These Are The Voyages, TOS, Season One

by Cushman, Marc

  I don’t think that we have enough story material in this outline to sustain an hour as it presently stands. I think it needs some more juice... perhaps we could find a way to get something else into the story. (RJ5-1)

  The “something else” added into Erwin’s free revised outline, dated April 15, gave the creature the ability to fool its intended victims with illusions. Justman wrote to Roddenberry that the revised outline was “a much cleaner and straighter story line.” He said:

  The “apparition” gimmick in this story is extremely intriguing to me. However, I think we have to get some action into this prior to the end. (RJ5-2)

  Stan Robertson at NBC wanted to see more action, too. But he also liked the idea, writing Roddenberry:

  The basic germ or idea for an excellent action-adventure story appears to be present in this very thin presentation. The idea of introducing an animal as a central antagonist in one of our stories is excellent.... [But] we would caution against making the animal so “far out” that its effectiveness is not believable.... Also, you might check the medical exactness of a person dying “instantaneously” as the result of having one or another of the body chemicals suddenly drained from his person. (SR5-1)

  Roddenberry did, with De Forest Research. Since no person had ever had all of a particular vital chemical suddenly drained from his body, there was no way to say for sure how quickly death would occur. But it was deduced that death would likely occur, and would likely occur soon.

  At this stage, the “animal” was never seen as anything other than a salt-sucking creature who could put its victims into a hypnotic trance. Justman wrote Roddenberry:

  I don’t know what the grotesque biped should look like, or how we are to go about handling this creation. I might make a suggestion which goes in an entirely opposite direction. Perhaps the grotesque biped could be an extremely beautiful, but terrifying, young lady. Perhaps she could be something along the lines of the green dancing maiden we had in Star Trek pilot No. 1. Would you believe a blue dancing maiden? With orange hair? And plenty stacked? I’d like to be in on the casting of this part. (RJ5-2)

  Roddenberry agreed that a sexy monster was intriguing, but Stan Robinson had already endorsed the idea of the protagonist being an “animal.” The question: how to get both? George Clayton Johnson had the answer. He later said, “My very first Twilight Zone, ‘The Four of Us Are Dying,’ had to do with a person who could change his appearance. I figured something that worked once, and succeeded, could work again. So I started thinking in terms of a shape-changer and came up with the idea of ‘the last of its kind’ -- the idea that, at one time, there were three, four, five states completely covered by one herd of buffalo, tens of hundreds of thousands of these beasts, and now there are almost none of them left. What if there was only one left? That appealed to Gene -- that idea, the very last of its kind.” (93-1)

  Roddenberry was so enthusiastic about this idea, which now had a clear central theme, that he paid Erwin a “kill fee” of $345 (on top of the $655 he had already gotten for the first draft of his outline) and assigned the script to Johnson. Using Erwin’s outline as a guide, which had been approved by NBC, Johnson inserted his shape-shifting element and went straight to teleplay. He said, “Well, off I went to try to write it, with John D.F. Black being sort of assigned to me as a story editor. And then I’m calling up John, saying, ‘This isn’t working for me. I don’t understand it.’ So, I went in and met with him, told him what I was doing, and he said, ‘Ah-ha! You made your mistake by bringing the creature aboard the ship in Act III. It should be in Act I. That’s what the whole thing is about -- the creature.’ And I said, ‘That’s all very well and good, but you billed the show as exploring alien planets, other environments, so, really, there should be some action that takes place on the planet.’ So, I worked out that part of the action involving Captain Kirk trying to capture Professor Crater -- the character who had been protecting the creature – on the planet.” (93-1)

  Johnson also came up with a new title for his first draft script, turned in on May 23: “Damsel with a Dulcimer.” Mark Alfred, a fan of both Star Trek and English literature, explained the reference, saying, “Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote a poem in 1797, published in 1816, called ‘Kubla Khan.’ It was a wild vision in his imagination of the savage Khan’s establishment of a ‘pleasure dome.’ But the last few lines of the poem changed gears to describe the Coleridge’s poetic vision. The last stanza begins, ‘A damsel with a dulcimer in a vision once I saw,’ and says that if the writer could only reproduce her beauty and song, the world would go wild for it, and say that he was crazy for carrying on so…. [W]riter Johnson wanted to use this reference to Coleridge’s poem to form a deeper resonance in the mind of a perceptive Star Trek viewer.”

  The day after Johnson’s teleplay was received, Robert Justman wrote to John D.F. Black, saying, “This first draft is damn fine!” But Justman being Justman, there were numerous pages of suggestions and criticism. He wrote:

  I pose the musical question: where is the TEASER? Also, I think the script is plenty short. I only count about 56 ½ pages…. Would you believe a wooden crate and labelled [sic] medical supplies? I wouldn’t. While I think of it, naturally most of the exteriors would have to be done on location. I think I know just the spot for our locations. Ask me nicely and I’ll tell you.... [W]e will have to be careful in the way we handle the varying appearances of NANCY down on the planet. The audience should have no doubt what they are seeing is either Kirk’s or McCoy’s personalized representation of Nancy. We must not confuse the audience in any respect with regard to this point…. On here, the audience discovers the dead body of DARNELL. I don’t think that the audience should discover this before Kirk and McCoy. I think it’s important that Kirk and McCoy find Darnell and react for the end of ACT I. Also, may I suggest that we ask writers not to write in such things as boom shots on location, or anything of that intricacy for the directors. I think the directors can get intricate enough all by themselves without any additional help from any of us…. I hope NBC does not feel that the script is too “cerebral.” (RJ5-3)

  NBC did. Stan Robertson told Roddenberry:

  Since the utilization of hallucinative, hypnotic vision, etc., are a strong part of the storyline in Pilot Number 1, we should minimize these tools. (SR5-1)

  In this first stab at a teleplay, Johnson had depicted everything on the planet as an illusion, including the buildings. He was asked to tone this down, substantially. The only illusion remaining in his second draft script from May 31 was in how the creature chose to reveal itself to its intended victims.

  Two days after delivery, Justman wrote John D.F. Black:

  Again, a very good draft by George Clayton Johnson. I shall not level anymore praise at him, but shall instead go to work and tear this draft apart as best I can. Nothing personal, mind you. (RJ5-4)

  The memos and notes that the producers sent each other about the story outlines, scripts, and rewrites served a variety of purposes. They offered story critiques, as well as thoughts about how well the plots and characterizations fit the evolving gospel according to Star Trek. Another purpose of the notes was to scale the stories and roles to fit the budget and casting constraints. They also provided more than occasional dollops of wit, sarcasm and comedic relief from the never-ending stresses of production.

  Justman was always very thorough and came up with more than a few pages of notes concerning things needing immediate correction. One such note had to do with Roddenberry’s instructions to the writers to avoid putting the science fiction over the personal drama. Of this, he said:

  We establish a plant named “Beauregard.” This bit is very amusing and quite science fiction. But are we telling science fiction stories or are we doing a television dramatic show? I’m not sure that the plant routine is out of place. I’m just not sure that it is in place in this story. (RJ5-4)

  Roddenberry could have -- and possibly should have -- killed the Beauregard the Plant
bit. But he allowed Johnson to leave it in, with the warning:

  One moving plant, okay. One which makes sounds, okay. But if we go much further, we’ll get outlandish. (GR5-3)

  Justman’s notes continued:

  I understand that the various guises that Nancy appears in are to key off of whosoever is looking at her. And we should follow this method throughout the script. However, what does she look like when Crater looks at her? And he does exactly this on the top of here. (RJ5-4)

  It was decided that the audience should not see what Crater sees. Showing us this would take away from the surprise at the end of the story when we do see the true appearance of the creature.

  George Clayton Johnson did a free polish on his script and trimmed the scene back to have only one plant moving and making noises. And it was outlandish. In Johnson’s defense, his description of “Sulu’s zoo” is intriguing and, if budget, time and technical abilities allowed it to be brought to life as the writer envisioned, it would have been well worth doing. Example:

  In the center of the room -- obviously one of Sulu’s prize pets -- is a large, undulating plant with a pansy-type face -- a plant that looks like a Pekingese dog. It is swaying with sentient life and gives off a CHIMING, MELODIC HUM, like a harmonium. As Janice enters, it senses her presence and leans toward her. Almost unconsciously she strokes it as one might stroke a friendly German shepherd. It CROONS MUSICALLY and ducks its head as though welcoming her touch.

  A splendid idea, but there was no TV show from this period that could do something like this and not have it come off damn silly. And it did come off damn silly.

  Another change Roddenberry requested:

  While I like the lilt of your revised title, suggest we consider “The Man Trap” is still a better 8:30 action-adventure slot heading for our show. I know what NBC is going to say. (GR5-3)

  Johnson complained, “I was really disappointed when Gene put that title on it. I thought it trite and predictable and obvious - ‘The Man Trap,’ yeah, it’s clever, it’s hardboiled, it’s almost Dashiell Hammett-esque. ‘Yeh, she was a man trap.’ Whereas ‘Damsel with a Dulcimer’ was somehow trying to romanticize the dismal creature that was so depleted in her life substance that she looked like death, but she still had the power to look voluptuous or strong or intelligent by reading the minds and emotions and, I guess, the soul of these people that she met.” (93-1)

  Then again, would most audience members even know what “Damsel with a Dulcimer” meant?

  Johnson’s Revised 2nd Draft, always provided at no charge per Writers Guild of America guidelines, and his final handling of the script, was turned in on June 8. He had caught the voices of the characters better than any other freelancer so far. But, of course, with only the pilot film as a guide, he could not be expected to deliver a draft ready to go before the cameras. Bob Justman, desperate for another script to put into preproduction, responded two days later, writing John D.F. Black:

  I still find many of the previous points I made about this script unresolved so far as I’m concerned…. And the beginning of the TEASER in the Transporter Room, shouldn’t the audience know where Kirk, McCoy and Darnell are going? And shouldn’t we see this Trio arrive on the surface of the planet?... I still feel there is an enormous problem concerned with what Nancy looks like when certain people are looking at her. And I don’t think that this problem has been resolved yet. Especially at the end of the story, when Kirk and Spock and McCoy are in the throes of getting rid of Nancy, or whatever she is. How does Spock see her? Are we going to have to keep on jumping two or three different actresses back and forth within the same sequence, depending upon who is looking at her? If we do this, we can be shooting this show forever, because we will have to cover it for all looks. I think it would be best if Kirk and McCoy and Spock see Nancy as one physical representation. And Darnell sees her as the brassy blonde. I think we can easily believe that Kirk sees Nancy the same way that McCoy sees her physically. It is evident now that McCoy and Kirk have discussed Nancy prior to ever coming down on the planet. Kirk would know what she looks like. (RJ5-5)

  Black disagreed. He felt that once it was established how each person saw her, the audience would not need to be reminded of this, unless Nancy allowed herself to be seen differently, and added an effective moment to the script where, after Kirk corrects McCoy, stating that Nancy is “a handsome woman,” but hardly as young as McCoy believes he sees, Nancy allows the doctor to see her more realistically, as a woman past 40.

  Justman continued:

  On here, if I were Spock, I would kick Uhura’s ass right off the ship…. Don’t you think it is a bit too much on the nose for Yeoman Janice to enter the Transporter Room with a tray on which she has a bowl of nuts and a salt shaker? … We will have to discuss with Gene our conception of what the Creature really looks like [at the end of the story], and how Nancy changes into this Creature. Also, how we are to create the Creature. The various visualizations of what the Creature is, cannot dissolve into each other, but will have to be some sort of optical ZAP EFFECT due to the difference in physical characteristics…. John, this is supposedly our next show after “The Enemy Within” and I feel it needs a lot of work - and right away. (RJ5-5)

  Black did not agree that the script needed a lot of work, but he did do his contractually obligated script polish. A nice in-joke added here for Nichelle Nichols, in consideration of how many times she said “Hailing frequencies open, Captain” in the first few episodes, was the line: “Mister Spock, I think if I hear that word again, I’ll cry.”

  Black’s rewrite, sent to the mimeo department and designated as the “Yellow Cover First Draft” was ready to send to NBC and Star Trek’s various department heads on June 13. As with the Yellow Cover draft of the previous episode’s script, it never got to any of them.

  George C. Johnson said, “Gene liked it, or claimed that he did. Then he hid it from me for a while and the next thing you know I got a copy of the final script and it had been rewritten -- quite a bit.” (93-4)

  Johnson felt Roddenberry’s “tinkering” resulted in “downgrading the story.” (93-2)

  John Black agreed, believing that Johnson’s story successfully dealt with humans’ insatiable need for companionship. He said, “I don’t remember what GR put in, but I do remember that he took out a lot of George’s material. Again, we’re back to ‘it’s a gift horse, leave its mouth alone.’ There could have been a hell of a lot more art in Star Trek if GR kept his hands off the scripts.” (17-4)

  One scene Roddenberry tossed out was in the teaser Johnson wrote. McCoy is uncomfortable about being beamed down to the planet; he doesn’t trust the transporter; he even suspects that it can somehow alter the personalities of the people using it. Roddenberry felt this scene was irrelevant to the story being told and delayed getting Kirk and McCoy to the planet. It also encroached on the premise of “The Enemy Within,” being written by Richard Matheson. But the lost moment was too good to be lost forever, especially in light of what happens to Kirk in the Matheson story. McCoy’s transporter phobia would be inserted into other episodes.

  In George Clayton Johnson’s final handling of the teleplay, we feel more for Crater and better appreciate his heartache over losing Nancy -- twice -- since Crater lives in Johnson’s version. And we discover, as does Kirk, that Crater truly did care for the creature and does ache from the knowledge that the last one may now be dead. He has spent years digging among the ruins, finding the art and the music the creatures made, and he has lived with one and exchanged love with it. More was made of this relationship before Roddenberry’s rewrite.

  The tragedy built into the story actually works better with Crater living at the end; it helps us empathize more with the creature, since it is not so cold-hearted to callously discard and even feed upon its companion and protector -- and lover -- as Roddenberry has it do. We also get a stronger sense of its fear. When it impersonates McCoy, it tries harder to convey to Kirk and Spock that they don’t have to k
ill “the creature” -- it has just been trying to survive and, now, by enabling it to nourish itself on salt from the ship stores, it would pose no further threat. But they argue with the “Unreal McCoy,” telling him the creature cannot be trusted and that it might be the type of living being that, if fed regularly, can reproduce by fission, thereby posing a greater threat, especially with it being on a ship that can take it to any planet -- any grazing ground -- in the universe. Spock even compares it to a drug addict and says that, in the creature’s eyes, “all of us are sweating heroin.” The Unreal McCoy -- the creature -- realizing it cannot reason with them, slowly backs away, and then bolts for the turbolift, fleeing the bridge. It is truly terrified.

  At the story’s end, as Johnson played it, Crater tells Kirk he has decided to stay behind on the planet, alone, spending the remainder of his life searching for another of these remarkable creatures. Kirk’s anguish is more profound than what we see in the filmed version. We sense from Johnson’s writing that, with the danger now over, with Kirk thinking with a cooler head and realizing how wrong he was about Crater, he truly has taken some of the heartbroken man’s anguish onto his own shoulders. He tells Spock, “I was just thinking about the buffalo.”

  Roddenberry left that line in but, with so much of the emotional aspects removed from the script, it had far less impact.

  Leonard Nimoy’s stand-in Frank da Vinci in make-up test for Roddenberry’s red blotches (Courtesy of Fred Walder)

  As for the elements John D.F. Black could not remember Roddenberry adding, there were many. The red ring-like markings on the faces of the dead came at this time. In Johnson’s final draft, the body of each victim “glows with a phosphorescence.” In Johnson’s script, McCoy doesn’t get reprimanded by Kirk in sickbay with the confrontational line, “How your lost love affects your vision doesn’t interest me, Doctor! I’ve lost a man. I want to know what killed him.” Those words, as well as the underlines, came courtesy of Gene Roddenberry’s rewrite. In Johnson’s version, it is Scotty who beams down to the planet with Kirk to search for Crater, not Spock. While the scene works just as well this way, there does seem to be a lack of Spock throughout much of the story. For that reason alone, the change helps. And, in Johnson’s versions, Crater gives up when Kirk and Scott surround him. In Roddenberry’s, Kirk hits Crater with a phaser stun beam, resulting in his groggy and slurred confession about his wife’s death. Roddenberry also added the perfect final chill to this scene, when Kirk asks how long Nancy has been dead and Crater can’t remember if it was “a year ... or was it two?”