Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 7, 1994 TAG: 9410080001
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
John and Bjo Trimble, in Salem recently as guests at the third annual Rising Star convention, started a write-in campaign that kept the original series on the air a little longer and helped pave the way for what has now become three more Trek TV series and seven movies with more to come.
John, a Gallup Poll telephone pollster, and Bjo, a layout artist, cartoonist and writer, had been science fiction fans for years. He joined the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society in the 1950s and became an early member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. The couple organized the first World Science Fiction Art Show, which has since become an annual tradition.
To them, ``Star Trek'' was the first adult science fiction show that television had ever produced, except for some anthology shows like ``The Twilight Zone'' and ``The Outer Limits,'' which did not feature a continuing set of characters. Their enthusiasm brought them to Paramount, where they become friends with some of the people involved with the original Trek series.
On one such visit, they found that the cast and crew had gotten word that the show was being cancelled at the end of its second season.
As they drove home, they talked about how sad it was to see such a happy troupe so down. ``There ought to be something we could do about it,'' John recalls saying.
Bjo launched a then-unprecedented letter-writing campaign with science fiction fans across the country, using lines of communication worked out in fandom, to try and convince NBC that the show should go on. It did, but in such a bad time slot that it lasted only another half-season.
Bjo said there should have been more than 20 Trek movies by now, if the studio had known what it was doing. Even now, she said, the studio resisted the idea of a female in authority - as it had when Trek creator Gene Roddenberry cast Majel Barrett, who later became Mrs. Roddenberry, as the second-in-command in the first of two Trek pilot shows - for the latest TV incarnation, ``Star Trek: Voyager.''
``Paramount wanted a male captain,'' Bjo said. But actress Kate Mulgrew eventually got the part. The new series will also feature the first black actor to play a Vulcan, she said.
``They're giving us that ensemble cast again, where everybody can identify with someone,'' she said.
by CNB