Boldly Telling Them To Stuff It

[halloweenjack]

Via io9, here's a letter from Gene Roddenberry reacting to the rejection of Star Trek's first pilot. (For those of you who aren't that familiar with Star Trek's origins, Roddenberry made a pilot, "The Cage", which was rejected by NBC because it was "too cerebral", among other reasons; they did fund a second pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before", which was accepted. In an inspired bit of recycling, the first pilot was turned into a two-part episode, "The Menagerie", with the events of the first pilot being a flashback to the earlier years of the Enterprise, a logical move since the only character that was retained from the first pilot was Spock.) Although Roddenberry graciously accepts that he may have been partially at fault for the rejection, he's quite passionate about defending his show:

For the first time I think I see our particular and peculiar medium exactly for what it is. It has been and can be very good -- and if someone proves to me they want me to try for that level, I gladly will. On the other hand, without that proof, I intend to aim for safe copies and parallels of existing successes -- settle for doing it just two or three percent better than the next guy so that job and profits are always there, and I eat dinner every night at 6:00 p.m. with the children and have two days at home out of every seven to play horseshoes and putter in the garden. And do everything possible to move on into another medium.

 

Preach it, Gene.