10 MORE Notorious Star Trek Urban Legends
2. Roddenberry Was With Star Trek The Whole Time
Gene Roddenberry was the father of Star Trek, having written the original pilot The Cage and then fought to bring it back with the second pilot, Where No Man Has Gone Before. It survived two seasons of fairly solid ratings, though things looked grim at the end of the second year. A fan letter-writing campaign organised by Bjo Trimble helped save the show for another year but it came with a heavy cost.
Roddenberry had attempted to play hardball with NBC, saying he would return as writer and producer for a third year as long as the show was given the family-friendly timeslot on a Monday. They called his bluff and scheduled it for Friday's nights, the slot of death. Seeing that they didn't care for him as much as he had believed, Roddenberry tucked his tail and resigned as a producer on the show.
That meant that going into the final year, Fred Freiberger took over as showrunner on Star Trek. Roddenberry moved his office to the other side of the Desilu lot. He kept his title (and salary) on the show, but had very little active involvement with Star Trek from Spock's Brain to Turnabout Intruder.