70s TREK - Star Trek in the 1970s

Richard Arnold has been around Star Trek most of his life. He was at the first Star Trek convention in 1972, and has, to date, attended over one thousand! In the 70s, Richard worked as a volunteer for Gene Roddenberry as the creator began plotting the return of Star Trek. He was there, in the Paramount offices, when Star Trek lurched from a movie, to a TV show, and back to a movie again.   While The Next Generation was in production, Richard finally became employed by Paramount and held the position of Research Consultant. As part of his job,…

After Star Trek’s cancellation, the show’s creator, Gene Roddenberry, faced limited prospects.  The opinion of many industry execs was that Star Trek was a failed and dead property and Roddenberry’s reputation suffered because of it. But he did work.  He wrote a movie script and tried to sell several TV show concepts. But always under the surface in the early 70s was Star Trek, now on TVs around the country in syndication.  It bubbled in our collective consciousness, always there.  By the middle of the decade, it was clear that the show had a huge audience and Paramount was ready to…

Shortly after recording Episode 11 about the James Blish books, Barnes and Noble released a leather-bound collection of some of his Star Trek adaptions.  Star Trek The Classic Episodes has 43 episodes adapted into novel form by Blish. The collection is part of Barnes and Noble’s Collector Series and was released for the show’s 50th Anniversary.  It features beautiful art work on the front and back of the leather cover.   The one drawback of this book is that it does not list James Blish as the author on the cover, or anywhere inside.  Norman Spinrad wrote the introduction and even…