"'Wagon Train' to the stars" was Gene Roddenberry's catch-phrase for grabbing the network exec's imagination (or lack thereof). Roddenberry himself was thinking more in terms of a character like Horatio Hornblower, moved forward in time a few centuries, but "Wagon Train" with Ward Bond was a high-rated oater back in the early Sixties. He figure that might get their attention, which it did.

But when they viewed the first pilot, the one with Jeffery Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike, they considered the show "much too intellectual" for their viewers, and they balked at the idea of a woman ("Number One"—Majel Barrett) as second in command of a starship (or a woman in a command position on the bridge at all!). "And get rid of the guy with the ears! He looks too much like the Devil! That might offend some of our religious viewers!"

The fact that they actually asked for a second pilot was unprecedented. When the time came to film it, Hunter was no longer available, so Captain James Tiberius Kirk was bunged in. Majel Barrett got demoted to McCoy's nurse, but "the guy with the ears" wound up second in command. Roddenberry convinced them that they needed an alien-looking person on the bridge to remind the viewers that they were in space and the series often involved interaction with civilizations on other planets. This one, they bought.

Roddenberry had used William Shatner in a previous series he wrote, called "The Lieutenant," so he did have some idea of what he was getting. . . .

[Gleaned from The World of Star Trek by David Gerrold, who also wrote the script for "The Trouble with Tribbles."]

Don Firth