Whose Pitch is it, Anyway?
Harlan Ellison
New information indicates that Gene Roddenberry did not come up with the line “Wagon Train to the stars.”
Harlan Ellison says he has the answer.
In an exclusive interview with writer Marc Cushman, renowned science fiction author Harlan Ellison, who got the screen credit for writing Star Trek®'s most honored episode: The City on the Edge of Forever tells how Roddenberry was handed the phrase that may have served up a series on a silver platter … or, at least, a dinner plate. Ellison revealed, “He got ‘Wagon Train to the stars’ from Sam Peeples. That’s what Gene said to me. They were at dinner and Sam Peeples, of course, was a fount of ideas, and Gene said something or other about wanting to
do a space show and Sam said, ‘Yeah? Why don’t you do Wagon Train to the stars?’ And when Gene started shopping it around, that’s how he presented it.”
It's hearsay, of course, but documents in the Star Trek® show files do reveal that Samuel Peeples, a top writer and producer in television from the 1960s -- and the one who gave Dorothy Fontana her first five jobs as a TV writer (on his shows The Tall Man and Frontiere Circus), then recommended Roddenberry hire Fontana, enabling her to go on to become one of Star Trek®’s top writers -- was the one who came up with the line "Where no man had gone before." This, as you know, was used for the opening narration in the original series’ title sequence. It was also the title of the episode Peeples wrote for Star Trek® – the second pilot film which sold the series.
Something else concerning that famous pitch: Roddenberry told Cushman, in a never-before-published interview from 1982, “You know how I said that -- that ‘Wagon Train to the stars’ thing. It was about finding a means for them [the network] to see that it wasn't that impossible to tell those kinds of stories. Technically, of course, we had challenges -- more than any other series, certainly. But the first thing to get them to see was that the stories we would tell could appeal to a broad television audience. If a family can watch a western, a story set a hundred years in the past, why not something a hundred years in the future, or two hundred years in the future? And that is the primary thing they are going to think about; are going to question -- can this appeal to a mass audience, meaning, a broad audience. Not just men, not just women, not just teenagers, not just those crazy science fiction people, but a broad enough audience to have 15, 20 million households turning in. So I made those comparisons, intentionally so.”
On a related subject, did you know that before Roddenberry asked Gene Coon to produce Star Trek®, he first asked Sam Peeples? Why did Peeples turn the offer down? What other successful TV producers from the time did Roddenberry try to get to sit in the producer's chair before he thought of Coon, and why did they (There were three of them.) say "No"? Read all about it in These are the Voyages: TOS, Season One, coming in July from Jacobs/Brown Press.
Harlan Ellison says he has the answer.
In an exclusive interview with writer Marc Cushman, renowned science fiction author Harlan Ellison, who got the screen credit for writing Star Trek®'s most honored episode: The City on the Edge of Forever tells how Roddenberry was handed the phrase that may have served up a series on a silver platter … or, at least, a dinner plate. Ellison revealed, “He got ‘Wagon Train to the stars’ from Sam Peeples. That’s what Gene said to me. They were at dinner and Sam Peeples, of course, was a fount of ideas, and Gene said something or other about wanting to
do a space show and Sam said, ‘Yeah? Why don’t you do Wagon Train to the stars?’ And when Gene started shopping it around, that’s how he presented it.”
It's hearsay, of course, but documents in the Star Trek® show files do reveal that Samuel Peeples, a top writer and producer in television from the 1960s -- and the one who gave Dorothy Fontana her first five jobs as a TV writer (on his shows The Tall Man and Frontiere Circus), then recommended Roddenberry hire Fontana, enabling her to go on to become one of Star Trek®’s top writers -- was the one who came up with the line "Where no man had gone before." This, as you know, was used for the opening narration in the original series’ title sequence. It was also the title of the episode Peeples wrote for Star Trek® – the second pilot film which sold the series.
Something else concerning that famous pitch: Roddenberry told Cushman, in a never-before-published interview from 1982, “You know how I said that -- that ‘Wagon Train to the stars’ thing. It was about finding a means for them [the network] to see that it wasn't that impossible to tell those kinds of stories. Technically, of course, we had challenges -- more than any other series, certainly. But the first thing to get them to see was that the stories we would tell could appeal to a broad television audience. If a family can watch a western, a story set a hundred years in the past, why not something a hundred years in the future, or two hundred years in the future? And that is the primary thing they are going to think about; are going to question -- can this appeal to a mass audience, meaning, a broad audience. Not just men, not just women, not just teenagers, not just those crazy science fiction people, but a broad enough audience to have 15, 20 million households turning in. So I made those comparisons, intentionally so.”
On a related subject, did you know that before Roddenberry asked Gene Coon to produce Star Trek®, he first asked Sam Peeples? Why did Peeples turn the offer down? What other successful TV producers from the time did Roddenberry try to get to sit in the producer's chair before he thought of Coon, and why did they (There were three of them.) say "No"? Read all about it in These are the Voyages: TOS, Season One, coming in July from Jacobs/Brown Press.
Watch for These are the Voyages — TOS, Seasons Two and Three, set for publication by Jacobs/Brown Press later in 2013.