TheWholeTruthXX 🎨 ❤️ 🍁 🛡️
Long thread warning.
Header: Homeless #StarTrek fan with press credentials gets 15 minutes with Gene Roddenberry.
Classic case of I wish I knew then all that I know now.
I didn't pooch the article but by gum I'd nail that thing today.
So I went in knowing all one could know of Trek in 1982. I'd replaced three worn-out paperback copies of The Making of Star Trek.
What I didn't know was he was a genuine fucking badass:
https://theoatmeal.com/comics/plane
who wrote his own disk operating systems.
TheWholeTruthXX 🎨 ❤️ 🍁 🛡️
/6
I was getting near the end of my time and I mis-stepped.
I asked about the portrayal of women in the series and the light went back out in his eyes and he gave me the canned response about resistance to a female first officer in the original pilot with women in particular hostile to the idea. Product of its time.
And my time was up.
TheWholeTruthXX 🎨 ❤️ 🍁 🛡️
/7
Since then there've been a library's worth of tell-all books and articles about every conceivable aspect of the production of the original series and Trek exploded into the multi-billion dollar franchise of today that still, like a magic thing, offers promises of a better humanity building a better future to a world that's lost faith in one.
And no one knows anything about any 1982 inhouse studio data systems.
/end
TheWholeTruthXX 🎨 ❤️ 🍁 🛡️
/epilogue
I didn't get my degree, I got half a decade of homelessness and many dark nights scrounging for food but I also got 15 minutes with Gene Roddenberry, had a couple hours including the drinking with Graham Chapman, was blown away when I met Timothy Leary, who had total recall as I've never seen before or since outside fiction and had a nice sit-in with Fran Lebowitz.
In hindsight, that was a hella year, warts and all.
TheWholeTruthXX 🎨 ❤️ 🍁 🛡️
/3
So I'm homeless like two years then, a 2nd year student; late student loan money and no available paying jobs sunk me.
I'm writing for the Dal Gazette, hoping practical journalism experience might translate into paying work somewhere down the road.
That didn't happen, I'd be homeless another 3 years, ain't life grand?
But I'd be buggered if I was going to look as stunned as the other reporters to someone I was in awe of already and I knew nothing about the bad-assery and tech chops then.
TheWholeTruthXX 🎨 ❤️ 🍁 🛡️
/4
So we got to talking about Wrath of Khan. He was telling me how he was less involved with the production of it, that he hated the new red serge Starfleet uniforms, they were foolish, a starship is a shirtsleeves environment.
Then we get to the 1982 mystery no one has been able to answer including William Shatner and Mike Okuda.
Roddenberry's liking my questions. He starts telling me the main benefit he's getting is his own office on the Paramount lot.
He says it comes with info access.
TheWholeTruthXX 🎨 ❤️ 🍁 🛡️
/5
So he starts describing the system to me, and for the first time his eyes started to light up.
He says it's inhouse, just on the Paramount lot, no remote access. Like some kind of local network.
He says the thing was encyclopedic. He said, you type in goldfish and you get pictures and text with all the details about goldfish. 1982. He said you could look up anything with it and it was great.
No one has clue one wtf that system was. I wish to hell I'd followed up on it with more questions.
TheWholeTruthXX 🎨 ❤️ 🍁 🛡️
/2
So to set the stage, it's 1982. "Wrath of Khan" was about to come out, Roddenberry had just flown to Nova Scotia from Alaska and he was kinda beat.
Halifax media asked him the same questions about the show we've all heard a million times over and over during their times while I waited my turn.
Did he know how popular the show would become? Why did Spock have pointed ears? What was the reason it kept coming back?
He gamely answered each one.
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