****
"She is very female, disturbingly so."
Roddenberry's legendary pitch for a cerebral yet titillating space western is obviously fascinating for nerds in its cosmetic differences on the way to the first pilot, but it's also an entertaining balancing act as the experienced showrunner pitches to execs in language they understand to slip through the more progressive casting (we didn't get the Space Jesus and Commie-baiting episodes in the end).
Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek: The Next Generation Writer/Director's Guide
***
Gene's enthusiasm for his fresh start in the drama-free 24th century is inspiring, and despite all the changes and improvements they'd make along the way, the series stayed true to his concise mission summary over seven years (even if they broke some of these rules big time). This was cobbled together late enough in development for the ship to have a design and Wesley to be male, but still early enough for some fun oddities and vague casting speculations.
Rick Berman and Michael Piller, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Bible (Revised)
**
Sadly not the first edition – which would be a lot more interesting in its formative brainstorming and more blatant Babylon 5 appropriation – but there are still a few little differences before they got to casting and production. The newfound freedom for interpersonal conflict is emphasised, now that Gene's dead, and in a show of faith in their prospective writers, the creators helpfully spell out what real-world allegories it is that they're doing there.
Rick Berman and Michael Piller & Rick Sternbach and Michael Okuda, Star Trek: Voyager Bible & Technical Guide V1.0
Read 2020
Series bibles are usually interesting for how strange and stilted the familiar characters are described before being fleshed out, but these descriptions show more personality and interpersonal potential than the poorly-managed show would achieve. The dry technical guide that repeats and slightly modifies a TNG reference book is truer to the spirit of the series we'd get. Yeah, I've gone off Voyager a bit since I was twelve.
Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, Enterprise Bible
*
If I'd got hold of these pages at the time, I would have been even less excited for the uninspired prequel I didn't bother watching than I was already. It ended up being an okay show, I guess, but when these outlines aren't shamelessly ripping off previous series, they're generic as hell. About the only original thing is the even more shameless decontamination titillation, which was evidently in there from the start.
