A Brief Guide to Star Trek (19 page)

The sticking point seemed to be the fact that the screenplay specified an age for Kirk, and it was this that was upsetting Shatner. ‘The revisions proved remarkably simple’, admitted Meyer in his memoir, ‘and in the end Shatner’s needs were easily fulfilled.’ Shatner described the resulting revised screenplay as ‘terrific’, although all Meyer had done was to delete any specific numerical references to Kirk’s age. The rest was the same script that Shatner had previously professed to ‘hate’.

Meyer brought in George Lucas’ special effects house Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) to provide many of the special effects for
Star Trek II
. While the majority of the work was traditional film models, especially for the climactic confrontation of the two starships (the
Enterprise
and the hijacked
Reliant
), ILM also pioneered the use of computer-generated imagery or computer graphics in the Genesis Project sequence. Intended to depict the terraforming of a planet – renewing a barren landscape to make it suitable for human habitation – in the past the sequence would have been traditionally animated. Using computers to create special effects would gradually
become the norm in filmmaking, but
Star Trek II
was one of the first to use the technique in a commercial film.

The shooting of the pivotal death of Spock scene was saved until the end of the production process. ‘It was my job to make Spock’s death plausible, meaningful and moving’, wrote Meyer in his memoir. ‘If we botched the job, people would throw things at the screen. If we did it correctly and the death proceeded organically from the material, no one would ever question it.’ After fifteen years of living with Spock, Leonard Nimoy was nervous on the day the scene was to be filmed – after all, he was saying goodbye to an alter-ego that had meant a lot to him, even if the relationship had been a troubling one. During the shooting of
Star Trek II
there was talk of making a third film in the series, and Nimoy’s more commercial instincts may have been telling him he’d be silly to distance himself from
Star Trek
just as it was on the verge of ever-greater success. As it was, the atmosphere on stage during the shooting of the dramatic sacrifice scene anticipated that which would pervade cinemas where the movie screened: several of the production crew were observed to have tears in their eyes as
Star Trek
’s Vulcan hero breathed his last. ‘It took about a day to film the death of Spock’, relates Meyer. ‘Some of us understood the significance of that eternal moment while it was unfolding.’

Released in the US on 4 June 1982,
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
enjoyed considerable success, garnering $97 million worldwide on a budget of around $11 million. The film’s opening weekend – at the time the largest opening weekend gross in movie history – brought in $14.3 million, reaching a total of $78.9 million in the US, and becoming the sixth highest grossing film of the year. The final total may have been less than that of
The Motion Picture
, but the substantially lower production cost meant the
Star Trek
sequel was much more profitable.

Critical reaction was more uniform than that in response to the first film, with many welcoming the dramatic nature of the easy to follow storyline. The improved pacing in comparison to its predecessor was much commented upon, with the
Washington
Post
and the
New York Times
feeling the movie was much closer in spirit to the original TV series. The stronger storyline was welcomed by the
New York Times
, while
Variety
praised the new movie’s stronger character interaction. Spock’s death was deemed to have been dramatic and well handled by the
Chicago Sun-Times
’ critic Roger Ebert, although he feared the film sometimes verged on melodrama and he saw the climactic battle sequences as tepid.

For
Star Trek
fans (and many critics)
The Wrath of Khan
would be regarded as the film that saved the
Star Trek
movie franchise. It had shown that
Star Trek
could fill the big screen in a dynamic and exciting way that faithfully recalled the TV series but also pushed on to new frontiers – and was unafraid of taking risks, such as killing off Spock.

Recognising a successful production when they saw one, the executive team at Paramount kept Harve Bennett on board for the next
Star Trek
movie. Although there were plenty of sequel movies through the 1980s, few were as heavily serialised as Bennett would make the second, third and fourth
Star Trek
movies.
Star Trek III
would pick up directly from the end of the second film and take the characters and drama forward into a new adventure. There would also be a moment of high drama to match the death of Spock in
Star Trek II
: the destruction of the starship
Enterprise
. As with Spock’s death, Gene Roddenberry objected to this latest development. ‘I thought it was a foolish piece of waste’, he said. ‘I don’t know what they gained by losing the
Enterprise
, other than a moment in a film. The
Enterprise
was really one of our continuing characters.’

Part of the climactic action of
The Wrath of Khan
had been cooked up between Harve Bennett and Leonard Nimoy on set during filming. Just before Spock takes action to save the
Enterprise
, thus leading to his death, he delivers the notorious Vulcan nerve pinch to Dr McCoy, so the medic will not interfere. Bennett had come from episodic television, and was aware that
Star Trek
might well return for a third episode. Laying possible
story threads that could be picked up in the next movie, Bennett (with Meyer’s reluctant agreement: he wanted Spock’s death to be final) had Spock perform a mind-meld on McCoy, with the crucial line of dialogue – ‘Remember’ – suggested by Nimoy himself. This also served to provide a response to Roddenberry’s main criticism of the film, namely the apparent death of Spock. Few knew at that point how – or if – the implications of that brief moment might be picked up in another
Star Trek
film.

Bennett had to first persuade Nimoy to return once again if they were to seriously pursue the option of resurrecting Spock. After each
Star Trek
movie Nimoy had considered himself to be finished with the character. The actor always had a confused relationship with his Vulcan creation (to the extent that he issued two autobiographies at different times, one called
I Am Not Spock
and another titled
I Am Spock
). If Nimoy had not fully grasped the implications of the brief ‘Remember’ scene, he did understand the meaning of the surprise appearance of Spock’s burial tube on the Genesis planet (a scene added by Paramount and not shot by Meyer) in the closing moments of
The Wrath of Khan
: he would be wanted once again to play Spock.

The two key
Star Trek
stars who returned for
The Wrath of Khan
managed to gain pay-or-play deals (meaning they would be paid whether the projects proceeded or not) for two additional non-
Star Trek
acting projects from Paramount as part of their negotiations. Nimoy knew what his deal-breaker would be this time around: he wanted to direct. Nimoy recalled that he (and Shatner) had campaigned for the opportunity to direct episodes of the original
Star Trek
TV series back in the 1960s – but had been consistently turned down, although Shatner was scheduled to helm a late season three instalment that was never made due to the show’s cancellation. Now Nimoy saw his opportunity: in return for reviving Spock in
Star Trek III
, he wanted to direct the movie.

Expecting to meet studio resistance, Nimoy was pleasantly surprised to find much support for the idea among the Paramount executives, including Harve Bennett (Nimoy had
previously directed a TV movie that Bennett had produced,
The Powers of Matthew Starr
). Perhaps more surprising was the support of studio boss Michael Eisner. According to Nimoy’s
I Am Spock
memoir, Eisner immediately latched on to the promotional aspects of the idea: ‘Leonard Nimoy directs the return of Spock? I love it!’ Nimoy noted of Eisner’s reaction, ‘He was so enthusiastic, I went totally slack-jawed.’ Eisner even asked Nimoy if he’d like to write the script, but the actor was content to leave that task to Harve Bennett.

Picking up the story threads planted in
The Wrath of Khan
,
The Search for Spock
reveals that the ‘Remember’ scene saw Spock implant his ‘katra’ (his essential essence) within McCoy’s psyche during the mind-meld as a back-up, in case he perished attempting to save the
Enterprise
. Realising this, Kirk and his crew steal the
Enterprise
in order to retrieve Spock’s body from the Genesis planet and reunite it with his katra. In the process they come into conflict with hostile Klingons, led by Kruge (Christopher Lloyd), who are after the secrets of the Genesis device. Kirk’s newly found son David Marcus is killed, and the
Enterprise
is destroyed.

As far back as
The Motion Picture
, William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy had enjoyed a ‘favoured nations’ clause in their contracts, meaning each would be offered the same benefits as his co-star. Shatner therefore expected to also direct a film in the
Star Trek
movie series, regarding that as a benefit to be shared. Starting work on
The Search for Spock
, Shatner admitted to finding being directed by his co-star difficult and awkward until he got used to the situation. The absence of Spock from much of the movie allowed Nimoy to focus on his work behind the camera. The third film in the series finally offered a prominent role to DeForest Kelley as Dr McCoy, the incongruous and unexpected carrier of Spock’s katra. The rest of the regular
Star Trek
cast all had their moments, but none beyond the three central bridge characters really had a chance to make any significant impact.

Once again Bennett’s TV production habits kicked in and he decided to open the film with a series of clips from the previous
movie to remind audiences of the key story threads, the same way a TV series might open a new episode that built on last week’s developments. The difference with the
Star Trek
movies was that audiences would go years between instalments. In writing the screenplay, Bennett had the film’s ending in mind from the beginning. It was obvious that the crew would find and resurrect Spock, so Bennett came up with the ‘Your name is . . . Jim’ line to signal that Spock’s consciousness had survived. As a result the movie is perhaps rather predictable with all the dramatic high points fairly well telegraphed, even though Bennett took the opportunity to feature the Klingons as big screen adversaries.

Following the ageing and death themes of
The Wrath of Khan
, Bennett introduced a more optimistic friendship and commitment theme to
The Search for Spock
. The film would be about the central trio of
Star Trek
characters’ commitment to each other. Kirk is prepared to break the rules to save Spock, while McCoy – despite his comic antagonism to his Vulcan friend – takes on the burden of carrying his katra. For his part, Spock had enough faith in Kirk and McCoy to trust them to bring him back from beyond death. While Roddenberry objected to story developments such as the destruction of the
Enterprise
, he remained silent about the apparent introduction of Christian sacrifice and resurrection themes to his previously usually anti-religious series.

Produced on a slimline $16-million budget,
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
opened on 1 June 1984, competing with other summer blockbusters that year including
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
,
Gremlins
and
Ghostbusters
. Breaking the record-making weekend gross of the second
Indiana Jones
movie released the week before,
The Search for Spock
recovered its production budget in its opening weekend. The movie went on to gross $76.5 million in the US, reaching a total of $87 million worldwide.

The third
Star Trek
movie was not as widely acclaimed as
The Wrath of Khan
, with critics praising its sense of grand space opera, while commenting on the movie’s lower production
values. Roger Ebert, in the
Chicago Sun-Times
, called the movie ‘Good, but not great’, while
USA Today
praised the film as the best of the three and the closest in spirit to the original TV series. Nimoy’s direction was approved of by the majority of critics, with
Newsweek
acclaiming
The Search for Spock
as the best-paced of the three movies to date. However, the shock dramatic developments of David’s death and the destruction of the
Enterprise
were criticised by some as obvious and manipulative moves. Fans broadly welcomed the further adventures of the
Enterprise
crew, but for most the third film did not trump
The Wrath of Khan
as the best
Star Trek
movie.

Many of the ideas developed for the first
Star Trek
movie had involved time travel. One of the best episodes of the TV series – Harlan Ellison’s ‘The City on the Edge of Forever’ – had seen Kirk, Spock and McCoy travel to Earth’s past for an adventure. For the fourth
Star Trek
movie, which would conclude the trilogy begun with
The Wrath of Khan
, Bennett resolved to send the
Enterprise
crew back to contemporary Earth. This gambit would not only give the often otherworldly
Star Trek
series a direct connection to its contemporary audience, but it would also help with the budget if scenes could be shot in an environment requiring no ‘futuristic’ set dressing.