by Edward Gross
WILLIAM SHATNER
They did TMP and it was not successful. It was only because of Paramount’s belief that there must be some box office somewhere that they hired Harve Bennett who again set the tone of the way the subsequent movies were going to go. Gene was again in the background, offering advice, but not interested in the creative process.
DAVID GERROLD
Harve Bennett knew what he was doing. He did these nice, crisp little movies that are doing like a hundred million dollars each, which is something that Gene Roddenberry has never been able to do. We get into meetings for Star Trek: The Next Generation, and in the first six weeks, Gene is saying, “I don’t want anyone telling Harve Bennett anything.” We ran into Harve Bennett at the ceremony for George [Takei’s] star and, of course, we’re all being polite, but I’m watching Gene, and Gene is shining Harve on. “Yes, we’re having great fun, we’re going to make it work.” Harve gets up and leaves and Gene looks at me and says, “See how I handled him?” And I’m thinking, “Jesus, what a scumbag.” At that time, it’s like watching these two guys dancing around each other like they’re in competition, which is so stupid. Harve Bennett didn’t want to be an enemy. Gene turned him into an enemy.
WALTER KOENIG
Harve wanted to remold the show in his own image. He’s obviously a bright man and has a good sense of which stories work. I don’t think he liked working in Roddenberry’s shadow. He resented him. Harve had a tendency to talk about us to other people. George [Takei] came back and would recount what Harve had said about me. And he [Bennett] spoke to me about other actors on the show.
EDDIE EGAN
There was some friction between Harve and Leonard on III, which I never really understood. I believe it was Harve feeling a little sensitive to not getting enough attention for being the person who was the architect of the rebirth of Star Trek. In the second movie, people were just glad that it was back and the crew was acting like they expected them to act. Then the news on the third one was that Leonard Nimoy is directing, it’s in good hands. So I think Harve just felt a little left out of being the focus of attention. He was also the hammer that had to lay down the law about how long they could go on shooting days and whether they could ever go outside anywhere; all of the budgetary things fell to him to impart to Leonard.
I think he also told Leonard a few times that certain scenes were not staged well and they had some disagreements about that. By the way, the advice was good and once Leonard got over the interference part of it, he was okay. Overall, though, there did seem to be some element of a different dynamic between them.
Although the regular cast was present for Star Trek III, Kirstie Alley, who had played and made quite the impression as the half-Vulcan, half-Romulan Lt. Saavik, decided not to reprise the role for a variety of reasons, resulting in her being replaced by Robin Curtis. Alley explained to Starlog magazine at the time, “I thought [Robin Curtis] was at a real disadvantage playing a role someone else established, especially with Star Trek, which has an enormous following. I think she did a fine job. I have no problem with what she was doing except that, when I saw the film, I said, “She isn’t Saavik, I am!’”
Also MIA was Bibi Besch as Carol Marcus, who was simply written out. Merritt Butrick was back as David, but in Bennett’s tale the Genesis Device was not quite as nobly created as first perceived (using highly unstable protomatter in its matrix), and in Bennett’s view David needs to be punished for his hubris, the character ultimately perishing at the hands of the Klingons on the Genesis Planet, after he and Saavik have discovered the rapidly aging Spock.
One final “character” to get the axe was the Enterprise itself. In a shocking and moving moment, Kirk orders the self-destruction of the starship to save his crew (who have beamed down to the surface of the Genesis Planet) to stop a large contingent of marauding Klingons.
An addition to the cast was actor Christopher Lloyd (Taxi, Back to the Future) as the Klingon Kruge, who wants to retrieve the Genesis Device to bring back to the Empire.
SUSAN SACKETT
Kirstie Alley was caught between a rock and a hard place. I think her agent and Paramount screwed up in trying to close the deal for her and they didn’t come to terms. I don’t think it was her fault. That’s showbiz.
DEBORAH ARAKELIAN
There is that amazing thing where Kirstie’s breast size seems to change radically in the movie. I don’t know if you have noticed that. Take a very close look at the elevator scene and then look at the rest of the movie. She’s wearing a tunic. It is impossible to miss. Poor Agnes Henry had to remake the uniform. If it is not a weight thing, what could it possibly be? I didn’t feel them, but all I know is that those puppies grew tremendously from the elevator scene to the rest of the movie. She left for a period of time ostensibly because there had been a death in the family. And they redid the production schedule to accommodate her absence from the set. When she came back, let’s just say a lot of reconstruction work had to be done on her uniform.
HARVE BENNETT
Our big problem came with the lady who played Saavik. She wanted as much as Bill Shatner. We thought it was funny at first. There was no movement in negotiation. We thought that Saavik’s part in this was wonderful. We didn’t want to cut it out. We decided to recast the character and keep the part. How did we fare in putting Robin Curtis in where Kirstie Alley had gone before? About even.
ROBIN CURTIS (actress, “Saavik”)
There was not a word mentioned to me of her. I don’t think it had anything to do with bad feelings or being an outcast or anything like that. I think that it was the most professional and healthy approach to the whole situation. This was Leonard Nimoy’s baby. Being a beginner, given that this was my first film, I just left myself totally in Leonard’s hands. I never got a sense I was following in someone else’s footsteps, which was lovely. I’m so different physically from her that I think that in itself is kind of riveting. They didn’t try to copy. They didn’t try to mimic.
HARVE BENNETT
Curiously enough, no one said a thing. Part of it is probably that Alley had a different quality. The character’s latent sexuality was very appealing and indicated that there was something under that that might be Romulan. Robin is almost pure Vulcan. And Leonard directing was much more inclined to Vulcanize her rather than try to dig for the Romulan, which wasn’t really applicable here.
ROBIN CURTIS
I did want to keep things fairly separate between myself and Kirstie Alley, and as it turned out, each and every one of the people involved in Star Trek III were wonderful. Leonard set an example that everyone followed, and that is to say I was never made to feel like I had to fill someone else’s shoes. Never for a moment was I made to feel like that, and I think that was really Leonard’s healthy approach to the whole thing.
DEBORAH ARAKELIAN
Robin Curtis was just a really delightful person. Very sweet in a really miserable situation of having to reprise that role so quickly after somebody else had created it. It was a nasty position to be in.
HARVE BENNETT
Carol Marcus was the fifth member of a four-man relay team. She was the extraneous character. She was in the story outline. I thought it might be fun to have her relating to David and have something going with Saavik.
But then protomatter came up. Then something happened: Did Carol know? If Carol knows about protomatter, everything about David making a mistake doesn’t wash. Then it’s not David’s ambition, it’s mother and son in some kind of Oedipal whim to cheat the world together. And they don’t tell Kirk, which is very out of character. Also, then I would have had to kill them both. Writer’s problem. Answer: Don’t get Carol involved. Get her out of this issue. David doing it without his mother’s knowledge enriches it for me. And his father certainly doesn’t know.
If you think it’s tough answering that, think of how it was when I tried to explain it to Bibi Besch. She was deeply upset. She cried. She thought it was a rejection of her tal
ent. She thought she must have done something wrong. But I got a lovely letter from Bibi after the picture opened. It said, “I’ve seen the picture. Now I understand. You were right. I hope you can find a place for me in one of the other films.”
WILLIAM SHATNER
I thought the loss of David Marcus and the Enterprise were very clever devices used to create drama in a situation. The problem is that, in a continuing series of movies where the characters appear through all the films, we have to raise some jeopardy. But everybody knows the characters are not going to die.
HARVE BENNETT
I confess to being old-fashioned. There is in my vision such a thing as ultimate retribution. The reason David dies, structurally, is because he’s messed with Mother Nature. He allowed himself to bend the rules at the wrong time, in the wrong place. He’s there on that planet for only that reason. The whole story dates back to David putting protomatter in the matrix. The death of Spock—everything—rests on his shoulders if you want to blame him for it.
Also, we did not feel that the character of David was a viable character upon which to build further stories. We didn’t set out to kill him. We didn’t even set out to use him, but when I got to the crisis and came up with the idea, “I’m going to kill one of them,” it became obvious which one I would have to kill, because it was the one I didn’t need. I had no idea what the future of Saavik might be.
Clearly, I couldn’t kill Spock a second time or the picture would be over and David was extraneous then. It was like the [Decker] character in the first movie: it was a good try and it is very interesting to see the number of tries to bring “new blood” into “the family.” Kirk changed the computer on the Kobayashi Maru scenario before Star Trek II. His son says to him, “You’ve cheated.” His father says, “I changed the rules.” Well, it turns out that the kettle was calling the pot black. David says it at a time when he knows he’s changed the rules.
LEONARD NIMOY
As a director, I’m probably somewhere in between Bob Wise and Nicholas Meyer. Not as precise as Bob, not as imaginative or rough-edged as Nick. I think the major difference, and for me the most important difference, is my attitude toward the story and the actors. Wise and Meyer are looking for a different kind of final product than I am.
HARVE BENNETT
I’ll tell you, what was a great directorial achievement by Leonard was getting emotion over David’s death out of Shatner, because he wanted to play it more stylistically. It’s the only scene I remember where Leonard said, “Clear the bridge.” Literally, he said, “Will everybody please leave? I want to talk to Bill.” I never asked him what he said to Bill. It was very personal. It was director talk to actor.
LEONARD NIMOY
On the day of shooting that scene, he and I got ourselves off into a corner and discussed it slowly in a relaxed atmosphere and privately. What I said to him was this: “You have to decide how far you want to go with this. How far you want to take this reaction. My opinion is that you can go pretty far and get away with it, maybe strip off some of the veneer of the admiral, the hero, always in charge, always on top of the situation, and show us a vulnerable person.” He took it further, frankly, than I expected him to. And it was scary.
I mean, how many space epics do you see where your hero, on receiving news, stumbles back and falls on the person’s own ship? You don’t see that a lot. It was a scary thing for all of us hoping that it would be perceived as a very touching moment. Some little kid breaks into laughter in the audience and you’re dead. We did several takes and used the one where we really thought Bill lost control and stumbled and fell. It looked accidental, not a performance. I’m very moved by it. In my opinion, it is some of the best work he has ever done. It looked as though he had received a physical jolt, as if somebody had hit him with the information. He looks deeply hurt. Some of the most personal and vulnerable work I’ve ever seen done in the role of Kirk.
WALTER KOENIG
I went to school with Chris Lloyd. We used to be best buddies, it could have been a trip. It wasn’t. He was very much into his character, which was good, but he was not very approachable as a consequence, and the rapport we had had as kids in a playhouse was not there for me. I always want to go home again and I guess you can’t.
EDDIE EGAN
I think he just felt very out of place. There were whole parts in the movie where he didn’t interact with any of them until the end except with Robin Curtis and Merritt Butrick. No one likes wearing that kind of makeup in that kind of heat for that many hours a day. It was a very quick job. He didn’t work that long. The movie was also shot at an extremely quick pace.
DEBORAH ARAKELIAN
Chris Lloyd stayed to himself. He would sit there in full makeup with his little wire glasses on reading the trades. I wish I had a picture of it, it was pretty funny to look at. He had almost no interaction with anyone. Came in and did his job, such a professional. I used to go to the Taxi stage and watch him work and he was so amazingly funny. Probably my second favorite show to watch film next to Mork & Mindy. You never saw the good stuff. They couldn’t air that stuff. They would shoot way into the mornings.
HARVE BENNETT
The death of the Enterprise caused serious ripples. The death of David did not. That’s backward for me. “How could you destroy the Enterprise?” is a burden I take full responsibility for. I will justify it to the end and once again I think I have been playing fair.
RICHARD ARNOLD (Star Trek archivist)
Harve showed no respect for Gene and what he had created. When it came to destroying the Enterprise, Gene felt that it was like killing off one of the characters. As a pilot during WWII, Gene felt that “she” deserved better. Harve said that he felt more like a helicopter pilot during the Korean War … if you crashed your helicopter, you could always get another one. This very different approach to “equipment” was only one aspect of their difficult relationship, one that had a history that went back to 1965, when Gene had Harve thrown off of the set of his pilot The Long Hunt of April Savage.
KEN RALSTON (visual effects supervisor, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock)
It was something I always wanted to do. I hate that ship. I’ve said that a hundred times, but it’s true. I think it’s ugly—the most silly-looking thing. The model itself is murder to work with. I would hope that the idea actually originated with me on Trek II. I talked to Harve Bennett about doing that to the ship—blowing it up. I’d like to take some credit, at least, for blowing it up—for physically doing it. Watching that thing go was one of my favorite parts.
RALPH WINTER
I remember that the conventional wisdom is you can’t kill Spock and the answer is you can, if you do it well. And the same thing is you can’t kill the Enterprise when you can—if you do it well. It was that zigzag storytelling structural thing that both of them understood very well. The way Star Trek is opera in space
HARVE BENNETT
My choice was a humanistic choice. It began as a writer’s problem. Usually it happens when you reach a sticky point. I had a whole justification for it. Oliver Hazard Perry of the U.S. Navy scuttled the Niagara at the Battle of Lake Erie and won the battle as a result. He was rowed on a rowboat to another ship and took command. Perry happens to be one of James T. Kirk’s great heroes. Actually, there is a model of the Niagara in Kirk’s quarters for those who love Star Trek trivia. So the scuttling of the ship to achieve the greater good is a tactic. Also, with the death of his son and the hopelessness of the situation, it seemed like the right solution.
GENE RODDENBERRY
I felt it wasn’t really that necessary. I would have rather seen the saucer blow up, at the end of the picture we could have had a new saucer come down and reunite the two. Symbolic of the end of the story. They preferred to do it the other way.
SCOTT MANTZ (film critic, Access Hollywood)
I remember being almost as upset watching the Enterprise blow up as when Spock died. The destruct sequence, which goes bac
k to “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield,” was a nice touch of continuity. But when the bridge blows up and you see the words “U.S.S. Enterprise and NCC-1701” disintegrate, it was heartbreaking. It doesn’t just blow up like a big burst of sun. It blows up in pieces and the Enterprise disintegrates, which is really spectacular.
KEN RALSTON
It was a full miniature blown up. Then we had to pull a matte off that and put some stars in because it was just shot against black. We weren’t about to destroy the $150,000 model. I was tempted though—tempted many times to take a mallet to it. Next we cut to the famous number being eaten away and the explosions going off. Bill George devised a light Styrofoam that he laid over this incredible grid work—something he came up with in twenty minutes or so. It looked great. There is also a stock explosion from The Empire Strikes Back in there, too. It comes out from underneath the dish to make the explosion seem a little more cohesive and not so much of an effect.
WILLIAM SHATNER
Two elements that were expendable, David and the Enterprise, were killed off because nothing else could be killed off. In fact, the real problem is, what else can we kill? We’re looking around for people to die!
DeFOREST KELLEY (actor, “Dr. Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy”)
When I read that in the script, I couldn’t believe it. You know, I thought, “My God, the Enterprise is a bigger star than any of us. If they’re shooting this guy out of the script, they can shoot anybody out.”
HARVE BENNETT
There are two elements in the making of a story, whether it’s on film or not. Suspense and surprise. You’re either hoping a character will do something or he does something that you didn’t expect. The sure knowledge of the audience saying, “Oh, no, they’re not going to do that,” and the sheer surprise of saying, “Oh, yes we are!” There are many other moments in the film which were intended to be one or the other. The death of David is one clear example of surprise, because you’re playing off the clichés of the expected. One of the joys of motion-picture writing as opposed to television is that you have full use of those two ranges. In television the surprise is limited and suspense is limited to the fact that the episode must end with the hero surviving.