Gene Roddenberry: The Myth and the Man Behind "Star Trek"

From day one of attempting to secure scripts for Star Dreck, Roddenberry was notorious for rewriting every script no matter how good it already was or how well-established and well-known the scriptwriter was. The feud between Roddenberry and Harlan Ellison over Ellison's "The City on the Edge of Forever" (whose original script was substantially different from the broadcast version people know and love) is merely the most (in)famous example. The new versions would not necessarily be superior, to put it mildly.

Roddenberry was also notorious for taking credit for ideas, and even entire scripts, that were not his. Most of Star Dreck's contributors didn't seem to mind unless it led to their being denied official credit (and payment) for a script. But because of this irrepressible habit of Roddenberry's, most fans do not know that key concepts and characters from Star Dreck (especially The Next Generation) originated with people other than Roddenberry. For instance, someone else whose name I am trying to remember (or possibly two people, I forget) is directly responsible for inventing the characters of Data and Worf. (Roddenberry later sent a memo about the android character as though it were his idea. There is a special reason he did something that obnoxious.)
Captain Picard's first name was originally going to be "Julien"; the person who suggested
"Jean-Luc" instead was D.C. Fontana. The concept of "away teams" led by the second-in-command also came entirely from one of the contributors. So did the concept of the "captain's log" voice-over that began in the original series: it was someone's solution to the practical need for a narrative explanation of what would happen.

During the gestation and first season of Star Dreck: The Next Generation, Roddenberry alienated legendary original series writers D.C. Fontana (Journey to Babel) and David Gerrold (The Trouble With Tribbles), mostly over issues of monetary compensation. I won't try to describe this issue in detail, because it's much more complicated than the older and more constant issue of Roddenberry's dictatorial control; but it boils down to money for Gerrold--Roddenberry insisted on low-balling Gerrold for his script contributions and Gerrold wouldn't have it--and, for Fontana, more that Roddenberry mistreated her professionally (but, on his end, for personal reasons) until she got fed up, referred their disputes to the Guild, and left.

Roddenberry was an alcoholic and, from at least the mid-1970s, a very heavy recreational drug user. Reliable sources in the book repeatedly recall that he regularly smoked pot and snorted cocaine. Although his death is not directly attributable to an alcohol- or drug-related reason, it is difficult not to think he, to a certain extent, drank himself and drugged himself to death.

Almost certainly helped along by the drugs and alcohol, his health failed from the mid-1980s onward. The book makes it clear that the entire time of the gestation of TNG through its first few seasons, Roddenberry was dying (if slowly). Moreover, he was senile by halfway through the first season, and this is why his compulsive practice of rewriting all scripts finally ended: he just couldn't do it any longer. (It's also why he sent the memo sketching the character Data as though an android character were a new idea he had just thought of: he couldn't remember it coming from someone else.)
This is partly (but not entirely) why he infamously used his lawyer, the widely loathed Leonard Maizlish, as his proxy at the studio. Maizlish looked after Roddenberry's financial interests, and more generally enforced Roddenberry's desires. Maizlish also, since Roddenberry was eventually too ill to handle script editing, edited scripts himself on Roddenberry's behalf despite that being a direct violation of writers' guild rules (only writers and producers could do scriptwriting). Maizlish was heavily involved in the final alienation of Fontana, mainly over trying to coerce Fontana to testify against David Gerrold in an ongoing script-related financial lawsuit.

Roddenberry had an intense personal antipathy toward women, due to a failed marriage with and bitter divorce from first wife Eileen (the woman before Majel Barrett, whom he had taken up with well before the divorce finalized). Colleagues recall that Roddenberry's remarks toward women were highly misogynistic, to put it mildly. Colleagues also, on visits to the Roddenberry home, witnessed Roddenberry and Majel Barrett fighting viciously (mostly verbally, the accounts indicate) at home. Why Roddenberry and Barrett remained married is not obvious unless it were about money.

Roddenberry was also an inveterate sexual fantasist who constantly inserted sexual material into the original series and The Next Generation even if it embarrassed and offended writers. One example given is: the scene in "The Naked Now" in which Tasha Yar (intoxicated by the "polywater" contamination) seduces Data (after passing the condition on to him) was created entirely by Roddenberry, and inserted over the scriptwriter's objection. (If you always questioned the plausibility of an android getting infected with this contaminant and instantly losing his judgment, now you know who insisted on the scene.) The character who eventually became Deanna Troi was originally conceived by Roddenberry as a four-breasted hermaphrodite, until Fontana pointed out to him that that was (a)offensive, (b)physically rather difficult for an actress to perform. (Fontana, who wrote the book's foreword, very much comes off throughout the book as both level-headed and brave, doing a pretty good job of never allowing her boss Roddenberry to intimidate her.)