Yep, I was there, on the Star Trek set and other places with Bill Shatner (extreme left photo) and houseguests Leonard Nimoy, (photo at the far end) Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, Walter Koenig and others — how come? Because the producer of Star Trek and my Dad were friends, is why. More than that, Gene Roddenberry had already hired many of our sci-fi friends to turn in a script.
My director friend Joe Pevney had been hired to shoot some dozen or so episodes. Here’s a photo of me co-directing with Pevney:
So Gene Roddenberry asked my Dad, Horace, who swore that he had never either written or bought “space opera” — totally wrong — I have dozens of his space stories just waiting for publication… if he (Horace) could come up with a script, and he nodded yes, said that I’d have to collaborate with him because he could no longer handle long typing sessions, and that’s how come I was on the Star Trek set from time to time. We did come up with a treatment, but the show was cancelled before we could get a shooting script out the door.
Well, CBS certainly got the show they contracted for, based upon a solid CBS hit series, Gunsmoke, which had been running as the time slot winner for years and years. So, being the gorillas they are, the CBS Network Executives ordered Roddenberry to “give us Gunsmoke in space!” And by golly, that’s what they got. Doubt it? I have two original scripts here, one from Gunsmoke, and one from Star Trek, and you know what? The dialogue’s the same in both for very long stretches. Any idea why?
See You At The Top!!!
gorby