In The Making of Star Trek, There’s Never Been An ‘Indispensable Man’
“Oral history” makes it clear that credit for the original series truly belongs to many
There’s never been an “indispensable man” to the creation of Star Trek.
That might seem like an incredibly obvious thing to say today with the production of the franchise distributed among the writers, directors, and producers on several multiple TV series.
But there was a time when the myth of an “indispensable man” — with apologies to Saxon White Kessinger’s famous poem — was accepted as gospel.
As fandom mushroomed through the 1970s, a fable took hold that claimed an almost single-handed preeminence of series creator Gene Roddenberry — known as the “Great Bird of the Galaxy” to many — in producing the original series week-to-week.
It was a mythology that — if you listen to many of his public statements through the ‘70s and ‘80s — Roddenberry himself was all-to-eager to cultivate.
The only problem was that it was never true.
To be clear: I’m not denying that the idea for Star Trek was Roddenberry’s, although even there his original concept of “Wagon Train to the Stars” didn’t exactly pan out as he originally pitched.
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I recently came across an astounding audio recording available on YouTube that more than bears this out.
Based on their 1996 book, Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, this online audio of Herb Solow and Robert Justman amounts to an incredibly detailed and honest remembrance of the breadth of talent it took to get original Star Trek on the air.
You can listen to the entire audio online here:
Solow was an executive at Desilu Studios in the 1960s who became the studio’s oversight for the original series, and Justman became an associate producer and later producer of the series.
Both men add their voices and perspectives to the story, and even decades after the fact share compelling details that put you right there in the midst of production — down to chasing noisy pigeons out of the Desilu soundstage on the first day of shooting the first pilot episode in 1964.
But what is most striking is just how much credit Solow and Justman spread around to others, from Desilu chief Lucille Ball’s own involvement, to early work on Star Trek performed by the designer of her own series before others took over, and so many others.
They neither denigrate nor belittle Roddenberry or his work, but certainly don’t contribute to his manufactured, larger-than-life persona either.
In fact, Solow recalled how Roddenberry for a time met with him daily just to get advice on how to turn his idea for Star Trek into a workable pitch.
It’s really the story of a very different — and kinder — Hollywood, in which colleagues we’re friendlier and often more interested in “win-win” situations.
Sadly, neither Solow nor Justman are still with us. Solow passed away in 2020 at the age of 89 and Justman died even earlier, in 2008 at age 81.
But if you love Star Trek — and like me, fascinated by the lore of a bygone Hollywood era — you owe it to yourself to seek out this entertaining and endlessly informative recording.
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