Roddenberry briefly attended Los Angeles City College, flew B-17 bombers during World War II, and was an airline pilot (1945–49) and a sergeant on the Los Angeles police force (1949–53). He then became a freelance television writer and contributed scripts through 1962 to several network programs, including Dragnet, Highway Patrol, Dr. Kildare, and Have Gun—Will Travel. In 1964 he began trying to sell the idea of Star Trek to producers, but not until Sept. 8, 1966, did the first episode debut on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) network. The series was repeatedly threatened with cancellation, but the program's ardent followers, known as “Trekkies,” formed fan clubs and initiated letter-writing campaigns to keep the series alive until Sept. 2, 1969.

Star Trek chronicled the 23rd-century adventures of a cast of characters headed by Capt. James Kirk, Mr. Spock, and other officers of the starship Enterprise. The 79 aired episodes of the series presented an optimistic view of life in the future as it traced the crew's mission “to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before.”