The Unauthorized History of Trek

GUS MEYER

CHAPTER ONE: (#ulink_53b7e9a4-ce33-550b-925b-20d2df0306af)

A DREAM IN THE MAKING (#ulink_53b7e9a4-ce33-550b-925b-20d2df0306af)

Gene Roddenberry was a science fiction aficionado from childhood. It all started with a battered copy of Astounding magazine and took off from there. Still, he never considered writing in any genre or medium until much later in life.

In the late forties he worked as an international airline pilot for Pan Am, and it was at this time that he began to write pieces for flying magazines. In 1948, he was one of only eight survivors of a plane crash in the Syrian desert, an experience that profoundly shaped his attitude toward life.

The writing bug soon led him to quit the airline and move to Los Angeles, where he met with absolutely no success in the new field of television writing. The industry was, at the time, still centered on the East Coast. This led him to become a Los Angeles policeman, a job which would provide him with insights no office job could ever hope to offer. At the same time, he continued to write, and sold his first script, pseudonymously, in 1951.

More sales followed, including “The Secret Defense of 117,” a science Fiction story which aired on Chevron Theater and starred Ricardo Montalban. During the same period, he wrote speeches for L.A. police chief William Parker, and even ghosted most of Parker’s book Parker on Police, still regarded today as a classic of police philosophy.

Roddenberry managed to slip a bit of his own more liberal views into right-wing Parker’s texts; Parker was often perplexed when people he regarded as left-wingers would enthusiastically applaud his Roddenberry-penned speeches. Despite Parker’s strong political stance, there was a side to him that impressed Roddenberry even more: he was always open to new ideas, and had wide-ranging intellectual interests, traits which Roddenberry would later incorporate into the character of Spock.

By 1954, Roddenberry’s moonlighting was earning him four times his policeman’s salary, leading him to resign from the force and devote all his energies to writing. After freelancing for a variety of series, including Dragnet, Naked City, and Dr. Kildare, he became head writer of the Richard Boone Western series, Have Gun Will Travel.

He began to realize that freelancing left the final product of his mind in the hands of others. To retain control over his ideas (and to retain greater profits), he decided to become a producer. He had seen too many pilots written but left unmade; it was time for him to see one all the way through to completion.

His first series was thus created: The Lieutenant, which ran for the 1963 television season. Starring Gary Lockwood as a newly commissioned officer in the peacetime Marine Corps, this was an intelligent, dramatic series which unfortunately failed to draw much of an audience. (Ironically, another Marine-centered series which premiered the following year was successful enough to last through the rest of the decade. Gomer Pyle was not, however, noted for its intelligence!) One episode featured an actor named Leonard Nimoy as a flamboyant Hollywood director; Roddenberry would eventually employ him again in the new series he was already creating.

By the time The Lieutenant went off the air, Roddenberry had submitted a proposed Star Trek format to MGM, the studio behind The Lieutenant. The basic premise was the one now familiar to millions, but the characters were radically different.

The Captain was one Robert T. April, his executive officer was the logical female Number One, and the navigator was one José Tyler. The doctor was nicknamed Bones but was otherwise an older, completely different character. Mr. Spock was in the proposal, but was described as having “a red-hued satanic look” and, according to one source, absorbed energy through a red plate in his navel!

The Enterprise and its mission are perhaps the only things that made it to the screen unchanged from this original format. One other thing Roddenberry insisted on was that the science fiction in the show be ordered and logical, without falling on convenient fantasy resolutions having no basis in reality.

MGM said it was interested, but not at the present time. Other studios followed suit, providing Roddenberry with a fileful of politely worded brush-offs. A shift in the prevailing winds occurred when he learned that Desilu Studios was looking for series ideas. Desilu, the studio behind I Love Lucy and Lucille Ball’s later shows, was hurting financially; Lucy was its only viable property, and it frequently rented out its facilities to other studios to make up for the monthly overhead costs. Desilu was impressed with Roddenberry and his ideas, including the Star Trek proposal, and signed him to a three-year pilot development deal. (Desilu’s interest in Star Trek would pass over to Paramount Pictures when Paramount bought the television studio out.) Things seemed to pick up steam almost immediately, as Roddenberry was called in to pitch Star Trek to an assembly of CBS’s highest-ranking network executives.

They listened for two hours. Roddenberry was convinced that he’d sold them on it. They were certainly interested in his thoughts on saving costs and designing ships, among other things, but their questions turned out to have another motive entirely. When he was finished, they thanked him politely, but passed on the proposal, as they already had a science fiction series of their own in the works. Roddenberry may very well have inadvertently helped them launch Lost in Space, which even, by some coincidence, had the Robinson family embarking on a five-year mission of exploration. Lost in Space premiered in 1965 and, like Star Trek, ran for three seasons.

Roddenberry, even though disheartened by CBS’s cavalier treatment of him, kept on trying. In May of 1964, NBC offered Roddenberry twenty thousand dollars in story development money. The deal was that Roddenberry would develop three story ideas for a Star Trek pilot, then write a pilot script based on the idea chosen by the network. NBC chose the story entitled “The Cage.” Roddenberry set to work on a shooting script. In September of 1964, the script was approved: the first Star Trek episode had received the green light.

Roddenberry had already been laying the groundwork for this. Of primary importance was the starship Enterprise itself, which he hoped to have avoid all previous spaceship clichés.

The final design of the U.S.S. Enterprise was largely the work of assistant art director Matt Jefferies, who had a strong background in aviation.

During World War Two, Jefferies flew B-17 missions over Africa, and later devoted much of his spare time to restoring vintage airplanes. The starship and its various sets were drawn from Jefferies’s own familiarity with aeronautics.

As a member of the Aviation Writers’ Association, Jefferies was able to collate a large number of designs from NASA and the defense industry … all as examples of what not to do. All previous science fiction spaceship designs were also held up as things to be avoided.

Hundreds of sketches were made for the design of the Enterprise; the main hull was, at one point, going to be spherical, and even the now-familiar final design almost wound up being shot upside down. (Admittedly, this wouldn’t make much difference in space.) As a final touch of authenticity, red and green lights were added on the port and starboard sides, a time-honored nautical practice. Finally, a three-foot and fourteen-foot model of the Enterprise were constructed.

Again, Matt Jefferies’s air force engineering background came in handy in the design of the sets. The U.S. Navy was so impressed by the bridge design that it supposedly used it as a basis for one of its own communications centers.

Another seemingly insurmountable problem revolved around Roddenberry’s desire to feature a green-skinned woman in the pilot. For some reason, all the makeup department’s experiments failed to show up on the test footage shot of actress Susan Oliver for this purpose. No matter how dark they made the green, their model always showed up on film as looking perfectly normal. Eventually, they discovered that someone at the photo lab, perplexed by the pictures coming his way, was chemically correcting what he thought was a flaw in the initial photography. When this was cleared up, the desired makeup effect was achieved with a minimum of fuss.

“The Cage” began shooting with a cast of characters drawn from the original format, although the captain was now named Christopher Pike. Pike was portrayed by Jeffrey Hunter, who had the rare distinction of having once played Jesus Christ, in King of Kings. John Hoyt played the ship’s doctor, Philip Boyce. Leonard Nimoy appeared as Spock, but the character was a bit different from its later incarnation, as the logical aspect of his future personality belonged to the character Number One, portrayed by Majel Barrett.

Leonard Nimoy had assumed that he would be trying out for the part of Spock; he failed to realize that he was Roddenberry’s first and preferred choice for the role. The prospect of a regular series was exciting to the actor, who, despite his frequent guest appearances on television, did not have what could be called a stable income. He did have some misgivings about the part; what if the show was an unmitigated flop? Would he become a laughing stock, forever derided for having dared to don those silly-looking pointed ears? In conference with his friend Vic Morrow, he even pondered the possibility of developing character makeup that would completely conceal his true face—just in case Star Trek was a disaster and an embarrassment. Fortunately for his future recognizability, he thought better of this idea.

Still, one obstacle remained to be overcome. The makeup department had yet to come up with a painless means of applying the Spock ears. The ears were irritating and painful where the glue was applied; one of the reasons for Spock’s general stiffness was the fact that any facial movement, however slight, served only to compound the intense physical discomfort generated by the aural appliances.

Matters were even more confounded by the odd fact that, due to contractual obligations, the actual ears had to be made by the props department, not the makeup department. Considerable variations in the shape of the ears (as well as in Spock’s general appearance) can still be seen in the two pilot episodes. Leonard was frustrated by this situation, and expressed his dissatisfaction over it to his producer.

Roddenberry could tell that Nimoy’s anguish was real—but what could he do? Finally, grasping at straws, he promised Nimoy that if, after thirteen episodes, he was still unhappy with the ears, Roddenberry would personally write an episode in which Spock had an ear-job to give him normal, human-looking ears. Nimoy pondered this, and then broke into laughter. The fate of the ears was sealed—and Spock still has them to this day.

“The Cage” introduces viewers to Roddenberry’s nascent version of the Enterprise crew as it is headed toward a starbase after a disastrous first contact with an alien culture. Captain Pike and his crew are tired and in great need of some rest, but they are distracted by a distress signal from a nearby planet.

When they investigate, they find a colony of scientists who have survived a crash nearly twenty years earlier… and a beautiful young girl, Vina, who the survivors claim was born just as their ship crashed. When Vina lures Captain Pike away from the encampment, he is abducted by dome-skulled aliens and taken below the surface. The scientists and their camp, merely an illusion designed to lure humans, disappear.

Pike regains consciousness to find himself in an enclosed space; he has become part of an alien zoo, held prisoner by beings who can read his thoughts and project him into a bewildering variety of subjective but real-seeming scenarios. As he goes through these, he resists them at every turn, but begins to realize that the girl has a role in all this, too. Perhaps she is not an illusion, but another captive; she constantly tries to get him to accept his situation and make the best of the illusions his captors create.

Meanwhile, Number One and Spock haul out an impressive array of technology in their attempts to free their captain from his subterranean prison, but to no avail. Beneath the surface, the philosophical drama unfolds, with Pike finally being freed after resisting mind control. It is revealed that the woman, Vina, was the only survivor of the crash; not truly young, she was also severely disfigured by the crash. When Pike offers to take her off the planet to rejoin humanity, she elects to stay and live the rest of her life in the illusionary happiness the aliens have provided her. The aliens have been acting partly out of their own motivations but also out of a desire to help the lonely woman. Pike goes on to a starbase while she continues to embrace a reality that is false but which offers her the only comfort she will ever know.

NBC’s reaction to this pilot was overwhelmingly enthusiastic. In its intelligence and its appearance, it surpassed anything done in the genre television before, and looked better than the vast majority of theatrical science fiction films as well. No one had a bad word to say about the finished product.

They rejected it anyway.

The problem, it seemed, was that it was too intelligent. NBC execs were afraid that the story would go over the heads of most of the audience. Something a bit more action-oriented would perhaps be better, they mused—and, in an unprecedented move, they gave Roddenberry a shot at a second pilot.

They also wanted to get rid of the guy with the pointed ears. There was always the possibility that religious groups might be offended by such a demonic-looking character.

Roddenberry set out to revamp the entire show, but he was determined to keep Spock. He discarded the character of Number One, who hadn’t gone over too well, and promoted Spock to second-in-command, bringing him closer to the forefront.

This time, NBC wanted three complete scripts for consideration. All three had plenty of action: “Mudd’s Women,” by Stephen Kandel; “Omega Glory,” by Roddenberry; and “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” by Samuel A. Peeples. The network chose the Peeples script; the second Star Trek pilot was under way.

CHAPTER TWO: (#ulink_351b6d8a-95af-5042-ad65-b80119580dbb)

A NEAR MISS AND A SOLID HIT (#ulink_351b6d8a-95af-5042-ad65-b80119580dbb)

Despite the network’s misgivings, Roddenberry was determined to stick with Spock. He was also determined to maintain the Enterprise’s multiethnic crew despite the network’s concerns that this might affect ratings in various areas of the country.

As for Spock, Roddenberry worked with the character a bit; the now-discarded Number One left a vacancy for the second-in-command, and Spock fit the bill perfectly. Spock also inherited Number One’s cold, dispassionate logic. This all gelled to provide a fascinating amalgam of intelligence, restraint, and a certain attractive aura of mystery, all admirably brought to life by a highly capable actor, Leonard Nimoy.

Leonard Nimoy was born in Boston in 1931, the son of Jewish immigrants from the USSR. He showed an early interest in the theater, making his stage debut in a production of Hansel and Gretel at the age of eight.

After high school, he studied briefly at Boston College. With only six hundred dollars to his name, he took a three-day train trip to California in pursuit of an acting career. Studies at the Pasadena Playhouse did not lead to much movie work, however, and he was obliged to work at a variety of menial jobs: theater usher, ice cream counterman, pet shop clerk, vacuum cleaner salesman, and many others.

A fluke break landed him the lead in a Z-grade boxing picture, Kid Monk Baroni, but this and a few much smaller roles in such forgettable pictures as Francis Goes to West Point, where he was billed far below the picture’s talking-donkey star, were all the film work he could obtain at the time.

After marriage and a stint in the army in Georgia, Nimoy returned to Los Angeles in the late fifties and began to get more roles in episodic television, frequently as a heavy. But he was far from being a household name.

In fact, although it was too early to realize it, it was his fortuitous encounter with Gene Roddenberry and The Lieutenant series that would save him from a career as one of those all-too-familiar faces whose name the audience can’t quite place. Star Trek would soon preclude this possibility from ever coming true.

With Nimoy the sole holdover from “The Cage” pilot, Roddenberry was obliged to create an entirely new cast from scratch. Of course, the most important character on any ship is the captain. Inspired by C. S. Forester’s heroic Horatio Hornblower character, Roddenberry created a new leader for the Enterprise, James Tiberius Kirk.

Kirk, a Midwesterner, is a driven officer with great faith in himself, who is not afraid to take a stand; apart from his senior officers, he confides in few, and bears the full responsibility for his command. Yet he is not without humor and he has a highly developed sense of adventure. For this all-important lead role, Roddenberry cast actor William Shatner.