Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek and was its sole showrunner and creative spirit throughout its three-season run. As the show got canceled after the third season, it found a new lease of life in syndication and eventually with the original films and The Next Generation. However, the path was not that easy for Roddenberry.
The showrunner reportedly hoped to continue the series as a feature film, which was then turned into a sequel series. Ultimately, his idea for a movie was given the go-ahead but Star Trek: The Motion Picture’s lackluster results prompted the studio to kick Roddenberry ‘upstairs’ as a consultant. However, he still had an idea for a sequel which he hoped to make.
Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek movie idea involved the crew going back in time to JFK’s assassination
Star Trek, though set in the future, has always given powerful commentary on the present day. The series is set in a time of relative peace on Earth and most of the conflicts happen in space during their voyages. Creator Gene Roddenberry also used the show to express his vision of the future which involved solving many problems of the present.
While working on a script for the sequel of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (which he reportedly was not supposed to do), Roddenberry came up with the idea of the crew going back in time to the point of JFK’s assassination. According to Trek Movie, the film involved the Klingons eliminating Starfleet by going back in time and changing history.
In Roddenberry’s canceled movie treatment, the film would see the Enterprise avoiding detection and attacking the Klingons, who are using the Guardian of Forever to time travel. The film also reportedly had a plot line where Captain Kirk actually meets a living JFK, avoiding his trip to Dallas due to the Enterprise’s crash.
Roddenberry’s movie never came to be as studio heads at the time did not want him involved in the films anymore. According to Vanity Fair, the studio thought the idea was hacky and too similar to one of the original series’ episodes named ‘The City on the Edge of Forever’, which included the crew trying to prevent World War II.
Gene Roddenberry’s JFK assassination Star Trek movie would be extremely relevant in today’s times
While Gene Roddenberry may have been the originator of this idea, many have since attempted the storyline of time travel to JFK’s assassination. Many seem to want to save President Kennedy, inducing noted horror author Stephen King, whose novel 11.22.63 saw the same scenario play out with lasting consequences.
The comedy sci-fi show Red Dwarf also had a similar episode, with Kennedy himself being the ‘man on the grassy knoll’. Even the original The Twilight Zone had a similar setting. However, the politics surrounding the JFK assassination and its conspiracy theories set in the Star Trek universe would have put the theme in the center of the world.
Today’s American political climate is extremely divisive and theories and discourse that would be considered fringe have made it into the mainstream. The assassination of JFK and its conspiracy theories have long been associated with fringe discourse.
Star Trek’s depiction would have gotten it more limelight and would have been relevant at a time when Government cover-ups and conspiracy theories have become mainstream.
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