‘Star Trek’ creator’s hidden connections to South Georgia

By Charles Shiver

“He’s a high-tech redneck

Mayberry meets Star Trek

He’s a bumpkin’ but he’s plugged in

He’s a high-tech redneck …”

– George Jones, “High-Tech Redneck”

It may surprise you to learn, as it did me, that the late Gene Roddenberry, creator of the “Star Trek” television show, had ties to our neighboring community of Cairo/Grady County.

Did you know Roddenberry was related to the Cairo, Ga., Roddenbery family (spelled with one “r”)? This large and distinguished family since the late 1800s has sold “down home” products including cane syrup, peanut butter, and pickles.

David Alexander’s excellent biography of Roddenberry, entitled Star Trek Creator (1994, Penguin Books USA Inc.), contains some of the legendary screenwriter’s letters to his cousin Julien Roddenbery of Cairo. “Julien was slightly older than Gene’s father and Gene treated him with respect,” the book states. “Gene’s first choice for Captain Picard’s name (“Star Trek: The Next Generation”) was Julian.”

In the letters, Gene Roddenberry talks about visiting South Georgia with his wife Majel Barrett and son Eugene Wesley Roddenberry Jr. He also asks about ordering some Roddenbery peanut butter: “It is simply a fact that the stuff I get from the store shelves here is not nearly as good as what comes from down in the Roddenbery home area.” On a more serious note, discussing the conflicts of movie-making, Roddenberry wrote: “Somehow I’m certain that you have faced similar lonely battles and frustrations in creating the things that build a future for the ones you love.”

Gene Roddenberry’s father Edward Eugene was from Charlton County, Ga., once lived in a north Florida orphanage, and, as an adult, joined the U.S. Army in hunting the Mexican bandit Pancho Villa. Gene Roddenberry remarked about his father in another excellent biography by Joel Engel, Gene Roddenberry: The Myth and The Man Behind Star Trek (1994, Hyperion): “He had a side to him that was diffident, quiet. He had an ugly side, too, but it was, I think, legitimate for him at that time, as I know how he grew up in the Florida-Georgia backcountry.”

According to some sources, Roddenberry, just like his Roddenbery kin, had owned land in Grady and surrounding counties. There is even some talk that strange spacecraft have been seen hovering and zooming over that land. I have heard rumors from people asking exactly where did Roddenberry get his ideas for such futuristic advances as warp (“faster-than-light) drive for travel between the stars, the transporter beam (“Beam me up, Scotty!”), the phaser gun, and a peaceful “Federation” of highly civilized planets that watch over more primitive worlds but do not interfere in the natural development of their societies. That’s the sort of stance that UFO buffs claim the real-life “aliens” take towards our world. Could Gene Roddenberry’s meetings with “visitors” have occurred on his family’s extensive, secluded properties in the South Georgia backwoods, or was he in contact with someone who was feeding him information from ET friends?

I am a real doubting Thomas on that issue. Roddenberry publicly voiced disgust with the “ancient astronaut” theory, which contends that aliens were involved in building such great monuments as the pyramids in Egypt, Stonehenge, and the giant stone heads on Easter Island. Roddenberry felt those beliefs were a put-down on the intelligence and resourcefulness of mankind and what our ancestors had accomplished.

In any event, the original “Star Trek” series with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy and later TV series featured as advanced science fiction some of the inventions we take for granted these days: Handheld communications devices; high-tech hospital beds; cybernetic implants (body-machine connections) that allow the blind to see, the deaf to hear, and people with missing body parts due to birth defects or trauma such as combat veterans to have use of those lost limbs and appendages (however, in the case of the alien Borg species in “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” those biological-mechanical combinations turn to the evil effect of dehumanizing people into insect drones – which some claim is happening now with social media communications); 

“Tasers” that stun criminals without permanently harming them; “shuttle craft” that fly in space; “replicators” for food, drink, and clothing, which we would recognize these days as the ultimate version of 3-D printers; AI with computers that speak and reason solutions to problems, follow voice commands, and translate different languages; “holodeck” suites, hologram sets which would be a bigger scale, more advanced version of modern virtual reality that allows users to live out their own private adventures and fantasies; and much more.

Still, according to Joel Engel’s book, in May 1975, “Lab 9” – a company of individuals devoted to the study and actualization of paranormal events – asked Roddenberry to write a screenplay that explored the group’s belief that earth would soon be visited by extraterrestrials, collectively called “The Nine.” He signed a $50,000 contract with Lab 9 for the first draft and rewrite. Roddenberry witnessed paranormal experiences including “spoon bending” and the stopping and starting of a wrist watch without anyone touching it as a means of communication, as well as speaking with “The Nine” through a human channeler. Roddenberry later abandoned the effort.

You may recall the “Prime Directive” of Roddenberry’s “Federation,” which forbids the space-farers from interfering with the natural development of more primitive civilizations that haven’t yet found the way of traveling to the stars.

However, if you felt an entire world with billions of living souls was in danger of destruction, wouldn’t it be humane to provide the endangered species with dreams of a better future among the stars, a vision helping them better themselves as they worked towards it? Is human imagination a means of communicating with a benevolent higher intelligence?

Whether or not there was some unearthly influence involved, Gene Roddenberry had such a wonderful vision. And he had links to South Georgia, which can be a beautiful place at times and a terrible place at times.