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

by Edward Gross

  The final thing, and Nick surprised me on this, is that in Star Trek II we got away with quoting Moby-Dick and A Tale of Two Cities because it worked and Nick had a blinding vision that this was like Moby-Dick and the whole picture became a metaphor. And it was a very good metaphor. But Christopher Plummer plumbing the depths of Shakespeare and coming up with “to be or not to be” because he ran out of other quotes, came to me like a punching bag and that pulled me out of the picture.

  WALTER KOENIG

  The thing I can say about Star Trek VI that it has going for it that none of the other films had is the preponderance of quality guest performers. We have some really strong people. Kim was wonderful; there’s a mind-meld scene that’s the first time a mind meld is really sexy. It’s very sensual.

  KIM CATTRALL (actress, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country)

  I took the name Valeris from the Greek god Eros, the god of strife. And we dropped the vowel because it sounded more Vulcan. I felt it was very much my own. I don’t think she’s like the other women in Star Trek. In the sixties, they were mostly beautiful women in great-looking, tight outfits with fabulous makeup and hairdos, more set decoration than real motivators in the mechanics of the plot.

  NICHOLAS MEYER

  I met a lot of pretty girls. It was amazing. There were some beautiful women who came out for it. But Kim was the only one who got the Vulcan-ness of it. The straight-faced “You must be very proud,” [and] “I don’t believe so, sir.”

  STEVEN-CHARLES JAFFE

  It’s not easy to play a Vulcan. There are a lot of people who did readings where either there was nothing there with absolutely no emotion, or there was too much. Kim was exquisite, because she had the proper balance of not showing emotion but also being very alive. You knew there was this very smart person worthy of being opposite Leonard Nimoy as Spock.

  NICHOLAS MEYER

  Leonard always told me that he never played a man with no emotions, but a man who always was holding his emotions in check.

  KIM CATTRALL

  I wanted a very definitive Vulcan woman. I was a warrior. I wanted a bold look to make it very different from what had come before. I came in to Nick after everything was settled and I said I want to have traces of Leonard, so I dyed my hair black and had it done very sixties and shaved my sideburns, because I felt my ears would look much stronger. I was a revolutionary and I wanted my appearance to reflect that. The great thing about the hairdo was the way I could just put it over my ear so you wouldn’t be able to see the ears. Then I could sort of surreptitiously put it behind my ear and that was really fun. I’ve kept all my ears. It’s a wonderful memory of having done the movie.

  DENNY MARTIN FLINN

  There was a desire to get Kirstie Alley to play Saavik. When that looked like it was going to be impractical, we couldn’t stand around waiting for a decision—maybe the money was too much—for whatever reason. We reached a point where Kirstie Alley could not be counted on to do the film and we said, let’s forget it. Let’s create another character, which led to some nice changes.

  KIM CATTRALL

  I told Nick I really wanted to wear a skirt, like Uhura, since I have great legs. He said, “Kim, if I put you in a skirt, people will be looking at your legs.” And I said, “So?” The uniforms are nice, but they were made in 1982 for someone else. I really wanted a new uniform, but when they fitted me for a costume they told me they couldn’t get any more material. I didn’t want to sweat in someone’s old jacket. I had to completely reshape it so I’d look like a woman. I wasn’t into hiding things at that point in my life. I feel good about the way I look and as a woman I enjoy feeling sexy. I think in science fiction, women should look great … and so should men. That’s why people go to the movies.

  NICHOLAS MEYER

  The history of Star Trek is like Rashomon. I’ll give you an example. Leonard Nimoy gave an interview where he claims one of the times he got most upset with me was when we were filming the confession scene where Spock is mind-melding with Valeris to ferret out the traitors. It’s a very emotionally intense scene. And he said that I showed up on set that day dressed as Sherlock Holmes, which was very distracting and trivialized the moment. In fact, I’ve never dressed up as Sherlock Holmes … ever. I was, however, dressed in a suit and tie that day since I was going to the symphony. So it definitely was a case of our memories playing tricks on us.

  KIM CATTRALL

  My first scene was in sick bay. We did one of the last scenes first and it was like some wonderful fantasy. I would look over at Chekov and say, “Am I dreaming or is this true?” It’s like being caught between fantasy TV land as a kid and the reality of being a working actress—this is my character, this is my job. At the first rehearsal the cast comes up to you, and these people whom you’ve watched since you were seven or eight on television welcome you aboard. You can’t help but feel part of this unique legacy and family.

  RALPH WINTER

  We did some fun things in that movie with weightlessness and floating blood and all that stuff. But ultimately the story is not that good guy–bad guy classic movie like Wrath of Khan was. It was a bit more intellectual.

  LUKAS KENDALL (editor, Film Score Monthly)

  The musical miracle of the movies is that twice Nicholas Meyer had no money for a name composer and picked an entry-level twentysomething—James Horner (Star Trek II) and Cliff Eidelman (Star Trek VI)—and both worked out brilliantly. As great as Goldsmith’s first Star Trek score is, personally I like Star Trek II even better, with Horner’s nautical sweep and heartfelt take on Spock. That’s as good as film scoring gets. At the scoring sessions, Meyer, an avid classical music buff, recognized Horner pilfering from Prokofiev’s “Battle on the Ice” from Alexander Nevsky in “Battle in the Mutara Nebula.” He pulled him aside and asked, “What is this?” Horner sheepishly admitted, “I’m young, I haven’t outgrown my influences.”

  NICHOLAS MEYER

  I would work with Cliff Eidelman again in a heartbeat—he supplied that rather extraordinary score. It was a blessing in disguise. Art thrives on restrictions. It’s when you can’t simply throw money at something you can get very clever and very creative. The whole idea is that any art should leave something to the imagination. That’s where the viewer comes in; those horses tug that plow when they meet your eye. Oscar Wilde said that all art is useless, unless you impute significance to it. So I think that being unable to simply write a check to Jerry Goldsmith and have him do the heavy lifting made us do more heavy lifting. Or finding James Horner and stuff like that was good stuff. And ultimately enriched the series. It was another vintage to add to the brew.

  LUKAS KENDALL

  Eidelman’s score for Star Trek VI is interesting for making the “villain” music the main theme and the heroic theme secondary; usually it’s the opposite. Meyer wanted that score to be an adaptation of Holst’s The Planets, but the rights were too expensive. Today, they’d be free—it’s public domain.

  CLIFF EIDELMAN (composer, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country)

  My Klingon theme is very different. I gave the Klingons more of an ominous theme and made it the main title. It’s violently different from Holst, but the pulse is there to create a menacing idea. It gave me a theme for the opening.

  When Kirk takes control one last time and as he looks out into the stars, he has that spark again.… one last time. And there’s an unresolved note, because it’s very important that he doesn’t trust the Klingons. He doesn’t want to go on this trip even though the spark is there that overtook him.

  The film culminates with the final log of the Starship Enterprise-A. But in the version on screen, it’s the cast, not the characters, signing off, which proved a disappointment to some.

  CLIFF EIDELMAN

  They reversed the order of the names so Shatner’s is last, like an opera. It’s a minute of signing off, which is real emotional.

  DENNY MARTIN FLINN

  My original script read that the signatu
res were James T. Kirk, Mr. Spock, etc. What we were doing was offering them a chance to sign the final log. I thought that would be rather touching, especially since it was the last film [with the original cast]. But it got changed to the actors instead of the characters and I personally disliked it very, very much. One of the actors who is executive produer who shall go unnamed, liked it. I suppose he’d rather see his own name than his character’s name up on the screen. I thought no one gives a fuck about Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner and those people in any substantive Star Trek sense. Those people are Mr. Spock and Kirk and Dr. McCoy. I didn’t see any point to the actors signing their name.

  RALPH WINTER

  There was a sense that this was it, that we were not going to make any more, so there was that bittersweet thing. Harve wasn’t a part of that. It’s the last movie for the original cast. We were clawing at the end of that genre of film about space battles with these great galleons in space, the Horatio Hornblowers, fighting. But it seemed clear to me that we weren’t going to be able to compete with the fast moving TIE fighters of Star Wars and the need for bigger action. The action in Star Trek in television was mostly contrived. We would need to seriously reinvent it. That’s why I wanted to go back and do the 1950s Republic serial view of the future with The Academy Years, because I felt that had more marketability than to just keep going in the same direction.

  WILLIAM SHATNER

  In STVI we took the legacy that Gene and Harve left us, and very successfully continued making a film that Nick, who has been a leading part of the continuation of Trek, had written and directed. And there are also the rest of us who have had our input, because if we didn’t know something by now about Star Trek, we ought to be put away.

  LEONARD NIMOY

  I remember a story I heard about Gregory Peck and his early days. He met John Wayne for the first time. He told Wayne, who was an established star, that he had just finished making a movie. Wayne said, “Is it a good one?” And Peck said, “Yeah.” Wayne said, “That’s good. It takes two good ones out of five to keep the bicycle turning.” I thought that was a very apt remark to make. You make two good films out of every five and you will spin. If you make less than that, chances are you get to the point of diminishing returns. You start to lose your opportunities. The offers don’t come so readily. My sense of the Star Trek movies we made was that we did at least two out of every five good ones. We kept that thing spinning.

  To Be Continued …

  COMING THIS FALL

  THE FIFTY-YEAR MISSION:

  THE NEXT 25 YEARS

  From The Next Generation to J. J. Abrams

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The authors would like to profusely thank everyone who graciously took the time over the years to be interviewed by us, in some cases multiple times for many, many hours. In addition, we’re deeply indebted to David E. Williams, Sheldon Teitelbaum, Steven A. Simak, Joe Nazarro, Jeff Bond, James Van Hise, Karen E. Willson, John Kenneth Muir, Randy and Jean-Marc Lofficier, Tony Timpone, Dan Madsen, Steve Kriozere, Scott Arthur, and Jennifer Howard at the Archive of American Television, who were willing to share their own original material to help supplement this volume, where necessary.

  In almost all cases, material is taken from original interviews conducted by the authors over the last three decades, with the exception of the aforementioned additional material as well as comments excerpted from public appearances at press conferences and/or conventions, along with original memo excerpts.

  In addition, special thanks to our research assistants, without whose help we would probably be publishing this book for the sixtieth anniversary: our indispensable senior research assistant, Jordan Rubio, as well as Jacob DuBoise, Marie Lombardi, Derek Hedbany, and New York University professor Andrew Goldman, for his gracious assistance; as well as the enormously helpful staff of the UCLA Library Special Collections. Thanks for the use of the room.

  The authors would also like to thank Stephen Pizzello of American Cinematographer magazine, for his contributions to this volume. Thanks also go to our friend Mark Gottwald, former publisher of Cinefantastique magazine, as well as to current publisher, Joe Sena.

  No book on Star Trek would be complete without acknowledging the inestimable contributions to the genre by the late Frederick S. Clarke, creator of Cinefantastique, without whom none of this would have been possible. Fred was a mentor and an inspiration and—along with Kerry O’Quinn, founder of Starlog—is a legendary pioneer in the field of erudite sci-fi television journalism long before the world had ever heard of the Internet.

  We would be remiss not to thank our patron saint, editor Brendan Deneen, his intrepid assistant, Nicole Sohl, and our publisher, the terrific Thomas Dunne. Our gratitude as well to our agent, Laurie Fox, at the Linda Chester Agency, for all her boundless enthusiasm throughout the process. Also, special thanks to our excellent copy editor, MaryAnn Johanson, without whose tireless efforts this book would be incomprehensible. Also a tip of the fedora to the brilliant Seth MacFarlane, for his contribution of this book’s foreword. (Anyone who would cast Flash Gordon’s Sam Jones and feature “All Time High” from Octopussy in a movie is okay in our book.)

  And, of course, our most profound thanks to the late, great visionaries Gene Roddenberry and Gene L. Coon, without whom we would not still be talking about (and watching) Star Trek five decades later.

  We would also be remiss not to mention the thoughtful, supportive, and immensely talented Michael Piller, who left this world way too soon, as well as the late Robert H. Justman, Harve Bennett, and the incomparable Leonard Nimoy, who could’ve lived and prospered a little longer.

  And last, but certainly not least, William Ware Theiss, for those amazing costumes that will forever be seared into our brains … until they are stolen by Imorg, at least.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  EDWARD GROSS is currently Executive Editor, U.S., for Empire Magazine’s site at empireonline.com, as well as a regular contributor to SciFiNow magazine. In a career devoted to covering film, television, and comics, he has served on the editorial staff of various magazines, including Movie Magic, Life Story, Cinescape, Starlog, SFX, Femme Fatales, and Cinefantastique, and contributed to Fangoria, Premiere, Comics Scene, and RetroVision. He has also authored numerous nonfiction books, including Rocky: The Complete Guide and X-Files Confidential. Twitter: @edgross. You can sign up for email updates here.

  MARK A. ALTMAN has been hailed as “the world’s foremost Trekspert” by the Los Angeles Times. Altman is a former journalist for such publications as The Boston Globe, Cinefantastique, The Manchester Guardian, and Geek. He is also the writer/producer of the award-winning feature film Free Enterprise, starring William Shatner and Eric McCormack, as well as such hit TV series as The Librarians, Agent X, Castle, and Femme Fatales. Twitter: @markaaltman. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  DATABASE

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT NOTICE

  DEDICATIONS

  EPIGRAPHS

  FOREWORD

  by Seth MacFarlane

  WHAT A LONG STRANGE TREK IT’S BEEN

  by Mark A. Altman

  REFLECTIONS ON THE TREK OF A LIFETIME

  by Edward Gross

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  BIRTH OF A (TREK) NATION

  “Let’s make sure that history never forgets … the name … Enterprise.”

  UNCAGED

  “It’s like nothing we’ve encountered before.”

  THESE WERE THE VOYAGES

  “Sometimes pain can drive a man har
der than pleasure.”

  FAMILY FEUD

  “One day our minds became so powerful we dared think of ourselves as gods.”

  BOLDLY GOING

  “In every revolution there is one man with a vision.”

  THE END OF THE BEGINNING

  “To survive is not enough … to simply exist is not enough.”

  LIFE AFTER DEATH

  “We’ve been through death … and life together.”

  REANIMATED

  “You can no more destroy this ship than I can change color.”

  LOST IN SPACE

  “Let me do something!”

  THE NEXT PHASE

  “Aren’t you dead?”

  SLOW MOTION

  “I need you … badly.”

  KHAN GAME

  “I reprogrammed the simulation so that it was possible to save the ship.”

  IN SEARCH OF

  “The word is no.… I am therefore going anyway.”

  A WHALE OF A TALE

  “There be whales here.”

  GOD COMPLEX

  “What does God need with a starship?”

  UP THE ACADEMY

  “I am a graduate of Starfleet Academy; I know many things.”

  THE FINAL ROUNDUP

  “Only Nixon could go to China.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  COPYRIGHT

  This book was not prepared, approved, licensed, or endorsed by Paramount Pictures, CBS Television, or any other entity involved in creating or producing Star Trek.