YARQOTPR

. . . or, "Yet Another Roddenberry Quote on Trek Post-Roddenberry"

Even to this day, some try to claim a lack of canonicity for post-Roddenberry Trek on the grounds of a statement from the TOS days in which Roddenberry stated "It's not Star Trek until I say it's Star Trek." As the argument goes, it was not possible for him to decide on whether things were Star Trek after his death, some 25 years after the old statement, ergo everything after his death is not canon.

Of course, this ignored the obvious torch-passing to Berman, along with assorted later comments which clearly showed he wanted Trek to go on after his death. But nonetheless, certain people insist on the statement from the 60's at the expense of everything to the contrary.

Now there's yet another quote to add to the pile. This one comes from TrekMovie.com, in an article by Jon Tenuto:

Blast from the past: Gene foresees Trek future
I also happen to have just come across an interesting Star Trek Communicator interview with Gene Roddenberry from 1989 where he talks to Dan Madsen about the TNG’s 3rd season and the future of the TV and film franchise following the disappointment of Star Trek V. Roddenberry was concerned STV would be the last for the TOS crew, but hoped they would get one more (and it turns out they did with Star Trek VI two years later). He also said he could ‘definitely foresee’ that the Next Gen crew would also head off to the big screen, but also later stated that the TOS and TNG crews should ‘absolutely not ever’ be mixed (which is exactly what happened with the first TNG film Star Trek Generations). The quote I found most interesting was regarding the general future of the franchise. Here is what Gene said 18 years ago:

"I feel that we’ve got such good people in Hollywood, and will in future as well, that I would be happy to have a Star Trek come on in 15 or 20 years where people say, "Now that is good! That makes Roddenberry look like nothing!" And that would please me!"

And so still, the fact remains that Roddenberry saw Star Trek as an entity which would continue after he himself was long gone.