The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek, Volume 1

by Edward Gross

  I believe what happened then—after a couple go-rounds—is that the project was simply allowed to die. I don’t know for certain, though, because by that point I had left Trek.

  MICHAEL JAN FRIEDMAN

  Gene’s feelings about organized religion had made their way into other Trek episodes and movies. In these other cases, his comments were more measured, more considered; they worked in the context of the story, making a point about our place in the universe. I don’t think that happened in The God Thing. The best Star Trek is about ultimately embracing the alien and unfamiliar. This took the opposite tack. I discussed the problem with Dave Stern. Pocket had already invested in the project, even designed a dust jacket, so we decided I would come up with a coherent novel outline that incorporated as many elements of Gene’s script as possible. I did this. However, Majel, Gene’s widow, wasn’t on board with what I had done. She insisted that Gene’s script be expanded into a novel-length narrative, period. No changes, no substantive additions, no embellishments.

  This was, of course, her prerogative. After all, she was Gene’s widow. And I could have tried to do what she was asking—just stretch out the scenes to take up more pages. Certainly, it would have been a healthy payday for me. The print run was slated to be enormous. But public scrutiny of this story in anything approximating its original form would not have put Gene or his legacy in a good light. It would not have put me in a good light. And it would not have put Pocket in a good light. In the end, after discussions with Majel and after entertaining the possibility of using one other writer, Pocket agreed with my assessment and scrapped the project.

  I wish it had turned out otherwise. But you know, all things considered, it’s probably better this way.

  JON POVILL

  Gene went to work on The God Thing in May of 1975, and it was his first attempt at a Star Trek feature. By August it was shitcanned by Paramount president Barry Diller. Gene, who had gotten to know me pretty well by then, suggested that I take a crack at writing a treatment, which I did. Then he and I worked on a treatment together.

  Treatment One was a spec story that I did after Gene told me that the studio had turned down The God Thing—which was not the actual title of his script, just what the script has come to be called since then. So, Gene told me it’d been rejected and told me that if I wanted to come up with a Star Trek movie story of my own, he’d be happy to look at it and to pass it along if he thought it was worthy. What I didn’t know at the time was that about seven hundred thousand other writers had been told the same thing and that some of them (I think) were being paid to come up with their ideas. Amongst them … not sure, but I think there was Harlan Ellison, Norman Spinrad, John D. F. Black, Richard Matheson, and Ted Sturgeon. And probably others from outside the Trek universe.

  In this story, planet Vulcan passes through an area of space in which they had previously released a “psychic cloud” that—they believed—would fill the enemy with distrust that would break down all military discipline and create chaos within the enemy ranks. They had done this in the final war that they’d fought, a war in which things were going so poorly that they were forced to release the cloud prematurely, without full testing that would have revealed the damn thing only worked on Vulcans. But as with most weapons, it’s only a matter of time before whatever you came up with winds up being used against you—only in this case it was more a matter of the movement of star systems bringing Vulcan into this area of space. Interestingly, in order for Spock to be free of the influence of the cloud, he has to focus himself totally on the human half of his being—and he remains human and quirky for the majority of the story.

  Ultimately, the Enterprise must go back in time to the final Vulcan war in an attempt to prevent the release of the cloud. When they fail to do so, Spock uses the equipment to send out a psychic cloud of his own—of logic, trust, restraint, and respect that effectively counteracts the effects of the initial cloud. And the Enterprise turns the tide in the war against the ancient foe so that Vulcan is not conquered or destroyed. I gave it to Gene sometime in late August or early September of 1975. He read it and said it would have made a swell episode, but that he didn’t think it would work as a feature.

  In December of 1975, he called me and said he had a new idea for a feature, would I like to work on it with him? I still remember standing in my kitchen and hanging up the phone after I said yes, and then whooping so loudly that my neighbors came running over to see what the hell was going on.

  The result of that call was Treatment Two, which certainly seemed at the time to be my “big break.” It was my first work for a studio—yes, I took over Gene Coon’s old office (for the first time; I’d lose it and get it back again many times in the next four years)—and Paramount paid me for my efforts on it. The story has numerous elements in common with Treatment One, which at the time led me to believe that Gene’s “new” idea had been inspired by my spec story, though he never said as much to me and so I have nothing to go on but my own presumption. In this one, rather than Spock being responsible for the change in Vulcan personality from hot-blooded warriors to peaceful beings ruled by logic, Scotty is responsible for wiping the Earth out of the Federation. The Enterprise and all aboard it had been destroyed by a black hole while Spock and Scotty, in smaller research vessels without the gravitational disrupting issues of warp engines, had managed to escape. Scotty, in a desperate attempt to go back in time and prevent his precious ship and crew from slipping into the event horizon, miscalculates, winds up in 1937, and triggers changes with a snowball effect.

  His efforts to stop the snowball only make things worse for his original time period, though they do make things considerably better between 1937 and 1964. World War II is avoided, Kennedy is not assassinated, medical science advances substantially and a whole bunch of other boons make it impossible for world leaders to agree to help Kirk set things right for the future by plunging the twentieth century back into the horrors stored in the Enterprise’s history records. Kennedy, however, recognizes the greater good and helps Kirk destroy his world to create the better one. There’s also a cool bit of stuff as Einstein along with Churchill, Kennedy, Hitler, and others tour the Enterprise.

  As I read the two treatments, I felt like both of the concepts had merit. Treatment Two had a really great way of reintroducing most of the main characters—who are dead as the movie starts, but are literally resurrected by a mysterious process in some way related to the black hole. Both stories needed a lot of reworking, but there was potential there. If the studio had any real sense of what Star Trek was about and why it worked, they might have shown more patience, but the plug was quickly pulled and Treatment Two was rejected by the studio.

  JOHN D. F. BLACK (story editor, Star Trek)

  I came up with a story concept involving a black hole, and this was before Disney’s film. The black hole had been used by several planets in a given constellation as a garbage dump. But with a black hole there’s a point of equality. In other words, when enough positive matter comes into contact with an equal amount of negative matter, the damn thing blows up. Well, if that ever occurs with a black hole, it’s the end of the universe. It will swallow everything. The Enterprise discovered what’s happened with this particular black hole, and they try to stop these planets from unloading into it. The planets won’t do it. It comes to war in some areas and as a result, the black hole comes to balance and blows up. At that point, it would continue to chew up matter. In 106 years Earth would be swallowed by this black hole, and the Enterprise is trying to beat the end of the world. There were at least twenty sequels in that story, because the jeopardy keeps growing more intense.

  Paramount rejected the idea. They said it wasn’t big enough.

  JAMES VAN HISE (editor, Enterprise Incidents)

  The story that Harlan came up with was never written down but presented verbally. The story did not begin with any of the Enterprise crew but started on Earth where strange phenomenon were inexplicably occurring.
In India, a building where a family is having dinner just vanishes into dust. In the United States, one of the Great Lakes suddenly vanishes, wreaking havoc. In a public square, a woman suddenly screams and falls to the pavement where she transforms into some sort of reptilian creature.

  The truth is suppressed, but the Federation realizes that someone or something is tampering with time and changing things on Earth in the far distant past. What is actually happening involves an alien race on the other end of the galaxy. Eons ago, Earth and this planet both developed races of humans and intelligent humanoid reptiles. On Earth, the humans destroyed the reptile men and flourished. In the time of the Enterprise, when the race learns what happened on Earth in the remote past, they decide to change things in the past so that they will have a kindred planet. For whatever reason, the Federation decides that only the Enterprise and her crew are qualified for this mission, so a mysterious cloaked figure goes about kidnapping the old central crew. The figure is finally revealed to be Kirk. After they are reunited, they prepare for the mission into the past to save Earth. And that would have been just the first half hour of the film!

  In a tenth-anniversary article on Star Trek that appeared in Crawdaddy! magazine, Ellison elaborated: “My involvement with the film amounted to bullshit,” he said. “It was the kind of bullshit you get from amateurs and independents but you don’t expect from a major studio like Paramount. They don’t know what they’re doing over there. Gene may know, but the studio sure doesn’t. They called me in on four separate occasions and they never paid me a nickel. I did one complete script that Gene liked. It was rejected. We worked on another idea together. We took it up to the executive who was in charge of the film, the head guy who, by the way, has never produced a film in his life. He’s an ex-designer—right away you know where he’s coming from.

  “Now, the guy is a complete and utter moron. We’re showing him the script and he’s just read a von Däniken book about the Aztec calendar and how the Aztec gods were from outer space. He looks at us and says, ‘Do you think you can put in something about the Aztecs?’ Agghhh. And we’re saying, ‘Look. This story takes place at the dawn of time. There weren’t any Aztecs then!’ He doesn’t flinch. ‘How about one or two?’ What can you do? These people are schmucks.”

  Author Robert Silverberg also wrote a treatment. Titled The Billion-Year Voyage, it was more of an intellectual foray as the Enterprise crew discovers the ruins of an ancient but far more advanced civilization, and must battle other aliens in order to take possession of the wondrous gifts left behind. Gifts which would surely benefit mankind some day in the future when they are ready to accept that responsibly.

  ROBERT SILVERBERG (author, Lord Valentine’s Castle)

  My Star Trek involvement was minimal. I never wrote for the show, rarely watched it, and was quite surprised when Paramount unexpectedly asked me to take a shot at the screenplay for the first movie. I met with the Paramount executives, pitched an idea based on a book of mine called Across a Billion Years, was asked to write a treatment, wrote it, was paid quite generously for it, and then vanished from the scene when the project was canceled.

  Perhaps the greatest “what if” in the history of the franchise is auteur Philip Kaufman’s (The Right Stuff, Invasion of the Body Snatchers) proposed Star Trek feature film, Planet of the Titans, which featured a script from British screenwriters Chris Bryant and Allan Scott (whose credits included the acclaimed Nicolas Roeg film Don’t Look Now), later rewritten by Kaufman himself. While the British screenwriters came to America, Gene Roddenberry was about to leave the country for Britain to shoot his supernatural Spectre pilot.

  Despite not even having completed a script, the writing team was already being asked to attend Star Trek conventions, prompting the two writers to ask Roddenberry what to do. His response: “Forget it! Trekkie teenyboppers lurk outside your room at night yearning to meet you and talk about science. If you must go to one of these, our main concern is that you keep your fly zipped up while on platform.”

  Star Trek was viewed as a priority at Paramount, particularly after the first space shuttle, originally called the Constitution, was renamed the Enterprise. This prompted Paramount to take out a full-page ad in The New York Times proclaiming, “Starship Enterprise will be joining the space shuttle Enterprise in its space travels very soon. Early next year, Paramount Pictures begins filming an extraordinary motion picture adventure—Star Trek. Now we can look forward to two great space adventures.” Ironically, neither would ever take off.

  DAVID V. PICKER (president of motion pictures, Paramount Pictures)

  Of all the films I developed, acquired, or green-lit while I was at Paramount, there was just one project that I was simply not interested in: [chairman of Gulf & Western, which then owned Paramount] Charlie Bludhorn’s favorite—a movie based on Star Trek. Obviously, character and story are the main ingredients, and in this show the futuristic but accessible world that was portrayed played an important role. But I disliked sci-fi. I didn’t like sci-fi books, movies, comic strips … none of it. Had George Lucas done American Graffiti for us at UA, I believe I would have passed on Star Wars. Jeffrey [Katzenberg] became Barry Diller’s assistant after my departure, and I told Barry that as my parting gift to him, Jeffrey would get Star Trek made. Of course, he did.

  RICHARD TAYLOR (art director, Robert Abel & Associates)

  Charles Bludhorn’s valet was Jeff Katzenberg. Somewhere along the way Jeff said, “You know I really want to be in movies.” And he said, “All right, I’ll send you to Hollywood.” This was the first film that he produced and he was really green. He was this young guy and he wasn’t unlikable, but he was learning as he went along and it was a much more complicated film than any traditional live-action film was where he should cut his teeth. Instead, he was thrown into this hydra, this Medusa with all the snakes.

  GERALD ISENBERG (producer, Star Trek: Planet of the Titans)

  I was brought into Paramount because I made a deal with Barry Diller, and that deal said that if a movie of Star Trek is made, I’m going to be the producer. David Picker, who was the head of the studio at the time, and I hired Phil Kaufman to direct and write. Phil was very taken with the Spock character and Leonard and thought that a lot of the other characters were past their usefulness. We began to develop a script that was a time-travel script that was really influenced by Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon, which was a history of human evolution for a billion years going forward.

  ALLAN SCOTT (writer, Star Trek: Planet of the Titans)

  Jerry Isenberg, who was the producer at that time, brought us in. We came out and met with him and Gene. We talked about the project, and I think the only thing we agreed on at the time was that if we were going to make Star Trek as a motion picture, we should try and go forward, as it were, from the television series. Take it into another realm, if you like. Another dimension. To that end we were talking quite excitedly about a distinguished film director, and Phil Kaufman’s name came up. We all thought that was a wonderful idea, and we met with him. Phil is a great enthusiast and very knowledgeable about science fiction.

  PHILIP KAUFMAN (director, The Right Stuff)

  I had done White Dawn for Paramount and it wasn’t a big hit, but it was well regarded, so I got the call from my agent who thought I wouldn’t be interested in doing it. But the minute I heard what it was, that they wanted to make a three-million-dollar movie of an old television series they thought would be worth reviving and there was a certain fan base, I knew I was interested. It wouldn’t have ordinarily been something that would interest me if it didn’t have all of these interesting situations, which I didn’t feel were that well executed on the TV show, by necessity.

  ALLAN SCOTT

  We did a huge amount of reading. We must have read thirty science-fiction books of various kinds. At that time we also had that guy from NASA who was one of the advisors to the project, Jesco von Puttkamer. He was at some of the meetings, and Gene was at all of the mee
tings.

  PHILIP KAUFMAN

  I met with Gene and I looked at episodes with him and we talked about all sorts of things. Somehow through the whole process, I must say, Gene always wanted to go back to his script, that he always wanted to really just do another episode with a little more money. Paramount wasn’t interested in that, because they’d already turned it down. But in the process of working with Jerry and Gene, we got them to commit to a ten-million-dollar movie, which was a good amount of money in those days.

  GERALD ISENBERG

  Phil was thinking 2001. He wanted to make another great movie, like the way 2001 explored the future and alternate realities. That’s where he was going.

  PHILIP KAUFMAN

  Whatever the requirements of sixties television were, they were really lacking in a visual quality and in all those things that a feature film in science fiction needed to have. I felt that those elements were in there, if properly thought out and expanded, and could be a fantastic event. We knew what the feature films in science fiction had been prior to this: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Planet of the Apes, a few of these things that were wondrous adventures.

  GERALD ISENBERG

  David [Picker] believed Phil was a talented filmmaker and he is. He’s made a couple of great movies and won Academy Awards. And a real thinker. We sat in a room and he basically talked to us about the Star Trek audience and who the characters are, who the most important characters are, and who is the center of Star Trek and it’s Spock. You can take any other character out of that series and the series is the same. Even Kirk. You just replace him with another captain. But Spock is the center of that series. That character represents the essence of what that show is about.