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

by Edward Gross

  Roddenberry compared the three of them to a trio of “fishwives trying to divide the day’s catch” noting that, in his opinion, each was “weighing, counting, craftily trying to con others and each other with smiles or tantrums, depending on which seems to work best at the moment. Then departing bitter that God in His wisdom did not provide a Solomon who would have understood that your true worth deserved more. Well, God didn’t have a Solomon to spare for Star Trek.” This, he clarified, was due to the fact that they felt that one script or another didn’t put their character in strong enough light, or that they wanted a line that had been written for another, or even which one of them a scene would end on. Added Roddenberry, “If the show should go on, under whatever leadership, or if you manage to kill the show and go on to some other, you’re still going to get shit on now and then. And I doubt that your continued cries of surprised indignation are going to change the hard realities of life and the television business.

  “Now, to specifics. William, yes, when discussing the Spock character you say all the right things—‘Wonderful character for the show; highly valuable; a large factor in our success; Nimoy handles it with skill.’ Nice sentiments, very ‘pro.’ Except that your actions make it painfully obvious to everyone that you don’t believe it for a minute. Your constant frantic concern, not only over Spock’s lines, but lately McCoy’s, Scott’s, and most recently even Chekov’s small part, is almost embarrassingly apparent and is a key factor in the sabotage and breakdown of whatever stage morale is left.

  “You said to me the other day, and more lately to others, that you’re going to show us what a star is really like. If that is meant as a threat, I’ll be forced into the only possible answer—I’ll show you what a producer is really like. Let each of you be aware that as long as I’m on this show, I’ll run it and I’ll damned well keep running it until the day I leave. You’ve been saying lately that you were told you’d be completely dominant as the star of the show, that you’ve been misled, and the stories had better start being exclusively about you or else! Bullshit! You saw the first pilot, you read the format, you played some twenty or more episodes without any such comment or complaint. The name of this show is Star Trek; it’s not about to be changed to The Adventures of Captain Kirk. The concept stays as we’ve played it for a year and a half and that concept will not be changed.

  “… I want you to realize fully where your fight for absolute screen dominance is taking you. It’s already affecting the image of Captain Kirk on the screen. We’re heading for an arrogant, loud, half-assed Queeg character who is so blatantly insecure upon that screen that he can’t afford to let anyone else have an idea, give an order, or solve a problem. You can’t hide things like that from an audience, the camera is there day after day, and like it or not it’ll show through.

  “And now, Leonard. I must say that if I were Shatner, I’d be nervous and edgy about you by now, too. For a man who makes no secret of his own sensitivity, you show a strange lack of understanding of it in your fellow actors. And an appalling lack of gratitude for the good fortune which has swept you almost overnight into a prominence.”

  Roddenberry drove home the point that he wasn’t actually expecting anything in return, except perhaps that, given his rising popularity, Nimoy could have for a moment taken Shatner’s feelings into consideration, to recognize the personal pain it would cause his costar to see all of the media attention focusing on Spock.

  “Let me tell you what people you respect are saying … A growing opinion is that Leonard feels that he has now broken the anonymity barrier via the Spock character. And thus with the world waiting, certain there can be cruel disappointments such as has happened to a long list of others who charged on at the first blush of popularity, he has no real need now to inconvenience himself in order to protect our joint enterprise or fulfill express or implied or even moral obligations.… There is no reason to not apply pressure in any way that makes the Spock role stronger or more pleasant for him to play, and nothing lost if this rocks the boat to the point where it sinks.

  “True? Any portion true? We know this—whereas Shatner, for all his incredible mistakes, will sometimes blow and get it out of his system, sometimes even apologize and try to make up to people, any wrongs or inequities to Leonard Nimoy, real or fancied, seems to result in an image of unshakeable, surly, and eternal unforgiveness. Not true again? Let’s repeat what you said at one time or another … ‘I’ve got so much personal integrity I’ll leave if the role isn’t what I think it should be, if it fouls up the future of my fellows who invested in this, if they starve, too, that’s tough.’ According to my dictionary, Leonard, that describes selfishness.

  “Although I’ve blasted Shatner on his foolish and self-destructive insecurities, let’s take a look at what he faces in you. This not Shatner’s description but one by a former studio fan of yours—‘I see a growing image of a shrewd, ambition-dominated man, probing, waiting with emotions and feelings masked, ready to leap at the right moment and send others broken and reeling when Nimoy thinks he can finally take what he’s been waiting to take.’ Wrong? Unfair? That’s how it looks to some.

  “A paradox in this—the above seems to be your very image of Shatner. And others wonder, too, whether under his more jovial exterior, the same beast doesn’t lurk. Funny if it turned out you’re both right. Now, I’ve told Shatner that Spock won’t become Star Trek’s lead. I’ve also made clear to Shatner that although Kirk is the lead of the show, he will be my concept of the lead, not his. I’ve also made it clear that you are and will remain a strong, effective, and integral second lead. Perhaps he believes despite that that you have secret agreements or strange devilish plans that will make you the star despite all I do. Forget the wisdom of such doubts, forget even common decency. It would still seem to me that a man of intelligence and sensitivity would have by now found ways to make it abundantly clear that this simply isn’t so.

  “Yes, it’s affected your image on the screen, too. No actor under TV’s week-to-week pressure can totally hide from camera his real feelings about a fellow he works closely with. The audience will ultimately realize that Spock’s great ‘loyalty’ is a facade; the viewers will begin to say that maybe this isn’t a warm love-oriented Earthman trying to break out of a Vulcan body but maybe instead there is alien Vulcan in there and maybe that Vulcan wouldn’t be so pleasant if he got out.”

  At that point he more or less removed DeForest Kelley as an addressee—deciding the letter should more or less serve as a cautionary warning for him—and concluded, “For as long as I stay with the show, starting Monday, there will be no more line switches from one to another. The directors will be instructed all such changes they wish must be made during their preparation week. No more of the long discussions about scenes which lose us approximately a half day of production a show—the director will permit it only when there is a valid dramatic story or interpretation point at stake which he believes makes it necessary. The director will be told he is also replaceable and failure to stay on top and in charge of the set will be grounds for his dismissal.”

  Roddenberry concludes by saying, “All right, my three former friends and ‘unique professionals,’ that’s it. In straight talk, not just my opinions but a summation of feelings held by almost all your fellows. Maybe everybody’s wrong and you three are right. Nothing I’ve seen yet leads me to believe that won’t be your opinion. Again, I don’t want to talk about it. If I’m wrong, show me!”

  The Great Bird of the Galaxy had spoken. Whether his message would be heard remained to be seen.…

  BOLDLY GOING

  “IN EVERY REVOLUTION, THERE IS ONE MAN WITH A VISION.”

  At the beginning of the second season, several noticeable changes greeted viewers. Not only was DeForest Kelley’s name now added to the opening credits, there was a new face at the helm: Navigator Pavel Andreievich Chekov, played by Walter Koenig. The addition of a new cast member who would potentially lure in a younger audience was eagerly
embraced by both NBC and Gene Roddenberry.

  In a September 22, 1966, memo, Roddenberry alerts casting director Joe D’Agosta to the casting. “Keeping our teenage audience in mind, also keeping aware of current trends, let’s watch for a young, irreverent, English-accent ‘Beatle’ type to try on the show, possibly with an eye to his reoccurring. Like the smallish fellow who looks to be a hit on The Monkees. Personally I find this type spirited and refreshing and I think our episodes could use that kind of ‘lift.’ Let’s discuss.”

  It was only later that Roddenberry reconceived the character as Russian, in deference to the success of the Soviet space program at the time. He attributed this, in a story that may very well be apocryphal, to an article that allegedly appeared in the Soviet daily newspaper Pravda, in which they took the show to task for not featuring any Russian characters.

  GENE RODDENBERRY (creator, executive producer, Star Trek)

  The Russians were responsible for the Chekov character. They put in Pravda that “Ah, the ugly Americans are at it again. They do a space show, and they forget to include the people who were in space first.” And I said, “My God, they’re right.”

  JOSEPH PEVNEY (director, “Amok Time”)

  When Roddenberry said he wanted to put a Russian on the show, I said, “I just used a kid in a television show at Universal named Walter Koenig, who I think I heard do a little Russian. Why don’t we have him in and have him read?” He looks Russian; his face has a Slavic look to it. He looked right and was not a typical Russian cliché.

  WALTER KOENIG (actor, “Pavel Chekov”)

  They were looking for somebody who would appeal to the bubblegum set. They had somebody in mind like Davey Jones of The Monkees. All that stuff about Pravda—you know, the complaining—that’s all nonsense. That was all just publicity. But it was a very practical decision. They wanted somebody who would appeal to eight- to fourteen-year-olds and the decision was to make him Russian. My fan mail came from eight- to fourteen-year-olds who weren’t that aware of the Cold War and what was going on anyway. At the time the whole thing of getting fan mail was so novel to me that I read every single letter I got. I was literally getting about seven hundred letters a week, so that took up a lot of my spare time.

  I had become involved because I had done the part of a Russian on another show [Mr. Novak] and the casting director was the same man. I had also worked with Gene Roddenberry in a leading guest starring role on The Lieutenant and worked with Joseph Pevney on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour he directed, so my name was already known, and it was a relatively painless situation. There was only one other actor who was brought into read, and I was told I had the part before I left that day.

  Joe [D’Agosta] called me in and I read the lines, and his name was Jones, not Chekov, because Davy Jones was who they had in mind for somebody to play this role. I went in and there were all the executives and Gene Roddenberry and Bob Justman and I read. When I was done, there was dead silence. Either I had knocked them into a stupor or I really fucked up. So they said to me, “Yeah, Walt, can you make it funnier.” Make it funny? How do I make it funny? So my reading was something like, “Keptin, guess what, the ship is about to blow up.” They asked me to wait in the outer lobby and there was one other actor there. an actor I had worked with on a series and we had played French Resistance fighters together. He went in and read and he didn’t come out. I waited and waited and after a while, literally, the sun started to go down and I’m still waiting. What I found out was there was another exit out of Gene’s office which bypasses where I was. So I’m waiting and waiting and waiting and another fellow comes in and says, “Are you Walter Koenig?” And he drops to his knees, puts his hand between my legs, and I said, “What are you doing?” And then I see a tape measure. He says, “I’m measuring you for your pants.” That’s the ignominious way I found out I had been cast in Star Trek.

  GEORGE TAKEI (actor, “Hikaru Sulu”)

  I had lobbied in season one and Gene had written some wonderful things for Sulu into the second season’s scripts. But I had taken off for The Green Berets, which went over, and because of the delay, Walter was brought in and he got those lines.

  WALTER KOENIG

  I had no idea how momentous this casting was in my career. I was told that the character might recur, but there was no guarantee. One of the things that happened, fortuitously, was that George Takei was shooting on The Green Berets and was late reporting for the second season, so they brought me back mainly to fill that seat for some sense of continuity, because at that point we had not had an audience reaction. I guess I was lucky that George was unavailable.

  Unbeknownst to Koenig at the time, George Takei, as he admitted in his autobiography, To the Stars, was jealous of the newcomer with whom he now needed to share the spotlight, who was also getting featured in some of the series’ most popular episodes, all originally intended for Sulu.

  WALTER KOENIG

  It never came to my attention. I was never aware of his animosity. He was always cordial, and it wasn’t until years later that he said how he felt about me. I should have been more aware that these parts were being lost because of my presence. But on the other hand, he was doing a movie with John Wayne, so I didn’t feel guilty. George is the consummate professional. He was disappointed and treated badly on several occasions and always bore it with enormous dignity and professionalism. And I admire him for that.

  DOROTHY FONTANA (story editor, Star Trek)

  In the first and second season I think we went from strength to strength, because, basically, we knew our direction by the sixth show in terms of the actors who filled out the characters. We had begun to know them as the characters and began writing for their strengths. I think the stories just got better, although you always have a clinker or two. On the whole, I think our batting average was awfully good during the first two seasons.

  ROBERT H. JUSTMAN (associate producer, Star Trek)

  One of the problems we did have in the second season is that once you solve anything, the thrill is gone. The thing that’s motivated me in working in the television business was getting the challenge of a new show and finding out if you could do it. My feeling was once you knew you could do it, I wanted to try something new. So, yes, the original magic, the original excitement, tends to pass on once you solve the mysteries of it. But there was still the camaraderie.

  We had another problem in the second season that was highly intensified during the third. In the second season we were cut down on how much we could spend per show by a sizeable amount of money. Despite the fact that there had been cast escalations, so our cast costs were higher. This in turn had an effect on the kind of shows we could do. It was even worse the third season when we got cut down again despite more cast escalations.

  RALPH SENENSKY (director, “Metamorphosis”)

  There wasn’t any money. If you saw the soundstage we shot on, you’d be amazed. One of them was the starship interiors, which filled the entire stage, and it wasn’t that big a stage to begin with. The other one was the stage where we built everything else we needed. For example, on “Metamorphosis” we had the Enterprise shuttle, the Galileo, on the soundstage. We were supposed to have a spacecraft and sell the idea of a huge, huge planet. If you remember the wide shots we did, the spacecraft looks so small that you would think it was a model.

  This was achieved by our cinematographer, Jerry Finnerman. We literally had the spacecraft at one end of the stage and the camera’s as far back as it could go on the other end of the stage. Jerry shot it with a nine-millimeter lens just to give it that scope. You see it today, I think it’s marvelous. But you couldn’t use the nine-millimeter with actors because it distorts. That’s an example of the budgetary limitations. Rather than fight it, you try and find a way to use the imagination and rise above it.

  Unfortunately for Lucille Ball, the crushing deficits incurred by Star Trek and Mission: Impossible, both shows that would go on to enduring legacies and prove immensely profitable
for Paramount, forced her to reluctantly sell the studio she and ex-husband Desi had built on the back of her wildly successful sitcom to Paramount, her studio’s neighbor at Gower and Melrose. At the time, Paramount was actually more interested in the real estate Lucy owned than the television series the studio was producing.

  MARC CUSHMAN (author, These Are the Voyages)

  Paramount took over at the halfway point of the second season and started tightening the budget. Paramount’s attitude to Star Trek was “You’re not going to ruin us like you ruined Desilu.” Lucille Ball lost her studio because of Star Trek. She had gambled on the show, and you can read the memos where her board of directors is saying, “Don’t do this show, it’s going to kill us.” But she believed in it. She moved forward with it, and halfway into the second season she had to sell Desilu to Paramount Pictures. And once Paramount Pictures came in they said, “We’re going to run this like a business. You’re not going to go over budget anymore.” Lucille Ball gave up the studio that she and her husband built, it’s all she had left of her marriage, and she sacrificed that for Star Trek.

  RALPH SENENSKY

  Desilu was like a family. Herb Solow, who was the head of the studio, used to come down and talk with you on the soundstage. He didn’t seem like the other studio heads who never seemed to talk to you. Herb went out of his way to help you. Can you imagine a studio working like that?

  When Paramount bought it, a kind of corporate mentality took over. In a way I think that’s why I resent Paramount having such a hit in Star Trek, because if they had their way, they would have killed it off. It survived in spite of them, and now they have this bonanza making them all of this money.

  MARC CUSHMAN

  Lucy’s instincts were right about Star Trek, that it would become one of the biggest shows in syndication ever. The problem was that her pockets weren’t deep enough. They were losing fifteen thousand dollars an episode, which would be like five hundred thousand dollars per episode today. The board was saying, “We’re not a big studio. We can’t afford this, it will break us,” and she kept thinking, “No, somehow we’ll get through it, we’ll get them to live within their budget, somehow it’s going to work out.” You know, if she could have hung on just six months longer, it would have worked out, because by the end of the second season, once they had enough episodes, Star Trek was playing in, I believe, sixty different countries around the world. And all of that money is flowing in. It’s just that she couldn’t last those extra six months.