[Gates McFadden] Despite stellar box office...
[cash register dings]
[McFadden] Star Trek: The Motion Picture fell short of Paramount's expectations.
But The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock were hits,
proving that the franchise could charm audiences and critics.
But as big-screen Star Trek got bigger...
Boom!
[McFadden] ...so did the egos...
He wanted to be in my shot.
[McFadden] ...the special effects...
That's some of the most embarrassing work.
[McFadden] ...and the mounting pressure on a risky fourth movie.
This might be it, you know. This might be the franchise killer.
Boop!
[McFadden] 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.
After finding success with The Search for Spock,
Paramount wanted their biggest star to direct the next movie.
Directing a motion picture
is possibly the most fulfilling thing I can do.
[McFadden] No, not William Shatner.
Not yet.
Their other biggest star:
actor and director of Star Trek III, Leonard Nimoy.
Jeff Katzenberg tells Leonard Nimoy, "We want you to make Star Trek IV ."
[McFadden] Because Leonard already had a big idea.
Leonard Nimoy had been reading a book by Edward Wilson called Biophilia.
[McFadden] Whose powerful environmental message
resonated with Nimoy.
[John Tenuto] There are certain species on Earth
where if they get pulled out of the ecosystem,
it would be detrimental to the entire ecosystem.
[McFadden] Otherwise known as keystone species,
the idea got Nimoy thinking about how Star Trek could save the world.
Maybe there is some problem in the 23rd century
that can only be solved by going back to the 20th century,
finding the species that humans caused to become extinct,
and bringing them back so that they can help solve the problem.
[McFadden] So the crew of the Enterprise
would help save one of Earth's most majestic creatures
in the ultimate feel-good adventure.
It was just a matter of finding the right animal,
one that everyone loves.
And the original idea that gets bantered around--
and it's Harve Bennett's idea-- is to use snail darts as the species.
[McFadden] Sorry, was that snails or darts?
Snail darts are very small.
[McFadden] As in very small endangered fish,
which producer Harve Bennett thought would become big stars.
As a producer, he says he liked the idea
because snail darts wouldn't be very expensive.
[McFadden] But as far as director Leonard Nimoy was concerned,
these snail darters were small fry.
He had something else in mind for the big screen.
Specifically...
Humpback whales.
[McFadden] Producer Harve Bennett and Nimoy
quickly devised a story with all the classic Star Trek ingredients.
And now humpback whales.
[whale calls]
[McCoy] You're proposing that we go backwards in time,
find humpback whales, then bring them forward in time,
drop 'em off, and hope to hell they tell this probe what to go do with itself?
That's the general idea.
Well, that's crazy.
I thought the story was a little out there.
You know, it's like, "Save the whales, okay."
[McFadden] But things were about to get much further out there.
[Tenuto] Jeffrey Katzenberg calls up Leonard Nimoy and tells him,
"I either have what is the greatest idea of all time
or the worst idea of all time."
[McFadden] Which was enough to make Leonard's ears perk up.
[Tenuto] That idea is Eddie Murphy has been mentioning
how much of a Star Trek fan he is.
Yeah, I'm a Trekkie.
Get out of here, I'm a Trekkie.
[McFadden] So a script for Star Trek IV was commissioned,
starring none other than the biggest star on the Paramount lot.
Eddie Murphy was going to play an English professor
who is a little bit different.
[McFadden] A nutty professor you might say,
who had a thing for UFOs and whale songs.
With the crew of the Enterprise searching for whales.
[McFadden] But...
[Tenuto] It just didn't work. It was too convoluted.
How do you balance out the comedy with the science fiction?
[McFadden] The one part of the script that worked...
-[whale calls] -[McFadden] ...was the whales.
With that piece of the puzzle figured out,
Harve Bennett decided to bring in a writer
who he could trust wholeheartedly.
[phone rings]
I got an emergency call saying, "Help, help, we had this script,
we threw it out, we wanna start over."
I said, "What's the story?"
And I remember Leonard's first words. He said, "Something nice."
[McFadden] That something nice came with a catch.
And I was not allowed to read their script.
'Cause I asked, I said, "Should I read it?"
And they said, "No, please don't."
[McFadden] Harve had an idea to speed things up.
What's your plan?
Harve said, "I'll write the outer space parts
and you write the Earth parts."
[McFadden] It was a kind of cosmic job-share.
My first line in Star Trek IV is, "When are we?"
[McFadden] As in, "What's the date?"
I believe we have arrived at the latter half of the 20th century.
That's where I came in.
And I went out when they start talking about D.H. Lawrence.
[video rewinding]
They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains the hottest blood of all.
[McFadden] D.H. Lawrence was in. Eddie Murphy was out.
And so was a storyline that would have lit up the tabloids on Vulcan.
We would have learned that Saavik was pregnant with Spock's child.
[dramatic music plays]
[baby cries]
[McFadden] Which was the offspring of this encounter
with teenage Spock in Star Trek III,
arguably modern cinema's most romantic high-five.
I have a telegram that Harve Bennett sent me.
He says, "I, too, am delighted you are with us.
Have a wonderful shoot and bring a Vulcan obstetrician along just in case.
Love, Harve."
[McFadden] But ultimately there was only room
for one Vulcan on this trip back in time.
They ended the chapter, so to speak.
This is goodbye.
But I was mystified why she was so unceremoniously booted out of IV.
Like, I didn't understand that.
[McFadden] Ron Moore wasn't the only one.
Many fans were left wondering,
had Star Trek 's most famous female Vulcan hit the glass ceiling,
or something more complicated?
Had they revealed that Saavik was pregnant,
then you would have had Saavik in the later films
because what are you gonna do?
Are you gonna have Spock have a child and then not deal with it?
[McFadden] And producers felt that wouldn't make
a good role model for young Vulcans out there,
so Robin's role was cut down significantly.
Live long and prosper, Lieutenant.
Creatively, would I have loved to played a pregnant Vulcan? Yes, very much so.
It didn't matter.
It had been so, so good to me up until that point
that I think one can only, you know, be so greedy. [laughs]
[McFadden] Instead, the original crew of the Enterprise
returned home on an aquatic mission.
Everybody remember where we parked.
It was always intended to be a fish-out-of-water story.
A fish out of water is always an interesting concept.
I'm from Iowa. I only work in outer space.
[McFadden] It seemed everyone liked the script.
I thought it was great. Chekov had another good part.
We are in an enemy vessel, sir.
I did not wish to be shot down on our way to our own funeral.
Good thinking.
It hit on all the right levels.
It was such a relatable story with such beloved characters,
a storyline that really resonated with what was going on at the time.
[McFadden] And even though Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry
was mostly on the sidelines these days,
it sounded like Star Trek IV would be timely, compelling science fiction,
exactly what Gene always wanted in the first place.
It just felt like it was kismet.
[McFadden] Shooting on Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
began on February 24th, 1986.
Okay, now the question is, we're tracking here with Bill...
So let me see you do the walk and talk, please.
Hold it real quiet, Doug.
[McFadden] But it didn't take long for newcomer and female lead Catherine Hicks
to realize she'd have to fight not only for her whales,
but also for her space in this newly crowded film.
Your friend was messing up my tanks and messing up my whales.
They like you very much, but they are not the hell your whales.
Bill Shatner. [chuckles]
I love him, I swear to God, but he, you know,
it's like he is a annoying brother.
[McFadden] Like annoying brothers, he had a habit of getting in the way.
He wanted to be in my shot.
I want it all.
[McFadden] And Catherine wasn't giving it to him.
"Get him out of my shot, Leonard."
[McFadden] Now a veteran director,
Leonard knew how to handle his bickering stars.
I know Bill.
He shows up to not work but win.
"Trust me, I know every, every angle and I'll protect you."
[McFadden] But to be fair, it wasn't just Bill causing disruptions on the set.
One time, I remember I had a moment with her. It was...
We were in the bridge and all kinds of things are happening.
The machines are going and the wind is blowing,
and all the actors around are working.
Sulu, that's all I can give ya!
[Leonard Nimoy] And right in the middle of this big set-up...
"Leonard, can we stop?"
...she stops.
And it was like...
[McFadden] And Catherine was suddenly face-to-face with a very stern Vulcan.
Yeah.
[laughs]
Something just wasn't working for her.
And I'm yelling at her, "Keep acting, keep acting!" [laughs]
And then we'll get this right.
[McFadden] After the take, the ever-logical Nimoy
went over to have a talk with his actors.
He said, "Catherine, you can't do that.
There's, like, 100 million things happening.
Just play the scene out."
[McFadden] Because one of the unwritten rules of working on a Star Trek film is...
You don't stop an effects scene.
[McFadden] And as stressful as they were,
one big effects shot actually put a smile on Leonard's face.
[Catherine Hicks] The diehards say, "Oh, my God, Leonard smiled.
Spock never smiled."
[McFadden] But accidental smiles can happen when you're all...
Having a bit of fun.
[McFadden] Well, worrying about diehards and what they think
seems to be par for the course on a Star Trek film.
Just ask associate producer Brooke Breton,
who was getting her first big break on a feature film.
They brought me in to create a lot of the material that would play
in Starfleet Command when everything was being disrupted by the probe.
[McFadden] Ah, the probe.
It appears to be a probe, Captain.
Everybody had warned me, "Well, if you don't get this right,
you know, you're in deep trouble because they're paying attention.
Those fans really pay attention to everything."
And there were a few nights where I didn't sleep all that well,
thinking about, "Oh, my gosh, I hope the fans...
I hope they're good with this."
[McFadden] But when it came to the probe itself,
they could rest easy because the movie's effects
were in the safe hands of Industrial Light & Magic.
And as usual, they were thinking big...
or maybe not big enough.
I think it's one of those things where you come up with the idea
and you go, "Ooh, it's this big, gigantic, cylindrical thing.
It'll be like the monolith in 2001."
But then there's nothing to tell you how big it is.
And no matter how you photograph it, it doesn't seem to improve it in any way.
[McFadden] ILM's initial efforts looked good on paper,
but only on paper.
Nimoy called in the cavalry, asking ILM's top visual effects guru
to drop everything and rush to Star Trek' s rescue.
I got a call both from Leonard and Harve Bennett,
begging me to take the show over.
It was a 911 call.
[McFadden] Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was in trouble.
-[whale calls] -I am receiving whale song.
[McFadden] The producers of Star Trek IV had a whale-sized problem.
Well, it's not just the whales.
[Saratoga Captain] We're tracking a probe of unknown origin.
[McFadden] Their alien probe looked like something else altogether.
All I saw was a big water heater.
[McFadden] This is just one of the problems
Ken Ralston was brought in to fix.
A big, dumb shape.
[McFadden] But he had to do it...
As cheaply as possible.
Conceptually, they wanted the probe to look like a whale.
Specifically, humpback whale.
[Brooke Breton] It looked rather ridiculous.
It looked like a water heater.
[McFadden] With no time or money to burn, Ken thought...
"I can't design another ship. What am I going to do to hide this thing?"
Then you're just gonna have to take your best shot.
[McFadden] The solution had two parts. One...
[Ken Ralston] I painted it glossy black.
Making it look almost greasy, watery, giving it a lot more texture.
[McFadden] Ah, much better.
And two...
Lit it in ways where it kind of came and went.
[McFadden] Reminiscent of the monolith in Kubrick's 2001.
I hoped. [chuckles]
No offense to whoever designed it.
[McFadden] But there would be no hiding the whales.
There be whales here!
When you saw whales look like they were swimming in water,
they actually had a whale puppet.
I remember there was a guy named Walt Conti who had designed these whales,
an animatronic puppet that was remote-controlled.
[screams and laughter]
[Gillian] Beautiful, aren't they?
[Jay Riddle] National Geographic actually called to find out
how we had photographed real whales like that.
Perfect whales right in our hands.
[McFadden] But there was one scene that couldn't be done
even with the best animatronics.
[Riddle] It was a sequence that involved going inside of Kirk's thoughts.
There were these blobby, liquidy shapes.
Turns into this surreal something or other.
It was trying to do something artistic and interesting.
[McFadden] But what resulted was more...
Artsy fartsy.
Oh, I hated that sequence.
[McFadden] The special effects may have been special in unexpected ways,
but under Nimoy's diligent direction, the film wrapped on schedule
and under budget, a rarity for Star Trek films.
[Nimoy] Clock it.
[McFadden] So perhaps it was not a complete surprise
that when the film debuted on Thanksgiving weekend in 1986,
it was an instant hit.
This unlikely comedic opera of whale song and environmental messages
brought a whole new audience to Star Trek,
raking in $133 million worldwide.
[cheering and applause]
[Larry Nemecek] For the first time,
Star Trek is on the cover of Newsweek magazine.
This is, like, awesome. This is incredible.
All the geeks in the closet all through the '70s,
you could only dream of this moment, right?
But that was a real watershed moment showing where Star Trek was.
Forget pop culture, in the culture, period.
Everybody not going to Earth had better get off.
Star Trek IV is really a crossover movie.
A lot of fans who are starting to show
their new girlfriend or boyfriend Star Trek,
you start with Star Trek IV.
Our own world is waiting for us to save it.
[Ralph Winter] It was fun.
The material attracted people that were outside of the Trek family and Trek fans.
It's the least Star Trekky of all the Star Trek movies.
You're very perceptive.
It's ecological. It's relevant.
If you do a Star Trek film, that's the one to do if you're not into sci-fi.
It is a compliment?
-It is. -Ah.
And that's just good writing.
That's good writing and good storytelling on Harve Bennett's and Nick Meyer's part.
Everybody was happy with it and it made the studio a lot of money,
and they decided they'd make another film.
[whale calls]
[McFadden] Thanks in part to the whales,
Nimoy went on to have a whale of a time
directing hit comedies,
but he was far from done with Star Trek.
[Ronald D. Moore] Star Trek II, III, and IV
worked so well creatively and commercially,
it's almost like a foregone conclusion that this is now a franchise.
[McFadden] And that meant the next movie was guaranteed.
It was written in the stars.
So to direct, naturally they turned again to one of Star Trek 's biggest stars.
Excuse me.
[McFadden] This time, the other biggest star.
James T. Kirk.
[McFadden] Because William Shatner had negotiated his way
to the real captain's chair.
Now, Shatner had the famous favored-nations contract with Nimoy.
[McFadden] Which was designed to guarantee
Nimoy and Shatner each had their turn helming a Star Trek movie.
[Winter] That deal was made to let Leonard direct IV
and Bill could direct V,
so that Bill felt comfortable with Leonard doing IV.
Very clever, Captain.
Shatner's claiming the right to direct
and everybody's like, "Sure, fine, go for it."
[McFadden] And while it was a contractual thing,
Shatner had earned his directing wings.
Small ones.
Shatner had directed TV episodes.
He wasn't, like, a complete novice at that.
[McFadden] If nothing else, Shatner had proved adept
at directing himself in the popular police drama T.J. Hooker.
So with his favored-nations clause in his back pocket,
Shatner was given the green light.
With the team around him, the camera team, the support team,
the design team, the studio...
[McFadden] Like Brooke Breton. She was back.
And of course Harve Bennett, who'd been integral to the success
of every Star Trek movie since The Wrath of Khan.
Oh, and there was also Star Trek alumnus Ralph Winter.
I was the post supervisor on Star Trek II.
[McFadden] And he'd risen through the ranks to become producer.
-[laughs] -[McFadden] So Shatner was in safe hands.
Everybody felt like he was capable of pulling it off.
"Go for it, Bill."
[McFadden] Oh, and as for Leonard Nimoy...
I seem to remember that Leonard was a little reticent to even be in V.
[McFadden] Since Paramount owed him Star Trek merchandising revenue.
So I remember that Harve and I went to bat for that.
Harve prevailed.
[McFadden] So the next time the three met for lunch,
Harve made sure to bring an extra brown paper bag.
We brought three bags for lunch.
[McFadden] Bags one through three were just ordinary lunch,
but Leonard spotted a fourth bag.
"Well, who's that bag for?" "Oh, it's for you. Open the bag."
[slide whistle blows]
A million-dollar check.
[McFadden] After that, Nimoy couldn't say no.
He starts laughing. "Yeah, I'll be in the movie."
Let's go to work.
[McFadden] At the risk of biting off more than he could chew,
Shatner took the biggest bite he could.
He wanted to make the biggest damn Star Trek movie ever.
We'll need all the power you can muster, mister.
[McFadden] And thinking big meant choosing an ambitious story
about the biggest possible topic.
Something very big.
[all cheer]
[Winter] I think we were sort of smoking our own press releases
when we went to do V because we picked
the hardest topic you can possibly pick.
[McFadden] Shatner wanted to return to a favorite Star Trek theme.
I'm God.
Probably not a bigger topic that you can tackle than meeting God.
God?
Where is God? Who is God?
God's a busy man.
Shatner's original story doc was called "An Act of Love."
[McFadden] But maybe Shatner's script was not inspired by God,
but rather by false prophets.
Not everyone can hear the voice of God.
A commentary on crooked televangelists...
In the name of Jesus.
[McFadden] 1980s America had no shortage of those.
Now, this audience would warm you up on a cold, chilly October day.
...people who were hyping a flock...
Help me with $1,000 gift.
[Nemecek] ...sucking people in for their contribution money.
The movie was going to be a commentary on basically charlatans.
Why is God angry?
[McFadden] It would tell the story of a man on a mission from God.
[Sybok] The greatest adventure of all time.
[McFadden] After The Voyage Home,
it was time for a voyage to the promised land.
The discovery of Sha Ka Ree.
[McFadden] Which surprisingly turned out to have Scottish origins,
because if you say it in a certain way...
Sha Ka Ree.
[McFadden] ...Sha Ka Ree sounds like...
Sean Connery.
The quest for the Grail.
[McFadden] Who producers would have loved to have played Sybok.
Again, it's Shatner dreaming big.
And he was busy and it was never gonna work.
[McFadden] So the closest they got was...
Sha Ka Ree.
[Winter] Sha Ka Ree was definitely a reference to Sean Connery.
We really wanted Sean in the movie.
[McFadden] Instead, the role went to an actor
who could be almost mistaken for the man he stood in for.
Have faith, my friend.
Sha Ka Ree.
[McFadden] Unable to secure Sean Connery for Star Trek V,
producers discovered their charismatic cult leader
in Laurence Luckinbill.
It's me. It's Sybok.
Laurence Luckinbill more than fills the Vulcan boots
of what Sybok needs to be.
That's exactly what I'm counting on.
Larry resonated with Harve and myself.
We shall seek the answers... together.
And so we were fortunate and pinching ourselves that we got him.
[McFadden] Actor David Warner was cast as...
St. John Talbot, the Federation representative here on Nimbus III.
[Winter] David's a fine actor and we were happy to have him.
He drank too much, but he was a fine actor.
[speaking Klingon]
[McFadden] Todd Bryant and Spice Williams-Crosby
sported the foreheads.
[speaking Klingon]
Spice, you know, she was a great bodybuilder, weightlifter, a lot of fun.
She has wonderful muscles.
[McFadden] And for the Romulan consul, producers left no stone unturned.
I was Caithlin Dar in Star Trek V.
I'm Caithlin Dar.
Casting director said I was one of 2,000 people
that they auditioned for this role.
Well, then it appears I've arrived just in time.
It was a rollercoaster. I mean, there were eight callbacks in the end.
[McFadden] Cynthia was a new kind of Romulan.
I know my character didn't exactly look like a Romulan.
[McFadden] And it was all to do with continuing the diversity
of the Star Trek saga.
The character of Caithlin Dar was biracial.
I mean, her name, Caithlin Dar, very Irish-Terran, and Dar, very Romulan.
[McFadden] Romulan, but only to a point.
I never got pointy ears.
[McFadden] But why would producers hide such an important detail?
Because it was too expensive to do my ears every day.
[McFadden] Going au naturel on the ears was one money saver,
but producers applied the same penny-pinching logic to visual effects,
where they made a brave call.
"We're gonna find a cheaper vendor, basically."
We made a choice.
We didn't wanna spend the money that we'd been spending before.
[McFadden] But producers wouldn't be able to replace ILM,
the titan of Hollywood effects,
as easily as they covered up those Romulan ears.
They wanted a number of companies to do a test
and show us what this, you know, imagination of God would be,
which is a tall order no matter what.
[McFadden] After all...
How do you portray God?
We sought only your infinite wisdom.
[McFadden] The man that claimed to have an answer as splendid as his beard
was special effects artist Bran Ferren,
whose more traditional live effects had caught the eyes of the producers.
He really fancied himself an in-camera effects person.
[God] You doubt me?
I seek proof.
The character of God, Bran showed us some stuff that was really clever,
like taking silver screen material that you'd project in a theater,
ripping it up, putting it on a cylinder and spinning it,
and then project God down there with big lights,
and we'd never seen that before.
And we're watching it in-camera.
Bill and a number of others became very enamored with that
because it was going to be an in-camera effect.
[McFadden] Ferren was no one-man ILM,
but his in-camera effects were immediate and tangible.
And that was extremely appealing to people
who had a very short schedule and not much of a budget.
[cash register dings]
[McFadden] And even though the last time they didn't use ILM,
things wound up pretty expensive.
They decided to go with Bran Ferren.
[McFadden] With this special effects team on board,
production was ready to roll.
Filming began at Yosemite in 1988.
And on day one of shooting on his first feature film as a director,
Shatner hit a wall.
But more specifically...
A fiberglass wall, which I will climb.
I had to build a side of a cliff in a parking lot at Yosemite.
Theoretically, it's supposed to look like El Cap.
[McFadden] Which it certainly did,
but this was only the first part of the illusion.
[screaming]
[continues screaming]
Shatner falls at Yosemite and Spock goes after him.
[grunts]
[Winter] That scene, we just turned the camera and built a set sideways,
so that the ground has rocks and leaves glued to it,
and that's the ground.
Here's Shatner coming, you know, this way to hit the ground.
Spock comes down this way to catch him.
These are not fancy tricks,
and they don't look great when you go back and look at 'em now.
Hi, Bones. Mind if we drop in for dinner?
[McFadden] Designing sets on terra firma was one thing,
but in space...
There was just so many concerns about the ship shots.
[McFadden] Early tests showed the in-camera effects
for the starship shots had come a long way since Star Trek IV.
A long way in the wrong direction.
[Breton] What was particularly challenging for Bran
is I think he thought it was gonna be simpler to do
and to replicate the kind of work that was being done at ILM.
That was a serious mistake.
[McFadden] The magisterial elegance of the Enterprise
in the previous films had devolved into something less nuanced.
The years of experience of shooting the Enterprise
and the pearlescent paint and all the fine details
is an accumulation of years of experience,
and especially on a tight schedule with Bran Ferren.
He had a lot of technological know-how,
but it didn't necessarily apply to how to get this show done.
[McFadden] Bran Ferren wasn't the only one
struggling to realize his vision.
That problem went all the way up to the director.
Me? What did I do?
[McFadden] Star Trek V 's director
was pouring his heart and soul into the project.
[Breton] Bill was very passionate.
He brought a lot to trying to make the story
something that he had in his heart and in his mind.
As a director, he was generous, compassionate,
kind, supportive of all the actors.
[McFadden] But Shatner's acting instincts
were not helping him direct his first feature.
All the other staging things in terms of transitions
and the way you're telling the story and the way it plays out...
Yeah, he wasn't disciplined about that.
[McFadden] Now his film was coming apart at the seams.
[Winter] Two-thirds of the way through and it's out in Ridgecrest
when we're filming all the stuff with God that it starts to just be...
It's a mess.
[McFadden] It seems Shatner's style of directing
involved almost as much ad-libbing as his acting.
[Winter] You know, having people running at camera
and then while they're running at camera,
"Some of you fall down."
[McFadden] But no one did fall down because...
[Winter] Normally, you'd prepare that ahead of time.
But what do you expect to happen?
[McFadden] And while they were having trouble falling down,
Nichelle Nichols was having trouble staying on her feet.
[Nichelle Nichols] You know what happens when you're in a dune?
The sand does what it wants to do,
and it's not always what you want it to do. [laughs]
[McFadden] It seemed like every day there were some unexpected challenges.
Production at times seemed a bit shaky.
And we're trying to help with the cameramen,
trying to help out with the first AD, trying to help out in all the other areas.
But you know, there's only so much you can do.
It didn't gel.
[McFadden] Producers had seen enough and convened for an emergency summit.
"What are we gonna do about this? How are we gonna control this?"
[McFadden] As panic set in, Paramount contemplated the unthinkable:
demoting the captain.
But was anyone willing to take the wheel?
Harve Bennett had asked me if I would take over directing it.
And I said, "What is it about?"
And they said, "It's about the search for God."
[McFadden] Presented with the chance to get back into the director's chair
of one of cinema's biggest franchises, Nicholas said...
I don't think so, you know. It's just... I didn't like the odds.
[McFadden] Neither did Paramount,
but two-thirds of the movie was already in the can.
The die is cast.
[McFadden] And with little time to course-correct,
one thing was becoming very apparent.
Holy...
We're gonna... We're gonna hit the wall.
[McFadden] With what little time they did have,
drastic changes were ordered to at least rein in the budget.
Everything ended up being simplified.
[McFadden] For example...
Creating what should have been a much bigger town,
I must have taken every bit of stock scenery
that was in the backlot out to the desert to build that little city.
[McFadden] And given that it was expensive to build,
when it came time to tear it all down...
The town mysteriously burned.
[dramatic music plays]
I don't know what happened, but I know that it's cheaper than striking it.
[McFadden] I guess it must have been an act of God.
[chuckles]
[McFadden] Because ultimately, even God himself was forced to bow to budget cuts.
The scaled-back special effects went a bit Old Testament.
Here is the proof you seek.
[groans]
[McFadden] Bran Ferren's special effects were so short of the mark,
they were mistaken for tests.
It was childish and we all really did believe that
that was just a preliminary and that the good stuff was coming later.
But it didn't really evolve all that much past that.
[McFadden] And it wasn't just sets and special effects
that were feeling budget cuts,
so were the costumes.
The rock man was a rock monster that comes together
out of living boulders on this planet of weird stuff.
Bill really wanted that.
[McFadden] But in 1988, the technology just wasn't there to make it happen.
It looks amateurish because it is.
Yeah, the rock creature was a disaster.
Boop!
[McFadden] But on the bright side...
If that had worked, then we wouldn't have had the great homage in Galaxy Quest.
[McFadden] That's right, this grumpy customer
is a loving nod to William Shatner's ambition:
the rock monster he never had and we never saw.
But despite all of the setbacks,
Bill Shatner still very much believed in the picture.
I remember he came to us three weeks after the picture ended and said,
"I'm done. I've edited the picture. We're all done."
And he leaves the room and Harve and I look at each other and go,
"Holy... We're in trouble."
Because you can't possibly edit the movie that quick.
[McFadden] Sure enough, after viewing a rough cut rougher than most,
producers were left asking...
What's going on?
It was a mess. It didn't make any sense.
It was like this giant puzzle laid out in front of you. It was like...
"All right, how do we fix this?"
[McFadden] A radical makeover was in the cards.
We were grasping at straws,
trying to figure out how can we beef this up.
I would put lipstick on the pig so that, you know, it's more attractive.
[McFadden] Desperate to beautify their pig,
Jerry Goldsmith was brought in to apply some musical lipstick.
So, you know, we were hoping that the music's gonna elevate it.
[McFadden] The music was good,
but not that good.
[Breton] If a project is stumbling and disappointing,
it's not gonna be saved by a terrific score.
[McFadden] It needed major surgery.
And so we had to recut it.
[McFadden] And the emergency surgeon was Harve Bennett.
Harve was really known in his writing as a structuralist.
He knew how to structure a story.
And so Harve just went at it in the cutting room for a while.
[McFadden] And quickly came to the realization
he would need more than just edits.
[Nemecek] The whole Klingon scene at the end on their bridge
was added to kind of clean up the ending of Kirk's rescue
and being reunited with Spock.
Our new gunner.
[McFadden] And even if you can't work a miracle,
you can still act like you're about to reveal one.
Spock.
[McFadden] Paramount's marketing arm went into overdrive,
asking audiences to strap themselves in.
You saw the teaser poster with this row of theater chairs
and the caption says,
"Why are they installing seatbelts in movie theater chairs this summer?"
Everyone's like, "Oh, it's exciting, the movie's opening!"
It's like... [grumbling]
You know, you're just like...
You're sweating because you know what's gonna happen.
You know it's not up to snuff.
[McFadden] Oh, come on, that's up to the audience to decide.
Premiering on June 9th, 1989,
it raked in 17.3 million in its opening weekend box office.
[cash register dings]
It actually opened a half-million more than IV had opened,
which was a big, great sign.
[McFadden] But week two was a different story.
It just sunk like a rock after that.
[McFadden] Box office fell 59% in the second week
to just over $7 million.
Like the rogue rock monster,
Star Trek V had come crashing down to Earth.
Fans were disappointed. Yeah.
[McFadden] And they weren't the only ones.
Star Trek V is so slow to get moving and so confused in its plotting.
I had a stern talking-to from the studio afterwards and saying,
"Don't ever do this again. This is not good."
[McFadden] Star Trek V looked for all the world
like it might end careers.
When it was over, I thought,
"Well, they'll never offer me another picture after this."
[McFadden] And even hastened the end of something much bigger.
We all kind of thought this might be it, you know.
This might be the franchise killer.
[screaming]
[McFadden] Star Trek V was a box-office bomb.
I'm hardly in a position to disagree.
[McFadden] But its failure was not fatal.
The franchise had something a single dud film could not erase.
[cash register dings]
[Nemecek] All of those say Hollywood and the franchise
and the films are all totally about the bottom line.
There was a lot of affinity beyond budget dollars for Star Trek
and a lot of affinity for those actors.
[McFadden] And with a growing and vocal fan base in mind,
Paramount executives asked themselves...
"Do we really want to end Star Trek movies and the Kirk era
with that movie?"
Your pain runs deep.
[McFadden] While the answer was obvious,
the story for the next film was not.
[Nicholas Meyer] Harve had proposed to Paramount
to do a movie about young Kirk and young Spock, et cetera,
at the Starfleet Academy, and he had developed this in some detail.
You want to go back?
[McFadden] With an aging original cast,
producer Harve Bennett had his eye on the future.
Maybe they're throwing us a retirement party.
That suits me. I just bought a boat.
[McFadden] Harve Bennett and Ralph Winter teamed up for the proposed prequel.
We developed a screenplay with David Lowery who wrote V.
And Harve really wanted to make that.
Still think we're finished?
More than ever.
[McFadden] A changing of the guard was being conceived
to allow the original cast a graceful exit.
You and I have grown so old and so inflexible.
"They're going to age out of being able to do this.
Here you go, Paramount.
Here's a perfect way to continue the franchise."
[McFadden] But...
The studio didn't wanna do it.
[McFadden] In fact, just about no one wanted to do it.
[Nemecek] Gene, the studio, the fan base, and the actors,
they're all saying, "No, we're not quite ready to go out to pasture yet."
People can be very frightened of change.
[McFadden] Paramount was not quite ready for the future
because they were not done with the past.
They said they weren't happy with the fifth Star Trek movie.
My pain?
It runs deep.
And they didn't wanna go out on that note with the original cast.
I wouldn't.
[McFadden] There was a legacy that needed to be honored.
[Winter] Frank Mancuso and the studio wanted to capitalize
on the 25th anniversary for the marketing and distribution aspect.
It was a nice ending to all of this.
There was so much more momentum on a larger scale.
This is the final cruise of the Starship Enterprise
under my command.
They decided there was gonna be a Star Trek VI
with the original cast.
[Gorkon] The Undiscovered Country.
[McFadden] Everyone was on board for one last blast with the original cast,
barring one key crew member.
Harve really just didn't wanna do that. He really wanted to make the prequel.
He left very upset and very disillusioned
and feeling very manipulated by Paramount.
"After all I've done for you?"
And they're like, "Sorry, no."
So he's like, "Okay, then I guess our time together is at an end."
[McFadden] Ralph Winter would stay on as producer,
but the biggest personnel question was...
"Who's been the most successful with our Star Trek movies so far?"
I think my passion is directing.
[clears throat]
-Leonard directing... -[sighs]
[McFadden] And... -...and Nick Meyer writing-directing.
[McFadden] After Shatner's mismanaging of Star Trek V,
the studio wanted a safer pair of hands.
[Winter] They certainly went back to Nick to be sure.
Here's the guy that directed II and did a lot of writing on IV.
"Let's do this the way we know that works.
Let's not take any chances like we did on V."
I gotta sit down.
"You know, we're not gonna screw this up. This is the 25th anniversary.
This is the one we gotta deliver on. We gotta go out with a bang."
[banging]
[McFadden] Nicholas Meyer had not only worked on Star Trek films,
he had also saved them and even done some writing for free.
-But this time, it was all about money. -[cash register dings]
They said they wanted to do it for about 30 million bucks
and would I be interested.
-And I said, "Sure." -[cash register dings]
[McFadden] Paramount had already confirmed
the other member of their dream team.
I assume command of this ship.
[Meyer] I get a call from Leonard.
"Can I come and talk to you about a Star Trek VI movie
which I'm gonna executive produce?"
And I said, "Sure."
It's a case of Leonard and Nick kind of saying,
"It's up to you and me, buddy."
[McFadden] Leonard already had a concept.
[Meyer] He said, " Star Trek has always reflected things
that are going on on planet Earth, inevitably."
[McFadden] And in 1989, what was happening on planet Earth
was about to change everything.
I'm Peter Jennings in New York.
Just a short while ago, astonishing news from East Germany,
where the East German authorities have said, in essence,
that the Berlin Wall doesn't mean anything anymore.
[McFadden] Nimoy saw the fall of the Berlin Wall
and the collapse of the Soviet Union
as a potential turning point for Star Trek,
a show originally conceived at the height of the Cold War.
We Klingons have a reputation for ruthlessness.
[Meyer] The Klingons have always been our stand-ins for the Russians.
"What if the wall comes down in outer space?"
And that was all I needed. You primed my pump. Okay, great.
[McFadden] The starting point for the story
was inspired by another Cold War flashpoint.
[Peter Jennings] There has been a nuclear accident in the Soviet Union.
One of the atomic reactors at the Chernobyl Atomic Power Plant
near the city of Kiev was damaged.
We start with an intergalactic Chernobyl.
[explosion]
Like a nuclear meltdown.
Their moon has exploded their energy source.
No! [screams]
[Meyer] And suddenly, the Klingon Empire is no more.
And all these immigrants are gonna be trooping to planet Earth
and other places dispersed 'cause their planet is collapsing.
The Klingons have never been trustworthy.
[McFadden] This existential threat to the Klingons
would also prove an existential crisis for Kirk.
They're dying.
Let them die.
"Who am I if I have no enemy to define me?"
Would you and your party care to dine in this evening?
We would be delighted.
Kirk's assigned to escort the Klingon Chancellor.
[clears throat]
We must do this again sometime.
The Klingon Chancellor gets assassinated...
[groans]
-...due to Kirk's negligence.... -What happened?
-...'cause he hates Klingons... -They're animals.
...'cause they killed his son.
[Kirk] I could never forgive them for the death of my boy.
They're all unfurled, you know, in a big gush.
[all cheer]
Tell us that you plan to take revenge for the death of your son.
It parallels a great deal of what's going on today in this universe
and more or less a quest for peace.
[McFadden] Leonard Nimoy liked Nicholas' idea.
And he said, "Great! This is great!"
[McFadden] But there was one opinion that had to be heard...
even if no one wanted to hear it.
[Meyer] I met Gene Roddenberry when the script was finished,
and he had a lot of objections to it.
It's no surprise that Roddenberry would be dissatisfied with the script
'cause that means he's gotta fix it.
That means he gets paid.
[McFadden] One of Gene's objections had to do with a traitor
the producers decided should be...
Lieutenant, are you wearing your hair differently?
[McFadden] ...Lieutenant Saavik.
Out of the gate, they wanted to bring Saavik back.
[McFadden] Originally played by Kirstie Alley and later by Robin Curtis.
But how could they have evolved so quickly?
[Meyer] Ideally, it was to have been Saavik.
It was to have been somebody that you liked, trusted,
whose tragedy was this terror of the unknown,
of change.
And that made the whole story more complicated.
[McFadden] But complicated was not how Gene saw his beloved Vulcans.
He did not like the idea of making her a traitor.
A lie?
A choice.
[Meyer] We had a meeting with a lot of other people in the room, in his office.
I had so much raining down on me.
We just created another character.
So there were a lot of forces here that aligned
to have the turncoat be someone that you just met.
Lieutenant?
Valeris, sir.
[McFadden] An all-new Vulcan.
She's a Vulcan all right.
[McFadden] And there was one other element to the story
that Gene found objectionable.
The Federation is no more than a Homo sapiens-only club.
[Meyer] He, in retrospect, perhaps was understandably mortified
to find that the crew of the Enterprise was racist.
They all look alike.
What about that smell?
[Meyer] Which was sort of the point I was trying to make,
but it was absolutely antithetical to his view
about the perfectibility of people.
We were at loggerheads.
[Azetbur] It's racist.
[McFadden] But at least everyone could agree on the budget
because what's not to like about $30 million?
When VI was proposed to me in London by Frank Mancuso,
he said $30 million.
[McFadden] But having already moved his family to LA...
I rented a house for my family. We're all there.
[McFadden] Nicholas attended a Hollywood meeting
and found that something had been lost in the trip across the Atlantic.
I was in a meeting with Ralph Winter, Steve Jaffe, Leonard Nimoy, and Paramount.
[McFadden] In other words, the big wigs.
[Meyer] "And we're all excited to be making this movie.
Now we're talking about a budget of 25 million."
And I go, "Wait, wait.
We're not talking about 25.
We're talking about 30 because Frank said 30 when I agreed to come here."
[McFadden] It seemed Paramount now had a new vision for the film.
"Well, Frank has this vision," and I said, "Stop."
[McFadden] That turned out to be the trigger word.
"Don't talk to me about Frank and his vision.
I'm the artist. I have the vision.
And I wanna give you some math, which shouldn't be my responsibility,
but I'm gonna do it."
[McFadden] Standby for a lesson in basic film-production accounting.
"You have the cast, you have the script,
producers' fees, directors' fees, all of that.
There's 14 million before you've put any film in the camera."
And back then it was film.
[McFadden] Expensive film.
Then there's the small matter of post-production.
You got two and a half million dollars in post-production or something.
You have $4 million in special effects.
We're now up to, I don't know, $19 million.
I can't remember. I added it all up.
[McFadden] Actually, we're already over 20 million.
But the point is...
"Where's the movie?"
[McFadden] In Hollywood, everyone lies except the numbers.
Numbers don't lie.
I see we have a long way to go.
"Would you excuse us for a minute?"
And we sat there and they went into another room.
And then we waited for about 20 minutes.
And they came back and they said $27 million.
And I said, "Guys, you're confused.
I'm not negotiating.
I'm gonna see Frank Mancuso. I'm gonna explain it to him.
We're gonna settle this whole thing."
So I go see Frank Mancuso and he courtly hears me out,
and he said, "Thank you very much, Mr. Meyer, for explaining this."
I leave and he cancels the movie.
The operation is over.
[McFadden] With Star Trek VI canceled over budgetary concerns,
Nicholas Meyer suddenly had a lot of time on his hands
to think about where it all went wrong.
I am in total shock,
wandering around the lot like a lost soul
and the sound of an empty soundstage,
and I thought, "Oh, yeah,
this is where the peace conference was supposed to be."
[phone rings]
[McFadden] When out of nowhere the phone rang.
There's nobody else there. I pick up the phone. "Hello?"
And this voice says, "Nick."
And I said, "Yeah." He said, "This is Stanley Jaffe."
[McFadden] Stanley Jaffe was the super producer
behind some of Hollywood's recent big box-office hits.
[Meyer] Now, Stanley Jaffe and Sherry Lansing
had made Kramer vs. Kramer
and they had made Fatal Attraction.
[McFadden] But it was Stanley Jaffe's new job,
not his track record,
that was about to make Nicholas' day.
He said, "Frank Mancuso is not with the studio anymore.
Sherry Lansing and I are running the studio.
And I hear you have a problem."
And I said, "Yeah, I need $5 million."
And he said, "You got it."
And he hung up.
And suddenly, we were back on.
[McFadden] And just like that, all of Nicholas' problems
were the kind with creative solutions.
Like casting, which stretched all the way back to the original series.
Mark Lenard as Spock's father.
That was a no-brainer.
Quite logical.
[McFadden] Having appeared as Spock's father,
Mark Lenard was an old hand at playing a Vulcan.
While Kim Cattrall was new as Lieutenant Valeris.
Sir, I address you as a kindred intellect.
[McFadden] Star Trek V 's David Warner underwent a makeover
and reemerged as the cultured Chancellor Gorkon.
You've not experienced Shakespeare
until you have read him in the original Klingon.
[McFadden] Kurtwood Smith played the Federation President.
I have ordered a full-scale investigation.
[McFadden] And Nicholas Meyer had only one actor in mind
to play the rambunctious General Chang.
I have so wanted to meet you, Captain.
When the time came, I said to my casting director, Mary Jo Slater,
"Don't come back without Christopher Plummer or we're sunk."
Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!
And his only thing was, you know, "Don't strangle me with makeup."
So he wound up being sort of a modified-Klingon look.
[McFadden] When it came to Klingons, Nicholas' biggest problem
was figuring out how to assassinate one in space.
One of the things that always struck me is,
when you watch Star Wars or any outer space movie,
nobody's ever floating.
They all walk down these corridors like they're in a Holiday Inn.
And I'm thinking, "Ooh, what a cool idea."
They knock out the gravity machine,
and two guys in magnetic boots go in and blast away.
[McFadden] Which leads to...
Floating blood. Ooh!
[McFadden] Which raised a surprisingly vexing question.
What color should Klingon blood be?
Originally, I thought about it. It should be green.
And Leonard nixed that.
I'm not sure why, but he didn't like it.
[McFadden] Possibly because Vulcan blood is green.
So producers went to the other end of the spectrum.
On Next Generation , Klingon blood
had seemed to be just kind of a dark red-brown.
[McFadden] But that sounded a little dull.
And we just wanted it to be different.
-[McFadden] And so... -I chose this pink.
We retcon that as saying, "Well, when Klingon blood's in no gravity,
then it turns that way."
[groans]
[McFadden] But if gallons of floating pink blood
were unsettling for some, not to worry.
I didn't think about Pepto-Bismol, and I wish I had.
[McFadden] So Klingon blood looked a little bit like indigestion medicine,
but producers were occupied with a bigger challenge.
Which was the guy being shot in the hallway.
[McFadden] Producers were stumped about how to create zero-G effects
on a shoestring budget.
"How do we get the impact of this guy to take the phaser hit
and then in a weightless environment, push him down the hallway?"
[McFadden] No CGI would be necessary,
since veteran production designer Herman Zimmerman
had an old-fashioned solution.
We take the whole scene, the hallway that we're gonna build,
and we build it like this.
So that the guy who's gonna be shot is hanging.
And now we yank the guy up towards the ceiling
and it looks like he's weightless going down the hallway.
[McFadden] The visual effects were stunning,
but were they convincing enough for Star Trek 's creator?
Gene Roddenberry still had a contractual guaranteed say on Star Trek.
They had basically the completed cut.
Gene is in his wheelchair, having had his mini-strokes.
He's having good days and bad days, more bad days than good days.
[McFadden] They had a special screening just for him at Paramount Studios.
Producers anxiously waited for his reaction.
I'm thinking in my head, "If there's a problem,
A, he gets more money,
and B, we gotta deal with that problem."
[McFadden] And so an ailing Gene was seeing his characters
behave in ways he would never have imagined.
Like Spock mind-melding in anger.
It's waterboarding by sci-fi means, and it ain't pleasant.
[McFadden] And yet Star Trek VI was pleasant enough for Gene.
As they're wheeling him out the theater,
he said, "No, I liked it. Thanks very much."
[McFadden] Until he thought about it.
A couple of days later, here come a whole list
of complaints and comments and demands that Gene wants changed.
[McFadden] But before they could get to the bottom of it...
Gene dies within days.
[dramatic music plays]
[McFadden] And the notes were never brought up again.
It's kind of an odd last moment for Gene and the characters that he created.
[McFadden] Star Trek VI premiered December 6th, 1991,
and The Undiscovered Country discovered $96 million worldwide
on its budget of 30 million.
-[cash register dings] -It did well, yes.
[McFadden] For Paramount, it was the best possible way
to celebrate the franchise's 25th anniversary.
-Here's to 25 years. -You bet.
Of joy and happiness, and fussing and fighting.
Yeah.
[McFadden] But what this really meant was...
We were done with that cast. That was the end.
[McFadden] At the end of the film,
each actor's signature appears on the screen.
Signing off both on the roles they had shaped into iconic characters
and also signaling the end of an era.
Your heart's in your throat, watching those signatures go up at the end.
[McFadden] And although it was the end of an incredible era,
there would be a small return to the silver screen
for some of the original cast in 1994's Star Trek: Generations.
And even though Captain Kirk had clearly lost his place
at the center seat, he did leave us with this final moment.
[exhales]
It was...
fun.
[McFadden] While that was the end of Captain Kirk,
that wasn't the end of Star Trek.
Quite the opposite.
Because the staggering success of Star Trek IV
had not only done its part in saving the whales,
it also saved televised Star Trek from extinction.
1986, Voyage Home is a huge hit
and the local stations saying, "Guys, can you please do something?
We've had these same damn little 80 one-hour episodes
we've been showing for 15 years now,
but if you would just make some more Star Trek for us on TV,
we'd all make more money."
And it's within several months of the film's success
that they announce that Next Generation is gonna be a reality.
[McFadden] And believe me, that is quite a story.
[theme music playing]