Original Roddenberry Star Trek Pitch Online
2 min readBack in 1964, Gene Roddenberry submitted a sixteen-page pitch for a new series to be called Star Trek and fans can now see that pitch online in its entirety.
The pitch, part of which has been published before, includes a description of the characters and some ideas which became episodes during the run of Star Trek.
As many fans know, the Captain of the ship (in this case, the U.S.S. Yorktown, not the more-familiar Enterprise) would have been Robert M. April, a “space-age Captain Horatio Hornblower.”
Other characters included: the Executive Officer, Number One, a “mysterious” female; the navigator – Jose Ortegas; the doctor – Phillip “Bones” Boyce; the First Lieutenant, Mr. Spock, who was described as being “probably half-Martin” and “with a heavy-lidded” and “satanic” face; and the Captain’s Yeoman, a blonde female with the surname of “Colt.”
Several programs that became episodes were mentioned in the pitch, including: The Cage (The Menagerie), Charlie X, A Piece of the Action, and Mudd’s Women.
Roddenberry had plenty of other story ideas which were included in the pitch. 100 A.B. would have been the story of life after “The Bomb.” “A terrifying parallel as we examine what might be our own world a few decades after an atomic holocaust,” is the description of this sobering story.
Another story, Kentucky, Kentucky, would have featured an earth colony out in space that had been reduced to a frontier, log-fort life.
Other topics covered in the pitch include casting, language (a telecommunicator device is mentioned), weaponry (laser beams), costuming and specifics regarding the U.S.S. Yorktown.
The pitch can be seen here.
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