It takes an army to bring a TV show to life, especially one creating it’s own world to explore in and more often than not the people behind the scenes are often unsung heroes despite being key to the creation of an iconic a legacy as Star Trek. Robert Justman was one of the many responsible to shaping the Star Trek Universe, particularly in it’s early days, and was one of the most influential producers in helping form the original series.
Staring his career in technical and production roles, Justman learned the ropes in the 1950’s as television in the US would go from a rare luxury to a household staple throughout the decade. Building his skills and reputation as assistant director and production manager on a variety of styles, Justman gained a reputation for being highly unorganised and keeping complex productions running smoothly including Lassie and the George Reeves’ fronted Superman in the early 50’s.
With some experience in drama and science fiction, including working on The Outer Limits, Justman was brought on board early into Star Trek’s development playing a key role behind the scenes to maintain a high order of quality. Officially titled associate and eventually supervising producer, Justman’s role was in the day to day operation for the series while creator Gene Roddenberry focused on the overall vision.
Frequently pushing back on weak scripts or stories that didn’t work as well as they could, Justman would spend a lot of focus on the shows quality controil in both refining scripts and story structure to translate to screen in more interesting ways and ensuring that the stories that went to production were pushed to be higher quality in terms of drama and depth. His talents for understanding how to properly pace an episode and focus on the characters first to tell that story made a vital part of the core team.
Aside from acting as a key liaison between contributing writers and directors, Justman’s input and collaboration with DC Fontana would make him a core part of the project and the duo, alongside DC Fontana, helped put together the building blocks that brought the Star Trek style to life.
Also having a strong hand in other key elements such as continuity, ensuring set pieces were practical and manageable, and even casting decisions, his contributions to the original series were so valued that when it came time to bring the shows sequel – The Next Generation – he’d bring the same order to help transfer the grand concepts on the page to a practical and realistic production that could operate efficiently with it’s complicated style and history.
Passing away in 2008 at the age of 81, Justman’s legacy in the Star Trek Universe was in elevating standards, ensuring the series maintained a people focused narrative and making every ambitious idea into a functional reality to help bring the Star Trek world to life.
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