by Edward Gross
In Roddenberry’s draft of the “In Thy Image” script, dated November 7, 1977, the film opens with Kirk and his girlfriend (an aide to Admiral Nogura), Alexandria, swimming nude. Notes Roddenberry in the scene description, “we limit to PG since we are using nudity to illustrate twenty-third-century natural attitudes.” Hailed by Starfleet on his wrist communicator, Alexandria pulls him down underwater. When he pops back up, he tells Starfleet that “I was attacked by an underwater creature.” San Francisco in the twenty-third century is a gorgeous and bucolic paradise with all industry and transportation now underground. With the Enterprise the only ship in the quadrant with an experienced captain and powerful shields, the vessel is dispatched to confront a mysterious probe that is on a heading for Earth. Alexandria is killed in the same transporter malfunction that would later be depicted in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, while, on the bridge, two “shapely female yeomans check out the young and inexperienced Xon, straight out of the Academy, and the new science officer, and ask him about pon farr.”
As in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, we are also introduced to the characters of Decker and Ilia—although in a far more clunky way. Decker acknowledges his lineage as the son of Commodore Will Decker from the original series episode “The Doomsday Machine,” while Kirk assures Ilia, “I know that Deltan females are not wanton, hairless whores.” Ilia laughs delightedly, prompting her retort, “On my world, existence is loving, pleasuring, sharing, caring,” leading Kirk to ask Ilia, “Have you ever sexed with a human?”
Many familiar elements in Star Trek: The Motion Picture can already be seen in the In Thy Image script, although the V’ger probe is nicknamed Tasha by Chekov and the Ilia–Tasha probe takes a special interest in the irresistible Captain Kirk. “Kirk, let us make sex. In a few hours, Ve-jur will arrive. I will return to my original form.”
Unlike The Motion Picture, however, both Decker and Ilia survive unharmed from their encounter with V’ger after Kirk screens a sixteen-millimeter print from NASA of the creator, which they uncover in San Francisco. In previous drafts the mysterious space probe was called N’Sa, which is discovered to be an abbreviation for NASA.
ROBERT L. COLLINS
After Gene gave us the script, Harold and I sat across from each other and asked which one was going to tell him that it wasn’t quite right. I said, “Hell, I’m the director,” and walked out [leaving the unenviable task to Livingston].
HAROLD LIVINGSTON
He kept the structure I’d created, but I don’t know what he did to it. Just crazy shit. So I said, “I’ll tell him.” I went in and I said, “Gene, this doesn’t work.” Well, his face dropped to his ankles. Then I got myself wound up and I told him why it didn’t work. I said, “Why’d you do it? When something works, you don’t piss in it to make it better!” In any case, he was pretty stubborn about this. He thought it was good and said, “Well, we’ll give it to the front office.”
Well, about three days later we have a meeting in Michael Eisner’s gigantic white office. We sat around this huge table. Michael had the two scripts. My version was in a brown folder and Gene’s version was in an orange cover. Michael had one script in one hand and one in the other, balancing them in his palms. And he said, “Listen, this is the problem. This,” Gene’s orange script, “is television. This,” the brown script, “is a movie. Frankly, it’s a lot better.” Well, holy shit! Everybody was clearing their throats. The great man had had his feathers ruffled. Anyway, after some heated discussion, it was decided to let Collins write a third version using the best elements of both.
ROBERT L. COLLINS
I did a couple of drafts and I had what I thought was a wonderful, spectacular idea for the end. Decker sacrificed himself at the end of the picture and unleashed a history of mankind. It would be a ten-minute sequence where we would flash images of mankind since the dawn of the apes up till the present. These flashes of images would be all over the ship and then, of course, all over the theater. All of this would be accompanied by a musical montage of Beethoven and Bach. It was a grand idea and very ambitious, and I think it would have set off the end of it in a very spectacular manner. I remember that I wrote something to that effect. Not particularly well, I imagine, but that was my thought on how the picture should end. I was trying to deal with what this animal known as man really is, and essentially I was saying that man was pretty good.
HAROLD LIVINGSTON
Collins’s version was a total disaster. About that time, Roddenberry and I really began to get at each other’s throats. I don’t remember when I began to pierce the Roddenberry myth, but he and I suddenly started to have creative differences. I resented his interference and he, apparently, wanted someone to carry his lunch around, and that wasn’t me. We became socially friendly for a while, but we started to have various difficulties.
ROBERT L. COLLINS
We eventually cast the part of Xon. I found an actor named David Gautreaux to play the part. He was a nice young man, a nice actor, and all of that would have worked. Though there was still considerable concern over how much box office we would have without Spock. But we proceeded.
DAVID GAUTREAUX (actor, “Xon”)
I personally was never a fan. I never watched the show. I bought a television two weeks after I was signed for the role, because I was given an advance large enough to actually do something like that. Studying the episodes I got what I thought was a firm grasp of what makes a proper Vulcan. One of my big inspirations came from the In Thy Image script, where Xon is described as smelling rather strongly, having just beamed aboard from a meditative monastery in the Gobi Desert.
I actually went on a meditative trek and fasted for ten days. I allowed my hair to grow long, I started researching to be a Vulcan with no emotion. For an actor, that’s death. I was looking at it from an actor’s point of view, which is how do you appear as having no emotion without looking like a piece of wood? I went to several acting coaches. Jeff Corey [Leonard Nimoy’s former acting coach and a guest star on the original series] is the one who gave me the key of how I could actively play the pure pursuit of logic as being my primary action. Then I felt I needed a physical equivalent, and I followed the teachings of Bruce Lee, who taught about dealing with emotion and a freedom from emotions that allowed you to live in a nonviolent world. That’s really what he was all about, despite the impression he gave.
I was looking forward to playing Xon. His actions were tremendous. His strength without size, and the aspect of playing a full Vulcan. When I say that, I mean somebody who had a larger presence than, say, Spock’s father, who was [also] a full Vulcan. By presence I mean a more involved presence on the show and in the running of the ship. It was a very exciting premise to be playing. But to me, it was a potentially good gig that didn’t work out.
ROBERT GOODWIN
Bob also cast Persis Khambatta in the role of Ilia, despite the fact that Michael Eisner said, “There will be no bald-headed woman in this show.” He thought it was an unattractive look and would turn people off. So we did a screen test with a bunch of ladies in bald-head caps and Persis, for some reason, looks great with no hair. The rest of them didn’t look so gorgeous, but she was still pretty. Eisner took one look at the test and said okay. He didn’t even call me personally. He just sent the word out that it was all right.
PERSIS KHAMBATTA (actress, “Ilia”)
I was told that the girl, Ilia, was supposed to be bald, so I went and bought a bald cap from a drugstore for a dollar. I walked in to see Gene Roddenberry and I was wearing this cap—I wasn’t even wearing it perfectly, just enough so he could have an idea of how I looked without hair. I said to him, “I’m sure you’re going to test girls for this part. Would you give me a chance?” I’m good in front of a camera, but if I have to do a cold reading … well, a lot of actors can just take a script and start reading and acting immediately. I feel more confident having a screen test done, because then I’m more prepared for it. Also, the director can see how I look, because
my personality changes a lot on camera.
Gene did give me a screen test. I felt very excited when I was told that of all the girls, I was the one who got it. I always loved Star Trek. I watched it in London and thought it was a fantastic show, it had a lot of class. But I’ll tell you, I was even more pleased when they decided to make it into a feature film instead of a TV series.
HAROLD LIVINGSTON
December came along and my contract was coming up. Before they could fire me, I quit. We had too many problems there. If I do a poor job, I’ll tell you it’s bad and I’ll welcome help. I’m certainly not infallible. None of us are. But Roddenberry would never admit that he wrote a bad line or couldn’t write.
ROBERT L. COLLINS
Roddenberry had a purist approach. This was his life. Star Trek and Roddenberry are synonymous. He would continually say, “This is not Star Trek.” One could argue that it may not be Star Trek, but it’s good. And at the same time you had to realize that on a human level, on a personal level, that he was all wrapped up in it. His whole way of defining himself was involved with the series and with this project. We all wanted to help him realize his ambition, and we wanted to make a good picture, too. Paramount was kind of holding a gun to his head, saying that they were going to do it, and then that they weren’t going to do it. That tension, I think, flowed through all of us. I’m not sorry about calling people assholes if I think they are, but I liked Roddenberry and I always felt sympathetic toward him and the project.
HAROLD LIVINGSTON
Gene’s made an industry of Star Trek and he’s done nothing else. Everything else he’s done—the few other things—are just shameful to watch. It’s a disgrace. Gene’s values lay in his knowledge, his experience … if he had just imparted that and let the professionals do their job, you’d have had a picture.
The film was in preproduction and they had gone back to basically what I wrote, with Collins as a writer, restoring much of what he left out, but little of Gene’s.
ROBERT L. COLLINS
Somewhere around that time we were talking about special effects. Close Encounters of the Third Kind was just about to open, and the word around town was that it was spectacular. So Roddenberry and I went down to the Pacific Theatre and sat down for what I think was a noon performance. We came out and were both pretty blown away by Close Encounters. I turned to him and said, “There goes our low-budget special effects.” After Star Wars and Close Encounters, you couldn’t do those kinds of special effects anymore. That means a whole new thinking and a whole reorganization of the production and concepts. They needed a great deal more money and time, and there were only a few people who could do the effects.
We spoke to John Dykstra and Robert Abel. Abel is an irritating asshole, but he came on board and decided that he would make it into a Robert Abel Production. His budget, which had been one or two million dollars, suddenly jumped between seven and ten million dollars. The budget kept rising and Paramount was getting more nervous. In the meantime, we were all sitting around trying to think of the number of Trekkies in the United States and the dollar admission that would result from the film. It was a little like McCarthy trying to figure out how many communists were in the State Department. Everybody had a different number every day.
As plans for a movie version of In Thy Image continued to move forward, and the scope of the film continued to grow, it was becoming obvious that what was conceived as a small, low-budget film was going to be anything but. Eventually this would result in Robert Wise coming aboard as director, who in turn would insist that Leonard Nimoy reprise his role of Spock for the movie.
ROBERT L. COLLINS
We were preparing to make this picture, but the writing was on the wall. I was a television director who had not done a feature film at that time. It was evident that they were going to hire somebody who was used to working with big-budget special effects. Paramount wasn’t brave about such things, so I called up Jeff Katzenberg and said, “You’re going to replace me, right?” He said, “No, Bob, never. Take my word for it, Bob. Trust me.”
Then my agent, who at that time handled Robert Wise, called me and said, “Look we’ve got an offer for Robert Wise to replace you on the picture.” Apparently Paramount couldn’t remember that we both had the same agent, so I called up Jeff again and said, “Look, are you going to replace me?” He said, “Absolutely not. Never. You’re absolutely staying with the project.” I pointed out that Robert Wise and I had the same agent, so he said, “If Robert Wise doesn’t do it, then you are absolutely going to do it.” I kind of laughed about that for a while. I knew it would happen sooner or later. They wanted to get somebody in place before they fired me. So they got Wise, and the first step was to redecorate my office.
ALAN DEAN FOSTER
Obviously the real reason the Star Trek film finally got the go-ahead was because of Star Wars and Close Encounters. After that, and this is supposition on my part, everybody started running around like crazy. I think that after being told, “Yes, we’re doing a series; no, we’re doing a movie; yes, we’re doing a movie,” everybody hears money. Everyone ran around trying to find something so that they could get started right away with budgeting and casting. Unfortunately, once it became a big-budget movie, I didn’t get so much as a phone call or an invitation to come down to the set.
DAVID GAUTREAUX
I was doing a play at the time, trying not to think that I was going to be playing an alien for the rest of my life. Then I spoke to Gene Roddenberry and said, “What’s the story? Did you see that Leonard Nimoy is coming back to play his character? What’s going to happen to Xon?” He said, “Oh, Xon is very much a part of the family and you’re very much a part of our family.” I responded, “Gene, don’t allow a character of this magnitude to simply carry Mr. Spock’s suitcases on board the ship and then say, ‘I’ll be in my quarters if anybody needs me.’ Give him what I’ve put into him and what you’ve put into him. If he’s not going to be more a part of it and more noble than that, let’s eliminate him.” They continued with the idea of Xon for quite a while.
HAROLD LIVINGSTON
After I left, they hired me on Fantasy Island as a producer. They’d already shot five or six episodes in Burbank and everybody hated it. The producer was a kid named Michael Fisher. Everybody hated him. So ABC had me come on, there was even a whole story in TV Guide at the time about bringing me in to save it. So they bring me in, but the idea is not to tell Michael Fisher because I’m in Beverly Hills at the 20th Century–Fox lot and Michael is in Burbank. So what do I care? I start to develop thirteen scripts and I even rewrote one of his. So mine are not ready to be filmed yet and they’ve got to go on with his because of the schedule.
And the first show goes on and it’s a fucking runaway hit! It’s a fluke. Second week goes on to bigger numbers. I drive into my office on the lot and my parking spot is blanked out. I go up to my office and my office is empty, the secretary is gone, all my possessions, cigars, boxes, are on the fucking pavement. So I go in and Aaron [Spelling] ducks me. I finally corner him about two days later and he says, “These things happen. I’ll make it up to you. What do you want?” I said, “You have a show called Vega$ that hasn’t sold yet. If it sells I want it.” He said, “You got it.” I said, “Call my agent right now, in front of me.” Calls my agent and Aaron says, “If I sell Vega$, Harold is the producer. Harold gets the show.”
So I still have a contract and every Thursday afternoon at two o’clock the doorbell rings and there’s Aaron’s chauffeur who hands me an envelope with a five-thousand-dollar check for the four or five weeks that are left on my contract. Anyway, it’s a good thing for Vega$ that I went back to Star Trek when Roddenberry called, because I’d have changed the whole goddamn thing.
JON POVILL
It was [Jeffrey] Katzenberg who courted and brought in Wise, though if you ask [Robert Wise’s wife] Millie Wise, she will readily tell you that Jeff threw Bob under the bus pretty much as soon as the project was �
�done”—quotation marks appropriate considering that we released what was essentially a rough cut of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. In point of fact, as I was under contract as story editor, I continued working with writers and bringing in commissioned scripts until my contract ran out, even though we were told that they were going to feature sometime in the middle of my story-editor tenure.
ROBERT GOODWIN
When they went with Robert Wise as director, Gene and I were never really informed of what the steps of the deal were. It turns out that Robert Wise is used to getting directing and producing credit. Apparently he would not accept a producer, so Gene Roddenberry was moved to executive producer and I was asked by Gene and the studio if I would stay on as associate producer. But I didn’t want to spend a minute of my life doing that. I was an associate producer ten years earlier, and it was taking a step backward, especially facing two years of production. I came to work one day and they had taken my name off the door. My stuff was packed in boxes in the hall and the janitor told me I had to be off the lot in twenty minutes.
JON POVILL
For me personally, I had very mixed feelings about it becoming a movie. I was the story editor of Star Trek: Phase II and my shows and my credit were gone. They weren’t going to be made. I was kept on as production coordinator as we went to the Robert Collins version, which was a low-budget feature. At the same time, when Robert Wise came in, that generated fresh enthusiasm for sure. There was nobody involved who didn’t think that this was the big time.
SLOW MOTION
“I NEED YOU … BADLY.”
The transition of Phase II to what would become Star Trek: The Motion Picture was fraught with changes. For starters, although the “In Thy Image” teleplay would still serve as the basis for the film’s story line, writer Harold Livingston was gone and replaced by Dennis Lynton Clark. Production designer Joe Jennings and consultant Walter “Matt” Jeffries (who still had a full-time gig on Little House on the Prairie) were replaced by Harold Michelson; costume designer William Ware Theiss saw his responsibilities taken over by Robert Fletcher; story editor Jon Povill became associate producer; and Robert Collins was replaced by legendary director Robert Wise in the center seat, who in turn ensured that Leonard Nimoy would reprise the role of Spock, thus making David Gautreaux’s Xon superfluous. At control of it all—or so he thought—was Gene Roddenberry.
