These Are The Voyages, TOS, Season One

by Cushman, Marc

  Writer Michael Fessier, Jr., for TV Guide on October 13, 1966, also put the spotlight on Shatner. The article was called “No One Ever Upsets the Star,” and Fessier, having witnessed the filming of “The Naked Time,” described how Shatner and Nimoy planned out the moment when Kirk confronts the emotionally devastated Spock in the briefing room. Kirk was to slap him, repeatedly, and then Spock was to strike back. As a dare, Nimoy suggested Captain Kirk “fly backward over the table, like a hero,” and to satisfy the needs of a closely positioned camera, Shatner did, without the aid of a stuntman. But the hero was receiving less attention than expected.

  By mid October, the tide was changing. The TV magazine with the article on Star Trek that included Shatner’s line about Shakespeare did not use a picture of Captain Kirk for its cover, but one of Mr. Spock, alone. Only a few weeks after hitting the airwaves, a new and very unexpected phenomenon was making itself known. It would soon be given a name: Spockmania.

  A letter printed in TV Guide from October 1966 read, “Hooray for the guy with the ears and eyebrows on Star Trek. At last, someone who is really different... or sort of.”

  Frank Judge, for the Boston Sunday Herald on October 23, 1966, observed, “While Shatner gets top billing, Leonard Nimoy is piling up mountains of fan mail of his own.”

  Mr. Spock was again featured solo on a magazine cover, this time for the January 6, 1967 issue of TV Showtime. The caption: “Romantic Image with Pointed Ears.” For the article entitled “New Breed of TV Hero,” Tom Weigel wrote:

  TV viewers -- especially the teen variety -[find] Nimoy an intriguing new variation of the cool, hard-to-rattle hero. Trek’s actual star is William Shatner, traditionally handsome fellow, who has all but been ignored by fans in their current predilection for the offbeat hero.

  Syndicated columnist Bob MacKenzie added fuel to the co-star fire on February 10, 1967, writing:

  For reasons mysterious to me, in a show that should by rights be dominated by the broad-shoulders and anthropoid jaw of William Shatner, the titular hero, Leonard Nimoy gets most of the attention. The attention comes not only from teenagers, who are naturally drawn to strange heroes, but from grown ladies with husbands and children. One letter I received recently was from a local wife and mother who assured that Nimoy “can park his space-ship in my garage anytime.” That touching sentiment was followed soon by a message from another indigenous hausfrau who claimed that Nimoy is “enchanting to look at.”... that Nimoy “presents a challenge to women because he plays hard to get.” Nimoy’s character is supposed to be devoid of emotion; he is simply not interested in love and related activities. Is this a clue to the secret of male sex appeal in these anxious times? Total indifference?... On the other hand, maybe it’s the pointy ears after all.

  TV Guide featured Star Trek on its cover for the March 4, 1967 issue. For the picture, Spock stood behind Kirk. For the article, however, Nimoy stepped to the forefront. The lead-off line read, “Product of Two Worlds: Leonard Nimoy, as the hybrid Mr. Spock, has made it big in outer space.” Writer Leslie Raddatz took note that the bulk of Nimoy’s fan mail came from teenagers. Nimoy’s explanation: “The kids dig the fact that Spock is cool.” Roddenberry added, “We’re all imprisoned within ourselves. We’re all aliens on this strange planet. So people find identification with Spock.” Nimoy understood this. He told Raddatz, “I don’t want to play a creature or a computer. Spock gives me a chance to say some things about the human race.”

  Charles Witbeck, writing for The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner on April 16, 1967, declared, “A stone-faced man with pointed ears and bangs has tickled the kids and saved NBC’s science fiction series Star Trek from oblivion on Thursday nights.”

  Isaac Asimov returned to TV Guide on April 29, 1967 to pen an article entitled “Mr. Spock Is Dreamy!” Asimov’s 12-year-old daughter gave her father the article’s title. She had said, “I think that Mr. Spock is dreamy -- he’s so smart,” prompting Asimov to write:

  The not-quite-human thinking machine may be starting a new trend in sex appeal. A revolution of incalculable importance is sweeping America, thanks to Star Trek, which, in its noble and successful effort to present good science fiction to the American public, has also presented everyone with an astonishing revelation.... [And] here I had been watching Star Trek since its inception because I like it, because it’s well-done, because it is exciting, because it says things, subtly and neatly, that are difficult to say in “straight” drama, and because science fiction, properly presented, is the type of literature most appropriate to our generation. But it hadn’t occurred to me that Mr. Spock was sexy. I had never realized that such a thing was possible; that girls palpitate over the way one eyebrow goes up a fraction; that they squeal with passion when a little smile quirks his lip. And all because he’s smart?!

  For “Girls All Want to Touch the Ears,” a New York Times article, Nimoy said, “[T]here must be something very sexual about it. I tell you, frankly, I’ve never had more female attention on a set before. And get this -- they all want to touch the ears!” (128-17)

  It was a phenomenon that baffled TV insiders and intellectuals all across America. It also baffled William Shatner.

  Casting Director Joe D’Agosta said, “Everybody talked about Spock, and Leonard Nimoy, because he was so interesting. He was the guy that everybody gave all the credit to, all the accolades, writing about, ‘Wow, this Leonard Nimoy is the show!’ But Bill was the secret weapon on that show, because Bill got reams of dialogue and he’d give it excitement. And all Leonard did was raise his eyebrow and say, ‘That’s illogical.’ It was illogical. Understandable, but illogical. Shatner was the energy.” (43-4)

  Gene Roddenberry was never afraid of a fight. One wouldn’t expect the former WWII Air Force pilot, turned Pan Am pilot, turned Los Angeles Police Officer, who then advanced in the ranks to LAPD Sergeant, to hesitate to defend his honor, or his place in line. NBC had been fighting him, and would continue to do so. As would the studio. As would Star Trek insiders, such as John D.F. Black, Shimon Wincelberg, George Clayton Johnson, and, soon to come, Jerry Sohl and Harlan Ellison, among others.

  For the November 26, 1966 issue of TV Guide, famed scientist and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov took on the makers of TV sci-fi with an article entitled “What Are a Few Galaxies Among Friends?” Asimov was having a good time pointing out the scientific implausibilities of Irwin Allen’s three prime time series, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space and Time Tunnel. He also had a few laughs at the expense of It’s About Time. And then came Star Trek. Asimov was most kind, merely devoting a single paragraph of his four page article to Roddenberry’s show. He wrote:

  In an episode of Star Trek (which seems to have the best technical assistance of the current crop) a mysterious gaseous cloud is sighted “one-half light-year outside the Galaxy.” But the Galaxy doesn’t have a sharp edge. The stars just get fewer and fewer and trail off. To speak of anything being one-half light-year outside the Galaxy is like saying a house is one-half yard outside the Mississippi Basin.

  Three days later – on November 29 – Roddenberry fired off a letter to Asimov that was every bit as long as the former’s TV Guide article. He wrote, in part:

  Dear Isaac.… In all friendliness, and with sincere thanks for the hundreds of wonderful hours of reading you have given me, it does seem to me that your article overlooked entirely the practical, factual and scientific problems involved in getting a television show on the air and keeping it there. Television deserves much criticism, not just SF alone but all of it, but that criticism should be aimed, not shot-gunned. For example, Star Trek almost did not get on the air because it refused to do a juvenile science fiction, because it refused to put a “Lassie” aboard the space ship, and because it insisted on hiring Dick Matheson, Harlan Ellison, A.E. van Vogt, Phil Farmer, and so on. (Not all of these came through since TV scripting is a highly difficult specialty, but many of them did.).… In the specific comment you made about Star Trek, the m
ysterious cloud being “one-half light-year outside the Galaxy,” I agree certainly that this was stated badly, but on the other hand, it got past a Rand Corporation physicist who is hired by us to review all of our stories and scripts, and further, got past Kellam de Forest Research who is also hired to do the same job. And, needless to say, it got past me.…

  We do spend several hundred dollars a week to guarantee scientific accuracy. And several hundred more dollars a week to guarantee other forms of accuracy, logical progressions, etc. Before going into production we made up a “Writer’s Guide” covering many of these things and we send out new pages, amendments, lists of terminology, excerpts of science articles, etc., to our writers continually. And to our directors. And specific science information to our actors depending on the job they portray. Despite all of this we do make mistakes and will probably continue to make them. The reason -- Thursday has an annoying way of coming up once a week, and five working days an episode is a crushing burden, an impossible one. The wonder of it is not that we make mistakes, but that we are able to turn out once a week science fiction which is (if we are to believe SF writers and fans who are writing us in increasing numbers) the first true SF series ever made on television. We like to think this is what we are trying to do, and trying with considerable pride. And I suppose with considerable touchiness when we believe we are criticized unfairly or as in the case of your article, damned with faint praise. Quoting Ted Sturgeon who made his first script attempt with us (and now seems firmly established as a contributor to good television), getting Star Trek on the air was impossible, putting out a program like this on a TV budget is impossible, reaching the necessary mass audience without alienating the select SF audience is impossible, not succumbing to network pressure to “juvenilize” the show is impossible, keeping it on the air is impossible. We've done all of these things. Perhaps someone else could have done it better, but no one else did.…

  Again, if we are to believe our letters (now mounting into the thousands), we are reaching a vast number of people who never before understood SF or enjoyed it. We are, in fact, making fans -- making future purchasers of SF magazines and novels, making future box office receipts for SF films. We are, I sincerely hope, making new purchasers of “The Foundation” novels, I, Robot, The Rest of the Robots, and other of your excellent work. We, and I personally, in our own way and beset with the strange problems of this mass communications media, work as proudly and as hard as any other SF writer in this land.…

  If mention was to be made of SF in television, we deserved much better. And, as much as I admire you in your work, I felt an obligation to reply. And, I believe, the public deserves a more definitive article on all this. Perhaps TV Guide is not the marketplace for it, but if you ever care to throw the Asimov mind and wit toward a definitive TV piece, please count on us for facts, figures, sample budgets, practical production examples, and samples of scripts from rough story to the usual multitude of drafts, samples of mass media “pressure,” and whatever else we can give you. Sincerely yours, Gene Roddenberry.

  And, with this, a friendship was formed. Asimov even considered writing a script for Star Trek.

  As early as the start of June 1966, over two months before Gene Coon came to Star Trek, Roddenberry was desperate for more help. His battles with many of the show’s writers he hired -- TV writers unable to deal with the demands of science fiction or science fiction writers unable to deal with the demands of TV -- were wearing him down. Stan Robertson at NBC was unhappy with many of the story outlines coming from Roddenberry’s office and was now becoming more and more critical.

  On June 2 Roddenberry, weary from relentless work and impossibly long days, fired back at Robertson, writing:

  Keep in mind that the frantic nature of getting a show on the road precludes the kind of attention to outline which we’d like to give. We have to take certain calculated risks that an outlined general direction, plus our comments to the writer, will result in first draft scripts containing something more near what we need. Much of the problem, I’m sure you’re aware, comes out of the totally unrealistic and impractical start date new shows get from networks. I sometimes wonder if people outside a working production office really realize the stupendous day and night effort required in preparing a new show for the camera, finding the writers, discussing ideas, sending stories back for revisions, re-revising, pleading, threatening, and at the same time casting, laying out sets, designing costumes, and so on, ad infinitum. We should have started, at the bare minimum, a full month earlier. We didn’t. Okay, we’ll make it anyway. But some of the niceties of story blocking and progression and communication have to be lost, some risks taken, in order to do it. It’s not good business, it’s not even fair to the people involved, but who am I to doubt that this is the best of all possible worlds? Okay? Cordially, Gene Roddenberry.

  Roddenberry’s disdain for the network was growing. In a letter to his agent, Alden Schwimmer, he wrote:

  There seems to be a popular delusion that networks do people a favor by buying shows. I happen to think the truth is somewhat nearer the other direction -- that a man who creates a format and offers integrity and a large hunk of his life in producing it, offers much more than networks or advertisers can give in return. Therefore, it logically follows, that side has a right to some terms too.

  It was a fair criticism, but not criticism NBC was going to appreciate hearing -- that the network was being over-demanding, unhelpful and, with giving insufficient time and funding, doing very nearly everything possible to sabotage the very quality it demanded from its series producers. This salvo may very well have been “Strike Eight.”

  While Roddenberry battled his celebrity writers, and the network, associate producer Robert Justman continued to fight his seemingly losing battle over trying to meet higher production expectations with insufficient funding to realize them. The arrival of Gene Coon as the new first chair producer did nothing to help with Justman’s concerns, including the mandated air dates that he was certain would not be met.

  Optical effects were still proving to be the main cause for delays. On October 19, 1966, Justman wrote to Roddenberry, with a “cc” to Coon, Eddie Milkis, and Herb Solow, saying that Lin Dunn and his company Film Effects of Hollywood was Star Trek’s new primary supplier of its post-production miniatures and opticals. The Howard Anderson Company, for the time being, was out. The Westheimer Company was being kept as a secondary supplier, designated to taking care of the trailer optical work and end titles. Justman told all concerned:

  In this way, Lin Dunn’s outfit will be free to concentrate upon the major Opticals and Miniatures. And, at the same time, we will have a secondary supplier who is familiar with the show in case we need to get bailed out again as we have had to be with Anderson Company. The Westheimer Company knows how to do our phaser animations and our Materialization Effects, and well equipped to handle Mattes and various other types of Opticals. I feel, as you do, that we must never let ourselves get in the position again of having all our eggs in one basket.

  The guarded optimism was short-lived. Less than two weeks later, on October 13, Justman wrote to Ed Milkis about the optical photography needed to complete “Balance of Terror” and “The Galileo Seven.” His discouraging memo to Milkis read:

  We have supplied Lin Dunn with the large model of the Enterprise, the small model of the Enterprise, the Romulan Vessel Miniature, the Shuttlecraft Miniature, and the Interior Hangar Deck from which the shuttlecraft takes off and lands. Every day when I come to the office I expect to get a call to go to the projection room where I would be deluged with reel upon reel of Miniature Photography for compositing. I go home every night and I am sure that I have not received this phone call. Please tell me that the sinking feeling I have in my stomach is self-engendered and not backed up by any facts that you know of. Having been burned before, I am writing this memo in order to get myself down on record.

  More than three weeks passed and Justman still had nothing to lo
ok at from Lin Dunn and Film Effects of Hollywood. On November 11, he went above Milkis and wrote directly to Herb Solow, saying, “I hope and pray that we are not being faced with another ‘Anderson situation.’”

  Justman asked Solow to ask Bill Heath to make arrangements for Joe Westheimer to pick up more Star Trek shows, just in case. On the same day, Justman wrote to Gene Coon, pleading for him to make the necessary changes to the new batch of scripts in order to scale back on the optical effects needed for upcoming episodes.

  As this latest problem presented itself, the Star Trek staff were hoping for a miracle. And then they got one.

  On December 1, 1966, Star Trek was pre-empted by a Jack Benny special. “The Menagerie, Part 1” and “Part 2” had bought a week’s worth of breathing room. Jack Benny bought the series another week. But that was still one week short.

  There would be no new episode ready for December 29th. On that night, a repeat of “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” was substituted into the NBC schedule. The network was not happy. ABC and CBS would have new programs to run. Star Trek was bound to take a hit with A.C. Nielsen. And it did.

  Up against first-run competition, the repeat of “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” was the lowest rated Star Trek episode of the first season. When aired several weeks earlier, “Little Girls” beat the CBS Thursday Night Movie in a close race. That night, at its peak, Star Trek drew 29.5% of the TVs in use. This week, for the unplanned rerun, the best it could do was a third place ranking and a 22.5% audience share.

  Failing to make delivery of a required first run episode was an unprecedented breach of contract as well as trust in the eyes of NBC. And since Gene Roddenberry was the Executive Producer, the man at the desk where the buck stops, this was “Strike Nine.”