by Larry Brody
Over the years the various incarnations of STAR TREK and the people who have worked and are still working on it have been very good to me. In return, I’ve tried to be just as good to them, both personally and professionally.
This section of TVWriter.Com is dedicated to all those who have put in so much time and effort making the STAR TREK universe the most actively beloved in television, and to all those who have put in so much time and effort loving it. Once upon a time I was an eager young writer thrilled at the fact that I was actually being paid to write my very own episode of one of my favorite shows. (Or was I really an ambitious young hustler trying to claw my way to the top? Funny, how I can’t remember just now.) The show, of course, was STAR TREK, and the guy crazy enough to pay me was Gene Roddenberry.
What was it really like to work with Gene? Remembering Roddenberry is all yours.
My latest claim to STAR TREK fame is an episode I co-wrote for STAR TREK: VOYAGER called TATTOO. I came up with the idea and wrote the preliminary treatment for the episode, but because of time problems, I was never able to write the teleplay. Executive Producer Michael Piller took it over and, to his credit, made TATTOO into an episode I really liked.
To see how my early version compares to what you saw on the air, look for it here.
“TATTOO” was sold after about half a dozen meetings with the VOYAGER staff, and was far from the first idea I told them. Just how far, you’re about to find out, because here, for the edification of TV writers and Trekkers everywhere, are the ideas Michael and the gang shot down. This is real stuff that I thought was good enough to be on UPN–but I was the only one.
You can call this a case of teaching by bad example. I call it: The Voyagers Nobody Wanted.
NEW! This just in. One of the artists who created the storyboards for the episode of STAR TREK: THE ANIMATED SERIES that I talk about in Remembering Roddenberry recently found some of his art and shared it with me. So I’m sharing it with you – HERE