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

by Edward Gross

  DeForest Kelley was as experienced an actor as you could ask for. He had gone from juvenile to character juvenile to young leading man to leading man and there he was on Star Trek with an enormous amount of training. He had his character in hand, although it changed slightly during the first five or six episodes, where he became a tad more earnest. The conflict built in between Spock and him was electric. Even the extras who would run in and out with their little zap guns were into their characters and into the show. I think that was relevant to the audience. It triggered their emotional responses.

  DeFOREST KELLEY (actor, “Dr. Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy”)

  The character was laid out by Roddenberry, of course, and there was a guide that went into a good deal of detail about each character. But I remember having long discussions with Gene about McCoy. One thing we had both arrived at, and which was indicated in the breakdown, was that McCoy was supposed to be something of a future-style H. L. Mencken. So I went to the library and read about him and tried to work some of the more personal writings about Mencken into the characterization of McCoy.

  The character began to really take shape after about six or seven of the episodes. It’s always difficult to step onto a set and fall immediately into a character—with the exception of the captain, of course. His attitude is not as complicated as Spock’s or McCoy’s, but that’s how the character actually began. As it was originally written, McCoy was even to be dressed differently. He would often be seen, for example, in an oversized-type sweater or something of that nature. He was to be the least military of all; he was described that way in the guide. But we never got to that part about the dress.

  That was the beginning of him. In addition to that sardonic-type wit, I tried to inject as much warmth as I could give to him at the proper times, and also a sense of great caring. Bill and Leonard being the fine actors they are, there seemed to be a certain chemistry that fell into place among us. It all came together, and each of us had in the beginning of Trek this feeling of unity, of trying to make it as fine a show as possible. We were generous with each other in the discussions of the characters, among ourselves. I might say to Bill, “I don’t think that line is mine. I think it’s yours. It sounds like a captain’s line.” Or we might suggest some other line that seemed more appropriate than what was in the script, and then, with the producer’s permission, of course, they might put it in. It was kind of a team effort.

  NICHELLE NICHOLS

  I had a car accident on the way to the set on the first day. I went to the hospital and the doctor put stitches in my lip and in my knee. He gave me a shot and some pills and it kept the swelling down and I didn’t feel the pain. He told me the medicine would wear off about three or four in the afternoon. Later, I was doing my last scene of the day and we were moving right along. I was standing up by my communications panel and Captain Kirk is standing down by his chair, and the director, Joe Sargent, said, “Well, we’re going to get this shot and we can call it a day. We’ve done really well.” While I’m standing there by the railing, I remember somebody saying, “You know what I mean, Nichelle? Nichelle? Oh my God!” And all I remember was Bill Shatner leaping across to catch me, because I had passed out and was falling straight for him. I fell over the railing and he caught me. Captain Kirk to the rescue! My first day was almost my undoing.

  DeFOREST KELLEY

  We all made suggestions concerning our characters all the way through. The longer you live with it, the more comfortable you become with the role. Every bit of input that you give to the creator he will buy. He knows that you’re beginning to get with it. The Spock–McCoy situation is a thing that started with a very small moment. It was just a line that he threw at me and I, in turn, threw the line back in a certain manner. Nobody thought much about it at the time. But when it hit the screen, it created an uproar. So they started to build on it and put more of that in. We all gave a great deal of input to our characters, but Gene Roddenberry laid them out for us in the beginning and tried to keep us on track.

  JOSEPH PEVNEY (director, “The City on the Edge of Forever”)

  I loved the characters. Gene was constantly trying to give it a universal aspect, because that’s what’s going to be in the theory regarding the future when we go to other worlds. There will be all kinds of things out there. Some will not be completely humanoid, but that was okay. He was quite convincing about that. So he wanted some more nationalities in the show. He had an Oriental, a black, eventually a Russian.… The sixties were boiling over with this out here. At that time we had all kinds of college things going on. The beginning of the ERA and so on. Civil rights were tumbling all over the place. In the second season, Gene was saying, “Let’s put a Russian in there.” Wow, what a shockeroo that was!

  STEVEN JAY RUBIN (author, The James Bond Films: A Behind-the-Scenes History)

  Whatever influence Forbidden Planet had on it, Star Trek was very much a series of the 1960s in that there was a certain diversity in the cast. You had the Russian; Mr. Sulu, who was Japanese; and the African communications officer. Very much an international element. Forbidden Planet was very white bread, but that was typical of the fifties, so probably was very typical of the navy. As the navy integrated, so did the space operas.

  THOMAS DOHERTY (professor of American studies, Brandeis University)

  I think the multiculturalism in World War II is there: the Italian, the Jewish guy, the guy from Texas, and the guy from the farm, and later on it gets more open with the Asian guy and the Hispanic guy. That kind of works like the Enterprise being a B-17 in space.

  JAMES GOLDSTONE (director, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”)

  Right back from when we did the second pilot, we had the idea that it would be a multiracial crew. We were doing this at a time when racial violence in the United States was rampant, and we were saying that in the future that it will not be a pressing problem, that we will have transcended that.

  MARC DANIELS (director, “The Man Trap”)

  Right from the beginning it was easy to see that the characters were extremely well drawn. There was some trial and error with the peripheral characters, but the main ones—Kirk, Spock, and McCoy—were excellent. With that many characters, it was difficult to give each of them their due. There was a very good contrast between them, because you didn’t have the same thing going on between any two of them.

  ROBERT H. JUSTMAN (associate producer, Star Trek)

  They all added to their characters. For instance, as Nimoy added to the character of Mr. Spock, we saw certain things in the portrayal that Gene thought could be taken advantage of and expanded, which we did. You have to learn in making film to deal with the film and not necessarily with what the original conception was. Film has a life of its own, and if you try to bend it toward what you originally intended and it didn’t turn out that way, it’s going to turn out to be quite awkward. You have to learn to take advantage of what’s there, to perhaps give it a new shape. It’s an interesting problem. You have to have a good concept for a character to begin with to enable the actors to do something with it.

  GENE RODDENBERRY

  The three-star billing between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy was the one that you would see a lot of. Plus science fiction wasn’t “in” in those days, and we were going to do a lot of things we knew people might not understand. I wouldn’t have stream of consciousness. In novels, stream of consciousness goes inside the hero’s head and you can read what he’s thinking. You don’t have that in television, and so I thought that if I took a perfect person and divided him into three parts, I could have the administrative, courageous part that would be the captain, the logical part who is the science officer, and the humanistic part with the doctor. Then, when something comes up, the captain could say, “I don’t know, fellas. We must do it,” and Spock would say, “However, the logical thing is,” and the doctor would say, “Yes, but the humanity of it,” and I could have them talk about it without having stream of consciousness, and it worked.

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nbsp; DOROTHY FONTANA (story editor, Star Trek)

  There was a very good team feeling. Gene had put together an extremely good team, between the cast, crew, and staff, who were united in the feeling that this is a good show, we’re doing a fine show and let’s keep it up. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered such a great team spirit on any other show I’ve ever worked on, although I’ve had good working relationships with other crews. But that whole unity of everybody, from the top to the least important production person, was right there.

  JOHN D. F. BLACK

  The show was meaningful for many people. Bill Shatner had just done the TV pilot Alexander the Great. He was good, but it was not a hit. On the night of the first shoot, I left the office and found him leaning against my car. He had a look of enormous innocence on his face. I said, “How’s it going, Billy?” and he said, “Fine.” I figured there was something going on. And he just looked at me and said, “It’s just so damned important to us.” And I said, “Yeah, we’ve got a hit.” That’s what you say to everybody when it’s in the fan and you don’t know what’s going to happen next, particularly to actors who are so vulnerable. And he said, “I hope so,” and walked away. The sense I had was that we were all doing the best we could and we were giving it everything we had.

  On May 4, 1965, Gene Roddenberry wrote to Shatner to express how happy he was so far with the way the show was progressing while also foreshadowing future difficulties with the star. “You must know how delighted I am that our arrangement together on Star Trek seems to be working out. Recalling our conversation and aiming in that direction, I already have three scripts at work which emphasize the captain in the dominant central role with powerful personality spiced with personal warmth. These three stories, each against an entirely different background and situation, are designed to combine believability with great personal jeopardy to firmly establish the man. Although I can make a number of guesses from your many performances I have seen, it would really be valuable at this early stage to have your comments, suggestions, and points of view. Can we get together for lunch soon? I’m enthused and pleased at the prospect of working together, particularly on a project with this much potential and challenge.”

  JERRY SOHL (writer, “The Paradise Syndrome”)

  Gene Roddenberry knew that I was a science-fiction writer from people evidently telling him I was. So he called me up one day and asked me if I would like to go down to the studio. I met him there in, like, 1965, and he said, “I have this idea for a science-fiction TV show, which I think the networks are going to buy, and wanted to talk to you about the possibilities of stories. Would you be available? I’m meeting with other science fiction writers like A. E. van Vogt, Ray Bradbury, Fredric Brown.” He would meet with them down there and really sort of drained them by lunch of any ideas. We all did the best that we could, suggesting what to do. We hoped that it wouldn’t be like Truman Bradley’s Science Fiction Theatre. We wanted something more than that. He told us that it would be a good thing, but nobody believed that it would be.

  I spoke to some writers afterward and they said, “Well, what did he do? Gene Roddenberry has only done The Lieutenant series and he was a police officer. What the hell does know about science fiction? It’s just going to be a pile of shit.” So we all agreed that, yes, it would be a pile of shit, but we would all work for it anyway. But it didn’t turn out to be that way and we wound up being very friendly with him.

  HARLAN ELLISON (author; writer, “The City on the Edge of Forever”)

  In the beginning, I was very optimistic about Star Trek. I was vice president of the Science Fiction Writers of America, and I was the one who set up the West Coast banquet. I showed the pilot the first time it was shown to the science-fiction community. I said, “This is our chance to get good science fiction on the tube. It’s being run by people who seem to know what they’re doing and they want us.” That was how Roddenberry came to hire Ted Sturgeon and the others, because of my intercession. Everybody else takes credit for it, but all of these people were friends of mine, and I got them to go in on the show.

  JOHN D. F. BLACK

  What Star Trek always strived to do, from my perspective, is to take things people can relate to now because it’s real in our own lives, and move them. What happens if somebody burns down your building? It’s the same thing as a monster showing up in your building. So they used the monster. The parallel was clean. The way television was, there was a hell of a lot that you couldn’t do, but there was also a hell of a lot that you could do then, but nobody was noticing. So when a show like Star Trek came along, it was a marvelous advantage. There was no writer I knew who didn’t want to work on that show. We were looking for the most acute science-fiction minds it was possible to acquire, because we were doing something new. But our dilemma was, first of all, that every plant that we showed had to be made. Every weapon or device had to be invented. What the hell did a plant look like on Rigel 9? Dilithium crystals were a rock which one of my kids brought home. It had a beautiful crystal-like shine, and I really fell in love with the look of it and took it into the office. Somebody asked me what it was and I said, “It’s a Dilithium crystal.” I didn’t know what the hell it was, but it became the power source of the Enterprise.

  We were creating everything. Conceiving an idea was one thing, getting it on film was another. Cost is relative in doing any series. And I wasn’t that familiar with science fiction. I had read a great deal of it, but science fiction is playing tennis without a net. You could do anything you wanted, and if you look at the one segment I wrote, “The Naked Time,” you’ll see what I did, purely and simply, was take drunkenness and remove the slurs and staggers from it.

  ADRIAN SPIES (writer, “Miri”)

  In those days, Gene told the writers he called that this was “really an anthology. This is a chance to write about anything you want.” I didn’t know what he was talking about. But we were two professionals and we worked out the story for “Miri” together. He had good ideas. I had gone to Gene and offered him the idea of a bunch of kids in this place where they are permanently young, but are really very old. I do remember that he said, “You have to develop a language for these people.” I said, “What the hell are you talking about?” He said, “The kids would talk differently.” In that conversation he made up the word grups for grown-ups. I immediately liked it. That’s an example of a creative producer at work.

  JOHN D. F. BLACK

  There was no limit to what we could do. We could have villains that you could see and villains you couldn’t see. You could have any character do a complete turnaround simply because there was a difference in oxygen somewhere. We jumped right in there without one single solitary thing in terms of theatricalism that we couldn’t do. We could have done Oedipus or anything, although the censors wouldn’t allow us to do the Oedipus story. Nor would they allow it anytime you got into those overtly sexually driven stories at that point in time. One exception was the episode “Mudd’s Women,” which was basically prostitution at large, which was in the papers every day. We were not promoting it or coming out against it. All we were saying is that it happens here and it happens in outer space, and the censors let us go.

  NORMAN SPINRAD (author; writer, “The Doomsday Machine”)

  I thought it was a genius thing Roddenberry did. The anthology was dead on television as a doornail, and he devised a format in which you could do a self-contained anthology story every week. All you had were these people on a spaceship who could go to any damned planet they felt like. It was a genius concept, because it literally left them open to do anything at all.

  JOHN D. F. BLACK

  The Star Trek offices at the Desilu Studio were directly below those of Mission: Impossible, which was gearing up for production at the same time. At the end of the day, we would gather together and talk. Everybody was going crazy. You know, how the hell do you do a science-fiction series? How the hell do you do Mission: Impossible? We would bat the day’s story pro
blems back and forth, so there’s no way to tell who came up with what about what at what time. It was all madness. It was a great deal of work, more work than I had ever done in so compacted a time. It was twelve to eighteen hours a day. I can remember many nights wandering around the sets at midnight, trying to figure out story logistics.

  ROBERT H. JUSTMAN

  To mount an episode of Star Trek, just imagine the most incredibly difficult process you can imagine and double it. The gestation is very, very difficult. We had to satisfy many masters. I can’t begin to tell you. Add to that the time constraints—you never had enough time to write the episodes properly, much less produce them properly. The world of series television is an arcane sort of work, an arcane art. In essence, you really can’t do anything in a way that’s true. You can only do the best that you can do. You have a finite amount of time and you need to sleep at least a few hours every night, so you accomplish what you can accomplish within those constraints. That’s it. It’s not easy. The reward every now and then is perhaps turning out a show that affects people, causes them to think, and perhaps changes their lives. There was a feeling that we were all together, doing something that was different. Not only different, but worthwhile. That was the feeling.

  HERBERT F. SOLOW (executive in charge of production for Desilu)

  There were more freedoms on television, and there was more of a challenge by a lot of the aggressive young writers to challenge the authority of the network censors; to see how far they could push the envelope. That was Gene.

  ROBERT H. JUSTMAN

  It was all we could do just to do the show. Forget about worrying about anything else. It was a new show, and because of that, the network programming department was understandably nervous about what we could show and what we couldn’t show, and what subjects we could deal with. Luckily, the fact that the show was allegorical in nature, sometimes the content escaped the network’s notice. They took the content of the show for what the content purported to be. Allegory oftentimes is not about what’s there, but what’s not there. You see, when you’re doing a show for a network, you not only have to deal with programming departments and development, but also with what in NBC’s case was called the Broadcast Standards Department, which was the censors. Programming might accept a story that Broadcast Standards might find objectionable. It was quite difficult to satisfy three masters, two of them being the network and one of them being ourselves.