THE GREAT BOOR OF THE GALAXY: On the 50th anniversary of Star Trek’s network debut, Matthew Continetti describes Gene Roddenberry as a “Liberal visionary? Maybe. But he was also an insecure, misogynistic hack,” and increasingly, his own worst enemy, particularly after the original Star Trek was cancelled by NBC:

For all of the control Roddenberry exercised over Star Trek, the franchise prospered only when it was under the aegis of others. As early as one month before the show’s premiere, an exhausted and embattled Roddenberry took a vacation. Television veteran Gene L. Coon, a Marine veteran of the Pacific, was hired as producer. “To a large degree,” write Gross and Altman, “it would be Coon who would ultimately define the show creatively in the coming months.”

The Star Trek that has imprinted itself on fans for decades is Gene L. Coon’s. His shows deepened the relationships between Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Dr. McCoy. He created the Klingons. There was more humor. Says writer David Gerrold, “Gene L. Coon created the noble image that everyone gives Roddenberry the most credit for.” Shatner puts it this way: “Gene Coon had more to do with the infusion of life into Star Trek than any other single person.”

With Coon at the helm Roddenberry turned to other projects, and to his own worst instincts. He was a horn dog. Affairs with police secretaries had been just the start. While on the force he had become friends with Jack Webb, the star and producer of Dragnet, who eased his entry into Hollywood and competed with him for the affections of actress Majel Barrett. Meanwhile Roddenberry also had an affair with the actress, singer, and model Nichelle Nichols. His relationship with Barrett was an open secret, lasting a decade before he divorced his wife. He and Barrett got married in 1969. (Their son, Rod, was born in 1974.) As for Nichols, Roddenberry cast her in a history-making role as Star Trek’s Lieutenant Uhura.

Ande Richardson, an assistant to Gene Coon who had worked for Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, says, “Gene Roddenberry was a sexist, manipulative person who disregarded women.” She mentions several examples. “He would have women walking from Bill Theiss’s fitting rooms through to his office in the skimpiest outfits so he could perv them.” In the twenty-third century of Roddenberry’s imagination, it is unlikely that “perv” is still a verb.

As Continetti writes, “Star Trek is whoever is writing it at a given moment. Roddenberry, like many great innovators, fused two elements — Westerns and the aspirations of the New Frontier — to create something that in retrospect appears absolutely necessary and obvious. Star Trek: The Next Generation writer-producer Burton Armus, whose credits include NYPD Blue, says, ‘Look, Roddenberry can’t write very well. He came out with a concept that suddenly got hot, so he moved his house into this spaceship and he lived on it for the rest of his life.’”

Read the whole thing.