Looking back, the success of Star Trek: The Next Generation might almost seem inevitable. A cast of characters on a gorgeous starship in a storytelling universe as wide and expansive as the one Gene Roddenberry created seems like a no-brainer. However, Star Trek: The Next Generation was expected to fail, at least according to conventional wisdom. After the cancellation of Star Trek: The Original Series, bringing The Next Generation to television was a risky and troubled effort.
Announced at a press conference celebrating the 20th anniversary of Star Trek: The Original Series’ debut, Paramount was cashing in on massive fan interest. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was poised to become the franchise’s most successful film, and Star Trek: The Original Series was still a massive hit in syndication. However, at that point in television history, no sequel series or reboot ever achieved the success of its predecessor. Still, the Star Trek movie series was going well, and Paramount knew the same reruns of old episodes would eventually lose their popularity. By greenlighting Star Trek: The Next Generation, Paramount hoped to continue the sci-fi party for many years to come. Now, almost 60 years later, Star Trek is stronger than ever, and it’s all because the unlikely sequel series became a massive hit.
How Star Trek: The Original Series Made The Next Generation Happen
The Original Series was almost canceled after Season 2, but fans Bjo and John Trimble helped to organize a letter-writing campaign that saved it. Yet, Roddenberry left the show after a feud with the network in Season 3, and NBC buried it on Friday nights (in a pre-DVR era). However, fan efforts to revive the show never ceased, with pickets happening outside of NBC. Eventually, all that campaigning resulted in Star Trek: The Animated Series, but fans hated it. Still, the series was a proof-of-concept for Paramount that interest in the adventures of the crew of the USS Enterprise was still very high.
In the mid-1970s, after not finding success with a new television series, Roddenberry came back to Paramount to give Star Trek another go. Because the original cast was hesitant to return with him, especially Leonard Nimoy, the new television series was meant to be a mix of old and new characters. However, after both Star Wars and Close Encounters of a Third Kind became massive box office successes, Paramount shifted focus. What originally started as Star Trek: Phase II became The Motion Picture. The process of turning this pilot into a film was a taxing and costly one. While still a box office success, the budget for the film was too high for Paramount’s tastes.
Relegated to the role of “executive consultant,” Roddenberry was cut out of the Star Trek film business. However, when Paramount started courting other television producers to create a sequel series, Roddenberry decided to swallow his pride and return. “I really feared doing it until I got angry enough to try,” Roddenberry said in The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman. So, when it came time to create TNG, Roddenberry used Phase II leftovers to start the ball rolling.
Paramount’s Search for Its Own Broadcast Network Was Tied to Star Trek
During the development of Star Trek: Phase II, Paramount was looking to get into the broadcast television game. Paramount first developed a television network in the late 1940s, owning a handful of stations and farming out programming to affiliates. In the late 1970s, they tried this plan again, planning a series of movies of the week for original programming. However, the weekends were going to be anchored by the crew of the USS Enterprise in a brand-new series, at least until Paramount repurposed the idea for film.
Then-CEO Barry Diller “wanted to take Star Trek and use that as the cornerstone of a new network,” according to John Pike, former President of Paramount Network Television in Chaos on the Bridge. Eventually, this effort failed, and Diller left Paramount for Fox, which successfully launched the “fourth network.” When Star Trek: The Next Generation came about, Pike took the show to Diller’s Fox Network in the hopes he’d still want the series to anchor the original programming. Pike said Fox at first agreed to a full 26-episode season, but eventually they cut the order in half.
“I can’t make the [budget] work at 13 [episodes], Pike said, “I need 13.” This was perhaps because of the lucrative deal that Roddenberry negotiated to come back. While Paramount still owned Star Trek, Roddenberry would get a huge piece of the action. In the documentary, Pike called it “a very, very contentious negotiation” with Roddenberry’s attorney Leonard Maizlish. “I needed Gene Roddenberry, and I needed to make a deal,” Pike said, “and Leonard…knew exactly where he had me.” With no network to air the series, Star Trek: The Next Generation was almost dead in dry dock, until they got creative.
Syndication Saved Star Trek Twice by Giving
The Next Generation a Home
Star Trek’s original network, NBC, rejected the new show, as did ABC. CBS was interested, but only as a miniseries. However, a full 20 years after it debuted, Star Trek: TOS was still the top-rated scripted program in syndication. Thus, Paramount decided to offer The Next Generation as a first-run syndication series, which had never been done before for drama. “For the longest time, Star Trek was in the top three [first-run syndication ratings]. Only Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy were constantly beating it,” according to Tom Mazza, then a VP at Paramount Television said in The Fifty-Year Mission.
Because the program was slated to debut in syndication, it helped lessen Pike’s budgetary problems. Actors and writers were forced to take less-then-scale rates thanks to provisions in the union contracts for syndication. Still, the budget was substantial for the time at an estimated $1.3 million average per-episode budget. Paramount was able to sell these episodes to TV stations eager for original programming for $980,000 in advertising, meaning the series would likely break even or turn a profit after only one or two reruns. This was a better return-on-investment than Star Trek: TOS gave Lucille Ball and Desilu. Yet, there was another benefit to this revolutionary move.
In order to guarantee stations enough episodes to air and rerun, the stations agreed to pay for two full seasons of episodes. Since Star Trek: TNG struggled in its early seasons, this meant the show was able to survive the critical onslaught from the industry press and fans themselves. The show was never really in danger of cancelation, however. The ratings for those first seasons were high, and they only soared higher as the series found its space-legs.
Roddenberry Brought in Star Trek: TOS Legends to Create TNG
To create Star Trek: The Next Generation, Gene Roddenberry relied on talent he knew, such as producer Robert Justman, David Gerrold and “mother of Star Trek” Dorothy Fontana. New writers, like Tracy Tormé also joined the staff. Unfortunately, they clashed with Maizlish who would rewrite their scripts in violation of union rules. As they left the show, The Next Generation hosted a revolving door of writers for its first two seasons. It wasn’t until eventual Executive Producer Michael Piller came in that The Next Generation finally found its rhythm and established a regular, consistent crew of storytellers.
The crew of The Next Generation had better luck in the art department, starting with Andrew Probert’s incredible design for the USS Enterprise-D. Other legends like Doug Drexler, Rick Sternbach, John Eaves and Michael and Denise Okuda also helped create the look of the series. For makeup, Academy Award winner Michael Westmore joined the crew, creating cost-effective, timely prosthetics for alien characters like Klingons and the newly-created Ferengi. However, the other person most responsible for The Next Generation’s success is executive producer Rick Berman, who left his job at the studio to work on the show.
The Next Generation “already had three strikes against it. One…it was a sequel, which had never…worked on television. Another…was it was going to be a syndicated dramatic series. The third strike was that it was science fiction,” which wasn’t popular on TV in the 1980s, Berman said in The Fifty-Year Mission. Berman’s relationship with the studio and the creative side helped shape The Next Generation into a project that launched three spinoffs and lasted for an unprecedented 18-year run on TV for some 600-plus episodes.