20 years ago: When EXACTLY did Voyager premiere?

VGR Premiere Program

Well, that 's a misleading headline—of course, for most of the world, we all know that Voyager premiered with its pilot "Caretaker" on Monday, Jan. 16, 1995—as the ballyhooed flagship of the newly birthed United Paramount Network. As such, for the first time since the original series, as a "network show" its airdate would be on a uniform date and time, unlike the scattered "week of" airdates of syndicated TNG and DS9. (Mostly).

But six days earlier, Jan. 10, saw a special studio premiere at the on-lot Paramount Theater, complete with some press and a celebrity guest to kick off not only the first network Star Trek since TOS, but the first to be led by a woman.

In special remarks beforehand, co-creators Rick Berman, Michael Piller (at left) and Jeri Taylor all spoke about their feelings on the occasion of this newest Trek, as did star Kate Mulgrew—who then introduced an equally historic figure from the real space universe—Dr. Sally Ride, America's first female astronaut, who had flown twice on the shuttle during the 1980s, and who since has sadly passed away of pancreatic cancer far too soon, in 2012.

As a symbol of bonding between historic women of the real and fictional universe, Kate presented her that night with an actual Voyager combadge, making her an official member of Voyager's crew and with the hardware so that Ride could "beam up to the ship any time" she wished. We carried the event in Communicator #100.

And with those words, after a small press posing event, the Paramount Theater darkened while cast, crew, studio honchos, guest and press all saw "Caretaker" for the first time. Pilots and premiere episodes always hold such promise and hope, unaware how succeeding seasons just might unspool, or for how long... but everyone that night was a-marvel at, truth be told, how it was seemingly the best Star Trek pilot yet for character conflict, potential drama, scope and visual effects.

Reverse of VGR premiere program

On a personal note, we had barely been in L.A. for five months, and the prospect of present for a front-row seat to watch a new Trek series launch was exhilarating with its fresh-faced, fandom-naive cast (well, all but for boyhood Trek fan Tim Russ, who knew best of all exactly what he was getting into.) Thus you can imagine my chagrin when all my photography—taken on 35mm Kodachrome slides in the pre-digital age—was mostly ruined thanks to a new Burbank neighborhood photo lab that used old chemicals, and threw off the color of almost all my photos taken that night. (The top two are among the rare pics salvaged). I never did THAT again—but I've been heartbroken ever since that I did not have my shots to archive, from an event not exactly as mangy with photogs as you'd expect.

Along with those, enjoy the premiere program card I scanned here—and no, those are not printed signatures, and no, it is not going in the Trekland Trunk any time soon!

TWENTY years ago? A pitch you can't 'Prophecy'

Well, THIS is a moment locked in time for me...and it was exactly 20 years ago today that we rehearsed for it:

This sale memo, from Voyager's Jeri Taylor and signed under fellow exec producer Michael Piller's
reply, was about our pitch called "Reflections," or "Descendants," or "Alliances Undone," or "Birds of a Feather"... whatever... that SOLD... then got bumped for 4 years, sank into the unused "sold" pile, but then finally got plucked out to produce (with update) seven years later as "Prophecy."

It's been an anniversary memory for me all week, exactly (gulp) two decades ago: The TNG Companion was two years old, our new home home in L.A./Burbank was into its fifth month, Janet's six-week Voyager temp job had just been made permanent, and the extended contact from all our new opportunities had won us an invitation to pitch stories.

Yes, Dec. 12  was the night we rehearsed our 3 or 4 pitches with script coordinator and buddy/boss Lolita Fatjo at Micelli's in Hollywood, and got her notes; the very next day, we met with Jeri in her Hart Building office to try them all for real. And it was all, of course, still six weeks or so until the world at large would even see Voyager and meet its denizens on TV.

I had heard all the TNG writers tell of their own pitch experiences—of the nerves and mistakes in both their own as writers, and of the hopefuls they heard ideas from—and thus Lolita's gentle reminder that "no one sells on their first pitch" had been well taken.

Which, of course, was all the more weird when we DID do just that—and with the one idea, of course, we thought the least of: our "token 'Klingon in the Delta Quadrant' story, to mess with B'Elanna's Klingon half" idea. Thank you, Jeri—and thank you for being gentle with the rookies. And you too, Michael, wherever you are—bedecked in Dodger blue, I'm sure).

It was hardly the last time we pitched to either show—back in the day of Michael's revolutionary but time-consuming open-door policy for non-agented writers and spec scripts—but it was the only time we ever sold. Of course. (The old maxim about "you never get to do the teleplay for your first story sale," however, came perfectly true.) I even found out later we weren't even the first ones to pitch a "Klingon generational ship" story for Voyager.

March 1995: A "bottle show" no longer...

We used to tell the full story at convention talks—the prep and pitch, the writer meetings, the directed enlarging and then shrinking of the bottle story scope as the show and staff evolved, its disappearance and then final-season resurrection—as a snapshot of the outside-writer process, and how wacky a "textbook case" of off-staff TV selling and writing can actually be, and over several years. I've told parts of the saga on a couple of podcast interviews, but any of you new fans want us to pipe up about it for a current con, just let me know. (For the right rum mixture, I'll even share all the better concepts we pitched on either "middle show" that didn't sell.)

But for young Okie kids getting a tad later start in the biz than usual, it was three fast days in a week I'll always remember.

RIP Sally Ride—but do you know her big Star Trek Moment?

It was January 10, 1995, and Star Trek: Voyager was just days away from becoming not only Star Trek's first true network series since the orignal... but also the first in the franchise to feature another groundbreaking casting choice: a female captain, Kathryn Janeway.

For the highly anticipated cast and crew premiere screening at Paramount, the UPN honchos and Voyager co-creators Rick Berman, Michael Piller and Jeri Taylor (in background) joined new lead Kate Mulgrew—whose Janeway role had been the brainchild of Taylor—and made sure to make a little history that night as well.

Who else to honor on such an auspicious night for the world's biggest space adventure and its first female regular captain .... than America's first female astronaut and high-flying gender pioneer, Dr. Sally K. Ride?

(I was there that night in the front press row, a recent arrival in LA myself, and I'm danged if I can locate my good original photos this second. Instead, here's the studio photog's image we ran in Communicator/Issue 101—so apologies for the print-screen.)

Ride passed away today of pancreatic cancer at 61, having made her mark at age 31 in 1983 as American's first woman in space, and then-youngest ever, at age 32. She left NASA in 1987 after nine years and one more mission, with a third mission postponed by the Challenger disaster and her sitting on the accident's review commission. She resigned to work at Stanford's Center for International Security and Arms Control, as her spot in history will always be assured.

But back on the Paramount Pictures main theater stage in 1995, after honoring Ride for such contributions to space exploration, Mulgrew presented her with a plaque and combadge from the show's sets so Ride "could beam up whenever she felt the need to." In line with the historic mutual love affair overall between Star Trek and NASA—America's fictional and real-life space heroes—Ride's remarks that night revealed she was suitably touched and honored to be a part of another landmark for women in culture.

Ride even had a second and earlier link to the franchise, of course, in that she was in the group of new astronauts chosen from among women and minorities recruited by the NASA program Nichelle "Uhura" Nichols headed in the 1970s-80s.

An Andy Griffith-Star Trek link? Not once, but twice!

Happy Independence Day, y'all...

And while all of America joins in to mourn and remember the great Andy Griffith, who died Tuesday at the age of 86, it took a Facebook poke from Dan Madsen to remind me of a site that actually has a great Andy-Star Trek connection: a study of the commonly seen Mayberry small town exteriors at the Desilu "Forty Acres" lot in Culver City that Desilu-produced Star Trek redressed and shot wider, in "Miri," "The Return of the Archons," "Errand of Mercy," and "The City on the Edge of Forever": with an even greater link here.  "Forty Acres" (actually 29) was also the home of the Hogan Heroes' "Stalag 13" POW camp set, with "Mayberry" serving earlier for both the Superman TV series and even as Atlanta in Gone With the Wind. The large outdoor set complex was sold, bulldozed and developed more industrially in 1976.

But Mayberry-Trek lives on in film: Not Andy per se, but the iconic "Goodnight, Sweetheart" Kirk-Edith scene in "City" actually includes a stroll past the iconic "Floyd's Barber Shop" (above), whose sign is left uncovered across the whole frame as the two tragic lovers walk by, on what is of course ostensibly a 1930 New York City street.

If you want to go one more Andy-Trek connection, don't forget the yes-they-really-aired-this-concept Salvage 1 (left), which starred Andy and was executive produced by none other than ... Harve Bennett! For all its glorious 19 episodes in 1979, over a half and a quarter season—this was Harve's TV follow-up to The SIx Million Dollar Man and his last series prior to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

What's more, guess who got her first writing credits ever on that Andy-starring series in its dying weeks? None other than future TNG executive producer and Voyager co-creator Jeri Taylor!