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In the “Star Trek” episode “Assignment: Earth” (first aired March 29, 1998), the Enterprise travels back in time to the year 1968 — something, it seems, the Enterprise can just do — for historical research purposes. While in hiding out in orbit, however, Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) detect that someone else nearby is using super-advanced transporter technology, meaning they aren’t the only time travelers in the vicinity. Interrupting a transporter signal, the Enterprise beams aboard a handsome and mysterious stranger holding a black cat. This is Gary Seven (Robert Lansing), a time traveler from the 24th century, which is a century beyond from where Kirk came from.
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Gary Seven announces that he is on a mission of his own, and that it is of the utmost importance. It involved taking over control of a nuclear missile, however, so Gary doesn’t seem very trustworthy. Gary also has to deal with the suspicions of a secretary named Roberta (Teri Garr), who has access to his office. Gary’s office, by the way, is outfitted with a secret high-tech computer, and has a bank vault with a transportation portal inside. Gary also makes use of a palm-sized, screwdriver-like tool that he calls a Servo, and his cat, named Isis, occasionally turns into a humanoid woman (April Tatro). When Gary uses his computer, he refers to himself as Supervisor 194, so he is clearly part of some time-traveling bureaucracy that regularly sends agents on temporal missions.
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I assure you that “Assignment: Earth” is an episode of “Star Trek,” even if it did suddenly just became “The Gary Seven Show.” Kirk and Spock are in it, but Gary is the protagonist, and the bulk of the episode’s runtime is devoted to his personality and talents. It may not shock the reader, then, to learn that “Assignment: Earth” was deliberately constructed as a backdoor pilot for a Gary Seven-based “Star Trek” spinoff.
Assignment: Earth was the backdoor pilot for a new sci-fi series, just in case Star Trek got canceled
One should recall that “Assignment: Earth” was scheduled to be the final episode of “Star Trek’s” second season. At the time, the show’s rating were flagging, and NBC was on the cusp of canceling the series. It was only kept on the air for a third season thanks to a concerted letter-writing campaign from “Star Trek” mega-fans Bjo and John Trimble. Gene Roddenberry, however, essentially wrote an insurance policy with “Assignment: Earth,” using it to set up Gary Seven as the potential star of his own spinoff TV series. Indeed, Gary Seven was recycled from a TV pilot treatment that Roddenberry had written back in 1966, so the idea for an “Assignment: Earth” TV series was already fully formed.
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The idea for the “Assignment: Earth” TV series was largely as it was presented on “Star Trek.” Gary Seven was a stern, intelligent, resourceful time-traveling agent with access to a transportation cabinet and an all-seeing computer. His sidekick was to be a 20-year-old “mod” girl. In the original pilot, she was to be called Roberta “Bobbi” Hornblower, named after Gene Roddenberry’s favorite book series. On “Star Trek,” her name was changed to Roberta Lincoln.
The opening narration ran thus:
“In the hands of this one man could rest the future of all mankind. His name, Gary Seven. Born in the year 2319 A.D. The only survivor of Earth’s attempt to send a man back through time to today. Assignment: fight an enemy who is already here, trying to destroy us. If he fail, there’ll be no tomorrow!”
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Some other fun details: Gary’s parents were humans from Earth, abducted from the year 4,000 BC. Gary was raised on a distant planet to be hyper-intelligent and hyper-strong. He’s the time-traveling super-child of Bronze Age parents.
Was Gary Seven a Doctor Who knockoff?
Of course, the idea of a time-traveling super-agent with a young, female, “mod” companion — along with the use of a high-tech screwdriver-like device — will certainly have sci-fi fans making immediate comparisons to “Doctor Who,” a series that was already on its fifth season in 1967. It’s unclear if Gene Roddenberry had seen “Doctor Who” in 1967, as the show wasn’t syndicated in the United States until the 1970s. It’s likely that the similarities to “Doctor Who” are a coincidence.
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Many Trekkies consider “Assignment: Earth” to be something of an aberration in the “Star Trek” canon, and Gary Seven’s background wasn’t addressed for many decades. Trekkies had come to see the Supervisors as only semi-canonical at best, understanding that Gary Seven lived in his own universe. If there had been an “Assignment: Earth” TV series, it’s unlikely that it would have contained a lot of “Star Trek” references. After all, in 1967, “Star Trek” was failing. Why involve Captain Kirk or the Starship Enterprise in a new series? Had “Star Trek” been canceled and “Assignment: Earth” picked up, it’s entirely possible that “Star Trek” would have been lost to time.
Gary Seven existed outside of the official “Star Trek” canon for years, only returning in expanded universe novels and comic books. In one of the novels, Gary was said to have evacuated Earth in 1996, stowing away with the Eugenics Wars tyrant Khan(!). Another book announced that Gary’s bosses were an organization called the Aegis, an organization that was later explored in 1990s “Star Trek” comics. One can buy collections of those comics. Later on, in 2018, Gary Seven got his own spinoff comic title from IDW. Comics and novels, however, are merely overseen by Paramount, and not part of any official Trek canon.
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How canonical are the Supervisors?
Gary was eventually folded back into the main Trek canon, but it took quite a long time. It wasn’t until the “Star Trek: Picard” episode “Fly Me to the Moon” (during its awful second season) that the Supervisors would be mentioned again. While visiting the year 2024, Admiral Picard (Patrick Stewart) met a super-futuristic Supervisor named Tallinn (Orla Brady) who was overseeing Earth’s history to retain a certain cleanliness in the timeline. Picard name-checked Gary Seven when talking to her, and she said that she “was recruited by superior beings as an agent who would, in [her] words, protect the tapestry of history.” For many Trekkies, it was downright surreal to hear Picard say “Gary Seven” out loud, as we had all wordlessly agreed that the character was outside canon. Now, thanks to “Picard,” Gary Seven was officially official.
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The Supervisors returned again shortly thereafter. In the “Star Trek: Prodigy” episode “The Devourer of All Things,” Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton) appeared, saying that Supervisors were agents of the Travelers, a powerful cadre of psychic space-wanderers previously established on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” Wesley was now a Traveler, and he also appeared on “Picard,” linking the two shows. Wesley had his own hideout, which was decked out to look like Gary Seven’s apartment as it looked in “Assignment: Earth.” It took 57 years, but the Supervisors were finally accepted as “Star Trek” canon. “Prodigy” deserved better.
It’s almost illogical that Paramount+ hasn’t tried to produce a modern retooled version of “Assignment: Earth” for the streaming age. The premise is all set, and it seems that it would require a smaller special effects budget than one’s average “Star Trek” show. Also, it would be “Star Trek”-adjacent, giving it that all-important shot of recognizable I.P., but leaving it independent enough to operate as its own animal. I, certainly, would love to learn what that shape-shifting cat was all about.
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