Gene Roddenberry's Own Star Trek Shows Don't Match the Vision Fans Quote

When somebody says Gene Roddenberry would never have allowed something in modern Star Trek, I want to know which Roddenberry they mean. I held his vision, the one we all quote, up against his own shows in the order he made them, and it doesn't match. It changes.

If you've spent any time around the reaction to a new Star Trek trailer, you've seen the sentence: "Gene Roddenberry would never have allowed this." It shows up under Discovery, under Picard and under Starfleet Academy, and there's a whole corner of fandom built on it. I've made that argument too. Back in 2017, I asked whether "In the Pale Moonlight" stomped on Roddenberry's vision. So I'm not here to tell anybody they're wrong for caring about it. But I finally did something I should have done a long time ago: I checked the vision against the man's own work.

The 1966 Star Trek Roddenberry sold to NBC was full of flawed people

The original pitch Roddenberry sold to NBC was an adventure show. He called it "Wagon Train to the stars." And the Enterprise he put on screen is full of people with flaws.

Take "Balance of Terror" from season one, in December 1966. The Enterprise gets its first look at a Romulan, and the Romulan looks like a Vulcan. A young navigator named Stiles, whose family lost people in the Romulan war, turns on Spock. He makes cracks about him and hints there could be spies on the ship, and he means Spock. Kirk tells him: "Leave any bigotry in your quarters. There's no room for it on the bridge."

Think about what that line assumes. It assumes the bigotry is still there, in a Starfleet officer, in the 23rd century, and the job is to keep it off the bridge. By the end of the episode, Spock saves Stiles's life, and Stiles has to sit with that. That's the lesson: people can be wrong, and people can be shown they're wrong.

Court Martial and A Taste of Armageddon show grudges and killer instincts

A month and a half later came "Court Martial." An officer named Ben Finney has hated Kirk for years. Kirk logged a mistake Finney made, Finney got passed over for promotion, and he blamed Kirk for all of it. So he fakes his own death and doctors the ship's records to frame Kirk for killing him. That's a Starfleet officer holding a grudge so long it turns into a plan to destroy his captain and the ship.

Three weeks after that came "A Taste of Armageddon." Two planets have been fighting a war for almost 500 years, and they've made it tidy. A computer simulates the attacks, and the people marked as casualties report to disintegration stations within 24 hours. Kirk wrecks the whole system, and then he gives them the line I think is the actual Star Trek philosophy: "We can admit that we're killers, but we're not going to kill today. That's all it takes."

Hold on to that one. Humans in 1967's Star Trek are killers. They have the instinct. What makes them better is that they choose, every day, not to act on it. And the last writer to touch that script, the revised final draft, was Gene Coon.

Money and trade were part of the original series, including a Roddenberry outline

Then there's money. In season two's "The Apple," Spock jumps in front of a poison dart meant for Kirk, and Kirk is furious with him. He asks whether Spock knows how much Starfleet has invested in him, starts reciting a figure of 122,200, and then drops it. It's a joke, but it's a joke that only works if there's a number. Starfleet keeps books.

This is also the same show where, in "Mudd's Women," the whole plot is Harry Mudd showing up with three women to marry off to lonely miners, and the miners trying to trade for them. That one came out of an outline Roddenberry wrote himself.

So that's the starting line. Prejudice, grudges, money, and people who have to choose to be better. That's Roddenberry's Star Trek in 1966 and 1967. Remember it, because it's about to change.

Star Trek IV dropped money, and Roddenberry's Next Generation guide made it permanent

Jump to 1986 and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Kirk is in 1986 San Francisco, trying to get a whale biologist named Gillian to help him, and she asks him directly whether they use money in the 23rd century. He tells her they don't. This is the same Kirk who was asking Spock what he cost Starfleet 19 years earlier.

Some of you will point out that the movies weren't Roddenberry's, and you're right. Leonard Nimoy directed it. Harve Bennett and Nimoy came up with the story, and Roddenberry's name is on it for creating Star Trek, not as a writer. So I'm not putting that line on him. But look at what he does with it, because the very next thing he makes, he makes it permanent.

Four months after that, on March 23rd, 1987, Roddenberry handed out the writers' guide for a brand new show called The Next Generation. In it, he describes the new crew. They have been selected for this mission, he writes, because of "their ability to transcend their human feelings." Transcend. Kirk's crew had to fight their failings every episode. Picard's crew was picked because they'd already risen above them.

The Neutral Zone put a moneyless future on screen by Gene's rule

In May 1988, at the end of season one, came "The Neutral Zone." The crew thaws out three people from the 20th century, and one of them is a financier who wants to get in touch with his lawyer about his investments. His lawyer has been dead for 400 years. Picard explains how things work now: "People are no longer obsessed with the accumulation of things." They have eliminated hunger, want and the need for possessions.

So by 1988, on screen, money's gone, and it wasn't an accident. Ron Moore, who wrote for The Next Generation and went on to Deep Space Nine, said years later that Roddenberry decreed there was no money in the Federation. Moore thought it was nonsense, and he followed the rule anyway, because it was Gene's rule.

Roddenberry hated Family, which Ron Moore wrote about Picard and his brother

That wasn't the only rule. Roddenberry's best known rule on that show was no conflict between the human crew. No grudges, no feuds, no Finney.

In 1990, in season four, there's an episode called "Family." It's the quiet one right after Picard gets rescued from the Borg. Picard goes home to France, his older brother Robert resents him, and they end up wrestling in the mud in a vineyard. It's one of the best episodes that show ever made.

Roddenberry hated it. Ron Moore wrote it, and he says Roddenberry told him it wasn't a Star Trek episode. There was no action and no jeopardy, and his biggest objection, in Moore's telling, was that brothers like that wouldn't exist anymore: "These brothers don't exist in the 24th century." Michael Piller and Rick Berman told Moore to finish it anyway, and they handled Gene.

Star Trek VI's prejudice offended Roddenberry, though his 1966 bridge had it too

Then the last one: 1991's Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. The crew has to escort the Klingon chancellor to peace talks, and the script has the crew saying ugly things about Klingons, about how they all look and what they smell like. Nicholas Meyer, who directed it, said Roddenberry found that deeply offensive, because in his view humans in the future simply wouldn't hold that kind of prejudice.

Now go back to Stiles in December 1966. A Starfleet officer on Roddenberry's own bridge was saying ugly things about Spock because of what his face looks like, and Kirk's answer was to keep it in your quarters. In 1966, Roddenberry's show said prejudice is something you fight. In 1991, Roddenberry said it shouldn't exist at all.

Roddenberry saw Star Trek VI and within about 48 hours, he was gone, on October 24th, 1991. The last time he weighed in on Kirk's crew, he was objecting to them acting like his own crew from 1966.

Roddenberry's mind changed, and his vision became a brand

So what happened? I don't think anybody needs a villain here. Roddenberry was 45 when the original series premiered and 66 when The Next Generation did. People change their minds over 20 years. His got bigger, and the future he wanted got further away from the one he started with.

There's one more piece worth knowing. A media scholar wrote a paper in 2012 about how Roddenberry became "the visionary" in the first place. The argument is that Roddenberry built that image of himself as the single creative force behind Star Trek back in the 60s, and then Paramount picked it up in the 70s and used it to sell the franchise. So "Roddenberry's vision" has been a brand as long as it's been an idea.

The early Roddenberry had Star Trek's best idea, I'd argue

So back to that comment. If you mean the 1987 Roddenberry, the one with the writers' guide and the rules, you've probably got a point about a lot of modern Trek. But that Roddenberry tried to stop "Family." He might not have let "Balance of Terror" through either. He had problems with the movie that sent off the original crew.

The 1966 Roddenberry made a show where people can carry prejudice, hold grudges, talk about money, and have to decide every single day not to be the worst version of themselves. We can admit that we're killers, but we're not going to kill today. I'd argue that's still the best idea Star Trek ever had, and it belongs to the early version of the man, not the late one.

When you think of Roddenberry's vision, which one do you mean: the crew that has to choose to be better, or the crew that already is?