Editing Star Trek: Phase II (section)

===Conception===
The [[Paramount Television Service]] was announced on June 10, 1977.{{sfn |Reeves-Stevens|Reeves-Stevens |1997 |p=21}} Seven days later, Roddenberry announced that ''Star Trek'' would be returning to television on the new service,<ref name=fls>{{cite news|title='Star Trek' will be new TV Series|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=5KUQAAAAIBAJ&pg=3501,2385839&dq=paramount+television+service&hl=en|access-date=25 May 2012|newspaper=The Free Lance-Star|date=June 18, 1977|agency=[[Associated Press|AP]]|page=13}}{{Dead link|date=September 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> saying that "Hopefully it will be even superior" to ''The Original Series'' and that casting would include "as many of the old faces as possible, as well as an infusion of new ones".<ref name=fls/> At the time, ''The Original Series'' was being broadcast on 137 stations in the United States in syndication, and it was expected that the new television service would provide a single evening package that could be broadcast by these independent stations as well as Paramount's recently acquired [[Hughes Television Network]].<ref name=fls/> It was hoped that this station could become the fourth national network in the United States;<ref name=starlog12>{{cite journal|last1=Sackett|first1=Susan|title=A Conversation with Gene Roddenberry|journal=Starlog|date=March 1978|issue=12|pages=25–29|url=https://archive.org/stream/starlog_magazine-012/012#page/n24/mode/1up|access-date=December 12, 2014}}</ref> Diller and his assistant [[Michael Eisner]] had hired [[Jeffrey Katzenberg]] to manage ''Star Trek'' into production, with a [[television film]] due to launch the new series at a cost of $3.2 million – which some claimed would have made it the most expensive television movie ever made to date.{{sfn |Masters |2000 |pp=80–81}}

Roddenberry said that the show would continue to cover modern themes in a science fiction way as had the first series, saying that these could include [[aircraft hijacking|hijacking]], [[nationalism]], and [[radicalization]] of both individuals and groups. He also wanted to show 23rd-century Earth for the first time, and said that this had been the answer to Paramount executives asking him if there had been anything he wanted to do on ''The Original Series'' but could not. A further change was to be the number of female cast members, as NBC had a requirement of a maximum of one-third, and Roddenberry wanted to have them appear in authority positions.<ref name=starlog12/>