This is the difference between Harlan Ellison’s view of writing and Gene Roddenberry’s. When Harlan tells a story, it’s about an important event in a person’s life; it assaults that person’s sensibilities, shatters him, forces him to reinvent himself, and ultimately leaves him forever transformed. A Harlan Ellison story is a challenge to festering complacency.

Gene Roddenberry’s view of the job seemed to be much less ambitious: get the Captain laid and clean up the mess before the last commercial. Nobody gets permanently hurt. Our people are the best and the brightest; our people are perfect; they don’t have problems. Everything is wonderful. Everybody is loyal. Nobody ever argues with the Captain.

The Captain is always right. Everybody stays in his place. And is happy. Forever.

I guess so, but if our people don’t have any problems to solve, they’re really not very interesting, are they? They certainly aren’t human. They’re just…nice to look at.

But that’s not storytelling. That’s cowardice. That’s a failure to use the tool. A television show like Star Trek is an opportunity to make a difference—to demonstrate that human beings can rise above adversity, that life as it is lived is not necessarily the way that life has to be, to evoke the best from ourselves and demonstrate that we as a species are committed to challenging ourselves against whatever horrors the universe can throw against us. A television show like Star Trek shouldn’t be polite. It should be unafraid and passionate. It should startle and disturb and leave your view of the universe shaken. It should expand your vision of what’s possible in the world.

Most of all, a show like Star Trek should be a writer’s dream assignment—it should be a place where a writer can come in and tell that story that he’s always wanted to tell, a place where he can take that thing that sticks in his craw and lay it out for all the world to see. When a writer cares, when he is committed to truth, and passionate about life, then he is willing to wrestle with the devil himself if the result will be a story that makes a difference.

It’s about keeping the promise.

Anything less is like having your imagination gummed to death by tribbles.

If there is only one reason to fault Gene Roddenberry, this is it—his failure to allow Star Trek’s writers to be the very best that they aspired to be.

The loss is Star Trek’s. And ours.

DeForest Kelley

DeForest Kelley