A Brief Guide to Star Trek (17 page)

Other
Phase II
storylines that were ultimately dropped included ‘Are Unheard Melodies Sweet?’, an episode that saw an alien try to capture the crew using illusions and fantasy, an idea dating back to ‘The Cage’. Worley Thorne’s story was
distinguished by its inclusion of nudity and suggestive situations that would never have made it to air. Theodore Sturgeon proposed a comedy episode called ‘Cassandra’, about a young, clumsy yeoman and a tiny, Tribble-like creature that causes havoc aboard the
Enterprise
.

Perhaps the most promising of all the storylines was John Meredyth Lucas’ planned two-part episode ‘Kitumba’. The story would have seen the return of the infamous Klingons, but would have explored their culture in a more serious way than ever happened on
The Original Series
, and was only achieved to a greater extent on
The Next Generation
. Kirk is sent on a secret mission, accompanying a Klingon defector to the Klingon home world. Their plan is to locate the ‘Kitumba’, the rightful ruler of the planet, in order to avoid a war between the Klingons and the Federation. ‘I wanted something we’d never seen on the series before’, said Lucas, who’d been a producer in
The Original Series
’ second year and had written ‘The Changeling’, ‘Patterns of Force’ and ‘That Which Survives’, and directed ‘The Ultimate Computer’ and ‘The
Enterprise
Incident’. He’d also both written and directed the episode ‘Elaan of Troyius’. ‘[I wanted] penetration deep into enemy space – then I began to think about how they lived. I tried to think what Klingon society would be like and the Japanese came to mind’.

While Roddenberry believed writers would have no trouble getting to grips with the new
Star Trek
, he failed to understand that television and its audiences had moved on in the decade since the original show was on air and so would be expecting a different kind of storytelling. There were also three new characters (Decker, Xon and Ilia) for scriptwriters to contend with, and one major character (Spock) missing altogether. There was also the question of making a new show that appealed to the original
Star Trek
fans (who were desperate for their favourite show to return) and a potentially wider audience turned on to space opera science fiction by
Star Wars
.

With Shatner on board, the new character roles were quickly filled. David Gautreaux won the role of Xon, while
model–actress – and former Miss India – Persis Khambata was signed up to play the sensitive Ilia. Despite this sign of progress, those working on
Phase II
began to notice that deadlines were being ignored, shooting dates were looming and the studio executives appeared unconcerned. This was extremely unusual in television production, and it soon began to become apparent to all that the show they were working on was destined never to appear on a television screen. The shooting date was looming for the two-hour pilot episode, and the pivotal role of Commander Decker had still not been cast. There was even some question about whether the character (originally a possible Kirk replacement) was needed for what was now intended to be a movie rather than a TV series. The real priority was the feature film script for ‘In Thy Image’ that Harold Livingston and Gene Roddenberry were rapidly – but secretly – redrafting.

Roddenberry’s November 1977 rewrite of Livingston’s script was the first step in a process that would cause him to once again lose control of
Star Trek
. The others involved in the movie and
Phase II
project considered Roddenberry’s rewrite to be too intellectual (a criticism similar to those aimed at the original
Star Trek
pilot ‘The Cage’) and – more damningly – dull. It fell to Paramount executive Michael Eisner to decide between the scripts. He dubbed Roddenberry’s version to be ‘television’ and Livingston’s to be ‘a movie’ and ‘a lot better’. Roddenberry’s take was not without merit, so a decision was taken to create a third draft combining the best elements from both the competing versions, leaning heavily on the Livingston draft.

The biggest problem came at the climax. The alien threat was now identified as the long-lost Earth space probe
Voyager
(dubbed
V’ger
), searching for its creator. Unconvinced that mankind, as represented by the
Enterprise
crew, would be capable of creating an entity such as
V’ger
, the wayward probe threatens to destroy the planet. The solution was to see the largely redundant Will Decker merge with
V’ger
, thus informing the intelligent probe of mankind’s achievements and saving Earth. Many of these core
elements would be maintained through to the eventual production of
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
.

By December 1977, Hollywood gossip columnist Rona Barrett had gone public with information well known within the upper echelons of Paramount:
Star Trek: Phase II
was a dummy project and the space-faring franchise was now set to be revived as a movie. Her report was business based, focusing on Paramount’s abandonment of the planned fourth TV network. The studio continued to deny anything had changed, except for a delay in the launch of the Paramount network to fall 1978. Among those still in the dark about the project’s change in nature were the series’ episodic writers, who continued to work on scripts for a show that the studio knew was never going to happen. Povill, Livingston and Roddenberry participated in the charade, taking the time to read all the story outlines and offer notes as if the series were going ahead. No one involved creatively at the lower levels of the production of
Star Trek: Phase II
had any real reason to suspect otherwise. But after a decade of struggle and false starts, by 1979
Star Trek
on television was finally pronounced dead. Now,
Star Trek
was going to the movies.

‘
The question was not whether we killed Spock, but whether we killed him well
.’ Nicholas Meyer

The story of the most successful
Star Trek
movies is primarily the story of three creative individuals: Harve Bennett, Leonard Nimoy and Nicholas Meyer. They would be the driving forces – in various capacities – behind the movies from
Star Trek II
to
Star Trek VI
, with William Shatner carrying the can for the poorly performing
Star Trek V
. However, to begin with it was down to one man to launch
Star Trek
on the big screen: the series’ creator, Gene Roddenberry.

All the work done on the TV series was now repurposed for the movie, which was not as easy as it might sound. For ex -ample, the quality of finish required for sets (such as the new
Enterprise
bridge) on television was much lower than that required for a film image that would be projected onto the big screen. Everything – sets, costumes, props and special effects – now had to be brought up to movie quality.

The biggest problem of all was still the script, which had gone through many drafts with several writers alternately tackling the story ideas in the form of a TV pilot or a would-be blockbuster movie. It’s little wonder that the attempted November 1977 combination of all previous scripts into one satisfied no one. There were questions of approach and tone: was this to be like an
expanded episode of the original series? Would broad comedy be suitable for
Star Trek
? Should it be heroic space adventure, like
Star Wars
, or a more contemplative, thoughtful film, like
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
or some of the better episodes of the original
Star Trek
series? The questions were endless, and few people – even Gene Roddenberry – had answers that everyone involved could get behind and support. The only thing that seemed to be agreed on was that the
Star Trek
movie should be full of ‘startling special effects’, a ‘light show’ that would ‘dazzle the senses’, according to a script memo from Jon Povill.

What had been proposed originally as a $3-million TV movie in the mid-1970s quickly ballooned to an $8-million feature film, then a $15-million blockbuster (in comparison, 1977’s
Star Wars
had cost in the region of $9 million in direct production costs). The final tally (including all the amounts spent in development on
Phase II
) would eventually be a whopping $44 million.

Although Paramount had tried to maintain the fiction that
Phase II
was an active project, by March 1978 they had to come clean. The appointment of director Robert Wise to helm what was now being dubbed
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
gave the game away. Wise was an old Hollywood hand who’d directed many classics, including
West Side Story
(1961) and
The Sound of Music
(1965). More relevant to Paramount were his science fiction and fantasy credentials on
The Day the Earth Stood Still
(1951),
The Haunting
(1963) and
The Andromeda Strain
(1971). Wise had started out as a film editor working with Orson Welles on
Citizen Kane
(1941), before moving on to directing for producer Val Lewton with
Curse of the Cat People
(1944). He was regarded as a safe pair of hands to helm Paramount’s biggest movie project in years.

As the creative point man on any film project, the director is generally regarded as the authority figure on set (sometimes for specific projects producers or writers can hold that position, but for the majority of films the director is the driving force). A single voice in the form of an authoritative director was exactly what
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
needed to break the logjam
that was crippling the production. The problem was that this was not any run-of-the-mill movie but
Star Trek
, and the series’ creative godfather Gene Roddenberry was still very much involved. While Robert Wise was able to take command of the creative departments (sets, costumes, props, make-up, special effects) and get them all pulling in the same direction to realise the film, he still had to deal with the politics of Paramount, the involvement of Roddenberry and a far from finished script.

The first action Wise took was to resolve any outstanding issues with Spock actor Leonard Nimoy, bringing him back on board the project (and in the process dropping new Vulcan character Xon), as he knew it would be impossible to have
Star Trek
without Spock. Secondly, Wise recalled writer Harold Livingston to rework the ‘In Thy Image’ script from the ground up, removing all the rewriting done by Roddenberry, Povill and others through countless confused drafts. Wise wanted a script that contained the same ideas and action, but was written for the big screen rather than cobbled together from failed TV pilot drafts.

From the first musings about a possible
Star Trek
film, by D. C. Fontana in a fanzine called
Star-Borne
in 1972, through Gene Roddenberry’s 1975 script ‘The God Thing’ to Harold Livingston’s 1977 script ‘In Thy Image’, the voyage of
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
to its first day of principal photography on 7 August 1978 had been a long and complicated one.

Robert Wise started shooting barely eighteen months before the planned December 1979 release date, with an unfinished script and no idea if the studio could handle the special effects required by the story (which had remained true to the basics of
Phase II
’s ‘In Thy Image’). With new script pages arriving on set daily, the film was still without an agreed ending well into shooting (script revisions were so numerous that some were noted not just by the day they were made, but by the hour).

With scenes on the redesigned
Enterprise
bridge and transporter platform completed in the studio, the production relocated for three days to Yellowstone National Park to shoot the scenes on Vulcan featuring Nimoy. The film’s realisation of
Vulcan (easily outstripping anything seen on the original TV show) would be augmented with the use of visual effects and matte paintings for a convincing otherworldly feel. However, by the end of August the production was around two weeks behind the planned shooting schedule. It would be 26 January 1979 before shooting wrapped on the film after 125 days, with a huge amount of post-production work still to be done.

The creation of the special effects for
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
proved to be the biggest headache for the production. Robert Abel and Associates were appointed to realise the
Enterprise
’s encounter with
V’ger
, but found the work and the tight schedule daunting. Paramount brought in effects specialist Douglas Trumbull (
2001: A Space Odyssey
,
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
) to rescue the project and ensure it met the release date. Despite all the time and money available, the film was barely completed in time for release, with Wise always considering it to have been a ‘rough cut’: an unfinished project released due to commercial deadlines.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
was not audience tested due to lack of time (something Wise regretted) and the film’s just-completed print was delivered to the premiere in Washington DC by the director himself. ‘I saw the completed film for the first time on December 1, just three days before our premiere. I cut about ten minutes and had a new master printed. The film that was ultimately shown was a rough cut, the kind of film you show at your first sneak preview. You really never know what you have until you get your film in front of an audience.’

The reviews of
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
were definitely mixed, with
Variety
taking a positive view: ‘[The film] includes all of the ingredients the TV show’s fans thrive on: the philosophical dilemma wrapped in a scenario of mind control, troubles with the spaceship, the dependable and understanding Kirk, the ever-logical Spock, and [a] suspenseful twist ending.’ Roger Ebert, of the
Chicago Sun-Times
called the film ‘about as good as we could have expected’ but lacking the ‘dazzling brilliance and originality of
2001
’. The film’s lengthy running time – much of it taken up
with special effects sequences – was heavily criticised, resulting in the movie becoming widely known as
Star Trek: The Motionless Picture
or
Star Trek: The Slow Motion Picture
. David Denby, of
New York Magazine
, noted how much of the film consisted of characters reacting to things on view screens, making the experience ‘like watching someone else watch television’, perhaps intended as a veiled criticism of the movie’s television origins.