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I know that Roddenberry took a less and less active role in TNG as his health deteriorated. He died before the release of Deep Space Nine or Voyager.

Did he having anything to do with the creation of either series?

Or did his health conditions prevent him from being involved?

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No.

In Deep Space Nine Companion (page 3 - if you "search inside" the book with Amazon for "Roddenberry", it's the first match), Rick Berman is quoted as saying:

"I was asked to create and develop a series that would serve as a companion piece to The Next Generation for about a year and a half, and then TNG would go off the air and this new show would continue." recalls Berman. "So I asked Michael Piller to get involved, and we put our heads together. I never had the opportunity to discuss any ideas with Gene [Roddenberry]. This was very close to the end of Gene's life, and he was quite ill at the time. But he knew that we were working on something, and I definitely had his blessing to develop it."

(Emphasis mine).

There's no mention of Voyager, but it seems unlikely that they were working on developing that series at the same time that DS9 was being developed.

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    I had several pitch sessions with Ron D. Moore for ST:TNG before DS9 was in development (and not long before Roddenberry died). There were several topics that came up in our discussions that were not covered in the Writer's Guide. DS9 included several factors that Roddenberry would not have accepted, such as religion playing an important point in character's lives and in storylines. From what I could gather, Roddenberry was quite negative about religious beliefs, so I'm still trying to figure out how Bread and Circuses could have the Christ references in it and gotten by him.
    – Tango
    Commented Nov 12, 2011 at 4:28
  • @Tango: DS9 is overtly incompatible with Roddenberry's views, especially in the later seasons (after he passed away). Look particularly to "In the Pale Moonlight"; it's a classic example of this pattern. You also have "The Darkness and the Light," which gets bonus points for being an explicit apologia for terrorism, and numerous other episodes.
    – Kevin
    Commented Feb 15, 2016 at 7:29
  • @Kevin: I agree, it was very much against Roddenberry's views. I believe Roddenberry had also once stated Trek would always be about the Enterprise, but I can't remember if that was an actual quotation. I doubt he was involved, but I'd find evidence, one way or the other, interesting.
    – Tango
    Commented Feb 15, 2016 at 16:17
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I saw an interview years ago by Leonard Nimoy, and he stated that Gene Roddenberry was asked to write and produce the Star Trek:The Motion Picture but there was substantial difficulty completing the script. Constant rewrites were being made, even when the film being made. He couldn't finish it. When the second film started production, their was a concious decision by the studio's, not to include him, and from that point forward he was marginalised, and finally out of it.

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    I've heard the same thing about Star Trek 2, but I think that Roddenberry was brought back in for TNG. From what I can tell he was given a lot of control over casting and initial direction of that show.
    – Mark Rogers
    Commented Jan 25, 2011 at 3:31
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    @Mark, I'm glad he was bought back in. I think you can see that reflected in the quality of the scripts in TNG that are not present in DS9 or Voyager. I think the quality of the series decayed when he wasn't leading from the front.
    – scope_creep
    Commented Jan 25, 2011 at 13:46
  • I was at a small con where David Gerrold spoke during the 1st year of ST:TNG and he was quite clear about his frustrations in work Roddenberry on developing the series. Roddenberry was definitely the show runner for ST:TNG for the first season or two.
    – Tango
    Commented Nov 12, 2011 at 4:25
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I can speak about Deep Space Nine and the answer is NO. He saw some initial scripts from Berman and according to the latter he approved of it though he voiced a concern if a show about a space station would work but No. Gene was never involved in Deep Space Nine. I don't know much about Voyager.

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  • What are you basing this on?
    – Valorum
    Commented Jun 10, 2018 at 14:43

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