Gene Roddenberry before Star Trek: Pilot and Cop

Gene Roddenberry had quite a ride before creating and producing a certain science fiction series in the mid-1960's that allowed the TV-viewing public to embark on a certain five-year mission aboard a certain starship that went where no man had gone before. Born in El Paso, Texas on August 19, 1921, Roddenberry grew up in Los Angeles, California where his father was an officer of the Los Angeles Police Department. It was in Los Angeles that Roddenberry began what eventually became a global phenomenon and a multi-billion dollar industry, but before that, he worked in jobs that relatively few people are willing or able to do.

Initially wanting to follow in his father’s footsteps, Roddenberry began attending Los Angeles City College in 1939 and pursued an AA degree in police science, graduating in June of 1941. During this time, he also was trained as a pilot through a special Army program and attempted to join the U.S. Army Air Corps immediately after his graduation, but was turned away because the Air Corps was already full of would-be Army aviators. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor changed the Air Corps’ mind, and Roddenberry was accepted for service on December 18, 1941, reporting to Kelly Field near San Antonio, Texas. After further training, Roddenberry was commissioned as a second lieutenant on August 5, 1942.

Because of his height (Roddenberry was 6’4”) and training on multi-engine aircraft, Roddenberry, after being assigned to bombers, became a B-17 pilot with the 394^th Bomb Squadron, flying bombing and reconnaissance missions from several bases in the Southwest Pacific including Guadalcanal. Facing the usual hazards of war like antiaircraft fire and Japanese fighters, Roddenberry said the most terrifying flight of his entire aviation career was when he flew though a typhoon at a low altitude during a reconnaissance mission; blinded by the rain and severely buffeted by the wind, Roddenberry’s B-17 nearly crashed into the roiling waves only a few feet below.

In August of 1943, while attempting to take off from a crude airfield on the tiny island of Espiritu Santu, Roddenberry’s B-17 crashed, killing two crewmen; the cause of the crash was determined to be mechanical failure. The squadron was rotated back to the U.S. a month later, where Roddenberry spent the remainder of the war, his final assignment being an aircraft crash investigator; while serving in this capacity, Roddenberry survived another plane crash, this time as a passenger.

After being discharged from the U.S. Army Air Force in July 1945 as a captain and holder of the Distinguished Flying Cross among his other decorations, Roddenberry became a pilot for Pan American World Airways, flying routes across the Middle East and Asia. It was during this time that Roddenberry’s interest in writing intensified. On June 18, 1947, Roddenberry survived yet another crash (his third and last one) when he was a passenger aboard a Pan Am Lockheed Constellation that went down in the Syrian desert. After a close call while piloting an aircraft with frozen control surfaces that very nearly stalled and crashed after takeoff and responding to pressure from his wife to find a safer way to earn a living, Roddenberry quit Pan Am in May of 1948 and moved back to Los Angeles.

Excited by the exploding post-war popularity of television and fully appreciating its future potential, Roddenberry was determined to become a writer more than ever, but with a family to support and needing a reliable source of income, Roddenberry finally became what he originally set out to be before the outbreak of World War 2; a member of the Los Angeles Police Department, which he joined early in 1949.

Initially assigned as a traffic cop, Roddenberry, whose superiors were impressed by his sharp intellect and flair for writing, transferred him to what would now be called a public affairs office, where he wrote press releases and other material on behalf of the LAPD. The appointment of the legendary William Parker as chief of the LAPD in the summer of 1950 bode well for Roddenberry, whom Parker chose to write his speeches and other material issued in the Chief’s name. 

Taking maximum advantage of his position, Roddenberry got his foot in the TV writer’s door by submitting actual LAPD cases to the Dragnet series on radio and TV. After being assigned as a technical advisor to a series called Mr. District Attorney (Chief Parker was very media-savvy and left few stones unturned at efforts toward creating a positive public perception of the LAPD), Roddenberry convinced the producers of that show to buy a teleplay he had written under the pen name of “Robert Wesley”, which they did, the episode titled “Defense Plant Gambling”.

Roddenberry’s writing career went into high gear from this point on; as demand (and considerable income) for his work grew, Roddenberry’s police work began to suffer, so the inevitable happened on June 7, 1956 when he resigned from the LAPD to concentrate on his increasingly lucrative writing gigs. Roddenberry wrote many teleplays for Western shows, and using his track record in this genre, successfully pitched what eventually became Star Trek as a “Wagon Train to the stars”. Some legacies from his LAPD days made their way into Star Trek; Roddenberry (allegedly) based the character of Mr. Spock on Chief Parker, and an LAPD buddy named Wilbur Clingan’s name became immortalized as the Klingons.