Why I Am Not a Gene Roddenberry Fan

Reflections on the novelization of The Motion Picture by The Man Himself

The description of this newsletter says that the purpose is to reflect on the development of the Star Trek franchise. One great way to do that is to read tie-in novels from previous eras, especially ones that have been “superseded” by current-day canonical productions. Even more than the plot developments—which are typically reset to the status quo by the end of the novel—the worldbuilding in these older novels gives us a window into what people thought was possible for the franchise. Reading the Original Series novels of Diane Duane, for instance, we get a thoroughly fleshed out science fiction universe whose complexity and sophistication rivals and often exceeds what we actually got on TV and films. Duane is best known for the Rihannsu novels that purport to give an inside look at Romulan culture, but all of her novels fit into a “Duane-verse” where the ship has an advanced rec room facility run by the lovably gruff Chief of Recreation, Lt. Harb Tanzer, and any number of other things are unique and different.

I approached Gene Roddenberry’s novelization of The Motion Picture in a similar spirit. At the time when he was witnessing the franchise improbably reviving, what did Star Trek’s creator think Star Trek could be? I had read bemused articles like this one and hence knew that it was weird. But already in the first few pages, I felt like I was in a completely different universe.

Roddenberry begins by distancing himself from The Original Series. The novel opens with a preface by Admiral James T. Kirk, in which he laments the undeserved fame that had resulted from the exaggerated accounts of his adventures. The author’s introductory note then follows up by expressing his surprise that he had been selected to document the “Vejur” mission (apparently so spelled to avoid revealing the connection with Voyager implied by the more typical spelling of “V’ger”), since he was responsible for many of the exaggerations that had so plagued Kirk. So far, so understandable—now that he has a feature film budget and more sophisticated sets and effects, he doesn’t want to be held back by the more cheaply produced TV series. But Kirk’s preface goes further, claiming that the type of humanity portrayed on screen is highly atypical for his time, even primitive and anachronistic. Most humans have opted for a more collective form of existence known as “the new humanity,” and they look down on the old-fashioned individualists who make their way to Starfleet (perhaps after having scored lower than average on intelligence tests). Turns out that individualism is still a necessary evil aboard interstellar exploratory vessels.

This is a shocking reversal. The Star Trek fan’s guiding assumption is that Starfleet is the best of the best, the avant garde of humanity. Everyone else’s lifestyle, to the extent that it comes up at all, seems to center on aimless hedonism or tinkering with hobbies in a world where nothing “counts.” To think that Starfleet is made up of the rejects who can’t get with the program is bizarre from that perspective—though it may make sense of the fact that Starfleet seems disproportionately populated by orphans and alienated children.

The aspect of Kirk’s preface that most often jumps out at readers is his reference to his mother’s “love coach”—presumably the person who gave her sex lessons in this extremely liberated utopian world. This idea is of course very “Seventies,” but it is also very “Roddenberry.” The movie itself already displays his worst impulses, because we are introduced to a new species of “sex aliens,” in the person of the bald Deltan woman Ilia, whose species is so overwhelmingly sensual that making love with them would drive a human mad. This is the same guy who introduced the Orion Slave Girls in the first pilot (and had Pike contemplate a career as a human trafficker) and who oversaw any number of plots where Kirk uses sex as a tool to fulfill his mission.

Given the more expansive canvas of the novel, Roddenberry makes all of this even worse. As viewers of the movie know, Ilia is killed by V’ger, which then takes on her form to act as its avatar. They discover the Ilia Probe in Ilia’s quarters, where she initially appears (implicitly) nude before being covered with a skimpy garment. This is gross and indulgent enough—the woman just died! But in the novel, it turns out that all the guys get a much better look at her. Some highlights:

• “Kirk stepped to the cabin’s master control panel, touched the sonics door switch—the transparency slid open. It was Ilia! Lovely, almost unbearably lovely in her nudity!”

• “…it almost certainly was Ilia—except that there was some sort of a glowing light from the throat. . . . Kirk found his eyes shifting from the tiny light glow to what seemed impossibly lovely, hard-tipped breasts, which were at this moment swinging around to point directly at him . . . damn! It had to be Deltan pheromones that were doing this to him!”

Realizing that she still has the Deltan pheremones, Kirk reasons that perhaps she is still capable of sexuality—and that they can exploit that in order to control her. We are given a window into the admiral’s thought process as he contemplates whether he or Decker (who is the Riker to her Troi in the film, a long-simmering ex) should do the honors:

• “Kirk hesitated, struck with the thought that his own experience might be superior in this area, too. Unlike Decker, he had no emotional attachment to the Deltan navigator—and a mechanical replica of the navigator’s body would mean even less to him. But even as Kirk was telling himself this, he realized that the question here was not technique. It must be Decker for the simple reason that the real Ilia had loved this young man—sexual technique always came out a poor runner-up in any race with love.”

To which I can only say: Jesus Christ, dude.

Here we might say simply that “it was a different time.” Certainly there were times when being a horndog was more acceptable than it is today, for better or worse. But there has never been a time when it has been acceptable to view women’s sexuality as a tool of dominance, even retrospectively. There has never been a time when we should be comfortable with our beloved captain musing, “I’m better at sex, so maybe if I’m the one to fuck her, we can get control over her more easily — but no, I guess she has feelings, too.” There has never been a time when it was cool and fun to imagine that there is a whole species of sex slaves, but it’s okay because they’re into it.

None of this can be hand-waved away, especially because there is clear evidence that these same attitudes colored the atmosphere on set—arguably leading to the sexual assault that led Grace Lee Whitney (Yeoman Rand) to leave the show early in the first season. Perhaps uncoincidentally, prior to her exit, she had been required to play a scene in which Kirk’s evil half (created during a transporter incident) attempts to sexually assault her and she admits that it wasn’t all bad since she does have feelings for him.

Using the franchise to indulge his gross “free love” fantasies is not entirely separate from Roddenberry’s weird ideas about the “new humanity” of which Kirk and friends are unrepresentative samples. Those kinds of New Age-y ideas speak to the mindset of a man who was clearly attracted to the prospect that Star Trek’s “cult following” could be an actual cult, with him as guru. By the time the film franchise’s success—which resulted directly from taking away Roddenberry’s day-to-day creative control for Wrath of Khan—led to the creation of a new series, Roddenberry had drunk his own Kool-Aid and believed himself to be a utopian philosopher, leading to the artificially constricted and stilted stories that mar Next Generation’s first two seasons. If we ask what led to the burst of creativity in TNG season 3, I think there’s a clear answer: they got Roddenberry out of the way. Similarly, the franchise’s greatest artistic achievement, Deep Space Nine, was only able to be produced at all because Roddenberry had died and could no longer block a concept that would cloud the simplistic utopia he thought Star Trek should be.

In sum, reading this novelization confirms my long-standing view that—with the notable exception of creating the broad outline of the Star Trek concept and getting it green-lit—Gene Roddenberry’s impact on Star Trek was entirely negative. This goes back even to The Original Series. Most notably, his initial concept for Spock was centered on the fact that his ears made him look like the devil (how subversive!). It was Dorothy (D.C.) Fontana, obviously in collaboration with Leonard Nimoy himself, who really created the Spock we know, by writing essentially all the scripts in which his background and character is fleshed out. To the extent, then, that Spock is the moral center of The Original Series, the character who created fans’ attachment, it is actually Dorothy Fontana who is the creator of Star Trek—not the confused creepy guy who got the network to sign off on the idea. Or at least that’s my head-canon.