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What could go wrong?

- Gene's ideas about
the future and about man

are wacky doodle.

- Red alert, shields up!

- He was a flawed man.

He had great virtues, he had great flaws.

- I thought Gene was gonna
come across the table at me.

- I saw, first hand, Gene's
battling with the studio.

- Gene was considered somewhat
of a pain in the neck.

He was kind of a blustery guy.

- Gene wasn't the easiest
person to get along with,

but he stuck up for his
beliefs and his concepts.

- There was just a lot of
infighting, it was all chaos.

- There's really scary stuff going on.

There's a lawyer going around,
looking in people's desks

when they're not there.

- I spent the first couple years

just worried I was gonna be fired.

- My agent was the first person to tell

that there wasn't a hope
in hell that this show

would even make it
through the first season.

- This film is about the turbulent years

that marked the beginning of
Star Trek: The Next Generation,

how it got off the ground
and survived the chaos

of the first three years.

I became fascinated with the struggle,

not only the creative struggle,
but the struggle for power.

Those doors are opening up on Stage Six,

where the bridge for the Next Generation

was first constructed.

Power is ephemeral,
it's what is perceived.

In order for power to exist
it has to be acknowledged

by the people who are
involved in the work.

What I began to see was Gene Roddenberry,

the creator of Star Trek, aging
and in diminishing health,

trying desperately to hold on

to his creative vision, his legacy,

and ultimately, his power.

- Roddenberry had an incredible loyalty.

He was very loyal to his friends.

- No, Gene screwed over all his friends

as well as his enemies.

- You know, he had a lot of demons.

- He was very perceptive, had a high IQ.

- Gene was a historical revisionist.

- Creative, and contributive,
and collaborative.

- Very intimidating guy.

- He's good natured.

- He could be a bully.

- But he was a nice man
and he was a generous man.

- Gene had a way of making you

feel really good about yourself.

- He could inspire people to
do better than they believed

they were capable of.

- I just found him a decent man.

- And had a lot of worldly experience.

A bomber pilot in the Pacific, decorated,

Pan Am Pilot, worldwide.

- I had great arguments about philosophy

and all sorts of things.

He was a really remarkable man, I thought.

- Gene was fun.

But then, later, as things
were not going as well,

I think he got somewhat sour.

- There's this 20 year
in the desert for Gene.

He's the forgotten man.

The things that didn't happen

were disappointing and very saddening.

- His wife, Majel, would
go to the conventions

and they would sell memorabilia,
make some money that way.

And that money helped sustain him.

When you're out of work
as a writer in Hollywood,

and you can't find anything,
it's a difficult life.

I guarantee you he had a difficult life

between Star Trek and the first movie.

- We get back together for Next Gen,

and for him it's like he's been called

back out of the desert and
given a position of power again.

- At the time, Gene
Roddenberry was considered

somewhat of a pain in the neck.

He was kind of a blustery guy
who was not very agreeable.

Everybody else forgot him

after Star Trek: The Motion
Picture, this epic disaster.

- Every aspect of it got out of hand.

This was a runaway train.

- He wasn't trusted with anything.

- He had been relegated to
being the Executive Consultant

on the movies.

They paid him very well.

And I think that that
may have been enough.

He had a big corner
office in the Hart Building.

He pretty much spent his days
in correspondence with people

from all over the world who
had become Star Trek fans.

- They gave him this emeritus status

and he was a has been.

- The summer, 1986, a special summer.

Star Trek IV about to come out,

20th anniversary about to happen.

Everything seemed to be
building towards this peak.

The studio had decided to
start developing a new series.

- Without Gene?
- Without Gene.

- The president of the television group

was a guy named Mel Harris.

He called me one day and he said,

"we're gonna do a new Star Trek."

- The studio came to him and said,

"we wanna start a new series.“

- Gene wasn't all that excited about doing

another Star Trek for Paramount.

- And so we created this series,

and Gene went, "whoa, wait, no."

- He saw the studio as an adversary.

- Gene in the studio, it was a war.

It really was.

- Gene says, "no, you're not
doing Star Trek without me,

"it's my property."

Gene had the power.

- They weren't going to proceed.

And he said, "well,
dammit, I could do it."

- Finally, after years
of trying to convince him

to do a new Star Trek series, he agreed.

- He didn't mean to go in
there and end up coming out

with a new series to develop.

He was looking forward to retirement

in just a couple of months.

- Gene agreed, and we had

a very, very, contentious negotiation

with Gene's lawyer from Bullhead City,

by the name of Leonard Maizlish.

- Oh, Leonard.

- Gene's wacky attorney.

- Who, in himself, could
be a movie of the week.

- He was not the nicest
person in the world.

- A lot of people hated Leonard.

- I can recall, one day,

when Leonard was almost
clutching his chest,

and I'm saying "I hope you die."

- I personally never had
problems with Leonard.

- Gene wanted to be the good guy.

So the lawyer got to be the bad guy.

- Leonard was carrying the wrath of Gene

for all these years because
Gene felt he had gotten screwed

on the original series.

- Paramount owns the rights.

There was never any dispute about that.

But Gene Roddenberry is
the creator of Star Trek.

Gene had as much celebrity
as the show itself.

- I actually thought he
was imperative to the DNA

of a successful reboot of Star Trek.

- So, what happens?

- I needed Gene Roddenberry,
and I needed to make a deal.

And Leonard Maizlish knew
exactly where he had me.

Look it, his job

was to represent Gene Roddenberry

and as tough as he was,

he did a hell of a job at doing that.

- We made the deal giving
Gene a compensation package

that was sufficient to
Gene and to Leonard.

Paramount would still own
the property, Star Trek,

but Gene would take his fair
share out, and by the way,

it was handsome share.

- So Gene said yes to doing a series,

and then suddenly he's
startled by his own statement.

- Yeah, I don't think he was
prepared for what that meant.

- And he wasn't a fit man?

- Every weekend, Majel would
pour him onto the train

and send him to La Costa,

the facility where they'd dry him out.

- Because of the drinking,

because of the recreational drug use,

he needed to clean himself up.

Which he did, over the
next couple of months.

As everything was being worked out,

the I's were being dotted,
the T's were being crossed.

- Now it was decided, all right, Gene,

you will assemble your team.

- Does anybody have a
concept at this point?

- No, they had no cast, they had nothing.

- You go back and conceptualize
what this show is.

- Gene brought in, almost
immediately, Eddie Milkis,

Bob Justman, me, Dorothy Fontana.

- People that he had trusted
and relied on heavily

during the original series production.

- So we began to meet at lunchtime

at the Paramount Commissary
in the private room there.

- Everybody in the commissary
would watch us walk in

and walk into the Executive Dining Room

and start whispering.

"There goes a hundred million
dollar deal on the hook."

And it was fun, it was really fun.

- The fans, you would have thought,

would have been Gene's biggest supporters.

Absolutely not.

- I think that a lot of the fans

were very verbal about someone
taking away Captain Kirk.

They were angry because he
didn't have Kirk, Spock, or McCoy

in the new series, and how
dare he call it Star Trek?

- I had done a show
called "Get Smart Again."

Which was off of the Get Smart Series.

And I think there's a big problem

with you trying to recreate
it; it's quicksand.

- When I got the script
to come in and audition

for the Next Gen, I thought, oh my god,

I don't know if this is
something that anybody

should be doing.

Because it was such an
iconic thing, Star Trek,

at this point.

- "Everybody knows, it's
not gonna work," they said.

"You cannot revive an iconic series."

"You cannot replace those guys."

- This had the markings
of just some little seedy.

Oh, really.

- It was both really exciting,

and also there was this
thing in my mind of going,

ooh, are we trying to create or recreate?

- In the 1970s, people
started saying that Gene

was a visionary, when he
had this utopian vision

of the future.

I think that he started to believe that.

And then Next Generation became a vehicle

to demonstrate this utopia.

- I remember that he used to
tell me that L. Ron Hubbard

was a friend of his, and he
went and started a religion.

Gene always thought that,
if he had wanted to,

he probably could have
done the same thing.

- He would go to conventions,

and he loved being the
great bird of the galaxy,

who wouldn't?

He gave college
lectures for years in the '70s.

And tens of thousands
of people would show up

at these lectures.

He was starting to
believe his own publicity.

Isaac Asimov send
Gene a copy of his book,

called "Asimov's Guide to the Bible."

Gene got very interested in
learning more about humanism.

- The research prior
to the Next Generation

led him to have a thesis that,

if not perfection, man was
evolving in a humanist way.

- In the Next Generation,
he tried to impart

his humanistic philosophy.

- Most science fiction
that we experience today

is relatively dismal view

of what the future's gonna be like.

Gene was obsessed with
the idea that the future

was going to be better.

- There was tremendous anticipation

because it was the rebirth

of this phenomenally successful series.

- Barry Diller had this idea
of starting a fourth network.

- And he wanted to take Star Trek

and use that as the
cornerstone of a new network.

We had the commitment
to do the new series.

And we assumed that it would
be a 26 episode commitment.

Well, at the 11th hour,
they cut that to 13.

I can't make the numbers
work at 13; I need 26.

I'm not quite sure what to do here,

but let me go explore
the other three networks.

- It was a science fiction show.

And at that point, in the mid '80s,

there was no science
fiction on television.

- First I went to NBC,
to Brandon Tartikoff.

Well, it was dismissed out of hand.

I then went to ABC, and Brandon Stoddard,

and he thought it was simply a bad idea.

The third meeting was with Kim LeMasters,

President of CBS Entertainment.

And he said, "let's do
it as a miniseries."

So that clearly doesn't work.

It is then, when we
went back, at Paramount,

Lucie Salhany, who was
President of Distribution,

says, "wait a minute, I
can give you 26 episodes.

"Why don't you produce the program,

"we will take it out in
first run syndication?"

Well, nobody'd ever
done a program like that

in first run syndication.

- Tell me what first run syndication is.

- First run syndication is programming

that is sold, basically, market by market,

station by station, on
independent stations,

wherever they wanted to place it,

or on network stations outside
of the so-called prime time,

which is eight to eleven.

So, all of a sudden, we
went from a cornerstone

for the Fox Network,

to this new hybrid for
first run syndication.

And by the way, Gene Roddenberry believed

we were gonna do a network show.

- The studio, I think
it's in their manual.

It tells you that the
Director, and the Producer,

and the Studio are always gonna be

at loggerheads about something.

- Because they have different needs?

- Because they feel that
that's how they can control

the cast, the budget.

- This is a low budget television show.

And it had enormous expectations.

- How did you know that?

- Star Trek has always been
a low budget production.

- And Star Trek always
has enormous expectations.

- Yes.
- I see.

- The first meeting that I went
to in Roddenberry's office,

the big discussion was
whether it would be a one hour

or two hour pilot.

Roddenberry wanted it
to be a one hour pilot,

the studio wanted it
to be a two hour pilot.

And it was a big, blustery, argument.

- The premiere episode, we
have to make a splash with.

And that must be a two hour episode.

- Roddenberry didn't
want to do a two hour.

- I thought Gene was gonna
come across the table at me.

"We're not doing a two hour,

"and I'm not writing a two hour."

And I said, "Gene, quite
frankly, if you do not do this,

"I will bar you from the lot.

"We are going forward with a two hour.

"I don't know who's going to write it."

And now everybody's
looking around the room

and nobody is saying nothing.

I'm looking to my left
where my bosses are,

I'm looking to my right where
the syndication people are.

- It's poker being played right here.

- And nobody is backing me.

Because when I said "I will
lock you out of this lot,

"and I'm not kidding you."

- What are you thinking?

- I'm thinking what if
he gets up and walks out.

I'm screwed.

If this program were not
blessed by Roddenberry,

we would've placed the
franchise in serious jeopardy.

- These millions of dollars are hanging

on his yes to a two hour thing.

And it's more like
tens of millions of dollars.

It's a lot of money.

- All right, so you were bluffing.

- I was bluffing.

- Holy cats.

- And he knew I was dead serious.

- But you were bluffing.

- I was bluffing.

He blinked.

- You play poker?

- Occasionally.

- I was asked to come in, by Gene,

and he said, "would you write the pilot?"

And I brought in the
"Encounter at Farpoint."

So I was writing introduction
of the new Enterprise,

the new crew, the new Captain, obviously.

- Then he says, "I have to
add 30 minutes to the script

because the studio wants
my name on the pilot,

which was a lie.

- Gene wanted Dorothy to
write the two hour script.

She said she couldn't do it.

She said, “I can't, in
less that two weeks."

Gene, on the other hand,

could write very well under pressure.

And he came back the next week
with "Encounter at Farpoint,“

the two hour story,

which introduced the Q character,

who was not in the original
story that Dorothy wrote.

- Q was so totally different.

It was like he was thrust into that story.

I like John de Lancie, I
thought he did a wonderful job.

And Q came back in other stories.

- Right, it has nothing to do with John.

- Nothing to do with that.

But it was like this is not what the story

was supposed to be about.

It was supposed to be about
the mystery of Farpoint

and putting this new crew together.

- He wrote the Q character?
- Yes.

- And fleshed it out another half hour.

- Right.

- And then said it was a
script by Gene Roddenberry.

- Well, that went to arbitration,

and of course it was a split credit.

- What he had done was
he had jumped her credit.

He was now getting half the
residuals for that episode.

And that's in perpetuity.

- Gene did this brilliant job
of turning this one hour story

into a two hour story.

He wrote half of it, she wrote half of it.

- He came back with a script.

And to this day I have no idea
what that episode was about.

But there was no way in the world

I was gonna give any notes,
whatsoever, to Mr. Roddenberry.

- One story that is one
of my favorites about Gene

had to do with the
casting of Captain Picard.

We looked at a whole bunch of people.

And Bob Justman had seen
Patrick Stewart give a class,

or a lecture.

- Bob Justman went by a hallway

where he was teaching at UCLA,

and heard this voice
reverberating down the hallway.

It was Patrick Stewart.

- Patrick Stewart, who was
not Gene's first choice.

In fact, he kind of fought
even reading him at first.

But Bob Justman insisted, so Gene did.

- Bob Justman said "you
gotta meet this guy.

"This is the captain."

And Gene met me and I understood
that it was some time,

some time later that Gene
said, "absolutely not.

"This guy couldn't be more wrong."

- Gene said, “I'm not gonna
have a bald Englishman

"playing the new Captain Kirk."

- And I think he didn't
quite understand the nature

of my background and where
I come from ,

and what I'd done,

except that I was this guy

who had a lot of classical
theater experience

in the background.

But Gene respected that.

- It's final cast, and it's Gene and I,

Rick Berman was sitting there.

I had my vision.

My vision was I want Bill Shatner.

I want a good looking guy
who's young and virile.

And we were down to three actors.

Mitch Ryan was number two.

Roy Thinnes was number three.

And the one that I thought was interesting

was Yaphet Kotto.

- They were all but despairing
of finding a captain.

- This is silly, Patrick
is, by far, the best person

that we've talked about.

And Roddenberry said, "I'll
have him read for the studio,"

and this was John Pike.

He said, "I'll have him read,
but he's gotta wear a wig."

Patrick had a toupee that was in England.

It was FedExed across to Los Angeles,

and it was sent to me in my office.

He went to read, along
with one other actor,

because you never went
with just one actor.

- Patrick did a really good reading,

but he had British accent

and he had a really, really bad toupee on.

And Gene says, "you know,
that number two guy,

"that Patrick Stewart guy,
let's bring him back."

And they grabbed Patrick,
he was on the way out,

he'd already taken his rug off.

“Well, bring him in and
read him bald-headed."

Well, Pat Stewart has one of
the baldest heads in the world.

I mean there is not a hair anywhere.

And he comes in and he reads it.

He nailed it.

And Gene said, "we got him."

And I said, "Gene, he
doesn't have any hair.

"We can't make the Captain a bald guy."

And Gene looks at me

and he goes, "hair doesn't mean anything

"in the 25th Century."

And it was remarks like that

that there was no way you could counter.

And the next thing you know,
Patrick Stewart got the job.

- About two weeks before
we started filming,

I said, "come on Gene," ,

"give me stuff, I want
background and all of it."

And he said, "oh, there's just
one thing I have for you."

And he fished down and
he brought this pile

of Horatio Hornblower books.

And he said, "there he
is; that's your man."

And the rest he left up to me.

He was brilliant.

He didn't tie me down to anything at all

except he said that the nature of the man

is in this character in this book.

- We were having great
fun until December of '86.

And about February, Leonard
Maizlish moved in full time

and things started to go to hell.

- He came on the lot, got his own office,

went into production the first season.

- Even though he was the
Executive Producer's lawyer,

he would hand me scripts,

saying "these are notes from Gene."

But I knew Gene's handwriting

and they were not notes from Gene.

- The writers got a hold of this knowledge

that Leonard Maizlish, who was
not a Writer's Guild member,

was working on scripts.

- Here's a guy who'd never
written a word in his life,

he was telling writers how
to write Star Trek scripts.

- And this is very much
against the Writer's Guild.

- My agent took the stuff tot the Guild,

and the Guild filed a grievance,

and Leonard Maizlish
got banned from the lot.

- But then he kinda snuck back in again.

- We'd go out to lunch, we'd come back,

Leonard Maizlish had snuck
into people's computers.

- I seen that Maizlish
hovering around my room,

opening the door, peeking
through, to see if I was in there.

And I just said, "something I
can help you with, Leonard?"

And he leaped about a foot and a half.

- I think he thought he was
speaking with Gene's voice,

but I don't think Gene ever heard

the way he spoke to people.

- Nobody liked him.

- Gene had these wonderful
relationships with people

who had worked on the original series,

like Dorothy Fontana.

And Leonard was horrible to Dorothy.

And in particular, I
didn't like him.

- Leonard Maizlish was
running around hiring people.

Maurice Hurley, Bob Lewin,

neither one of them came
in knowing Star Trek

and they were immediately
promoted above me and Dorothy.

Why are people being promoted above us?

We're the ones who should
be the show runners,

the producers, here.

- I found him to be an unsavory character.

- He's standing right
next to an open window,

no screen, no anything,

and I'm thinking it would be
so easy to push that bastard

out the window.

It would be so easy.

Say it again.

- David, so do it, go push
that bastard out of a window.

They'll give you a medal.

- I remember there was
this huge screening,

in the Executive Conference
Room at Paramount Pictures,

and all the hitters and
everybody that was important.

And up we put on the big
screen "Encounter at Farpoint.“

Everybody looked at it and
they were visually knocked out

at how stunning the two hour looked.

Because I assumed they were
gonna look at it and go,

"What is this about?

"What in the world is that thing

"that looks like a big jellyfish?"

It didn't really even have an ending.

And it was a smash.

- Did you realize that
the Next generation,

it was possible to characterize it

as Gene Roddenberry's dream of heaven.

- I would never have
thought that, at the time.

But now that we're talking,

with his conception of the future,

and human beings in the future.

And Q, Q is God.

I mean, just look at the character,

look at everything about the character.

- Gene was a well known atheist.

But he invents Q.

- Typical, so typical.

Savage lifeforms never
follow even their own rules.

- As I sit here thinking about
it, it's pretty startling.

God's a character, a
Iiteralized character,

on Star Trek: the Next Generation.

- By an atheist.
- By an atheist.

Very interesting.

- I had never filmed in
Hollywood in my life before,

I'd had no ambitions to film in Hollywood.

I didn't know how to wear these costumes.

I didn't know how to
speak, or move, or sit.

But I would outwork, and
work, and work, and work.

I would always be prepared,
I would know my lines

when I came on set.

- Sir Patrick took the
work very seriously.

And, if we fooled around,
which we were won't to do,

we, meaning the Americans in the cast,

and if he was not in the
mood, he'd let us have it.

- I thought that there was a
lack of concentration and focus

on the set, that people were
taking this far too lightly.

- We would sing and we would dance,

and we would wrestle.
- What?

- Bill, you're acting
like you didn't do this?

- No!
- Oh, Bill.

- Okay, so six of the seven of
you are singing and dancing.

- Maybe not at the same time.

- People did not realize
the closeness that we had.

We did have a long lasting personal,

very intimate, relationship
that developed over 15 years.

This was his final chance,
and he knew it, pretty much,

I think, that this was his last gasp.

Because it is hard to go back

to do something you had
done 20 years before.

He was feeling the need for some support.

And he wasn't getting it
from anybody except Maizlish.

- Once Leonard Maizlish was there

I wasn't even invited to meetings anymore.

Because it was like, okay,

I no longer have input on the show.

Why am I here?

- We keep hearing Maizlish's name.

What was the magic there?

There was none.

- No, but why was he there?

- To help Gene.
- In what way?

- To keep him protected.

- I wouldn't say that he was
the puppet master of Gene,

but Gene was not just having his doubts

about the ability to write,

but he was also having some health issues.

- Gene started to experience
a series of mini strokes.

- And there was one meeting
that the other producers, and I,

and Gene, were in.

Gene got up to turn and he
literally went in a circle

and slammed into a wall.

- Gene's energy level was so up and down,

and Gene's direct activity with the show

was so mercurial.

It was all over the map.

- By that time, Gene was, his
condition was deteriorating,

worse, and worse.

- And people were being
fired left and right.

And screaming matches in the hallway

and all kinds of just
insanity was going on.

- And so the leadership that you needed

from your Executive
Producer was not there.

- We were shutting down, sometimes,

because there was no captain
of the ship, at that point.

- There was a power vacuum?

- Very much so.

- I get a call from Paramount

saying, "come and meet Roddenberry.

"We wanna consider you as a writer

for "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

And I said, "that's a
joke, that's a joke."

But I wanna meet Roddenberry.

Who wouldn't wanna meet Roddenberry?

I was coming off two cop shows.

I was coming off Miami
Vice, very good show.

Equalizer, very good show.

So he gives me the first
episode to re-write.

We pass each other in the
hallway four or five times a day.

He won't look at me.

- Apparently Gene didn't
like what he wrote.

It was probably the first
time we heard the battle.

- And he raises up behind his desk,

this great bird like creature,

and he points his finger at me like this.

And he says, "you don't
know the difference

"between shields and deflectors."

- And that went on for weeks.

- What did that say to you
about what you were confronting?

- He didn't want me, Hurley the writer,

he didn't want me to write me.

He wanted me to write him.

Gene's ideas about the
future and about man

are wacky doodle.

He sees us now in our infancy,

where we just gather and accumulate,

like a three year old in a crib.

"That's mine, that's mine.

"Give me this, you can't have that.

"I need this, I need that."

- He believed that mankind,
in the 24th Century

had resolved all conflict
between themselves.

- That developed between
the first Star Trek

and the second Star Trek.

- Back in the '60s, Gene
wanted to be the womanizer,

and always gets the beautiful woman,

and always punches out the
bad guy, and always wins.

And in 1986, Gene is
not gonna be down there

on the front lines punching,

but he will be the all-seeing
advisor, the wise man.

- Gene's conception on
Next Gen is almost heavenly

in that everyone's at peace.

- It takes away everything
you need for drama,

in Gene's wacky doodle
vision of the future.

- The real trouble in
year one is the dictums,

how to get to get a good script out?

- If you tell a writer that the characters

can't have conflict between them,

you're just cutting his legs off.

- Some writers chafed
against Gene's vision

of a better future where
there was no conflict.

- The essence of drama is conflict.

- There was no evil.

- There's no money anymore.

- There was no jealousy.

- There's no fighting anymore.

- No separate individual goals or ideas.

- We negotiate.

- No tension, what?

- I liked the dramatic constraints
it put on me as a writer.

- Really?

- Well, I had to find
new ways to tell stories.

- When we look at the original series,

there's a lot of conflict
between those characters.

They argue a lot.

The crewman on the Enterprise
are yelling at each other.

- If our people are perfect,

and have no problems or
conflicts between them,

there is no story here.

- We would walk around
in each other's offices

going "I don't know how
to write about that.

"I don't know how to write
about perfect people."

- That was Gene's vision of
Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Take it or leave it,

and work within it or don't.

- The dictums gave the writers
a lot of stress and struggle,

and then, in most cases, Gene
would just take the scripts

and he would just rewrite them.

And these writers were not used to that.

And that was very, very frustrating.

And a lot of writers left.

- The turnover that first
season was 30 writers

and staff members left the show.

The first season of a TV show
with that kind of turnover?

- There was a writer who wrote an episode,

he was a huge Star Trek
fan, he was so excited.

Gene called him to say congratulations,

and Gene told him how great it was.

The next day, Gene came to him
and said, “I'm sorry, friend,

"but we're gonna have to part company."

And he thought, oh my god,
Gene is leaving the show.

And then found out that
the furniture in his office

had been moved into the hallway.

And that's how he found out he was fired.

And he lasted about a week.

- I know that the fans
are always surprised

that this wasn't some
glamorous, red-carpeted,

money's thrown at us, affair.

- On the first year.
- On the first year.

Your trailer was so bad

You didn't wanna go back to it.

We had no air conditioning.

- No bathroom, no wash
basin, no telephone.

- There were those
little Jerry Lewis boxes,

remember, they were on the steel wheels?

The things that
they dug out of some back lot

that probably no one
had been in since 1953.

- You remember those.

- I do, I used to look at them from afar.

Of course you did.

- We were a syndicated
science fiction series.

We were down the status
ladder at Paramount.

- I would go to Rick and
say, "this is how much money

"we've got to spend, per episode."

- They weren't throwing a lot our way,

in terms of any perks.

- If I was in trouble
financially, I could go to Rick,

and then say, "Rick, I need
two million dollars this year.

"Can you find it?"

He said "I'll get it for you."

- I used to go and steal
food from the set of Cheers.

- You mean there was
no Kraft service table?

- Not really.

- And Rick, at the end of
the year, on the numbers.

- We would literally have
sliced tomatoes and Cremora.

- So this made you think what?

Well, you feel like the
illegitimate bastard

In the back lot.

- Gene, at this time in his life,

didn't really care about the
management of television.

It's a sausage factory.

You gotta turn out a sausage every day.

He would come up with a story,

say "this is the story we wanna do."

Then, when that story was written out,

he'd wanna tear it up and throw it away.

"Oh no, I got a better idea."

- Gene would read a script
three days before shooting

and decide he didn't like it.

- If you throw this story away
because this one is different

but not better, the machine breaks down.

Because this has to go to the stage.

And we have to have
something to shoot on Monday.

- Meanwhile, we've had
a production meeting,

everything had been set for this episode.

And suddenly we were
having to make changes.

- So I wanted to leave.

- He said "I'm turning
the show over to you."

And I said, "I'll do
the show if you leave."

And he said, "Majel and I were
thinking of going to Tahiti."

I said, "I'll buy your ticket
and make your reservation."

And he left.

- This trip that they took
had an enormous effect

on the show.

- It couldn't have been a at a worse time.

- And that's where Berman
and I took his idea

and ran with it.

- Rick Berman and Mauri
Hurley were trying very hard

to respect Gene's wishes.

And perhaps they were doing
so a little too literally.

- If in one instance, Gene
said, "no, that should be blue,"

suddenly everything had to be blue.

Gene had intended, fully, to step away.

And he found he couldn't.

I don't think he realized
that things would get

so out of control so quickly.

- Maury got elevated to
the show runner position.

- I was a little surprised
because he had never written

any science fiction in his life.

He had done mostly cop shows.

- People questioned Maury's
ability to run a room.

Maury didn't like the way
certain people took notes.

- I don't really care what people think.

I mean, when I'm doing what
I'm doing, I don't care.

I'm gonna do what I'm gonna
do, and that's the way it is.

- First thing he did is he took Bob Lewin

and moved him to a tiny little
office on the ground floor,

and took all of his power away.

And I didn't like that at all.

I grew up in a show business family,

and I've seen all the
bullshit, and I don't like it.

- The power pull.
- The politics,

and the backstabbing and all that.

- All for?

- For personal power.

- Maury was really trying
to stick with Gene's plan.

And I think there was a lot
of resentment about that, too,

because a lot of people would come in

and they had their own ideas.

And, Gene didn't want anybody
to have their own ideas.

This was his world.

- No writer could come
in and give me an idea

that I would accept, no
matter how great the idea was,

if it broke that concept.

- I wrote this thing called "Conspiracy,"

and I was intentionally
trying to shake things up

and do a different kind of story.

- I was the keeper of the grail.

And nothing was going to change it.

- Maury came back to me and
said, "it's not Star Trek.

"It's too dark, it's got a dark ending.

"It's unhappy, it's," this and that.

And he turned it down.

Somebody overruled him,
maybe it was Rick Berman.

But somebody loved the script
and thought it's exactly

what we should be doing.

But Maury and I had a
very bad relationship

from that point on.

- In that first season,

we had Denise go halfway
through the season

which was just such a screw up.

- Episodes would go by

and I'd maybe say "aye, aye, Captain."

- And she was such a popular character.

- Denise Crosby, clearly,
is not Catherine Hepburn.

But, you know, the
camera really loved her.

- I used to ask them to
do a mockup of my legs.

And just put 'em up there

on the bridge.
- You'd have to come in

for a shot of just your legs.
- I was always there.

15 hour days just
standing on the horseshoe.

The actor inside of me was
beginning to chew on my own arm.

- And I think Denise quit
after 20 some odd episodes

to become a motion picture star.

- When I think about the
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations,

I think about sometimes
they seem to negotiate

the way the studio was
negotiating with Denise's people.

And it ended up with her just going.

- I don't think you can sustain a show

where the characters are not
accessible to the audience.

Where you don't see
somebody overcoming a flaw.

If there is no conflict and
no tension between people,

then there is no
relationship between people,

and that show will wither.

- And that's what was happening.

- I tried to make it sustain.

I wanted to create this
new adversary, the Borg.

I want the Federation to form allies

against this overwhelming,
awesome adversary.

At the end of the first season,

there's an episode called
"The Neutral Zone,“

which was the arc for the second season.

And the arc for the second season

was going to be here come the Borg.

At the end of the second
season, they defeat the Borg.

- Then what happened?

- Writer strike.

End of the first
season, writer strike begins.

- Couldn't talk to the writers,

couldn't talk to Roddenberry.

- Then the hiatus dragged
on, and on, and on.

It was five an a half months.

- I remember having lunch
with a couple of executives

in Paramount, and they were
saying "it's really bad,

"and I think your show
will be one of the first

"to be canceled.

"It's looking so bad."

And I had already adjusted to the idea

that maybe we'll get two or
three years out of this show.

Suddenly, the strike was
resolved and we went back.

And we started the
second season very late.

And we started it without Gates.

- At the end of the first season,

Paramount Studios was more than happy

that their gamble on the rebooted series

was paying dividends.

But on the inside, behind the scenes,

oh the infighting, the
chaos, and the power shifts,

was about to get worse.

And in the center of it, the
man that I've worked with

and deeply admire, Maury Hurley.

Tell me the story of Gates McFadden,

she was let go at the
end of the first season.

Then she's rehired.

Tell me how that happens.

- At the end of the first season,

Hurley became the successor
to all of the other writers

and was gonna be coming
back as the head writer.

He felt very insistent about a new doctor.

- Coming out of academia,

having done a lot of stage direction,

and being in New York theater,

I was used to you can sort of say

what you think about something.

And you're respected.

You fight your argument and
then you either win or lose.

- He just didn't like the way
the character of Dr. Crusher

was working out.

- There'd been a few issues
over that first season

about Dr. Crusher's character.

And I think they thought, at times,

that Gates was a little bit high handed,

maybe being a little demanding.

I never experienced that.

- I had heard that somebody
said "it's either her or me.

"One of us has to go."

- She was adored.

And suddenly she was gone.

- We ended up casting Diana Muldaur,

who was a pretty well known
TV actress at the time.

That never quite worked.

- What?

- Just didn't get on with
the cast all that well,

and the character of Dr. Pulaski

just never really quite solidified.

- It was awkward, a lot of the time.

- They were not that
interested in renewing me

and I was certainly not that interested.

When I worked with you, we
had scenes, it was all actors.

But by the time you got to
Star Trek: The Next Generation,

it was a vast technical world

that had some characters placed in it.

- At the end of the second season,

I remember feeling that Maury
was getting very frustrated.

- Gene would allow things
to come into the show

that were against his own concept,

and I would go ballistic.

- Maury had kind of gotten
the show back to where

it had fallen apart because
of the writer's strike.

- He says, "this episode is good.

"I wanna do this episode."

I'd say "this episode is crap,“

When I have to fight Roddenberry

about maintaining the
integrity of his concept,

I know I've lost the fight.

- He didn't seem to want
to be there anymore.

I think he was tired.

I think he was tired of fighting
whoever he was fighting.

- And egos kicked in in
the second year, big time.

Mine as much, or maybe
more, than anybody's.

I get a call from the set.

Patrick Stewart won't read this line.

- There was an argument and it went on

a little bit too long.

Patrick got a little angry.

- So now it's this.

It's the Producer and the actor.

- And he sort of said, "if you
guys don't get out of here,

"I'm getting out of here."

- I say to Berman, "fire them all.

"I'll build a second season
on the absolute tragedy

"that the Enterprise
exploded by unknown cause

"and lost everybody.

"And now we must find
the new Enterprise crew."

- Systems are off line.

Core breach is imminent!

- All hands, abandon ship!

Repeat, all hands, abandon ship!

- And Rick Berman called me one day,

and said "we got a problem,
Patrick's very unhappy.

"He's creatively not being satisfied."

I said, "I'll fix that."

I said, "have Patrick come over
and meet me for lunch today,

"I want to make sure
that he is in costume.

"It'll be a one o'clock lunch."

I happened to have had a table

in the back of the Paramount
Executive Dining Room.

At one o'clock, the commissary is packed.

So I intentionally said to my
assistant at the time, Maris,

"let me know when it's 1:15 p.m."

She said "you're meeting
Patrick at one o'clock."

I said, "let me know when it's 1:15 p.m."

- You're a game player.

- Patrick walks in,
promptly, at one o'clock,

goes back to the table, in costume.

Sits down by himself and now
has to wait for 15 minutes.

And I walk up and I'm out of breath.

And I say, "Patrick,
let's just cut through it.

"I do know that you are
creatively not being taxed.

"You're gonna have to bear with
us for a couple more weeks,

"but we have already put
the script in the work,

"and we will write your character out."

Now I'm looking at an actor
who isn't even blinking.

"What are you talking about?"

"The one thing I don't want
is my lead actor unhappy.

"Let's just cut through this thing.

"No harm, no foul.

"I'd like to thank you."

- John, that's terrible.

- Patrick Stewart and I never
had a discussion after that.

- I was interested in the
comment that John made.

Because I don't recall
that meeting very well.

I recall another meeting,
which was very different.

We were advised by the studio
that Good Morning America

would be coming in to town,

they were going to film
on the set of Cheers,

and they were gonna film
on the set of Star Trek.

I said, "no, screw you.

"We are working 12, 14, 16 hours a day

"to persuade people that we're
living in the 24th Century,

"and we're out in space."

They basically said, "hey,
there's nothing to be done.

"You're just an actor here."

I said, "okay, can we lay down

"some ground rules about this?

"Taking this stuff very, very seriously

"for the sake of our fans?

"No gags, no jokes.

"No Klingon jokes, no fooling around."

And they said, "oh, no,
no, absolutely none.

"There's gonna be nothing like that."

And so I walk onto our set,
the show is going out live,

just in time to hear them
say "and now we're going over

"to today's weather forecast,
over to our weatherman."

And he's wearing my uniform.

He's wearing the Captain's uniform.

I won't repeat what I said,
but I walked off the set.

"We're live, we're live,
you better announce you're."

And I said , I'm out of here.

I had hardly been home
more than a few minutes

before my phone rang.

"John Pike wants to see you in his office

"at two o'clock this afternoon."

I stood in front of his desk

and was basically read the riot act.

He said I had let the studio down,

I'd embarrassed the studio.

They were trying to keep
it out of the press.

And we finished the conversation,
I was about to leave.

And he said "by the way, off the record,

"I totally understand why
you did what you did.“

And I said "thank you John."

- The first best thing

was when I took over Roddenberry's idea.

That was the first best
thing that happened.

The second best thing that happened

was when they didn't pick
me up for the third year.

When I left the gate at
Paramount, I was laughing.

I said, "this is insanity.

"I have just left the cuckoo house.

"Just go right down to Paramount,

"you'll find the great
bird of the universe,"

only nobody knew he was a cuckoo bird.

- First and second
seasons of Next Generation

are almost unwatchable, in all honesty.

They're very plot driven,
they're very alien of the week.

The shows are kind of creaky

and don't really work very well.

- But there were some crucial
concepts that were done

in the first couple years.

Some things that would reverberate

through the entire series.

Like the Borg,

the idea of Q.

The Holodeck, in my opinion,
was Gene's greatest invention

in The Next Generation.

It was very ahead of it's time,

making a show is difficult
under any circumstances,

especially early on,

but the storytelling got sharper.

- As it went on.

- As the show found itself.

- It had the advantage of
having a great brand behind it

before it started.

People were giving it more
of a chance to last longer

than a show that had no
brand recognition whatsoever.

- The fan base kept the show on the air

through those first two rocky years.

And that's an amazing
salute to the audience

that was out there for this material.

They were gonna stick with it.

They were gonna stick with it and believe

that it was gonna be better.

The ship had tilted

All the way over on it's side already,

and Rick was just, at that
point, tearing his hair out.

The first day that I walked
in to someone's office

and they said "come look
into this bathroom."

- I used to have a big board
that was in my bathroom.

- And there, on the wall, printed out,

was the name of every writer
who had gotten fired, so far,

in the first two seasons.

- How many names, about?

- It was a lot of names on a show

that was only around for two seasons.

- I have the third season fixed in my head

as being a time when there
was a change in style.

- Michael Piller was a
writer who had written

on a number of network television shows.

And a very rigid producing writer

when it came to the process.

And he believed that
the process that existed

prior to his arrival was a mess.

- In the context of the way
Maury Hurley ran his room,

how was the room that Michael organized?

Ira Behr was
sort of his number two.

And Ira was the guy in
the trenches with us.

- Michael had never run a show.

Michael wanted me to
deal with the writers.

Michael stayed in his
room as often as he could

to do rewrites.

When I finally got a
script of my own to write,

I came up with this idea
of this pleasure planet.

- "Captain's Holiday," the visit to Risa.

It's the only planet name
I can actually remember.

- Patrick kept saying
the trouble with the show

is that not enough, effing and effing,

fighting and fornicating.

- And I said, “I've got
a feeling our audience

"might like to see the captain
just getting blown away

"by meeting somebody new.“

- The writers were really excited.

Well, Rick says, "you
gotta go in to see Gene."

So I go in, and he's very nice,

but he says, "I like the
idea of a pleasure planet.

"I want it to be a place
where you see women

"fondling and kissing other women,

"and men hugging and
holding hands, and kissing.

"And we can imply that they're having sex

"in the background."

Huh?

Really?

I'm going, oh man, I'm in
the fricking Twilight Zone.

I go back to Rick, he goes
"pay no attention to that.

"Just get the captain laid."

- I think Gene knew that there
had been this subtle erosion

of his authority and power.

The equation moved
from Gene, Rick, Michael,

to just Rick and Michael,

because Gene's health was starting to fail

and he was less and less involved.

- They knew there were
workarounds for things

they wanted to have done.

- And Michael, along with Rick,

found a way to make the show work better.

- Michael refocused the show.

He said, "this is all
about our characters."

This is a Worf story.

This is a Picard story.

This is a Data story.

How is this episode gonna
affect one of our people

and make it a character-orientated
show in that sense.

And that fundamentally shifted
the direction of everything.

- Michael Piller is very
adept at creating conflict

between characters that was so organic

that you didn't question it.

- Data.

- And what Klingons do to their children.

- Data, I am not talking about parenting!

I am talking about
extraordinary consequences

of creating a new life.

- Does that not describe
becoming a parent, Sir?

- When I started in third season,

we were still the bastard
stepchild of Star Trek.

- All we were still getting
was Picard isn't Kirk,

and there's no Spock.

- That we were the pretenders
and we weren't real Star Trek.

There was only one real Star Trek,

and that was the one with
Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

Even though Gene was running it.

- How did you feel when you heard

that there was gonna be a new Star Trek?

Did that piss you off?

Seriously.

- I had a twinge, absolutely,
and a sense of loss

when I heard Star Trek and my
name isn't associated with it.

I had a twinge for saying
"you're now the captain,"

to Patrick.

- It wasn't until

after “The Best of Both
Worlds" cliffhanger

that you felt the whole
Gestalt of it shift

and suddenly we were Star Trek.

- I am Locutus, of Borg.

Resistance is futile.

Your life as it has been, is over.

- Mr. Worf, fire.

- What was genius was it took Picard,

who, compared to Kirk,
was an administrator,

more than an adventurer.

And by cutting him off, and
turning him into a Borg,

it kind of gave his humanity back to him.

- Making the man more
human, and vulnerable,

and prone to error and
mistake, was a great decision.

- When I came in,

I sensed that there was
a transition going on.

Gene was beginning to phase out

and Rick was seizing power.

- And Rick was generous and allowed me

into some of his thinking

and some of his long term planning,

and talked in a relaxed way
about the future of the series,

which I'd never really
been able to do with Gene.

- Everybody that worked there

could see the deterioration of Gene,

in his walking, in his talking.

And his ability to communicate
had changed drastically.

- When a powerful figure
like a king, or an emperor,

as their faculties erode, and
therefor their power erodes,

the diffusion of power.

- Eventually, I think Rick
Berman solidified the power.

He replaced Gene.

Gene was clinging to
the world he had built,

trying to make it the most
beautiful thing it could be,

a vision of humanity.

And I think he became far
more obsessed with his legacy

than he was with his
history as a storyteller.

The guy who created Star Trek,
wagon train to the stars.

As his health failed, as
his faculties were failing,

I got the sense of a
man who felt like things

were simply slipping away from him.

- We had been sitting
watching dailies after lunch,

and Michael Piller called
everybody into his office,

everybody came from the set.

I knew something was up.

But I didn't know what it was.

And I had a really bad feeling.

And he announced that Gene Roddenberry

had died that morning.

- Gene's passing brought an end to an era,

but it also gave a new group

of talented writers and producers

the opportunity to take the
franchise to new worlds.

- If we'd not shifted
from plot to character

in the third season,

the show would have continued.

But I don't think it
would have broken through

the way it did.

I think it would have
been that other series

that they did of Star Trek.

And I get the feeling that Star Trek

would have kind of stopped there.

There would not have
been a Deep Space Nine,

there would not have been
a Voyager, and so on.

And certainly not more movies.

- If he had not come back
and done The Next Generation,

I think there would be
people that would say

that Gene Roddenberry was a very lucky man

who was a failed producer,

who had one show that
did well for three years.

And that's what they
would limit his legacy to.

- I sort of discounted him, in a way.

- Everybody did.

They all did.

Most people get one shot,
they have one triumph,

and that's it.

Gene had one.

It was elusive and so when
this one came back again.

- Hold tight.

- Hold it, don't let it get away from me.

- I have enormous respect
for his achievement,

for many of his unique ideas and beliefs.

- I think he really believed
in this positive vision

of what mankind was capable of.

- And you subscribed to that vision.

- I subscribed to that idea,

all throughout all the
different shows that we did,

because I believed that
I owed that to Gene.

- I think, at his best,

I don't think Gene wanted
the franchise to fossilize

into this, there's no way out,

you've just gotta recycle
everything over and over again.

It was too rich a franchise.

There were too many possibilities.

- I should have done this a long time ago.

- You were always welcome.

- So, five card stud, nothing wild.

And the sky's the limit.

- The sky is the limit.

In it's seventh and final season,

five shows were nominated for nine Emmys.

And the series, as a whole,

was the first syndicated television series

to be nominated for
Outstanding Drama Series.

To this day, The Next
Generation is the only

syndicated drama series to be
nominated in this category.

Not so wacky doodle after all.

♪ I woke up early morning ♪

♪ Headed for downtown ♪

♪ When I got to work ♪

♪ Everything was upside down ♪

♪ My desk was on the ceiling ♪

♪ The floor became the sky ♪

♪ My boss was on a cloud ♪

♪ Eating wacky doodle pie ♪

♪ There's wacky doodle doos ♪

♪ And there's wacky doodle don'ts ♪

♪ Wacky doodle wills ♪

♪ And there's wacky doodle won'ts ♪

♪ Wished I could hide my head ♪

♪ Make it go away ♪

♪ Wacky doodle wacky doodle ♪

♪ Wacky doodle day ♪