Gene Roddenberry was born in El Paso, Texas and spent his childhood in Los Angeles, California where his family moved so that his father can pursue a career in the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). Following his father’s footsteps he attended the Police studies at the Los Angeles City College.
After changing several universities he transferred his interest in the field of aeronautical engineering and qualified for a pilot’s license. Roddenberry joined the US Army Air Corps where he flew many B-17 Flying Fortress combat missions and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal.
After leaving the service he spent the following years flying for Pan Am as a commercial pilot. Soon, he left Pan Am and went to pursue a career as a TV series writer. Gene also served in the LAPD from 1949 to 1956.
Gene was married twice, first to Eileen Rexroat and later to Majel Barrett, whom he later casted in various Star Trek roles.
Ahead of his time
Gene Roddenberry is commonly known as the master mind behind Star Trek. He was the one initiating the ideas for the, now, legendary Star Trek Series. As he firstly introduced his ideas in 1964 as a material to rival Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, he was criticized and rejected until finally accepted by Desilu Studios. Star Trek: The Original Series premiered in September 8, 1966.
After the cancelation of the series after only three seasons, Gene struggled until, in 1975, Paramount offered him to
develop a sequel for Star Trek. Soon things changed and what was firstly meant to be just a sequel to the series now became a plan for a Star Trek featured film. The result was – Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Although the film was criticized, it turned out well in the box office and it resulted in plans for new featured films as well as for a new season for the series – Star Trek: The Next Generation, created in the 1980s.
Gene Roddenberry was a man ahead of his time. In the Star Trek saga he spoke about things which, in that time, were difficult even to imagine. He created a whole new culture, dozens of civilizations and many legendary characters. He created the United Federation of Planets, a diverse world that, opposite of the current reality, was living in unity and cooperation. Racial discrimination and war on the Earth were far behind in the past, money was no more, people were not living with the greedy need for material assets but were co-existing and helping each other for the greater good off all mankind.
The technology in Star Trek is a story for it self. Things like, the communicator, the transporter, Warp engines, Photon torpedoes etc, were things new to the common man, with or without imagination. All though all that seemed impossible to comprehend, people liked the series. This resulted in the integration of Star Trek in the everyday life. Scientists began to draw ideas from the series. The communicator from Star Trek was the gadget that initiated the discovery of the cell-phones, the pads (that replaced paper in the series) gave the idea for the today’s pocket PCs, and even the transporter gave some masterminds of the present day an idea to experiment (There is a story here as well). Star Trek is so well know that even NASA honored the Series and named a Space Shuttle – Enterprise.
Never the less, the biggest benefit from the idea that one man had, are not the gadgets that we use, but the change of the mindset of people regarding possible and impossible things. If you consider it from that perspective, if we are now using the cell-phones and pocket PCs, maybe in the future (near or later) we’ll be using Warp technology and transporters to travel from planet to planet and outside our Solar System. Maybe even sooner than we think, we’ll be discovering the strange new worlds and traveling The Final Frontier...
Gene’s work of art contributed to the change of a lot of things. He was the first to put a Russian character in the “good team” in an American movie. He put a female character in the “Captains chair”, he helped us break the stereotypes and the limits of our minds. This is why Star trek is appreciated all over the world. He did a lot more controversial things during the airing of the series and the movies, things today commonly accepted in the film production and the everyday life.
The Saga Continues
Following the initial success the saga continued. With his health now getting worse from day to day, he was forced to gradually give control to Rick Berman and Michael Piller who later, based upon the Star Trek written by Gene Roddenberry, created Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise.
Gene was the executive consultant in the creation of the next four films as well - Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. The last film based on the Original Star Trek series Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country was actually made in memory of Gene Roddenberry, as it is known that he saw a version prior to the final one in the last hours of his life.
Based upon the original ideas few other films were made – Star Trek VII: Generations, Star Trek VIII: First Contact, Star Trek IX: Insurrection, Star Trek X: Nemesis. Star Trek XI is due somewhere in 2008 with no official release date announced.
After Gene Roddenberry’s death his estate allowed the creation of two more long-running series based on unfilmed ideas and concepts that Gene had - Earth: Final Conflict and Andromeda.
Gene Roddenberry died on October 24, 1991 at the age of 70. After his death, a lipstick-sized capsule of his ashes was sent into space to orbit the earth for just over five years (after which they burned up in the earth's atmosphere). He was a pioneer ahead of his time.
Enjoy!
Source: www.memory-alpha.org
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