by Edward Gross
GENE RODDENBERRY
The ship’s transporters—which let the crew “beam” from place to place—really came out of a production need. I realized with this huge spaceship we’d come up with, which is practically the size of an aircraft carrier, that, number one, I would blow the whole budget of the show just in landing the thing on a planet. And second, it would take a long time to get into our stories, so the transporter idea was conceived so we could get our people down to the planet fast and easy, and get our story going by page two.
HOWARD A. ANDERSON
For the transporter effect, we added another element: a glitter effect in the dematerialization and rematerialization. To obtain the glitter effect, we used aluminum dust falling through a beam of high-intensity light. This was photographed on one of our stages at our Fairfax Avenue plant. In addition to making a matte of the figure to be transported, we also made an identically shaped matte of the falling particles of aluminum. Then, using the two mattes, we slowly dissolve the person, leaving only the glitter effect, then slowly dissolve the glitter effect to leave nothing but the empty chamber.
ROBERT BUTLER
Subsequently, after doing the pilot and executing it in the way we thought it should be done, I’d heard that NBC had said, “We believe this. We think there’s a show here, but we don’t understand it.” Apparently the network, at its level, was feeling exactly as I did.
In fact, a July 31, 1964, memo from the network to production prior to filming on the pilot expressed the following concerns that the pilot might already be too erudite for the average TV viewer. “Be certain there are enough explanations on the planet, the people, their ways and abilities so that even someone who is not a science-fiction aficionado can clearly understand and follow the story.” And second, “Can we do a little more to establish the spaceship in the beginning, possibly something which also helps establish the secondary characters a little better, too.”
GENE RODDENBERRY
The reason they turned it down was that it was too cerebral and there wasn’t enough action and adventure. “The Cage” didn’t end with a chase and a right cross to the jaw, the way all manly films were supposed to end. There were no female leads then—women in those days were just set dressing. So, another thing they felt was wrong with our film was that we had Majel as a female second-in-command of the vessel. It’s nice now, I’m sure, for the ladies to say, “Well, the men did it,” but in the test reports, the women in the audience were saying, “Who does she think she is?” They hated her. It is hard to believe that we have gone from a totally sexist society to where we are today—where all intelligent people certainly accept sexual equality. We’ve made progress.
MAJEL BARRETT
NBC wanted some changes after they saw “The Cage.” They felt that my position as Number One would have to be cut because no one would believe that a woman could hold the position of second-in-command.
GENE RODDENBERRY
Number One was originally the one with the cold, calculating, computerlike mind. Spock, at the start, was not quite the character he became. He was the science officer on the Enterprise, but he was sort of satanic. He even smiled and got mad. He had a catlike curiosity. When we had to eliminate a feminine Number One—I was told you could cast a woman in a secretary’s role or that of a housewife, but not in a position of command over men on even a twenty-third-century spaceship—I combined the two roles into one. Spock became the second-in-command, still the science officer but also the computerlike, logical mind never displaying emotion.
LEONARD NIMOY
Gene felt the format badly needed the alien Spock, even if the price was the acceptance of 1960s-style sexual inequality.
GENE RODDENBERRY
The idea of dropping Spock became a major issue. I felt that was the one fight I had to win, so I wouldn’t do the show unless we left him in. They said, “Fine, leave him in, but keep him in the background, will you?” And then when they put out the sales brochure when we eventually went to series, they carefully rounded Spock’s ears and made him look human so he wouldn’t scare off potential advertisers. Once the show had been on the air for six to eight weeks, of course, the audience reaction to Spock was very strong, and a new NBC vice president came to the West Coast and he called me in and said, “What’s the matter with you? You have this great character and you’re keeping him in the background?” And we pointed out the sales brochure and told him what NBC was going to do, and his only answer was, “I think I’m going to throw up.”
LEONARD NIMOY
A new pilot was written and Mr. Spock was in Number One’s place as second-in-command as well as having some of the woman’s computer-mind qualities. Vulcan unemotionalism and logic came into being.
GENE RODDENBERRY
When they initially wanted Spock dropped, it was one of those cases where you go home at night and pound your head against a wall and say, “How come I am the only one in the world that believes in it?” But I said I would not do a second pilot without Spock because I felt we had to have him for many reasons. I felt we couldn’t do a space show without at least one person on board who constantly reminded you that you were out in space and in a world of the future.
TRACY TORME (creative consultant, Star Trek: The Next Generation)
Gene told me how NBC wanted Spock off the original show, until he came up with the idea of a space cigarette that had green smoke and the network loved that. He hoped they would just forget about it, which they did, so he never used it, but he felt that had saved Spock from being taken off the show.
GENE RODDENBERRY
We had what they called a “childish concept”—an alien with pointy ears from another planet. People in those days were not talking about life-forms on other worlds. It was generally assumed by most sensible people that this is the place where life occurred and probably nowhere else. It would have been all right if this alien with pointy ears, this “silly creature,” had the biggest zap gun in existence, or the strength of a hundred men, that could be exciting. But his only difference from the others was he had an alien perspective on emotion and logic. And that didn’t make television executives jump up and yell “Yippee.”
MARGARET BONANNO (author, Star Trek: Burning Dreams)
The idea for Burning Dreams came from Simon & Schuster editor Marco Palmieri, who called me out of the blue and made the offer for me to write the definitive novel about Christopher Pike. I took that to mean a biography, from beginning to end, and that was exactly what Marco wanted. We knocked some ideas around and at some point—whether during that initial conversation or after I’d submitted a first-draft outline—he suggested an environmental theme. Really what he said was “Mosquito Coast,” and it clicked, so that was the frame to hang Pike’s childhood on, as well as what becomes of him once he returns to Talos IV [in the episode “The Menagerie”]. In between, I tried to pick moments in Pike’s career as a young officer that would show why he became, at the time, the youngest starship captain in the fleet, and weave in a personal life that shaped him as a human being.
GENE RODDENBERRY
The Talosian planet’s “ridiculous” premise of mind control annoyed a great many people, and the objection, of course, overlooks the fact that the most serious threat we face today in our world is mind control—such as not too long ago by Hitler, and what’s now exercised by fanatical religions all over the world and even here in our own country. Mind control is a dangerous subject for TV to discuss, because the yuppies may wake up someday and be discussing it and say, “Well, wait a minute, television may be the most powerful mind control force of all” and may begin taking a very close look at television. Most executives would like to avoid that possibility.
MARGARET BONANNO
Watching “The Cage” and “Menagerie” [the season one two-parter that incorporated footage from the former] over and over again, I realized how much of the character’s story was below the surface. I started digging. It seemed as if almost every line o
f dialogue could be a hook to something in his backstory. There was also something heady about taking a character that Gene Roddenberry had created more or less by the seat of his pants and probably never gave a second thought to once he had created Kirk, and whom other writers had used effectively in several novels and comics, but always in the action-adventure mold, and being able to really get inside his head and ask, “What makes this man what he is?” What was really interesting was what I saw as Pike’s drive for perfection, as well as him distancing himself from his crew, unlike Kirk, who goes way beyond the bounds of any real-life commanding officer, which is part of his charm, but also a bit of weakness in terms of credibility.
I had the same attitude toward Pike that I think a lot of original series fans have: interesting character, interesting performance by Jeffrey Hunter, but good or bad, he’s nothing like Kirk. There’s been a lot written about how Pike was an “intellectual,” as opposed to Kirk, who was a “man of action,” but it didn’t seem quite that simple. Yes, Pike is more apt to think things through than to charge headlong into a situation, but you don’t get to be a starship captain if you’re brooding like Hamlet all the time. There’s also a haunted quality to Pike, a suggestion of something in his past that the Talosians—like all good interrogators—would try to exploit in an attempt to control him initially.
OSCAR KATZ
When they rejected “The Cage,” I asked NBC, “Why are you turning it down?” and I was told, “We can’t sell it from this show, it’s too atypical.” I said, “But you guys picked this one, I gave you four choices.” NBC said, “I know we did and because of that, right now we’re going to give you an order for a second pilot next season.”
HERBERT F. SOLOW
Getting a second pilot was enormously rare. If a pilot didn’t work the first time, the networks said, “Oh, forget it; it’s over.” Television is unlike any other business in that way. But we got the second pilot.
STEPHEN KANDEL (writer, “Mudd’s Women”)
NBC’s attitude was to forget it and to abandon it. So, after much argument and discussion, Gene got the money to write three additional pilot scripts. “The Cage” had been a sample of what the series would be like and that frightened the network. They thought the audience wouldn’t understand it.
ROBERT BUTLER
Gene asked me to direct the second pilot, but I told him I had been there and done it already, and didn’t wish to repeat myself. Another reason I didn’t wish to do it is that science fiction, directorially, is a bit of a chore, because you have to share the reins with graphics, special visual effects, and all the other people who supply the tricks. It’s very much direction by committee, and I was a little impatient with that. I like working on pilots because you’re in on the formulation, and you’re handed fewer givens, so, as a result you direct more. The more control and freedom I have to direct, the more I enjoy it. I will say that we were all praying and doing our best on “The Cage.” The eventual phenomenon was bigger than I expected, not that I really measured it at the time. That wasn’t in the equation. You just roll up your sleeves and decide what the hell it is you’re trying to do. Then you jump in and never look back.
GENE RODDENBERRY
Jeffrey Hunter decided he did not want to come back and play Pike again. I thought highly of him and he would have made a grand captain, except his family convinced him that science fiction was really beneath him.
OSCAR KATZ
When you make a pilot deal with an actor, you can’t tie him up forever. You usually have a hold on him for the following season, so we had no hold on Jeffrey Hunter. And either he or his wife didn’t like “The Cage” and he didn’t want to do the second pilot. I already had the set built—I think it was the largest set in the history of Hollywood, that planet in “The Cage”—we had the interior of the spaceship, the miniature of the outside of the spaceship, etc. We had everything and all we had to do was write a new script. But we didn’t have a leading man.
Business affairs negotiated with Jeffrey Hunter, and we all thought it was the usual actor-network situation. They don’t want to do it for reason XYZ, and it’s a device for getting the price up. We kept increasing the price and he kept saying no. One day I said, “What’s with Jeffrey Hunter?” and I was told he just won’t do it at any price. Finally I said, “Tell Jeffrey Hunter to get lost. Tell him we’re going to do the pilot without him.” And that’s how William Shatner got into it, because Hunter wouldn’t do it.
RICHARD ARNOLD
Gene would not have agreed with me here, but I thought that Jeffrey Hunter seemed a little wooden in the role, as though he couldn’t quite get a grip on the character. I’ve read things since that would seem to disprove that, but he just wasn’t captain material, in my opinion. His turning the series down was probably the best thing for Star Trek. No one could have known how well Bill and Leonard would work together, nor how De Kelley would fit into the picture, but it all turned out, even if by chance, to be just what the show needed.
At the time, Jeffrey Hunter confessed to the Milwaukee Journal, “I was asked to do it, but had I accepted I would have been tied up much longer than I care to be. I have several things brewing now and they should be coming to a head. I love doing motion pictures and expect to be as busy as I want to be in them.”
Ironically, it was only a few years later that Hunter and his agents were lobbying hard for him to play Mike Brady, the paterfamilias of the Brady clan in Paramount’s The Brady Bunch, a part that was instead offered to Gene Hackman (which he turned down), eventually going to Robert Reed, making him a television icon in a role that the actor absolutely loathed.
GENE RODDENBERRY
At that time we were putting Star Trek on, TV was full of antiheroes, and I had a feeling that the public likes heroes. People with goals in mind, people with honesty and dedication, so I decided to go with the straight heroic roles, and it paid off. My model for Kirk was Horatio Hornblower from the C. S. Forester sea story that I always enjoyed. We had a great deal of trouble casting it, many actors turned us down, and later on, of course, wished they hadn’t. But science fiction at that time had a very bad name and many serious actors had made up their minds because what they had seen on TV was so bad they didn’t want their name associated with it. Shatner was available, he needed a show, was open-minded about science fiction, and a marvelous choice because he did great things for our show. I was happy to get him. I’d seen some work he did, and I thought he was an excellent choice, no question of it at all.
JAMES GOLDSTONE (director, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”)
I think Shatner was the choice partly of the network, partly of Desilu, and partly of Gene. I don’t know whether I had approval within contract, though I was a creative partner as the director. I thought he could play it marvelously. I liked him very much and thought he was a marvelous balance for the Spock character.
WILLIAM SHATNER (actor, “James Tiberius Kirk”)
They showed me the first pilot and said, “Would you like to play the part? Here are some of the story lines that we plan to go with; you can see the kind of production we have in mind. Would you care to play it?” And I thought it was an interesting gamble for myself as an actor to take, because I’ve always been fascinated by science fiction. I liked the production; I like the people involved with the production, and so I decided to do it.
But it was under these peculiar circumstances of having a first pilot made that I did it. I then talked to Gene Roddenberry about the objectives we hoped to achieve, and one of those objectives was serious drama as well as science fiction. His reputation and ability, which I knew firsthand, was such that I did not think he would do Lost in Space. And I was too expensive an actor, with what special or particular abilities I have, to warrant being put in something that somebody else could walk through. So I felt confident that Star Trek would keep those serious objectives for the most part, and it did.
ROBERT H. JUSTMAN
Gene was very happy
that he was able to get Bill Shatner, who was highly thought of in the industry. I had worked with Bill on Outer Limits and he had a good reputation in the television and entertainment industries even at that time, well before the second pilot of Star Trek. He was someone to be reckoned with, and we certainly understood that he was a more accomplished actor than Jeff Hunter was, and he gave us more dimension.
Shatner was hired for $10,000 an episode, as opposed to Jeffrey Hunter who was getting $5,000 for the original pilot. Alongside Shatner was Leonard Nimoy at $2,500 an episode, Paul Fix as Dr. Piper for $1,250, with James Doohan’s Scotty getting $750, and George Takei, a meager $375. Legendary stuntman Hal Needham doubled for Gary Lockwood, who was getting $5,000 for his efforts.
SCOTT MANTZ (film critic, Access Hollywood)
When you go back and you watch “The Cage,” Pike and Kirk were so different. Let’s say you’re watching “The Cage” and you’re part of a focus group. Which captain would you follow? You watch the scene where your captain, your hero, is telling his doctor, “I don’t want to be the captain. I want to raise a horse or be a slave trader, whatever. I don’t want to be the captain anymore.” And then you see this captain joking around, charming, and you know he looks like he likes being the captain. I’d follow Kirk in a second.
Pike was a stiff captain. He didn’t want to be the captain. He was more like Picard than Kirk. He had more of Picard’s traits than Kirk’s. They lucked out with Shatner. Shatner’s performance as Kirk is the reason I became a Trek fan.
ROBERT H. JUSTMAN