The Unauthorized History of Trek
James van Hise
Originally published in 1997 and now available as an ebook. The inspiring story of the men and women who dared to go where no TV series had gone before!BEAM UP FOR:• The operation that almost cost Spock his ears• The woman who wouldn’t stay green• The fortune-teller who predicted McCoy’s success• The Leonard “Nimsy” Christmas parade• Harlan Ellison’s letter writing campaign• Attack of the Nielsens!• The spacecraft design the US Navy stole… and much, much more!Here are the stories behind the stories, the little-known facts and legendary incidents that made Star Trek the most successful, most innovative, most enduring, most influential and most fiercely beloved SF show to ever appear on television. From Roddenberry’s first pilot to the megahit movies and first generation of spin-offs, The Unauthorized History of Trek is one of the most inspiring and fascinating stories in entertainment history.
Voyager
THE UNAUTHORIZED
HISTORY OF
TREK
JAMES VAN HISE
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_389bfa88-5a31-5b65-833e-94fbeec4a85c)
Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek Deep Space Nine are registered trademarks of Paramount Pictures Corporation. This book was not prepared, approved, licensed or endorsed by any entity involved in creating or producing the Star Trek television series or films.
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Copyright © 1991, 1995 Pioneer Books, Inc.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780006482925
Ebook Edition © December 2016 ISBN: 9780008240257
Version: 2017-01-05
A TREK THROUGH HISTORY
This unauthorized history of Star Trek is the complete and inspirational chronicle of a legend from its original conception to its phenomenal effect on millions of viewers across the world. America’s leading science fiction television historian JAMES VAN HISE takes you where no Trek fan has ever gone before—from the meeting in which Gene Roddenberry first pitched his idea for the Star Trek series to the lean years when die-hard fans kept the show alive to the continuing sequence of successful feature films and new television series which have secured Star Trek’s enduring importance in popular culture, and in our lives. The origins of the series are revealed through in-depth interviews with the original cast and creative staff, offering not only a wealth of Trek trivia but speculations as to what the future may hold.
Here are the facts behind the science fiction, the historical journey that goes beyond what you can see on the screen and covers three decades of voyage and on-going discover.
CONTENTS
COVER (#u8c6fa1bf-cf14-5309-a620-537a66c413df)
TITLE PAGE (#u8dea954f-8163-55f2-a106-b8782f271976)
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_11425e92-ebbd-5981-a48b-1958ee247ef6)
FOREWORD (#ulink_7849767f-721d-555f-a398-ab5be1cd3ab3)
GENE RODDENBERRY (1921–1991) (#ulink_7849767f-721d-555f-a398-ab5be1cd3ab3)
INTRODUCTION (#ulink_7058d948-9ce7-5374-82f6-a9255531df3a)
A PHENOMENON UNEXCELLED (#ulink_7058d948-9ce7-5374-82f6-a9255531df3a)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_6ce58c08-64df-5447-8e31-93b84530f08c)
A DREAM IN THE MAKING: (#ulink_6ce58c08-64df-5447-8e31-93b84530f08c)
A brush with death alters Gene Roddenberry’s career choices and leads him to Hollywood, where he creates Star Trek.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_cebce73b-0855-5ed8-899e-04c51915fd3c)
A NEAR MISS AND A SOLID HIT: (#ulink_cebce73b-0855-5ed8-899e-04c51915fd3c)
NBC loves “The Cage” but wants Roddenberry to produce a second pilot.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_61ab83b8-7047-5a45-b502-ad6bf96bbbcb)
ONWARD TO THE STARS, WITH HOPE (THE FIRST SEASON): (#ulink_61ab83b8-7047-5a45-b502-ad6bf96bbbcb)
Star Trek makes stars of William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy as the series is launched successfully, albeit with some trepidation.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_c34bcc87-9e94-5aeb-8097-ae17f41589dd)
STEADY AS SHE GOES (THE SECOND SEASON): (#ulink_c34bcc87-9e94-5aeb-8097-ae17f41589dd)
The strong scripts in the second season aren’t enough to satisfy the mysterious Nielsen ratings, but Star Trek is brought back from the brink of cancellation, only to suffer a bitter loss.
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
AN AREA OF TURBULENCE (THE THIRD AND FINAL SEASON): (#litres_trial_promo)
A lackluster third season, marked by numerous indifferent scripts and few bright lights, marks the inevitable end to the first voyage of the starship Enterprise.
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
MOVING THROUGH LIMBO AND BEYOND (THE LOST YEARS … TO STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE): (#litres_trial_promo)
The seventies prove that Star Trek is anything but dead, as rumors of a revival become a reality by decade’s end.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
SAILING THE SILVER SCREEN (THE MOVIE TRILOGY): (#litres_trial_promo)
One successful motion picture leads to another.
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
A NEW GENERATION EMBARKS: (#litres_trial_promo)
The seemingly impossible task of creating a new version of Star Trek is accomplished.
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
THE OLD GUARD STUMBLES; THE NEW WAVE TRIUMPHS: (#litres_trial_promo)
Star Trek V goes down for the count while The Next Generation gets better and better.
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
THE TORCH IS CARRIED ON: (#litres_trial_promo)
The fourth season of The Next Generation produces some of the finest episodes yet and further demonstrates how different the new Star Trek really is.
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
THE END OF A GENERATION: (#litres_trial_promo)
After seven outstanding years, The Next Generation ends its successful run on television—but still the voyage continues.
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
THE FUTURE BECKONS, BRIGHT AND BOLD: (#litres_trial_promo)
Whither Star Trek?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHECKLISTS: (#litres_trial_promo)
Star Trek: The Classic Years, The Animated Voyages; The Next Generation.
KEEP READING (#litres_trial_promo)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR (#litres_trial_promo)
ALSO BY (#litres_trial_promo)
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER (#litres_trial_promo)
FOREWORD (#ulink_543b90e1-f0b2-5495-8ec3-e0116566e6c9)
GENE RODDENBERRY (1921–1991) (#ulink_543b90e1-f0b2-5495-8ec3-e0116566e6c9)
It came as a surprise to many when Gene Roddenberry died of a heart attack on October 24, 1991. While the news that he had suffered a series of strokes during the year had leaked out, the full extent of his illness was not known.
There had been rumors, though, when a gala twenty-fifth anniversary celebration for Star Trek at Paramount was scaled down in September because he was too ill to attend. A couple of actors from the original series had long been rumored to be in frail health, but no one ever thought Roddenberry would be the first to depart.
While some fear that with Roddenberry’s passing the light of Star Trek will die, it has been known for some time that he was all but retired, having stepped down from his on-line duties on The Next Generation more and more as each year passed, until for the last two years he had been little more than a consultant. His involvement with the motion pictures has been minimal since the first one, the only one on which he worked full-time.
Star Trek was a synthesis of many talents. While it was created by Roddenberry years ago, it was developed by such people as Gene Coon, Dorothy Fontana, and others whose contributions added much to the legend. While Roddenberry had the original vision and steered the ship on a true course, he was not the only one to dream the dream, and his biggest gift was to inspire others. The many forms of Star Trek over the years serve as living testimonial.
When people die there is the danger of their being elevated to a role they never had in life or never aspired to. One should not suddenly elevate Roddenberry to godhood. Gene was a man, with the foibles of a man, but he should never be forgotten for his many abilities, and most of all for his dream, a dream he shared with so many of us. This dream will insure that Gene Roddenberry will never be forgotten.
JAMES VAN HISE
INTRODUCTION (#ulink_29197010-5789-5ac5-94fd-fbe62446559d)
A PHENOMENON UNEXCELLED (#ulink_29197010-5789-5ac5-94fd-fbe62446559d)
Star Trek. These two simple words bring forth a vast web of mental associations to millions of people. For more than twenty-five years, a remarkable and widely varied group of characters has seemingly taken over a sizable portion of our collective consciousness and made it its own. Perhaps the late science fiction visionary Philip K. Dick saw this when he had a character in his novel A Scanner Darkly refer to the latest entertainment extravaganza as a “captainkirk.”
More than thirty years after Gene Roddenberry first envisioned the world of the starship Enterprise, the traces of the original series are everywhere. Kirk and crew have become icons in American popular culture, representing the best of our dreams: adventure, exploration, the triumph of the human spirit over all kinds of adversity. Current films and television series continue to refer to Star Trek, and in the 1991 feature film Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey William Shatner is honored as a guest star when the movie’s heroes are seen watching “The Arena.”
Clearly, Star Trek has risen above the fate of other past television programs. This is a show to which some people have dedicated more than twenty-five years of their lives, often making Star Trek a centerpiece of their own personal philosophies and mythologies. This is a show that has refused to die. Battling network muddleheadedness in the sixties, creator Gene Roddenberry thought that his dream had died after its third season.
Fortunately, nothing could undermine or destroy Star Trek’s unique appeal. Rather than fade gracefully away into the dusty attic of quaint and anachronistic conceits, Star Trek continued to live and breathe. With only seventy-nine episodes aired, the myth of Star Trek built around the dedication of its fans as well as an undying fascination with a television show that had shown viewers such strange new worlds. Even Roddenberry was somewhat taken aback by the support his creation gathered as the years went by; it began to seem inevitable that Star Trek would return someday, and overcome the many impediments that blocked its path.
Star Trek brought fortune and fame to a handful of actors who had for years been laboring in obscurity: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Nichelle Nichols, James Doohan, George Takei, and Walter Koenig. Without their talents, this unique television legacy would never have survived. Instead of fading into celluloid, these actors became a surrogate family, a group of faithful and fascinating friends to a generation, and, now, to that generation’s children.
Though some found the 1979 release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture to be disappointing, the movie’s tepid reviews could not slow down the rampaging phenomenon of Star Trek’s popularity. Fans remained as involved as ever, and were irate at Spock’s death in The Wrath of Khan and the destruction of their beloved Enterprise in The Search for Spock. No amount of irritation or criticism could keep Trekkers out of the movie theaters, however, and hard-core fans began to share seat space with a new generation, born in the time since Kirk’s last journey. Disgruntlement among the fans was overcome by loyalty, and eventually passed into the legend of Star Trek.
The original Enterprise crew had been busy in the intervening years. In 1986, when the fourth, and most successful, movie was released, fans were thrilled to find Leonard Nimoy in the director’s chair. The lighthearted approach, combined with a compelling and timely Enterprise mission to Earth’s history, served to bring yet more new fans into the Star Trek fold.
Rumors of a new Star Trek incarnation abounded for nearly twenty years, and 1987 finally brought the debut of the Enterprise D, a Galaxy-class starship, in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Launched on Stardate 2363, some one hundred years after the last voyage of the now legendary Captain Kirk, the new Enterprise was a sleek beauty that never forgot her roots in rough-and-ready adventure. Captained by Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard, the new Enterprise would have strong ensemble acting by Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, LeVar Burton, Denise Crosby, and Michael Dorn. Like their predecessors on the bridge, the names of this crew rapidly became household words, their characters and actions debated, analyzed, applauded, and criticized.
The launch of the Enterprise D set off a raging, still-unresolved debate about which captain and crew best exemplified the dream of Star Trek. Fans took sides immediately and began fantasizing about a meeting, and an inevitable fight, between the two captains. If some fans found the new product unpalatable. Star Trek: The Next Generation widened the fold, and in its seven-year run garnered its own acclaim, awards, and admirers.
Gene Roddenberry’s dream continued to explore strange new worlds, and in 1993, two years after its creator’s death, Star Trek gave birth to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, a new weekly series set in a permanent orbiting space station. The world of Trek met Avery Brooks as Commander Sisko, with actors Rene Auberjonois, Nana Visitor, Terry Farrell, Siddig El Fadil, Armin Shimerman, and Colm Meaney to man the station.
Two more movies, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1988), and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), kept fans in the theaters, when they weren’t home watching Picard in first-run shows and Kirk and Spock in popular reruns.
Star Trek: The Next Generation saw its final broadcast in 1994, but fans had been promised a movie. The autumn release of Star Trek: Generations may have been weak critically, but fans were treated to a long-awaited meeting of Picard and Kirk. The long-debated “battle of the captains” did not materialize, as the movie showed the two Enterprise captains working together in a spirit of cooperation, not conflict. Like other Trek movies, Generations itself was born in conflict, and fans missed the presence of Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley.
If Kirk seemed to be passing the torch, although with chagrin, to Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation found its own child in the launch of yet another weekly series. In January 1995, Paramount launched its own broadcast network, UPN, with the maiden voyage of Star Trek: Voyager. The starship Voyager is thrown nearly eighty million light-years from home, and the new series chronicles the ship’s travels as it makes its way back to Federation space. Captain Kathryn Janeway has already been compared to both James T. Kirk and Katharine Hepburn. Actress Kate Mulgrew and crew, confident and excited, are gearing up for the inevitable scrutiny of Star Trek’s legendary fandom.
On inheriting Gene Roddenberry’s formidable responsibility and vision, Executive Producer Rick Berman told TV Guide in the spring 1995 special edition, “We would be crazy if we always sat around saying to ourselves, ‘Now what would Gene have done about this?’ I owe him a great deal, and part of that debt is to keep his vision as true as I can—but not so rigidly that Star Trek doesn’t grow.”
All Star Trek fans owe Roddenberry a great deal of love and admiration for his creativity, dedication, and integrity. While Star Trek began as a concept that few thought would ever get off the ground, the starship Enterprise became the flagship of a fleet of wondrous ships and stories that after nearly thirty years continue, almost unbelievably, to boldly go where no one has gone before. This book will take you on that journey, from Roddenberry’s first idea to the final frontier.
GUS MEYER
CHAPTER ONE: (#ulink_53b7e9a4-ce33-550b-925b-20d2df0306af)
A DREAM IN THE MAKING (#ulink_53b7e9a4-ce33-550b-925b-20d2df0306af)
Gene Roddenberry was a science fiction aficionado from childhood. It all started with a battered copy of Astounding magazine and took off from there. Still, he never considered writing in any genre or medium until much later in life.
In the late forties he worked as an international airline pilot for Pan Am, and it was at this time that he began to write pieces for flying magazines. In 1948, he was one of only eight survivors of a plane crash in the Syrian desert, an experience that profoundly shaped his attitude toward life.
The writing bug soon led him to quit the airline and move to Los Angeles, where he met with absolutely no success in the new field of television writing. The industry was, at the time, still centered on the East Coast. This led him to become a Los Angeles policeman, a job which would provide him with insights no office job could ever hope to offer. At the same time, he continued to write, and sold his first script, pseudonymously, in 1951.
More sales followed, including “The Secret Defense of 117,” a science Fiction story which aired on Chevron Theater and starred Ricardo Montalban. During the same period, he wrote speeches for L.A. police chief William Parker, and even ghosted most of Parker’s book Parker on Police, still regarded today as a classic of police philosophy.
Roddenberry managed to slip a bit of his own more liberal views into right-wing Parker’s texts; Parker was often perplexed when people he regarded as left-wingers would enthusiastically applaud his Roddenberry-penned speeches. Despite Parker’s strong political stance, there was a side to him that impressed Roddenberry even more: he was always open to new ideas, and had wide-ranging intellectual interests, traits which Roddenberry would later incorporate into the character of Spock.
By 1954, Roddenberry’s moonlighting was earning him four times his policeman’s salary, leading him to resign from the force and devote all his energies to writing. After freelancing for a variety of series, including Dragnet, Naked City, and Dr. Kildare, he became head writer of the Richard Boone Western series, Have Gun Will Travel.
He began to realize that freelancing left the final product of his mind in the hands of others. To retain control over his ideas (and to retain greater profits), he decided to become a producer. He had seen too many pilots written but left unmade; it was time for him to see one all the way through to completion.
His first series was thus created: The Lieutenant, which ran for the 1963 television season. Starring Gary Lockwood as a newly commissioned officer in the peacetime Marine Corps, this was an intelligent, dramatic series which unfortunately failed to draw much of an audience. (Ironically, another Marine-centered series which premiered the following year was successful enough to last through the rest of the decade. Gomer Pyle was not, however, noted for its intelligence!) One episode featured an actor named Leonard Nimoy as a flamboyant Hollywood director; Roddenberry would eventually employ him again in the new series he was already creating.
By the time The Lieutenant went off the air, Roddenberry had submitted a proposed Star Trek format to MGM, the studio behind The Lieutenant. The basic premise was the one now familiar to millions, but the characters were radically different.
The Captain was one Robert T. April, his executive officer was the logical female Number One, and the navigator was one José Tyler. The doctor was nicknamed Bones but was otherwise an older, completely different character. Mr. Spock was in the proposal, but was described as having “a red-hued satanic look” and, according to one source, absorbed energy through a red plate in his navel!
The Enterprise and its mission are perhaps the only things that made it to the screen unchanged from this original format. One other thing Roddenberry insisted on was that the science fiction in the show be ordered and logical, without falling on convenient fantasy resolutions having no basis in reality.
MGM said it was interested, but not at the present time. Other studios followed suit, providing Roddenberry with a fileful of politely worded brush-offs. A shift in the prevailing winds occurred when he learned that Desilu Studios was looking for series ideas. Desilu, the studio behind I Love Lucy and Lucille Ball’s later shows, was hurting financially; Lucy was its only viable property, and it frequently rented out its facilities to other studios to make up for the monthly overhead costs. Desilu was impressed with Roddenberry and his ideas, including the Star Trek proposal, and signed him to a three-year pilot development deal. (Desilu’s interest in Star Trek would pass over to Paramount Pictures when Paramount bought the television studio out.) Things seemed to pick up steam almost immediately, as Roddenberry was called in to pitch Star Trek to an assembly of CBS’s highest-ranking network executives.
They listened for two hours. Roddenberry was convinced that he’d sold them on it. They were certainly interested in his thoughts on saving costs and designing ships, among other things, but their questions turned out to have another motive entirely. When he was finished, they thanked him politely, but passed on the proposal, as they already had a science fiction series of their own in the works. Roddenberry may very well have inadvertently helped them launch Lost in Space, which even, by some coincidence, had the Robinson family embarking on a five-year mission of exploration. Lost in Space premiered in 1965 and, like Star Trek, ran for three seasons.
Roddenberry, even though disheartened by CBS’s cavalier treatment of him, kept on trying. In May of 1964, NBC offered Roddenberry twenty thousand dollars in story development money. The deal was that Roddenberry would develop three story ideas for a Star Trek pilot, then write a pilot script based on the idea chosen by the network. NBC chose the story entitled “The Cage.” Roddenberry set to work on a shooting script. In September of 1964, the script was approved: the first Star Trek episode had received the green light.
Roddenberry had already been laying the groundwork for this. Of primary importance was the starship Enterprise itself, which he hoped to have avoid all previous spaceship clichés.
The final design of the U.S.S. Enterprise was largely the work of assistant art director Matt Jefferies, who had a strong background in aviation.
During World War Two, Jefferies flew B-17 missions over Africa, and later devoted much of his spare time to restoring vintage airplanes. The starship and its various sets were drawn from Jefferies’s own familiarity with aeronautics.
As a member of the Aviation Writers’ Association, Jefferies was able to collate a large number of designs from NASA and the defense industry … all as examples of what not to do. All previous science fiction spaceship designs were also held up as things to be avoided.
Hundreds of sketches were made for the design of the Enterprise; the main hull was, at one point, going to be spherical, and even the now-familiar final design almost wound up being shot upside down. (Admittedly, this wouldn’t make much difference in space.) As a final touch of authenticity, red and green lights were added on the port and starboard sides, a time-honored nautical practice. Finally, a three-foot and fourteen-foot model of the Enterprise were constructed.
Again, Matt Jefferies’s air force engineering background came in handy in the design of the sets. The U.S. Navy was so impressed by the bridge design that it supposedly used it as a basis for one of its own communications centers.
Another seemingly insurmountable problem revolved around Roddenberry’s desire to feature a green-skinned woman in the pilot. For some reason, all the makeup department’s experiments failed to show up on the test footage shot of actress Susan Oliver for this purpose. No matter how dark they made the green, their model always showed up on film as looking perfectly normal. Eventually, they discovered that someone at the photo lab, perplexed by the pictures coming his way, was chemically correcting what he thought was a flaw in the initial photography. When this was cleared up, the desired makeup effect was achieved with a minimum of fuss.
“The Cage” began shooting with a cast of characters drawn from the original format, although the captain was now named Christopher Pike. Pike was portrayed by Jeffrey Hunter, who had the rare distinction of having once played Jesus Christ, in King of Kings. John Hoyt played the ship’s doctor, Philip Boyce. Leonard Nimoy appeared as Spock, but the character was a bit different from its later incarnation, as the logical aspect of his future personality belonged to the character Number One, portrayed by Majel Barrett.
Leonard Nimoy had assumed that he would be trying out for the part of Spock; he failed to realize that he was Roddenberry’s first and preferred choice for the role. The prospect of a regular series was exciting to the actor, who, despite his frequent guest appearances on television, did not have what could be called a stable income. He did have some misgivings about the part; what if the show was an unmitigated flop? Would he become a laughing stock, forever derided for having dared to don those silly-looking pointed ears? In conference with his friend Vic Morrow, he even pondered the possibility of developing character makeup that would completely conceal his true face—just in case Star Trek was a disaster and an embarrassment. Fortunately for his future recognizability, he thought better of this idea.
Still, one obstacle remained to be overcome. The makeup department had yet to come up with a painless means of applying the Spock ears. The ears were irritating and painful where the glue was applied; one of the reasons for Spock’s general stiffness was the fact that any facial movement, however slight, served only to compound the intense physical discomfort generated by the aural appliances.
Matters were even more confounded by the odd fact that, due to contractual obligations, the actual ears had to be made by the props department, not the makeup department. Considerable variations in the shape of the ears (as well as in Spock’s general appearance) can still be seen in the two pilot episodes. Leonard was frustrated by this situation, and expressed his dissatisfaction over it to his producer.
Roddenberry could tell that Nimoy’s anguish was real—but what could he do? Finally, grasping at straws, he promised Nimoy that if, after thirteen episodes, he was still unhappy with the ears, Roddenberry would personally write an episode in which Spock had an ear-job to give him normal, human-looking ears. Nimoy pondered this, and then broke into laughter. The fate of the ears was sealed—and Spock still has them to this day.
“The Cage” introduces viewers to Roddenberry’s nascent version of the Enterprise crew as it is headed toward a starbase after a disastrous first contact with an alien culture. Captain Pike and his crew are tired and in great need of some rest, but they are distracted by a distress signal from a nearby planet.
When they investigate, they find a colony of scientists who have survived a crash nearly twenty years earlier… and a beautiful young girl, Vina, who the survivors claim was born just as their ship crashed. When Vina lures Captain Pike away from the encampment, he is abducted by dome-skulled aliens and taken below the surface. The scientists and their camp, merely an illusion designed to lure humans, disappear.
Pike regains consciousness to find himself in an enclosed space; he has become part of an alien zoo, held prisoner by beings who can read his thoughts and project him into a bewildering variety of subjective but real-seeming scenarios. As he goes through these, he resists them at every turn, but begins to realize that the girl has a role in all this, too. Perhaps she is not an illusion, but another captive; she constantly tries to get him to accept his situation and make the best of the illusions his captors create.
Meanwhile, Number One and Spock haul out an impressive array of technology in their attempts to free their captain from his subterranean prison, but to no avail. Beneath the surface, the philosophical drama unfolds, with Pike finally being freed after resisting mind control. It is revealed that the woman, Vina, was the only survivor of the crash; not truly young, she was also severely disfigured by the crash. When Pike offers to take her off the planet to rejoin humanity, she elects to stay and live the rest of her life in the illusionary happiness the aliens have provided her. The aliens have been acting partly out of their own motivations but also out of a desire to help the lonely woman. Pike goes on to a starbase while she continues to embrace a reality that is false but which offers her the only comfort she will ever know.
NBC’s reaction to this pilot was overwhelmingly enthusiastic. In its intelligence and its appearance, it surpassed anything done in the genre television before, and looked better than the vast majority of theatrical science fiction films as well. No one had a bad word to say about the finished product.
They rejected it anyway.
The problem, it seemed, was that it was too intelligent. NBC execs were afraid that the story would go over the heads of most of the audience. Something a bit more action-oriented would perhaps be better, they mused—and, in an unprecedented move, they gave Roddenberry a shot at a second pilot.
They also wanted to get rid of the guy with the pointed ears. There was always the possibility that religious groups might be offended by such a demonic-looking character.
Roddenberry set out to revamp the entire show, but he was determined to keep Spock. He discarded the character of Number One, who hadn’t gone over too well, and promoted Spock to second-in-command, bringing him closer to the forefront.
This time, NBC wanted three complete scripts for consideration. All three had plenty of action: “Mudd’s Women,” by Stephen Kandel; “Omega Glory,” by Roddenberry; and “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” by Samuel A. Peeples. The network chose the Peeples script; the second Star Trek pilot was under way.
CHAPTER TWO: (#ulink_351b6d8a-95af-5042-ad65-b80119580dbb)
A NEAR MISS AND A SOLID HIT (#ulink_351b6d8a-95af-5042-ad65-b80119580dbb)
Despite the network’s misgivings, Roddenberry was determined to stick with Spock. He was also determined to maintain the Enterprise’s multiethnic crew despite the network’s concerns that this might affect ratings in various areas of the country.
As for Spock, Roddenberry worked with the character a bit; the now-discarded Number One left a vacancy for the second-in-command, and Spock fit the bill perfectly. Spock also inherited Number One’s cold, dispassionate logic. This all gelled to provide a fascinating amalgam of intelligence, restraint, and a certain attractive aura of mystery, all admirably brought to life by a highly capable actor, Leonard Nimoy.
Leonard Nimoy was born in Boston in 1931, the son of Jewish immigrants from the USSR. He showed an early interest in the theater, making his stage debut in a production of Hansel and Gretel at the age of eight.
After high school, he studied briefly at Boston College. With only six hundred dollars to his name, he took a three-day train trip to California in pursuit of an acting career. Studies at the Pasadena Playhouse did not lead to much movie work, however, and he was obliged to work at a variety of menial jobs: theater usher, ice cream counterman, pet shop clerk, vacuum cleaner salesman, and many others.
A fluke break landed him the lead in a Z-grade boxing picture, Kid Monk Baroni, but this and a few much smaller roles in such forgettable pictures as Francis Goes to West Point, where he was billed far below the picture’s talking-donkey star, were all the film work he could obtain at the time.
After marriage and a stint in the army in Georgia, Nimoy returned to Los Angeles in the late fifties and began to get more roles in episodic television, frequently as a heavy. But he was far from being a household name.
In fact, although it was too early to realize it, it was his fortuitous encounter with Gene Roddenberry and The Lieutenant series that would save him from a career as one of those all-too-familiar faces whose name the audience can’t quite place. Star Trek would soon preclude this possibility from ever coming true.
With Nimoy the sole holdover from “The Cage” pilot, Roddenberry was obliged to create an entirely new cast from scratch. Of course, the most important character on any ship is the captain. Inspired by C. S. Forester’s heroic Horatio Hornblower character, Roddenberry created a new leader for the Enterprise, James Tiberius Kirk.
Kirk, a Midwesterner, is a driven officer with great faith in himself, who is not afraid to take a stand; apart from his senior officers, he confides in few, and bears the full responsibility for his command. Yet he is not without humor and he has a highly developed sense of adventure. For this all-important lead role, Roddenberry cast actor William Shatner.
William Shatner, thirty-eight at the time he started playing Captain Kirk, was born in Canada and was, like Leonard Nimoy, involved in the theater quite early. By the time he graduated McGill University in 1952, Shatner had already done extensive radio acting work.
He then joined the National Repertory Theater of Ottawa, where he earned the massive sum of thirty-one dollars (Canadian) a week. After years of hard work he received excellent reviews in a New York production of Tamburlaine, but he turned down a seven-year, five-hundred-dollar-a-week (American) contract with Twentieth Century-Fox in order to return to Canada and star in a television drama that he had written himself.
Soon afterward, he returned to New York and became extremely active in live television. He also played in the movie The Brothers Karamazov, which starred Yul Brynner. Work in westerns soon followed. He settled in Los Angeles, determined to make his fortunes in Hollywood.
Roles on The Twilight Zone and Outer Limits feature prominently in his resume from this period. He starred in the classic Twilight Zone episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” and in the Outer Limits episode “Cold Hands, Warm Heart” he delivered, at one point, a passionate declaration about the importance of space exploration which sounds like a paraphrase of the opening narration of every Star Trek episode.
For the technical end of things, Roddenberry came up with the character of the chief engineer, Montgomery Scott. A regular shirtsleeves kind of guy, with an unbending devotion to his captain superseded only by his devotion to his ship, Scott would often be called upon to do the impossible, in as little time as he could manage. His ethnic background was suggested by the actor who played Scott. He was gifted in the area of dialects, and since there was a long tradition of Scotsmen in nautical and military engineering, his suggestion was approved.
Star Trek’s other Canadian, James Doohan, was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and flew an artillery observation plane in the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War. Like many other actors of his generation, he did extensive radio work. He arrived in the United States in 1946 and remained until 1953, performing and teaching acting.
In 1961 he came back to the United States and worked on such television shows as Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Bewitched, and The FBI. Doohan had been offered the role of the chief engineer on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea right after he auditioned for Star Trek, and only a call from the Star Trek offices at just the right time decided him on which series he would take. Of Scotty, Doohan once surmised that perhaps his accent was not natural, but was actually learned, possibly in a time when people would re-create archaic modes of speech in order to reduce the monotony of an ever-more-homogeneous language. An intriguing theory, indeed!
For the helmsman, who also doubles as weapons officer, Roddenberry created a character of Asian background, Sulu, who is primarily Japanese but also has Filipino blood. Sulu was portrayed by George Takei.
George Takei was born in Los Angeles but spent the World War Two period in Arkansas where, as a child, he lived with his family in a Japanese/American detention camp. He studied architecture at U.C. Berkeley and earned a bachelor’s degree at UCLA in 1960.
In the few years between this and the debut of Star Trek, he managed to appear on a number of shows, including Perry Mason and I Spy. He also acted in The Green Berets, The Brothers Karamazov, and other movies.
He appeared in The Twilight Zone episode “The Encounter,” an episode no longer included in the syndication package for reasons of anti-Japanese prejudice expressed in the script.
At a time when the networks were still dubious about the use of black characters in television (Bill Cosby’s equal billing with Robert Culp on I Spy was definitely the exception, not the rule), Roddenberry pushed the envelope by creating the black communications officer Uhura.
Things were thrown more out of kilter when he made the character a woman as well. Even after the loss of the Number One character, he was determined to have a woman in a responsible position on the Enterprise bridge. In this, he was years ahead of our own military.
Uhura, whose name means “freedom,” was from an African nation (according to the background material, anyway), and is proof of the changes Earth society has achieved in Roddenberry’s hopeful vision of the future.
Actress, dancer, and singer Nichelle Nichols was cast as Uhura. Born in Chicago, she had worked extensively as a vocalist, and toured with Duke Ellington’s and Lionel Hampton’s bands. On stage, she appeared in such plays as The Blacks, No Strings, Carmen Jones, and James Baldwin’s Blues for Mister Charlie.
With the new cast set and ready to go, “Where No Man Has Gone Before” started shooting on July 21, 1965, and was not completed until January 1966, costing $330,000 to produce. Needless to say, the network was eager to see what it had been waiting for.
Roddenberry and his team were on tenterhooks; would NBC reject this effort, too? In February, the word came through: Star Trek would debut in December, with the network committed to sixteen episodes. It was time to start producing the series. With a budget of roughly $180,000 an episode, it was going to be quite a ride.
Early on, the idea of incorporating the rejected “Cage” pilot into a two-part episode was put forward as a means of relieving the expected time-and-budget crunch. Set building, prop design, and, of course, scripts all occupied a great deal of this preparation period.
Roddenberry attended the World Science Fiction Convention in Cleveland on September 4, 1966, where he showed “Where No Man Has Gone Before” to a suitably impressed audience of five hundred die-hard science fiction fans.
“Where No Man Has Gone Before” was different from the form that Star Trek would soon assume. Uhura had not yet joined the roster, nor had Yeoman Janice Rand; the ship’s doctor. Dr. Piper, was portrayed by Paul Fix; and Sulu was a physicist, not the helmsman. Several characters in key roles appeared only in the pilot.
What the Worldcon audience saw was the story of how the Enterprise tries to penetrate a mysterious purple energy barrier in space. Strange radiations affect the crew; Lieutenant Commander Gary Mitchell seems normal, but his eyes begin to glow silver. It soon becomes apparent that the radiation has boosted his latent extrasensory perceptions to a previously undreamed-of level. Mitchell’s mental powers begin to accelerate, and Spock becomes convinced that Mitchell is a threat to the Enterprise and prompts Kirk to kill him.
But the Captain cannot bring himself to terminate an old college buddy from Starfleet Academy. Ultimately, Kirk and Mitchell battle to the death in a harsh landscape altered by Mitchell’s godlike powers. At one point, Mitchell produces a tombstone bearing the name of James R. Kirk, proving that even a nearly omnipotent being can get someone’s middle initial wrong. Finally, Kirk destroys Mitchell, but it is a hollow triumph, as he has killed the friend he once had.
The audience gave Roddenberry a standing ovation; he knew then that he was on the right track.
Finally, on September 8, 1966, Star Trek premiered on NBC. (Actually, the first broadcast was two days earlier, on Canadian television.) The episode aired was not the pilot (that was shown two weeks later) but the sixth episode filmed, “The Man Trap,” perhaps best known for its piteous Salt Vampire nemesis.
This episode was most notable for introducing audiences to a character who was not actually in the pilot, but who would quickly become an indispensable part of the Star Trek myth: Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy.
This seemingly cynical but strongly compassionate humanitarian would provide a constant counterpoint to the cold logic of Spock, and their battle of wits would soon become legendary.
Fed up with protocol, distrustful of technology (especially transporters), and wary of dehumanizing influences, in a way McCoy represents the probable reaction of an intelligent twentieth-century man cast forward into the twenty-third century. He has his roots very much in our present. Veteran actor DeForest Kelley was called upon to bring this crucial character to life.
DeForest Kelley was born in Atlanta, but bucked his Baptist minister father’s desire for him to become a doctor and opted for acting instead. Moving to Long Beach, California, he continued the radio work he had begun in Georgia, and also worked as an elevator operator.
In the navy during World War Two, he worked in training films, where he was spotted by a talent scout from Paramount. He worked as a contract player at Paramount Studios for two and a half years. About this time, a fortune-teller told him that he would not achieve success until after he passed the age of forty, which proved to be true!
Then, in 1948, he went to New York City and worked in television and on stage. Returning to Hollywood, he worked extensively in westerns, both on television shows such as Gunsmoke, Rawhide, and Bonanza and in movies such as Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and Warlock. For Gene Roddenberry, Kelley starred in two pilots: 1960’s Free. Free, Free Montgomery, in which he played a famous, controversial defense attorney named Jake Early, and the unsold Police Story (no relation to the later TV series).
With the key elements in place and the show finally in production and on the air, Star Trek was now more than a dream in Gene Roddenberry’s mind. It was a reality. Variety insisted that the series wouldn’t work; time has certainly proven the newspaper wrong.
CHAPTER THREE: (#ulink_fcaff8d4-da71-5e70-b08d-0b7ae21e3ba9)
ONWARD TO THE STARS, WITH HOPE (#ulink_fcaff8d4-da71-5e70-b08d-0b7ae21e3ba9)
(THE FIRST SEASON) (#ulink_fcaff8d4-da71-5e70-b08d-0b7ae21e3ba9)
A week before Star Trek premiered, the Buffalo Evening News previewed new shows:
A 400-man space ship, the U.S.S. Enterprise, cruises the TV universe this fall starting Thursday night in Star Trek, NBC’s expensive full-hour science fiction adventure series about puny man exploring the wide blue yonder. Starring the talented Canadian actor William Shatner as spaceship commander Kirk, assisted by brainy, elf-eared Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Star Trek goes back and forth in time, jousting with alien spirits, bewildering viruses and ordinary human conflicts on a never-ending trip to other worlds.
In this article, both NBC and Shatner are already defending the show against criticism, days before it even premieres. NBC tries to cast Star Trek as action/adventure rather than science fiction. At a time when Bonanza was a hit and science fiction television was represented by Lost in Space, their concern was well-founded! Shatner insists, “We’re not going to be like the children’s show Lost in Space, where characters battle villains in eerie costumes. … We deal with human conflicts against a science fiction background.” Some of these conflicts will include Kirk’s Jekyll and Hyde battle with his own self, the attack of a bizarre virus that robs humans of will, and Mr. Spock’s battle to be a true Vulcan and control his feelings.
Star Trek promises to deliver new and exotic technology, fun gadgets, and wild special effects:
The Earth men have a few dandy tools and gadgets on display, all calculated to catch the fancy of young viewers. Captain Kirk and crew make excellent use of laser beam guns, jolting enemies with the sizzle of cutting light. They listen and understand various alien languages by way of walkie-talkie interpreters that translate foreign words in a split second.
From these clumsy attempts to describe Star Trek’s technology, it would have been hard to imagine that much of its terminology would actually one day be incorporated into common daily usage. The only clue is that according to Shatner, there is already a company working on a real-life walkie-talkie interpreter! “That’s the point of our show—science fiction projections into the future based on what is possible today.”
The Buffalo Evening News places Star Trek a step above Lost in Space and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, but calls it a Twilight Zone set in space. Of course, a show this new would be hard to categorize—Roddenberry even once tried to sell the idea as a space western!
The News comes out in praise of Shatner, both for his bold plugs for the new show and for his previous acting credits, including Shakespeare, Broadway, and the short-lived TV series For the People. Fortunately for the actor, the new show would enjoy a longer TV life than his first effort; in fact, it would make him world-famous.
“The Man Trap,” written by Twilight Zone alumnus George Clayton Johnson, kicked off the Star Trek series with a story featuring Dr. McCoy’s apparent reunion with his old flame Nancy, now married to archaeologist Robert Crater. Unfortunately, Nancy is actually dead and is being impersonated by a creature that lives off the body salt of other living creatures.
Things are further compounded by its ability to take on any form. McCoy is faced with the agonizing truth in a story that is quite poignant and moving. The good doctor’s futuristic medical supplies came out of the prop search for this episode, as futuristic salt shakers were sought out but then discarded for fear that they wouldn’t be recognized as such. The props department, always on a budget, converted the salt shakers into medical devices.
The next episode aired, “Charlie X,” featured Robert Walker, Jr., as a space foundling whose hidden psychic powers are ill matched with his adolescent need for attention and approval, in a story about loneliness and alienation. In hindsight, the story has more than passing similarities to the central character in Robert Heinlein’s 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land.
“Where No Man Has Gone Before” was the third episode broadcast.
Things really hit their stride with “The Naked Time,” which gave the Star Trek cast a chance to show off their range when an alien microbe opens up the ship’s crew to their innermost personal conflicts. Kirk’s love of the Enterprise wars with his knowledge that the command keeps him from having a normal life. Spock’s dual heritage leads to even more divided behavior, and he is seen to actually weep.
The ship, meanwhile, finds itself in danger of being destroyed, but is saved through the simple expedient of a little minor time travel, the first for the series. This episode also introduces Nurse Christine Chapel and her unrequited love for the unreachable Mr. Spock.
“The Enemy Within” gives Shatner a shot at strutting his stuff when a transporter malfunction divides him into two diametrically opposed selves. Believe it or not, this episode first explored on television the much-abused concept of the “evil twin,” and this is perhaps the only time on TV that it was ever explored with any thought or imagination. Hack TV writers reduced the idea to a trivial cliché in the seventies and eighties on countless television shows.
“Mudd’s Women,” one of the three scripts proposed for the second pilot submission, introduces Roger C. Carmel as the rascally space swindler Harry Mudd. This also marks the first time the Enterprise is in dire need of fresh dilithium crystals. Furthermore, Mudd actually gives another character a pleasure drug—a fact overlooked by the network censor!
On October 15, 1966 (two days after “Mudd’s Women”), TV Guide featured a profile of William Shatner. Entitled “No One Ever Upsets The STAR,” it details Shatner’s first taste of real fame.
William Shatner, Star Trek’s 35-year-old Montreal-born ex-Hollywood holdout, sits in his plush Desilu dressing room force-feeding himself on five pages of rush dialogue. He is interrupted first by a small man bearing a new-style jacket on a hanger, and then an intently solicitous press agent, and then an eager-to-please youth who asks in the manner of a bellhop addressing the man in the presidential suite, “Would you like something cold to drink?”
Shatner appears to love all this attention, and comments on his new attitude, “Before, I always thought that kind of, uh, toadying was beneath human dignity. But for the first time I’m able to see the reason for it. These little attentions do help. It makes life easier for me.” Later he continues, “I’ve gotten great insight into the omnipotence of the series lead. Everybody does his best not to upset the star. It’s an almost unique position few in the entertainment world achieve … it’s like absolute power.”
Shatner then joins Leonard Nimoy, already wearing his famous ears, guest star Robert Walker, Jr., and director Larry Dobkin for a rehearsal just outside his dressing room. Shatner insists on these off-the-set run-throughs, an innovation that earns him the applause of most of the directors. The actor evidently has firm ideas about the show itself, and when an associate producer arrives with late, late script changes, Shatner gets testy. (Later, he persuades Roddenberry to outlaw these last-minute changes.)
Not content just to be the star, Shatner from the beginning would approach Roddenberry with his comments about the script. Later, he presented Gene with a script he himself had written. Roddenberry was impressed—“I caught myself wishing I could write that well. …”—but not inspired to buy the script. Working with such an assertive actor at first seemed ominous, “but it wasn’t so bad. I have never had more intelligent suggestions, and we used all of them,” Roddenberry said.
Shatner took to stardom like a natural from the very first, and in the years since that first season, he has even realized his early dream of writing and directing.
“What Are Little Girls Made Of?” again features two Kirks (Shatner must have loved this!) when he is duplicated, in android form, by Nurse Chapel’s fiancé, Dr. Roger Korby. She’s been searching for him, but he seems to have gone just a little bit ’round the bend, and is intent on taking over the Enterprise and populating the universe with his androids, one of whom, Ruk, is portrayed by Ted Cassidy (Lurch on The Addams Family). This episode has a strange, eerie quality about it, and writer Robert Bloch, who wrote the novel on which the film Psycho was based, peppers it with arcane references to aspects of H. P. Lovecraft’s mythos. Kirk’s brother George is mentioned in this episode.
“Miri” brings Kirk and crew to a planet remarkably like Earth, where ancient children live long lives until their long-delayed puberty causes them to sicken and die. Kirk is beaten up by children in this episode; McCoy finds a cure for the aging disease before almost succumbing to it himself.
“Dagger of the Mind” involves Kirk’s discovery of the abuses of power at a supposedly humane penal colony. This introduces the Vulcan mind meld, which conveniently serves as a means to avoid a lengthy expository conversation with a mentally deranged character.
“The Corbomite Maneuver” was actually the third episode filmed, as well as being the first one to include McCoy as a character. Here Kirk encounters a massive, threatening spaceship that is not what it seems to be.
The next two broadcasts consisted of a two-parter, “The Menagerie,” which incorporated much of the footage from the first pilot, “The Cage.” Here Spock goes to great lengths to take Captain Pike, crippled in an accident, back to Talos IV so that he can live out his life in a happy illusion created by the Talosians. Through flashbacks, Spock explains his actions to Kirk and the others.
By this point in the series, one thing was crystal clear: Mr. Spock, originally a supporting character, was becoming as popular as the lead, Captain Kirk. At times, Shatner even felt obliged to remind some series scriptwriters that he was the captain; he later acknowledged that there was sometimes friction between him and Leonard, but made certain to indicate that this was a thing of the past: “We went through that fire together and today we are fast friends. Leonard is an honest man and a fine craftsman.” Still, at the time Shatner was so concerned over the situation that he counted his lines in each new script to be certain that he had more than Nimoy. If he didn’t, either more were added for him at his insistence, or some of Nimoy’s lines were cut.
Norman Spinrad once related the story of his visit to the set of the episode he had scripted, “The Doomsday Machine.” He witnessed the director trying to come up with an alternative way for Nimoy to react to Shatner in a scene because for Nimoy to utter a line would have given him one line too many, as far as Shatner was concerned.
But by the end of 1966, Star Trek was already in trouble. NBC was dissatisfied with the Nielsen ratings, and was, as usual, uncertain of how to categorize the series. The show had already generated a highly positive response in the science fiction subculture, of course, and so Roddenberry turned to Harlan Ellison for help. Perhaps if the network knew just how large an audience science fiction fandom represented, it might very well see the show in a new light.
And so, Ellison sent out five thousand letters urging science fiction fans to press NBC with a letter-writing campaign. Dated December 1, 1966, Ellison’s missive bore the letterhead of “The Committee,” an impressive listing of names: Paul Anderson, Robert Bloch, Lester Del Rey, Ellison, Philip Jose Farmer, Frank Herbert, Richard Matheson, Theodore Sturgeon, and A. E. Van Vogt. Thus Ellison, who would later be less than keen on his involvement with Star Trek (“The City on the Edge of Forever” had yet to be filmed), was in fact responsible for the very first letter campaign organized to benefit the series.
This, of course, was in the days when the Nielsen ratings presupposed a bland, all-encompassing uniformity belonging to the “average” TV viewer. With this sort of a priori approach, it is hardly surprising that the appeal of Star Trek did not dovetail with the Nielsen company’s concepts, and hence eluded its comprehension. But in those pre-demographics days, before the variety of the American mind-set was taken into consideration, the Nielsen ratings were the voice of God as far as the networks were concerned. Those were the numbers that determined a show’s advertising value and marketability, as well as its popularity, despite whatever evidence reality had to offer to the contrary.
And evidence there was. The stars of Star Trek had become wildly popular with the public … almost, if not quite, overnight. The ratings problem seems almost ironic when held up against this fact.
In 1966, Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner were invited to appear in Hollywood’s annual Christmas parade. This newfound fame was no guarantee of respect, however, for while the parade announcer got Shatner’s name correct, he introduced the other Star Trek star as “Leonard Nimsy.” Despite this gaffe, Nimoy was, for the first time in his life, frequently recognized on the street, and constantly besieged for autographs.
He took it all in good humor, although he soon became weary of smart-aleck fans asking him where he’d left his ears. Fan mail began to pour in, too, a great deal of it from younger viewers.
All of this was uncharted territory for Nimoy. At first, he was determined to answer all his fan mail by himself. Thirty or so letters a week was no big deal, after all. Unfortunately for this plan, the numbers began to increase every week, until thousands of messages were pouring in. He had to hire an assistant, Teresa Victor, to help him cope with his popularity. The other Star Trek stars made similar arrangements.
With the success of the show, the principal actors were better off financially than they had been in their entire careers. Nimoy used this money to upgrade his personal transportation, and replaced his battered old car with a new Buick luxury auto. Shatner went for something sportier, while DeForest Kelley bought a Thunderbird—which he managed to ram into Nimoy’s Buick one day at the end of shooting. Things proceeded amicably, but passersby were probably a bit nonplussed to see a normal-looking man exchanging insurance information with Leonard, who was still rigged up in full Spock regalia.
There was also a downside to Nimoy’s newfound celebrity. Early in Star Trek’s run, NBC arranged for him to be the grand marshal of Medford, Oregon’s annual Pear Blossom Festival; this was to be his first real promotional trip, and he was quite unprepared for the chaos that would surround it. The parade went without a hitch—but it had also been announced that Nimoy would sign autographs in a small park at the end of the parade route. A crowd, with a large number of young people, actually followed Leonard’s itinerary. By the time he reached the park, it was swarming with immense numbers of people. The lone park employee was swamped by this madness; traffic was completely fouled up. In the end, Medford police had to make their way in and “rescue” Nimoy from the friendly mob.
Eventually, it reached the point where people actually turned down the chance for a Spock/Nimoy appearance. Macy’s, the famous New York department store, declined to have Nimoy appear to promote one of his record albums. The stone honestly admitted that it could not handle the sort of crowds which would undoubtedly attend such an event.
Nimoy himself turned down many requests for public appearances because they asked for him to wear the ears in public; he estimated losing about fifty thousand dollars in passing up these offers.
His popularity continued to manifest itself in a bewildering variety of ways. Spock was the only Star Trek character to merit solo reproduction as a model kit. While Kirk and Sulu did join Spock as small figures in AMT’s Enterprise Bridge model, a six-inch-tall Spock was featured in a larger diorama kit that featured him facing off against a three-headed alien serpent. (In 1975, Spock and other Star Trek characters would have the dubious honor of being reproduced as ice pop molds!)
His face also appeared on a variety of series-related toy packages over the years, including original show style phaser rifles and the ever-popular Star Trek disc gun. “I Grok Spock” buttons, alluding to Robert Heinlein’s classic 1961 science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land, began to crop up as well.
By this point, the NBC executives who had wanted to give Spock the axe were now acting as if they’d been for the character all along. Leonard’s place in the public consciousness was rock-solid, and the first season wasn’t even over yet!
“The Conscience of the King” involves Kirk in efforts to determine whether a well-known Shakespearian actor is actually the man responsible for a massacre some years earlier; Kirk is one of the few survivors. An intriguing study of guilt and self-punishment, with an intriguing plot twist or two, it is ably supported by actor Arnold Moss in a very demanding role.
“Balance of Terror” introduces the Romulans, who have returned after a century to harass the Federation with the assistance of their new cloaking devices. This story, essentially a submarine movie set in space, featured Mark Lenard as the Romulan commander. Lenard would, of course, play Spock’s father Sarek in a future episode.
“Shore Leave,” written by Theodore Sturgeon, prefigures the movie Westworld by some years, as the crew beams down for R&R on a planet that seems to be deadly but is actually an artifact programmed to custom-tailor amusements for each individual. This marks the first time a leading Star Trek character dies, only to return intact. (This time around it’s McCoy.)
“The Galileo Seven” brings Spock to the forefront as he commands a shuttlecraft which crashes, leaving him, Scotty, and Dr. McCoy stranded on a hostile planet. Is his logic sufficient to save the castaways, or must he learn to look at things from an irrational perspective?
“The Squire of Gothos” is Trelane, who traps the Enterprise and her crew to be his playthings; he is a powerful, godlike being, but also a child, ultimately answerable to his parents … though not before shaking up the resolute Captain Kirk a bit.
“Arena” adapts the classic science fiction story by Fredric L. Brown and casts Kirk in the lead, as the captain and the lizardlike Gorn are chosen as champions of their respective races by the meddlesome superior Metrons.
“Tomorrow Is Yesterday” is the first solid time-travel story for Star Trek, in which the Enterprise is hurled back to the twentieth century by the gravitational field of a black hole. Matters are complicated when an air force jet spots the Enterprise and Kirk must decide what to do with pilot John Christopher.
In “Court Martial,” Captain Kirk is tried for criminal negligence which resulted in the death of an officer; the redoubtable Mr. Spock applies his logic to the case and ultimately proves that the officer is really alive, having staged his own death in order to satisfy a personal grudge against Kirk.
Sulu gets to go nuts on-screen in “The Return of the Archons,” in which the Enterprise investigates the planet Beta III, which is ruled by a mysterious computer. (The last Federation ship to visit, a century earlier, was called the Archon; hence the returning Archons of the title are Kirk and his crew.) The outsiders are threatened with absorption, but Kirk ultimately talks the ancient computer into destroying itself. Spock actually hits someone in this episode.
“Space Seed” introduces Ricardo Montalban as Khan, a late-twentieth-century fanatic who, with his followers, has been adrift in a “sleeper ship” for hundreds of years. The Enterprise revives the sleepers only to be taken over by Khan, who uses the infatuation of Marla McGivers, a young woman officer, to gain control by cutting off the air to the bridge. At the end he is defeated (Kirk retaliates with knockout gas in the ventilation system) and chooses exile on an unexplored planet for himself and his people. McGivers chooses to join him.
“A Taste of Armageddon” draws Kirk into a peculiar war between the planets Eminiar Seven and Vendikar: battles are no longer fought, but computers do the fighting and determine the casualties. Victims in the affected areas then willingly report for euthanasia.
Kirk is appalled by this, of course—and all the more so when the Enterprise is decreed a casualty of war. Kirk and crew destroy the computers and leave the two worlds faced with the options of real war on the one hand and peaceful negotiations on the other.
“This Side of Paradise” takes the Enterprise to a colony that should have died of radiation poisoning years earlier, but survived because of spores on the planet Omicron Ceti III that also provide a constant sense of euphoria. The crew all fall prey to this, rendering them unfit for (and uninterested in) their duties. Foremost among these is Spock, who once again has his emotions liberated, as in “The Naked Time.” He falls in love with a young botanist whom he had known before. Kirk must discover a way to get his crew back; Spock’s happy romance is unfortunately short-lived. (He is also referred to as a Vulcanian on the show for the first and last time, since the terminology still hadn’t been standardized!)
About this time, in its issue of March 4, 1967, TV Guide featured a profile of Leonard Nimoy.
It could only happen in America: where else could a son of Russian immigrants become a television star with pointed ears?
The article then describes the picture of the “Spock Cut” in Max Nimoy’s Boston barber shop, where he would proudly point out his son to all customers; Nimoy’s mother, Dora, was sometimes interrupted at her job in a department store by people wanting to look at Spock’s mother.
According to TV Guide, much of Leonard Nimoy’s fan mail was from younger viewers, who thought Spock was “cool.” Roddenberry had a more philosophical idea: “We’re all imprisoned within ourselves. We’re all aliens on this strange planet, so people find identification with Spock.” Since it was the 1960s, it’s no surprise that so many young people felt they had more in common with a Vulcan than with their own parents!
Some fans had other ideas, and to many Spock became a sex symbol. A drama school colleague, actress Evelyn Ward, believed Nimoy’s own “great animal magnetism” was the reason for Spock’s popularity. Hidden for years under the heavy makeup of his Native American and Mexican roles, Nimoy’s charm was lying in wait for Gene Roddenberry’s genius—and a pair of pointed ears—to bring it out.
Hero for youth or sex symbol, Leonard Nimoy attempted to give Spock more depth and character. Spock was more than ears and eyebrows, largely because of Nimoy’s attitude: “I don’t want to play a creature or a computer. Spock gives me a chance to say something about the human race.” From the start, Nimoy hoped that the Spock role would bring him bigger projects: “I have all sorts of things I want to do. Perhaps this show will give me the wherewithal to do some of them.” But for now, he said, “I’m having a ball. It’s the first steady job I’ve had in seventeen years.”
Offscreen, Nimoy looked pretty much like an ordinary guy, if you overlook the “Spock Cut.” Quiet and serious, he even insisted that people call him Leonard, not “Lenny.” Though nicknames are almost required on a set, Nimoy managed to preserve a truly Vulcan dignity, regardless of whether he was being Spock or just plain Leonard Nimoy.
“The Devil in the Dark” is the Horta, a silicon-based creature that has been killing miners in the underground colony of Janus VI. The Enterprise is called in on the crisis, but Spock discovers, by means of the Vulcan mind meld, that it is actually a mother protecting its young, in this case spherical eggs which had previously seemed only peculiar geological phenomena. The real conflict of this story is the need to overcome the fear and hostility of the human miners when they are faced with something new and incomprehensible.
The Horta costume, designed and worn by Janos Prohaska, was originally used in the last Outer Limits episode, “The Probe,” but was customized and refurbished for its appearance on Star Trek.
“Errand of Mercy” sends Kirk to the peaceful, pastoral world of Organia, which is in danger of Klingon attack; Klingon/Federation relations have become increasingly strained, and war seems imminent. When Commander Kor and his Klingon force invade and take over, they arrest Spock and Kirk, but the Organians themselves seem unperturbed by the occupation. Still, the Organians rescue Kirk and Spock, and avert war by the use of their previously unsuspected mental powers, which render all weapons ineffective. They are in fact completely evolved beings whose human forms were a disguise, and they promise to keep a watchful eye on the enemy factions. In spite of the major plot element represented by the Organians and their ability to force an end to war, they were never used again in any subsequent Star Trek episode.
“The Alternative Factor” involves the battle between Lazarus and his antimatter double Lazarus; the fate of the universe hangs in the balance, and once again hinges on the need for dilithium crystals.
“The City on the Edge of Forever” is generally regarded as one of the best Star Trek episodes; it is also perhaps the episode with the most interesting background history. Harlan Ellison’s original script was rewritten by Gene Roddenberry, perhaps unnecessarily, and has become a long-standing source of annoyance for the writer. Roddenberry’s reasons for the rewrite have become somewhat clouded with the passage of time; he has claimed that Ellison’s script included huge crowd scenes and other factors which would have drastically exceeded the show’s budget (not exactly true), and even that the script had Scotty dealing drugs!
Ellison’s original draft did hinge on a low-ranking crew member dealing in illegal drugs, but it was not Scotty by any means; perhaps Roddenberry was simply aghast that someone might dare to show a seamy underside to his perfect human civilization of the future. The script as written by Ellison was published in the now-out-of-print Six Science Fiction Plays, edited by Roger Ellwood, and is due to be published again soon … with an extensive introduction by Ellison detailing the controversy in all its gory details. But, despite Ellison’s disavowals of the filmed product, his original story still shines through Roddenberry’s rewrite, and the story retains its fascination.
In the story as filmed, Dr. McCoy accidentally injects himself with a powerful experimental drug and becomes completely unhinged. (Apparently Roddenberry would rather impugn the good doctor’s basic competency than allow the blame to fall on a dishonest drug-smuggling crewman.) Meanwhile, Kirk and Spock are investigating a mysterious time portal, the Guardian of Forever, on the planet below.
McCoy beams down and leaps through the portal, disappearing into the past; the Enterprise suddenly ceases to exist, leaving Kirk and Spock stranded in a distant corner of the universe. They must go to the past and undo whatever it is McCoy has done to disrupt history. In 1930s New York, Kirk falls in love with Edith Keeler (Joan Collins), not realizing that she is the key to their predicament.
Spock manages to create a time-scanning device with his tricorder and the primitive technology of the period, and ultimately discovers that Keeler will, if she lives, lead a pacifist movement that will keep the USA out of World War Two. The Nazis will win the war and make history on Earth a veritable hell; thus, Keeler’s humanitarian impulses contain the seeds of humanity’s destruction.
Kirk must then force himself to keep the still delirious McCoy from saving Edith from her death under the wheels of a car. History is restored to its proper form—but not without some wrenching decisions for Kirk.
This was to be DeForest Kelley’s favorite episode of the series. According to him, Edith was to have been the key character, but the story was rewritten to give McCoy a greater role.
“Operation: Annihilate!” features William Shatner in a second role: that of the dead body of Kirk’s older brother George, complete with a mustache and gray hair. This personal tragedy is discovered on the planet Deneva, where alien parasites are attacking humans and driving them to excruciatingly painful deaths. This episode’s effectiveness is somewhat enhanced by the fact that the creatures look like enormous airborne fried eggs. Held to a wall with electromagnets, these creatures fell to the ground quite convincingly when hit by phaser fire.
This episode brought the first season to its end. Leonard Nimoy would be nominated for Best Supporting Actor in a Dramatic Series for this year’s work.
Between seasons, in its issue of July 15, 1967, Nichelle Nichols was profiled in TV Guide.
Although her presence on the show at all was considered daring, the actress felt strongly that her character was too limited. She told TV Guide, “The producers admit being very foolish and very lax in the way they’ve used me—or not used me.” Gene Coon, a producer, defended Uhura’s small role: “I thought it would be very ungallant to imperil a beautiful girl with twenty-toed snaggle-toothed monsters from outer space.”
Nichols, however, did not feel imperiled by additional dialogue, and by the end of the first season had increased her dialogue quotient. No longer confined to “All hailing frequencies open, sir,” Nichols also began ad-libbing, including the famous line, “Mr. Spock, if I have to say ‘Hailing frequencies open’ one more time, I’ll blow my top! Why don’t you tell me I’m a lovely young woman?”
TV Guide saw this development as more important than it turned out to be, alas, as borne out by a careful examination of the seventy-nine known episodes of Star Trek. But Roddenberry commented to TV Guide at the time, “We’re thinking about taking her down on the planets next season. Maybe we’ll have wardrobe make her an appropriate costume for planet wear.” In fact, female characters in addition to Uhura eventually beamed down to planets, still wearing the daring miniskirt uniform and getting involved in dangerous, often romantic, situations.
At the end of the first season, however, Nichols was so dismayed by her character’s limitations that she considered quitting the show. But when she met civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., he told her to stay with it; just appearing on the show as a bridge officer in a position of responsibility, he told her, she was providing a positive message that would be beneficial both to blacks and to the perception of blacks by others. (And somewhere in Brooklyn, the girl who would someday take the stage name of Whoopi Goldberg was inspired by Lieutenant Uhura.)
Of the famous tension between Spock and McCoy, DeForest Kelley tried to use elements of comedy and drama in the relationship, as related in a 1974 interview with Joseph Gulick:
“I never wanted it thought for a minute that McCoy truly disliked [Spock]. McCoy had great respect for Spock, and I thought and felt that the best way was to somehow lighten it with an expression or a line. I did that purposefully. I didn’t want to lose fans by being too hard with Spock under certain circumstances. McCoy liked him. It became a kind of battle of wits.”
The on-screen battle of wits came about through hard work offscreen. Kelley and Nimoy discussed their scenes at great length, working on how they should be acted. According to Kelley, all the actors’ deep caring for the show made for a unique taping situation. Unlike other shows, where actors would read a book or the trade papers between scenes, the crew of the Enterprise worked with the producer, breaking down future scenes and working on their parts—more like old-fashioned live New York television than Hollywood shows. Kelley explained, “This had a great bearing on the show. No one was out just running around or loafing or sleeping in a dressing room. They were preparing for the next scene.”
Like the crew of the Enterprise, Star Trek’s cast often worked seven days, with grueling schedules often keeping them on the set until 8:30 or 9 P.M. That first season, Nimoy and Kelley reported for makeup around 6 A.M. Between their getting home at 10 P.M., then reporting back to the set at 6 A.M., a real starship crew may have had more time for R&R.
But by the second season the schedule had improved, and Kelley admits, “The first year was pure hell, but I think we did our best work in the first year when I look back.”
CHAPTER FOUR: (#ulink_3f3d6615-7e91-5a9b-af92-99d665863305)
STEADY AS SHE GOES (#ulink_3f3d6615-7e91-5a9b-af92-99d665863305)
(THE SECOND SEASON) (#ulink_3f3d6615-7e91-5a9b-af92-99d665863305)
During the spring and summer of 1967, while the first season of Star Trek was in reruns, word began to spread that the next season would feature a visit to Spock’s home planet, Vulcan. Needless to say, speculation was rife. That year in New York, World Science Fiction Convention attendees were the first to see the promised episode, “Amok Time,” as well as the first season’s blooper reel.
“Amok Time,” written by veteran science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon (who also wrote the first season’s “Shore Leave”), proved to be well worth the wait. Keying in on the interest in Spock’s emotional chinks, the story opened with the Vulcan officer acting decidedly strange and sulky.
McCoy determines that Spock will die if something is not done about the physical changes he’s undergoing, and Spock admits, not to the doctor but to Kirk, that he is undergoing Pon farr, the Vulcan mating cycle, which will, indeed, be fatal if he doesn’t get to Vulcan and undergo the proper rituals posthaste. Kirk bucks orders and reroutes the Enterprise to Vulcan.
The rituals involved are remnants of Vulcan’s barbaric past (one wonders if they’re really prudes except on these occasions). T’Pau, a dignified Vulcan leader, appears, as does the first use of the Vulcan ritual greeting “Live long and prosper.” (Leonard Nimoy provided the accompanying hand gesture, which he “borrowed” from an important Jewish religious ritual; congregations were supposed to look away when the rabbi made this gesture, but Nimoy, as a young boy, couldn’t help but peek!) Spock’s would-be bride (by long-standing prearrangement, of course) T’Pring adds danger to the proceedings when she demands that Spock must engage in combat for her hand, and chooses Kirk as her champion. The fight must be to the death. Fortunately, McCoy manages to set up Kirk’s “death” in order to end the fight. Spock snaps out of Pon farr thanks to this ruse, and is greatly relieved to find Kirk still alive; T’Pau gets Kirk out of any potential hot water by asking the Federation to divert the Enterprise to Vulcan.
Vulcan was presented here in sparse but effective visual terms; T’Pau, as portrayed by Peter Lorre’s onetime wife Celia Lovsky, carries the entire implied culture in her bearing. Sturgeon provided many small but telling touches regarding ethics and customs of the planet Vulcan; photography and music added immensely to this episode. The Worldcon audience was suitably impressed.
The cast of Star Trek was altered to include a new character in the second season. The network was pressing for a character to rope in the “youth” market, something along the lines of Davy Jones of The Monkees. A press release (later revealed to have exaggerated the truth by fabricating the incident) claimed that the show was criticized by the Russian Communist newspaper Pravda for, among other things, its lack of a Russian character in the Enterprise’s otherwise multinational crew. And so to kill two birds with one stone, Roddenberry reportedly created the character of Ensign Pavel Chekov, a young officer with a heavy accent, to satisfy Soviet angst. Signing on as Chekov was actor Walter Koenig.
The second season of Star Trek began on September 15, 1967. The episode shown was “Amok Time,” which also marked the first time DeForest Kelley received billing in the opening credits of the show.
“Who Mourns for Adonais?” brings the Enterprise into conflict with no less a personage than the Greek god Apollo, actually the last of a band of immortals who once visited Earth and lived on Mount Olympus. Scotty has a romantic interest here, but she falls for the god instead. Fortunately, Kirk manages to obtain her aid in destroying the temple that provides the god with his omnipotent powers, and Apollo destroys his own physical form and lets the Enterprise go. (In James Blish’s adaptation of this episode, a final epilogue note from the original script is retained: the young woman is found to have become pregnant by the god Apollo.)
‘The Changeling” is Nomad, an ancient Earth probe which has merged with an alien device and is convinced that its mission is to destroy imperfect life-forms. Unfortunately, humans fit its criteria perfectly. Fortunately, it thinks Kirk is the scientist Roykirk, the scientist who created it. Thus, out of deference to Kirk, it repairs Scotty after killing him. It is still a threat, but Kirk manages to trick it into destroying itself. (In retrospect, this seems to have been one of his specialties.)
“Mirror, Mirror” casts Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, and Uhura into an alternative universe where the Federation has developed along bloodthirsty, Klingonesque lines. Meanwhile, their counterparts from the alternate universe arrive on the regular Enterprise, where Spock has the sense to toss them all in the brig. In the alternate universe, Kirk and crew meet, among others, a brutal and scarred Sulu, an ambitious Chekov, a “Captain’s Woman,” and a bearded Spock. Kirk uses logic to win Spock’s assistance in his efforts to return home.
“The Apple” is the gift Kirk brings to the peaceful inhabitants of a dangerous world where their existence is protected by an ancient computer which also has retarded their social development. Kirk decides to violate Starfleet General Order Number One, known as the Prime Directive, which forbids Starfleet interference in a planet’s domestic affairs. Kirk blows up the computer, saving the Enterprise but destroying the society of the planet, Gamma Trianguli VI.
“The Doomsday Machine” was shot from a script by Norman Spinrad and featured William Windom as Commodore Matthew Decker, the sole survivor of the crew of the U.S.S. Constellation (an AMT model kit, apparently “damaged” with a Zippo lighter). His crew was on a planet destroyed by the device of the title, which seems to be a planet-zapping weapon apparently built by a long-dead civilization. Decker, a latter-day Captain Ahab in space, is obsessed with destroying it, and hijacks the Enterprise to this end.
When Kirk regains control, Decker steals a shuttlecraft and dies trying to destroy the weapon. Kirk himself then flies the Constellation into the device’s maw and sets it to self-destruct, transporting out in barely the nick of time and finishing off the device for good.
“Catspaw” was aired, appropriately enough, just before Halloween 1967 (on October 27, to be exact). Written by Robert Bloch, it involves the efforts of two shape-changing aliens to frighten the Enterprise crew with all the accoutrements of human superstition: magic, skeletons, witches, and the like. At one point, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are chained in a dungeon; Kirk turns to address the doctor as “Bones,” only to find a skeleton dangling in his friend’s place. This macabre humor is further developed by Spock’s inability (fortunate in these circumstances) to perceive any of the illusions thrown his way as frightening in any way, shape, or form. A final touch of pathos is introduced at the end when the aliens assume their true shapes and are found to be feeble, helpless creatures.
“I, Mudd” brings back Roger C. Carmel as Harry Mudd, currently serving as emperor of a planet of advanced androids. Of course, the androids realize what a buffoon he is, but they are using him to further their own plans of universal domination, which they intend to begin by stealing the Enterprise. Kirk and crew, including Spock, bewilder the androids by acting in absurd ways, and Mudd, who has created for himself a beautiful android harem, is punished by being afflicted with innumerable android replicas of the nagging, shrewish wife he’d abandoned long before.
“Metamorphosis” introduces Zefram Cochrane, the inventor of the warp drive, who was believed to have died a century before at the age of eighty-seven. It seems that he met a nebulous space creature who has kept him alive ever since; it has diverted the Galileo shuttlecraft to his location in order to provide him with human companionship. Cochrane begins to fall in love with the terminally ill Nancy Hedford, a Federation functionary who was being taken to the Enterprise. Kirk uses a translator to communicate with the alien companion and discovers that it is in love with Cochrane. Cochrane is initially repulsed by this, but accepts it when the immortal being merges with the dying woman, who stays with the scientist as the Enterprise resumes its course.
“Journey to Babel” finally introduces Spock’s parents. the Vulcan Sarek (Mark Lenard) and his human wife Amanda (Jane Wyatt). The occasion is a diplomatic mission. A ship is following the Enterprise; the Tellarite ambassador is murdered and Sarek is the prime suspect. Sarek needs a blood transfusion for a heart operation, but Spock must act as captain after an Andorian stabs Kirk. Kirk fakes his recovery so Spock can give blood. A battle with the ship results in its destruction. Kirk’s attacker kills himself after revealing that he killed the Tellarite ambassador, and Spock and his father achieve a rapprochement after nearly twenty years of estrangement.
In December 1967, another letter campaign came to the rescue of the again-beleaguered series. This one, orchestrated by fan Bjo Trimble and her husband, John, was even more successful than the first. Inspired by NBC’s decision to cancel the show, it generated an unprecedented number of letters, and would prove instrumental in clearing the way for the show’s third season.
New Year’s Day, 1968, saw the Star Trek season’s continuation with a perhaps unintentional Christmas touch: an episode wherein a child is born in a cave.
“Friday’s Child” opens with a briefing on how to get along in Capellan society. Kirk and crew are headed for Capella IV to head off a potential alliance between that world and the Klingons, but the good captain doesn’t seem to have learned much about the required protocol. The planet’s leader is deposed and his wife seems fated to die, but Kirk interferes and the Klingons turn the Capellans against him and his team. McCoy helps the woman deliver her baby, who is ultimately named the new ruler when the Klingons kill the latest ruler; the child is named “Leonard James” after McCoy and Kirk—but Spock, not much for children, it seems, gets short shrift.
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