A Geek History of Time - Episode 93 - Star Trek TOS and Social Justice Part I

Episode Date: February 13, 2021

So first thing foremost, I think being the addition of pant leggings is really when you start to see your heroes get watered down. The ability to go straight man, that one. Which is a good argument for absolute girls. Everybody is going to get behind me though, and the support numbers will go through. When you hang out with the hero, it doesn't go well for you. Grandfather took the cob and just slid it right through the bar. Oh god, Bob. Okay.

And that became the dominant way our family did it. Okay. And so, both of my marriages, they were treated to that. Okay, wait, hold on. Yeah, rage, I could. How do you imagine that I'm not chicken? My grandmother actually vacuumed in her pearls. Oh my god, you always make sure.

We had the sexual revolution. It might have just been a Canadian standoff. We're gonna go back to 9-11. Oh, I'm gonna get over it. And I don't understand the book, it's a school. Agra has no business being that big. With the cultists, we'll be all week. This is a Geek of Time.

Connect your journey to the real world. My name is Ed Blum. I'm a history teacher at the seventh Latin teacher up here in northern California. And I also don't have very much else going on, because that's basically finals week. Oh, yeah. So it's been exciting. Let me tell you, especially with all the power outages, so we can now date this, the time of the January storms. So yeah, my neighbor and I were both sharing Yeah, my neighbor and I were both sharing Glee over the fact that we had decided to actually get out ahead of the curve and

What do you call it? redo our fence Oh, yeah, because that thing would have blown down oh Yeah, no, so easy. Yeah, so it's nice nice Driving driving Robert to his daycare, the day after the big blow. Every construction site we passed, the chain link fences at every one of them, had blown down, like everywhere. And I wound up taking breakfast to my wife at her workplace. And if you are not familiar with the Sacramento area, one of the nicknames of Sacramento is the City of Trees, which is, you know, lovely most of the time. But after a major wind storm, we turned into the City of Dibri.

Oh, yes. And I was a couple of times going down the street in front of her workplace. There were actually a couple of piles of downed foliage that were serious enough. I was looking at them like, is this car going to clear this? Oh, wow. Because I was driving her car, which has lower ground clearance than mine. Because we had not gotten our power back yet. And I couldn't get into our garage to get my car.

Oh, there's no manual way to get in there. Wow. Welcome to apartment living. Oh boy. Yeah. So, you know, we pay extra money every month to actually have a garage to park one of our cars and that day was like, you know, I feel like we bought ourselves

into a problem. Like, well, it's a once in a year problem, but it's still, you didn't pay for that minus one day. Yeah. Well, yeah, you know, but the thing, you know, you say it's a once in a year problem, where, where we are, we've been pretty lucky. I think this is the first time we've had, excuse me, this is the first time we've had an outage that has lasted that long. I think in the time, in the time that we've been living here. So that night as we were lying in bed awake,

in my case, because I need a CPAP and I just couldn't breathe to fall asleep. We wound up buying a battery backup, one of those camping batteries. In case, the next time this happens. Got you. Yeah. So I don't know that I necessarily told you what I'm writing about today. So I'm just going to dive right in. That's all. Yeah. What are we doing? So we're going to talk about Star Trek today. And my working title is Star Trek was incidentally socially just as focused.

Now I'm only talking about the original series here. I think that there is, I mean, I did over 6 over 6000 words just for TOS and I left out a bunch. So I can imagine that the TNG and DS9 and Voyager will get their own explorations later. But right now it's just TOS because it's far enough away from us and that it's worthy of discussion. Okay. So creator Jean Roddenberry, likes Rod Serling, served during World War II in the Pacific theater.

Roddenberry was a B-17 pilot and he flew 89 combat missions. All right. Now, yeah? Okay, Army Air Corps. Yeah, I believe so. Well, yeah. Okay, Army Air Corps. Yeah, I believe so. Well, yeah, B17. So, yeah.

So we would have been, so, so we're talking about the pineapple air force. Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. All right. Interesting, interesting. I had not realized I had known he had been a pilot. Mm-hmm.

But I had not realized it was, it was specifically b17s in the Pacific and he did he had an incident where he Overshot the runway runway crashed and killed two of his crew He was found not at fault for that in an As as often happens like you know things happen. So yeah now once he got back to the states he flew commercially for pan am things happen. So yeah, now once he got back to the States, he flew commercially for Pan Am. Yeah, and on Pan Am, he would do their long flights and he would fly from like Johannesburg up to Oh God, I forget where Damascus, which I think was their longest flight that they had at the time. And on a 1947 one. Oh, it is it absolutely. That's the whole that's the

flippin continent right there. Yep. Wow. All right. The long way. Yeah. Okay. So on a 1947 flight from Karachi to Istanbul, the plane that he was technically the third officer in, but he was actually doing what's called deadheading, which you're hitching a ride with no real duties, but you can step in if needs be. He was on a plane called the Clipper Eclipse and the plane crashed in the Syrian desert. And so this is the second time he's crashed. And he helped pull people to safety and then he organized search parties to go find help.

After everybody was rescued and taken out, he stayed behind for about two weeks to answer Syrian government questions about the crash while most of the US nationals got to go home. Now, the details of the crash are kind of interesting. Roddenberry was giving the pilot a break, and he ended up having to deal with engine problems, and he shut down the first engine, as was apparently the pilot a break, and he ended up having to deal with engine problems, and he shut down the first engine,

as was apparently the same. Standard operating procedure. Exactly. Do you know the model of aircraft? No, but it's called the, it's called, where did I write that down? It is called the Clipper Eclipse. It is something that is,

the Clipper Eclipse incident, or something that is the Clipper Eclipse Incident, or Plane Crash, is actually pretty somewhat famous for the following reasons. So it was a four-engine plane and it could still stay aloft with three engines. And since none of the airstrips in root could affect repairs, the captain, Joseph Hart Jr. decided to push on to Istanbul. Now previously the captain and the first officer or the person were inspecting the plane and they found that something was leaking. They thought it was hydraulic fluid or perhaps oil and it got repaired but obviously not enough. Now the other three engines began to overheat

due to the added strain of making up for the other engine. And so, uh, heart, the, the captain decided to descend a little bit to cool them off. Get a little extra air across them. And even at this point, he still decides to press on as they're passing over Iraq, because he's concerned that they're just not going to be able to get to repairs. Um, and he's like, no, we need to continue on to Istanbul. Then the number two engine caught fire. And it began to burn so hot that the fire suppression efforts failed. The magnesium inside started burning up. And at this point, the fire spread to the wing. Yeah, once once you get a magnesium fire going,

Yeah, once once you get a magnesium fire going Yeah, you're you're you're you're not gonna be able to put that out. Yeah and and for those in the audience for for whom this detail might be important. It's a Darn it my phone shut down in the middle. It was a lock-eat L049 constellation So yeah anyway, okay for engineer craft as you said. Yeah, well now a three engineer craft because the number two engine fell off. Then the gas line ruptured. Now a two engineer craft because the first one had been feathered. And then the gas line ruptured and that ignited even more.

So at three in the morning or three30 in the morning, the plane crashed. And it was a good crash as crashes go until one of the engines dragged on the ground and took it into a loop while on the ground, which then split the plane in two. Yeah, ground loop. Yeah. Roddenberry broke two ribs. Both pilots died. The plane was on fire and Roddenberry organized the evacuation from the burning plane, rescuing several people personally. In fact, like destroying a seat belt in order to get someone out because it was jammed until the plane's flames were simply too hot to continue to rescue folks from. His final rescue died in his arms, actually.

Then afterward, they organized supplies and got all the first aid kits together and started treating people. And then he said, let's blow up the raft so that we have a shade shelter for when the sun comes up. Okay, good second. Yep, so he's very capable. Okay.

Yes. And he is in there doing good work and rescuing people. And this will come in later toward the end, although some might accuse me of shoe horning, and I wouldn't say that you're necessarily wrong. But while they're there, desert tribesmen come out to meet them, and Rod and Mary goes out to speak with them, because now he is the ranking person.

Yeah, um, he is the authority. Yep. He makes first contact with them, pun intended, and and then he convinces them to only rob the dead. Okay. So he's having search teams go and try to find a city and he notices that there's some telegraph cables and telegraph poles. So he says go to the telegraph poles and take two teams, go in opposite directions. One way or the other, you're going to find a city. Yeah, civilization, something. Meanwhile, now because they were in the Syrian desert, they were close enough to the Freighties River that fisherman also came up and then robbed the

passengers. So pretty soon the survivors had only their clothing with them. He again like I said, he ends up going, I think he gets up getting to a small town, I forget the name, and radio is in that this had happened and at first they thought it was part of another panam Plain that was a slightly different name to forget what it was But they thought that was part of the around the world tour and so it kind of slowed things down But eventually they get everybody out of there. He stays for two weeks and whatnot. Now. Yeah There's another incident that I didn't go too much into detail on that happened thereafter

shortly thereafter There's another incident that I didn't go too much into detail on that happened thereafter. Shortly thereafter, and he quits over that incident. So now you have somebody who is willing to quit over what he thinks is not okay. It was also found later that Pan Am itself was negligent in the maintenance of these engines. So you even had a measure of accountability for a corporation. I mean, it was the Halcyon days of the 1940s. So from 1949 to 1953, Gene Roddenberry was a police officer. And he's a police officer who's trying to become a TV writer. Now, as a police officer, he's mostly working the traffic beat and he's writing speeches for the police chief and for his captain. Okay. So he's basically public relations officer for the police for the LAPD. So he'd moved from I want to say New York

to L.A. to pursue a writing career, but he became a policeman. Yeah. He eventually begins getting more and more successful at writing. Turns out that the captain actually, I think the captain was a friend of his dad's, because Roddenberry's dad had been a police officer. Okay. And it turns out that the captain had been friends with his dad, and I believe was trying to keep edging him toward,

like introducing him to various people who were writing for television. This is the nasancy of TV in LA. So it would make sense that the police chief would be friends with people who are TV studio guys. Yeah. We saw Bruce Wayne being friends with the police are TV studio guys. Yeah. We saw Bruce Wayne being friends with the police chief.

Yeah, so it's a thing. It's a trope for a reason. Connected people are connected. Yeah. So he ends up getting enough connections that he writes enough. He starts writing successfully enough and selling scripts. And he begins writing for a TV show called The West Point Story, which also was just called West Point.

It's a very forgettable TV show. And it's a TV show that had the full cooperation of the U.S. military. And that's when he quits. He's like, I can make a living at this now. He's pitching ideas. He's submitting scripts. He's like, I can make a living at this now. He's pitching ideas, he's submitting scripts, he's getting awards, actually. Often he's writing ideas for shows that are set in atypical locations. One that really stuck out to me was there was a cruise ship in Hawaii called cruise ship Hawaii that he wrote a pilot for. Okay. Not much of a title. No, well, again, you can tell the art form

is nascent. Yes, it really is. Like, what are we going to do? So, so give me your elevator pitch. Well, okay, we're throwing baseballs in an elevator. Yeah, it's a cruise ship. Yeah, in Honolulu. Oh, okay. All right. And what do you think about titleing it cruise ship? Oh, why? Okay, you know what? All right. It's clear. Are you married to the title? Cause I'm thinking we could like narrow it down. You know, maybe maybe we could, you know, like what's the name of the ship? Yeah. like what's the name of the ship? Yeah. Hi. So talking to soap operas, it's a comedy, like, you know, give me some, right? I can feel something, but okay. But actually, then you didn't have to.

That's the best. No, that's, you didn't, because the art form was brand new. And it was like, all right, no, we got, we got time in the schedule, we got to fill. Do it. Right. We're doing the template, you know, we're building it as we fly it. So probably bad choice of words given his past. But given his background and some specific incidents there, that's not. He's also writing plenty of Western scripts, which is really popular at the time.

That was America loves Jedi Gecky movies. So, oh wait, no, it's the other thing. Oh thank you. You're welcome. No there was actually the ubiquity, this is the word I was hunting for, of Westerns and police dramas, detective shows, was so great. Yes. Mad magazine. Actually there was a gag in Mad magazine in 50. I don't remember what where they were talking about, you know, and now the government is going to go in and they're going to start regulating television programming. And you know, you can't have two Westerns back to back. You have to put a pull just a detective show in between them. That's awesome.

But that's how it went. I mean, a lot of TV shows were, you know, re-skins of radio dramas and stuff like that. Yeah, I know. I'm a teenager. Yeah, and because TV show dictates me. Because they're in LA, you have access to outside scenes where the police could be. In other NLA, you have access to outside scenes where the police could be, and you have access to a cooperative police department,

and you have access to all the places that you could go to make it look like the old West. Yeah. So you had a lot of that. Yeah, no, it makes sense. If television had been born instead in the Pacific Northwest, you'd have had been had been born instead in you know the Pacific Northwest You'd have had lumberjack dramas like oh my god. I want lumberjack dramas now besides 20 peaks besides 20 peaks That was a lumberjack drama. Yeah, okay

Log okay fine. There was a fish in the burger later All right, yeah, I want to argue, but I can't. But, you know, yeah. So and everything, every, no matter whether you were in West Texas or, you know, Virginia or, you know, tombstone, Arizona, everything looked like the hills outside L.A. Right. You know, Yeah, which is cheap because you just go out there and point a camera, you know? Yeah, I got it. So also, he would write episodic TV shows that traveled.

So it was more the setting was with the people and their infrastructure than it was anything else. There's just some like Route 66. You know, honestly, I never saw that one. And that didn't come up in the list of things that he wrote for. But there were several where you're following characters who are moving through different locales. Okay. Which is basically what a Western is. Honestly, it's either trouble comes, it's either trouble comes to the ranch

or guys are on the range. Yeah, this is true. Now, at this point, I can't find much evidence of his ideology. He seems pretty vanilla, pretty bland. And then I ran across something about a TV show called Riverboat that ran from 59 to 61. And it was set on a riverboat. It seems kind of obvious in retrospect. Okay. So it was set in 1860s, Mrs. Sippy. Now when we say 1860s, do we mean the first half of the decade or the second half of the decade?

When we say 1860s, do we mean the first half of the decade or the second half of the decade? Early, early, yeah. So it's anti-bellum. Uh-huh. Or it's bellum. Okay, yeah. Anti-or what's during? Anti-is. You would use in bellow.

In bellow, yeah. Okay. So it's either anti-bellum or in bellow. Yeah. Or post-bellum. Post-bellum. Yeah. So it's either anti bellow or in bellow. Yeah. Or post bellow. Uh, post bellow. Yeah. Okay. Um, all right. Okay. Now here's the thing. This is not this is not leading in a direction. I'm entirely going to be thrilled with. Yeah. So as it turns out, they didn't want to have any black actors on the show. And Roddenberry argued so much with the showrunners and the producers that he lost his job.

He was like, you can't do Mississippi in the 1860s and not have black people. So wait. Yeah, okay. Hold on. Yeah. This is the first I found of his ideology. Okay. Yeah.

I'm not even, you know what? I'm I am pleased to to discover that is the first I found of his ideology. Okay. Yeah. I'm not even, you know what, I am pleased to discover that is the case in this incident. What I am kind of more cobsmacked than I probably should be because we are talking about the fifties here, is somebody wanted to set a show on a river boat. Yes. In Mississippi. Yes. In the 1860s. Yes. And they didn't want to have any black actors. Well, there is blackface. Like, like, like like wait. But honestly, if you set it in a river boat, you don't have to have them land in any towns where you land in the white section of town

or in the black section of town. And you could have it where, I mean, you could write it in where white America would be like. Are you, are you never going to see anybody deliver food to anybody abort the ship? Are you never going to have a young man doing that? A young, lucky young man, a jack London type character. Not, not, not, not, not, historically, accurately, you couldn't. No, of course not. I mean, do you remember happy days? That shit was made in the 70s and it's not that different. They said it in Milwaukee

because people pretended that black people didn't exist in Milwaukee But like Malcolm X's family literally lived there lived in Milwaukee. Yeah, yeah, so no, I I get it. Yeah, no, I understand but like There's there's like at least I know two and O was accurate Yeah Okay, yeah, this is gentrified. They did price everybody out. So, it's the ocean.

They've priced everybody out. It's the OC, like, you know, it's near there. Like, you know, but, but, wow. It's one of those moments where you're like, well, you know, I know that, you know, the history of my country is pretty fucking racist. And then I hear that, and I'm like, that's not just racist, that's fucking stupid racist.

Well, it's one of those like, oh, that's how it manifests. Okay, you know, just on and on and on. Yeah, and the weirdest way. And the guys writing the show probably didn't think they were white supremacists, but like, right. Dude. Yeah. Well, okay, the guys running the show, our studio guys, the studios were instituted in the 20s. Yeah. And we talked about, again, talk about Nacensee of movies, right? We talked about that old model and it was very often people from the Eastern Seaboard and or

Southern Cities and they would come out or It was people living in the far west where again, it's you have transplants from the South coming out And you have people who are in the skilled trades and that was shut out to black people for the most part So I mean you have this kind of revolving reinforcement of white supremacy going into it all. So it does, it does unfortunately make some sense that the people, and here's where it gets really insidious

because the people who were running the studios, there were a number of people that he talked to and that he dealt with that I don't really include in this because I'm more focused on him, but people who were absolutely 100% Jewish, but they changed their names. And then you do have that complicity with the need to hide yourself in some ways

so that you can make money, and therefore you have to appeal to the German market in the 1930s during film, therefore you have to appeal to the German market in the 1930s during film. Or you have to appeal to the Southern market because you don't want racist station owners in the South to not carry your broadcast for NBC, you know, and stuff like that. So I mean, it's just, it's so just ingrained. Like you said, they didn't think they were white supremacists. They were answering a market need. And that's

as far as they could go with it. And, and, and again, it was they were, they were products of, of the system that they were working in. Yes. And I mean, it's, it's like the same thing, you know, my, my buddy, Sean, works in tech. And one of the things he's constantly winds up pushing back against management and in the companies that he has worked for, including the one he's working for right now, is they talk about hiring people.

And like, well, we don't want to be racist and we were hiring, but it's just these guys don't have the experience. Well, they don't have the don't want to be, you know, racist and we were hiring, but it's just, you know, these, these guys don't have the experience. Well, they don't have the experience because nobody's fucking hiring them. Right. You know, why was monkey dead? Because they fell out of tree. Why did it fall out of tree? Because it was dead. You're like, at some point, yeah. And, and, you know, when you're, when you're dealing with that, like looking at somebody's resume, and you know, putting it in the hash can't based on a name, like, dude, like he at the company he and I worked at together, a number of years ago, he actually,

he got into a shouting match with the HR director of the company because the guy was basically saying without saying it straight up, the guy was saying he didn't want to hire somebody because the guy was Hispanic. And well, you know, and we were sending people out to job sites and we don't want clients like, no, stop. Right. Listen to yourself. Yeah.

And then really tell me, what is it, you know, like, no, this guy is, because apparently I think I was hyper-qualified, highly, highly competent, and they were like, well, yeah, but, you know, we've, we've got, we've got some clients that, you know, aren't going to like have an amount on the site. It's like, well, then there really is not worth your time. Yeah, like dude. So anyway. So, now a little bit about the show Riverboat.

Now the show follows Darren McGavin as the captain. For the first half of the first season, it follows Youngbert Reynolds as his aide to comp. Okay. It follows Youngbert Reynolds as his aide to camp. Okay. So it's a show about a ship traveling where you focus on the captain and his friend on a boat. Okay. With a hard-drinking engineer.

Okay. And a clearly Scottish character. As the engineer. No, but a different character. Oh, clearly Scottish character. As the engineer? No, but a different character. Oh, okay. Yeah. And eventually Abraham Lincoln. Okay, who of course also appears in the original series? All right.

Can you guess the name of the riverboat? Not the Enterprise. It is the Enterprise. No, shitty thing. And I've had on my face for that. It's the enterprise. It is. The enterprise. No shitting. I've had on my face for that. It's the enterprise. You should you should you should see the the she's ball. Fucking grand.

I can't face with that. Wow. Yeah. Okay. So check this out. In one episode, the captain gets involved in a whip fight with a really tall villain and nearly strangles him to death. Okay. In another one, they run into it. Yeah. Okay. Okay. The captain. Yes. Darren McGavin. Uh-huh. Darren McGavin. Uh-huh. It's into a whip fight. Yes. And nearly strangles somebody. Yes. I can't picture that. Anyway, with someone who's really tall, by the way. Yeah. Well,

yeah. Like in an arena, if you will. Yeah. Yeah. So in another episode, they run into a deserted area where a doctor is trying to determine the cause of a plague that depopulated the area. Okay. And they run into a group of people who are searching for a utopia in another episode. On the Mississippi in the 1860s. Sure. Sure. Like the whip fight thing. I'm like, okay, yeah, it's the deep south. It's 1860s. Like, okay, yeah, you know, my all that

lines up perfectly with all of my own cultural prejudices, like no, I can totally see that. But a bunch of people hunting for utopia along the Mississippi River, which by the way, at that point was fully navigated and completely, I mean, as much as the Mississippi was ever charted, it was like, no, no, every square inch of the bank of that fucking river had been mapped. Oh, yeah. Okay.

They also took on a father-daughter acting troop that had the father playing Macbeth in an episode So So did did did Did he just like copy all of those scripts over? Down Okay, so in the final, something got changed. Okay. So in the final episode of Riverboat, yeah, gene ball, uh, and deforest Kelly came aboard.

Now you might remember deforest Kelly because he played Dr. McHoy. But do you remember the very joy? Do I need to get out my nerd card to show you, of course, I know deforest. Come on. So do you remember? Okay, well, you will remember her in a second, because in the first episode that ever aired,

there was an old flame that Doc McCoy ran into who turns out was a salt sucking monster. Remember? Right. That's right. Played by Gene Ball. No kidding. Yep. Wow. Now, you and I have talked about this before. Gene Roddenberry pitched Star Trek to Desilu productions as very famously what? Wagon train to the stars. Except if you don't have other wagons behind you, it's not a goddamn wagon train. No, so the reason why he said wagon train to the stars

was because Riverboat didn't do well. So he didn't want to tie it to that failure. And I think because he was like, well, Westerns are doing well. So if we could just explain it that way. And so there you go. Okay, now, now this, this is 1961. He actually has a discussion with a friend of his,

a producer I forget for where, and he discusses just the idea of having a show specifically set in space, a board of ship with a multi-ethnic crew. Okay. This is maybe a year after he gets canned from doing Riverboat. Well, everybody got canned from doing Riverboat. I mean, yeah. But like he quit over it. He got fired over his arguments, right? Okay, yeah. All right, good point. Yeah.

Okay. So in 1964, he finally put spend a paper and writes up a 16 page pitch and he registers it with the writer's guild of America as Star Trek. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. So as he's pitching it around, Roddenberry noticed that there was a posity of sci-fi on

TV, even though Lost in Space was starting to gain popularity. So he would alternately pitch it as a Western in space, specifically as we said, wagon train to the stars. Yeah, train to the stars. Yeah. Or if he thought, if he read the room and he's like, oh, these people want to have something that competes with Lost in Space, he would amp up its sci-fi nature. And yeah.

Now that's interesting to me, because again, it's not a wagon train, right? No. And it's clear, and if you remember, I told you about that show that he pitched about the cruise ship in Hawaii. Yes. So this is the third thing that he's been involved with

that involves a ship Which is a contained set Traveling to different locales with the relationships of the crew being the thing Yeah Well because for for the art form Mm-hmm the idea of having you know a self-contained kind of you know carry over set of characters is Makes things a lot easier for production standpoint and you can do bottle episodes

Oh, yeah, no you can for sure which which again makes the writing simpler yeah, and now you have a ship in a bottle episode. Oh, yeah, okay. Now from the jump, Roddenberry is aiming at a multi-ethnic approach to things. And he obviously took issue with people not being aboard with diversity on TV. These are all things that are demonstrably true about him. But as per the usual, if we're gonna understand the art and the work, we need to understand the author and the creator

and we need to look at his earlier life. So I already told you about that incident where he saved people's lives. I would point out that there are a number of episodes where shit crashes, where rescues are affected, where you have to make those kinds of decisions. I think that worked its way in in a fairly benign way. Now, Roddenberry himself was born in the 1920s. I think it was like 21. And he was raised in El Paso, Texas as a southern Baptist. Okay. Now around age 14, he began to question his own religion and while he's sang in the church choir

He would make up his own lyrics. I just that was too fun not to not to keep in Okay, cuz I did the same thing when I went to youth group when I was 14 Why am I not surprised? Right? Well the surprises were that I went to a youth group Yeah, it was gonna say the only part of that is they're all surprising Why am I not surprised? Right. Well, the surprise is more than I went to a youth group. Yeah, I was going to say, the only part of that is they're all surprising. Yeah. You went to youth group? Yeah, it was before I started working. So I needed something to do, you know, it was.

Okay. Yeah. So, uh, but yeah, uh, he, uh, he seemed to believe ultimately in a kind of secular humanism that definitely stopped short of atheism. He continued to work with churches through his adult life. He accepted their praise. He wrote letters back and forth with them having discussion with various representatives of those churches, but he did maintain a religious interest in other religions. For instance, he called Catholicism a work of art. When he married... Can I can get a plan that?

Yeah, I'm sure you can. When he married Major Barrett, it was in a Shinto ceremony in Japan. Okay, yeah, right. Because Shinto is, Shinto is wedding's Buddhism as funerals. There you go. Culturally, that's how that works out. Right. Right. I think what is it? You're born a Buddhist, you live a Shinto, you die a Buddhist? Yeah, generally,

pretty much. And Shinto is, you know, fertility and all of that kind of stuff. Buddhism is like, you know, let's not wind up being a hungry ghost in hell. Right. So, you know. Anyway. His approach to religion, and I'll give you some more quotes about it in a second, but I think, and it was really, as I was looking at how he conceived of religion,

what he thought of it, is really where my thesis kind of came about. He's essentially a narcissist. And I noticed this by the way he looks at religion because, and I'll explain why more so when it comes to women, but when it comes to religion, his problem with Christianity didn't seem to be moral or even particularly philosophical, it was that he didn't get why he had to be subservient to any God. Okay.

And we're going to come back round to that much later. But. Here's a quote, how can I take seriously a God image that requires that I prostrate myself every seven days and praise it? That sounds to me like a very insecure personality. He said that. Well, and I'm having flash forwards to undiscovered country. Yeah, yeah.

Okay, yeah. Or no, no, not understanding. No, no, no, no. Why does God need a starship? I can't remember. It's number five. It's yeah. Where he meets God and He's not impressed. Yeah, well, and it turns out it's not actually God,

but anyway, yeah. Is it ever? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Now, his was a more egoistic approach. He said, quote, it's not true that I don't believe in God. I believe in a kind of God. It's just not other people's God.

I reject religion, I accept the notion of God. Okay. He's being quoted here, usually in the late 60s, early 70s, mid 70s even now again. Okay. Yeah, he's a guy in his 40s and 50s talking about religion. He's gotten married in a shinto ceremony out east in Japan. He honestly comes across as one of the many men who were creatives in the 60s. He's Lucas-like in his tendency to fetishize other religions, and he's ultimately

disdainful of dogma. That's what I configure. Like he doesn't want the rules. He doesn't like those. He's spiritual, not religious. So he's a silent with a lot of boomer tendencies. Kind of what I'm getting. Yeah. The vibe I'm getting here is. Or he's like the proto boomer.

Yeah, and you know, it's interesting. There's there's a lot of I'm in this is a comparison I never thought I'd ever make, but between Roddenberry and Heinlein. There's there's a lot of I'm getting a very similar kind of vibe behind line in the 60s turned into a you know, free love smoke, if you caught them, like whatever they are. Right. You know, but with a much more libertarian, you know, kind of, kind of right wing edge to it, which is weird, but, you know, you know, legalized pot and have sex with everybody, but by the same token, you know, patriotism. And it's a weird, it's a weird, and as a Heinlein fan, I'm saying this, but it's a weird thing. But it's a similar

kind of deal. And their Heinlein, I think, was older, but that's a weird, it's an interesting parallel that these two guys who were, who are creatives of, of a generation that we don't associate with those kind of attitudes, both wound up going that way. Well, it was Heinlein also born in the further west. I don't recall. Let me look at it. I mean, because Roddenberry is raised as a southern Baptist, so white people. Yeah.

But in El Paso, which is surrounded by Mexicans. And so you've got that, oh, again, he's fetishizing the other, he's fetishizing Catholicism a bit by, oh, it's beautiful work of art, it's what the brown people have, you know, he never said that, but it would make sense that he... It's also what the whitest people on the planet have. I just want to point out, yes, but in his experience in El Paso, it wouldn't have been. Yeah, okay.

That's a good point. The Catholicism, he would have seen Wendembeid Irish or German. It would have been Hispanic. Yeah. So, yeah, Heinlein was born in 07. Where? In Butler, Missouri. Okay.

Farther West. So, yeah. So that Frontierish... Yeah. Now, he's... Heinlein is, I could see him being more libertarian Then then Roddenberry here too because Roddenberry lived closer to a border So he's seeing a lot more intermixing of people whereas Highline lived I mean is born in 07 so he's living

He's being raised by people who have a living memory of when the frontier was a thing that you pushed back further. Yes. And it's very white supremacist. So yes, again, so it makes sense that Heinlein would go libertarian, whereas Roddenberry would go more liberal. And again, Roddenberry ends up living in LA and he ends up, you know, kind of,

and, you know, he's a creative in that way. So he's, he's, he's disdainful of dogma. I have no problem looking downward on dogma. Okay. You know, it's not that much of a stretch. Yeah. Ah. Well done a stretch. Yeah.

Well, that, thanks. Yeah. But he said that just watch out for my karma. He said that organized religion was for people who needed, quote, a malfunction, a malfunctioning substitute brain. Functioning substitute brain. Yeah, he said you basically people needed a substitute brain and it was a malfunctioning one at that. Okay, yeah, that's an awkward way to phrase that,

but okay, yeah, I think I probably Damien phrased it. Well, good could be, but you know, it's interesting. Yeah, okay, well, having been raised in El Paso, Texas as a Southern Baptist. And that being his, his formative experience of and rejecting it too. And then, and turning around and rejecting it. Yeah. The thing is, whatever your initial experience is of organized religion, it's going to color your outlook on organized religion forever. Like it's a kind of paradigm thing

that is just, it's part of your, it turns into part of your base level coding. Now, as you're saying that, Southern Baptist is the bloodletting, is the, you know, it's, it's like snakes. Yeah, so, and it's the don't fuck because you're going to hell, right?

So he's 14 and he's realizing that a system that says don't fuck and you should be fighting people all the time. And he's like, I don't fuck and you should be fighting people all the time. And he's like, I don't really like that. I like to make up my own lyrics to their songs. So he's already a bit of a contrarian and then he's reacting to that. And like you said, it becomes part of your coding. You're responding to it. I think that response is absolutely... It's wrapping itself around a very underdeveloped and arrestedly developed

sense of ethics. Okay. So. I'm okay. I'm interested in seeing where that goes here with your thesis. Now, the one thing, I just, I want to get this out of the way before we move on, of all of the religions for somebody to be raised in and all of the environments of religion for somebody to be raised in who turns into a contrarian. The breed of southern baptism

that we're talking about is, and I'm going to this as unpuduratively as I can, is such an immensely top down. The theology is all very, God is the big daddy, and he's not a benevolent, and he's benevolent, but he's incredibly stern. And just that being your formative experience, no wonder he condescended to call Catholicism a beautiful work of art. Well, and again, he sees that at the other church. So he sees the stained glass that El Paso, El Paso, Mexican Catholics are doing, you know. So anyway.

So yeah, so he is saying these things. Now I kind of get it because in the 1950s and 60s, religion at that point, especially in white America, which is very different than religion, then Southern Baptist for black America, which he frankly either seems to have ignored completely or been thoroughly unaware of and being a white guy born in El Paso and then moving to LA, you could not see black people for much of your life probably. Yeah. Very long time.

Yeah. So, but he saw a religion as a tool of conformity and control and fair game there, quite honestly. It's the 1950s and 60s. Oh yeah, I'm not gonna, yeah. So, and because he's not black, having the black experience in America, he doesn't see religion as a tool of emancipation,

or of liberation resistance resistance or comfort or right hope yeah so now when it comes to the abrasions that often happen when one religion holds more power than another religion he was decidedly the woke dude in the middle about it. So like when when stuff happened in the 60s and the 70s, you know, and he'd be like, well, you know, you shouldn't call one group terrorists and call the other group freedom fighters when they're both doing the same thing, but really religion is bad and really violence is bad on both sides. If they would

both just wake up and realize that they're both the same, then it would be better. And like, that's, and like the gem of that is, yes, that sounds great, but you're masturbating. Well, one, one're you're jacking off philosophically without getting anything fucking done. Right? Yeah. Number number two, beyond that. I mean, what what we have had to be educated about, I think what I'm gonna say we, I mean, well, meaning white people. What we have had to be educated about in the years since then is that that characterization puts an incredibly unequal burden

on the two sides, because it's really, really easy for, you know, the people in power in the equation to say, all right, well, you know, what do you want? Right? And it's an awful lot harder for people who don't have the power, don't have the access to power to make themselves heard. Yes. And to explain the reality of their lived experience. Yeah. And I would also point out, um, and again, speaking as a formerly, uh, good, white liberal, uh, so I can speak from experience, woke, woke dude in the middle Woke dude in the middle.

Woke dude in the middle. The real problem is that not everybody thinks like me. You know, if only you children would, I mean, just the colonizer mentality that that has, let me erase both of your experiences and just tell you what is correct. Which, by the way, that's going to come back up a number of times. The Y chromosome arrogance is amazing. And, you know, coming at this,

as somebody who was raised by Reagan Republicans, I have had to come even farther. You know, because, you know, originally, yeah, I don't even want to get into it. But yeah. Right. Well, so, sitting there and telling a group that is literally fighting for their existential, literal existential existence, like ignoring them is an existential threat their existential existence, like ignoring them is an existential threat,

and telling them like, well, you know, there's blame to be had on both sides when the other side has been an oppressor, like, and could ignore you, and that means your death. Yeah, that kind of blanket statement does nobody any good but the oppressors. Any good at all. Yeah, it's a passive version of protecting the status quo. So anyway, he talks like that a lot. Now, Roddenberry figured that by the time Star Trek would have happened, 23rd century, humans would have grown past the need for religion. And I absolutely

see why that's an attractive idea. I happen to really hope for it. But that doesn't mean that we're there yet or that the way of getting there is a good way, especially when you look at further star trek properties and they're like, oh yeah, we had to go through the eugenics wars. It's like, oh shit, never mind, not worth it. But now he figured that the need for religion would no longer be there. And as such, there's very little room for religion in Star Trek. The characters themselves don't have much religion, at least on the surface. And I'm going to get into it more.

Now, it's pretty clear in the next generation, also. This is probably like one of the only references I'll make to TNG because I just watched this episode again, too. The episode where Picard becomes known as the Picard to the proto-vulcan race. Um, straight up mentions that that race had already done away with superstition and religion, those repaired long ago, and that the real disaster was that they were possibly going to start believing in a God again.

Not that Picard is a false God. That's a given, obviously, but like straight up that they will start believing in a god of any kind That's the problem now. This was a season three episode. There's a really good one But it was a season three episode while Gene was still alive Later on you'll see other ones that deal with religion in a very different way after Gene is gone But that is that is another story as as Conan would say on. But that is another story, as Conan would say. Yes. So his approach seems to be similar when it comes to marriage and sex, too. Roddenberry pursued and eventually won the affection of his first wife. And by his approach, I mean that narcissism, because his first wife, Eileen,

was reportedly very beautiful. And he pursued her hard at first. She was uninterested, but he persisted. And I always hear stories like this. And now looking back, I wonder, I truly wonder what ability a woman had to tell him fuck off. I'm not interested. Don't call me anymore without risking some sort of social derision. So it's a red flag to me. Now, her family saw him as lower class. He's the son of a

police officer, and they discouraged it. But he was either charming enough, or frankly, women didn't have the agency to fully be able to say no back then forever. And he benefited from that. I'm not sure which it is, I don't know. But I always wonder when you hear about the ladies man, you know, voted most ladies man in 1964. I'm always like, yee, was he getting full consent? Yeah, you're wonderful. So sad.

Yeah, now it could be that she's very beautiful and she didn't see anything in him And then he like opened up to her and all that but it really doesn't seem like it given what I've learned about Jean Roddenberry and He has the same same narcissism the same egoism I Want that that's beautiful. I want that. That's beautiful. I'm going to go get that.

Not I'm going to find a way to match her needs and wants or find mutual interest. I'm going to, it's that pursuit mentality. Yeah. Well, and I don't know. I don't necessarily mean this as a defense of him in that case. Sure. But for context, you know, remember that we're, remember the decade we're talking about, same as you wonder about whether she had agency. Right. You also have to keep in mind that the expectation in that time period was that's what a man does. Yes, and that's what a woman does too.

Yeah. No, I mean, it's that I really can't stay. You know, that kind of thing. You have to pretend not to want because there's no way that you can actually say what you want. And that it. That's why people always ask, you know, would you ever go back in time? I'm like, hell no. Like, it's bad enough as it is.

I don't want to go further back. So. Yeah, my kids ask me, you know, Mr. Planeleck, would you want to go back in time? And I'm like, um, no, because antibiotics are a thing. Yeah. Plumbing is a thing. Right. And like I live in a society with a much higher threshold of violence than there has been in just about any place on the planet. Yes. You know, at any point in history. So like I don't have to worry about, you know, getting into a simple,

you know, a wagon fender bender and getting stabbed. Yeah. You know, yeah, absolutely. Those are my big three. And then on top of that, there's all of the other, you know, all of the, you know, social, you know, interaction, social status. You know, if I went back in time, how do I know that I'm going to be able to convince everybody I'm a noble? Like I'm teaching my students' futilism like right now. Right.

We just moved from futilism to talking about the medieval church today. Yeah. Well, I know how you'll convince everybody that you're a witch. You just do math higher than 10. Yeah. Sadly. Yes. than 10. Yeah, sadly, yes. But, you know, like, like, if they, if they look at me, they're going to be like, well, okay, he's clearly wealthy because look at that gut. Right.

You know, this is clearly not somebody who's burning 12,000 calories a day doing service work. Exactly. You know, but like by the same token, he clearly is no good on the back of a horse. And you know, like, no, man, I don't like, you know, let's, let's, let's look at the benefits of our current time in comparison to literally any other in the world. Exactly. So, but anyway, we're getting off this. current time in comparison to literally any other in the world. Exactly. So, but anyway, we're getting off to this boss. Oh, that's okay. I'm gonna go further away anyway. So they get married.

So we do. Yeah. And then how long were they married? 26 years. Really? Yeah, it gets worse. It gets, it's shitty. He is a shitty human being. Yeah, it gets worse. It gets it's it's shitty. He is a shitty human being. Yeah, he he

really is by any by any measure. He's a dick really. Yeah. So yeah, they get married. You know, it's funny because you don't because you don't hear this story from the people who worked with them. Like yeah, because it's glossed over like, oh, that's gene. Yeah, because I mean, if you listen, I was about to say, while Bill Shatton, you might not be the best, you know, source to, to, you know, think about that was right. You know, Leonard, Leonard Nimoy never had a bad word to say about him deforest Kelly. And he were true kind of sounds like they were

buds. They were, you know, and it were kind of sounds like they were buds. They were. And it's part of the Boys Club that he cultivated. But if you look at how he treated actors on TNG and writers, it's really the way he treats the writers. And again, this place to his narcissism. He's really good to people who are on screen, the visible people, the cool kids.

Okay, nice. He's a dick to everyone else. So, yeah, they get married. And, you know, they'd courted and stuff. Then he went off to Warney, he comes back. They get married. And he moves out to LA, gets a job with the police department. And basically, he's working in the traffic division. And and then he starts writing speeches and he's part of the communications

Essentially so is a police officer yes, but really is the communications guy and and almost as soon as he gets there He starts banging secretaries Just that's what he does and Everyone in the police department knows and everyone in the police department knows, and everyone in the police department knows that he has an unhappy marriage. And he still goes ahead and has two kids with his wife. Really?

Yeah, yeah. So his first wife and he had two kids. Okay. And then eventually he's gonna, you know, spoiler alert, he ends up with Major Barrett for most of his life. Or the second half of his life at least, and they have another kid, Rob. Rob, I forget it's a Rod maybe.

He was Eugene Jr., but I think they called him Rod. But anyway, he begins to find success as a writer, like I said, and then as a producer. So he's a climber, and he starts to increase the frequency and amount of the affairs that he's having. His wife, Eileen, confided to her friends that she thought that she would lose him to his new career given the social life that it seemed to encourage or require. Not that he would never come home, but just that he would go home with other people. And she wasn't wrong. Now, he's writing for, I think it's called the police story or some, some sort of serialized police drama that has, I mean, okay, he's

writing police dramas, right? By 56, he's quit the police department. Yeah. But he's got plenty of contacts. He's got cooperation. I mean, he's, he's really the police department. Yeah. But he's got plenty of contacts, he's got cooperation. I mean, he's really dialed in in an odd kind of way. And there's a young actress that he meets on this one called Nischel Nichols. Oh, okay. And they become friends. And that friendship turned into a relationship once Star Trek started. I know. And then the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy,

the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy it felt kind of the same. She knew that he was unhappily married. She knew she was another woman. And she was actually worried for him for what being in an openly interracial relationship would mean to his career. And she said in her own autobiography that he'd never seemed to care about that.

Now again, I think that he gets credit for being a woke by virtue of the fact that he's a narcissist. And so he's like, I don't care. Because he's a contrary and he just doesn't care. Yeah. He winds up getting getting woke tokens. Yeah, he gets his wokens. Okay. And so then because he's Jean Roddenberry and he's having sex with Michelle Nichols, the lucky son of a bitch. In in 1966, 1967, right, which at that time, an interrelational relationship, I mean, the loving case had just gone through in 66.

Yeah. Right. So this is a big deal, right? And LA is a pretty stratified place, you know. Oh, immensely. Jackie Robinson talked about it all the time, having grown up in Pasadena about how shitty it was. having grown up in Pasadena about how shitty it was. Well, he starts a relationship with Majel Barrett, while she's on the show. Because if you remember, she was actually in the first pilot. She was number one. Uh, yeah, Inson. No, she was number one. Oh, oh yeah, she was.

Yeah, she was. Okay, yeah, all right. So he starts a relationship with her. And Michelle Nichols, yeah, she was with you. Okay. Yeah. All right. So he starts up a relationship with her and Michelle Nichols. Uh, he actually goes to them both and he says, I'd like to keep sleeping with both of you. Can we have an open relationship? This is what I mean about narcissism. Like, yeah, what?

What? How? Yeah, what? What? What? How? Yeah. The sheer... Oh, it's fun. Yeah. Like, like...

He puts the dick in big dick energy. Oh, no. Yeah, now getting over and above like the ways in which that could be hurtful. Yes. Two, two, both of them. I don't think he cared about that part. I think he cared about what he wanted.

Wow. Okay. Now, she, Nichols appears to have backed off once Roddenberry suggested this because she, because he was still married too because she quote yeah so because she didn't want to be part of a fucking herrm. Yeah well and she even said I didn't want to be the other woman to the other woman.

Yeah like makes sense. Yeah. Now by all accounts Rod and Barry seems very smitten with Barrett, but also he wasn't going to divorce Eileen. He claimed it was because he couldn't run the show at the same time and deal with a divorce at the same time. And it's like, that's weak sauce. Yeah, really is.

As a guy who's been through a divorce during like finals week, fucking sucks. Oh well, you know, and grant you, I'm not writing stories, but you know, I'm doing, you know, I'm, stop. No, he didn't even get that. No, no, let's, this is, especially since he took off for the first half of the season anyway.

Jesus. Yeah. Like how many, how many writers, how many producers, how many whoever at any given time in LA are going through a divorce, it's it's L.A. It's it's the TV industry for God's sake. Right. Like I mean, it's it's background noise to the culture. Yep. You know, and and I mean, especially when we,

when we start getting into the 70s and into the, you know, early 80s, this is of course before that, but you know, it's the, it's, it's, you know, where the wave began. Yes. You know, and like, that's no, that is, that is a transparently bad excuse. Mm-hmm.

Like, I mean, I was not teaching when I got my divorce, but you know, I got to tell you, unless you are for some reason really desperate to go to the mattresses about something, all you have to do is have a couple of meetings with an attorney and like sign the papers. Yeah. Now, it could be more money equals more problems. You know, he had kids. My first divorce was very easy because we had nothing. I was student teaching at that time. My second divorce, a lot tougher, a lot more appointments, stuff like that. There are kids involved. There's property involved. Okay.

Cool. I get that. But you can, you can walk and chew bubble gum. Yeah. Yeah. Like, no, just no. It's not like you don't have show runners too. So yeah.

And a writer's room. Yeah. Now as it turns out, he and Nichols didn't stop because a number of times throughout the series, she was found in his office either waiting for him naked under his desk once or in Flagranto. I know you can't help but be impressed but at the same time like You son of a bitch Like because you've got a wife and you've got

Majel Barrett. And again, I don't think this is very much evidence to him being woke when it comes to race and romance so much as it is him feeling entitled and frankly wanting his cake and eat it too. Yeah, good one. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. No. You know, it's it's it's it is a known thing and and I'm now fully on board with with the narcissism angle here Because it is it is a known thing that narcissists are Because of because of their boundless confidence. Mm-hmm They they are like statistically ridiculously successful in the wooing part of interpersonal relationships. Yeah, sociopaths are charming.

Yeah. And so, wow. Yeah, I'm over here worried about respecting people. And he's, you know, and he's, he's out there. Not. Yeah. Now, now she makes Christmas. He and Barrett were more and more open about their relationship. It was an open secret as often happened.

And I would just point out, at the same time, he's still continuing his dalliance on occasion with Nishon Nichols. And both him and Barrett did seem to be genuinely in love, and I think that you can absolutely argue that he was in love with her. But that didn't stop his eye from wandering, which is absolutely fine if we could find evidence that that Major Barrett was giving her informed dignified consent, but by most research that I found, including interviews with her much after the fact, after he died, she knew about his affairs, but they also clearly bothered her.

And it was more that the relationship was focused on her adoration of him, which if you really think about how he works through the Star Trek convention circuits in the 70s and 80s, he basically just wanted to be, and I didn't dig into his family too much, but it would be interesting to see, but he wanted to be adored, like he really really liked that Roddenberry began and casting women specifically because he wanted to have sex with them He even got mage'll bear it to go along with several sexual pranks on other writers Yeah Yeah, like not actually banging them, but like seducing them and her underwear and all this. Now he was also pretty braggadocious about these casting sessions with young talent.

He would talk to the guys in the cast. He would talk to the guys in the writer's room. He would talk to the guys in the production companies. And he even gave his own secretary a raise so that she would inform him when his wife was on set before she got there, or when Major Barrett was on set, because she wasn't a regular necessarily. She played a nurse chapel once they got the series out. He also, his office, had very easily visible windows and

He had lots of sex up there with lots of different women with other people being able to notice So he was also an open prick to his wife When she was with him in social situations to the point where he even contrived a A moment where he could embarrass her by having an X show up to a party with somebody else. So eventually, and he was trying to embarrass her publicly, which was weird. Now eventually, he leaves his first wife, Eileen, and he eventually marries Major Barrett. I don't know why I call her Major Barrett, whereas I referred everybody else by their last name, but it just has a rhythm to it.

But he marries her in Japan. I think there was actually a bit of a problem legally with him marrying her because technically he didn't have his divorce secure uh... from his wife but then they they fix that but while he was in japan they did the shinto ceremony which to me screams fetishization um and while he's yeah and while he's in japan he absolutely gets it on with a masseuse within a week. And this seems to be in the norm throughout their entire marriage. And it just, to me, that I think both things can happen. I think he can be in love with his wife, or his second wife, clearly, he wasn't in love with his first one as much anymore. I think he can

absolutely love Barrett and at the same time have that compulsion because I think he's broken inside. Well, yeah, and the compulsion involved is about needing as a narcissist, yes, needing, needing the hit, needing the validation, like needing the hit of validation, needing the hit of adoration, adoration,

the conquest, whatever it was that's. And then capture, yeah. That reward was something that he had had. Yeah, yeah, that that reward. Oh, yeah. Was something that he had an emotional addiction to. Yep. You know, and that's a third reason that, you know, people like that have so much trouble breaking those habits. You know, if somebody does that once, the likelihood of them doing it again increases by, God knows how many percent.

Oh yeah, yeah. And I mean, it's that you've got that hole in yourself and you're trying to fill it and you never can, but then you ruin the rest of the world trying to fill that hole in yourself. We just had four years of that at the executive level. Yeah. So now it could be that his and we were talking about this a little bit ago. It could be that this is all tied back to his southern Baptist upbringing because maybe it

short-circuited him when it came to his own sexuality. Quite honestly, he might be one of those people that is wired for polyamory more so than monogamy, but the problem is He lived in a time in a place where those things weren't really a thing and so even if he explored them He couldn't in polite society necessarily go. Oh, yeah, that's the thing that I do Well, and on top of that it wasn't a It wasn't enough of a thing that he had the likelihood of finding anybody as a partner who would have the capacity to give informed, dignified consent to that. Or the desire for a partner with that.

Or yeah, because it swings both ways there. And it's actually similar to what I remember about Timothy Leary and the guy who wrote Wonder Woman and any number of other creatives who set it up where they get to have sex with lots of women and all those women adore and revolve around them. Oh, yeah. So again, the problem there is that narcissism

and there's no account of any of these women saying, hey, I wanna have an open relationship on my end. They just kind of accept that this is how he is. And again, consent and pressure being what it was back then, I have to wonder if he's not just an earlier version of Harvey Weinstein. Hmm, yeah. So, now here, he used to write back and forth with Isaac Asimov, who actually criticized

Star Trek at one point, and then Gene wrote to him, and they had it out a little bit, but Gene was very respectful and Asimov was like, you know, actually I'm going to retract some of the things I said because you bring some good points. So he had a good relationship with Asimov who then later would advise on the next generation. But here's what he says, expressing, and I'm going to put in finger quotes, expressing sorrow over it all because you tell me if you find sorrow. He said, the separation and divorce after 26 years of marriage, particularly with my Southern family

traditions and concerns over the sanctity of personal contracts, was a traumatic experience. I realized now it was much more difficult than it should have been. Relationships like people can die and when they can be properly mourned, it seems to me that they should have a proper burial at the appropriate time. I wish I had realized all that sooner. I wish I'd realized that all the sooner. Do you hear any sorrow in that? Not really has such no. Yeah. I really genuinely am not hearing an awful lot of sadness. I'm hearing a lot of, well, you know, that's a sad thing. Right. And that's that's very different from I carry a lot of hurt. And you know, so even that, I think he, I think I can find him saying that he's carrying a lot of hurt.

My problem is he doesn't seem to have any regret as to his impact on other people. What you said earlier about like he went at it with no conception of how it might be considered hurtful to the other person, brilliant, because that's I think at the crux of it. He doesn't at any time acknowledge the feelings of anyone but himself in that quote.

It's all about him, his trauma, his hurt, and it reads very similarly to his approach to religion. Okay, I can see that. I don't see any God that I should have to lay down to every every seven days, you know. And I believe in a God, I just don't like these rules. And it doesn't like because the rules stop him from getting to have what he wants when he wants it. And I think his approach to marriage, his approach to romance and his approach to religion ultimately all go to the same thing. And frankly, I think that his approach to war versus peace is while laudable because he came out on the side of peace more often than not. It's still because peace is better for me. Yeah, but I can see that just rooted. Yeah. Yeah, I want to note while we're talking about this

that I find it interesting where we're talking about, you know, Gene Roddenberry's, you know, dalliances and, you know, inability to be faithful to a spouse ever. At the same time, we're talking about him corresponding with Isaac Asimov, uh-huh. Who is a literary titan of the genre and is now, um, has, has been removed from the canon of sci-fi saints in recent years because the truth has come out and people have stopped whispering about the fact that he was a trick-stair. I'm trying to think what the term is, but when women at conventions that he was present at who had had experience with him might pull friends aside and go,

don't get in an elevator alone with him. Really? Because, yeah, because Asimov was a aw-shocks. It's just, you know, it's harmless. It's harmless. Fun. Why are you going to be approved? So it's actual prep. Grabbyby hands predator. Yeah. Lovely. And, yeah. And so it's interesting that we're talking about these two figures within the genre, corresponding with one another. You know, kind of like talking about Robert E. Howard and Lovecraft, corresponding and being

best buddies like, well,, the racism like, exactly. And how much of that is like you can say, well, that's the water they were swimming in because it absolutely was, but also they're also reinforcing each other's shittiestness. Well, they're reinforcing each other's shittiestness. And the other thing is yes, that was when we're talking about how the mob certainly, um, again, he, he was, he was, he had a reputation. So it's not just he was, well, you know, guys did that. Right. He stood out. Sadly, they did. He stood out when they did. Yeah. Yeah. No, you know, there's, there was sadly a chance that chance that you know any dude you got into an elevator alone with was was gonna You know try to get pushy, but like as them. I've had a reputation for it. Oh

like Man That's awful. Yeah, I know and the thing is they're gonna be wonderful Wonderfully creative individuals and it's like their work is amazing, but and it's like their work is amazing, but... Well, they created worlds that they had full control over and got to do with women in those worlds, whatever they wanted. Yes. Which I feel terrible saying that about fiction writers,

but that does seem to be a trope. Little bit. Yeah. Little bit. Yeah. But that does seem to be a trope. Little bit. Yeah. Little bit. Yeah. So, that's race and sex when it comes to Gene Roddenberry and his personal life. And that's a good place to stop for this episode because I almost got to the TV show. Yeah, we're right there.

We really are. So next episode we'll do more of that. But so far, besides the fact that he was having sex with Nishal Nichols, what have you gleaned? You know, I did not. I'm, again, I've mentioned this before. I'm like Trekkie adjacent in terms of fandom. Like I watched the series, I really enjoyed TNG a lot. You know, and I understand all of

the tropes that are associated with the original series and all that kind of stuff. But, but I was never enough of a fan to read the memoirs, the autobiographies, and the stuff of cast members and people from the original series. And so the version of Roddenberry's story that I've gotten a Texas state history textbook version. You know, the plaster saint, version of the story. And I knew, like I vaguely knew that like, you know, there was a situation where, you know, Mageel, Mageel Barrett was, you know, the other woman and I kind of knew that.

But the extent to which he was a serial cheater is new. And I'm saddened to hear it and I think I'm even sadder to find out how little I'm surprised. Yeah, it's one of those were, yeah, absolutely. Like when you hear that somebody, I don't know, like you hear that I get arrested and taken out of a school board in handcuffs, you're gonna be like, yeah, fits. Yeah, yeah. Like, oh, he got too mouthy, huh? Yeah. But yeah, like Gene Roddenberry is, his vice is, you know,

sleep cheating, his flandering, yeah. His, his, his vice is actresses. Yeah. You know, and, which would again be fine if he wasn't in a position of power. Like, I don't care what people do in their romantic lives, but he's in a position of power. And it's inherently, that's the problem I have with it.

Well, it inherently carries tones of being rapy. Yes, because he's in a position of power. It inherently puts in question, the level of willingness involved, as you've already said, like in every case across the board. And I'm gonna say additionally, you're entirely right that the power imbalance is a big deal, it imbalance is a big deal.

It's a huge big deal. But just the fact that, you know what, you promised somebody that you were going to be their partner. And then you're not like know, made a series, it's made a series of bad, bad judgment calls and slept with somebody else, which like would be bad enough. Right.

But like you, you are so fucked up, frankly, that like you keep doing it. Speak to a deep level of moral failing. Even if everybody involved, even if he and everyone of his sexual partners were totally, there was no question of anybody's active willing enthusiastic consent, there's still a third and apparently a fourth person involved in all of this. And if you don't have their consent, then that's still, yeah, ugly. And that's a third and that's a third and fourth steady. Never mind all the rest.

Yeah. And the amount of contrivances that you have to, I mean, it's just, yeah, it's, okay. So yeah, it's it's a depressing gleaning today. Yeah And I kind of and just totally incidentally I I follow Wilton on on Twitter and on Facebook and I'm a big fan of his writing Sure and I kind of wonder because he's he's Spoken a great deal about his relationship with Rod and Mary. Again, he was one of the people on screen. He was one of the cool kids. Yes.

He was playing a character who was at least partially named after Rod and Mary's son with Mitchell Barrett, because Rod and Mary's middle name is Wesley. So, but anyway. And he talks about his experiences with Gene as being almost like a surrogate dad in some cases And I kind of wonder because it's I mean by that time of running Peru is much older and we're talking about TNG Not the original series right, you know, I wonder how much of this

He knows out the original series. You know, I wonder how much of this he knows and like the other people who worked with him later in his career, with Rod and Mary later in his career, how much of it they know and how much of it was just like, well, you know, he's not doing that so much anymore. So there's no reason for us to bring it up. Kind of thing. I would say because I've looked into this a bit. Um, the way that he treated writers, like he would just, he would fuck with them by like denying them parking spots and messing with like, like, like, just petty or moving their offices and stuff. And not like in a way that was a joke, like, oh, no, I don't like you. So your office is now, you know, further away. Just petty shit, right? He would do that. And there were producers who did his bidding. And there

were producers who were shown the door. And then there were talents who were brought in and who had terrible stories about Gene Roddenberry. I would say that like we said before, a sociopath can be very charming. And his treatment of Will Wheaton makes perfect sense. And so does his treatment of other people. They pick and choose. They absolutely pick and choose. And I think that, uh, well, Wheaton was a kid. So he gets a pass on, on how he's accepted

it. And I kind of get not wanting to crack that open or just being like, well, I don't need to come out publicly and talk about a man who've been dead for 25 years. X-per-leaf years, yeah. No, that makes that, that makes that. Yeah, and yeah. Also it's worth it. It's just that popped into my head thinking about that. So any books you want people to take a look at? I'm gonna very strongly recommend that everybody read,

stranger in a strange land, because we were talking about high line earlier, recommend that everybody read, um, Stranger and Strange Land, because we were talking about Highline earlier. And it's one of Highline's philosophical books where, I mean, he gets preachy, but he manages to do it in a way that is more consistently entertaining and less didactic uh... then say in starship troopers which is like one which is one long lecture on

political theory that winds up getting lost in the weeds of of oh my god how fascist are you uh... which which is both totally true which is both totally true and simultaneously really unfair and i think I figured out what it is I'm going to be doing an episode on here very soon. Good.

So, yeah, but since we mentioned it, and since we're talking about Rodden Bear's relationship to religion, I think Heinlein's relationship to religion is a good point of comparison. Okay. Well, I'm going to recommend Nishel Nichols' autobiography called Beyond Uhura, Star Trek and other memories, because she's a woman who was in sci-fi at the beginning of TV sci-fi, and she wrote her own damn book. Or if she didn't write it, it was ghostwritten and she got the credit, but I'm pretty sure she wrote it. And she is a tremendously talented woman

and endlessly fascinating, never mind her beauty. Like she's a really cool gal. And so I would recommend. And it's a wicked sense of humor to me. Yeah, yeah. And I would recommend going and hearing things in her words. So. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, you can actually get that as an audio as well.

Okay. I don't know if it's read by her, but I hope so. Okay. If people want to argue with you about Heinlin or anything else on the social media, where can they find you? They can find me in these streets. Oh wait, no, you said sorry online. They can find me at ehblaloc on the Twitter

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There you go. Recommend it to your friends. Show them your favorite episode. Show them the buffet that is the number of topics that we have because I think that that is pretty cool. We would love it if you could please, again, rate, subscribe, review, give us a five-star if you think we earned it it and you know we did. Perfect. And you know, if you have something you want us to get all pointy headed about, yes.

Let us know because like we can, if we can find a hook and it will do it. Mm-hmm. Have hook, we'll travel. Yeah. Yeah. So for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blalock. And until next time, boldly go.

I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blalock. And until next time, boldly go.