← Harold's Old Time Radio
Loading summary
Transcript2 lines
- [00:00]
American Express Representative
With the American Express Platinum card, you can unlock over 1500 dollars in value annually with statement credits on select purchases and other benefits. So you can access more jet setting and more Resetting and downward dog. Learn more at americanexpress.com us Explore-Platinum terms.
- [00:15]
Narrator
Apply the Rest of the Story Once upon a wartime A fresh faced young man in a private uniform ambled into a dark little canteen in New York City. Daisy and Doris noticed him immediately as he passed the tiny round table at which the pretty sisters were sitting. They invited him to stop and chat a while. The young soldier smiled, introduced himself in a soft southern accent. His name was Gene. Something to drink? Daisy asked. Beer, thanks. Took a very little time for the girls to discover jeans, reflective nature and his eagerness to share his reflections. Europe seemed so far away. He told them he'd never even met anyone from Germany, and now he's being sent across an ocean to kill Germans. He understood why, he guessed. Nonetheless, it still seemed so strange. In the future, Gene declared, there would be no more wars. Nations would find new ways to resolve their differences. Doris and her sister agreed that that would be wonderful. But the young private had only begun to speculate. People would eventually dedicate their energies to more productive enterprises, he said. Doctors would operate without scalpels, diagnose diseases without ever touching a patient. Cars would travel without wheels, and airplanes would fly without wings, and machines would not only work, but think. And Jean's eyes were dancing as he envisioned the greatest future adventure of all mankind reaching for the stars. We'll discover other worlds out there, he said eventually. Other people as well. But Daisy and Doris were wide eyed now, and even after the young soldier told them I'd best be going and walked out into the night, the two sisters talked about him and wondered about him and and hope that he'd be all right. Years passed. The war was over. The girls were women now, still together. They moved to Florida. One evening Daisy turned on the television. A show was just coming on, a new show in that autumn of 1966. And whose name did the sisters see emblazoned across their television screen? That's right, the unusual, unmistakable name of the soldier boy whom they had been farewell d decades before. We must write to him, doris insisted. And they did. They reminded him of their long ago encounter in New York, told how impressed they had been with him, particularly with his ideas of what the future would bring, and how they were at a bit surprised to learn that he was now producing a television series about the future. Daisy and Doris wished him luck. They sent the letters in care of the local television station on which they had seen the show. How could one have expected them to know that the television producer whose name they had seen was not the young Private to whom they had spoken in April of 1917? Oh, is the same name, all right. But the producer, Gene Roddenberry, was Private. Gene Roddenberry's son was the Next Generation. Another young man of soaring imagination. And you think you've guessed his television creation? You're right. The series that boldly took its viewers where none had ever gone before. Star Trek. All these years you've known that show, but now you know the rest of the story.