Gene L. Coon: The Unsung Hero of Star Trek

[@surfernorm6360]

Great report!! I'm one of the older fans of STAR TREK I started watchin in high school and been a fan ever since. I also watched and was a fan of most of the shows he was a writer for. Thank you for this tribute to an Unsung hero

[@TREK-WORLD]

Keep an eye out for my video on Janos Prohaska. He’s another that did so much, and we lost him too soon.

[@speeta]

David Gerrold wrote long ago that Star Trek's success could be attributed to having good Genes.

[@TREK-WORLD]

I remember that! 😀

[@iancroft1447]

Oh man what a TALENT

[@terryfox9344]

Thanks! I remember Star Trek from the beginning, and any episode that I might have missed, I saw on reruns. I quickly noticed the names of Gene L. Coon and D. C. Fontana on all of my favorite episodes. One of the most entertaining and thoughtful aspects of Star Trek were the interplay and humor among the characters of Spock, McCoy, and Kirk. I enjoyed the science fiction, but the character development was intellectually stimulating.

[@thecandidframe]

Thank you for this video. I greatly appreciate learning about the Gene's contribution to Trek culture.

[@markbanash921]

"Metamorphosis" is such a beautiful episode. It showed how the series concept could be extended and yet tell a very human story.

[@gallery7596]

The music is gorgeous and genuinely moving.

[@michaelschramm1064]

@@markbanash921 That’s one episode I didn’t appreciate enough in the ‘70s. Now it’s a firm top five favorite, owing in no small measure to George Duning’s exceptional music score.

[@ewaf88]

Great episode, but I didn't like the portrayal of Cochrane in First Contact. Presenting him as a drunken oaf didn't work for me.

[@dumyes]

Really nicely done! thank you for bringing Jean Coon’s contributions to the forefront. The it’s amazing how so much of the basic understandings with in the Star Trek world traces back to him as well as the the recognition by others.

[@TREK-WORLD]

I’m glad you enjoyed it!

[@tori8380]

I went to a Roddenberry lecture at university in 1982. I really was disheartened to discover Roddenberry was an overrated ego maniac.

[@TREK-WORLD]

I had similar experience with him in. the 70s when he was traveling the country doing lectures. At that particular point in time, he seemed like a self-appointed prophet to me. He really felt everything revolved around him. I have a very special video about him that I will be releasing next week. It's time that people take a realistic approach to Gene. And the damage he did to many good people over the years.

[@DWNicolo]

@@tori8380 people have feet of clay.

[@DWNicolo]

@@TREK-WORLD in volume one of the oral biography of Star Trek someone described that whenever Gene Roddenberry and Leonard Nimoy showed up at a convention everyone treated whatever came out of their mouths as if the Pope had spoken.

[@TREK-WORLD]

That's a wonderful analogy!

[@mahatmarandy5977]

@@DWNicoloThe difference, I think, is that Nimoy generally told the truth and was a self-effacing and humble man, and Gene just continually lied his ass off all the time to make himself look like a genius. He’d get caught in a lie, mumble some shuck about “Well, I had a lot of scripts come over my desk in those days, and it was more than a decade ago, I maybe just forgot.” And then a week later at the next convention or interview he’d tell the same lies again.

[@clintballard521]

This is a great idea. Everyone knows about the main contributors but these unsung contributors are often the real heroes.

[@TREK-WORLD]

Hi Clint! You are so right... As the years go by, our opportunity to honor these folks slips by. One of the people I hope to spend more time with is Yanos Prohaska. His creature work in Trek is iconic. But he also died young, and as a result he slipped from our consciousness.

[@clintballard521]

@@TREK-WORLD That would be awesome! There are so many names I know from the credits of the shows but I have no clue what they actually did. Gene L. Coon was a biggie.

[@TREK-WORLD]

Now *THATS* a great idea. I never thought of it from the end credit perspectives. You may have just found a way for me to logically arrange this kind of info in manageable chunks. Thanks!!!

[@clintballard521]

@@TREK-WORLD always happy to help! 😁

[@DarrylRuiz-s1w]

Tel Trek fan's know who Gene Coon is

[@TheShornak]

Everyone doesn't like Spock's Brain "Brain, what is Brain?" but personally Plato's Stepchild I find much harder to watch.

[@TREK-WORLD]

Agreed. That whole episode felt like a freak show to me.

[@speeta]

@@TREK-WORLD Except for Michael Dunn's elevating performance, which single-handedly made it sit-through-able.

[@michaelschramm1064]

Don’t forget the insufferable “And the Children Shall Lead”…and “The Way to Eden”.

[@thecaptain6730]

Well, "Stepchildren" is literally about a group of sadists torturing the crew, so, yes, that is a difficult one to watch for sure. It is intended to be.

[@michaelschramm1064]

@@thecaptain6730 “The Twilight Zone” had a couple episodes drawn along similar lines, in particular “A Piano in the House”. Always disliked that episode as well.

[@dumyes]

regarding Spock‘s brain, while derided by many, I really want to tell everyone to focus on the De Kelly’s performance. to me this episode showcases him in a way no other episode. I would argue that as much Notoriety as all of the actors received, D was the ringer they brought on to carry and provide continuity in each episodes ensemble performances

[@mahatmarandy5977]

It’s hard to be sure exactly what the original concept of characters are since there’s so many retcons in Trek continuity, but I always got the impression that “Zephram Cochrane of Alpha Centauri” meant he was *from* Alpha Centauri, at least in the original iteration. Either he was an alien (which doesn’t make sense in context) or he was born in a pre-warp human colony in the Alpha Centauri solar system. (Given they were never entirely sure how far in the future the show took place - dates from 200 years in the future all the way to six hundred years in the future were thrown around, and some scripts said it was the 25th century, but that never made it to screen) it’s entirely plausible that humanity made interstellar journies at very fast sublight, or right at light speed. For me, though, the more interesting implication is kirk’s “We’re on a thousand worlds and growing fast” comment which (To me anyway) implies that the federation is relatively new and in its ‘wild west’ days, which is fairly consistent with the series as a whole. I’m rambling, I’m sorry, none of this has anything to do with anything, I just think this is probably Trek’s single most retconned episode.

[@TREK-WORLD]

Hi there! You many very well be correct on how significantly this has been retconned. I think the biggest issue with the Cochran story as originally told would be that it was actually Alpha Centauri and not Earth that developed the warp drive. Which would have required a human colony be established and thriving in a prewar period. When it was decided to use warp development as the focus for First Contact, they realized the timeline didn’t really match up with their desire to use the event on the movie. Star Trek’s original timeline requires that we end up at Kirk’s period in about 200 years or so. If about 75-100 years of that is spent actually creating a viable colony at Alpha Centauri before we even get to First Contact with the Vulcans, then that simply doesn’t leave enough time between the development of warp and the TOS timeline. So they had to reduce the delay to allow time for First Contact to happen earlier. Just my two cents.

[@mahatmarandy5977]

@@TREK-WORLD yeah, the TOS timeline is wonky. Space Seed mentions that something happened in 2018, and suddenly suspended animation was no longer required because it no longer took years just to get between planets in the solar system. Was that at work? Probably not. Was that light speed drive? Or even 1/2 light speed Drive? Maybe. Given the way Star Trek works I would imagine establishing via colony on office and probably just landing and cutting down some trees and building a few log cabins. The universe seems full of earthlike worlds. No assembly needed, just add people :-). Also, there was kind of no attempt to keep the backstorystraight and so it often contradicts. I think what we can agree on is that the author of that episode intended Zephyr Cochran to be from Alpha Centauri. And we can probably agree that Braga and Moore deliberately decided to change that because it did not fit the story they wanted to tell.

[@dragdragon23]

this should be shown at those star trek conventions on big screens!

[@grahamturner1290]

🖖

[@jonathanmartin-ives8665]

I really enjoyed this! So much stuff I didn't know. 🖖

[@TREK-WORLD]

I'm glad you enjoyed it! I think Gene Coon deserves a lot more recognition.

[@jonathanmartin-ives8665]

@@TREK-WORLD I totally agree!

[@jcortese3300]

"Errand of Mercy," "A Taste of Armageddon," and especially "The Devil in the Dark" are to me, in the top five episodes that must be watched and that stand in for the values and ethics of the entire Trek universe.

[@ForestTre]

Thank you so much for telling us.I honestly didn't know any of this. The obviously wrote some of my favorite episodes. Devil in the dark in the trouble with Tribbles are two of my favorites

[@TREK-WORLD]

Thank you for the kind words!

[@cowbelltv4865]

Thanks for another interesting video. I appreciate your work to tell Trek stories!

[@TREK-WORLD]

Thank you for the kind words!

[@cbspock1701]

Gene Coon was an interesting guy. He’s definitely on the Mount Rushmore of Star Trek with Gene Roddenberry, Justman and DC Fontana

[@robzilla730]

Would Berman and Meyer be on that Mt Rushmore, too?

[@geographicaloddity2]

Please include Matt Jefferies. I've been shocked at how many other shows relied on Mr. Jefferies for their design lead. There is a Little House On The Prarie where Jonathan builds an altar and it looks like a Star Trek prop thanks to Mr. Jefferies being the designer.

[@TREK-WORLD]

You know what, you are SO right. I'm going to have to make a note for my next video!

[@michaelproctor8100]

Devil In The Dark is also notable because Shatner's father died during production. Shatner insisted on finishing his scenes before leaving for the funeral.

[@Kleidenwaht44]

"Elaan Of Troyius" also shows an obvious post-coital scene. I think Kirk is putting on his boots in that one too.

[@chrisboerger465]

Coon also cowrote Who Mourns For Adonais. Surprised you missed that!

[@TREK-WORLD]

You’re correct! Even though it is widely known that Gene changed the script significantly in re-writes; he opted not to ask for credit. So his work is uncredited on that one (and there were others he i uncredited for as well). So I made the early decision not to include that one because he wasn’t credited.

[@jaymedina3142]

You know I always saw his name in the credits but sadly never gave it much thought but was very familiar with his name this is an excellent tribute

[@TREK-WORLD]

I have a hunch that a lot of folks felt the same way.

[@AvengerII]

"I can remember it ('Spock's Brain') not being as bad [as I remembered]." No, let me REASSURE YOU -- It's worse than you remembered! 😂

[@henrykujawa4427]

I've been putting up with realy awful recordings of STAR TREK off a bad antenna signal in 1980 (but, they WERE uncut, oddly enough). I'm so lokoing forward to eventually upgrading to disc. One of the best things about DVDs and BRs is, they majke it so much easier to play episodes in any order... or... just SKIP ones you REALLY DON'T LIKE! The last 3 times I watched my ST collections, each time, I skipped MORE episodes, and the more I did that, the BETTER the entire series became. 😄

[@TREK-WORLD]

😀 Wow! Do you know how hard it is today to get VHS home recordings of the actual syndicated versions done in the 70s-80s? There very hard to come by now.

[@reichensperger1847]

Jim, you know your stuff and your obvious love of the show comes through in your work. So I hope you will forgive me if I don’t join the Gene Coon fan club. There’s no question of his enormous influence. He changed the show profoundly, and for all the innovations that you cite (Prime Directive, Klingons, the Federation, etc.) The question is, were all those changes for the better? My point of view is that of someone who watched the show from the very beginning (almost the beginning; I missed the first half hour of the Man Trap because I foolishly tuned in to the Tammy Grimes Show.) The first dozen or so episodes were splendid; these were the episodes supervised by John D. F. Black (whose name you don’t cite). The level of quality, particularly in writing, was remarkably high. The rest of the first season was still good but increasingly uneven. And something critical got lost, which was the sense of the essential strangeness of space. When the Enterprise comes upon that space buoy in Corbomite Maneuver, or meets Ruk in that endless cavern, or that Thasian shows up to reclaim Charlie Evans, you get a palpable sense of what the hell is that? Never again was deep space so mysterious or so frightening. Later on, when they come upon space Romans, space Nazis, space gangsters, space Indians, they don't even bat an eyelash. They might as well be Lost in Space's Dr. Smith and the Robot crossing paths with a Valkyrie. Even as a little kid, I could feel the waning sense of wonder as the show went on. Coon was responsible for some very good scripts but also some very pedestrian ones. He’s invariably praised for emphasizing the Kirk-Spock-McCoy triad but this came at a cost. Once Coon put the focus on “the Big Three,” the rest of the crew faded into the background. We lost the feeling of being in a very big ship filled with interesting people, like Lt. Bailey, the nervous navigator; or tormented Joe Tormolen (“We’ve got no business out here, no business!”; or Sam, who wrestled Kirk in the gym; or Lt. Stiles, the bigot; or Kevin Riley, who kept singing I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen “one more time.” Not only did we stop getting interesting crewmen (apart from attractive yeomen), we lost the human interest scenes between the secondary characters, such as Sulu and Yeoman Rand in the botany lab, or Uhura singing to Riley when he was exiled in engineering. Had Gene Coon never come on board, Star Trek still would have been a very good show, but a different one. There would have been more elements of tragedy (which didn’t interest Coon much) and less comedy. Much as I love the dynamic Kirk-Spock-McCoy triad, I keep thinking of another triad from a different show that Coon created, the one between Capt. Binghamton, Lt. McHale and Ensign Parker, and wonder what Star Trek would have evolved into had he not turned it into a kind of inter-galactic McHale's Navy. I know all too well that mine is a minority opinion.

[@TREK-WORLD]

Hi there! First, I absolutely love when folks have various viewpoints, because it stretches me and allows me to grow in an overall manner. So please never feel like I may take something the wrong way. You've raised some very good points about the fundamental differences between the two Genes. And your point definitely aligns with my belief that Gene C. was far more "demographic" minded than Gene R. And that's why he diluted the more hard aspects of science fiction. Gene R was kind of like Asimov, while Gene C was more like Heinlein in their approaches.

[@reichensperger1847]

@@TREK-WORLD Thanks for the thoughtful reply.

[@cyphi474]

Well.... Spock's Brain wasnt exactly his best work...

[@DougForce]

[@TREK-WORLD]

Howdy! I am so glad you enjoyed this one. I wish he had lived longer; it would have been fun to see where he would turn his creative talent to in later projects.

[@DWNicolo]

@@TREK-WORLD what could have been….

[@DWNicolo]

@@TREK-WORLD I enjoyed this episode as well. Atta boy, more episodes like this. Another suggestion. Do an episode on the FASA Star Trek role playing games.

[@PerryPapanier]

Funny how you said "Orson Welles" guess you weren't expecting that.

[@genewaddlerandomstuff2122]

14:45 Not that it really matters in the grand scheme of things, but Beatrice, Nebraska is pronounced with the accent on the second syllable, not the first like it is when naming a person. And that syllable is pronounced the same as the word "at". 🙂

[@TREK-WORLD]

Hi Gene! Thanks for the tip! I'm actually pretty notorious for mispronouncing words on these videos. So hopefully this is one I won't get wrong the next time! 😀

[@DWNicolo]

I hope you’ll do a podcast on Shane Johnson aka Lora Johnson. She created Mr. Scott’s Guide To The Enterprise.

[@TREK-WORLD]

I've been thinking about it. I have a basic "We Lost" announcement in one of the new videos where I refer to her. But I also have several folks here who have also embraced that lifestyle. And they find any references to their former selves as being in poor taste. So, quite frankly, I'm not sure how to handle such a situation yet as I certainly do not want to offend any of my regulars, as you guys mean the world to me.

[@DWNicolo]

@@TREK-WORLD Michael Okuda reported it as is and emphasized that normally trans people don’t like dead naming but in this case because of her contributions to Star Trek it is an exception to the rule which trans people he consulted said they understood.

[@TREK-WORLD]

Yeah, I saw Mike's comment about it. And it was because of the backlash that he received that I originally opted to not actually address it in a seperate video. There was a bunch of "back door chatter" from folks that clearly showed me that Mike was caught in a "darned if you do, darned if you don't" situation.

[@DWNicolo]

@@TREK-WORLD I worry that her place in Star Trek history will be erased if we don’t talk about her life and contributions to Star Trek history. When Russell Bates and David Wise passed away not a peep from anyone about their contributions to Star Trek history. Sometimes you have to bite the bullet and brave the gauntlet to tell the truth. Life is not easy and can be complicated as is the case with Lora Johnson.

[@TREK-WORLD]

Hi Daniel! I meant to tell you that we did include a brief announcement back on August 27th concerning your voicemail and Shane, Russel, and David. You will find it t just over the 2:00 minute mark : kzbin.info/www/bejne/joDFoJV3qdyKbNk.

[@henrykujawa4427]

You know what I could never figure? Why Gold Key comic-books NEVER used to actual logos of TV shows they were licensing. 😉

[@TREK-WORLD]

That's a really good question! Filmation did the same thing with music on any property they had . They always created their own instead of using the original. My guess is that there really was some kind of business driver for that..... But I've never seen any explanation on the font differences.

[@Anymouse6980]

The Questor Tapes - an android seeking to be more human. Hmm, sounds familiar.

[@Rocket_Man232]

🔔 This announcer sounds like Dr. Demento (as a youngster whose voice has started to change).

[@CONNIECOLVIN-wg8bq]

Devil in the Dak was the best of Star Trek.

[@TREK-WORLD]

Agreed! It was the very first episode I ever watched back in 72. And it made a huge impact on the way I would look at life in the future.

[@robzilla730]

Was that the one about the serial killer?

[@CONNIECOLVIN-wg8bq]

No it was the one about the Horta defending her children in the mine planet

[@robzilla730]

@@CONNIECOLVIN-wg8bq oh. That was a good one. That "Horta" looked like eggs & chorizo. Lol

[@paulmasuicca5304]

I wish I'd known this video was for children. What a waste.

[@TREK-WORLD]

Huh? I'm sorry.... I'm confused.... But I want to learn in the event that I have messed up something in my approach to this subject. So please feel free to be more specific and I will take it as a learning experience! -Jim

[@BillBadMule123]

🥰😍🥳❤💯💢💥💫👍👍👍