Star Trek Report

Zine
Title:	Star Trek Report
Publisher:	Joseph Stohel
Editor(s):	G.P. Greenley
Date(s):	August 1974
Medium:	print
Fandom:	Star Trek: TOS
Language:	English
External Links:
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Star Trek Report was published August 1974 and contains 18 pages.

cover

sample page

The bulk of the zine is a annotated transcript of Gene Roddenberry's talk on May 21, 1974 at a lecture hall at the University of Utah.

The editor notes that "thousands" of fans were turned away due to space limitations, and that Roddenberry "... was a real thinker, extremely intelligent with his own views on life, and a pleasant voice to listen to."

During the speech, someone called in a bomb threat, which paused, but did not stop the event. This is not the same Roddenberry event that took place at Stanford in January 1975 in which there was also a bomb threat.

You can listen to this speech here.

Contents

• description of going to hear a speech by Gene Roddenberry
• transcript of the Roddenberry's speech (topics: getting his start in writing, optimism about the human race, the possibility that civilization as we know it will collapse but will also rise again, the Vietnam War and social difficulties, and more)
• photos from the show
• description of the blooper reel
• a short description of Star Trek's pilot episode, includes descriptions of scenes cut out of the original where Spock smiles
• short updates on Genesis II, Planet Earth, and various Star Trek events

Some Excerpts from the Speech

Star Trek came on the air and was on the air during those years in which America heroically resisted attack from that Asian colossus, Viet Nam. In which the President and his brother who might run for President were killed, and for good measure, another one trouble-maker named Martin Luther King.

Star Trek was also on the air in which democracy was saved in Saigon, in South Korea, Greece, Chile, Brazil.

In which Japan finally got Pearl Harbor — she purchased it. The years in which Northern Ireland began its religious discussions, airline hijacking was invented.

As you may know, I'm known is some circles as the "great bird of the Galaxy." The man who created a whole new universe, and on the seventh day, he wasn't even tired.

Now, at the other end of the spectrum, it's equally frightening. Not a few circles, such as NBC, and Paramount, and other places, the title is simply "crazy Gene." A nut, probably a Communist, who turned his back on a promising career of writing American westerns, to write science fiction for a group of other nuts.

There is a third area, my wife, who sees me in a third image. She sees me as a traitor to show business. As you know, Majel is an actress. She's fond of pointing out that since she married me, she's gone from starring roles to bit parts.

My mission for coming here is I recently discovered I have an enormous affection for the academic community. I discovered this affection rather suddenly last year, to my great surprise, I found Boston's Emerson College giving me an honorary doctorate. Now, it was not the

honor that I cared for. It's the practical advantage. An honorary doctorate in an academic community. In the hands of a Hollywood producer, it can become an awesome weapon.

"I was an airline pilot who one day decided to become a writer. I turned in my wings, moved to Hollywood, took a look at the competition, and decided on the direct approach — I Joined the Los Angeles police department.

Now I'm fond of saying in lecturing writing classes I did this to get broader life experience. But since we meet here today as fellows, in the academic community, I'll be more honest. I didn't want life experience, I wanted to get an agent to read my scripts. And I figured with handcuffs, and a badge, and a gun that I had an advantage over the other writers.

Within a few months, I'd studied the list of literary representatives in Hollywood. I picked what seemed to be the very best man. I carefully analyzed his travel habits to and from work, and there came a day I found my choice of agents doing forty in a twenty-five mile zone.' "Now, I know that they say agents are cool, inhuman people, but I didn't find that to be so. I had no sooner taken out my ticket book, and my pencil, and happened to mention to this man my aspirations in the field of writing when I found that, all his life, he had wanted to give a chance to a young writer. He was not the least interested in the petty misdemeanor which had brought us together in this point of time.

So I had myself an agent, a good one, carefully preselected. He sent me around to see producers with my stories after giving me good professional advice: 'Get out of uniform, get into a plain clothes assignment." There's a good reason for that. NO producer is going to let a cop into his office. He's got a lot more to hide than a mere agent.

My agent's advice finally worked. I received a chance to write in what was then one of the top shows in talents: "Four Star Theater." If the producer and the staff liked the story I was going to spin to them. "We met in our office, it was a hot August afternoon. As I began to talk, it got hotter. They took off their coats, I took off my sportcoat, and I continued to tell my story. And I began to realize they were listening not with just politeness, but with really rapt attention. What I had forgotten was with my sport coat off, there was a huge .38 in a shoulder holster.

It was a new experience for "Four Star," They had never had a writer come armed to a meeting. I suppose you could say today I was making them an offer they couldn't refuse. Many people ask how I got my start and how Star Trek got its start, and if I were to tell them with a gun, I'm sure they'd get the wrong idea without this whole explanation.

Now, I can feel some questions already forming out there. Why, if you feel this [optimistic] way, did you write a couple of shows called Genesis II and Planet Earth which saw our present society fall and a dark ages occur?

Well, while writing the original Star Trek, I never for a moment stated or considered that it was necessarily a direct outgrowth, an uninterrupted outgrowth of our present civilization with its emphasis on material things.

The collapse of all this does not mean the end of us. Of course not. The human being is an incredible creatures. Knock us down, destroy our civilization, and we’ll get up and build a still better one on top of it.

It’s happened many times. For the Western world, the last time was, I remind you, Rome paved roads a thousand miles in any direction. People speaking the same language from the British Isles to the Middle East. It must have seemed impossible that all that could come to an end. And yet — it did.

And yet, we should not be afraid of that kind of change, because that collapse prepared the way for much more than was lost.

Like churning ocean currents bring nutrients to the surface and new life is caused. It is very possible that our civilization is meant to come and go and do very much the same thing. I give you, for example, the collapse of Rome and the rebuilding which followed spawned treasures far beyond the capacity of Rome, and even Greece. The art of the Renaissance, the paintings, that phenomenon named Shakespeare, Beethoven's symphonies, the incredible explosion of music which persists to this very day. And of course, it led to our present technology, which, in little more than fifty years went from reliable steam trains to putting a man on the moon.

Star Trek, then, and Planet Earth, and Genesis II are stories of optimism about mankind. I'm saying to you that any civilization that can produce fist fights in gas stations over a ten percent cut in petroleum, can't be all bad.

"That probably means that we've reached a critical point of technological over-complexity. If we can't handle the technology we've already got, our society probably can come unglued before we reach the point where we'll be able to blast ourselves into oblivion. That's a very comforting thought. It may mean that we'll get other chances until we finally perfect a civilization in which our power to love finally becomes as great as our power to kill.