As many Trekkies might be able to tell you, Gene Roddenberry created "Star Trek: The Next Generation" out of spite. When "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" came out in 1979, it was a big swing, taking a rinky-dink science fiction series and blowing it into a massive, psychedelic, $44 million space opera. It was about a gigantic, dangerous space cloud that appeared out of the cosmos and began bearing down on Earth, its mission unknown. The film ended with human beings merging with ineffable machine intelligences beyond our comprehension. It was heady and great, closer in spirit to the previous decade's "2001: A Space Odyssey" than the contemporary "Star Wars."

But when "The Motion Picture" didn't make quite as much money as Paramount wanted , Roddenberry was informally removed from any furt

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