If that is a fault, I am sorry, but it's how I work.

I freely invite the STARLOG interviewers to examine the Files on these scripts which are in the UCLA Television library. They will find all the memos and work drafts and final drafts of all the scripts there, if those files have been preserved as I've been told they were. Or, if they would like access to my personal files, I also freely offer that.

One last word, in reference to Mr. Freiberger's charge that I have been bumrapping him. The only thing I have ever said about Mr. Freiberger and the third season of Star Trek is that, aside from "The Enterprise Incident." I didn't see any episodes of the third season, so I have no comment to make on it. It was the truth twelve years ago, and it happens to be the truth still.

Excerpts from David Gerrold's Response Column

Now, look at "The Cloud Minders"— it's just not cut from the same cloth. Its flaws are symptomatic of what was wrong with all of Star Trek's third season; whatever idea may have been present in the original concept, it was ignored in favor of the usual TV porridge of duck-billed platitudes and glittering generalities. The story was trivialized and the piece of truth at the core of it never had a chance, because the real problem in the story—the lack of communication between the two warring factions—was never dealt with at all.

I don't write for television any more. I got "Cloud-Minder-ed" once too many times. The heartache isn't worth the money. I doubt that there's much room in television these days for the serious writer—and because of that, American television has become a cultural disaster area. I believe that a large part of the problem is that too many of the people who must make the decisions about what will or will not be shown on American television are not writers themselves, have never written a story, and are so removed from the creative process, so unfamiliar with the responsibilities of the craft that they are incapable of recognizing a good story unless it has a rating attached. These are the non-writers and they're telling the writers what stories they may or may not tell. And this is why the serious writers are refusing to work for them.

The non-writer doesn't always understand the relationship of a writer to his craft—but a writer's work transcends being merely an expression of his identity. Very often, it is his sole purpose in life: his reason for existing. This isn't true of every writer—it's only true of the ones who care; but it's the ones who care whose work is truly worth paying attention to.

I will say it simply: when the people you at writing for won't let you be as good as you want to be, as good as you know you can be—then it is time to stop cooperating with them in the process of your own destruction as an artist.

A writer has only so much energy, so much writing time—he has to make the best use he can. I will not waste my time. I will not cooperate with the producers of mind-numbing twaddle that serves no purpose other than to fill up the spaces between commercials—it is chewing gum for the commercials—it is chewing gum for the mind, it deadens the soul and ultimately it works to destroy the viewer's ability to recognize and appreciate the wider and more beautiful horizons of this amazing universe.

Bitter? You bet.

Television is the most powerful medium for communication ever invented in the history of the human race, and we're using it to sell sex, violence, insecurity and denture adhesives.

Fan Reaction

Responses to the Interview, and to David Gerrold's Editorial

... David Gerrold said that Mike Clark and Bill Cotter were inexperienced or were playing a classic game of "Let's you and him fight." Exception an apology from the editor and publisher is incredible. They would not have run the Freiberger interview if they didn't feel it was good. Howard Zimmerman staled ihat Gerrold "has license lo cover the SF world as well as ihe world at large". With this in mind, why does Gerrold try to protect his image and accuse others of wrong doing?

... I found it rather appealing that in STARLOG #39 interview with Fred Freiberger, he and David are at odds with each other. I think it childish that two grown men should verbally or on paper criticize or rebuke each other. Perhaps Gerrold had his reason to take his pot shot at Freiberger in his book. Regardless, it reveals Gerrold's total lack of professionalism when it comes to criticism. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions and both men, as talented as they are, should respect each other despite their differences of opinion

I have complete faith in David Gerrold as a writer, especially after reading Yesterday's Children. However, I think he is digging a hole too deep to climb out of. Taking the defensive, he has lowered himself to taking cheap shots such as telling us who didn't like Freiberger among the Star Trek cast. The overall results of the interview were nothing to be ashamed of for either Freiberger or Gerrold. I agree with Mr. Zimmerman that the interview merely reflects the interest of the readers. Maybe there is friction between the two men, but if there is, I don't want to hear about it and 1 don't think I'm alone on this. There are too many other good things to write about than this petty defensive bitching.

... I think that David Gerrold's November column was a disgusting breach of professionalism that should not be tolerated. His immature and bitter attacks, and his totally unnecessary use of profanity, has embarrassed and offended every member of the SF community. I cannot stand idly by while such a fine publication as Starlog is dragged down to the depths of a cheap supermarket scandal sheet. I request that Gerrold's column by permanently dropped from the pages of your magazine.