"The Questor Tapes": New life at Imagine TV for a Gene Roddenberry project

Here's a surprising development for this development season. Imagine TV has teamed with Rod Roddenberry, son of the late "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry and Majel Barrett Roddenberry, to develop a redo of a project Gene Roddenberry developed for NBC and Universal TV in the mid-1970s.

"The Questor Tapes" revolved around an android created with incomplete memory tapes who winds up searching for his creator and his purpose. The pilot starred Robert Foxworth, Mike Farrell (pre-"MASH"), Dana Wynter, James Shigeta, Lew Ayres and Mrs. Roddenberry (pictured above with Gene on the "Questor" set). It wound up airing as a two-hour movie (aka burn-off pilot) in 1974 (the year Rod Roddenberry was born). Apparently NBC was interested in the show but tussled with Roddenberry over the creative direction. Some things never change.

"Questor" has lingering cult appeal, along with almost everything else Roddenberry touched before and after "Star Trek." Imagine TV topper David Nevins is high on the project, which Roddenberry brought to Imagine. The project will be reworked to reflected contempo times but the original source material is impressively solid, Nevins says.

Roddenberry maintains that his father, who died in 1991, believed "Questor" had the potential to be "bigger than 'Star Trek.' "

Judge for yourself. The whole "Questor" pilot is on YouTube in 9-10 minute segments. Here's the first one: