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

by Edward Gross

  My mother played a role in the “Wolf in the Fold” episode of Star Trek. It’s a terrific episode with murder, intrigue, and spirits! But what I most remember about it was that they gave my mother a phaser to take home. I was a little boy at the time and my mom brought me an actual phaser from the TV show to play with. This was my “crack” that started my addiction to science fiction.

  RENE ECHEVARRIA (supervising producer, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)

  My first memory of Star Trek is it being on the air … and being sent to bed. I remember hearing the theme song and seeing a spaceship unlike anything I had ever seen before. And it was nine o’clock on a Friday night and I was being told it was bedtime. I was six years old or something. Space was happening. Man was going to the moon. So, for me Star Trek is just woven right into that part of American history.

  BRANNON BRAGA

  When I was in middle school, there were cliques that I remember very specifically. There were the horror guys who were into Fangoria, which was me and my group. There were the fantasy Dungeons & Dragons, the Lord of the Rings dudes. And there were the Trek guys who were sitting reading Spock Must Die! And each group thought the others were nerds.

  JONATHAN LARSEN

  I wanted a show that I could watch with my seven-year-old son, Jeremy, that would be fun and exciting but also open doors for us to have conversations about ethics and big ideas. Important ideas. So we decided to watch the entire original series, in order. I went with unremastered, in part because I didn’t want spiffy special effects to take center stage. If special effects weren’t the main appeal, I thought Jeremy would focus more on the characters and their motivations and the underlying dynamics of each story. That said, Jeremy loved the aliens and the monsters and the spaceships.

  But more than that, he came to know the characters—we argued over which were coolest—and when I’d pause the shows to explain some of the more subtle story elements, we often found ourselves in those big-idea conversations I had hoped for. Jeremy knows at least a bit about World War II and the Cold War, and mutually assured destruction, and Vietnam and the domino theory and on and on, primarily because of our conversations about what elements from our history Star Trek was addressing in individual episodes. We’ve watched lots of other movies and shows—none has opened the door so powerfully or insistently to that kind of exegesis about cultural and historical relevance. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that none has stayed with him as deeply as Star Trek has.

  ALAN DEAN FOSTER (author, story, Star Trek: The Motion Picture)

  It’s fairly obvious that it represented, more than anything else, a sensible future. A future where people worked together and utilized science and reason and logic to try and solve problems, instead of just blowing things up.

  BRANNON BRAGA

  Star Trek isn’t just a shoot-’em-up laser show. There’s a certain expectation that you’re going to explore some aspect of humanity in an interesting way, which distinguishes this show from most sci-fi series. The different series seem to reflect the time in which they were created to some degree, but there’s always a humanistic philosophical core that seems unchanged, and I would hope that Star Trek would retain its essence going forward.

  ROBERT LEWIN (coproducer, Star Trek: The Next Generation)

  The old series endured because it is basically rooted in two elements. The first element is that the shows have ideas. Some are good, some are not so good. There is philosophy, extravagantly designed ideas with other planets that you can’t express in any other show. Some of the ideas are wild, but they’re always grounded in science-fiction reality. The other reason is that the affection the characters felt for each other was, in a sense, the same kind of affection you got in all the long-running series.

  THOMAS DOHERTY

  The show is also about the Freudian triad: the id, the ego, and the superego. That’s the core of the series.

  FRANK SPOTNITZ (executive producer, The Man in the High Castle)

  The original Star Trek and The Twilight Zone were the key things to my childhood. The good episodes of Star Trek—and most of them were really good—were about something. They were about ideas. To me, the genius of it was that Kirk was the character of action, Spock was the character of the mind, and McCoy was the character of emotion. You had mind and emotion, logic and conscience, arguing, and Kirk had to meditate and take action. It was a beautiful prism for storytelling, and it drove those episodes week after week. That’s what made that show so great. That and Twilight Zone were by far the most thought-provoking things on television in the 1960s and the 1970s. There was nothing else remotely as good.

  SCOTT MANTZ

  My love for Star Trek was fueled because of the characters. When I was a kid, I wanted to be James T. Kirk … and I still do.

  DAVID A. GOODMAN

  He could kick anybody’s ass.

  SCOTT MANTZ

  He was the James Bond of outer space.

  RENE ECHEVARRIA

  There are certain actors who just grab a role with such gusto that you can feel it. And he did. He believed. They all did remarkably when you think about the fact they were standing on these sets made of cardboard, practically, wearing these costumes and makeup, and how outlandish it all was. The way they committed to it was extraordinary. The perceived wisdom is that the show was this quirky show that was canceled that nobody watched, but Leonard Nimoy was nominated for an Emmy.

  DAVID A. GOODMAN

  There is a way in which Kirk is wish fulfillment for a lot of guys, in that he’s obviously an action hero, but he’s also smart. And then his best friend is the supernerd, Spock, and the supernerd can actually beat up the Kirk character, which is also is a bit of wish fulfillment. And that’s true going forward as well, Picard is the intellectual leader who leads by the weight of his intellect.

  MARIE JACQUEMETTON

  I remember lying on my living-room floor with my brothers and watching it, and it was just the excitement that they were in space, and there would always be a moment in every episode where their life was in jeopardy and “oh my God, are they gonna make it back?” And also, Captain Kirk was pretty cute.

  HARVE BENNETT (executive producer, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan)

  Leonard was to Star Trek what David McCallum was to The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Bill is the centerpiece, but the thing that makes it work is this extraordinary oddball who makes the show unpredictable. I’ve always thought that. The fans validated that in Leonard’s first two years on the old series.

  ADAM MALIN (cofounder, Creation Entertainment)

  Mr. Spock was part of the cultural zeitgeist at the time. Spock was the biggest character in Star Trek, with all apologies to Captain Kirk. I don’t think you can top Spock for being the most intriguing, beloved Star Trek character of all time. He was Roddenberry’s and Leonard’s perfect creation. Leonard Nimoy really created that character—the writers did wonderful things to help define him, but it was Leonard who created this amazing multifaceted being, and it doesn’t surprise me that Leonard amassed worldwide fame and attention just off of that character.

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

  I loved the sixties show. When I was growing up I just thought Spock was the most amazing character. He was so smart and sexy. He was just the perfect man to me, maybe a little lacking in passion but underneath all that was this incredible passion.

  RENE ECHEVARRIA

  For any kid who was into Star Trek, it was, “Did you identify with Kirk or were you a Spock guy?” I was a Spock guy. There’s an age when you’re twelve or thirteen where logic seems like the answer to all the world’s problems. You’re like, “I can logic my way to anything.” The idea of logic appeals to the adolescent brain.

  ROD RODDENBERRY

  It’s interesting because I do have a unique perspective on it. I met the fans first and then watched Star Trek. I didn’t watch Star Trek as a kid. I didn’t watch Star Trek as a teenager except The Next Gene
ration—barely—because I was a PA [production assistant] on the show. I still didn’t get it.

  It wasn’t until after going to the conventions and talking to the fans after my father passed away that I pulled my head out of my ass long enough to start listening and asking questions like “Why do all you nutjobs dress up in these costumes and praise this show?” And they started telling their stories and it just fucking blew me away.

  DOUG DREXLER (scenic artist, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)

  We had Rod [Roddenberry] as a PA in the art department for a couple of years. You know how cool it is to work and be able to yell, “Roddenberry, get in here!” Just by Rod, you knew that the parents were good people to raise a good kid like that.

  ROD RODDENBERRY

  It’s not like I hated it, but I just didn’t get it. I didn’t really consider something on television being so deep, and I was also a teenager. Things like Mötley Crüe were what spoke to me. I wasn’t thinking about the future. So it was going to the conventions and just hearing story after story about how it touched people or what their views on it were or how it made humanity a better humanity that interested me.

  JESUS TREVINO (director, Star Trek: Voyager)

  I went to Occidental College and every Friday night when it was broadcast the whole dorm would amass in the common room. In those days it was the boys’ dorms and the girls’ dorms. And in the boys’ dorms every Friday night, everybody would storm down and watch the episode. We were just huge fans of the series. I remember one of the fraternities made a huge replica of the Enterprise twenty-five or thirty feet long out of kegs and beer cans.

  JOHN D. F. BLACK (executive story consultant, associate producer, Star Trek)

  It’s very easy to look back now and say Gene Roddenberry knew what he was doing. He didn’t know, but the collective knew. Robert Justman, myself, and other people who were involved with the pieces as they came out. We were a collective “one.” And that one turned out to be in quotes “Gene Roddenberry.” We were all in that mix. It was a wonderful thing to be involved with—except when you were there and then it was terrible.

  ED NAHA

  I loved working with Gene. He was one of the smartest, most gracious and optimistic people I’ve ever met. Having said that, I also would not have wanted to get on his bad side. He had things he wanted to accomplish, and accomplish them he would.

  Gene knew people. He’d been a civilian pilot who’d survived a nasty crash and helped save the crew, and he’d been an L.A. cop. He’d seen a lot of crap. Yet his vision for the near and distant future was one of optimism. For instance, he believed in equal rights. That was just a given with him. As someone who started marching for civil rights at the age of fourteen, I couldn’t believe a “grown-up” would just assume that it was the right thing to believe in.

  ADAM MALIN

  I’ll never forget his kindness, his mentorship, his positive outlook toward society and the future of society, considering what a screwed-up world it is in so many ways. His humanism and his optimism still remain inspiring. I think Gene’s optimism for the future of the human condition is a message that is just as vital today as it was fifty years ago; it’s part of what inspires new generations of Star Trek fans, and whatever Gene may have been as a business associate, a writer, a showrunner, a producer, he was a man with a very noble vision for society, and that has come through the spirit of Star Trek through all these years, and for me remains his greatest achievement. Simply saying to the world that in the future our society will be better, that’s a beautiful message, and I think it’s Gene’s greatest legacy.

  FRED BRONSON

  I found him funny; he loved to laugh. I don’t mean this as a pun, he was down-to-earth. He loved women, he loved many women, and somehow that was part of his charm, but he was generous and kind, and he would pick up the bill always.

  ED NAHA

  Gene also had a great sense of humor. I went over to his house for dinner one night, and I said I had to check in with my then girlfriend back in New York. He let me dial the number and then he got on the phone, identifying himself as an L.A. cop who had me in custody. My girlfriend gave him hell, saying that that was impossible. There must be some mistake. I was not the kind of guy who’d do anything illegal. “What if I told you he was caught exposing himself?” he said, grinning at me. My girlfriend hesitated. Gene laughed his ass off, identified himself to my girlfriend, and handed me the phone. She was not amused.

  A few months later, Gene was in Manhattan and we invited him over to our apartment for dinner. He showed up and we opened the door. He hesitated before entering, looking above his head, expecting some booby trap. There was none. Later on, however, he discovered that his salad was filled with rubber and plastic toy insects. He got a kick out of that.

  THOMAS DOHERTY

  In the golden age of television, writers lived life. Today’s writers live television.

  CHRIS GORE (founder, Film Threat magazine)

  For me, Star Trek was always about Kirk, Spock, McCoy, the starship Enterprise, and a galaxy to explore. All the spin-offs just made me miss the adventures of the characters I loved originally.

  BARRY SCHULMAN (vice-president of programming, Sci-Fi Channel)

  No matter how successful The Next Generation was, this was still the granddaddy of them all. I think viewers today would be hard-pressed to think of any talent on Star Trek other than Shatner and Nimoy. Next Generation was a great-looking show and a great series, but you can’t ignore the fact that it’s much like with the original Star Wars. No matter how major all of these others are, and how spectacular the techniques and the effects are today, and the casting is brilliant, you’ll never forget the original, Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher.

  ED NAHA

  It’s funny, because I was the A&R guy on both Inside Star Trek … and Born to Run. It’s very hard to summarize what was going on in the seventies. It’s almost an “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times” scenario. With the end of the Vietnam debacle, a lot of young people felt, rightly so, that they had played a pivotal role. There was a very optimistic attitude around. In a small way, this dovetailed into the Trek philosophy. But by the mid seventies, everything began to get co-opted and commercialized. It wasn’t obvious but it was happening. I think people who were aware, people who valued creativity sensed it coming.

  Ironically, Born to Run was released during a time when live music was being delivered a body blow by disco, a genre of sound where the producer took precedence over the performer. Soon, it became as calculating and craven as any other assembly-line product. And, again, those with a creative nature smelled the decay. It’s no accident that Springsteen went from Born to Run to Darkness on the Edge of Town by 1978. He followed that up with The River and Nebraska before launching Born in the USA in ’84. Ironically, the song was about Vietnam, lost friends, and dreams either destroyed or deferred. A lot of the public embraced it as a nationalistic arena rock anthem. This, I think, shows that not only was optimism on the fast fade but intelligence as well.

  It’s no mystery as to why Gene was shunted aside once the Star Trek movie series began. His brand of optimism couldn’t be packaged and sold in bulk. It had to be felt.

  DAVID A. GOODMAN

  Breaking Bad is dark, but it’s also light, it’s also really funny, and that’s also what Star Trek did really well. It walked that line, creatively, of always being dramatic, but also having a sense of humor about its characters.

  VINCE GILLIGAN (creator, executive producer, Breaking Bad)

  There probably is something to that. To be fair, as much as I love Star Trek, Star Trek was not the first dramatic story to levy its drama with humor. I can think of The Thing from Another World, which did that. A bunch of military guys in an installation at the North Pole in a very life-or-death situation and yet cracking wise whenever they had the chance.

  Having said that, Star Trek did it very well indeed, and it’s a good lesson to any writer to no
t take your drama too seriously. In other words, the most dramatic moments in real life oftentimes have a bit of absurdity or humor contained within them. Gene Roddenberry and the writers of the original Star Trek knew that lesson and used little dollops of humor very well. We later learned that lesson on The X-Files, another show that was very dramatic but had a couple of outright hilarious episodes—which shows how elastic that dramatic form can be.

  DAVID A. GOODMAN

  J. J. Abrams kind of proves that despite all the changes and all the iterations, the Kirk–Spock dynamic is something people like to see. I watched a lot of TV from the sixties; the production value of TV, the writing—nothing approaches Star Trek. That’s what gets lost in the discussion of the Star Trek phenomenon. People talk about how it represents hope for the future and the stories are exciting and it was so far ahead of its time. But as a TV producer, I look at it and think about what else was being produced at that time, the endless westerns and the endless cop shows shot on the Universal backlot. Here you have this drama where you can’t get all the costumes at a rental house, they had to be handmade. You’re creating aliens and makeup, but also the writers are creating societies, they’re creating the Federation, they’re creating Vulcans, they’re creating the Andorians. They’re creating societies that live on their own, and it all works and it all comes together.

  You can create these sequel series that can harken back without it feeling stupid, they connect because the work of those artisans, the writers, the producers, the actors was so far ahead of its time.

  In a certain way, Next Generation, as big a fan as I am of it, pales in comparison to the original series, because it builds on something that someone had already created. By then TV had done plenty of things that were like it, very well-written shows, great casts, but in terms of the accomplishments of the original series, that’s what is lost in the discussion of Star Trek. The reason it’s a success is because it’s amazing.

  VINCE GILLIGAN

  There’s a lot of admirable writing and directing and acting in the subsequent Star Trek series, but the original series just has the most meaning for me emotionally.