Once we lived in a world where man was learning to dream again, where we sent Explorer 1 into the night sky among the stars to explore outer space, and followed it with John Glenn and Mercury, Mariner 2, the first spacecraft to a world beyond the Moon, and more to come.
In that world, a man named Gene Roddenberry had an extrordinary vision.
A vision of the future, an optimistic vision for a hopeful future full of promise and potential.
And, beging a television script writer, Gene Roddenberry created a television series for his vision.
Series television is a very difficult, extremely demanding medium.
The demands of creating 20 stories a year year after year makes it almost impossible to create a television show on the level of quality of a great movie.
The Koreans are right. The miniseries is much less demanding.
Series television is just so difficult to do on a truly high level of quality.
Gene Roddenberry is one of the few who have ever succeeded in doing just that.
Not a show that is well-written on a surface level, but spiritually empty and emotionally just a giving in to darkness and despair like a lot of early 21st Century American television.
A television show that really is well written, not just on a surface level, but on a level of true emotional and intellectual substance.
That's Gene Roddenberry's creation, through Voyager and the 9th movie.
Gene Roddenberry had such an extrordinary talent for making a television show just rediculously good.
Along with the special effects team under Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Gene Roddenberry's original series even pioneered the use of special effects that was later perfected by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg in Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Although the original show only lasted three years, by the time Star Wars came out in 1977, Star Trek was a massive hit in syndicated reruns.
In 1979 Gene Roddenberry got a chance to do a Star Trek movie.
The result is one of probably only two movies that serious literary science fiction critics would be willing to give the time of day to.
Gene Roddenberry had brought serious literary science fiction to a movie.
Spectacularly.
In one of the greatest films of all time.
There was only one problem.
The first Star Trek movie was a quiet indie movie.
And in the age of Jaws, Star Wars, and the Superman movie, people expected a big, spectacular catchy pop blockbuster.
Now, Star Wars is far more than just a catchy pop blockbuster.
But it is a catchy pop blockbuster.
What is more, the first Star Trek movie, simply called Star Trek: The Motion Picture, was a kind of indie movie that most film critics do not even know exists.
An indie science fiction movie more like a literary science fiction story than any familiar genre of indie film that most film critics would know.
2001: A Space Odyssey could be seen as an indie thriller and an anti-nuke film, with the weird beginning and end just thrown in to please the science fiction fans.
Not Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
And so while literary science fiction critics knew exactly what Star Trek: The Motion Picture was, film critics did not know what to make of it.
And many mainstream movie fans- and people in the media- just found it too quiet compared to the blockbusters of the day.
But for a Star Trek fan, it meant one thing.
Star Trek was a living franchise!
With a good, quality story and spectacular special effects!
And we knew there would be more!
But the people in Paramount wanted that more that was to coming to please mainstream movie fans and mainstream film critics more than Gene Roddenberry's masterpiece movie did.
And so they brought in a legend.
The man responsible for developing The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, as well as The Mod Squad- three of the great action-adventure television shows of all time- as well as one of the two miniserieses responsible for launching the TV miniseries as a genre.
Harve Bennett.
Harve Bennett wanted to make a more exciting movie, a thrilling adventure blockbuster like Star Wars.
One that, like Star Wars, like the first episode of The Bionic Woman, would be more than just a pop hit, but would still be just that- a pop hit.
But he also wanted to create something with the immense big-idea scope of ideas and storytelling of Gene Roddenberry's movie.
Gene Roddenberry had demonstrated what kind of scope of ideas could be in a Star Trek movie.
Harve Bennet figured out how to do it in a movie that was also a thrilling pop hit.
And in the process created some of the finest movies of the finest ever era of American movies- the age of Star Wars and Steven Spielberg, when so many of the biggest pop hit movies were so, so much more than just pop hits- they were legendary masterpieces to stand alongside Hamlet and the Sistine Chapel ceiling!
Hamlet was a pop hit in its day too! (And was again in 1994 as Disney's The Lion King!) A pop hit can be so much more than just a pop hit!
And Harve Bennett's first two Star Trek movies managed to do something that few movies ever have succeeded in doing- among them Close Encounter of the Third Kind and E.T.
And that was to be both a great catchy pop hit movie and a great indie movie at the same time!
As well as legendary big idea movies!
Harve Bennett had sent the Star Trek film series on its way.
Gene Roddenberry then got to do what he did far better than any but a few in all history.
Create a television series.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture was, once again, a television series done on an astoundingly high level.
Not just in surface element, but in substance.
And like the early Star Trek movies, it stayed true to his vision of an optimistic future.
And with it Gene Roddenberry created the future of Star Trek.
Gene Roddenberry was well past the age of 40 when he created Star Trek.
That was over 30 years before.
And so on Star Trek: The Next Generation, he assembled the group of writers that he intended to hand the franchise to when he died.
People like Rick Berman and Michael Piller, Brannon Braga and Jeri Taylor.
They not only oversaw the rest of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but created and oversaw the other two great classic Star Trek television serieses.
Deep Space Nine and Voyager.
And three more classic movies, to make nine great classics.
What a run.
And the rest?
The rest after Voyager and the ninth movie?
The big giving in to despair that I call Star Trek: CSI, and a betrayal of the optimism and hope of Gene's original vision?
Well, series television is such a demanding medium.
We could not have expected it to last forever.
What, are Rick Berman and Michael Piller gods?
We had a great run.
And that's the story of the creation of Star Trek.
Real Star Trek.
Thank you, Gene!
God loves you!
Sincerely,
David S. Annderson