[announcer] The Star Trek USS Enterprise gift set with command chair,
console, three telescreen cards, and five Star Trek action figures.
[Gates McFadden] Years after its cancelation,
the only new Star Trek characters on TV
were about six inches tall and made of plastic.
[announcer] Star Trek action figures also sold separately.
[McFadden] With no new series,
Gene Roddenberry could only watch as other people got rich off his idea.
They sold $12 million worth of toys the first year,
on a toy line of a television show that was off the air for half a decade.
[McFadden] Desperate, Gene went cap in hand to Paramount,
looking for a piece of the action, but instead...
They said, "For 150,000, why don't you just buy everything?"
[McFadden] A good deal for a franchise that's now worth $4 billion dollars.
[Larry Nemecek] He could've been the George Lucas of Star Trek,
but right at that time, he couldn't come up with the cash.
[McFadden] But don't worry, help is on the way.
Somebody's gotta write the goddamn script.
[McFadden] Sort of.
So beam aboard and hold on tight
as we boldly go into the depths of Star Trek.
And you can see it all from here in The Center Seat.
Unable to come up with that cash, Gene looked to create another cash cow
in the form of sci-fi pilots.
Pumping them out one after the other.
Phasers set to stun and jumpsuits set to kill.
That thing is from your century?
Yeah, we call them automobiles.
[McFadden] But no matter how fetching the jumpsuits,
nothing fit quite like Star Trek.
The reruns were doing gangbusters.
It went into syndication.
They kept running it and kept running it and kept running it.
So we watched that show all the time because it was on.
I grew up watching the original series and, you know, reruns whenever it was on.
Come home from school, you watched Star Trek.
It was a perfect sales demographic.
It was a show that appealed to 18-49, and they just ate it up.
[McFadden] The networks were crying out for new Star Trek,
but the show had already been consigned to history.
Because they had destroyed the sets,
they had given away the Enterprise to the Smithsonian Institute.
[McFadden] But Paramount could no longer ignore the show's growing legion of fans.
[Marc Cushman] It's everywhere. Fan fiction, books, it's just selling.
The merchandising is selling.
So they finally said, "Okay, let's do a Star Trek movie."
[McFadden] Well, that was easy.
The idea that a dead TV series would come back as a movie
because the fandom demanded it, that was revolutionary.
[McFadden] But for Gene, it was an opportunity,
or even an answered prayer.
So he wrote a feature film script entitled The God Thing.
In which Kirk fights Jesus on the bridge of the Enterprise.
Which involved the crew of the Enterprise, in essence,
meeting what is perceived to be a god but not being God.
[McFadden] But this wasn't to be God's chosen script
because in 1974, The God Thing wasn't a thing.
Barry Diller, who was running Paramount, was Catholic,
and this script dealt with religion, and so he was bothered by it.
[McFadden] But Gene wasn't the only one to pull up a pew,
and another script had caught Paramount's eye.
Called Star Trek: Planet of the Titans,
a planet that the Klingons, the Federation,
and a new alien race that was being introduced
were trying to develop.
Several versions of the script were written.
[McFadden] And Gene didn't like any of them.
He keeps having to tell them that everything they wrote is not Star Trek.
The characters aren't right. The Federation's not right.
The starship's not right.
"Have you seen any of the episodes, guys?"
There were about a dozen scripts that were written
that were never produced.
[McFadden] After two years of false starts aiming for the silver screen,
Paramount gave up, deciding it was now time to return to the small screen.
Paramount decided, "Let's do what we know how to do."
[McFadden] Uh, make movies?
"Let Gene make another TV series on Star Trek."
[McFadden] So no movies, then?
Which isn't as odd as it sounds
because Paramount did have big plans to make content for the small screen.
By the time you get to 1977, the only networks that existed
in the United States were CBS, NBC, and ABC.
Paramount decides it wants to try its hand at a fourth network.
Now, you know, a decade before Fox,
here's Paramount trying to add to the Big Three.
Star Trek was going to be the flagship of that network.
They realize what their strength is, and they're gonna lead with that.
[McFadden] They thought they needed TV people to make a TV show,
and that's why this man entered the fray.
I'm Harold Livingston.
[McFadden] Harold was hired to produce Paramount's new Star Trek TV show
called Phase II.
All I know is Roddenberry called me in one day.
They offered me this job.
[McFadden] Harold had just one sci-fi credit, but it was a doozy.
I was the story editor on a show called Future Cop.
[McFadden] But now he'd be the writer
for this perfectly named second Star Trek series, Phase II.
We were going to do 13 one-hour episodes.
[McFadden] There was just one rather pointy problem.
Spock was not going to be in Phase II.
That, sir, is illogical.
[McFadden] It was all to do with differences
regarding a chocolate breakfast cereal.
Mr. Spock!
My search for something super chocolatey has led me here.
They'd let Pebbles cereal have Fred and Barney wearing pointed hears
and making quasi-Vulcan jokes.
Fascinating!
There had been legal disputes involving royalties from the series,
involving the use of the actors' faces in merchandising.
[McFadden] Nimoy refused to sign on
until the dispute over licensing his image was resolved.
Ironically, the script he passed on was called In Thy Image.
Everyone else is, "Yes, sign me up."
[McFadden] And although the screenplay writing duties fell to Harold...
The idea of the story came from Alan Dean Foster.
Alan Dean Foster has been published in science-fiction magazines
and has written science-fiction books.
He also wrote the novelization books based on the animated Star Trek series.
Fascinating.
[McFadden] Well, hopefully, Harold would make it so
as he began working on the script.
I went home and locked the doors and wrote this script.
[McFadden] And what a script.
[John Tenuto] There's a supreme intelligence
on its way to Earth to meet its creator.
The Enterprise is sent to intercept it.
[McFadden] But then, another supreme intelligence
intercepted Harold's script.
Roddenberry, he said, "All right, you've done your job, now I'll do mine."
And Gene Roddenberry rewrote Harold's script.
It was about 40 pages longer and very poor.
Just dreadful.
[McFadden] Possibly because Gene had replaced his beloved Spock
with an inferior facsimile.
The character of Xon was a full Vulcan
but wanted to be on a mostly human ship
because he wanted to explore the human element more.
[McFadden] The man lined up to replace Spock wasn't from Vulcan,
he was the man from Atlantis.
Oh, not the Man from Atlantis, a different one.
My list of credits, other than the theater plays that I'd done,
was the Man from Atlantis.
Oh. Pass freely. I haven't the heart.
[McFadden] It was just a humble guest spot,
but it led to this.
Will Decker.
How do you do, sir?
[McFadden] With so little experience,
David was brought in for a full makeup screen test,
to see if he had the chops...
Lieutenant, you're erasing those tapes.
[McFadden] ...and the ears for the role.
Sir, if I am to function efficiently as science officer,
I must become intimately familiar with each circuit in this system.
Carry on.
Thank you, sir. I will.
[McFadden] But just as the new kid was about to be cast,
a new kid on the block arrived for sci-fi,
and he had people queuing around the block for his movie.
Mr. Roddenberry told me that he was very wistful one day in 1977
when he drove by the theater
and saw the long line around the block for Star Wars,
wishing that it could have been for a Star Trek film.
[McFadden] Even if Paramount was having second thoughts
about doing TV instead of a movie, it was too late to change course.
When Star Wars became a hit, they didn't wanna do a movie
because they said, "Now it's been done.
Who needs another? It's a one-time thing."
[McFadden] Well, then a TV series it is.
Well, that's the real trick, isn't it?
[McFadden] Actually, yes,
because Paramount's plan to turn on a fourth network
was about to be turned off.
Because no one wanted to really commit the dollars for a fourth network.
[McFadden] The TV network was faltering,
and if Paramount thought George Lucas was a one-trick pony...
They didn't think there'd be sequels to Star Wars.
They didn't think there'd be Close Encounters.
I wanna speak to someone in charge!
[McFadden] Along came a film whose dazzling lights
proved just how hypnotic science fiction at the movies could be.
[musical tones playing]
[McFadden] There was no denying it,
the big money in sci-fi was moving to the big screen.
After seeing Close Encounter's success,
Paramount executives called David Gautreaux to their offices
for a close encounter of their own kind.
I'm brought right up to Gene Roddenberry's office now.
I'm in a big room, a lovely office, and there's a lot of men in this room.
[McFadden] Including Paramount's top brass.
[David Gautreaux] There was Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner,
and there's Gene, and he's got a drink in his hand,
and he's offering me, "What would you like, David?"
I go, "Well, I happen to like bourbon." "Pour David a bourbon."
So Gene is really the master of ceremonies for this.
And so it was two things going on at the same time.
"David, congratulations, you are our Xon. Hurrah!"
A big toast. I'm so happy I'm standing there.
"Now we have another announcement we wanted to make with all of you here.
We're going to be a motion picture!"
[McFadden] So not a TV show, a movie, again.
"Huzzah!"
[McFadden] And so now all they had to do was repurpose Harold's pilot...
[coughs]
[McFadden] ...that had been repurposed by Gene for the big screen.
So we all go and we read it.
And he's sitting there, he had a desk that was about two feet higher
so he looked down on you like Mussolini.
He had this grin on his face, expectantly. "What'd you think?"
So I said, "Gene, it is shit."
And the grin fades.
We had a few words, and he got a little angry.
"Well, we'll let the studio decide!"
[McFadden] That gave studio head Michael Eisner the deciding vote
between Gene's rewrite or Harold's original pilot.
He says, "This is a good script, Gene, but it's a television script."
He says, "Harold's is a movie."
I though Gene was gonna faint.
[McFadden] By the mid-1970s, it seemed Star Trek the TV series
was suffering an identity crisis.
What was always meant to be a TV series became...
The movie that was a movie, but then it was a TV show,
but then it was a movie again.
[McFadden] Nearly everyone had lost track of the trek until...
The decision is made to take In Thy Image and turn it into a motion picture.
The pilot that we were commissioned to do
is being morphed into a major motion picture.
[McFadden] And in more ways than one, Paramount was shooting for the stars.
They were aspiring to do 2001.
[Dr. Dave Bowman] Open the pod bay doors, please, HAL.
[McFadden] George Lucas had shown sci-fi could pull a crowd,
but Paramount didn't think movies were the way to keep them.
People think Paramount said, "Oh, we gotta have a movie like Star Wars."
And it's gonna cost you something extra.
[Cushman] The reality was Star Wars had very little to do with it.
Science fiction was not by any stretch of the imagination a guaranteed thing
just because Star Wars had been successful.
The concept of a sustained, profitable, growing science-fiction franchise
had never really existed before.
[McFadden] So Paramount planned to make one and one movie only.
"With big money, big box office, no reason to every make a second one.
The fans will never come out to watch a second Star Trek movie.
And then we'll launch our network,
and then doing the series off of the strength of the movie."
[McFadden] But no matter how much Paramount said,
"May the fourth network be with you," it never would be.
But in any case...
You still have a lot of money that has been invested.
[McFadden] The studio's Star Trek project resembled a real-life space program,
and felt almost as costly with sets, props, and even a brand-new spaceship.
An entire overhaul and update of the Enterprise itself.
[McFadden] They had a new ship for a new production,
but who would captain this risky mission?
Robert Wise.
[McFadden] Paramount thought veteran director Robert wise
would be a safe pair of hands.
Robert Wise was the first and only director on the list considered.
[McFadden] Wise couldn't make a flop if he tried,
not after this song and dance.
West Side Story.
This is the guy who made The Sound of Music.
[McFadden] And he knew sci-fi from way back
when it was lasers, not phasers.
He had done a classic science-fiction movie
called The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Which is still regarded as one of the greatest science-fiction movies ever made.
[McFadden] The pieces were falling into place for Paramount,
but there was still something, or someone, missing.
Mr. Nimoy was still not involved in the project.
Robert Wise, he agreed to do the film.
His wife was a Trekker and her son was a Trekker,
and they told him, "It's crazy to do it without Spock.
It'd be like doing it without Kirk."
And so Wise went to Paramount and said exactly what they had told him
and said, "There's got to be a way that we can get him."
[McFadden] Scheduling conflicts and a bigger conflict
over licensing and royalties had taken it down to the wire.
Days before the press conference to announce Star Trek: The Motion Picture,
all of those issues were quickly resolved,
and Leonard Nimoy came on board.
Science Officer Spock,
reporting as ordered, Captain.
[McFadden] The movie was announced to huge fanfare.
Leonard Nimoy was already getting into character,
and when asked why it had taken him so long to confirm...
And probably the thing that took the most time was the fact
that the mail service between here and Vulcan is still pretty slow.
[audience laughs]
[McFadden] But Paramount still had a mountain to climb.
Since Star Trek last took to the airwaves, science fiction had gotten real.
Now audiences are expecting Star Wars-level and Close Encounters-level
quality special effects.
[musical tones playing]
[McFadden] Aggressive presales had also painted Paramount into a corner,
with a terrifyingly close release date.
The distributors were promised that there would be a Star Trek movie
that they could show in their theaters on December 7th, 1979.
They had penalty contracts where if they could not deliver this movie by the 7th,
because these theaters are holding open the space for them,
they were out the wazoo for millions of dollars.
[Tenuto] So that only gives them 18 months, basically,
to take what was a television show and turn it into a motion picture.
[McFadden] At least they had a brilliantly inventive title.
This motion picture would be called...
Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
[McFadden] Huh?
[John Dykstra] The body politic that was making the movie went,
"You better let everybody know that this is a motion picture,
as opposed to an adapted TV show."
[McFadden] The fact was this was an adaptation.
[Tenuto] You had what was meant to be a teleplay for a TV show
has to become a major motion picture for large screens.
[McFadden] Which brings us back to Harold.
Somebody's gotta write the goddamn script.
There was a deadline looming. They had to start shooting.
So Roddenberry invited Harold Livingston back.
[McFadden] Harold's original script
seemed to have gotten its DNA mixed up in the transporter.
In fact, it had gained a whole new Gene.
"In Thy Image, written by Gene Roddenberry."
He took all the credit. He didn't share it.
His name is on top.
[McFadden] Harold felt his script was now a rewrite,
and a write-off.
So he decided to draw a line in the sand
when meeting Roddenberry and director Bob Wise.
[Harold Livingston] The first thing Wise says to me is,
"What'd you think of the script?"
I said, "What I think, Mr. Wise, is you ought to take cyanide.
Total crap."
And that one brought a big laugh. [laughs]
So they asked me if I would rewrite it.
I said, "I'll rewrite it as long as it is contractually agreed
that Gene Roddenberry does not put word on paper."
I mean, I hated him because he couldn't keep his fingers off a script.
He had to rewrite everything.
"Agreed."
And they gave me a lot of money.
[McFadden] Harold set about writing a script
the whole franchise was riding on, safe in the knowledge
that Gene Roddenberry would not have his way with it.
[Livingston] I write a first draft, which Eisner wants to see.
I give it to Gene's secretary to send to Eisner.
About three days later, my phone rings.
It's Eisner calling me from Paris.
He said, "What kind of shit did you send me?"
Honest to God.
I said, "What are you talking about?"
I said it was a good script. I said Bob liked it.
He said, "Nobody could like this crap."
We find out what happened was I gave the script to Gene's secretary,
and she sent Gene's rewrite to Eisner in Paris.
[McFadden] You can't write this stuff,
which is why director Bob Wise was amazed.
Wise said to me, direct quote,
"Harold, I've been in this business for 40 years,
and I've never had an experience like this."
[McFadden] Not for the first time,
Star Trek, the fourth iteration was back to square one.
We threw Gene's rewrite out and went back to what I did.
[McFadden] The signing of Leonard Nimoy as Spock
had Star Trek: The Motion Picture headed in the right direction...
Well, so help me, I'm actually pleased to see you.
[McFadden] ...and Paramount breathing a sigh of relief.
[Tenuto] Because we're not gonna risk Star Trek property
that doesn't have its most recognizable and one of the most popular,
if not the most popular character.
[McFadden] But Spock's return was still throwing a wrench in the works.
In essence, you have to write Spock into the movie, right?
He wasn't even in In Thy Image.
[McFadden] What was good for Leonard Nimoy
was not so good for David Gautreaux.
[Will Decker] Are you trying to tell me all that work was done for nothing?
That is the logical conclusion, sir.
[McFadden] Whose Johnny-come-lately Vulcan character, Xon,
was suddenly on the chopping block.
Spock is vital to this core.
[McFadden] And knowing Xon wasn't,
David met with Gene for reassurance.
[Gautreaux] And he gave me a thousand assurances.
"We're definitely, definitely, definitely, we're building this to go into series."
[McFadden] Executives insisted Xon was a Vulcan
who would live long and prosper.
"Xon is key to the future of this franchise."
I went, "Okay."
[McFadden] So all David had to worry about was learning his lines.
[Gautreaux] They send me the script.
There is no Xon in the screenplay.
And I realize, "Oh, it's over."
[McFadden] Fortunately for David, another envelope arrived,
and it contained the next best thing an actor can hope for.
"Here is your payoff. You're free."
All in one gesture,
and a very large check well above what the pilot figure was.
I felt completely liberated.
[McFadden] But Mr. Spock himself was feeling anything but relief
over the Spock-versus-Xon debacle.
So Nimoy summoned David to ask him...
[imitating Leonard Nimoy] "How did it affect you
when I took that role away from you?"
[McFadden] For David, Nimoy's olive branch
was compensation enough for his loss.
I certainly never, ever once said,
"That Nimoy guy coming back and taking my role."
I never viewed it that way because... he's Spock.
You are correct.
[McFadden] And even by the standards of a Vulcan, this was...
It was very human, very humane,
that he would ask such a challenging question.
[McFadden] And David still got to learn some lines for the movie.
That's within Klingon boundaries. Who are they fighting?
Unknown, sir.
They did say, "David, we'd like you to play Commander Branch."
So I agreed. I played Commander Branch.
[McFadden] Here he is commanding, albeit briefly.
[alarm sounds]
We are under attack!
[McFadden] And while Xon, the new Vulcan didn't make it,
for the first time in nearly a decade, the original cast was tight again,
like peas in a space pod.
I appreciate the welcome.
[McFadden] Including Mr. Chekov.
Aye, sir.
[McFadden] Walter Koenig finally came in from the cold
after missing the animated series.
I thought were in for a grand time.
When we came back to do the first really big one that we did
after being away so long, it was amazing!
They're the same people.
[McFadden] And there were mysterious new characters too,
smuggled in from the original Phase II TV pilot.
She's Deltan, Captain.
[Tenuto] A Deltan, which was a new alien race.
Her species was bald.
They possessed a pheromone that was something
that humans just could not steel themselves against.
[McFadden] Which was especially inconvenient for humans because...
My oath of celibacy is on record, Captain.
[McFadden] Lieutenant Ilia was played by a new face,
and not just any face, Miss India 1965.
Persis Khambatta was an exceptionally beautiful woman.
[McFadden] It wasn't just her looks that set Persis apart.
Unlike a lot of actors, she was willing to part with her hair.
[McFadden] This was no simple matter of a few hours of makeup and a bald cap.
Persis was prepared to go baldly where no Star Trek actress had gone before.
There are really heartbreaking images of her crying
while they were doing that, but that's how committed she was
to playing the character and bringing an authenticity to the role.
[McFadden] Also new, the character of Commander Decker.
But actor Stephen Collins got to keep his locks.
But getting the part was a bit of a close shave.
Because at this point in his career, his biggest film role had been
as one of the many men in All the President's Men.
Now Stephen had a meaty role,
playing a character with deep ties to Star Trek.
Who's the son of Will Decker from "The Doomsday Machine"
from the original series.
Commodore Decker, you are relieved of command.
[McFadden] The cast for the motion picture was in shipshape,
but unfortunately the script wasn't.
[Tenuto] It was not perfect because it had been rushed
to convert In Thy Image to Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Ready or not, she launches in 12 hours.
[McFadden] So much so that principal photography began in 1978
before a script had even been finished.
Paramount was also behind on commissioning special effects.
[screams]
[Cushman] They wanted to give it to Industrial Light & Magic,
but they weren't available.
[McFadden] Meaning there was a risk
their special effects might not be so special.
And so...
Paramount hired Robert Abel and Associates.
[McFadden] Which in movie circles was not an obvious choice.
Had never done a movie. They were doing TV commercials.
[announcer] Enough of this kissing, little registered mark.
[McFadden] Not just any TV commercials, but effects-heavy extravaganzas.
And they had just gotten a lot of attention for a 7UP TV commercial,
which had a lot of effects in it.
♪ We see the light of 7UP ♪
[McFadden] While it was more soda than Yoda,
it wasn't a million light years away from sci-fi.
So Robert Abel was hired.
To do all these mind-blowing special effects
that are, in an industry perspective, having to compete with Star Wars.
[McFadden] Desperate for fresh ideas,
Robert Abel hired a hotshot young designer...
I was recommended right out of school to work on Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
[McFadden] ...and gave him a suitably entry-level job to start.
Build a whole new Enterprise.
[McFadden] Completely redesign one of television's most iconic vehicles,
and do it fast.
The Enterprise had already been built, but it was too small.
It was like six feet long. They decided on maybe a 10-foot model.
[McFadden] For the big screen, Paramount needed a big ship.
So the Enterprise was upsized.
And they build this beautiful model. Huge.
[Cushman] He rebuilt most of the miniatures.
And the ones he didn't rebuild, he had to redesign in some way or another.
[McFadden] But with the script still in flux and with shooting underway,
who knew which of the new ships would even fly?
They were rewriting that script as they were filming it.
We were shooting without pages at times.
[McFadden] None of this helped director Robert Wise,
whose vast experience counted for little in the Star Trek universe.
He did not know Star Trek, and he was at the mercy of people
who said, "This is the way this should be done."
[McFadden] And at the mercy of people pestering him for close-ups.
Each time I tell this, I hope I tried to relieve myself
of the embarrassment, the humiliation,
the guilt that I felt at the time.
[McFadden] A shocking burden that Walter carries with him to this day.
We were shooting. It was very early in the shoot.
And I went up to...
I called him Mr. Wise from start to finish.
I said, "Mr. Wise, are we gonna come back and do a close-up of Chekov?"
[dramatic music playing]
I can't. [laughs]
He said to me, "Please don't.
Please don't talk about those actor things to me."
Ugh. It destroyed me.
I mean, he was absolutely right. Absolutely right.
You know, I was thinking of me, me, me, me, me.
[McFadden] You can't blame a guy for trying.
[Walter Koenig] Me, me, me, me.
[McFadden] But under the circumstances,
Robert Wise had much bigger issues monopolizing all of his attention.
There were changes coming down by the hour.
We had to do all kinds of scenes.
[McFadden] Soon, the movie's right hand was no longer talking to its left.
Script pages were coming down to the set after the scenes had already been shot.
And any kind of script or vision that you have causes problems.
You may need to set up that scene in a different location,
do the camera movement in a different way.
That's all time. That's all money.
Both of which the film didn't have enough of.
[McFadden] The writer and producer were barely talking either.
[Livingston] Gene would continually rewrite.
Somebody would sneak it back to me, and I'd rewrite him.
The rewrite of the rewrite of the rewrite would get rewritten.
And it became script wars.
He wouldn't stop. He was just maniacal about it.
[Koenig] I guess that was a trademark of Gene's.
He had to rewrite everybody's work.
And he was a bad writer.
[McFadden] Ironically, some of the best dialogue
and the most electrifying scenes were playing out between Harold and Gene.
We'd sit there, insulting each other, calling each other "stupid"
and "a piece of shit"
and, "You don't know what the hell you're doing.
Get out of my sight."
We are at each other's throats.
[male voice] Emergency alert.
[McFadden] But Star Trek: The Motion Picture
now had a problem money alone couldn't solve.
I said, "I'm not gonna put up with this and I don't care, and I quit!"
[McFadden] Star Trek: The Motion Picture was now months into shooting,
but fast running out of script.
They gave us an unfinished script.
[McFadden] And the only thing worse than not having a script
is not having a writer to fix that.
So I get a call from Katzenberg.
[McFadden] Writer Harold Livingston had...
Quit!
[McFadden] And Paramount executives rushed to save their production.
Katzenberg sends a car for me, brings me to his office at 7:00 PM.
I walk into his office. The secretary locks the door.
"Would you like something to drink?"
So I said, "Yeah, I'd like some gin on the rocks."
Brings me a full glass.
So I'm sitting there, I'm drinking.
I drank.
Half-hour later, Katzenberg comes in.
"All right, you're gonna come back to work."
I said, "No, I'm not."
And I'm drunk, I'm whacked out of my head.
[McFadden] Perhaps the gin had not swayed Harold,
but it had given him some courage.
I said, "I want $10,000 a week." "Got it."
"And I want a picture commitment, a script commitment."
"You got it."
So that's what I had to do.
[McFadden] But just as Harold had tied one on with Katzenberg
and been tied down, Gene was unraveling.
Gene was already starting to show signs of substance abuse.
He was on drugs all the time.
He smoked a lot of pot, and I know he was on cocaine,
and he was a prodigious drinker.
[Gerrold] Gene Roddenberry was probably
one of the most complicated people I've ever met.
He had power, he had authority, he had ability.
He wasted it by being a substance abuser.
But when he was at his best, he was the best.
And when he was at his worst, he was the worst.
[McFadden] Sidelined from his own production,
Gene was losing touch with his life's work.
[Livingston] I understand that this was Gene's baby.
It was his whole life.
And without Star Trek, he was gone.
He was nothing.
[McFadden] The creator of Star Trek
tried harder to force his will on the production.
Roddenberry was always trying to imbue his own ideas into the script,
into the picture.
He drove everybody crazy.
He was more than a pain in the ass, he was a monumental nuisance.
[McFadden] On set, director Robert Wise
was feeling stymied by his overreaching producer.
[Gerrold] Robert Wise was used to having a much greater degree of autonomy
to getting things to work,
and Roddenberry's meddling and micromanaging
was not working well for him.
It was not a happy experience for him.
Roddenberry was the worst producer he ever had to work with.
[McFadden] Adding to the trouble,
Katzenberg and Harold's gin-fueled accord had already broken down.
I got so disgusted with everything that I didn't care about the money or anything.
I just walked out.
[McFadden] Again.
Which was not the end of the story
because the story still had no end.
They didn't have an ending for Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
They gave us a two-act script in a three-act movie.
I had trouble writing the ending myself.
I mean, I can't blame anybody for that
because I couldn't come up with a decent ending.
[McFadden] And without a writer on board,
the only writing being done was a series of angry memos.
Lots of memos going back and forth, including from Paramount.
"What's the ending gonna be?"
And nobody could agree on what the ending was gonna be.
[McFadden] Literally at a loose end,
they even turned to the movie's two stars for ideas.
Bill and Leonard joining the party, there's a trap there of self-interest.
[McFadden] Meaning roles that were written for other characters.
"I'll do that part." [chuckles]
That's what I was imagining that was going on.
You know, there were so many voices and so many... so much self-interest
that it interfered with them finding the end of the story.
[McFadden] But actually, rumor has it Shatner was a little more generous
than previously suggested.
"I'll do that part." [laughs]
[McFadden] No. Actually...
Bill Shatner said, "Let's have Chekov do this"
on a couple of occasions.
That would have substantially boosted my part.
[McFadden] Maybe Walter would have that close-up after all.
They didn't. They didn't go for it.
[McFadden] Ooh, right.
But Bill Shatner had come out in favor of Walter Koenig.
[McFadden] Well, whoever got the close-ups,
it was pretty obvious that not having a third act was bad.
But there was another problem
that couldn't simply be solved with a typewriter.
The special effects people were not producing what he needed.
So the question would be, why wouldn't they come forward and say,
"Hey, we're having a problem"?
Well, because you don't wanna get fired.
They were feeling that they would somehow find a way to pull it through.
[McFadden] The director was getting nervous.
Paramount presold this.
There was a locked premiere date.
[McFadden] With the movie already booked in theaters,
Wise knew how true the teaser poster really was.
The adventure was only just beginning when it should have been nearly finished.
They were opening the movie in nine months.
She needs more work, sir!
Bob Wise finally said, "Come show me what you have."
He'd been asking to see it for a while.
[McFadden] The effects crew played a test reel,
hoping the director would see the light.
And so they brought it in, and they screened it.
[McFadden] Robert Wise saw the light all right.
The probe itself, which was a physical thing,
putting out a huge amount of light.
[McFadden] But that was all he saw.
[Cushman] And he said, "Okay, show me what else you have."
They said, "That's everything."
And they failed terribly. They were over their heads.
They didn't know how to do something like this.
[McFadden] Worse, this humble on-camera effect
was not what Robert Abel had promised.
Bob had bitten off a huge chunk.
He had proposed and pursued doing the effects for the movie
in a digital environment
with computers that were not even as powerful as your cellphone.
[McFadden] Unbeknownst to the director, the digital effects had failed.
And the only stunning visual effect Robert Wise saw
was the disappearing budget.
About five million was squandered.
Robert Wise had a meltdown,
to just storm out and say, "I never wanna see that man again."
[McFadden] That man was soon-to-be-replaced
special effects supervisor Robert Abel.
"Find me somebody else. I don't care who.
I will never have anything to do with that man again."
[McFadden] The numbers were all bad for Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Six months until the premiere, only two of three acts scripted
and just one miserable minute of special effects.
[McFadden] Nearly a year into production,
Star Trek: The Motion Picture still had no special effects,
no ending, and seemingly no hope.
Systems overloading, Captain!
[McFadden] Only one thing could make this classic Hollywood nightmare worse:
lawyers.
Exhibitors put a lot of pressure on the studio
in the form of a potential lawsuit
to make sure that the movie was completed on the date that they had proposed.
[McFadden] There's nothing like the threat of legal action to get things moving.
Fearing the worst, Paramount made plans to shift liability.
I believe they had to have a fall guy.
[McFadden] Overwhelmed and underachieving, Robert Abel was cast in that role.
Bob Abel became the force majeure that the studio had to have
in case they were sued by the exhibitors
to avoid a $100 million class-action suit.
[McFadden] Dreaming up legal strategies was one thing,
but what Paramount needed was someone to dream up an ending to their film.
[Cushman] And John Povill, who was associate producer,
came up with the ending in the 11th hour
with this idea that V'Ger is trying to achieve consciousness.
[McFadden] That's V'Ger, the giant, amorphous energy cloud.
And how better to do it than to merge with the Creator?
-And who is the Creator? -A human.
[McFadden] That's this human.
[Cushman] And Decker can merge with Ilia.
[McFadden] That's this woman.
The Creator has not answered.
[Cushman] Which is also merging with V'Ger.
Who is V'Ger?
V'Ger is that which seeks the Creator.
Which allows V'Ger to merge with humankind.
It became a living thing.
[McFadden] If that sounds confusing, that's because it is.
And Paramount felt the same way.
Paramount hated it, hated it, but Robert Wise said, "I like it."
And of course, when Bob Wise liked it, then Paramount liked it,
and so it got filmed.
[McFadden] Working out the end was a start.
But in June of '79, Paramount still had
an incomplete film with no special effects.
[Tenuto] Paramount brings in Doug Trumbull,
who is one of the special effects world's most amazing artists,
working on 2001.
[McFadden] Stanley Kubrick's classic opus
had virtually defined the look and feel of space on film.
Nobody knew how to do space effects better than Doug Trumbull.
[McFadden] Paramount needed Trumbull to do the same for Star Trek,
and at warp speed.
What Star Trek needed was a new way of doing things.
And luckily for Trumbull, John Dykstra had invented just that,
courtesy of Star Wars again.
Here's where the fun begins.
When we did the Star Wars stuff, it opened up a whole new realm
for lots and lots of material.
[McFadden] Motion control, still a new technique,
had made it possible to realistically depict spaceflight.
Take us out.
We were using technology we designed for an earlier project
to achieve a new result, but there was so much work to do
in such a short period of time.
When I joined them, it was triage.
Suddenly, there was a crash rush at the end of coming up to the release date.
[Dykstra] We immediately went into a nightmare.
Everybody's hair was on fire.
We were working three eight-hour shifts.
They brought beds in.
I think the quote was from Michael Eisner was,
"You're coming out on the release date we have set.
I don't care if there's black leader in place of where the effects should be,
the movie's coming out."
Don't worry, she'll launch on schedule
if we have to tow her out with our bare hands.
[McFadden] With the hardest of hard deadlines,
John and Doug divided the work between their studios.
Doug was really, I think, focusing on the Enterprise.
[McFadden] The iconic and now redesigned mothership
was destined to be the centerpiece.
Doug did the drydock sequence.
And they do the tour around the Enterprise.
And if you're a Star Trek fan, it's ahh...
The introduction of the Enterprise had to be orgasmic.
I'm in heaven. You know, you could stop now, I'll die happy.
[McFadden] This cinematic climax was made possible
by some ingenious smoke and mirrors.
[Dykstra] Trick is, is that we're trying to create an illusion.
You put a light source on the ship,
and you want it to focus on a particular thing.
[Andrew Probert] So much white lighting on the side of the ship
kind of took away from the scale of the ship,
and he thought it'd be better to neutralize all of that lighting down
and just use these spotlights to give the ship more scale.
[McFadden] That epic scale came from something
small enough to fit in your mouth.
There was dental mirrors, a lot of dental mirrors.
Take a new light source, it's a focused beam
bouncing off a dental mirror, and it puts a spot of light over here,
and it looks like that light is sourced from here.
[McFadden] But to get the party started,
it wasn't the Enterprise that needed to look imperious.
John Dykstra's outfit did the opening shot,
which was of the Klingon ship looming into view.
They knew how important it was for the picture.
[McFadden] If the Enterprise was going to be majestic,
her enemies needed to be electrifying.
We had lots of weird stuff.
We had a Tesla coil, which is a lightning generator.
It would throw a six-foot arc in helium with the no vacuum,
which is a long piece of lightning.
It used 60 amps at 440 volts, which is a lot of electricity.
And we had to build a cage around it because we're near the airport there,
and when we fired it up, it would interfere
with radio transmissions from the tower with the airplanes.
Maybe that wasn't the best way to do it, but it was the way that we figured
we could get it done in the time that we had.
[McFadden] While incredible explosions were being rendered to film,
something else was exploding like a supernova, and it wasn't pretty.
It went way over budget.
It doubled and then tripled, and then eventually was $45 million.
Money wasn't an issue.
And worked around the clock
and finished the last of the special effects
about a week before the movie was going to open.
[McFadden] A lot had gone into Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Nobody had seen the movie.
[McFadden] And a lot of it ended up on screen.
It was an incredible human effort.
[McFadden] So it was no surprise that, following their first screening,
the L-word was used.
And suddenly, it's feeling long.
[McFadden] Along with the B-word.
It's feeling a little boring.
[McFadden] However, somewhat ironically,
Robert Wise just didn't have enough time to fix it.
He wanted more time to shave off some of those moments
that people complained about where there's a little too much special effects,
add a little bit more of the humanity into the film.
[McFadden] But with the premiere looming, Paramount had the bigger problem
of finishing their final cut, or any cut, in time for the opening.
They were just hoping that they could get it done.
[McFadden] December 7th, 1979.
There was a red carpet thing. Everybody was in tuxedos.
[McFadden] As everyone made their way to the premiere...
Robert Wise is carrying with him the print, and it's still wet.
They just made the print.
[Gerrold] They came out of the developer into the can still wet
with the idea that they would be dried off by their first trip through the projector
when they got to the theater.
The last roll of visual effects had been done the night before.
They got into the theater.
[McFadden] The feeling in the room was euphoric.
The opening to Star Trek: The Motion Picture is glorious.
There's so much going on, the effects are marvelous.
The audience cheered and applauded when they saw the Klingon ships.
[McFadden] Paramount had a hit on their hands.
It's amazing. It's insane.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture was extremely successful.
It's insane that the movie made as much money as it did.
It made a fortune.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture makes $139 million.
[McFadden] After crawling over the finish line,
the film still managed to take first place.
It was number one at the box office for about three months.
It made more money than any Star Trek film until Star Trek 2009.
[McFadden] But critics were split.
[Cushman] About half of them were very positive. Half weren't.
[McFadden] For some, the rebirth of Star Trek
was an achievement itself.
[Tenuto] What a towering achievement Star Trek: The Motion Picture was
that it was able to take a 1960s television show
produced on a 1960s budget with 1960s special effects technology
and transform it into something realistic and believable.
It looks like you found a way.
[McFadden] But for some, the film still moved at a 1960s pace.
"Star Trek: The Motionless Picture" and things like that.
[Koenig] The papers, they were brutal.
They just said we were these old guys who should have stuck to television.
It was just awful.
The only thing was, I evidently was so anonymous in the picture
that when the reviews came and they started naming the actors
who were out of their league by being in this picture,
they ignored my existence entirely.
I-I was grateful.
We're out of it.
I always see all the flaws in it because I was there
and I know where the compromises are.
[McFadden] For Leonard Nimoy,
the motion picture was like a faraway planet.
V'Ger is barren, cold.
It was cold, it was distant.
It had very little to do with Star Trek.
No meaning, no hope.
Characters were not in shape in place, playing off of each other
and with each other the way we did best.
There were some reviews that called into question
the missing sort of humanity of the characters.
[McFadden] Then, there was possibly the most confusing ending
to a sci-fi picture since 2001: A Space Odyssey.
I wasn't crazy about the ending.
What V'Ger needs in order to evolve is a human quality.
And that's not because I didn't write it. It's because it made little sense to me.
They all do a merge or do something. I don't know.
But if it worked for the Star Trek people, okay, good.
[McFadden] For director Robert Wise,
it turned out to be one of his biggest hits,
and one of his least favorite films.
He said, "I've never made a movie before where we were rewriting the script
as we were shooting and waiting for the special effects."
Making Star Trek wasn't fun.
[McFadden] The success of Star Trek: The Motion Picture
had saved the franchise.
[Cushman] Star Trek: The Motion Picture was such a big hit,
of course there was gonna be a second movie
and a third movie and so forth.
It made it of worth to continue the Star Trek franchise.
[McFadden] But this larger prize came at the expense of the TV show.
So their Phase II went away for that reason,
because of the success of the movie.
[McFadden] For Gene Roddenberry, the motion picture was another example
of Star Trek taking off without him on board.
[Nemecek] You know, there were a lot of problems with the motion picture,
both structurally and as a film, and a lot of that was not Gene's fault,
but he was blamed.
And he was demoted.
After the motion picture, Gene was kicked upstairs.
They gave him a new contract that said
that he would be a very well-paid script consultant.
[McFadden] For perhaps the first time in its history,
but not the last, Star Trek had broken through
despite its creator, as well as because of him.
We wouldn't be here discussing Star Trek
if it wasn't for Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Somebody had to go boldly where no one had gone before,
and Robert Wise did it.
It would be churlish and self-aggrandizing, I think,
to not acknowledge the debt,
even if, you know, I just learned things watching the movie
that I didn't understand or wanted to change
or thought could be done differently.
It was also a sociological pop culture landmark.
What do you make of all this?
[McFadden] Just as the motion picture split critical opinion,
fans were also split and still debate its worth today.
The very first debate among the fans:
Is Star Trek: The Motion Picture good or bad?
It just didn't have the dynamics, didn't have the drama.
I think it's a good movie.
Most people excoriate it, but I like the first Star Trek movie.
[McFadden] But for every fan of the original series
who lamented the lack of a good villain or driving action...
[grunting]
[McFadden] ...there's a fan who sees pure science fiction.
[Tenuto] It's a very cerebral, thoughtful commentary.
It comments on the concept of faith.
It deals with something that we are dealing with right now,
in a profound way, which is the merger of humanity and machines.
V'Ger and the Creator will become one.
And so in some ways, again, like really great science fiction,
ahead of its time.
For all the slings and arrows that the motion picture takes as a piece of cinema,
Star Trek broke so many norms.
It broke so much new ground on so many levels.
We are inside a living machine.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture goes into who we are.
What is life? What is the meaning of life?
Star Trek: The Motion Picture keeps in line with Roddenberry's edict
that Star Trek is us.
I think we gave it the ability to create its own sense of purpose
out of our own human weaknesses.
[McFadden] Whatever its human weaknesses,
Star Trek: The Motion Picture had put Star Trek, the franchise back on track,
even if its makers felt like they had just survived a war.
I've been in three wars. I've had the shit kicked out of me.
My worst war was with Roddenberry.
I don't know who else could have taken all that shit.
[McFadden] Well, Harold would not be the last.
[theme music playing]