Roddenberry Vault: Week 7 - Story ideas and scripts

Throughout 2016 the Roddenberry Facebook page will be posting artefacts from their archives, including behind the scenes documents, production artwork, and photos. Dubbed the Roddenberry Vault, there will be new posts every day, some times multiples. To make sure you don't miss any of these insightful glimpses into the production of Star Trek, I will be posting weekly summaries.

In the seventh week's worth of posts we got an in depth look at the development of stories, with notes on unmade episodes, various documents charting the evolution of stories, and complete scripts. Continue below for details of all the week's posts.

Day forty-three kicked off the week with a script, specifically Majel Barrett's copy of Journey to Babel. As with almost all the posts from this week, the Facebook post was just a sample, with the full length pdf documents hosted on the Roddenberry website.

Day forty-four gave us pages of notes by Gene Roddenberry on the first draft of Court Martial, or Court Martial on Star Base 811 as it appears to have been known at the time. Again the full document is hosted by Roddenberry, including the rather brilliant following passages, which give a wonderful bit of futurist speculation on computer technology:

Day forty-five is another script, this time for The Way to Eden, what makes this a bit more insightful into the entire production process is the inclusion of a special effects shot list for the episode too. Once more, the entire document is hosted by Roddenberry.

Day forty-six is the highlight of the week for me, and in fact one of my favourite posts in the entire project so far, several pages of story ideas for episodes we never got to see. Those include a time travel episode where the crew must decide what to do with Hitler's father, an ethical dilemma on food production and sentience (which, as a vegan, I find particularly compelling), a Star Trek version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and what sounds rather like the first pass on what would become Encounter at Farpoint! Again, the full document is on the Roddenberry website.

Day forty-seven gave us the story outline for The Changeling, and once more, you can find the full document on Roddenberry.

The Broadcasting Standards Department were keeping tabs on Trek for day forty-eight, which was a set of notes on A Private Little War.

And the final post of this round-up, day forty-nine was the only image post of this seventh week's worth of posts, a couple of frames of Spock on the bridge.

Make sure you follow the Roddenberry Facebook page to catch posts as they come out each day. And be sure to click through to the original posts to check out more images and join the discussions. The Roddenberry page is pretty active on other fronts too, so if you want to find your way back to previous Vault posts, then scanning back through my weekly summary articles might be a bit easier; you can find all of them under my Roddenberry Vault label.