Did ‘Star Trek’ Creator Gene Roddenberry Really Hate NBC?

Lately, I’ve been pouring over a bunch of interviews with Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, written during a time when Gene was enjoying something of a Star Trek renaissance. After reading these interviews with Roddenberry, I think it’s fair to say that he didn’t have fond feelings for NBC, the network that originally aired Star Trek, and cancelled it after just three seasons. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that Gene felt like he had handed the Peacock Network this amazing, wonderful gift and they pretty much just took a giant metaphorical space dookie on it.

After the original television series was canceled in 1969, the decade that followed saw the Star Trek fan base refuse to die. Reruns of the program, along with a new animated series in 1973 and novelizations that were either direct adaptations from the show or inspired by the original series, kept everyone’s hopes alive until Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released during the 1979 holiday season. And, while all of that was happening, Roddenberry had plenty of time to reflect on how the show had been mistreated by NBC executives, who had, according SlashFilm, “thought disparagingly that Star Trek was for 12-year-olds.”

Paramount/Everett Collection

One article in particular, written by James Calloway in 1982 in the Raleigh, North Carolina News and Observer, goes a long way to paint the picture of just exactly how mistreated Gene felt. In that article, The Great Bird of the Galaxy pointed out that sacrifices had been made to produce Star Trek to the network’s liking.

Gene declared, “Every member of our staff was in the hospital at one time or another for nervous exhaustion. There were three divorces out of the five people on my staff. I feel bitter about the time I never spent with my kids. I’ve made up for it in part, but it’s not entirely possible.”

So, Gene and his staff went through all that, and then NBC wanted to cancel Star Trek after the show’s second season. Could that cause him to hate the network? I’ll let you be the judge.

Ultimately, a slight uptick in the ratings and a grassroots letter-writing campaign saved the show and allowed Roddenberry and team to produce a third season. The victory was bittersweet however, as The History Channel reminded us not all that long ago that the network gave the program the unfavorable time slot of Friday nights at 10 PM during that final season.

And while fans of Star Trek often point out that the final season isn’t quite up to the high standard set by the first two, there are still some great episodes there. And thankfully Gene, at the very least, didn’t have to deal with network executives telling him that Mr. Spock needed to be removed from the program. Yep, they really asked him to do that at the beginning of the first season. He also didn’t have to fight battles with the network over issues like wanting to have an ethnically diverse cast. Those battles had been fought, and for the most part, they’d been won.

In that same 1982 News and Observer article, Gene made it very clear that he felt like both Desilu, the show’s production company, and NBC really didn’t like Star Trek. And because of that, he and the rest of the creative team always carried a bit of a chip on their shoulders. Their motto was, “Let’s show the bastards. Let’s prove them wrong.”

And prove them wrong they did. So much so that Star Trek, at this point, is forever etched in the tapestry of our culture. And as time has gone on, further proving Gene’s point, the lines between fiction and reality have crossed time and time again. With all of the advances we’ve been seeing lately with AI, that holodeck from Star Trek: The Next Generation can’t be too far away.