by Edward Gross
FRED FREIBERGER
When Gene Coon left, he left with three assignments from Gene Roddenberry, which I honored.
GLEN A. LARSON (creator, executive producer, Knight Rider)
The reason he had assignments for the third season was that at first Gene Roddenberry wouldn’t let him leave because he had a contract. The only way they’d let Gene out is if he continued to write for the show, and he did so under a pseudonym. He would be in there typing away while we were supposed to be doing It Takes a Thief, but that was great because more of it fell on me and I became an instant producer. Roddenberry knew they needed Gene, and didn’t feel they could function without him, so he had to promise to make script commitments.
FRED FREIBERGER
Gene Coon was a lovely, talented guy who came up with certain stories and said do what you want with them, because he couldn’t get involved. He worked as much as he could with us and he was a complete gentleman and completely professional about the whole thing.
The first of Coon’s commitments, writing under the nom de plume Lee Cronin, was “Spock’s Brain,” considered by many to be one of the worst Star Trek episodes ever filmed. In it, a race of beautiful, short-skirted, buxom alien women steal Spock’s brain, and it’s up to Kirk and a zombielike Spock to retrieve it. What audiences fail to appreciate today is the fact that organ transplantation was very much in the zeitgeist when the series was being produced, with the first successful heart transplant taking place in 1967. This still can’t explain—or excuse—such execrable and laughable dialogue as “Brain and brain, what is brain?”
DAVID GERROLD
I suspect that “Spock’s Brain” was Gene L. Coon’s way of thumbing his nose at Roddenberry or something. If not Roddenberry, he was thumbing his nose at how seriously the show was taking itself. I suspect what had happened is that they were a little panic-stricken because there weren’t a lot of scripts to shoot.
The history of Star Trek is management by crisis. I think somebody called up Gene L. Coon and said, “We need a script in a hurry, can you do it?” and he did it under a pen name. I don’t think he deliberately set out to write that show seriously. I don’t think there’s any way you can take that episode seriously. You’ve got to take it as an in-joke. What’s the stupidest science-fiction idea to do? What if somebody stole Spock’s brain? Gene L. Coon had that kind of sense of humor to do that kind of impish stuff. He had an irreverent sense of humor, and I think he wanted to poke Star Trek because someone was taking it too seriously. Maybe it was his way of not buying into it.
DOROTHY FONTANA (story editor, Star Trek)
Gene Coon was under enormous time pressure and forced to write these Star Trek scripts between other assignments. It wasn’t like being on a series where you could devote all your time to that series. The writing suffers because of that.
GLEN A. LARSON
If you’re not producing, somebody else takes it and does the rewriting. Knowing Gene’s attention to detail and his work ethic, I would imagine that somebody rewrote him. It would be interesting to be able to see his first-draft scripts.
FRED FREIBERGER
Besides Coon, Dorothy Fontana had two assignments, and David Gerrold had none. I gave him one [“Castles in the Sky,” later renamed “The Cloud Minders”] on the strength of “Tribbles,” but it’s one of those things that happened that didn’t work out too well. We tried it, and if it doesn’t work, you bring in other people. Any pro accepts that and understands it. Nobody enjoys it, but that happens when you’re doing a show. It doesn’t mean it diminishes their talent, it just happens. That’s the nature of television. Some people don’t understand that and it’s too bad, but if you’re a pro, you do.
DAVID GERROLD
I went in to meet Fred Freiberger with the attitude that I had to prove myself to the new producer. I said, “I know how well ‘Tribbles’ turned out. I know I can do it, I’ve got my credential, everyone who saw ‘Tribbles’ loved it, the episode turned out well, I don’t have anything to be embarrassed about.” I walk in, Freddy Freiberger is looking at me, and his very first words are, “I saw ‘Tribbles’ this morning,” because he was having episodes screened for him. The polite thing to say is, “Not bad,” or “Well done,” or “Good job.” His words were, “I didn’t like it. Star Trek is not a comedy.” From that point on, our relationship never recovered.
So he tells me Star Trek is not a comedy, and I’m thinking, “It’s not? The two scripts I worked on, ‘I, Mudd’ and ‘Tribbles,’ the reason I had specifically been asked to work on ‘I, Mudd’ is that they wanted it to be funny.” Gene L. Coon said to me, “You know, ‘Tribbles’ has given us a new insight into our characters. Our characters can be funny, but we can still have things at stake.” Joe Pevney said, “I’ve been arguing that Star Trek could do funny stuff, and I was right.”
MARC CUSHMAN
Fred was left alone in the second half of the season, but during the first half he was making the show that Roddenberry wanted it to be. It was Roddenberry’s mandate to get rid of the humor, and to have Kirk instead of referring to Scotty as Scotty, like he was in the second season, he would say, “Engineer.” Instead of calling Mr. Spock Mr. Spock, he would say, “Science Officer.” He wanted more formality. Not every line, but usually in the teaser and the beginning of act one. Roddenberry sent out a memo to Fred Freiberger saying that they were in a new time slot and there would be people who had never seen the show before, so they had to establish who these characters were, their rank, their position.
So in the teaser instead of Kirk saying “Mr. Spock” he wanted him to say, “Science Officer, what’s your opinion?” and things of that nature. Well, we fans who had been watching it for two years are suddenly asking, “Why is he talking to them like this?” And we’re not getting episodes like “Tribbles” and things of that nature, so we’re blaming Fred Freiberger.
But these are all memos from Gene telling Fred that he wanted to get back to the way it was when it was first on the air. “I want it more military, I want it more serious, they’re professional astronauts, they’re military in outer space, and they should talk that way.” It was getting too chummy for his taste. Kirk shouldn’t be friendly with his crew; he’s the captain and things like this, because Roddenberry had been in the military and captains don’t get chummy with their men. He always had a problem with Gene Coon for doing that.
ROBERT H. JUSTMAN
As far as I could tell, the atmosphere on the show behind the scenes was still the same in the third season. I got on fine with everyone, as always. I got on fine with Fred Freiberger, as always. He was a nice man. I think he did what he did as best he could do it. I never had any harsh words. I don’t think I ever had an argument the entire three seasons with anyone. I would disagree with Gene Roddenberry at times and fight with him on certain things that I thought we ought to do or should not be doing, but in the end if Gene said it was yes, it was yes. If he said no, it was no. Whether I felt he was right or wrong, if that’s what he wanted to do, that’s what I would do. After all, it was his show. I had wonderful feelings working with those people. It just wasn’t the same without Gene in a hands-on position that third season.
MARC CUSHMAN
Things did change behind the scenes. Gene Roddenberry had thrown up his hands in the middle of the third season, Dorothy Fontana left, and Bob Justman left. So you had some of the most talented people from Star Trek that were leaving. The concepts were still interesting, but you didn’t have Gene Coon, Gene Roddenberry, or Dorothy Fontana finessing the scripts. And they didn’t have the money to really put into them. They were all vital elements of Star Trek. And when you take them out of the mix, it’s like having The Beatles and taking away John Lennon and Paul McCartney. “Okay, we still have George and Ringo. We’re still The Beatles.” No, you’re not. You’re still good, but not as good, and that’s what you have with the third season.
SCOTT MANTZ
The director of “The Empath,”
John Erman, brought the episode in on time and budget, and the cast tells him, “Well, you’ll be back.” And the director said, “Nope, I’m never working with you guys again.” Ouch! That’s what season three was like.
DOROTHY FONTANA
I was becoming too associated with Star Trek and wanted to prove that I was able to write other shows. In fact, when I left I did several westerns, dramatic contemporary shows, and so on. I had to prove to other producers that Star Trek wasn’t all I could do.
ROBERT H. JUSTMAN
I felt I was in prison and I had to get out. I just didn’t want to take it anymore, because I was so unhappy with what was happening with the show. We couldn’t make the kind of shows that we wanted to make because we couldn’t afford them, and I felt that the content of the shows was going downhill. I finally asked for my release and left. I left a lot of bruised feelings at Paramount. They pleaded with me not to go. I said, “Fine, I won’t go. Just take me off the show, and I won’t take any other jobs, and I’ll come back to you on anything else you want me to do in the spring.” They didn’t want that, and I said, “I’m leaving. I just don’t want to stay anymore.” I went to work at MGM.
It was my feeling that the show wasn’t what it ought to be. There was also the feeling of disappointment over the fact that I was made coproducer instead of producer. I know that doesn’t mean anything to people not in the industry, but in effect I had been line-producing the show since the beginning, even though my title was associate producer. When the third season came around, instead of producing the show, Freddy was brought in with the title of producer and I was made coproducer to him. The studio felt, as all studios do and I can’t blame them, they wanted a writer to be there to do the work of story and script.
On the other hand, I felt that I could produce the show with someone there to do the writing. Of course there’s a lot of ego in that. I was much younger and ambitious. I can’t blame the studio, but in the meantime I was unhappy about that and I didn’t like the way the scripts were turning out. There was no excitement, or there wasn’t enough excitement. And when they had good concepts, they kind of got whittled down and weren’t as magical as they ought to be.
RALPH SENENSKY (director, “Is There in Truth No Beauty?”)
I always felt that with the production staff of the last year, the tenor had changed. In “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” there were some cuts made in postproduction that, for my money, were schlock, horror cuts. They hadn’t been in the script, were not in the concept, and were thrown in by Fred Freiberger. He kept cutting back to this box, or container, with lights flashing. You didn’t need it. That’s underestimating the intelligence of the audience. Because they weren’t planned cuts, they became arbitrary and rather like jump cuts, which I’ve always resented. That was the third season’s problem. The real tightening of the budget was the first thing, and then, probably having to do with those budgetary cuts, the caliber of the writing went down.
Early in the season, Robert Justman had already anticipated issues with the cast responding to their new boss and sent a memo on May 8, 1968, to Roddenberry to try and address these concerns. He emphasized the importance of pointing out to William Shatner the way that Roddenberry expected the actor to work with Fred Freiberger and, more important, that Roddenberry himself was still serving as “great bird” of the series. Wrote Justman, “Bill is as rapacious an animal as any other leading man in a series, and I think it would help Freddie enormously in his relationships with Bill if you let Bill understand how much confidence you have in Fred and how much respect that you, Gene Roddenberry, have for Freddie’s creative talents and executive abilities. It also might be a good way to get a fairly close look at Bill and see what sort of physical shape he is in at the present time. Come to think of it, perhaps it would be a good idea to have this get-together before the end of this week, so that if Bill is on the pudgy side, it can be suggested that he start slimming down right away.”
Justman added, “Now that DeForest Kelley has been firmed for this season, all our cast have been locked in. Would you want to send a personal letter to each one of our seven regulars, in which you express your personal gratification at the fact that his, or her, particular talents and abilities will be once more enhancing the value and prestige of Star Trek?”
Unfortunately, unlike Shatner—who did enjoy a good relationship with Freiberger, and who in turn considered Kirk the sole star of the show—Nimoy felt slighted by him, as did many of the other cast members who were vying for screen time and were less than fond of the new producer.
JAMES DOOHAN (actor, “Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott”)
Fred Freiberger was just a producer. He had no inventiveness in him at all. He was a no-talent businessman. There were so many episodes third season that were so wordy, and Gene Coon would have knocked that up, but Gene Roddenberry wasn’t paying attention either. He was unhappy that his series was going to be canceled. We had done some forty shows at Desilu, and then Paramount bought Desilu and here was this damn space show as part of the package and they couldn’t care less about it.
WALTER KOENIG (actor, “Pavel Chekov”)
One day during the second season I asked Gene to have a meeting between seasons when it looked like we were going to be on eight o’clock Mondays and asked him about how my character would evolve based on his popularity. I went to his house, and he proceeded to show me some memos he had written the guys at NBC, and memos from Paramount, and all the memos were very positive, saying “Let’s involve Chekov more, he has appeal. Let’s bring him down to the planets more, involve him with members of the opposite sex.”
And it looked enormously promising. “Spectre of the Gun” was the first episode written with that in mind for third season, and it reflected what my anticipation was going to be. Immediately thereafter, our time slot was changed and everybody sort of threw up their hands and gave up on the show. They brought in Freiberger, who had no particular style, as far as I could tell, or empathy for the character. I don’t think he had any antipathy either, but he didn’t see it as being important.
FRED FREIBERGER
They wouldn’t be actors if they didn’t want more. You’re doing an ensemble show and what’s selling the show, hopefully, is the personality of the stars, the relationship between the three most important ones, Shatner, Nimoy, and Kelley. You would try to give all the others something. I gave Scotty a love affair in one show. It’s very difficult, because when you have many format characters, to try and keep them going in a limited time is hard. I certainly sympathize with any of them who wanted more to do.
In one of the third year’s most infamous installments, the Enterprise comes across a band of space hippies searching for a mythical Eden. Originally pitched by D. C. Fontana as “Joanna,” about McCoy’s estranged daughter arriving aboard the Enterprise, Fontana took her name off the episode, which shared few similarities with her original pitch. One has to wonder, though, if it was Freiberger who rejected the idea or Roddenberry, who had actually dismissed the pitch as early as 1967. In a memo to John Meredyth Lucas, Roddenberry had written, “While Dorothy has come up with an interesting character in McCoy’s long-lost daughter … there is really not sufficient story in the premise. I recommend we give this one a pass while leaving the way open to Dorothy to submit a new story using this character and situation.” The script would eventually be written for Chekov and a former girlfriend and would be retitled “The Way to Eden.”
WALTER KOENIG
I read “The Way to Eden” and I thought it was all wrong. First of all, it wasn’t even my character. Chekov became very uptight and very establishment, saying, “No, no, no” and “Don’t do this.” I don’t think that was the way he would have responded. What happened was “The Way to Eden” was really written for McCoy’s daughter rather than Chekov’s former girlfriend.
As a matter of fact, prior to that I had submitted a four-page statement of how I felt Chekov could be improved and made more multidim
ensional without subverting the story. Freiberger’s comment was, “I read it, forget it.” I knew the character was always going to be subordinate, but instead of spending the time pushing buttons, we could have spent that same thirty seconds on Chekov in a more fruitful way.
Even though he said, “I read it, forget it,” the episode was his way of giving me something and making Chekov a featured player. But I knew it just wasn’t any good when I read it, and then the casting was terrible. They were all good actors, like Victor Brandt, but they were totally miscast. They’re supposed to be playing thirty-year-old flower children, hippie types, and they looked much rougher and much tougher than that.
DAVID GERROLD
There’s a way to say no to an actor other than “Read your memo. Forget it.” You know, “I read your memo, thank you for taking the time to let us know so much about what you want to do. It’s not quite going to fit into our plans, but I’m certainly going to keep your comments on the top of my mind when we talk about Chekov.” The actor goes out saying, “Well, he said no, but he let me down gently,” and he feels good toward the producer.
FRED FREIBERGER
When you have a second banana, like Spock, who’s probably getting more fan mail than the lead, it gets twice as murderous. They want the last line, they want this, they want that. They’re measuring each other’s dressing room. Even this kid, Walter Koenig, was always asking for more. I told the writers to put him in more. So I read Shatner’s book [Star Trek Memories], and Koenig is complaining that he’s supposed to be representing progressive youth of the decade and the producer finally gave him more to do and it was establishment shit.