33STAR TREK

Aired: NBC, 1966-1969

As creator Gene Roddenberry wrote to science fiction author Isaac Asmiov two months after the first Star Trek series premiered in 1966: "Star Trek almost did not get on the air because it refused to do a juvenile science fiction, because it refused to put a Lassie' aboard the space ship, and because it insisted on hiring Dick Matheson, Harlan Ellison, A.E. Van Vogt, Phil Farmer, and so on." Matheson and Vogt did write for the show extensively, and Ellison briefly. Months before his death and during the run of Star Trek: Next Generation, Roddenberry told the Los Angeles Times: "It has become a crusade of mine to demonstrate that TV need not be violent to be exciting. I'd often felt that no one was catching on. But if the Dalai Lama likes us, I suppose the message is getting out."

How Star Trek incubated generations of writers