Norway Productions

Norway Corporation, also called Norway Productions, was a motion picture and television production company established by Gene Roddenberry. Norway Corporation is best known for having been the production company that brought Star Trek to television on the NBC network in association with Desilu Studios, which later became part of Paramount Television.

Gene Roddenberry decided to become a producer as a direct result of his frustrations with his work as a television writer and the difficulty he faced in adding anything substantial to his stories. The Lieutenant, a 1963-1964 NBC and MGM Television series about the United States Marine Corps that starred Gary Lockwood as Lieutenant William Rice, was the first series he created and produced. Several future cast members of Star Trek first worked with Roddenberry as regular or guest cast members of The Lieutenant.

Roddenberry developed his idea for Star Trek while working on The Lieutenant. Desilu's vice president of production, Herbert F. Solow, purchased the series concept and made a production deal with Roddenberry in April 1964. Roddenberry pitched the show as "Wagon Train in space," even though it owed more to C. S. Forrester's writings about Horatio Hornblower than to any western.

Having squandered money on a series of failed pilots over the course of the early 1960s, Desilu had become severely cash-poor and was desperate to regain its past success. Although NBC rejected the first pilot, its executives were impressed favorably enough to commission an unprecedented second pilot, which the network picked up for the 1966-67 season. Star Trek premiered on September 8, 1966. Star Trek's end credits listed the show as a "Desilu Prouduction in association with Norway Corporation."

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