The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek, Volume 1

by Edward Gross

  They gave it to other people and they made it into a kid’s show. Our version was very funny and very hip. We were doing a satire of The Donna Reed Show with monsters, because we wanted to do something very adult. The first two scripts were a very sly, tongue-in-cheek, and arch takeoff on The Donna Reed Show, but The Munsters never became that.

  MORT ZARCOFF

  During this time, they would get Gene to fix everything. Whenever there was something going wrong, they would call Gene Coon. He would fix scripts, he would fix pilots. He was a jack-of-all-trades. That is what he brought to Star Trek.

  Gene L. Coon was a progressive in many ways, ranging from his general attitude toward life to hiring Ande Richardson—a young African-American woman who counted among her friends Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Maulana Karenga—as his secretary and assistant. She had been hired a couple of years earlier to serve as a “floor secretary” at Desilu before she began working for Coon at Star Trek.

  ANDE RICHARDSON (assistant to Gene L. Coon)

  Desilu, after Watts exploded, realized that they had no black staff. Just the black actors who would come in, but they had nobody working on the lot that was black other than the janitors. So they called the Urban League and asked them to send over a couple of people. I went over and interviewed as a secretary, which I was not and never was. Anyhow, I worked in all the different departments all over the lot, including the desk on the Gower Street entrance.

  Then Gene Coon came along and he had me come in and work with him. Then one day he asked me if I’d like to work for him and give up the other job. It took a little bit for me to decide that, because I had come from working with Malcolm and Karenga and all those people, and to work for a white dude named Coon was not exactly what I planning. But we worked it out and Gene became my heart.

  DAVID GERROLD (writer, “The Trouble with Tribbles”)

  If you look at the episodes that Roddenberry was responsible for in the beginning, which was pretty much the first ten episodes, there’s not a lot of Star Trek’s noble purpose there. There’s a bumbling around trying to find out what the show is about, yet at the same time they did some great episodes. Because no one knew what Star Trek was, they were continually inventing it. You see stuff like “Charlie X,” “The Enemy Within,” and they also did a lot of rip-offs—“The Galileo Seven” was Flight of the Phoenix, “Balance of Terror” was The Enemy Below—and so they didn’t really know what they could do with the show yet.

  When Gene L. Coon first came on board in the second half of the first season, you start getting things like the Prime Directive and a lot of the stuff that was later identified as the noble parts of Star Trek. Gene L. Coon created the noble image that everyone gives Roddenberry the most credit for.

  JACKIE COON FERNANDEZ (Gene L. Coon’s widow)

  Science fiction per se was not a particular choice for him. It was a genre he did, but he didn’t think of himself as a science-fiction writer at all. If you hadn’t had that name on it, it was just another drama which Gene was interested in. Another thought, another quest, another way to look at a situation from a different angle. It just happened to fall into that category.

  GENE RODDENBERRY

  I had no choice. The only way I could get people like Gene Coon to come in and produce—and I needed a producer, more helping hands—was to become executive producer. Actually a supervising producer. Today it would be different. No one would object to a very complex show having two, three, or even four line producers with a supervising producer over them. In those days, it was unheard of, but I just had to get some extra people in any way I could. I had found myself working twelve or fourteen hours a day, and I could no longer do it. Everyone on our staff was in the hospital at least once during those three years just from total exhaustion. We were doing half a science-fiction movie every week. Imagine what a burden that is. Science-fiction movies usually take twenty weeks to do. We were doing one every week.

  LESTER COLODNY

  Gene Coon could work on many projects at the same time because he taught himself something called “automatic writing.” He had this crazy thing in which he hypnotized himself, and he was convinced that he could put himself in a state of almost disembodiment in which once he was ready to write, after having thought out the story and worked out what he was about to write, he would go into a room, put on some jazz music, and sit down at his typewriter. His fingers flew like you never saw in your life. He would be in a state of self-hypnosis, which he called automatic writing. His mind was only focused on one single thing: that script. The most astonishing thing you’ve ever seen in your life.

  ANDE RICHARDSON

  I used to go to the most unethical doctor you could find. I could buy jars of amphetamines from him. Then I’d take them back and give them to Gene. He’d give me some and off he’d go to write, and at night I’d go dancing.

  JACKIE COON FERNANDEZ

  His way of writing was going to bed with the thought in his head of what he had to come up with, and then it was there when he got up. It was just there. He went from sleeping soundly to getting up feeling fresh, and it just came out of his fingers onto the typewriter and he just never had to think about it.

  JOHN FURIA JR. (writer/producer/former president of the Writers Guild of America)

  Gene was an extremely prolific writer. He wrote novels and lots of television in lots of genres. A lot of prolific writers tend to be sloppy, facile, and not very good. Gene was not that. He just happened to be a writer who wrote fast. He cared a great deal about writing. I think there were a lot of things he cared about. He loved to talk, he loved writing. A lot of writers kind of write defensively and hate the process. I sometimes say I have a love-hate relationship with writing. I hate to be doing it, but I love it when I’m finished. But Gene really relished the process of writing itself.

  JACKIE COON FERNANDEZ

  I never once heard him complain about writing. It would have been unthinkable for him to be anything else but a writer.

  DOROTHY FONTANA

  He had a delicacy of writing that was really remarkable. A subtlety of relationships that showed in the writing. His secretary was a young black woman who had very much gotten into Malcolm X’s philosophy, and she was telling Gene about it. Gene said, “Well, I don’t know. Is he going to be speaking? I’ll go down and listen to him talk.” And they had these discussions on the black movement and all that involves, the philosophy of life that involves, the determination of the black people to be more equal. Gene was always an open-minded and fair man. I always liked that about him, because it showed up in his writing and I think it made him a good writer.

  ANDE RICHARDSON

  Gene wanted to go to the mosque and I said, “Sorry, mate, you can’t come to the mosque. No white folks allowed.” Gene came from a background where his dad was a Klansman, and Gene was the opposite of that. Remember, he was a war correspondent. He had to go back again to World War II and then back to Korea. He was no lover of war, and he was open to all opinions. He was just a good man.

  While we were working together, Gene didn’t really share his feelings about Star Trek. I’d get a script and he’d come in and say, “Oh, how is it?” And I’d say, “Second act needs work,” or whatever. I’d gotten so used to reading them and analyzing them, and then he would take it, look at it, and put it all together. So it wasn’t so much that we would talk about Star Trek as we would talk more about the world. About politics, what was going on. And then I would see all of that in Star Trek. Look, I had been working with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, and working with Gene was as normal as being with them.

  LESTER COLODNY

  Gene was always a commentator in everything he wrote. Everything had a message. He was very tuned in to things. You know how many years ago you’re talking about? Gene was so aware of the ozone layer or forests being decimated. If you go over the episodes he did, so many of them have an underlying message that were very apropos to our culture. Whatever he wrote
—he could write the funniest comedy—there was always a sociological point of view that had to do with the betterment of mankind. He was very dedicated in that way. Of all the people that I’ve met in my life, I would say he was one of the most guileless people I’ve known. There were no hidden agendas. No bullshit.

  JACKIE COON FERNANDEZ

  Gene was kind of like a grown-up Huckleberry Finn. It was a great quality, because everybody knew where they stood and didn’t have to do any tap dancing. Gene Roddenberry’s personality, even though he was a very soft-spoken man, was a very expansive, huge personality, bigger than life, so to speak. That ran true to form when it came to the show. Gene Coon’s personality was quite the opposite. He was introspective, he was quite content to let others shine—Roddenberry, me, or anyone else who wanted to shine. He would let them and just be there.

  DAVID GERROLD

  There was no performance. I have to contrast him with Gene Roddenberry on this. Gene Roddenberry was always doing the performance of a great man, and people were awed because they would go into his office wanting to see the great man, and of course he would do the performance. Gene L. Coon just did Gene L. Coon. He was very accessible, very straightforward, and very unpretentious. He had a very nuts-and-bolts attitude about the fact that we were doing a television show. That was very refreshing, because what we’ve got now is that Star Trek has become this whole religion. People argue about this, that, and the other thing; there’s a significance about it. With Gene Coon there was an understanding, first, that what we’re doing is television. Good television. We’re not on a mission from God, we’re here to entertain the audience.

  ANDE RICHARDSON

  There were certain people who had my respect, and Gene Roddenberry didn’t really get in that group. I mean, he came to my wedding and I went to his and Majel’s wedding party after they’d gotten married in Japan. We were all friendly, but Gene Coon was my heart. I always say it was Malcolm, Martin, and Gene Coon. Those were the people I valued, admired, and I had respect for their integrity. But Gene Roddenberry was a sexist, manipulative person who disregarded women. I didn’t value and respect him. He was funny in his own way, but he was a man of no substance. No integrity … well, I can’t say no integrity, but he was paper-thin. He wasn’t substantial. Having hung out with those three men, I have no hesitation putting them together and saying that Roddenberry came nowhere near them. Sure, he may have been the Great Bird, but he wasn’t a great person.

  He would have women walking from Bill Theiss’s fitting rooms through to his office in the skimpiest outfits so he could perv them. He was really such a sexist. I remember him telling me something and I thought, “Why is he telling me this?” Just personal kind of stuff I couldn’t really care to know about him. Disregarding people’s private space. I remember seeing him with Nichelle in his office, which is when I realized, “Oh, he’s been banging Nichelle.” But he moved Majel into an apartment just down the street so he could go for nooners. I don’t know why he had to be lecherous, looking after every woman. He came back from Japan with Majel and he said to me, “You know, Ande, you can go from the front to the back but you can’t go from the back to the front. Majel’s got a heck of an infection.” Again, why are you telling me this? But that was him: freaky-deaky dude.

  ROBERT H. JUSTMAN

  Gene Coon shaped a lot of the individual shows, but he didn’t shape the concept. It was Gene’s concept and it was never changed. Gene Coon rewrote the episodes while he was there. He wrote some originals and he was a workaholic. He would push himself to the limit and was marvelous. But the concept of the show had been established early in the first season. It was always Gene’s concept. He shaped the show the way he wanted it to be. Then Gene Coon did his best—and his best was really very high—to make the show live up to that concept.

  WILLIAM SHATNER (actor, “James Tiberius Kirk”)

  In my opinion, Gene Coon had more to do with the infusion of life into Star Trek than any other single person. Gene Roddenberry’s instincts for creating the original package is unparalleled. You can’t even discuss it. He put it together, hired the people, and the concept was his and set in motion by him. But after thirteen shows, other people took over. Gene Coon spent a year and set the tenor of the show. Gene Roddenberry was more in the background as other people actively took over.

  ROBERT H. JUSTMAN

  Gene Coon was almost totally involved with story and script. He did some casting, but he had nothing really to do with the editing of the show or the scoring. I did all of that, as well as the props, the set dressing, and all the other garbage. Honestly, Gene Roddenberry would have died if he didn’t have Gene Coon or someone to do this. Gene Coon was a brilliant find; you couldn’t find anyone better. The problem is that we wore him out, which is why he ultimately left in the middle of the second season.

  HARVE BENNETT (executive producer, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan)

  Gene Roddenberry was the Douglas MacArthur of this particular campaign, the George Patton. And guys like Gene Coon were the Omar Bradleys.

  GLEN A. LARSON (producer, It Takes a Thief, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century)

  My whole introduction to television came through working with Gene Coon. I think he was the spirit and soul of the show. I don’t think the show would have gone in the direction that it did nor had its enormous credibility if not for Coon. Gene had a good sense of drama in addition to strong concepts.

  DAVID GERROLD

  When Gene L. Coon came in, one of the things that happened is that by then they knew what they could do, and he would concentrate on those areas. The episodes he did were more sure of themselves, but they weren’t as adventurous in the same way as the early shows. The characters by then were more established, so Coon let the characters have the relationships with each other. The advantages were that when he took over, the characters locked into place very tightly and crisply. And it became Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. Before that time, there was a vagueness because Roddenberry didn’t know who or what the show was about. After Gene Coon took over, he decided it was about Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, and the other characters were ancillary. That became kind of the formula, which was successful.

  DOROTHY FONTANA

  Gene Coon’s writing influenced the writers who came in, who were structuring their stories. You could see this kind of flow happening. Another thing that happened is that the humor between the characters began to become more and more developed, particularly the Spock and McCoy relationship became a lot more fun. It evolved into what it ultimately became, which was a basic friendship. It was a friendship conducted with little insults and jabs, but the verbal fencing matches were always fun. It was fun to create those conversations once we started getting into that. I think Gene Coon led the way on that.

  STEVEN W. CARABATSOS

  Gene Roddenberry worked very hard. I’ve got to give the man a lot of credit, he busted his butt. But he had taken on executive-producer responsibilities and the line producer was Gene L. Coon, who was actually making sure the scripts got into the right form for shooting, and physically produced the show. He’s the one I reported to once I came to work.

  DAVID GERROLD

  Roddenberry always took the show too seriously and everybody preached. I think Roddenberry wanted to be a preacher and couldn’t make it or something. Everybody preached and Gene said, “No, in the future our people work together,” but what he would write would be sermons.

  ROBERT H. JUSTMAN

  It didn’t take long for Gene Coon’s personality to almost overwhelm me because after a few days, and especially after I read the first thing he wrote for us, I was thrilled, because, number one, no one else of the writers that we had been using up until that time had the concept of Star Trek within his grasp, but Gene Coon did. It didn’t take him long, and I knew how good he was, because I read the work and realized as I was writing my notes to him on his script or a story that he had just turned in that I was highly entertained. He
understood the characters that the actors were playing, and it went on like that. The more I worked with him, the better I liked him, both personally as someone that was after the same things that Gene Roddenberry and I were after, and also because he was a very likable fellow.

  DAVID GERROLD

  In Gene L. Coon’s scripts, people interacted with each other in a whole different way and didn’t preach, although it was mandatory to do a little preaching at the end of the script where the captain explains—the captain being the father figure. Gene L. Coon’s characters joked with each other. I think that’s why the fans loved the show so much. While our people were having an adventure, they were never too busy to snipe at each other, which was the way they showed their affection. There was never a question of how much Spock and McCoy loved each other, and that was shown by how vicious they would get when they would start sniping at each other. I think a lot of that was Gene L. Coon.

  ANDE RICHARDSON

  Gene would make comments in his scripts, and then he put in a joke so that you can laugh. And it keeps the balance. He keeps you laughing and learning. If they’re laughing, they’re breathing and they’re learning. They can listen, hear, and take stuff in. That was Gene. He mixed it up so beautifully.

  ROBERT H. JUSTMAN

  One day I was almost stunned by the sight of him writing a script, and I watched him. He was pounding the keys for all they were worth and churning out what seemed to me to be reams of material. To my knowledge, he was the only person who ever wrote for Star Trek who gave you more than you were looking for. His scenes were highly playable, and he had lots and lots of ideas. He was like someone who comes in scattering happiness wherever he goes, because his work was so superb.