r/Star_Trek_

NuTrek is pretty much done but the damage it inflicted remains.

Over the last ten years, thousands of people have been banned from Star Trek online communities for criticizing Alex Kurtzman and his mistreatment of the franchise. Fans have been removed from their spaces. Lifelong Star Trek fans have been isolated from their fellows fans for the thoughtcrime of criticizing Star Trek: Discovery. This behavior is constant, indiscriminate, malicious and intentional.

On Reddit, the largest Star Trek community is run by shady clique that will ban you for breathing the wrong way. A couple of days ago, The Telegraph's official account was banned for simply sharing an opinion piece on the Kurtzman Era of Star Trek.

Star Trek communities need new management. The r/art debacle has proven that Reddit communities can be taken back by their users if there is enough public outcry. The last ten years of moderator misconduct must be brought to light.

The line has to be drawn here.

This is kind of about me personally and star treks message in general.

Like alot of guys I hit 40 and well, my life sucks. Its ok but you know, I dont have a LOT of reasons to be happy. Maybe I started to drift into bitterness and anger that the world had been so unkind to me.

That anger can really be directed anywhere, at anything it is so easy to get drawn into cultural and gender wars mental battles.

That is the entire point you know, the manipulate you with something that sounds reasonable "dont you think its unfair the cardassians have to compete against biologically superior klingons?" and they use it to drag you down and in.

But no one wants to be that old man yelling at clouds. Anyway reading the many various culture/gender war threads on this sub led me through many comments and you know, eventually something clicked.

This man I idolized as a child and still do would be horrified and disgusted by my attitudes. Tolerance and understanding and wisdom were his codes.

I felt I could not be in the same room as captain Picard and say that I believed in the ideals of the Federation the way I was. So I had to be the person I wanted to be, Captain Picard.

I had to value freedom and respect for others more then whatever my personal feelings might be and to seek out new life and understanding as it were.

Star Trek can make you a better person if you let it! I thought I believed in everything about the Federation but when I looked at my life, I wasnt living up to my words. I might still be a loser but I respect others now.

TREKMOVIE:

"Fred Bronson, who was working at NBC publicity during The Animated Series and wrote an episode along with co-writing TNG’s “Menage a Troi”; Denise Crosby, who played Tasha Yar on Next Gen; and Ernie Over, who was Gene’s driver and personal assistant, then Majel’s assistant, spending a total of 8 years in the Roddenberry household. With moderator John Champion (of the Mission Log podcast), they told stories, barely covering the tip of the iceberg of their experience."

https://trekmovie.com/2026/04/09/fateful-star-trek-auditions-polish-presidents-and-more-gene-and-majel-roddenberry-remembered-by-their-friends/

Quotes:

"At the beginning of the panel Rod talked about Trek Nation, a 2011 documentary “that details Rod’s trek across America to discovery his father through the touchstones Gene left behind: his friends, his work, and his influence.” Moderator John Champion of the Mission Log podcast asked if it reshaped his understanding of who Gene was. “I got to humanize my father,” he said.

>Rod Roddenberry: “I got to learn about him from a different point of view, not not from the son point of view, but from other points of view, and humanizing him with all his strengths and weaknesses. … a flawed human being. He still came up with the initial concept of Star Trek and then put incredible people on the show to make it what it is today. And I’m I was able to love him again, because he was no longer on the pedestal. He was no longer just the great bird of the galaxy. He was this, I mean, as stupid as it is to say out loud, this flawed but incredible, forward-thinking man who, with all his strengths and weaknesses, was someone I could connect with.”

Looking back on the panel a week later, Rod told TrekMovie:

>“It was a deeply nostalgic experience, and I truly felt the love and admiration everyone had for my parents. The entire moment filled me with a profound sense of pride.”

[...]

When Gene was looking for a driver who could handle a Rolls-Royce, Fred recommended Ernie, who’d just driven one for a friend of his. “I didn’t know that I was actually going to be hired by Gene until a month or so later, when he called me over to the house and brought me in and introduced me to Majel as his new driver,” he told the group.

Rod wanted to make it clear that Ernie was more than just a driver to Gene:

>Rod Roddenberry: “Even though I was a kid, I wasn’t completely oblivious, and he was much more than that to my father… [to Ernie] And I know that my father looked to you as a confidant, someone that he could trust in anything. You were there, you were his right hand for for so many things, personal and business and all that. So I just there was no seeing my father in that era without Ernie or Ernie was his right hand … as we all know, in this industry, and of course, any other industry, finding people that you can really trust and lean into it can be very hard to do and rare. And so Ernie, I have tremendous amount of admiration and respect for you.”

Ernie reported he also provided Devil Wears Prada-style assists as needed:

>Ernie Over: “One of the one of the fun things that I got to do with Gene, we would be invited to National Space Society events, and we would have astronauts and NASA administrators at the house and things like that. And I had to know who was coming beforehand, because Gene, at that time, was in a wheelchair. And if there was someone walking towards Gene, I would have to know who it is, and I would have to lean back and say it’s Dan Goldin, NASA administrator. And so when he got to the chair, Gene would say, ‘Dan, good to see you.’ And it was that kind of thing, I was just supporting him, you know, his memory was not as great as it once was.”

He also got to meet some pretty impressive people, including Nobel prize winner Lech Walesa, the first-ever Polish president to be elected by a popular vote.

>Ernie Over: “Probably the biggest thrill we had was at an event when Lech Walesa, the President of Poland, was visiting Los Angeles, and we had a private meeting with him. And Gene studied Polish to say, in Polish, ‘Welcome, Mister President, to Los Angeles.’ And he practiced that and practiced it and practiced it and he got to say that to Lech Walesa, that was pretty cool, because you don’t get to meet the president of another country very often.”

After Gene died, Ernie worked for Majel… and learned some of her secrets.

>Ernie Over: “…one of the things I don’t think people knew much about Majel is she was a heck of cook. She really ruled the kitchen and and I would stay for dinner most nights, and she would just just go out of her way to make the dinners really delicious. And after Gene passed, I worked for her as a personal assistant, and I had to set up all of the convention dates and speaking engagements for her, and she was adamant that she had vegetarian meals at the hotel and on the airplane where I had to set that up. But what people didn’t know is that she always had a bag of beef jerky in her purse.”

[...]

[Denise Crosby] reconnected with Majel once she got the role of Tasha Yar. A lot of fans know the story of how she was auditioning to play Deanna and Marina Sirtis was up for the part of the security officer, but we’ll let her tell it in her own words.

>Denise Crosby: “This is after maybe three auditions … I’m still reading for Deanna Troi and Gene right there in the office said, ‘Would you do me a favor? Would you take the sides for Macha Hernandez, and go look at them, and come back and read that part?’ And you go, Sure, you know, of course, whatever you want me to do. And that’s how it how it flipped. He just flipped Marina and I right, right then and there.”

[...]"

Laurie Ulster (TrekMovie)

Full article:

https://trekmovie.com/2026/04/09/fateful-star-trek-auditions-polish-presidents-and-more-gene-and-majel-roddenberry-remembered-by-their-friends/

Full video panel (Trek Talks 5):

https://www.youtube.com/live/H-lcrAVnAzY?si=ew2oZwoJtdYmgY8j&t=13433