Norway Corporation

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Norway Corporation is the motion picture and television production company established by Gene Roddenberry in 1963. At first operating out of MGM Television in conjunction with the NBC television network, Norway Corporation is best known in modern times for having been the production company that brought Star Trek to television on the NBC television network, originally for Desilu Studios and later for Paramount Television.

Contents 1 Origins 2 Star Trek, Norway Corporation's masterpiece 3 The first Norway Corporation motion picture 4 Twinkle, twinkle--and pfft 5 The Enterprise's relaunch revitalizes Norway Corporation 5.1 The shape of things to come proves not to be a good one 6 Norway Corporation loses power 7 After Roddenberry 8 Norway Corporation Repertory Company 9 A partial list of references 10 References

[edit] Origins

Gene Roddenberry organized Norway Corporation in 1963 as a direct result of his frustrations with his work as the head writer of Have Gun, Will Travel and the difficulty he faced in adding anything substantial to his stories. The Lieutenant, a 1963-1964 NBC and MGM Television series program about the United States Marine Corps that starred Gary Lockwood as Lieutenant William Rice, was its very first production.

Many future cast members of Star Trek first worked with Roddenberry as regular, or guest, cast members of The Lieutenant. These formed the backbone of what could be called "Norway Corporation Repertory Company."

The independent existence of Norway Corporation did not end Roddenberry's problems; NBC refused to transmit, or even pay for, an installment of The Lieutenant that dealt with racism in the Corps, forcing MGM Television to eat the production costs. This failure thorougly disgusted Roddenberry, who drew the conclusion that he could only say anything of substance by disguising his messages in extraordinary situations, as had the Reverend Dean Jonathan Swift Jr. in Gulliver's Travels. This conclusion on Roddenberry's part marked Norway Corporation's entry into the science-fiction allegory genre.

[edit] Star Trek, Norway Corporation's masterpiece

Roddenberry became a modern-day Swift in 1964, when he developed his idea for Star Trek in search of material to rival Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. Desilu Studios picked up the series program when he sold it as a reworking of Wagon Train situated in deep outer space, even though it was more intricate than any "Bat Durston" story that had been published up to the time, owing more to C. S. Forrester's writings about Horatio Hornblower than to any reworking of any western.

The original $630,000 pilot received only minor support from NBC and its production went over budget, which frightened Desilu. (Having squandered money on a series of failed pilots over the course of the early 1960s, after Desi Arnaz Sr. and Lucille Desiree Ball divorced, Desilu had become severely cash-poor, and it was desperate to regain its competitive edge.) But NBC was impressed favorably enough to commission an unprecedented second pilot. This one sold.

Norway Corporation began to make television history when Star Trek, produced under its banner, premiered on September 8, 1966. Though the series program ran for only three seasons and was canceled due to low ratings, it gained wide popularity in syndication.

In the third and final season of Star Trek, Norway Corporation effectively lost its founder for the duration. Roddenberry had offered to demote himself to the position of line producer in a final attempt to ensure the program's success if it received his desired timeslot. But his demands were not met, and he effectively resigned his workload almost entirely. (George Schlatter's counter-demands that Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In retain its Monday-night lead-in timeslot WERE met.)

One wise decision Roddenberry made in the wake of his almost-total resignation was to organize a mail-order business called Lincoln Enterprises, as a subsidiary of Norway Corporation, with his attorney its de-facto chief executive official. Through this business, he was able to tap into the still almost-fringe merchandising market and prevent Norway Corporation from being completely financially ruined.

[edit] The first Norway Corporation motion picture

Accepting a staff producer position with MGM, Roddenberry produced Norway Corporation's first motion picture, Pretty Maids All In A Row, a sexploitation film which Roddenberry adapted from Francis Pollini's novel, recruiting Roger Vadim to direct it. Its cast included established stars (Rock Hudson, Angie Dickinson, Telly Savalas, Roddy McDowall) alongside Star Trek regulars (James Doohan and William Campbell, both of whom were "Norway Corporation Repertory Actors") and beautiful unknowns, among them Gretchen Burrell, the wife of country-rock pioneer Gram Parsons.

[edit] Twinkle, twinkle--and pfft

Pretty Maids All In A Row was expected to be one of the biggest blockbusters of 1971, and had this happened, it could have given Norway Corporation greater prominence outside television. But even the support of a Playboy Magazine pictorial featuring Burrell was not enough to enable the film to do any better than break-even business at the box office. MGM all but gave up on Roddenberry and effectively severed ties with Norway Corporation because of this comparative failure, though he continued to pursue ideas into 1972.

Roddenberry offered networks four science-fiction television series program concepts through Norway Corporation. All four of these had pilot films produced; none were picked up for full production. These concepts were The Questor Tapes, which starred Robert Foxworth alongside Mike Farrell, Genesis II, which starred Alex Cord alongside Mariette Hartley, Planet Earth, which starred John Saxon alongside Janet Margolin with Ted Cassidy, versus Diana Muldaur, and Strange New World. Roddenberry also co-wrote, and was executive producer of, the made-for-television film Spectre, transmitted in 1977.

In total, the 1970s were bad years for Norway Corporation.

[edit] The Enterprise's relaunch revitalizes Norway Corporation

Norway Corporation had barely been able to stay solvent over the course of the 1970s through Lincoln Enterprises, the mail-order business it operated. But Star Trek had a loyal fan-base that was demanding more voyages of the Enterprise, thanks to Roddenberry spending time--for a price--on the lecture and convention circuits. This too helped keep Norway Corporation financially solvent.

In 1975, this fan-base led Paramount Television to authorize Roddenberry to develop a sequel Star Trek television series program, to be a Norway Corporation production, based around as many of the original cast as could be recruited. This would be called Star Trek: Phase II or simply Star Trek II. It would be the anchor series program of a new television network, which came to pass as the United Paramount Network, or UPN, which in time became part of the CW television network.

But where it had failed at MGM Studios, Norway Corporation got its long-awaited chance to avenge itself at, and upon, Paramount Pictures when the studio scrapped plans for the intended competitive network after George W. Lucas Jr. released Star Wars--Episode IV: A New Hope through 20th Century Fox Films and achieved unqualified success with it. Paramount promptly changed its plans and scheduled the production of a Star Trek motion picture.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture resulted from Paramount's changed plans. It received a lukewarm critical response, but it performed well at the box office and saved Norway Corporation. As a result, several motion pictures and a new television series program, Star Trek: The Next Generation, were created in the 1980s. Roddenberry was deeply involved with creating and producing Star Trek: The Next Generation, although his controlling interest in Norway Corporation ultimately only had full control over the program's first season.

[edit] The shape of things to come proves not to be a good one

The WGA strike of 1988 prevented Roddenberry from giving Norway Corporation an active role in production of the second season, forcing him to hand over control of the program, and Norway Corporation, to producer Maurice Hurley. While Roddenberry was free to resume work on the third season of the series program, his health was in serious decline by this point, and over the course of the season he gradually ceded control of Norway Corporation to Rick Berman and Michael Piller. This proved to be a mistake from whose effects and whose aftereffects Norway Corporation had still not fully recovered as of August 31, 2007.

[edit] Norway Corporation loses power

When Paramount planned a sequel to the first Star Trek motion picture, Roddenberry submitted a story in which the time-traveling Enterprise command crew got involved in John F. Kennedy's assassination. Revolted, Paramount rejected his submission, and he was removed from direct involvement--effectively hobbling the power of Norway Corporation--in favor of Harve Bennett. He continued as executive consultant on the next four motion pictures--Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. It was a position that allowed Rodenberry to view, and comment upon, all production scripts and dailies, but the creative team was free to disregard Roddenberry's advice. This was what Bennett almost always elected to do.^{[citation needed]}

The last motion picture based on the original Star Trek series, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country was dedicated to Roddenberry's memory, but it left only memories for Rod Roddenberry. the rightful heir of Norway Corporation. According to such witnesses as William Shatner, Chris Kreski, and Susan Sackett, Roddenberry viewed, and found fault after fault with, a version of the motion picture a few days before his death at the age of 70.

[edit] After Roddenberry

Without Roddenberry, Norway Corporation came to be at the mercy, or lack thereof, of Paramount Pictures Corporation. Attempting to guard her late husband's legacy, Majel Barrett joined forces with David Kirshner on what had originally been called "Battleground Earth." It was eventually produced for first-run syndication, by Robert Lantos's Canada-based Alliance-Atlantis production company, under the title Earth: Final Conflict. Norway Corporation was temporarily renamed Roddenberry-Kirshner Productions for the purpose of the series program.

Not long after Earth: Final Conflict had completed its run, yet another Roddenberry concept, Andromeda, starring Kevin Sorbo in the lead role of Captain Dylan Hunt, made it into first-run syndication as well. Norway Corporation was temporarily renamed MBR (for Majel Barrett Roddenberry) Productions for the purpose of the series program.

[edit] Norway Corporation Repertory Company

Beginning with The Lieutenant, Norway Corporation employed a series of actors who acted out one or more roles in one or more productions under its banner. Though these actors were never officially so incorporated, they became deserving of the unofficial reference to their entire number as "Norway Corporation Repertory Company." At least two of the oldest members of the company were actors DeForest Kelley and James Doohan, both of whom had died as of the time of original submission of this article. Other members of the company included Gary Lockwood, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Mariette Hartley, Diana Muldaur, Percy Rodriguez, Lee Meriwether, and others too numerous to name in the original text of this article. Most, if not all, of them are listed in The Star Trek Encyclopedia, ^[1]written by Michael Okuda and Denise Okuda.

[edit] A partial list of references

• Shatner, William, dictation; Kreski, Chris, transcriptions. Star Trek Memories. ISBN 0-060-17734-9 or ISBN 978-0060177348.
• Shatner, William, dictation; Kreski, Chris, transcriptions. Star Trek Movie Memories. ISBN 0-061-09329-7 or ISBN 978-0061093296.
• Nimoy, Leonard. I Am Not Spock. ISBN 1-568-49691-5 or ISBN 978-1568496917.
• Nimoy, Leonard. I Am Spock. ISBN 0-786-88910-1 or ISBN 978-0786889105.
• Okuda, Michael, and Okuda, Denise. The Star Trek Encyclopedia. ISBN 0-671-03475-8 or ISBN 0-671-53609-5. In ISBN 0-671-03475-8, "Appendix F: Cast, pp. 706-721" provides a more complete list of Norway Corporation Repertory Company's membership than the main body of the article itself has space to provide.

[edit] References