Russ Haslage, founder of the International Federation of Trekkers (IFT), is the mastermind behind the growing army of Star Trek fans seeking to reassert fan control over the franchise and put George Takei -- Hikaru Sulu -- in the captain's chair of a fifth series.

In this exclusive SPACE.com interview, he shares the reasoning behind the campaign, along with his reminiscences of Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.

It really is an interesting thing. I didn't watch it in the '60s, I was outside playing baseball at the time. My brother watched it here and there.

For a lot of people it was a boring movie and I'll admit there are parts that are boring, but at the same time, anybody who was in the military will tell you it ain't all exciting. So the boring parts are a part of real life. My job gets boring.

And to see what they did to it -- the philosophy was still there, the human interaction was still there -- I saw it 13 weeks in a row. Matinee prices on a Wednesday. Two bucks a shot.

From there, Star Trek II came out and I was in deep then. I went out looking for a fan club, just to find out more and get the cool stuff. I didn't find any fan clubs I like because in the early '80s fan clubs were "sit around and watch reruns on TV and wear pointed ears and stuff," and that's not me.

I was drawn to it for the philosophy, and after Star Trek II and going out and talking to people and researching fan clubs, I decided to do it myself.

So I called Paramount and Gene Roddenberry wasn't there at the time -- that was the interesting thing, is I called Paramount just like "hey, I should be calling Paramount" and I got right through!

Gene Roddenberry called me back the next week! We spent a little over an hour on the phone that day, I asked him all sorts of questions about what he thought a fan club should be, and that's where it all started.

Sixteen years later, we're here now, trying to rebuild what he did 30 years ago.

The interesting thing with Gene was that I was just a nobody. How old was I 16 years ago -- twenty-something? Just nobody from Cleveland.

In the general public's book Star Trek fans are a little bit weird to begin with, and he called me back on his dime, spent an hour coaching me in our first conversation, and then kept helping me along for the next several years whenever I had a problem or a question.

To spend that kind of time on just Joe Fan is truly amazing. And what really hit me with Gene is he [was] so genuine. He took the time not to just give me answers, he helped me find the answers myself.

And the quote about "Star Trek fan clubs should do what they see the crew of the Enterprise do every episode" -- that was from my question, "what should a fan club be?" And his answer was "what do you see the crew do?"

I said, "explore strange new worlds?" He was like, "well, no, you can't do that."

And so he actually led me in that hour-and-ten-minute phone call to find the answer that they go places and they help people. And that's what a fan club should do.

He spent all of that time, the first few months when we were designing IFT -- there were a few crises along the way -- he took the time to help.

He [was] just a great guy. After he had his stroke, we talked once and he's just in agony because he's a big guy, used to doing things on his own, and he's stuck in a wheelchair! And to share that with some guy from Cleveland is just amazing to me.

The fights he had with Paramount because he demanded that certain things be done on Star Trek.... the vision was there, he knew what he wanted the show to be and what would work and what wouldn't, and he was right.

Since he's been gone, Paramount has been trying to make big money on it because that's what they're in business to do, and they just haven't succeeded.

So he was one heck of a guy. Susan [Sackett] knew him a heck of a lot better than I did, but just to think of the time he spent with me, a nobody, is just amazing to me.

The underlying thing that Gene taught me is that everyone has a spark within them that when cultivated can do wondrous things for all mankind. And that's really what it's all about.

Well it came out of my head. I've run IFT for 16 years and things just come to me. When I try to think of something, I'll come up blank, but in the middle of nowhere, I'll go "wow, that's a great idea," and it'll happen.

And I said, "that's a great idea, George," but at the time it wasn't all that exciting an idea. It was a nifty little dream.

At the time, Next Generation was doing well. Gene was still alive and Next Generation still had the philosophy to it, things were okay. So George's idea was an idea whose time had not yet come.

In January [2000], I had been seeing for a few months -- in the mainstream media and in the science fiction media -- reports of the death of Star Trek. Everywhere.

Being that I had spent 15 years running an organization that was built on the ideals of Star Trek (what we did in 1983 when we started, we started something that had never been done, we went places and helped people just like the crew of the Enterprise -- we didn't quite do it on a starship though), I couldn't believe that this wonderful philosophy, this dream for the future and the underlying feeling of this series that made it so great could be gone and the whole thing dead.

At the time when we were developing IFT in 1983, Gene Roddenberry helped a lot. My phone calls -- you know, he called me back, he helped on a lot of things. So in a way we're saving his legacy. This is my way of returning the favor, I guess.

Within a week I had the groundwork all laid out, I had talked to a few people who I had come to know the last 16 years and found out what's the best way to go about this. Should we do Excelsior? Should we maybe go for an idea that had never been done before?

And the people in the business suggested we do Excelsior because it's already been established, we know there's a fan base, sets -- all the background work is done. We know the characters, we know the ship, the sets are probably somewhere in a soundstage at Paramount somewhere, piece of cake.

Instead of just telling Paramount, "we want something, no matter what it is," this was what we wanted. This was the way to go. So in January after a little bit of research, I got hold of the SCI FI Channel and gave them a sneak preview press release.

And things just took off. It's been an amazing few months.

Yeah, it really has. The amazing thing is to see how far this has gotten. We've gotten thousands of letters to Paramount, and all this was meant to do was wake Paramount up, let them know we're around. And they know that really well from all the media calls and the TV appearances by George and some of our fans.

The word about the campaign is everywhere. We've got fans from all around the world. We haven't nearly reached all of the fans -- every day we get more people joining the campaign who just heard about it that day, and sometimes people are shocked after seeing all the places around the Internet it is.

It's a difficult call to make. I'm not exactly sure where exactly in their operations things went awry -- I think, really, Rick Berman is a good man. He's written a few good scripts for Next Generation episodes and some of the Deep Space Nine, some of the Voyager shows.

I don't think he has a full grasp of the Roddenberry philosophy that made the show so great and made it Paramount's top money maker.

I think to make Star Trek the way Gene Roddenberry did, you can't just read the philosophy and know it, you've got to have the feeling. You've got to say, "this is good, this is not good," and not everybody can do that. Rick Berman is very good at what he does, but he is not perfect for Star Trek.

When Gene died, Berman took over, and you could actually see where things slowly started slipping away in the Next Generation and then Deep Space Nine and then Voyager.

The first few months after Gene died, some of the groundwork was already laid with his input and things, and it slowly started slipping away -- for budget reasons, or gosh knows what.

But you can actually track it from the time of Gene's death to now, when you have Voyager, in some local markets, being cancelled by the local affiliate, and they're replacing it with things like Full House and syndicated repeats that will bring them more money.

And that's a sad thing, because when Next Generation was on, stations were bidding against each other for the show, and now they're deciding not to carry the Star Trek show [in favor of] something we've seen 40 times on the Family Channel.

Where you watch an original or a Next Generation episode, and they confronted things like bigotry, slavery, different classes of people starving or not starving. You don't get that any more.

What you get now, as opposed to what Gene Roddenberry had envisioned for the future -- where there is no need for money, there is no desire for money or power, the human psyche is on exploration and learning and helping -- is Deep Space Nine. Although it was a good show, every couple of weeks you saw a conspiracy episode. "This man's trying to take over the Federation."

That's not what Star Trek was about. Humans were past that human self/need sort of thing. And that's really what helping is all about. If you're going out to help people, you're not doing it for yourself, and if you are, you're doing it for the wrong reasons.

You can have funny episodes. We had the tribbles episode and things, but you can't base an entire series around the little offshoots and things. That's really the underlying problem.

That's the reason Star Trek is dying -- and Rick Berman has actually admitted in a bunch of interviews in the last couple of months is that the future of Star Trek is very tenuous, it's on the verge of total death -- and the only thing that can save it is a good series.

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Take to the Streets! Don't Forget Your Starfleet Uniforms! Sulu fansand foes, mark your calendars! Fandom takes to the streets April 22 in what they see as their most crucial mission yet -- saving Star Trek from itself.

Captain Sulu to the Rescue! George Takei is not actively involved with the campaign to put him back in the captain's chair, but the actor told SPACE.com he still finds the attention "incredible."

We're offering them a heck of an idea for a good series. Just from the market research and everything out there, can you imagine that if they announced the series is going to be made? Think of the marketing and the toys and the collectibles that they're not selling now -- they're going to make a mint!

Besides the TV revenue, they'll be making millions and millions in collectibles and the stars will be doing collections again and the entire market will be rejuvenated like it was in the late '80s and early '90s, when it basically was Paramount's cash cow. That's where they made their dough was on Star Trek.