The Making of the Star Trek Pilots, Part 3: “Assignment Earth”

The second season of STAR TREK concluded with a pilot for a proposed spin-off series that would have starred Robert Lansing as Gary Seven, a human captured by alien beings and trained to save mankind from destroying itself. Helping Seven is secretary Roberta Lincoln (Terri Garr), though the two of them first have to convince the time traveling Kirk and Spock that they are there to save the future, not destroy it.

“Assignment Earth” was written by Gene Roddenberry and the late Art Wallace (who is also the creator of the storyline for the soap opera DARK SHADOWS). “It’s interesting in a sense,” said Wallace, “because I had gone to Paramount and pitched a series idea to them. They had said that Gene Roddenberry had come up with a very similar idea. So I saw Gene and we decided to pool the idea, which was about a man from tomorrow who takes care of the present on Earth. That was intended to be the pilot, although it was never made into a series. It was a very good pilot and it’s a shame, because I think if they had done it as a series with just Gary Seven, it would have been a very successful show. I believe Gene and I split the credit on that one.”

Guest star Robert Lansing told STARLOG magazine, “What Gene had done was go to futurists and scientists and ask them what advanced societies out in space might do towards more primitive societies like ours. One of the futurists said that they would probably kidnap children from various planets, take them to their superior civilization, raise them, teach and enlighten them and then put them back as adults to lead their worlds in more peaceful ways. That was the idea behind Gary Seven.”

“It was interesting trying to balance the episode between the regular crew and Robert Lansing,” said the late director, Marc Daniels. “It was also difficult because we came back to the present and it’s always a dangerous idea to take the STAR TREK characters into the present. Suddenly you’re in a very tangible situation. The show’s reality becomes that much harder to sustain.

“We were simulating Mission Control, which, on our budget, was not easy. You had to make do with very abbreviated sets. In terms of the story’s physical demands, this is a problem of any kind of science fiction. For example, the original STAR TREK set, the Enterprise, was practically nothing; corridors we kept using over and over again, a few basic cabins which were constantly reused and, of course, the engine room. With the exception of those and the bridge, it was extremely limited.”

Gary Seven and his mission is another element of the original series that has found significant after-life. Writer Howard Weinstein included the character during his run on DC Comics’ STAR TREK title.

“With Gary Seven,” he muses, “there’s the intrigue of a character about whom so little was revealed in the TV episode. Since we really knew nothing about who he was, who he worked for, and how he knew what he did, it just begged for expansion. Fortunately, Paramount pretty much let me do whatever I wanted in establishing details of Gary Seven’s organization (which I called The Aegis), and how and why they wielded knowledge and technology far beyond what the Federation had. The goal was to take readers and the Enterprise crew inside Gary Seven’s universe – to discover that the greater the power, the bigger and more dangerous the conflicts. And even though I’m a dog person, I loved writing more of his interplay with his cat-associate, Isis. One year, when my pal and TNG comic writer Michael Jan Friedman and I bounced around ideas for a big story which would span both the TOS and TNG annuals, we wanted to do something involving both Enterprise crews. And Gary Seven’s Aegis organization came back into play. But we took the bold, shocking step of killing Gary Seven early. That probably surprised some readers, but killing off a familiar guest character raised the stakes and made the bad guys even badder.”

Ignoring those events was comic book writer John Byrne, who wrote and drew a six-issue ASSIGNMENT EARTH series for IDW, with plans to do a follow-up. When the first series was announced, he sat down for an interview with Newsarama.com, noting, “As a kid, I just thought [‘Assignment Earth’] was really neat. First, I was a Robert Lansing fan from his other work. Also, I am a sucker for time-travel stories (which the ongoing Assignment Earth would not have been, but the TOS episode was). And Terri Garr was so darn cute.

“There is no set timeline,” he continued. “I will cover a number of years – toward the end I want to touch on Nixon’s visit to China, which was in 1972 – but I am not going to be setting clear dates. Anyone who is not familiar with those years might well think all the stories take place in the same year, same week, even. The main indicator of time passing will be Roberta having a different hairstyle in each issue. Possibly a different hair color, too, playing off the Beta V’s comment that her hair was ‘presently tined honey blonde.’”

Author Greg Cox had fun with Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln in his novel ASSIGNMENT: ETERNITY and the two-book THE EUGENICS WARS. Of these efforts the website www.assignmentearth.ca offers, “ASSIGNMENT: ETERNITY is fun and involved, and we get to see a possible outcome for the team of Seven and Lincoln. THE EUGENICS WARS pair open in 1974. Gary Seven watches with growing concern as the children of a top secret human genetic engineering project called Chrysalis grow to adulthood. In particular, he focuses on a brilliant youth named Khan Noonien Singh. Can Khan’s dark destiny be averted, or is Earth doomed to fight a global battle for supremacy?”

“Part of the appeal is the ‘60s spy-fi vibe of the whole thing,” says Cox. “I was always into James Bond, THE AVENGERS, MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. and all that. Basically Gary Seven is Our Man Flint of the STAR TREK universe. Also there’s the fact that they teased us at the end there would be many interesting adventures to come, and I wanted to know what those adventures were. I also had this theory that as STAR TREK is to FORBIDDEN PLANET, ‘Assignment Earth’ is to THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL. It’s basically THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL: THE TV SERIES. Gary Seven is basically Klattu. It made an impression on me as a kid and I was obsessed with bringing it back.”

Related posts:

1. The Making of the Star Trek Pilots, Part 2: “Where No Man Has Gone Before”
2. The Star Trek Pilots, Part 1: “The Cage”
3. Star Trek: Lost Voyages of the Reimagined Universe
4. Star Trek: Sequel & Book News
5. Gene Roddenberry Pilots Come to DVD