A Brief Guide to Star Trek (21 page)

As with the release of
The Wrath of Khan
, the new
Star Trek
movie was up against sequel films featuring Indiana Jones and the Ghostbusters in the summer of 1989. Although upon opening on 9 June
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
achieved the highest opening gross of any
Star Trek
film to that date, taking $17.4 million, the film’s initial success was not to last. With a production budget of $27 million (the highest yet for a
Star Trek
movie, excluding
The Motion Picture
),
The Final Frontier
grossed just $52 million in the US and reached a worldwide total of only $70 million, almost half of the $133 million taken by
The Voyage Home
. Despite this disappointment, the movie was still the tenth highest grossing film of the year.

A series of very critical reviews contributed heavily to the significant underperformance of a movie Paramount had been privately projecting could gross in excess of $200 million. The
Washington Post
called the movie ‘a shambles’, while the
Chicago Sun-Times
critic Roger Ebert was scathing of Shatner’s directorial efforts: ‘There is no clear line from the beginning of the movie to the end, not much danger, no characters to really care about, little suspense, uninteresting or incomprehensible villains, and a great deal of small talk and pointless dead ends.’ Fans generally regard
The Final Frontier
as the worst of the
Star Trek
movies by far, second only to 2002’s
Star Trek Nemesis
.

For the final
Star Trek
film to feature the original 1960s cast all together, the man who’d previously saved the
Star Trek
movie
franchise twice was called back into action. After
The Motion Picture
tanked, Nicholas Meyer had revived
Star Trek
with
The Wrath of Khan
. After
The Search for Spock
failed to be as exciting as its predecessor, Meyer had written the screenplay for the most popular
Star Trek
film to date,
The Voyage Home
. Now, after William Shatner’s encounter with God in
The Final Frontier
had proved to be something of a damp squib, the producers turned to a tried and tested storyteller: Nicholas Meyer was once more seen as the only man who could save
Star Trek
.

In 1991,
Star Trek
’s twenty-fifth anniversary was looming, so Paramount wanted something special. Harve Bennett had once more touted his long-cherished idea for a Starfleet Academy movie (dubbed by detractors and supporters alike as ‘
Top Gun
in space’), only for it to be dismissed once again in the face of a hostile reception for the idea from
Star Trek
fans and the (no doubt self-interested) cast of the current movie series. The rejection of his idea for the second time resulted in Bennett quitting the
Star Trek
films and withdrawing from the role of producer on
Star Trek VI
.

Instead, the successful idea for
Star Trek VI
came from Leonard Nimoy, who – as he had done with
The Voyage Home
– suggested that the film should take its theme from contemporary political or social issues, reflecting the often successful gambit of
The Original Series
. In response to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the end of the Cold War, Nimoy asked, ‘What would happen if the Wall came down in space?’ To this were added aspects of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986, recrafted as the environmentally devastating destruction of the Klingon moon Praxis. This event throws the Klingon Empire into turmoil, resulting in the prospect of a peace treaty with the United Federation of Planets. However, other factions are at work that will use assassination to prevent the peace from happening in a bid to further their own aims. The story puts the safety of Klingon Chancellor Gorkon (David Warner) in the hands of Kirk, whose son was killed by Klingons in
The Search for Spock
.

The Paramount studio executives had one proviso for
writer–director Meyer: this sixth movie should serve as a swan song for the original
Star Trek
television cast, who were now considered too old to front an action-adventure movie franchise. Meyer brought in Denny Martin Flinn to co-write the screenplay, deliberately layering in those contemporary political references. The Cold War and Chernobyl aspects made sense, thought Meyer, as the Klingons had always been
Star Trek
’s stand-ins for the Russians. The assassination plot was felt suitable, as leaders who sue for peace (as Chancellor Gorkon – modelled on Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev – would do) often found themselves attacked by their own side (or others) serving their own entrenched self-interests.

To keep costs down, much of the film was shot on the
Enterprise
sets then in use by
The Next Generation
TV series, redressed and lit differently for the film. Because many of Paramount’s studio stages were also in heavy use at the time of the film’s production, much of the movie would be shot on location around Los Angeles. Shatner, Nimoy and Kelley all agreed to cuts in their respective fees to keep the budget low, opting instead to be paid from the film’s net profits.

Once again, as with so many of the films in the
Star Trek
series after
The Motion Picture
, Gene Roddenberry disapproved of
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
(using the title Meyer had originally intended for
The Wrath of Khan
). He and Nicholas Meyer had a fundamentally different take on the future as depicted in
Star Trek
. While Roddenberry had long spoken of an idealistic future where bigotry and prejudice did not exist, Meyer believed such traits – often the basis of dramatic conflict needed in good storytelling – would never be eliminated from human nature. Even though Roddenberry was revered as the Great Bird of the Galaxy and
Star Trek’s
originator, long-standing fans enjoyed and approved of much of Meyer’s fresh take on Roddenberry’s creation. Of the six original
Star Trek
movies,
The Wrath of Khan
,
The Voyage Home
and
The Undiscovered Country
are widely regarded as the best, and all featured the heavy involvement of natural storyteller Nicholas Meyer.

Released on 6 December 1991,
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
opened to another record-breaking weekend for the
Star Trek
series, taking $18 million at the box office. The film went on to gross $74.8 million in the US, totalling a worldwide take of $96.8 million overall. It was a significant improvement over the dismal
The Final Frontier
, justified by a significantly improved film, but it could not match the runaway mainstream popularity of
The Voyage Home
. Critics found the movie to be a welcome step up from its predecessor, and many saw it as a suitable sign off for the venerable
Star Trek
crew of the 1960s, who by the 1990s were being eclipsed by their younger counterparts on television’s
The Next Generation
. The Australian newspaper the
Herald Sun
welcomed the film’s ‘suspense, action and subtle good humour’, while
USA Today
commented that ‘this last mission gets almost everything right – from the nod to late creator Gene Roddenberry to in-jokes about Kirk’s rep as an alien babe magnet’.

The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns was the final destination of
Star Trek
creator Gene Roddenberry, shortly after he viewed a near-complete rough cut of the film before release. Roddenberry died of heart failure on 24 October 1991, aged seventy. He’d been in ill health for his final years, but he had remained fully committed to and involved in his creation. A dedication to the creator of
Star Trek
was added to the film before its December release, and it brought much hearty applause across movie houses from the
Star Trek
fans in the audience. While he had opposed much of the material included in the
Star Trek
film series – rightly, in the case of Shatner’s misguided
Star Trek V
– Gene Roddenberry knew it was the amazing success of the movies that had allowed his return to television production with
The Next Generation
. While his storytelling talents hadn’t been needed by the makers of the movies, Roddenberry knew that he could still weave magic with his words. Challenged by a Paramount executive who’d told him he couldn’t capture lightning in a bottle twice, Gene Roddenberry had set out to prove the doubters wrong.

‘
Roddenberry had created quite a complex and at times mysterious character. Guarded, cautious, careful in showing his feelings, in expressing his ideas about many things – I found that very interesting
.’ Patrick Stewart

For years, executives at Paramount had been happy to maximise their income from what some had termed ‘the seventy-nine jewels’, the original three years of
Star Trek
episodes. The show had lost money during the years it was in production and on the air, but the afterlife of seemingly endless reruns the series enjoyed during the 1970s – and the growing popularity of the show – ensured that those seventy-nine episodes generated a healthy income for the parent company (and anyone lucky enough to be on residuals).

That surprising afterlife, and the fact that Paramount was finally convinced there was an audience for more
Star Trek
, led to the hugely successful movie series. Science fiction was in vogue again following
Star Wars
, and after the tortuous diversion into the development of the
Star Trek: Phase II
TV series, Paramount had finally made a commercial success of
Star Trek
. As the original crew aged on screen, Paramount began to think about bringing
Star Trek
back to television again, with an allnew crew in all-new adventures.

September 1986 saw the twentieth anniversary of the debut of
the original
Star Trek
series. Paramount celebrated with a lavish party, which many involved thought was unusual for a studio that had never previously shown much interest in the series. Many put the unexpected focus on
Star Trek
down to the upcoming fourth movie and the fact that episodes were now being sold on videotape to a growing audience. No one suspected that a major resurgence of
Star Trek
on television was mere months away. In October 1986, a month prior to the release of
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
(the most popular of the original cast
Star Trek
movies), Paramount announced a new first-run syndicated TV show entitled
Star Trek: The Next Generation
.

Gene Roddenberry had made several failed attempts to get a new science fiction show on air during the 1970s, resulting in a collection of TV movie pilots. That decade generally had not been a good one for SF TV in the US, consisting of interchangeable adventure shows like
The Six Million Dollar Man
, produced by Harve Bennett. Towards the end of the 1970s, in the wake of the success of
Star Wars
, space opera shows began to appear, prime among them being
Battlestar Galactica
(1978–80) and
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
(1979–81). This boom in 1970s SF movies and TV series had led to the work on
Star Trek: Phase II
resulting in
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
and the successful 1980s series of
Star Trek
films. The early 1980s saw a TV mini-series adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s
The Martian Chronicles
, followed by a surprisingly successful blockbuster alien invasion TV series:
V
. The 1983 mini-series led to a 1984 sequel dubbed
V: The Final Battle
. The battle wasn’t all that final, though, as a short-lived regular episodic series followed in the 1984–5 season.
Battlestar Galactica
producer Glen A. Larson was tapping a then-unserved appetite for fantasy adventure with series like
Knight Rider
(1982–6),
Manimal
(1983) and
Automan
(1983–4), but none was particularly accomplished. It was into this environment that the new
Star Trek
TV series would debut.

Since
The Motion Picture
Gene Roddenberry had been sidelined from any significant creative input into the ongoing
Star
Trek
movie series, and he (initially at least) apparently had little interest in producing a weekly television series again. He recalled the negative effect that producing the original
Star Trek
had had on his life, at a time when his two young daughters were growing up. He was not prepared to make that kind of exhausting commitment of time and creative effort again. However, the temptation to reclaim
Star Trek
for himself, and this time ‘get it right’ was overwhelming. The $1-million bonus (plus ongoing salary) offered for simply signing the contract with Paramount to create and creatively guide the series was perhaps another factor in Roddenberry’s decision to board the
Enterprise
once more. ‘When Paramount came to me and said, “Would you like to do a new
Star Trek
?” I said no’, Roddenberry claimed on a 1988 radio show. ‘I wanted no part of it.’ He had previously likened producing a new weekly television series as being the equivalent of turning out ‘half a motion picture’ every week. ‘Television is twelve hours a day, miserably hard work’, he told an audience at an event at New York’s Museum of Broadcasting in March 1986, just months before signing on to
Star Trek: The Next Generation
. ‘I wouldn’t produce a television series again myself.’