Replies

Then Roddenberry died, and they were able to save the show by going back to shoot-em-out scripts based on old submarine and air combat movies.

Gene Roddenberry died in 1991. He was fully involved in Star Trek until his death.

Yes, I realize Roddenberry was involved in Star Trek till his death.

And it was not until he died that the writers were able to break free of his non-violence edict and save TNG.

#20 He was involved but not fully. He was a known drug addict who could not be entrusted with running a tv show. Others like Gene Coon and later Rick Berman ran the shows.

He was quite the writer. He got hooked on drugs of all sorts. He also constantly cheated on his wives and girlfriends which explains some of the scripts.
His Wiki entry is quite interesting. He did much more then Star Trek.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Roddenberry

He was lucky to have survived as long as he did.
Wiki: longstanding recreational use of legal and illicit drugs, including alcohol,[198] cannabis, diazepam, secobarbital, methylphenidate, Dexamyl, and cocaine (which he had used regularly since the production of Star Trek: The Motion Picture).[162] The effects of these substances were compounded by deleterious interactions with diabetes,[198] high blood pressure, and antidepressant prescriptions.

Roddenberry even wrote lyrics to the original Star Trek theme. He did so because he was told that under the law, the composer and the lyricist split the royalties 50-50. By writing lyrics, he only had to pay Alexander Courage 50 percent of the royalties. he kept the other 50 percent as "lyricist".

but unlike Star Wars, Bill Murray didn't have to make up inane lyrics (with humorous results.)