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

by Edward Gross

  In addition, considerable acrimony remained over Nimoy’s failure to receive a piece of the burgeoning Star Trek merchandise being sold as well as Roddenberry failing to cast him in the Questor Tapes pilot three years earlier, for which Nimoy had been told he would be starring. Then, through secondhand sources, he discovered that Robert Foxworth had actually been cast as Questor, and when he confronted Roddenberry about it, the Great Bird once again blamed the studio.

  DAVID GERROLD (author, The World of Star Trek)

  You have to ask yourself why Gene Roddenberry never got any other series on the air except for Star Trek. It’s like he is the source of the problem. He was able to sell Genesis II and Questor, and Universal was actually willing to buy thirteen episodes of Questor, but Gene got angry and wouldn’t do the series.

  GENE RODDENBERRY (creator, executive producer, Star Trek)

  At about the time the Star Trek movie was canceled by Paramount, I had a meeting with Leonard Nimoy in which we discussed Star Trek and television. At that time, he told me that he might consider long-form television specials, but “under no circumstances” would he return to play Mr. Spock again on a weekly hour television series basis. He explained that the pressures of weekly television would interfere with his career goal of stage, film, and other things. I still hoped he would change his mind, but could not ignore reports that he continued to reject any Star Trek television possibilities in newspaper columns and in television interviews.

  Then when Nimoy finally became part of a successful play on Broadway, I had to accept that his rejection of Star Trek television was final. Convinced that no terms I could arrange would bring a willing and enthusiastic Leonard Nimoy into the role of Mr. Spock on television again, I had no choice but to get on with the difficult job of inventing a new science officer.

  In the pages of his second autobiography, I Am Spock, Nimoy painted a slightly different version of the situation: “I’ll confess that when I first heard about the new show, I had major reservations. I was still very concerned about being perceived as a one-character actor, and still war-weary from the unpleasant struggles from Trek’s third season. But I was at least willing to hear what Paramount and Gene Roddenberry had to offer. And here it was: a recurring role wherein Spock appeared in two of every eleven episodes. Quite honestly, the offer confused and startled me. Only two out of every eleven? I was being offered a part-time job. It made little sense for me to be technically tied up with a series and having to be unavailable for other challenging work, while at the same time making such a small contribution to the show. I passed.”

  JON POVILL

  I don’t think Gene was worried about Leonard not being on the show. Leonard is an example of someone he could demonstrate “revenge” on. You know, “I can show everyone that we didn’t need Spock.” Gene was pissed off at him. They were kind of feuding for most of that period. I don’t know exactly what the bug up his ass was about Leonard. Leonard was complaining that he wasn’t getting money from merchandising, including merchandising that was coming from Lincoln Enterprises, so there were arguments over things like that. Gene was just pissed off at him. I think there was more of a “Fuck him!” attitude. In retrospect, even though I didn’t know Leonard really well, I have to say that in all of my dealings with him, I really liked the guy. He was very genuine.

  HAROLD LIVINGSTON

  I wanted Jon Povill to be my story editor and Gene wanted him to continue cleaning his garage or something, so we had a big thing about that. I eventually got my way.

  JON POVILL

  Harold was primarily responsible for getting me the story-editor job. Gene was reluctant to move me “that far, that fast,” to use his words. Harold was adamant that I was doing the job of a story editor and, by God, I should be getting paid as one. Also, Harold had not been very familiar with the old series at all and kind of relied on me to be the monitor of whether something fit with Star Trek or not. Once everything got rolling, and we were in a lot of writers’ meetings, I sort of took over as the person who pointed out where there were holes in the stories, and where they did not conform to what Star Trek was supposed to be.

  One of the keys to me becoming story editor was that one of the stories we’d received, “The Child,” had to be written in a week. I had Jaron Summers, who wrote the story, do a first draft. And then I had to do a pretty complete rewrite. It had to get into shape for shooting, and the way that script came out would determine whether or not I could be the story editor.

  The staff put together a writers’ and directors’ bible for the series that was completed on July 15, 1977. The series bible was a guide for potential writers about how the ship would function, potential stories, and bios of the characters, emphasizing three new additions to the crew.

  Lt. Xon is a full Vulcan, designed to take the place of Spock as ship science officer. The primary difference between the two is that Xon has virtually no knowledge of the human equation and realizes that the only way he will be able to equal Spock is by making an effort to touch his repressed emotions, thus allowing him to more fully relate to the crew. The bible notes that “we’ll get some humor out of Xon trying to simulate laughter, anger, fear, and other human feelings.” Interestingly, the Spock-McCoy feud would have carried over to Xon and the doctor, with the difference being that McCoy believes their “feud is a very private affair … and McCoy has been known to severely chastise in private those crewmen who have been unfair to the Vulcan in comparing his efforts to Spock’s.”

  First officer Commander Will Decker was designed to be a younger version of Captain Kirk. He comes close to worshipping the captain and would “literally rather die than fail him.” Essentially Decker is a captain in training, and the idea was that the audience would watch his gradual growth during the five-year mission. In many instances he would lead landing parties, thus alleviating the perpetual logistical flaw of the initial Star Trek TV series: a ship’s captain would never beam into potential danger as often as Kirk did.

  The final new addition to the crew was Lieutenant Ilia, the bald Deltan, whose race is marked by a heightened sexuality that pervades every aspect of their society. Additionally, Ilia has heightened intelligence, second perhaps only to Xon, and gifted with unique esper abilities. As noted in the bible, “Unlike the mind meld of Vulcans, it simply is the ability to sense images in other minds. Never words or emotions, only images … shape, sizes, textures. On her planet, sexual foreplay consists largely of lovers placing images in each other’s minds.”

  HAROLD LIVINGSTON

  The idea was to bring in a new generation. I think those characters would have developed well. Obviously you couldn’t have a geriatric crew there; you have to have new people, and these were them. Gradually, Kirk would become an admiral and Decker would become captain. I thought on that basis we could develop some new directions with these people.

  ALAN DEAN FOSTER (author, Star Trek Log series)

  I loved the character of Lt. Xon. I loved the idea that there would be a full Vulcan on board. It was a change. It gives you different personal and interpersonal conflicts and relationships. I’m not saying they’re better than a half Vulcan gives you, but they would have been different. Particularly Xon on board with Kirk, because Kirk would have been thinking—and this is in the original treatment—that Xon is fully aware that he is taking the place of the legendary Commander Spock, and even though he doesn’t feel emotions, from a logical standpoint it presented all sorts of interesting dramatic possibilities. Kirk thinking, “This kid’s good, but he isn’t Spock.” So a whole different relationship and all kinds of interesting and new interpersonal dynamics to explore there.

  JON POVILL

  We were helped out tremendously by the new characters. We wanted characters that could go in new directions, as well as the old crew. I particularly liked Xon. I thought there was something very fresh in having a nice young Vulcan to deal with, somebody who was trying to live up to a previous image. To me, that was a very nice gim
mick for a TV show that was missing Spock. But we never wanted Xon to be a Spock retread. We wanted him to be somebody who definitely had his own direction to go in, and he had different failings than Spock. Xon’s youth was also very important and he would have brought a freshness that people would have appreciated.

  LARRY ALEXANDER (writer, Star Trek: Phase II: “Tomorrow and the Stars”)

  Xon may not have been Spock, but I considered him Spock from a character point of view. I had a moment in the script where something has happened to Kirk, and the captain says, “Xon, what have you done to me?” So there was a little bit of resentment there that he wasn’t Spock, which was fun to play with. It seemed like the “logical” thing to do.

  ALAN DEAN FOSTER

  When I wrote for the show, my idea with Xon was to have a lot of fun, because the old crew was back and they had this young squirt and everybody is looking over their shoulder, thinking, “This is the plebe we have to put up with instead of the great Mr. Spock,” who was supposed to be off meditating someplace. Meanwhile, the Vulcan character has to think, “Talk about having burden dumped on your shoulders.”

  JON POVILL

  Ilia was sort of an embodiment of warmth, sensuality, sensitivity, and a nice yin to Xon’s yang.

  ALAN DEAN FOSTER

  One aspect of Ilia that didn’t get utilized when she did show up in the first movie was the sexuality aspect of her. It barely got touched on. Deltans are sexually irresistible people and they cause a lot of trouble wherever they go. They unsettle guys.

  JON POVILL

  Decker, of course, was a young Kirk. He would have been the least distinct. He would have had to grow and the performance probably would have done that, bringing something to Decker that the writers would have ultimately latched on to for material.

  ALAN DEAN FOSTER

  The original idea was to have more conflict between Kirk and Decker. He’s supposed to be equal to a younger Kirk, but he comes across as kind of a postgraduate nerd when the character eventually showed up in the movie. It’s like everybody is sitting around wondering how this guy could get command. You weren’t supposed to think that when the character was conceived.

  JON POVILL

  Xon and Ilia were concept characters. They would have developed, too, I’m sure, because characters grow when they’re performed much more than they do from just the writing. In the early writing, you don’t realize the full potential. You don’t know who’s going to play the character, how they’re going to play it, and what the characteristics of their performance are going to be. If you look at “The Cage,” for example, Spock laughs.

  HAROLD LIVINGSTON

  I wanted to make Star Trek more universal. I felt that success notwithstanding, the show had a restrictive audience. There was a greater audience for this. I felt that almost all of the stories seemed to be allegorical, and I wanted to make them a little harder and a little more realistic. My broad intention was to create a series that would attract a larger audience by offering more. We would still offer the same elements that Star Trek did—i.e., science fiction and hope for the future—and do realistic stories.

  ALAN DEAN FOSTER

  When they were thinking of reviving the TV series, a number of writers were called in to submit treatments for hour-long episodes. Roddenberry had gotten in touch with me, because of the Star Trek Log book series. He felt that I was comfortable with the Star Trek universe, and comfortable and familiar with the characters. So I submitted three story ideas. Then Roddenberry gave me a page-and-a-half outline, or notes, for “Robot’s Return,” a proposed episode of Genesis II. He thought that could be developed and wanted to see what I could do with it.

  HAROLD LIVINGSTON

  There was a young man named Alan Dean Foster brought in to me to write something. I wanted to see something he had written and he brought me two screenplays, which I thought were terrible. And I didn’t want him to write, that’s all. I didn’t think he could do it, and this is obviously a subjective judgment. That’s what they were paying me for, and it was my judgment that they should get someone else. In any case, we made a deal with Alan to do a treatment for the pilot, which was this business of the old machine coming back to Earth and assuming a kind of life-form. I don’t think I knew this was similar to an episode of the original show. I thought I saw all seventy-nine episodes, some of which I liked and some I thought were just dreadful. Anyway, I made a deal with Alan’s agent, Paul Kohner, that he would write a treatment and agree not to do the script.

  ROBERT GOODWIN

  The decision was made to do a two-hour premiere for the series, and I suggested to Gene that since it had never been done in the series before, that we should come up with a story in which Earth was threatened. In all the Star Trek episodes before, they never even came close to Earth. There was this guy named Alan Dean Foster who had this story that became “In Thy Image,” which fit the bill perfectly.

  ALAN DEAN FOSTER

  After my treatment was turned in based on Roddenberry’s page, it was decided to open the series with a two-hour movie for TV, which is fairly standard procedure when they can manage it. It was decided that of the treatments they had in hand, mine was the best suited to carry two hours. So I went home and developed what became an expanded thirty-two-page outline.

  In many ways, “In Thy Image” is Star Trek: The Motion Picture sans Spock. The newly refitted Enterprise sets out to combat the mysterious energy cloud that has been destroying vessels and is on a direct heading for Earth. Kirk and the rest of his crew, plus Xon, Ilia, and Decker, encounter the approaching object, discovering the truth behind it: it’s actually an ancient Earth space probe en route to its home world in search of its creator.

  This story would prove highly significant to the next stage of Star Trek’s existence. In July 1977—a month after its announcement—the decision was made to cancel the fourth network, because projected advertising revenue would be insufficient to cover the anticipated production costs.

  WALTER KOENIG (actor, “Pavel Chekov”)

  I’m already gun-shy because of the animated series, and I was more than a bit skeptical and concerned that I would not be involved with so many aborted starts from B-movie to a new series. Then incredibly, the series thing happened. I went in for a costume fitting of the old costume and came home and about an hour later they said the whole project was put on hold.

  WILLIAM SHATNER (actor, “James T. Kirk”)

  I remember at one point giving a party at my home for the cast and production staff to celebrate the impending start of a new Star Trek TV series. Plans for it were canceled the day after my party.

  After abandoning its plans for a fourth network, Paramount’s initial idea was that “In Thy Image” would be filmed as a two-hour movie that would be shopped to the three networks as a backdoor pilot for a new series. Studio executives were concerned, however, that the networks would pass on the pilot in retaliation for Paramount attempting to launch their own network. As a result, the studio chose once again to mount a motion picture. Anxious to avoid another embarrassing failure to launch, work on Phase II would continue—set construction, scripts, etc.—until all the deals for a reconstituted feature film could be finalized.

  ROBERT GOODWIN

  At that point they had spent about four years trying to get a script for a feature, but they couldn’t come up with anything that Michael Eisner liked. One day we went into a meeting in the conference room in the Paramount administration building. There was Michael Eisner, Jeff Katzenberg, Gary Nardino, me, and Gene. In the course of that meeting, I got up and pitched this two-hour story. Michael Eisner slammed his hands on the table and said, “We’ve been looking for four years for a feature script. This is it. Now let’s make the movie.” And that was basically it.

  HAROLD LIVINGSTON

  I began looking for someone to write the script based on “In Thy Image,” but we were starting to come up against a production date. I couldn’t find anybody I liked, and I
just decided with five weeks to go I would have to write it myself.

  While Livingston worked on the screenplay between September and October, director Robert L. Collins—whose previous credits included Police Story, Medical Story, and the TV version of Serpico—was brought on to helm “In Thy Image,” and became part of the already turbulent and contentious creative process.

  ROBERT L. COLLINS (director, Star Trek: In Thy Image)

  They originally made me an offer to direct what was essentially a television movie to regenerate the Star Trek series. So we negotiated on that for a while, and then shortly after I came on board Paramount decided to make a feature of it instead. So it went the route of a feature, and we had a budget of about eight million dollars.

  JON POVILL

  As the summer of ’77 wore on and the box office for Star Wars continued to build, Paramount brass became more and more convinced they wanted to do a feature. I think they were waiting, to some extent, to see the development of “In Thy Image,” which, as a two-hour script, they felt showed promise but clearly wasn’t ready yet. So, probably to hedge their bet, they continued to develop the series while being mostly interested in the “pilot.” In the end I suspect greed took over and they decided to go all-in with the feature—even with Robert Collins—but then bringing in Robert Wise, who really made it happen.

  HAROLD LIVINGSTON

  I sat down and wrote this script. I delivered it and Gene said, “Great, you’ve done your job. Now just relax and I’ll write the second draft.” He wrote it in two days. Seriously, it was that fast. Then he brought it in, gave it to us in a bright orange cover, and there it is: In Thy Image, Screenplay by Gene Roddenberry and Harold Livingston. He took first position. We all read it and I was appalled, and so was everyone else. There was Povill, Bob Goodwin, myself, and Bob Collins, who was the director. We sat around looking at each other and somebody said, “Who’s going to tell him it’s a piece of shit?”