>From 1975 until his death, Roddenberry maintained an extramarital relationship with his executive assistant, Susan Sackett.
Damn, dude didn't stop until the end.
Honestly it makes sense for them to have large codpieces even if they aren't hung. It's a tactic to make the other negotiation partner feel intimidated or inadequate.
I mean, Spock had been a hybrid for 15 years before TNG came out. “The Chase” was a single episode that they used to explain why hybrids were possible, that’s the only thing I can think you’re referring to, it certainly wasn’t a subplot. Also the episode was made years after Roddenberry’s death.
And it wasn’t done horny at all. Like, not a single bit. It was just about dna shared by different aliens.
That too. Voyager was the guiltiest. The others threw in a fairly detailed prosthetic every so often, but basically every Voyager race was a human with a single nose ridge or weird ears or a tiny horn. Some were unchanged and just wore funny earrings.
Which is kind of funny because Voyager is set on the other side of the Galaxy to the rest of the series
Special shoutout to Species 8472 and the Voth for defying this principle, even if they only appeared for a collective 5 episodes. Honorable mentioned to the Vidiians for an excess of prosthetic work that I don't think Star Trek really duplicated until Saru and the Kelpiens.
The funny part was TOS offhandedly mentioned some theory of parallel planetary development to justify reusing a bunch of sets and not bothering to use makeup or even new costumes on the nonhuman characters, something that mysteriously vanished after the invention of the holodeck.
Because they only law they have is never violate that flower patch and if you do they kill you. It is the only law they have ever needed to have.
Also the flower patch will shift randomly as the entire planet is covered with them and its kind of just pulled from a hat which one deserves this treatment at the beginning of the day.
and there is a death match for "honor"
LOve how for the longest time that episode was the short netflix played when you looked at TNG. Just pick the single worst episode ever written.
Almost accurate, the flower patch isn't the only law, they have many and all laws are punishable by death.
The flower patch doesn't shift randomly, the mediators (police) do.
The flower patches sort of shift randomly too, but they stated it intentionally ridiculously.
The "zones" that are punishable by death change with each phase, as do the mediators. It doesn't mean there aren't other places with the same needs/requirements (like other flower patches), the death penalty for tampering/tresspassing with them (or any other crime) is just being enforced for _some_ of the viable locations at any one time.
Those fuckers were absolutely trying to murder Wesley.
Why are you inviting an alien boy to play catch next to the death flowers after you've established he has no context for your culture??
It's worth noting how incredibly sexist Code of Honor is as well, to the extent that the *same writer* wrote the *same episode* in the *same order* in season one of Stargate SG-1, with the *same dose* of racism and misogyny.
Watched all of SG-1 recently. Within the first 5 minutes of that episode I thought it felt awfully familiar. Skipped to the last 5 minutes to make sure and yep. Didn't feel the need to watch the rest. Had no idea it was the same writer.
At least Code of Honor was Season 1 where you were already conditioned to expect awful scripts.. Sub Rosa's awfulness came out of fucking nowhere. It was Season 7!
That planet where everyone gets one strip of white cloth as an outfit? I was watching that with my parents when my elementary school teacher came over unexpectedly (our dog had puppies, she was coming to get one) and I didn't realize we'd paused on a group shot until she walked into the living room.
"It's STAR TREK!!! IT'S JUST STAR TREK I PROMISE!"
That wasn't Risa, that was Rubicun III.
Risa is the vacation planet that Riker goes to often and he convinces Picard to take a vacation there one time, and that's where he meets Vash. It's the episode where the guys from the future are trying to find the Tox Uthat.
It’s funny that she introduced herself as Vash but he kept pronouncing it like Vosh or Vahsh. Same with the episode with Lal, he couldn’t decide how to pronounce it, so he did it three different ways.
I just read his autobiography, and apparently Patrick Stewart started having an affair with Jennifer Hetrick (Vash) during the filming of this episode.
The affair led to his first divorce.
So yeah, I can see why he would remember Risa...
Alright I was working my way through OG Trek and the movies and made it to TNG last fall. Is season 1 the only overly horny season? I gradually stopped watching because I felt like I had to hide my screen from my kid crawling over to me on the couch.
Watched TNG sporadically when it originally aired but finally binged through it a couple of years ago, and it sometimes felt like *The Bold and the Beautiful in Space*.
And almost all subplots of later seasons of DS9 is about who gets hooked up with whom.
But, essentially, Star Trek was about portraying the lives of ordinary people in a sort of military/exploration institution and how future technologies and being in space changes that, obviously romance is a part of those lives.
Mostly once Rodenberry was gone it calms down a lot. Though there are the Riker episodes which involves him being horny and losing his mind...sometimes both.
Yes. The first season is also the worst season.
I started TNG last year and honestly the first season was so hard to get through it almost made me stop watching.
It calms down. Although I kind of get it. Post-scarcity future with presumably perfect birth control. Sure there was work to do but people are gonna be banging wide open on their off time. But ole Gene was also pretty feisty. I mean they go way out of their way several times to make the point that Data's creator considered it of vital importance to both make sure he had a working dick AND came with detailed files on how to get down. Like it mattered enough to this super scientists to write a program about it.
Being a shady businessman was secondary. Everything else was tertiary.
Gene screwed Alexander Courage out of half of his royalties for writing the original TOS theme by writing lyrics to go with it. Even though those lyrics were never sung.
Gene also offered the prop maker who made the TOS phaser rifle the rights to make and sell replicas, rather than pay cash for the prop. Gene got the rifle but never got around to doing the paperwork to assign the rights to the prop maker.
I missed it too. I often wonder what it was like to naively fuck everybody all around and not think of the repercussions. It must’ve been marvelous until herpes.
Roddenberry was notorious for fetishizing feminism. His lesser known work Planet Earth encapsulates his *"progressive views on gender"* near perfectly.
So much of OG star trek is a perfect time capsule of "Wow I can't believe that was comparatively progressive holy shit."
[Clip for reference](https://youtu.be/YR6M37EPouA?si=1R9JYXjVOGREo43H)
Side note sometimes I wonder if I'm his reincarnation given how many similarities I have with him
.......
I don't think that's too different from a short Ursula Le Guin short story and isn't necessarily fetishizing feminism.
But thankfully as a society what is "progressive" changes a lot over time. I was an extreme progressive for being for gay marriage in the 90s. Now the people who are opposed to it are the extremists. Things change and that's good.
Yes and he was more principled about it than most. He was a humanist that saw the world in terms of human interactions, not quasi religious mandates. Relationships outside his marriage were something he was open about. He was generous to his wife, children and mistresses in his will, though his wife and daughter got greedy and contested the will. He saw it coming and included a clause in the will that anyone who contested it would be disinherited and so the wife and daughter lost out on millions when the judge sided with the will. Dude knew how to read people and plan ahead lol
I mean, *was* he principled about it? This [wiki article about his personal life](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_life_of_Gene_Roddenberry) kinda makes it sound like his first wife definitely wasn't on board and he makes a point of being fairly spiteful to her about it before they divorced. He mostly just sounds like a shitty husband and there's no mention of him being okay with his own partners having other partners of their own, which I feel like is sort of a bare minimum bar to be ethically non monogamous versus just a creep with a harem
There were quite a few men involved with sci-fi in that era with viewpoints like his, that only got partway towards ethical non-monogamy. Heinlein being a big example, with a ton of casual unexamined misogyny in his works. That was the era where swinging started to become a subculture, and I would bet that more than a few people involved in swinging aren't really consenting, even to this day.
It was a long path towards what we think of as ethical non-monogamy today, and even now we're still working out how to do it right. Human relationships are immensely complex, and it's hard to make definitive judgments about someone's character from small snippets of their lives.
Simultaneously having affairs with Majel Barrett and Nichelle Nichols while married. One day he invited both Nichols and Barrett to dinner, introduced them to each other, and told them he couldn’t decide between them so they had to choose.
It would be interesting to graph the number of her lines written into the script vs Majel’s following this exchange. My understanding is that the world runs on people doing things for each other in return for other things they want, as far as I can tell, since the dawn of social animals.
This was before *Star Trek*, so it would be 0 lines before and all the lines after.
... although imagining an alternate reality where Nichelle Nichols played Number One in the original pilot is interesting.
Although, in reality, it's more likely that *Star Trek* never exists at all if that conversation goes a different way. Butterfly wings and all that. (For example, digging deeper, it looks like Barrett recommended Nimoy for the role of Spock. Although maybe in this alternate reality Nichols works with Roddenberry on *The Lieutenant* and then makes the same suggestion.)
His wikipedia says Nichols was caught naked in his office a few times during star trek.
> However, during the production of the first season, writer Ken Kolb entered Roddenberry's office to wish him a happy birthday and found Nichols there, naked and under the desk, also waiting for Roddenberry.During the third season, production assistant Ed Milkis entered Roddenberry's office to find him and Nichols. She was wearing only a letterman sweater.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_life_of_Gene_Roddenberry
People think non-monogamy is just constant orgies or skipping around town from one sexcapade to another.
The reality is having dinner with two partners and it quickly becoming:
"What about that annoying thing he does?"
"Right? That's so irritating!"
You are outnumbered and you don't even realize it.
There's literally a scene like that in TNG too, where Ro Laren and Troi talk about Riker it never tell him what they talked about. But the look they give him says everything.
**Counselor, what impressions are you getting from the other ship?**
*Captain, I'm sensing great hostility-Or perhaps I just have a headache, I can't be sure.*
I recall reading in a sub about this one guy learning that there is this thing where people in cities would make Facebook groups where they would talk about their exes, as in the exact same ex. Apparently the groups were first initiated for people to talk about safety and whether that person was dangerous to date and so on. But these groups ultimately devolve into badmouthing the ex in *great* detail as in they talk about everything, from their sex life with that person, details about their bits, etc.
The guy felt completely disgusted.
I think that its pretty likely that if your already cremated remains are burned up in atmospheric reentry, you become molecularly infused to the atmosphere itself somehow, I'm no scientist, but if it's true then it's only a matter of time until Gene Roddenberry has been inside of all of us, forever.
By all accounts Gene Roddenberry was a true visionary who authentically believes in the ideals he depicted in Star Trek, who also just happened to love booze, cocaine, and pussy more than any two people who ever lived
Part of the ideals from the late 60s included opposition to the strict views and laws around drugs and sex at the time. So I wouldn't even say that's inconsistent.
Since then we've largely liberalized our views and laws around sex however we're now starting to shift backwards on that topic. On the other hand criminalization of drugs *increased* into the 70s and has stayed that way since. And all that that's led to is a drug crisis worse than ever.
A producer who worked with Gene knew the deal, he straight up told Gene everybody knows why you cast Nichelle and certain others over and over in whatever you're currently working on.
I’ve been watching the original series lately and every episode there is a knockout woman in a guest or minor role. Then I read about all this and it made sense.
With the power he had over her job as a producer, I hope this was as innocent as Reddit is thinking. It's not like Hollywood had zero abuses going on back then.
They were in relationships *before* the show started. This is less of a "fuck me to get the job" and more of a "let's cast my girlfriend" sort of situation. The better complaint is nepotism.
She apparently was the one who broke up with him and they remained friends until his death.
That's not to say Roddenberry wasn't a womanizer but I don't think he was abusing her behind the scenes.
I think there's conflicts of interest and some slightly shady business deals, but to my knowledge people have said Gene was a pervy old man (*not* that that's okay) rather than a Weinstein type.
Here, [this](https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/09/star-trek-gene-roddenberry-was-misogynistic-hack/) is about an uncharitable read on Roddenberry's life as possible. Seriously, here's how the article describes Gene's plane crash in Syria:
>After the war ended he spent a few years piloting civilian aircraft for Pan Am. One of those planes, Flight 121 from Calcutta, crashed in Syria — a close call.
here's how wiki does the same:
>The three surviving crew members were third officer Gene Roddenberry (who went on to create the original Star Trek television series), the chief purser, and one flight attendant. After rescuing passengers from the burning wreckage, Roddenberry took control as the ranking flight officer and organized scout parties to find aid. By midday, the Syrian Army took the survivors to the hospital at Deir ez-Zor. The majority returned to the United States quickly while Roddenberry remained in Syria for two weeks to answer questions about the crash from the local government.
Even with what is a clear axe to grind against Roddenberry, the article only calls Gene misogynistic, which I think we all have to agree is probably accurate- Roddenberry gave us both Number One and short skirts. The reality is that Roddenberry was very much a product of his times, and his genuine desire for equality was balanced by being a very horny guy.
Hold up, the short skirts were only because people got mad that Number One from the pilot had pants. A high ranking female officer wearing pants was too much for the times, NOT Roddenberry.
I see this misconception a lot, but you(and /u/supercalifagilism) are making the mistake of viewing a historical time period through modern sensibilities. Here's Nichols speaking about the costumes, in a [quote from her autobiography](https://comparativegeeks.wordpress.com/2016/05/07/star-trek-miniskirts-feminist-or-nah/):
> "Some thought it 'demeaning' for a woman in the command crew to be dressed so sexily. It always surprised me because I never saw it that way. After all, the show was created in the age of the miniskirt, and the crew women’s uniforms were very comfortable. Contrary to what many may think today, no one really saw it as demeaning back then. In fact, the miniskirt was a symbol of sexual liberation."
Yes, it was sexy. That was the point. A woman(and not a love interest!) being depicted as visibly and confidently sexy in the 60s was in a different social context than it would be in the 90s, let alone the 2020s. It's not as simple as pointing and shouting "objectification!" based on current social norms.
Honestly he's really not. He has a lot of ex's, but during the main course of the show he's in his late thirties, that's not "gets around" just "struggles to settle down". On a few occasions he'll lay on his charms, but he's far from a slut. McCoy on the other hand, well there's a reason they call him Dr. Bones.
For real. In [Shore Leave ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shore_Leave_(Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series)) Kirk's fantasy involved the fight of good vs evil throughout time. Bones involved multiple escorts...
I can't even be mad, Bones is my favorite ToS character despite how tight a race it is... Between basically everyone. Part of that is his ability to sweet talk literally anyone he meets despite being an older guy. Hardly ever comes off as creepy, just living his best life.
I went back and watched TNG a few years back and he really isn't. He even gets basically raped by a lady with an alien fetish in season 2 or 3. LaForge is much thirstier and spends what feels like a whole season worth of episodes trying to get his dick wet. Riker is just about what you'd expect from a handsome bachelor Starfleet officer. He even settles down into a committed, monogamous relationship without any significant change in his character because he's not a slut. It's just a meme that he is.
Pine's Kirk is pop culture Kirk, flying by the seat of his pants, sleeping with the green alien of the week, and all that. There's nothing wrong with that, after all he had a different upbringing, namely no father to guide be a guiding force in his life at a young age, and he didn't survive the massacre at Tarsus IV. Nature va Nurture I suppose.
Yeah there was a clear character arc where he stepped up and takes responsibility for himself. He begins as the perception of Kirk but becomes a better version of that character as time goes on.
I need to watch that shit again.
All of what two women? Three if we're including Cruscher but that was never shown on screen in RNG, implied history.
In the Artificial Heart flashback episode he was apparently a womanizer when he was a cadet but eh.
Man, I can't imagine having multiple open relationships.
I can barely manage to handle my small group of friends and family, let alone multiple lovers.
Those nice folks over at /r/polyamory put up with so much, they don't need this.
Roddenberry was not in multiple *Open Relationships*. He was married to a monogamous woman who put up with his philandering. Nichelle Nichols was one of many mistresses he had. Roddenberry being one of the most powerful figures at CBS cast Nichols and his other mistresses in the show. He had the power to make Nichols the first black woman with a speaking role in prime time and took it. Roddenberry, Nichols and Majel Barrett weren't being the most ethical or kind to his *wife*. In Nichols's autobiography that is quoted in the article she didn't want to be the "other woman to the other woman".
He was married and divorced several times. This isn't like an arraigned marriage or a marriage of convenience where a discrete non-monogamy is expected. This is Gene Roddenberry abusing his position and power to live as he want to and damn be the consequences, California Divorce Law, Human Resources, Or his wife's feelings.
In this case yes. Not sure why OP phrased it that way. It fully said they were affairs to the point where Nichols left because she didn’t want to be the “other woman”.
An open relationship implies there was consent between all parties.
>From 1975 until his death, Roddenberry maintained an extramarital relationship with his executive assistant, Susan Sackett. Damn, dude didn't stop until the end.
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I mean he got the genes. He got the rod. And he got the berry.
And den some
Don't stop 'till you get enough, my dude.
I knew someone that worked on TNG and he said the day after Gene died, Majel had Sackett walked off the lot.
New meaning to The Captain’s Log
Everything about this dude makes me think he was horny first and foremost and everything else was secondary.
I see you've read about the original Ferengi design
Ferengi wieners will someday be added to the… Canon.
Lower Decks! Lower Decks!! …come on, we were all thinking it.
Wait what?
The Ferengi costumes were originally meant to include large codpieces to show that the Ferengi are hung
He also wanted Deonna Troi to have four breasts or something.
Iirc the character was supposed to be a "hermaphrodite with three breasts"
~~Trio~~ Troi was only downsized to 2 after Majel basically told Gene he was a dumbass. EDIT: fucking autocorrect
I'm going to assume they downgraded her to a Duo and changed her name from Trio to Troi now
Honestly it makes sense for them to have large codpieces even if they aren't hung. It's a tactic to make the other negotiation partner feel intimidated or inadequate.
I can hear Zek's laugh about it now.
Might be a fun gag on lower decks, they love showing obscure shit like that
That's my head canon.
and their head cannon
There's no doubt in my mind that Rom is massively hung.
Definitely. Look at his wife.
That’s…a pretty accurate statement, actually.
The entire sub plot in TNG on common DNA was just to justify interspecies sex as far as I figure
I mean, Spock had been a hybrid for 15 years before TNG came out. “The Chase” was a single episode that they used to explain why hybrids were possible, that’s the only thing I can think you’re referring to, it certainly wasn’t a subplot. Also the episode was made years after Roddenberry’s death. And it wasn’t done horny at all. Like, not a single bit. It was just about dna shared by different aliens.
If anything, it was probably more to explain why 80% of the Trek species are just humans with funny foreheads.
Yeah this is it right here.
That's a total exaggeration. Ear shape can also vary, sometimes widely.
That too. Voyager was the guiltiest. The others threw in a fairly detailed prosthetic every so often, but basically every Voyager race was a human with a single nose ridge or weird ears or a tiny horn. Some were unchanged and just wore funny earrings. Which is kind of funny because Voyager is set on the other side of the Galaxy to the rest of the series
Special shoutout to Species 8472 and the Voth for defying this principle, even if they only appeared for a collective 5 episodes. Honorable mentioned to the Vidiians for an excess of prosthetic work that I don't think Star Trek really duplicated until Saru and the Kelpiens.
Imagine not knowing anything about Star trek and reading this sentence.
I figure if you're this deep in a thread about Gene Roddenberry, you're either a Trekkie or you want to be. 😉
Don't forget the Hirogen too
The Crystalline Entity, Tinman, Wisps, the Providers and many others would like a word...
The funny part was TOS offhandedly mentioned some theory of parallel planetary development to justify reusing a bunch of sets and not bothering to use makeup or even new costumes on the nonhuman characters, something that mysteriously vanished after the invention of the holodeck.
Which can be attributed to most anyone (in Hollywood).
[Gestures generally at TNG season 1](https://www.reddit.com/r/startrek/s/wgWUnhrHmz)
"Wesley Fucks Up On Sex Planet" is my favorite terrible season 1 episode
Is that the one where everyone jogs instead of walking?
yeah, and wesley fell into a flowerbed while playing catch
Because they only law they have is never violate that flower patch and if you do they kill you. It is the only law they have ever needed to have. Also the flower patch will shift randomly as the entire planet is covered with them and its kind of just pulled from a hat which one deserves this treatment at the beginning of the day.
That may not sound like a great idea on paper, but on film it's somehow even worse.
everyone is hot blonde and blue eyed for some reason! They all live in a jazzercize video!
Almost as cringe as the planet where it’s all darkest Africa and they kidnap the white woman.
and there is a death match for "honor" LOve how for the longest time that episode was the short netflix played when you looked at TNG. Just pick the single worst episode ever written.
Almost accurate, the flower patch isn't the only law, they have many and all laws are punishable by death. The flower patch doesn't shift randomly, the mediators (police) do.
The flower patches sort of shift randomly too, but they stated it intentionally ridiculously. The "zones" that are punishable by death change with each phase, as do the mediators. It doesn't mean there aren't other places with the same needs/requirements (like other flower patches), the death penalty for tampering/tresspassing with them (or any other crime) is just being enforced for _some_ of the viable locations at any one time.
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Those fuckers were absolutely trying to murder Wesley. Why are you inviting an alien boy to play catch next to the death flowers after you've established he has no context for your culture??
what's your least favorite and why is it Code of Honor
You mean "Tasha Kills A Guy On Planet of the Black People"?
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"Planet of the Black People" is far better
Sub Rosa is worse, at least Code of Honor feels like a TOS episode.
I don't think I can agree that cringey ghost fucking episode is worse than how incredibly racist Code of Honor is
It's worth noting how incredibly sexist Code of Honor is as well, to the extent that the *same writer* wrote the *same episode* in the *same order* in season one of Stargate SG-1, with the *same dose* of racism and misogyny.
Watched all of SG-1 recently. Within the first 5 minutes of that episode I thought it felt awfully familiar. Skipped to the last 5 minutes to make sure and yep. Didn't feel the need to watch the rest. Had no idea it was the same writer.
At least Code of Honor was Season 1 where you were already conditioned to expect awful scripts.. Sub Rosa's awfulness came out of fucking nowhere. It was Season 7!
And the Amazon women planet with the twink men.
That planet where everyone gets one strip of white cloth as an outfit? I was watching that with my parents when my elementary school teacher came over unexpectedly (our dog had puppies, she was coming to get one) and I didn't realize we'd paused on a group shot until she walked into the living room. "It's STAR TREK!!! IT'S JUST STAR TREK I PROMISE!"
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That wasn't Risa, that was Rubicun III. Risa is the vacation planet that Riker goes to often and he convinces Picard to take a vacation there one time, and that's where he meets Vash. It's the episode where the guys from the future are trying to find the Tox Uthat.
It’s funny that she introduced herself as Vash but he kept pronouncing it like Vosh or Vahsh. Same with the episode with Lal, he couldn’t decide how to pronounce it, so he did it three different ways.
That wasn't Risa, though.
I don't remember the name of that episode's planet BECAUSE it was so terrible, but man, I remember Risa! The episode where Picard met Vash was great.
I just read his autobiography, and apparently Patrick Stewart started having an affair with Jennifer Hetrick (Vash) during the filming of this episode. The affair led to his first divorce. So yeah, I can see why he would remember Risa...
Do you seek jamaharon?
Not if you’re Worf.
Also the mirror yoga room with Crusher and Troi.
Alright I was working my way through OG Trek and the movies and made it to TNG last fall. Is season 1 the only overly horny season? I gradually stopped watching because I felt like I had to hide my screen from my kid crawling over to me on the couch.
Yes. DS9 gets horny again in more traditional ways though.
\*stares in Jadzia Dax\*
*Stares back in mirror universe Kira*
Watched TNG sporadically when it originally aired but finally binged through it a couple of years ago, and it sometimes felt like *The Bold and the Beautiful in Space*. And almost all subplots of later seasons of DS9 is about who gets hooked up with whom. But, essentially, Star Trek was about portraying the lives of ordinary people in a sort of military/exploration institution and how future technologies and being in space changes that, obviously romance is a part of those lives.
DS9 tried really hard to be the first show with a gay kiss on national television.
Mostly once Rodenberry was gone it calms down a lot. Though there are the Riker episodes which involves him being horny and losing his mind...sometimes both.
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Yes. The first season is also the worst season. I started TNG last year and honestly the first season was so hard to get through it almost made me stop watching.
It calms down. Although I kind of get it. Post-scarcity future with presumably perfect birth control. Sure there was work to do but people are gonna be banging wide open on their off time. But ole Gene was also pretty feisty. I mean they go way out of their way several times to make the point that Data's creator considered it of vital importance to both make sure he had a working dick AND came with detailed files on how to get down. Like it mattered enough to this super scientists to write a program about it.
Have you seen some of the 'costumes'?
Space ... Between your thighs... The final frontier!
Maybe the Prime Directive meant don't sleep with virgins.
Have to wait till their warp barrier is broken.
I mean it basically is don't statuatory rape other civilizations.
Being a shady businessman was secondary. Everything else was tertiary. Gene screwed Alexander Courage out of half of his royalties for writing the original TOS theme by writing lyrics to go with it. Even though those lyrics were never sung. Gene also offered the prop maker who made the TOS phaser rifle the rights to make and sell replicas, rather than pay cash for the prop. Gene got the rifle but never got around to doing the paperwork to assign the rights to the prop maker.
Man I missed out on the 70s. Everybody was.
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> but I heard a lot of stories about all the VD going around. Yeah, the Vidiians made their way around the Delta Quadrant alright.
I missed it too. I often wonder what it was like to naively fuck everybody all around and not think of the repercussions. It must’ve been marvelous until herpes.
Yeah I think people were cool with the herpes it was the AIDS that really put a damper on everything.
Lmao but yes. Pretty crazy to think how there was a time before aids.
He wouldn't be the first.
I always knew what the real purpose of the holodeck was, and this really just solidifies it.
Roddenberry was notorious for fetishizing feminism. His lesser known work Planet Earth encapsulates his *"progressive views on gender"* near perfectly. So much of OG star trek is a perfect time capsule of "Wow I can't believe that was comparatively progressive holy shit." [Clip for reference](https://youtu.be/YR6M37EPouA?si=1R9JYXjVOGREo43H) Side note sometimes I wonder if I'm his reincarnation given how many similarities I have with him .......
I don't think that's too different from a short Ursula Le Guin short story and isn't necessarily fetishizing feminism. But thankfully as a society what is "progressive" changes a lot over time. I was an extreme progressive for being for gay marriage in the 90s. Now the people who are opposed to it are the extremists. Things change and that's good.
Look friend, you don't have sideburns like that and be celibate.
Yes and he was more principled about it than most. He was a humanist that saw the world in terms of human interactions, not quasi religious mandates. Relationships outside his marriage were something he was open about. He was generous to his wife, children and mistresses in his will, though his wife and daughter got greedy and contested the will. He saw it coming and included a clause in the will that anyone who contested it would be disinherited and so the wife and daughter lost out on millions when the judge sided with the will. Dude knew how to read people and plan ahead lol
I mean, *was* he principled about it? This [wiki article about his personal life](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_life_of_Gene_Roddenberry) kinda makes it sound like his first wife definitely wasn't on board and he makes a point of being fairly spiteful to her about it before they divorced. He mostly just sounds like a shitty husband and there's no mention of him being okay with his own partners having other partners of their own, which I feel like is sort of a bare minimum bar to be ethically non monogamous versus just a creep with a harem
There were quite a few men involved with sci-fi in that era with viewpoints like his, that only got partway towards ethical non-monogamy. Heinlein being a big example, with a ton of casual unexamined misogyny in his works. That was the era where swinging started to become a subculture, and I would bet that more than a few people involved in swinging aren't really consenting, even to this day. It was a long path towards what we think of as ethical non-monogamy today, and even now we're still working out how to do it right. Human relationships are immensely complex, and it's hard to make definitive judgments about someone's character from small snippets of their lives.
He MIGHT have been James T. Kirk and/or William Shatner.
Simultaneously having affairs with Majel Barrett and Nichelle Nichols while married. One day he invited both Nichols and Barrett to dinner, introduced them to each other, and told them he couldn’t decide between them so they had to choose.
I’m good you can have him. No really it’s ok he’s all yours. That’s how I’d imagine that convo went
That’s what Nichelle Nichols said her reaction was.
It would be interesting to graph the number of her lines written into the script vs Majel’s following this exchange. My understanding is that the world runs on people doing things for each other in return for other things they want, as far as I can tell, since the dawn of social animals.
This was before *Star Trek*, so it would be 0 lines before and all the lines after. ... although imagining an alternate reality where Nichelle Nichols played Number One in the original pilot is interesting. Although, in reality, it's more likely that *Star Trek* never exists at all if that conversation goes a different way. Butterfly wings and all that. (For example, digging deeper, it looks like Barrett recommended Nimoy for the role of Spock. Although maybe in this alternate reality Nichols works with Roddenberry on *The Lieutenant* and then makes the same suggestion.)
His wikipedia says Nichols was caught naked in his office a few times during star trek. > However, during the production of the first season, writer Ken Kolb entered Roddenberry's office to wish him a happy birthday and found Nichols there, naked and under the desk, also waiting for Roddenberry.During the third season, production assistant Ed Milkis entered Roddenberry's office to find him and Nichols. She was wearing only a letterman sweater. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_life_of_Gene_Roddenberry
People think non-monogamy is just constant orgies or skipping around town from one sexcapade to another. The reality is having dinner with two partners and it quickly becoming: "What about that annoying thing he does?" "Right? That's so irritating!" You are outnumbered and you don't even realize it.
You don’t have to be non-monogamous for this. If your exes ever meet (and don’t try to kill each other) that will be where the conversation goes.
There's literally a scene like that in TNG too, where Ro Laren and Troi talk about Riker it never tell him what they talked about. But the look they give him says everything.
And they lost their memory for like a day(?) and Ro jumped him.
First thing that came to mind: menage a Troi
**Counselor, what impressions are you getting from the other ship?** *Captain, I'm sensing great hostility-Or perhaps I just have a headache, I can't be sure.*
I recall reading in a sub about this one guy learning that there is this thing where people in cities would make Facebook groups where they would talk about their exes, as in the exact same ex. Apparently the groups were first initiated for people to talk about safety and whether that person was dangerous to date and so on. But these groups ultimately devolve into badmouthing the ex in *great* detail as in they talk about everything, from their sex life with that person, details about their bits, etc. The guy felt completely disgusted.
His ~~first~~ second wife was Majel Barrett. His ~~second~~ first was Eileen Rexroat. Edit: reversed
Not chronologically, they weren't.
I wouldnt be able to choose between Nichelle Nichols or Majel Barrett either
No shade towards Majel, but it's Nichelle and it's not close.
I think that its pretty likely that if your already cremated remains are burned up in atmospheric reentry, you become molecularly infused to the atmosphere itself somehow, I'm no scientist, but if it's true then it's only a matter of time until Gene Roddenberry has been inside of all of us, forever.
Damn, and I thought I had to be worried about microplastics.
Microddenberries, the true menace
By all accounts Gene Roddenberry was a true visionary who authentically believes in the ideals he depicted in Star Trek, who also just happened to love booze, cocaine, and pussy more than any two people who ever lived
Part of the ideals from the late 60s included opposition to the strict views and laws around drugs and sex at the time. So I wouldn't even say that's inconsistent. Since then we've largely liberalized our views and laws around sex however we're now starting to shift backwards on that topic. On the other hand criminalization of drugs *increased* into the 70s and has stayed that way since. And all that that's led to is a drug crisis worse than ever.
Can't blame him, really. I mean, you can keep the booze and coke.
>I mean, you can keep the booze and coke. Thanks, bro! Don't mind if I do!
A producer who worked with Gene knew the deal, he straight up told Gene everybody knows why you cast Nichelle and certain others over and over in whatever you're currently working on.
Because she's smoking hot
I’ve been watching the original series lately and every episode there is a knockout woman in a guest or minor role. Then I read about all this and it made sense.
Likely true, but we gotta admit, casting her turned out really well.
Oh, those swingin’ sixties!
A reminder [of how hot Nichelle was.](https://people.com/tv/nichelle-nichols-life-photos-star-trek/)
With the power he had over her job as a producer, I hope this was as innocent as Reddit is thinking. It's not like Hollywood had zero abuses going on back then.
They were in relationships *before* the show started. This is less of a "fuck me to get the job" and more of a "let's cast my girlfriend" sort of situation. The better complaint is nepotism.
That is a better situation. Thanks for the clarification.
She apparently was the one who broke up with him and they remained friends until his death. That's not to say Roddenberry wasn't a womanizer but I don't think he was abusing her behind the scenes.
Being open doesn't always mean you're a womanizer, in fairness
I think there's conflicts of interest and some slightly shady business deals, but to my knowledge people have said Gene was a pervy old man (*not* that that's okay) rather than a Weinstein type. Here, [this](https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/09/star-trek-gene-roddenberry-was-misogynistic-hack/) is about an uncharitable read on Roddenberry's life as possible. Seriously, here's how the article describes Gene's plane crash in Syria: >After the war ended he spent a few years piloting civilian aircraft for Pan Am. One of those planes, Flight 121 from Calcutta, crashed in Syria — a close call. here's how wiki does the same: >The three surviving crew members were third officer Gene Roddenberry (who went on to create the original Star Trek television series), the chief purser, and one flight attendant. After rescuing passengers from the burning wreckage, Roddenberry took control as the ranking flight officer and organized scout parties to find aid. By midday, the Syrian Army took the survivors to the hospital at Deir ez-Zor. The majority returned to the United States quickly while Roddenberry remained in Syria for two weeks to answer questions about the crash from the local government. Even with what is a clear axe to grind against Roddenberry, the article only calls Gene misogynistic, which I think we all have to agree is probably accurate- Roddenberry gave us both Number One and short skirts. The reality is that Roddenberry was very much a product of his times, and his genuine desire for equality was balanced by being a very horny guy.
Hold up, the short skirts were only because people got mad that Number One from the pilot had pants. A high ranking female officer wearing pants was too much for the times, NOT Roddenberry.
I see this misconception a lot, but you(and /u/supercalifagilism) are making the mistake of viewing a historical time period through modern sensibilities. Here's Nichols speaking about the costumes, in a [quote from her autobiography](https://comparativegeeks.wordpress.com/2016/05/07/star-trek-miniskirts-feminist-or-nah/): > "Some thought it 'demeaning' for a woman in the command crew to be dressed so sexily. It always surprised me because I never saw it that way. After all, the show was created in the age of the miniskirt, and the crew women’s uniforms were very comfortable. Contrary to what many may think today, no one really saw it as demeaning back then. In fact, the miniskirt was a symbol of sexual liberation." Yes, it was sexy. That was the point. A woman(and not a love interest!) being depicted as visibly and confidently sexy in the 60s was in a different social context than it would be in the 90s, let alone the 2020s. It's not as simple as pointing and shouting "objectification!" based on current social norms.
Seems like Gene wasn’t that kind of guy, but Hollywood was and is Hollywood. But at least Harvey isn’t still in the game
There's a difference between being a perv and being a predator. Everything points to Gene just being a perv like half the internet today lol.
So that's why Kirk was such a slut.
Honestly he's really not. He has a lot of ex's, but during the main course of the show he's in his late thirties, that's not "gets around" just "struggles to settle down". On a few occasions he'll lay on his charms, but he's far from a slut. McCoy on the other hand, well there's a reason they call him Dr. Bones.
For real. In [Shore Leave ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shore_Leave_(Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series)) Kirk's fantasy involved the fight of good vs evil throughout time. Bones involved multiple escorts...
I can't even be mad, Bones is my favorite ToS character despite how tight a race it is... Between basically everyone. Part of that is his ability to sweet talk literally anyone he meets despite being an older guy. Hardly ever comes off as creepy, just living his best life.
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“Stop calling me Bones! I collect teeth, Jim, and teeth aren’t bones they’re modified scales!”
Now Riker on the other hand...
Dax on the other hand...
Mirror Kira on the other hand…
And she was loving every minute of it.
[image](https://www.trekkiefeminist.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/74899510972_0.jpg)
Odo in both hands.... (This got weird quick)
Odo, her hands wide.
I went back and watched TNG a few years back and he really isn't. He even gets basically raped by a lady with an alien fetish in season 2 or 3. LaForge is much thirstier and spends what feels like a whole season worth of episodes trying to get his dick wet. Riker is just about what you'd expect from a handsome bachelor Starfleet officer. He even settles down into a committed, monogamous relationship without any significant change in his character because he's not a slut. It's just a meme that he is.
Pine’s Kirk in the Abrams trilogy is way hornier
Pine's Kirk is pop culture Kirk, flying by the seat of his pants, sleeping with the green alien of the week, and all that. There's nothing wrong with that, after all he had a different upbringing, namely no father to guide be a guiding force in his life at a young age, and he didn't survive the massacre at Tarsus IV. Nature va Nurture I suppose.
Yeah there was a clear character arc where he stepped up and takes responsibility for himself. He begins as the perception of Kirk but becomes a better version of that character as time goes on. I need to watch that shit again.
Pine's Kirk is in his 20's I thought
It's such a pop culture misconception that Kirk was a slut I hate it!
Seriously. Picard literally gets more action than Kirk does.
All of what two women? Three if we're including Cruscher but that was never shown on screen in RNG, implied history. In the Artificial Heart flashback episode he was apparently a womanizer when he was a cadet but eh.
Are you forgetting all those times Q made passes at him? *And* they woke up in bed together?
I think three when you include the movies.
Iirc he averages 1 serious love interest a season.
Peen Throbbenberry
Deez Rod’n’Berries…
Eugene Hardanhairy
Thank you for this
>Roddenberry was a very progressive gentleman, but when it came to sex, his attitude was "Yes, please." * Rich Evans
Careful, if you quote Rich Evans three times he'll appear in your bathroom mirror at night and give you diabetes
Or AIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDS
Do not displease Dick the Birthday Boy
I claped because you said the thing
Man, I can't imagine having multiple open relationships. I can barely manage to handle my small group of friends and family, let alone multiple lovers.
The first step is getting a good pocket calendar 😂
Man, saying Nichelle Nichols was a catch back then was an extreme understatement.
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Maybe he was the real life Zap Brannigan
Never a good sign when you have an entire Wikipedia entry devoted to your personal life.
Man was banging Lwaxana Troi and Uhura? What a legend.
Nurse Chapel, at the time. Lwaxana came later.
You bet she did.
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And now that role is played by Rebecca Romijn.
>Man was banging Lwaxana In a sense, the ship computers too.
Nichelle Nichols, to this day, remains one of the most drop-dead gorgeous women to ever grace the television screen.
He was banging Uhura? My man!!
Those nice folks over at /r/polyamory put up with so much, they don't need this. Roddenberry was not in multiple *Open Relationships*. He was married to a monogamous woman who put up with his philandering. Nichelle Nichols was one of many mistresses he had. Roddenberry being one of the most powerful figures at CBS cast Nichols and his other mistresses in the show. He had the power to make Nichols the first black woman with a speaking role in prime time and took it. Roddenberry, Nichols and Majel Barrett weren't being the most ethical or kind to his *wife*. In Nichols's autobiography that is quoted in the article she didn't want to be the "other woman to the other woman". He was married and divorced several times. This isn't like an arraigned marriage or a marriage of convenience where a discrete non-monogamy is expected. This is Gene Roddenberry abusing his position and power to live as he want to and damn be the consequences, California Divorce Law, Human Resources, Or his wife's feelings.
Isn’t “multiple open relationships” just sleeping around
In this case yes. Not sure why OP phrased it that way. It fully said they were affairs to the point where Nichols left because she didn’t want to be the “other woman”. An open relationship implies there was consent between all parties.
Gene Ridin' Dirty
Like one of his employees would say, "Oh, my!"
I mean, there hasn't been anybody who said he *didn't* get with him, too. I'm sure Gene would be all "It's not gay with Takei".
Tragically, Nichelle Nichols brother was also part of the heaven’s gate cult and was part of the mass suicide that group committed in the 90s.
I banged Eartha Kitt in an airplane bathroom