This week, 70s Trek co-hosts Bob Turner and Kelly Casto are talking about Star Trek Games from the 1970s.  The show’s popularity made it a natural for games to be developed around it.

The other aspect that made it perfect for a board game was its uniqueness.  Star Trek was different and memorable and in the 1970s, as the show grew in popularity, merchandisers wanted to capitalize on the brand anyway possible.  That included creating board games.

The first board game showed up in 1967 when the show was still on NBC.  The Star Trek Game was re-issued again in 1974 and 1975 under the same name.

In 1977, a version of 3-Dimensional Chess was released.  The author of the Star Fleet Technical Manual, Franz Joesph, actually helped to create the rules of play.    

With the release of Star Trek The Motion Picture right around the corner, Milton Bradley released the Star Trek Game in 1979.  Of all the board games based on Trek in the decade, this was probably the best.

Of course, board games were not the only types of games played in the 1970s.  It was the decade when role playing grew in popularity and the Star Trek universe was perfect for the format.

The first was the Star Trek Battle Manual released in 1972.  It's creator, Lou Zocchi did seek a license when creating the game, and Paramount stepped in stopped its production.  The next version in 1973 had no mention of Star Trek in it.

But, Zocchi eventually did obtain the rights to use the Star Trek name and re-leased the game in 1977.  He also got permission from Franz Joseph Designs to use material that published in the Star Fleet Technical Manual.

The next role playing game was released in 1978.  Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier was set in the TOS and TAS universe and was made to play on top of a table.  It included a book that described how to play the game, and also borrowed from Joseph's Star Fleet Technical Manual.

While this game did not include game figures, you could purchase a packet of six pewter figures that stood about 1-inch tall.  The figures were sculpted, crudely, to be characters from the series.

In addition to the pewter figures, players could also purchase plastic models based on Joseph's designs from the Technical Manual.  GameScience created four Star Fleet starships classes with stands so they could be used in the game.

The last role playing created in the 70s was Star Fleet Battles by Task Force Games.  It also borrowed from the Technical Manual.  It was this game that lasted into the 80s and 90s having four major editions released over the years.

All of these games were pretty typical for the era.  They were made to play on top of a table with your friends.  But there was one game developed in this era that was totally unique and totally different for the time. 

In 1971, Mike Mayfield wrote the software for the first Star Trek computer game.  It was played on mainframe computers.  At that time there was no graphical user interface such as Windows.  In fact, there were not cathode ray tube monitors, either! 

The object of the game was simple: Find and destroy Klingons.

Players printed a grid generated by the software that showed you where your ship was located and also where the Klingons were.  Then, you moved your virtual ship by typing in commands, then another printout would show the results.  When you got close enough to the Klingon ship, you typed in a command to fire your phasers.  the next printout told you whether or not you were successful.

It took time to play this game, but it quickly grew in popularity amongst computer programmers in the 1970s.

So just before the dawn of the personal computer revolution, Star Trek already had a presence with computer programmers and users.  

This is also a precursor for what happened 20 years later.  As the early internet was coming into being, one of the greatest presences on the web at that time was Star Trek.  

The show has always been a part of cutting edge technology.

On this episode of 70s Trek, co-hosts Bob Turner and Kelly Casto are celebrating the show's 75th episode.  It’s the perfect time to look back and see what we’ve covered so far and take a look at what’s around the corner.

Star Trek's Specialness

Throughout 70s Trek, we've discovered a very common theme.  There are many little stories and events that surround the show and its fandom that make it special.  These are things that have not happened to other other TV shows.  Just Trek!

Apart from its on-screen presentations, Star Trek has a special past, a certain pedigree that sets it apart from other creations.  It's what makes the franchise unique.

It's been the goal of 70s Trek to touch on some of these stories and events from the 1970s that helped shape Star Trek's rise and dramatic popular explosion.

Past Moments

Bob talk about the moments in the early 70s that brought attention to the show.  When the Neilsen Ratings company moved to demographics to report TV ratings rather than just the mass numbers right after Star Trek was cancelled.  Seeing how well the show performed with key demos made NBC realized it had made an incredible mistake!

When the show went into syndication, it quickly became profitable and prompted Filmation's Lou Scheimer to approach Roddenberry and NBC about doing an animated version.

In the meantime, fandom is growing rapidly as illustrated by the first Star Trek convention. Organizers expected 500, but 3,000 showed up!

All of this, and more, prompted Paramount to invite Roddenberry back to their lot to begin work on a new Star Trek feature.  That began nearly a 27-month process of listening to multiple pitches, trying to fine the right story.  

Books

Of course fueling fandom's fire were the many books in the early 1970s.  Prized by Trek fans were the episode adaptations written by James Blish. 

There was also the first Star Trek reference book, The Star Fleet Technical Manual by Franz Joseph.  Bjo Trimble followed that book up with the Star Trek Concordance, a fan-produced episode guide that included much more.  

Another fan-written reference book was the Star Fleet Medical Reference Manual created by a group of friends that were associated with the Federation Trading Post, an early Star Trek store.  Part of that group was Doug Drexler.  An Academy Award winner, Drexler would go on to work on every version of Trek from 1990 forward.

Interviews

70s Trek has also tried to present interviews with those that played significant roles with Star Trek in the 1970s  Richard Arnold worked directly for Gene Roddenberry.  We mentioned Doug Drexler above, and Bob Kelly also talked with Bjo and John Trimble.

Looking Forward

Coming up are episodes about Phase II, some other influences on Star Trek's next version and the production of The Motion Picture.  We hope you will join us.

In February 1976, The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder aired an episode that looked at the popularity of Star Trek.  On the set were DeForest Kelley, Jimmy Doohan, Walter Koenig, Harlan Ellison and Star Trek fan and convention holder Al Schuster.

Co-hosts Bob Turner and Kelly Casto discuss this program.

The Tomorrow Show had its origins in the 1971 Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act.  that law banned cigarette advertising on television.  The lost ad revenue for each of three networks was significant.  NBC execs come up with the idea of extending the broadcast day by an hour to try to recoup some of the lost revenue.

Bantam began publishing Star Trek books in 1967 with the first James Blish episode adaptation, today known as Star Trek 1.  Of course, the Blish books were a huge success in the 1970s.

After Star Trek the Animated Series left the air, Bantam began publishing the Star Trek Log series written by Alan Dean Foster.  These were episode adaptations of the Saturday morning show.

But writing and publishing original stories on a regular basis hadn’t begun yet. Prior to 1976, there had only been one original Star Trek novel.  That was Spock Must Die! by James Blish released in 1970.

It’s hard to imagine today, but there was a time when book publishers were not sure that Star Trek fiction would sell.  It had been six years since the release of Spock Must Die! but the editors at Bantam saw the growing Trek phenomenon in the 1970s and editor Fred Pohl decided to take a chance at original Star Trek fiction.

Their first attempt could be compared to just sticking a toe in the water to see how fiction would be received by fans.  Bantam decided to publish several short stories or novellas in an anthology.  What made Strange New Worlds so unique is that the stories were written by fans.  It is possibly the first time that fan fiction was ever professionally published.

The editors wanted to make this collection even more special, though.  So they invited Gene Roddenberry to contribute a foreword and also asked each cast member to write an introduction to one of the stories. It is the only time the actors were involved with the novels in this way.

Strange New Worlds was a success and it emboldened Pohl to authorize professionally written fiction.  The result was 12 original novels and one more anthology released between 1976 and 1981.  Those books are:

• Spock Messiah! by Theodore R. Cogswell and Charles A. Spano Jr. - September 1976
• The Price of the Phoenix by Sondra Marshank and Myrna Culbreath - July 1977
• Planet of Judgement by Joe Haldeman - August 1977
• Star Trek: New Voyages 2 (anthology) edited by Sondra Marshank and Myrna Culbreath - January 1978
• Vulcan! by Kathleen Sky - September 1978
• The Starless World by Gordon Eklund - November 1978
• Trek to Madworld by Stephen Goldin - January 1979
• World Without End by Joe Haldeman - February 1979
• The Fate of the Phoenix by Sondra Marshank and Myrna Culbreath - May 1979
• Devil World by Gordon Eklund - November 1979
• Perry's Planet by Jack C. Haldeman II - February 1980
• The Galactic Whirlpool by David Gerrold - October 1980
• Death's Angel by Kathleen Sky - April 1981

In 1979, Paramount decided to not to renew with Bantam and awarded Pocket Books with its publishing license.  In fact, the novelization for Star Trek The Motion Picture was released in 1979 by Pocket Books, even though Bantam would continue to publish novels under its contract through 1981.

Bantam’s last Star Trek book, Death's Angel, was published in April 1981.  Pocket Books released its first novel in its new Star Trek line, The Entropy Effect, just two months later.

The Bantam novels were significant to the Star Trek franchise because they were the first real attempt at publishing professional fiction.  The 12 novels proved that their was an audience hungry for Trek stories and that they would buy! 

They are also responsible for lighting the fuse that lead to the explosion in content in the 1980s, '90s, 2000s and beyond!

The gamble that Bantam made in 1976 paid off!

1976 was the year America celebrated its Bicentennial.  It was also the year that a small movie called Rocky captured our hearts, and a computer company, Apple, was born in a California garage.

This was also the year that Star Trek reached it apex in terms of popularity.  Its audience had grown considerably since entering syndication and now it was a firm part of American culture.

This fact was further illustrated when President Ford renamed the first NASA space shuttle Enterprise after the iconic starship from Trek.

But Star Trek got a further nod that it was reaching new heights when the late night comedy show, Saturday Night Live, did a sketch that parodied the show.

It featured John Belushi as Captain Kirk, Chevy Chase as Spock and Dan Aykroyd as Dr. McCoy and details The Last Voyage of the Starship Enterprise."

Guest host Elliot Gould plays a NBC executive boards the Enterprise and tells the crew that the show has been cancelled.  It's all done for laughs, with a little message thrown in, as well.  SNL writers  pointed out the illogic of NBC cancelling the show because of ratings. 

Of course, the show was broadcast on NBC, so it was a moment of youthful rebellion by the cast and crew.  They were "giving it to the man!" 

Belushi ends the bit as Kirk reading an entry into the Captain's log.  "Except for one television network, we have found intelligence everywhere in the galaxy.  Live long and prosper."  Then the comedian added with a little wry smile, "Promise," which was a nod to Shatner's early 70s commercials for Promise margarine.  

The sketch is classic SNL and is probably some of the best work by Belushi, Chase and Aykroyd.  It is remembered by critics, entertainers and authors as one of the best skits ever performed on the show.

Co-hosts Bob Turner and Kelly Casto give us the history of the show and this skit.

After a year of hearing Star Trek movie pitches and ideas from creator Gene Roddenberry and science fiction writers, Paramount executives decided to take matters into their own hands. 

In July 1976, they named Jerry Isenberg as the Executive Producer of the Star Trek movie project. Isenberg quickly hired two writers to work on a treatment, Chris Bryant and Alan Scott.  In September 1976, they get to work and turn in a treatment at the end of the month called The Planet of the Titans. 

Finally, Paramount had an idea it wanted to produce and execs ordered the writers to begin working on a script.

In the meantime, Isenberg began looking for a director.  He talked with some of the big names of the day: Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Robert Wise.  Each turned him down because of commitments to other projects.  But finally Phillip Kaufman agreed to direct.

During this activity, artist Ralph McQuarrie was hired to develop concept art for the project.  He had just finished a job working for George Lucas on a science fiction project that had not been released yet called Star Wars.  McQuarrie's art shows us a Star Trek that was very different from what we saw on our TV screens.

While we never had the chance to see this movie, the impact of McQuarrie's illustrations live on today.  His redesign of the U.S.S. Enterprise is the basis for the U.S.S. Discovery, the ship featured in the newest series of the franchise, Star Trek Discovery.

Planet of the Titans came the closest to actually being produced.  After Bryant and Scott turned in their finished script in March 1977, Paramount rejected it in April and went on to cancel the project permanently in May.

But just a few days later, a little movie called Star Wars opened, and suddenly it seemed like Hollywood was transformed over night.

But Paramount did not understand the impact of this film, nor did it understand the sentiment of sci-fi fans in the 70s. Execs at the studio thought it was a fluke and that Star Wars had satiated the appetite for this type of entertainment.  They believed they had missed their window for a science fiction film and decided to move Star Trek back to TV.

Just two weeks after Star War's opening, Paramount announced its plans to launch a new television network and a new Star Trek show that would anchor its schedule. We will tell that story in another episode.

Gene Roddenberry already had an actor in mind when he created the character Spock for his upcoming show, Star Trek.  It was Leonard Nimoy.  The actor had guest starred in the first series Roddenberry created, The Lieutenant. He seemed to fit the physical type that Gene had in mind for the character.

Nimoy was hired and became the only actor who was there from the first pilot, The Cage, to the second pilot, Where No Man Has Gone Before, to the last episode of the series, Turnabout Intruder.

Nimoy was a method actor, getting inside the skin of this alien character.  It took its toll on him.  After staying in character for 12-14 hours per day, it took him all of Saturday and half of Sunday to shed the character and become himself again.  Of course, Monday morning was then just around the corner.

The stress of the difficult shooting schedule, and perhaps even the way he approached the Spock character, took its toll on Nimoy.  He became an alcoholic.  He eventually sought help and went into rehab after the show was cancelled.

Nimoy was something of a Renaissance man.  Along with being an actor, he was a writer, poet, photographer, composer and director.  He sought answers to life, and explored what it meant to be Jew in today's world.  

He was also a very decent person.  He fought for things that he thought needed corrected.  One instance involved Nichelle Nichols and the inequity in her pay.  Leonard Nimoy went to the show's producers and fought to have her pay increased.

Star Trek would not have been the same show had Leonard Nimoy not been part of it.  He brought an intelligence to the character that elevated the show as a whole.  

Just two years after the publication of the Star Fleet Technical Manual by Franz Joseph, some friends in Manhattan got the idea to do their own reference book.  The result was the Star Fleet Medical Reference Manual (MRM).

The books was created by a group of young people who were in their teens and twenties.  They knew each other through the Federation Trading Post, a store and museum in Manhattan in the mid 1970s.

Ron Barlow ran the Trading Post with Doug Drexler, who would later go on to work professionally for Trek shows in the 1990s and early 2000s.  Ron's girlfriend, Eileen Palestine, a nurse, was the driving force behind the MRM.  It was her idea to create the book, after seeing the success of Franz Joseph's Star Fleet Technical Manual.

The MRM was created using the primitive publishing tools of the day.  The pages were created on a typewriter and the diagrams were hand-drawn.  Yet this group of young people were able to compile each medical fact from Star Trek, provide diagrams and even project out details that were not presented in the show's three seasons. 

While the MRM may look a bit out-dated by today's standards, it does a great job of touching on just about every medical fact or topic that was presented in Star Trek.  It’s another one of those   from the 1970s that told you when you first saw it, that “Star Trek Lives.”

After rejecting The God Thing movie treatment and two additional treatments that were referred to as Star Trek II, all from Gene Roddenberry, Paramount execs began looking elsewhere for Star Trek film ideas in January 1976.

They began to interview writers independently of Gene Roddenberry, hoping to find that one story idea that could become the first Star Trek movie and launch a franchise.

Many writers came in to pitch ideas.  We focus on the three who had the best stories on this episode of 70s Trek.  They include stories from John D. F. Black, Harlan Ellison, and Robert Silverberg.

John D. F. Black served as the story editor for the 1st season of Star Trek and wrote the episode The Naked Time.

Silverberg is a multi-award winning author in the sci-fi genre and a "Grand Master of Science Fiction."

Harlan Ellison is a science fiction author who has written over 1700 short stories, novellas, books and articles. He has also won numerous awards for his work and is known as "Sci-Fi's Most Controversial Figure."

Listeners can read about each of these pitches from our source material, the 1995 book Lost Voyages of Trek and The Next Generation by Edward Gross and Mark Altman.

Star Trek was burning up syndication in 1976, making Paramount millions!  The anticipation for some type of Star Trek return was palpable and the release of the album Inside Star Trek seemed like more evidence to that fact.

The record is a collection of interviews with members of the cast and audio clips from Gene Roddenberry's college tour.  Those actors who appear are William Shatner, DeForest Kelley, Nichelle Nichols and Mark Lenard.  Leonard Nimoy was invited to participate but he declined because of his declining relationship with Roddenberry.

Also on the album is an interview with Science Fiction author Isaac Asimov.  

The album was re-released in 1999 with an extended version of the soundtrack for Star Trek: The Motion Picture.  In the re-release, five extra tracks were included.

Photos, film clips or audio from Roddenberry's college tours are very rare.  So having them appear on this album makes it all the more valuable.  But it also stands as a remarkable document of Gene’s, Shatner’s, Kelley’s and Nichols’ thoughts about Star Trek at that moment in time in the mid-1970s.

From that perspective, Inside Star Trek is a goldmine!

The audio clips used in this podcast are the property of Columbia/Legacy Records and Sony Music Entertainment, Inc.