Up Till Now

by William Shatner

  After we had been on the air for a couple of months an agent called Leonard and offered him two thousand dollars to make a personal appearance somewhere in Massachusetts on a Saturday afternoon. From that amount the agent would take his ten percent fee. At that time Leonard was earning $1,250 a week so this was very exciting. His problem was that in order to get there in time for the lecture on Saturday he had to be on the 6 P.M. flight Friday afternoon out of Los Angeles. That meant leaving the set an hour and eighteen minutes before we finished. Technically that wasn’t a problem. With enough notice we could easily film around him. So he asked the producers for permission to leave early that Friday. “Two or three days went by,” he remembers, “and I hadn’t heard anything. The agent wanted me to make a commitment. Finally I was told that Gene Roddenberry wanted to see me. I went up to his office. ‘I understand you want to get out early?’ he said.

  “I told him that was true, ‘I’ve got a job offer on Saturday for two thousand dollars.’

  “Then he said to me, ‘I’ve just started a company called Lincoln Enterprises. We’re going to do some merchandising of Star Trek memorabilia, but we also want to represent actors for personal appearances. I’d like to represent you for this appearance. And the fee is twenty percent.’

  “I shook my head, then told him that I was already paying an agent ten percent and that I didn’t understand why I had to pay him too.

  “He looked at me and said, ‘The difference between your agent and me is that your agent can’t get you out of here at five o’clock on Friday and I can. And all it’ll cost you is twenty percent.’

  “ ‘Gene, I can’t do that to this agent,’ I said. ‘He got me the job.’ “And then he said, and I will never forget his exact words, ‘Well, you’re just going to have to learn how to bow down and say master.’

  “I told him, ‘You got the wrong guy,’ and walked out of his office. Eventually he backed down and I made that plane, but while we worked together for years afterward that was the end of any semblance of a friendship between Gene Roddenberry and myself.”

  The relationship between Leonard and the producers got so bad during the first season that they actually sent him a memo informing him that he was not permitted to use the studio’s pens and pencils.

  Gene and I had a similar argument about a small medal of honor he wanted me to award to a member of the crew on the show. It had absolutely nothing to do with the plot—and everything to do with the fact that this medal was going to be sold by Lincoln Enterprises. The actors’ contracts called for a minimal participation in merchandise revenue and this was just a clever way to get around that. I refused to have anything to do with the pin—so then they began working on Leonard to wear it, finally pressuring him into doing it.

  Roddenberry sold everything. To check the lighting of each scene the cinematographer would shoot what was known as a light strip. It was usually about ten frames times the number of scenes we’d shoot in a day. Maybe a hundred frames a day. Most people threw them out. Not Roddenberry. He cut out the individual frames and sold them as a piece of Star Trek. He was selling our images.

  Each Christmas the editors would put together a gag reel to be shown at our Christmas party. It’s ten minutes of jokes and bloopers, some of them intentional, many of them not; it was actors at play and actors making mistakes, and it was never, ever meant for anyone except the cast and crew to see. For example, we had one scene that showed Spock shooting an arrow—immediately followed by a scene showing Kirk being carried into a cave by members of the Enterprise crew, with an arrow sticking out of my crotch. Several years later I was in Mammoth and someone asked me if I’d seen the Star Trek gag reel being shown at a local pub—Roddenberry had spliced together two or three of these private reels and sold them.

  The battles both Leonard and I fought against the studio actually pushed us together. Eventually we were able to negotiate contracts that included a “most favored nation” clause, which basically meant that whatever perk or payment or privilege either one of us got, the other one would be entitled to the same treatment. Leonard and I became friendly, although certainly not best friends. In fact, I actually believed the entire cast got along quite well. Many years later I discovered that we weren’t getting along at all and that apparently I was the cause of it.

  After we’d shot about half the shows for our second season we began hearing strong rumors that the five-year voyage of discovery was about to come to an early and abrupt ending. NBC was preparing to cancel the show. To prevent that from happening two very loyal fans and friends of Roddenberry, Bjo and John Trimble, initiated a letter-writing campaign. Bjo obtained mailing lists from the World Science Fiction Convention and from notable science-fiction bookstores, as well as fan letters written to the cast. “I just got a call from Gene Roddenberry,” she wrote. “[T]here has been no word on renewing the show for next season, and in fact, it is highly likely Star Trek will die if something isn’t done . . .

  “If thousands of fans just sit around moaning about the death of Star Trek, they will get exactly what they deserve: Gomer Pyle!... So pass the word and write some letters, people.” Some letters? As a result of this campaign NBC received—trumpets blare here—more than one million letters urging the network not to cancel the show. NBC announced, “Star Trek will continue to be seen...”

  A very logical decision, Captain.

  Perhaps more important, the people who wrote these letters suddenly had an emotional attachment to a television program unlike any viewers ever before. They had actually influenced a network’s programming decision. They had ownership; Star Trek really had become their show. This marked the beginning of the most unusual relationship between viewers and a TV series in history.

  NBC scheduled the show for Monday nights at 7:30, the perfect time slot for us because our audience consisted primarily of teenagers, college students, and young adults, science-fiction fans who would be home at that hour. But when George Schlatter, the producer of NBC’s top-rated Laugh-In—which would have to be moved a half-hour from its 8 P.M. starting time—objected, the network moved us to Friday nights at 10 P.M.

  It was no Bonanza—for Star Trek this was the worst possible time slot. No one in our universe was going to stay home Friday night to watch television. Our audience was out on Friday nights. Not home, no esta en la casa, gone, away. Those people who would be at home weren’t going to be watching science fiction. Even then NBC reduced our budget, paying $15,000 less per episode than it had during our first season. That meant that we could no longer film on location, we couldn’t pay guest stars, and one of every four shows had to be done entirely on the Enterprise.

  Our first show that third season might have been a tribute to the NBC executives who so mishandled this show: it was about a society in desperate need of a brain. It was entitled “Spock’s Brain” and took place on Stardate 5431.4. I don’t know what day of the week that would have been—but I can assure you it was not a Friday night at ten o’clock. Because even aliens are busy Friday nights at ten o’clock. In this story a beautiful alien woman beams aboard the Enterprise and steals Spock’s brain, turning him into a zombie, and causing Bones to have to utter one of the worst lines of all seventy-nine episodes, “Jim. His brain is gone!” We had twenty-four hours to find Spock’s brain somewhere in the entire universe, then reinsert it in his head. Naturally Spock comes along with us, showing all the emotion of... Spock. Eventually we discover a race that needs his brain to control its planet’s life-supporting power systems. McCoy operates to reinsert Spock’s brain—during which Spock awakens and instructs him how the parts should be properly connected. In the dramatic highlight of the episode we are all standing by the operating table, waiting anxiously to see if Spock will survive this operation. Suddenly, Spock opens his eyes, looks at me and blinks several times, and then says in absolute astonishment, “Friday night at ten o’clock?”

  Perhaps he didn’t. But it was true, of course. The show was canceled after three se
asons on the air. In January 1969, we filmed the final episode. It had been a good job, a good cast, but it was over. During the three years I’d worked on the show my life had changed completely. Gloria and I had finally separated and, early one afternoon in 1967, as we were filming an episode called “Devil in the Dark,” I received a phone call telling me my father had died of a heart attack while playing golf in Florida.

  There is no way to prepare for the death of a parent. It is a knot in time into which all the emotions you’ve ever felt about that relationship come racing together. It is the ultimate unfinished symphony, with the loose ends of life and loves to somehow be bound together. Well, all of that hit me—and I had work to do. We were in the middle of a scene and it had to be finished. I owed it to my fellow actors. The first plane to Florida didn’t leave for several hours, so rather than wait in an airport I decided to work, hoping the familiarity of my work would provide me with at least a few moments of peace.

  Working that day was very difficult. I’d spent my career masking the reality of my own feelings, and instead presenting to the camera the emotional life of the character I was playing. As an actor you learn to do that, to blank out everything except the persona of the character you’re playing, and that’s what I tried to do because that’s what I had always done. I also knew that if I faltered it would be on camera as long as film lasted. Sooner or later the pain I was feeling would go away—but the impact of it on my performance would be recorded on film forever. So I persevered. I worked. When we’d rehearsed this scene in the morning I’d known all my lines, but when we filmed in the afternoon I just couldn’t remember them. I remember being stoic, while Leonard remembers me saying over and over, “Promises not kept, promises not kept. Things that he wanted to do...”

  That night I flew to Miami to pick up my father’s body and bring him home to Montreal.

  The result of that was the last serious argument Leonard and I have ever had. In this episode workers on a mining planet were being killed by a creature who lived in their caves. The creature, called a Horta, was a strange-looking beast operated by a guy inside the suit crawling on the floor. As Spock discovered during a painful mind-meld with the Horta, it was the last of its race and was simply protecting its eggs. It was saving the species. Eventually I was able to forge a peace between the miners and the Horta, which agreed to tunnel for the miners, who in return agreed to protect its offspring.

  While I was gone Leonard had a scene in which he performed a mind-meld with the wounded Horta. The danger of a mind-meld is that Spock literally felt the intense pain being felt by the Horta. So in this scene he had to get down and put his hands on it and cried in pain. Pain...pain... pain. It’s a difficult scene for an actor to make believable.

  When I returned from my father’s funeral the set was very somber. People were being very sympathetic, which I appreciated, but I wanted everyone to know that I was dealing with it and I was fine. I wanted to relieve some of the tension on the set. The first thing I had to do was figure out how to react to Leonard’s mind-meld. I looked at the footage and then told him, “Show me what you did.”

  He explained, “Well, I went over here and I put my hands on her and I said, ‘pain, pain, pain.’ “

  I shook my head. “It was bigger than that. Can you show me exactly what you did?”

  This had been a difficult scene for an actor, but as a favor to me Leonard got back into position and did the scene. He didn’t just go through the motions, he felt the emotion. He screamed out, “Pain. Pain. Pain.”

  And I said glibly, “Can somebody get this guy an aspirin?” I thought everybody would have a good laugh and we would go back to normal.

  Leonard did not think it was funny. He was furious. He thought I’d set him up and then betrayed him for the amusement of everyone else on the set. I had toyed with his commitment to his character and the show. For a laugh at his expense. An actor had betrayed an actor, the worst thing you could do. He told me later that he was done with me, that he thought I was a real son of a bitch. He didn’t say a word to me for more than a week.

  Many Star Trek plots revolved around beautiful women, although often we discovered these women were actually alien life forms or computer-generated mind images intended to make us compliant. The ole man-trap strategy. But during an episode in the third season entitled “Elaan of Troyius,” which guest-starred France Nuyen as an arrogant princess, I told Spock, “Mr. Spock, the women on your planet are logical. That’s the only planet in the galaxy that can make that claim.” In many ways I think that summed up the difficulties that I had understanding women.

  Admittedly, I wasn’t good at being married. I didn’t know how to make a real commitment to another person. On some level I believed that because I was paying the bills, I should make all the decisions. Holding the purse strings meant having the power. So my marriage to Gloria became very lopsided. I know now that when you take away someone’s self-worth their whole entity is lessened. The person you fell in love with slowly disappears, replaced by...by frustration, anger, disenchantment, and tremendous resentment. And then you get angry with them for no longer being the person you married. It’s considerably more volatile when two actors marry but only one has a successful career.

  I was working so hard to support my family and resented Gloria because I was getting so little joy out of my marriage. She resented me for...for probably many reasons. So Gloria stayed home with our girls and it seemed like each week new and beautiful—and seemingly available—women showed up on the set. We had separated emotionally years earlier, but while we were making Star Trek I physically moved out of the house. Eventually she filed for divorce.

  Divorce is simply modern society’s version of medieval torture. Except it lasts longer and leaves deeper scars. A divorce releases the most primitive emotions; the ugliest, raw feelings. Emotionally wounded people do their best to inflict pain upon the other party, but rather than using claws they use divorce lawyers. My marriage to Gloria didn’t simply end, it was ripped apart. It left only sharp edges. And poverty.

  When the show was canceled the three anchors that had bound me to responsibility had been cut loose. My job was done. My marriage was done. And my father had died. I was floating free. I had no firm direction, no emotional compass. I was just drifting with the currents. I took affection anywhere I could find it. It seemed like there was always someone around who had her own needs to be fulfilled, so lust and romance and passion all began playing a more important role in my life.

  I had assumed that the day we finished shooting Star Trek was the end of my association with Captain Kirk and the Enterprise—and its crew—forever. When a Broadway show ends its run it’s done forever; the producers burn the scenery and there is no recorded copy of the show. It exists only in memories. But television shows are different; television shows are syndicated, sold to local TV stations, which broadcast them over and over.

  Paramount had no concept of Star Trek’s true value. It was just another failed series. To try to recoup some of its cost they sold it very inexpensively to local stations, who bought it because it was inexpensive and had a proven, loyal audience. The syndication market was just beginning to expand and Star Trek was the perfect product. In cities all around the country stations began showing it when the core audience was home. Old fans didn’t want to miss an episode and they brought new fans with them to the living room. The ratings were terrific, especially for the price Paramount was asking, so more local stations bought it. And then television stations in other countries began buying it. In our second season we did a wonderful episode entitled “The Trouble with Tribbles.” Tribbles are adorable balls of fur that rapidly reproduce reproduce reproduce reproduce. They reproduce faster than a renegade copy machine; and once they start there is no stopping them them them them.

  That’s what happened to Star Trek. No program in television history had ever tribbled like this. It just kept tribbling and tribbling and tribbling. Leonard realized it long before
I did. He was touring the country starring in the one-man show he’d written, Vincent, the life of Vincent van Gogh as seen through the five hundred letters he’d written to his brother. And he found that no matter where he went—Billings, Montana; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Rapid City, South Dakota—wherever he went the only thing the local media wanted to talk about was Star Trek. “It was just all over the place,” he remembers. “I was becoming very aware that it was invasive—and pervasive—in the culture. The media started writing about the success of the show in syndication, which encouraged even more local stations to buy it. In some cities it was running six nights a week. Stations were running marathon Star Trek weekends. We were hearing stories about colleges changing course schedules in the afternoon to eliminate a conflict with Star Trek reruns.”

  It was impossible to truly grasp what was happening, because nothing like it had ever happened before. A failed television show was becoming a cultural phenomenon. While we were making the series I had often been recognized, but suddenly it started happening all the time and in strange places. People would come up to me in airports and recite ten pages of dialogue word-for-word from a specific episode they loved—and I would have absolutely no concept of what they were doing. I remember in the early 1970s I was working on a television show and got hurt. They rushed me to the hospital to take X-rays. Fortunately, my most serious injuries were some very bad bruises. But just to be certain the doctor asked for a urine specimen. He wanted to make sure there was no blood in my urine, no internal bleeding. I was lying in bed and he handed me a bottle and asked me to fill it. I was too sore to move, so he pulled the oval curtain around the bed to give me some privacy. And just as I started peeing into the bottle a nurse opened the curtain to see what was going on. She looked at me peeing into the bottle, then her face just lit up with joy and she said, without pausing, “I’m your biggest fan.”