What if Assignment: Earth, the infamous backdoor pilot from Star Trek’s second season, had gone to series? Or what if it were revived today? Siskoid and guest Rich Hendley discuss the adventures of Gary Seven, Roberta Lincoln and Isis in canon and spin-off media to extrapolate what it might have been like!
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Credits:
“Star Trek Theme” by Alexander Courage, with the Irredeemable Shagg on vocals. End theme: “Deep Space Nine Theme” by Dennis McCarthy.
Bonus clips from: Star Trek’s “Assignment: Earth”, starring Robert Lansing and Teri Garr.
And thanks for leaving a comment!
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One of my favorite episodes
were there any real scripts written?
Not to my knowledge or we’d have discussed them.
Teri Garr says she hated this episode and will not talk about it. Apparently something bad happened associated with it and she won’t go there.
Yes, it was about the skirt and Roddenberry walking on set and ordering it be shortened even more. She was creeped out by the whole affair, and I think that’s warranted.
This is kind of seen as blasphemy among a certain sector of Trek fans, but Roddenberry was a pretty unsavory guy in many ways.
There’s a good rundown of his many transgressions – esp. where this concerns his treatment of women in this post by the late, great Greg Hatcher at the Atomic Junk Shop from a few years back (the part about Roddenberry is halfway down, although the whole thing is well worth reading).
It’s absolutely not a secret, and reading about the making of Trek, Roddenberry is often both Trek’s hero and its villain.
Very interesting conversation, gentlemen.
“Assignment: Earth” has always been an episode of Star Trek that I’ve found enjoyable and that also endlessly intrigues me – mainly because, like you and many others, I’ve often found myself wondering what a series based on it would have been like back in the 1960s.
As for the use of the concept and characters in later ST media, I’ve only consumed one – the IDW mini-series by Byrne, which I found quite enjoyable. And here I have to stress how emphatically I agree with Rich: I absolutely love Byrne’s Trek comics, at least the ones he both wrote and drew. I haven’t (yet?) read New Visions, but they certainly sound interesting…
Great discussion. As a kid, I never liked “Assignment: Earth”. I smelled the spinoff, and I didn’t like that peanut butter in my Star Trek chocolate. Now, I can seen the possibilites, and Robert Lansing and Terri Garr have a certain chemistry I can see carrying the series.
I had no idea this had anything to do with Picard Season 2, but I guess that’s what I get for putting off watching it!
As for Rodennberry, yeah…he’s divisive at best, and seen through a modern lens…maybe at worst.
No glance at “The Questor Tapes”? That had to have gotten close enough to production for story proposals to be circulating.
Assignment: Eternity has a reference to the Questor Tapes as if Gary and Roberta helped the android.
A little late but I just finished this episode. Rich is a great guest – again. Assignment Earth was never my favorite episode for some of the same reasons Chris mentions above. But what made me want to comment was Rich’s theory at the end that we are going see a mix all of the Traveler, Guardian, Tenporal War etc into one story – wow! I had not even connected these. I had noticed the eugenics themes in all the shows, especially with Una’s fate in the most recent SNW episode. So I figured we were heading there. But combining that with time travel and the Watchers and Travlers – cool idea. I am kind of in the middle of you two with regard to whether I want to see any more ofWesley but I did enjoy the scene. I do like Wil Wheaton as an adult but I don’t think he could carry a show. Anyway sorry for rambling. Great episode as I mentioned and I will second Rich’s endorsement of the Byrne photo novels. They were great!
And Rich – if you read this, let me know if you have any connections with what is left of Eaglemoss. I got all the Graphic Novel collection except missing 2 volumes. Can’t find them anywhere!!