In making Trek Nation, Rod Roddenberry interviewed those who worked with his father over the years, including industry professionals who knew Gene Roddenberry, family friends, and Star Trek fans.

Rod Roddenberry realized that his father was something out of the ordinary back in 1991 when he attended the 25th anniversary of Star Trek at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. When he helped his father to stand onstage, “the entire Shrine Auditorium got up to applaud him; chills went up and down my spine,” said Roddenberry. “That was almost the first smack in the face that there’s more to this guy who’s your father.”

In discovering who his father really was, Roddenberry heard some stories that were difficult for the son of a man who had been “put up on this pedestal throughout my life;” stories that revealed the complete man, not just the myth. “I found out a tremendous number of them that were extremely moving and powerful and painful,” Roddenberry said. “That allowed me, as a son, not just to connect with him, but actually love him.”

Trek Nation will reveal Gene Roddenberry’s legacy using interviews, archival footage and home movies. For those eager to hear more before tomorrow’s television airing, Trek Nation‘s YouTube page features seven “Director’s Logs,” including the one below which features Star Trek: The Next Generation Writer Michael Piller. Other “Director’s Log” entries include exclusive Star Trek clips, deleted scenes, interviews with Patrick Stewart, Nichelle Nichols, composer Brian Langsbard, and an interview with Trek fan Lydia Chilton.

The Director’s Logs can be seen here.

http://youtu.be/Bc4ZtX4SWWU

In Lady Magdalene, Nichols plays Maggie, “the colorful and determined madam of a legal Nevada brothel, relocated from New Orleans after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.”

The brothel, “in tax default to the IRS,” ends up in more trouble when the “talented but disgraced federal agent, Jack Goldwater (Ethan Keogh), sent as the federal receiver to manage the brothel, soon uncovers evidence that Lady Magdalene’s is being used by al-Qaeda operatives as a meetup for a plot leading to the tunnels under Hoover Dam. But Agent Goldwater and a female federal agent he soon meets up with (Susan Smythe) can’t figure out what al-Qaeda is really doing until they seek help from Lady Magdalene and the working women at the brothel.”

The film, which runs two hours in length, can be seen below.

http://youtu.be/u45Do5gEL2Q

Kennedy Space Center is hosting Star Trek: The Exhibition this summer and Nichols’ interview took place on the Bridge of the USS Enterprise that is part of that exhibition, but instead of her usual place at the communications console, she was interviewed sitting in the Captain’s chair.

Nichols spoke about her time on Star Trek, praising Gene Roddenberry‘s genius, and also spoke about her interest in the space program and NASA, which predated her time on Star Trek. “I was always fascinated with the space program,” she said, “fifty years ago when Kennedy said ‘the moon in this decade and back again safely.’ And even the finest minds said ‘we can’t go to the moon and back in this decade.’ But the president said it would be done and they said ‘well we’ll do it.” And here we are today beneficiaries of that.”

If she were doing recruiting for NASA today, Nichols would do the very same thing she did when recruiting astronauts such as Sally Ride and Guion Bluford (the first female and the first black astronauts). She would tell them that “what the mind can imagine, the mind can achieve and as long as there is space out there, there is a background on which to paint our genius and to go where no woman or man has gone before, beyond the beyond. We have only just begun…You can do what the mind tells you, if we believe in it and go after it.”

Nichols is at Kennedy Space Center to see the launch of the GRAIL (Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory) spacecraft, due to launch on Thursday. She will meet with visitors and sign autographs on that day.

The video featuring the interview with Nichols can be seen here.

The actress who played Lieutenant Uhura appeared on the show in hopes of obtaining support for the victims of the Japanese earthquake relief efforts. “It’s only been three or four weeks,” she said, “and with the nature of communication and television and news service, at least they are still involved with reporting but much of it is very negative.”

“I saw these incredible people with such dignity in the face of such enormous catastrophe,” she said of watching the early coverage of the disaster. “Not that they were complaisant or anything about it. … In their pain, there was such beauty in their dignity. I saw the same thing on a different level in Haiti.”

Nichols had given anonymously to help after the recent Haitian earthquake, but decided after seeing the double tragedy of a powerful earthquake followed by a tsunami to make her support public in hopes of getting more people to assist the Japanese victims.

On Nichols’s Facebook page, located here, she has made the following offer: “The first 1,000 people that donate $50 or more to any organization listed on USAid, I will sign & mail an autographed photo to you! I do this in honor of my dear friend George Takei and his family. Just email a copy of your donation receipt dated 3/18 or later to me @nnsharethetrek@gmail.com and I will mail an autographed photo to you.”

In addition to speaking about the earthquake relief effort, Nichols shared memories about her Star Trek days and she updated fans about her new one-woman musical show.

On the first day of the convention, held in San Francisco, Richard Arnold, former assistant to Gene Roddenberry, started things off with a 45th anniversary slideshow and reminisced about 1970s fandom and the birth of the Star Trek conventions.

Grace Lee Whitney told the audience about her favorite Star Trek episode, The Enemy Within, which featured two Kirks, a good and a bad one. She was bruised during the scene when the bad Kirk grabs her and drags her across the floor of his cabin, she told the audience. Whitney also shared details about the “Janice Rand look” which included makeup, the way she was lit and of course, that famous basket-weave hair-do.

On the second day of the convention, Nichelle Nichols answered questions and sang for the fans, including a song about Charlie X from the episode of the same name. After her appearance, the Duras Sisters (Gwynyth Walsh and Barbara March) appeared in costume. “It all comes right back,” said March, who explained that the Klingon teeth they were obliged to wear were “like torture, so you can get in character and be pissed off already before you get on camera.”

The highlight of the second day was the appearance of Leonard Nimoy, who shared stories about his career in acting and photography. He spoke about his (at the time) controversial memoir, I Am Not Spock. “I called the chapter, I Am Not Spock,” he said. When his publisher asked him for the title of his book itself, he said, “Let’s go with I Am Not Spock. People will find that interesting.” But Nimoy soon found out that the fans ” found it interesting, all right, in the wrong way.”

The final day of the convention featured actors from Star Trek: Enterprise and Deep Space Nine. Connor Trinneer and Dominic Keating entertained the audience and updated them on the actors’ current projects. When asked if the cast members stay in touch, Keating gave a reply which will surely please Scott Bakula fans, “Connor and I are very close,” he said. “And every Christmas we go to Scott Bakula’s Christmas party. I’m still on the list for that.” Keating also said that fans will be seeing a lot of Scott Bakula at conventions this year, because he’s signed on for several. “He recently remodeled his house,” said Keating.

The final appearance was that of Rene Auberjonois and Nana Visitor, on stage together. The pair talked about their careers and current projects, and of course, about their projects. Auberjonois told the audience why he developed a gruff voice for Odo. “When I went in to audition for the role … The casting director said nobody had been grouchy enough.” So Auberjonois chose to go into the audition already in character as Odo, gruff voice and all.

Visitor shared her memory of the Take Me Out to the Holosuite episode; where it turned out that she had no baseball skills whatsoever but had to acquire them quickly. “I was never so nervous because we had to stay there until I hit the ball,” she said. But when the cameras started rolling, she (and those working with her) were in luck. “I cracked the ball right away,” she said. “The crew was so thrilled they carried me on their shoulders.”

Auberjonois and Visitor also gave a unique dramatic presentation called “Cross Our Hearts: Poems and Prose,” which they plan to do at other conventions this year.

Nichols, who played Scarlett in last year’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, and is familiar to Star Trek fans as the Orion Gaila from Star Trek XI, told fans that not all of the characters from G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra would be returning for the sequel.

“G.I. Joe 2 News Flash: The only characters to return in the Jon Chu-directed sequel will be Snake Eyes, Storm Shadow and Duke,” tweeted Nichols.

G.I. Joe 2 will be released in August.

According to Nichols, Star Trek fandom was the first one to put on conventions to meet with others who enjoyed their favorite television show. “First, it was a first,” she said. “Now, there are all kinds of conventions that celebrate their favorites, but this was the first. And so it was very, very different. And it was very honorable, you know? They loved the show. They got it. They got that Gene Roddenberry created something in the future that ‘today’ — 1966…”

At the same time that the show began its run, the United States was going through upheaval as African-Americans had begun to make their voices heard, demanding an end to segregation and racism. “Dr. King was marching,” said Nichols, “every day you’d look on the TV and people are having hoses and dogs [used on them] because they wanted to eat at a fountain — though they wanted more than that. And Dr. King was the person who was guiding that.”

Roddenberry’s show was a message that times would get better and that today’s problems would be solved. “And Gene was the person who was announcing that not only was this going to succeed, but it already has, because when the twenty-third century [arrives], see, there’s Nichelle, there’s Uhura, in the twenty-third century, communication officer, fourth in command. So it didn’t just start in the twenty-third century. It started from what you’re seeing on television every day. Men and women of the future are here now.”

Fans understood what Roddenberry was trying to do. “I’ll just tell you one of the most important things that someone said who was white,” said Nichols. “He said, ‘When discrimination, when racial discrimination was outlawed, black people weren’t the only people who were freed. We were freed, too. We were freed to care, we were freed to think and not be bound by racism, and protocol, and what our parents think.” Because a lot of parents didn’t want their kids looking at Star Trek.”

Several of the original series actors were profiled for the special, including William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and Nichelle Nichols.

In the interviews, Nimoy speaks about an important Gunsmoke role he had just before he landed the role of Spock on Star Trek, and about his career before Star Trek. Shatner shares a story about being nearly choked to death and Nichols tells viewers what it was like to work with Nimoy.

Writer-producer Mike Trinklein explained what he wanted the audience to see in the science fiction segment, both the Star Trek fan audience and the general audience. “On one hand we have to touch on the standard things that much of the Star Trek audience would already know, but that the general audience might not, like the interracial kiss and Nichelle Nichols’ Martin Luther King, Jr. story,” he said. “What we were searching for was to set it all in history and see what was around Star Trek.

“We try to give you a sense of the times we were in, the shows that were influencing each other, and, of course, with this series it’s always about the pioneers. So it’s about Star Trek and The Twilight Zone and Lost in Space, and about the people behind these shows. We try to give you a little bit of a sketch, of a portrait of those people. Now, obviously, we can’t get into great detail in a one-hour show that’s got to cover several different people, but we at least give people a sense of who Gene Roddenberry and Rod Serling and Irwin Allen were and how they all fit into the picture.”

Fans will get to see a bit of the early careers of Shatner and Nimoy. “We have Shatner talking about (having been) on Howdy Doody and we see Nimoy in Zombies of the Stratosphere and see Shatner in Alexander,” said Trinklein. “It’s kind of cool to include those clips. I think a lot of people have heard about these things, but maybe haven’t seen those clips. So, Bill and Leonard talk about those credits a little bit and then we see the clips. That’s fun.”

In fact, Nimoy’s work on Gunsmoke had an influence on how he played Spock. “I found an old Gunsmoke episode that Nimoy had done, in which he played an Indian,” said Trinklein. “He did this just a few weeks before Star Trek started. You look at it and you go, ‘That’s Spock.’ He has the same attitude, the same emotional approach, the same kind of feel as the Spock character. And I asked Leonard, ‘Did this Indian character influence how you portrayed Spock?’ He said, ‘I never thought about it, but it kind of did.’ He played that Indian with the same kind of ‘still waters run deep’ feeling that he brought to Spock.”

Nimoy speaks about the role in a clip embedded below.

Other interviews include one with Martin Landau, where he talked about not playing Spock. “I was surprised that he was so open about it and his comments about being glad that Leonard Nimoy got the part because Leonard was better suited for it,” said Trinklein. “Viewers can draw whatever conclusion they want from that. But he was more than happy to talk about it.”

Pioneers of Television: Science Fiction will air tomorrow evening on PBS stations. Several other short video interviews featuring Nichols, Nimoy and Shatner can be seen here.

Watch the full episode. See more Pioneers of Television.

If Nichols does join Criminal Minds as a regular, she will be the first regular addition to the show since 2007, when Joe Mantegna (David Rossi) took over for Mandy Patinkin (Jason Gideon).

Originally slated to appear as FBI cadet Ashley Seaver, Nichols had signed to appear in a three-episode arc, which will begin airing this week. In the arc, Seaver is brought in to assist Reid, Prentiss, Rossi and Morgan in the search for a murderer who targets women inside a gated New Mexico community.

In Criminal Minds, the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) investigates the criminal activity of serial killers, making a profile of the killer in hopes of stopping him from committing further murders.

One question that always comes up with original series members concerned getting along now with William Shatner. According to Nichols, “It’s very cordial when we see each other.”

Although Nichols wore a red uniform, she never worried about meeting the fate of many redshirts. “But there’s a funny story,” she said. “The first time you saw me, I wasn’t in a red outfit; the outfit was puke green. The front office had not seen that and had no idea I was on the show. When they saw the dailies, they went, ‘What the hell? Who is she?’ Gene [Roddenberry] said, ‘She’s the communications officer.’ They said, ‘What happened to…?’ Gene said, ‘He got a lead role on Room 222, and Nichelle is absolutely perfect for it. Isn’t she good?’ They said, ‘Yes, she’s good, but… but… but… but, we can’t…’ Gene said, ‘I told you I was going to make a change on the bridge. You knew this.’ They said, ‘All you said was you were going to add a little color. We thought you were talking about the costumes!’ Gene said, ‘You know, you’re right. I don’t like her in that outfit,’ and he had the costumer change it. The next thing I knew I was in a red costume for the duration of the show. They didn’t come up with the idea of the red shirts dying on planets for a little while.”

If Nichols could have lunch with any of the characters (not actors) from the show, with whom would she lunch and why? “Mr. Spock,” said Nichols. “As we talked about, I created my character as relating to Spock. I thought of Spock as Uhura’s mentor, because he was older and more experienced.”

What would Nichols like to see for the character Uhura in the next Star Trek film? “I’d like to see what J.J. Abrams does with it,” said Nichols. “I think with what Zoë [Saldana] did, making the change, going from this young, flirty gal and having fun to being dead serious, I’d like to see where that goes. She’ll be making more choices in the next few years and I have full faith and confidence in Zoë and in J.J. I’d love to see where they take it, and I’d love to come back to it in that out-of-sequence timeframe and meet up with Uhura as her mother or grandmother or whatever, if J.J. wanted to use me. I would love to be a part of it.”