Dick: GR and FJ corresponded in letters and phone calls from 1973-1975. FJ met with GR twice at GR's offices at Warner Brothers in January 1974 as part of the Planet Earth project, and my mother and I also met GR in his office prior to the April 1974 studio screening of Planet Earth. At the time, GR was very personable and cordial.

GR made no mention to FJ of a Star Trek revival whatsoever in any form (although the animated series was in production at the time). In fact, GR told FJ that Star Trek was dead and that FJ could draw anything he liked. At the time, GR was actively pursuing other series ideas such as Questor, Genesis II / Planet Earth, and Spectre.

Dick: D.C. Fontana had negative feelings toward FJ because he was an "outsider" and not part of the original Star Trek production team. (They were very close-knit and somewhat cliqueish.) I personally overheard her making negative comments to an associate about FJ at a 1976 Star Trek convention in an L.A. hotel hallway after the Tech Manual was published. Ms. Fontana's attitude was that FJ was making money at GR's expense when FJ hadn't even been involved with the original series. Ms. Fontana was very loyal to GR, so some of GR's negative feelings (see below) may have contributed to hers.

GR had negative feelings toward FJ for several reasons. (1) GR had wanted to publish and distribute the Ship's Plans and Tech Manual through Lincoln Enterprises, his wife's (Majel Barrett's) business. When GR would not give FJ straight answers over who owned the rights to Star Trek (or finalize marketing plans after nearly a year of discussions), FJ went over GR's head and queried Paramount Pictures about said rights. At that point, Paramount took over the negotiations, hooked FJ up with Ballantine Books, and collected the resulting royalty payments instead of GR. (See FJ Timeline.) (2) GR and FJ had a disagreement over assignment of rights regarding FJ's prop design work for Planet Earth (see Q7 below). This disagreement was eventually resolved, but it must have left GR with the feeling that FJ was difficult to deal with. (3) GR did not think that his "credit line" was large enough in the Technical Manual, even though having any credit lines at all contradicted the whole premise of the book (i.e., that the Star Trek universe was real and the Tech Manual had been broadcast accidentally to 20^th Century Earth by the real starship Enterprise during the events of "Tomorrow Is Yesterday"). (4) Once the contracts were signed for the first Star Trek movie and GR realized he/Paramount did not have the rights to any of the original work presented in the Tech Manual, he went out of his way to discredit FJ's work. (See more commentary under Q19.)

I must comment here that at the time he first came into contact with GR and Paramount, FJ was a 60-year-old retired aerospace engineer who had NO idea of the complicated interior political workings of Hollywood. After reading between the lines in FJ's work logs (See FJ Timeline), there is no doubt in my mind that FJ accidentally stepped on some toes and injured some feelings. All I can say here is that none of it was intentional; FJ only meant well, and acted out of ignorance, not malice.

Dick: I have all of FJ's correspondence with GR regarding Planet Earth, as well as FJ's work-up sketches and original, very detailed drawings of the props for Planet Earth.

Based on FJ's work on the Ship's Plans and Tech Manual, which GR had seen prior to publication and was very impressed with, GR contracted FJ to produce detailed drawings of the props for Planet Earth. To get around the unions, GR told FJ to title the initial drawings as "communicator," "tricorder," and "medkit;" to label them as Star Trek pre-production drawings; and to back-date them (real honest, huh?) to 1970 (it was then 1974). Now that I think about it, the back-dating GR requested would make them part of the work-up for the first aborted Star Trek revival series (circa 1972 -- see FJ Timeline), not the original series.

When FJ was about to deliver the finished drawings and asked for final payment for the job, GR (through Norway Productions' legal team) demanded that FJ sign away all his rights to the work. FJ refused to sign until the assignment of rights was re-worded. (Apparently, FJ did not care about the design rights as they applied to the fictional movie/TV series, but saw possible real-life commercial and scientific applications for the medkit in particular and was not willing to sign away everything carte blanche.) The assignment of rights was eventually re-worded to everyone's satisfaction, final payment was made, and the final drawings delivered, but not in time to build the detailed props for the movie. As a result, the props used in Planet Earth were little more than blocks of wood spray-painted silver and put together with hinges. I don't believe FJ received any onscreen credit, either, although he (and my mother and myself) were invited to the studio premiere, where GR was very pleasant and magnanimous to us. GR intended to have the more detailed props built for subsequent movies, but Planet Earth did so poorly that subsequent movies never happened, and GR eventually sold his rights to the property.

Some commentary here: When FJ agreed to do the Planet Earth project, GR told him verbally he would have to sign a "standard studio release" for his work. Nobody told FJ what the specifics of a "standard studio release" were. GR made it sound like no big deal. Further, said "standard studio release" was not sent to FJ until he had already completed the work. Thus, FJ was completely blindsided at the end when the transfer to GR/Norway Productions of all ownership rights was both expected and demanded.

Maybe it is standard Hollywood practice for conceptual artists to sign away all their design rights on a given movie project; I honestly don't know. Because FJ came from a freelance commercial art and industrial design background, where reproduction and other rights are negotiated and paid for separately from the commissioned artwork itself, it does not surprise me in the least that FJ refused to sign the paperwork saying that he didn't own his own intellectual properties. (GR/Norway Productions were paying for designs for movie props with some moving parts, but not fully functional scientific instruments. FJ had designed fully functional scientific instruments in order to make the controls on the props more believable, and didn't feel GR/Norway should necessarily have the rights to the working guts he had so laboriously thought out.) As a result, FJ came across as being a difficult and tempermental person to work with, when, if someone had just explained "standard studio release" to him at the outset, he would have walked away from or renegotiated the contract at the beginning, or not gone the extra mile on the designs to make them real, before everyone was up against the wall on production deadlines and tempers were running short.

Dick: Because, at 33 years old and counting, it's obviously very 1960s and very dated, even though it tried hard to be futuristic at the time. Because it was made in the Stone Age of special visual effects on a shoestring budget. Because many of the current fans weren't even born when the original series aired, and therefore can't get past the dated look and primitive FX.

Also, I feel Paramount is failing to promote the classic Star Trek series as avidly as it used to. If you watched the media, Star Trek's 30^th Anniversary seemed to be more about Deep Space 9 and Voyager than the original Star Trek, especially the way Paramount publicity was handling it. As a first-generation Trek fan who grew up with the old series, this approach by Paramount just plain felt wrong to me. It was classic Trek's 30^th Anniversary, dammit, and DS9 and Voyager, still in their comparative infancy, had nothing to do with it!

I'm not sure what, but I think something funky happened with Star Trek's proprietary rights when it transferred in the late 1960s from Desilu to Paramount. Gene Roddenberry seems to have lost his proprietary rights (and rights to residuals), but Paramount didn't seem to have full control, either. Sometimes I wonder if that is why Paramount has always done more to publicize the Star Trek properties created since 1975 that it positively owns 100%.