70s Trek: Star Trek In The 1970s

In 1975, as Star Trek was making money in syndication, Paramount decided it was time to develop a new Trek project.  Gene Roddenberry was offered a development deal and the project was to a motion picture with a $5 million budget.  Production was to start on July 15, 1976. Gene came up with The God Thing.  His script had the crew of the Enterprise meeting and discovering the nature of God.  It's revealed that God is actually a computer/ship/entity that visits worlds repeatedly, creating prophets to match the level of development of that planet's society.  These prophets then guide that world's population through their evolution. But the real twist is that the computer/ship/entity thing is not the God we know, but actually the Devil.  When Roddenberry finished his script and turned it into Paramount, the head of the studio, Barry Diller, rejected it.  So the The God Thing was thought to be permanently shelved.  But Gene decided to take the idea and make it into a book that he would author. But as the 70s moved