Gene Roddenberry
Gene Roddenberry
Eugene Wesley "Gene" Roddenberrywas an American television screenwriter and producer. He is best remembered for creating the original Star Trek television series. Born in El Paso, Texas, Roddenberry grew up in Los Angeles, where his father worked as a police officer. Roddenberry flew eighty-nine combat missions in the Army Air Forces during World War II, and worked as a commercial pilot after the war. Later he followed in his father's footsteps and joined the Los Angeles Police Department where he...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth19 August 1921
CityEl Paso, TX
CountryUnited States of America
In the fifth season [of Star Trek: The Next Generation] viewers will see more of shipboard life [including] gay crew members in day-to-day circumstances.
For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain. If people need religion, ignore them and maybe they will ignore you, and you can go on with your life. It wasn't until I was beginning to do Star Trek that the subject of religion arose. What brought it up was that people were saying that I would have a chaplain on board the Enterprise. I replied, "No, we don't.
'Star Trek' is a 'Wagon Train' concept - built around characters who travel to worlds 'similar' to our own, and meet the action-adventure-drama which become our stories. Their transportation is the cruiser 'S.S. Yorktown,' performing a well-defined and long-range Exploration-Science-Security mission which helps create our format.
The human race is a remarkable creature, one with great potential, and I hope that 'Star Trek' has helped to show us what we can be if we believe in ourselves and our abilities.
We stress humanity, and this is done at considerable cost. We can't have a lot of dramatics that other shows get away with - promiscuity, greed, jealousy. None of those have a place in 'Star Trek.'
Star Trek says that it has not all happened, it has not all been discovered, that tomorrow can be as challenging and adventurous as any time man has ever lived.
For Star Trek proves, as faulty as individual episodes could be, is that the much-maligned common man and common woman has an enormous hunger for brotherhood. They are ready for the twenty-third century now, and they are light-years ahead of their petty governments and their visionless leaders.
Star Trek speaks to some basic human needs: that there is a tomorrow—it's not all going to be over with a big flash and a bomb; that the human race is improving; that we have things to be proud of as humans. No, ancient astronauts did not build the pyramids—human beings built them, because they're clever and they work hard. And Star Trek is about those things.
Star Trek was an attempt to say that humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate, but take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in life forms. […] If we cannot learn to actually enjoy those small differences, to take a positive delight in those small differences between our own kind, here on this planet, then we do not deserve to go out into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there.
These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise, it's continuing mission to explore a strange new world, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.
These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five year mission... to boldly go where no man has gone before.
I wanted to send a message to the television industry that excitement is not made of car chases.
'Star Trek' says that it has not all happened, it has not all been discovered, that tomorrow can be as challenging and adventurous as any time man has ever lived.
Earth is the nest, the cradle, and we'll move out of it.