The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek, Volume 1 Read online

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  FROM MARK A. ALTMAN

  To my magnificent mom, Gail, for taking me to see Star Trek: The Motion Picture when she’d rather have been anywhere else in the galaxy. At least you got to have The Mommies’ Marilyn Kentz play you in a movie.

  To my unforgettable dad, Michael … for everything—and even occasionally turning off the baseball, football, hockey, and basketball games to let me watch Star Trek.

  To my sensational grandfather, Seymour, for stopping and taking me to a Star Trek convention in New Jersey when he really just wanted to get home to watch the Jets game.

  To my brotastic brother, Ira, for caring about sports and not Star Trek so we never competed with each other, Decker.

  To my wonderful wife, Naomi, for being the most enterprising woman I know.

  And my amazing kids, Ella and Isaac, who helped me get over my aversion to children after watching “And the Children Shall Lead.” It’s okay that you love the Ewoks … really.

  And, of course, Frederick S. Clarke; a mentor, a friend, and the man who made this book possible. You showed us all how it’s done. Remember.

  Finally, Ed Gross. Thanks for being such a nudge. I would have never written this book with you if you hadn’t kept bugging me for years about it. I can’t imagine doing it with anyone else.

  Also special thanks to our editor extraordinaire, Brendan Deneen, for being a Deep Space Nine fan, among many other things that make him awesome.

  FROM EDWARD GROSS

  To my wife and best friend, Eileen. Over thirty years on and we’re still boldly going! There’s no one I’d rather be on this voyage with. Sorry this book turned you into a Star Trek widow.

  To my sons, Teddy, Dennis, and Kevin. I am so proud of all three of you, and thrilled beyond words that we share a love for all things geek.

  To my mom, dad, sister, and brother. Thanks for all the years of nodding and smiling politely no matter how strange my obsessions seemed.

  To my father, who took me to the first Star Trek convention ever in 1972. Sorry we didn’t connect on much, but that was one moment when we did.

  To all of the editors—among them Starlog’s David McDonnell, Cinefantastique’s Frederick S. Clarke, Cinescape’s Douglas Perry, SFX’s Dave Golder, Long Island Nightlife’s Bill Ervolino, Movie Magic’s Karen Williams, SciFiNow’s Aaron Asadi, and Geek’s David Williams—who saw something in me and my writing and helped keep the dream going for all of these years.

  To my friends who have shared my love for Star Trek over the years, including John Garry, Kevin Oldham, Tom Sanders, Dexter Frank, Linda Miracco, Scott Milner, Jay Starr, Allen Lane, and Leon McKenzie.

  To all of the people connected with Star Trek that I’ve interviewed over the decades. So many of you made it easy to once again talk Trek for this book, and it’s genuinely appreciated.

  To Laurie Fox and Brendan Deneen, respectively agent and editor extraordinaire, for believing in this project as much as we do.

  And to Mark A. Altman. Throughout the process of writing this book, I could not imagine a better collaborator or cheerleader. It was such a joy to take this trip back to the Final Frontier with you.

  Sam Cogley asked me to give you something special. It’s not a first edition or anything, just a book. Sam says that makes it special, though.

  —Ariel Shaw, Star Trek episode “Court Martial”

  Space may be the final frontier. But it’s made in a Hollywood basement.

  —Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Californication”

  There are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth. And no one is lying. Memories shared serve each differently.

  —Robert Evans, The Kid Stays in the Picture

  FOREWORD

  BY Seth MacFarlane

  Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Ensign Rivers.

  Even if you’re a huge Star Trek fan, you may not know who that is. He was an assistant engineer on the first starship Enterprise, and although he’s hardly the most memorable character I’ve played, he’s one I’m very proud of. It’s because he allowed me to be a small part of Star Trek, a franchise that has literally changed the world.

  No, I’m not exaggerating.

  When Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry sold that legendary pilot so many years ago, he was, of course, doing what lots of television writers do: He was creating a series in the hope of a steady paycheck. But that wasn’t all he was doing. Because Gene was also a man of passion. He was angry about the suffering and injustice he saw in the world around him. And like other great television writers, such as Rod Serling and Norman Lear, Gene saw the medium as a powerful tool to comment on those injustices. To him, television was more than just a way to tell stories. He saw it as a platform to address things like politics, bigotry, religion, and sex. To him, such usage did not constitute preachiness. On the contrary, he felt it was his responsibility as a thoughtful writer to make a statement; to express a point of view, rather than simply to crank out filmed pablum with which to entertain the masses.

  With Star Trek, Gene conceived a vision of the future that was unashamedly optimistic: effectively a blueprint for what humanity could become should it eventually succeed in evolving beyond its superstitious, xenophobic adolescence. The show celebrated and glorified the virtues of human ingenuity, scientific advancement, and moral progress. It’s a vision that, to me, is sorely lacking in today’s entertainment landscape. In our era of Hunger Games–flavored dystopian science fiction, there is a conspicuous absence of such worthy models for the future. This should be cause for some concern. Carl Sagan once said, “The visions we offer our children shape the future. It matters what those visions are. Often, they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps. I do not think it is irresponsible to portray even the direst futures. If we are to avoid them we must understand that they are possible. But where are the alternatives? The dreams to motivate and inspire?” Indeed, when I watched Star Trek as a child, the moral guidelines it advocated were not lost on me. It meant something that those phasers were almost always set on stun, and that the crew never killed unless they had no other choice. Life was presented as precious. And while I loved the shoot-’em-up action of Star Wars as much as the rest of my generation, it’s Star Trek I thank for the fact that, when I find a spider in my house, I am morally obliged to put it outside rather than dispose of it. All life is precious. Message received, Gene.

  So there is no question that Star Trek makes a fine “dream map.” It’s a world we’d all like to live in. And Gene truly believed we’d get there. He felt that the better, more civilized side of human nature was ult
imately the stronger side, and would only grow more dominant as our species evolves. In that belief, he shares some philosophical ground with Martin Luther King, who said, “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” If this is true, and humanity naturally and inevitably evolves toward ethical maturity (as Michael Shermer powerfully and effectively argues in his book The Moral Arc), then there can be no more ideal vision of the future in popular fiction than Star Trek.

  The teams of artists and artisans who’ve brought Star Trek to life over the last five decades (many of whom have shared their stories with Mark and Ed for their amazing book), have given body and voice to that vision, and in doing so have not only captivated audiences, but also inspired people around the globe to pursue careers in science, engineering, and medicine, to explore outer space, and to work toward finding solutions to many of our problems here on Earth.

  In that sense, Star Trek has already helped shape our present. When asked about the appeal of the show, Roddenberry said it best in a shining example of his wonderful distaste for mysticism of superstition in favor of respect and regard for human achievement: “Star Trek speaks to some basic human needs: that there is a tomorrow—it’s not all going to be over with a big flash and a bomb; that the human race is improving; that we have things to be proud of as humans. No, ancient astronauts did not build the pyramids—human beings built them, because they’re clever and they work hard.”

  Unfortunately, I think we still have a ways to go, since there are still plenty of folks who think aliens built the pyramids, and that one of them is Barack Obama (look it up; people really believe that), but we’re moving in the right direction.

  In this book, Mark and Ed tell the fascinating story of that rare Hollywood product that actually means something to mankind. And though it can sometimes be difficult to maintain hope for our prospects as a species, I’m optimistic that, by the twenty-third century, things will be better than they are now. Maybe that’s because Star Trek has inspired me so much in my work and in my life. Or maybe it’s because I’m already living there.

  Remember, I’m Ensign Rivers.

  Seth MacFarlane is an animator, voice actor, screenwriter, producer, and filmmaker. He is the creator of the TV series Family Guy, cocreator of the TV series American Dad! and The Cleveland Show, and writer-director of the films Ted, its sequel Ted 2, and A Million Ways to Die in the West. He is an acclaimed singer and pianist as well.

  MacFarlane also served as executive producer of the Emmy Award–winning Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, an update of the Carl Sagan–hosted Cosmos series, hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson.

  WHAT A LONG STRANGE TREK IT’S BEEN

  Mark A. Altman

  HOLLYWOOD IS THE ONLY BUSINESS WHERE YOU GET TO SHAKE HANDS WITH YOUR DREAMS

  —writer/director NICHOLAS MEYER

  Sitting across from me at a small table in a cluttered room in a Miami cemetery was the bearded rabbi with a small yarmulke resting atop his mop of thick gray hair, who was about to conduct my grandmother Edna’s graveside funeral. As we all sat around in a melancholy haze as the fateful time approached to bury Edna, I’ll never forget the words he shared with me when he found out what I did for a living at the time. “I love Star Trek,” he stammered excitedly. “You know why I think that show is so significant? Every story had a moral; it was a parable for the same ethical issues we grapple with in religion every day. I think it’s a very meaningful and important show. The original, at least. The others were crap.”

  Now, I wouldn’t necessarily say “amen” to that (although admittedly some of the series are way better than others), but the reality is the original Star Trek was the center of the Big Bang that gave birth to a universe that is still expanding to this day. From the voyages of the original starship Enterprise (no bloody A, B, C, or D) as well as their animated adventures, to the Next Generation of twenty-fourth-century explorers, the gallant crew of the wildly underrated Deep Space Nine, the Voyager ensemble lost in space, Captain Archer and the crew members of Enterprise and, of course, J. J. Abrams’s latest reinvention of one of pop culture’s most beloved and lucrative franchises.

  One can’t escape the inexorable gravitational pull of Star Trek, much like the Beta Nairobi nova. I know I haven’t. Ever since September 8, 1966, I’ve always had a very special connection to the Star Trek universe. It might have something to do with the fact we both made our respective debuts on this planet the same year. I’m not sure exactly when I first discovered Star Trek, but I do have vivid recollections of obsessively watching the series every weeknight at six o’clock back on WPIX in New York City (“Oh no, not ‘The Way to Eden’ again!”) and lashing out at the television when a self-professed Trekspert on The $100,000 Pyramid responded dumbfoundedly to a question about the name of the ship that was destroyed in “The Doomsday Machine” (“The Constellation, you moron!”). Yes, I loved Star Trek … a lot.

  It was shortly thereafter that I waited on line for several hours to get the late Leonard Nimoy’s autograph at Macy’s inside the Kings Plaza Mall in Brooklyn, New York (probably the first—and last—time I ever cared about such things). But knowing this was the man who had called his first autobiography I Am Not Spock, I decided I would cleverly avoid asking anything about Spock and instead inquire about In Search Of.… Because in my sadly deluded mind, I was just the coolest nine-year-old on my block. (And in case you were wondering, he didn’t go to any of the exciting locales they visited in that series; Nimoy just did the voice-overs. Seems obvious now, but back then it was less than readily apparent.) It was an exciting time to be a Trek fan. Rumors of a new series or movie, the release of Franz Joseph’s brilliant Star Trek Blueprints, followed by the the even more sensational Star Fleet Technical Manual, Susan Sackett’s Letters to Star Trek; as well as Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Sondra Marshak, and Joan Winston’s Star Trek Lives!, the birth of Starlog, and a litany of novels, poster books, and Mego action figures (I went on that mission to Gamma VI a lot as a kid).

  In the years ahead, I continued to passionately follow Trek. As anyone who’s familiar with my first feature film, Free Enterprise, may recall, my junior-high-school friends and I went to see Star Trek: The Motion Picture excitedly on the day it debuted, December 7, 1979, another day that shall live in infamy. After we were turned away from the box office by an overearnest ticket taker who refused to allow children under sixteen into a G-rated movie due to some recent unruly theatregoers, I was forced to boldly seek out my mother at a nearby bank as she was depositing her paycheck with a teller (this was way before ATMs, you know) and prevailed on her desperately to accompany us to the film since they wouldn’t let us in otherwise. She did—and she’s never forgiven me since.

  Many years later, I was visiting Los Angeles for the first time and found myself on the Paramount lot, where I got a giddy thrill from seeing Starfleet uniform–clad extras for the first time milling around during a break at the studio commissary as production commenced on “Encounter at Farpoint,” the premiere of the then-new series, Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s hard to understand now—it was almost impossible to believe at the time—but Star Trek was finally coming back to television two decades after its inauspicious cancellation on NBC. It was with an all-new cast, but with much of the same creative team in place that had stewarded the original seventy-nine episodes, spearheaded by the so-called Great Bird of the Galaxy himself, Gene Roddenberry. At least, for the time being.

  A few months later, as editor in chief of my college newspaper, The Justice, I received a query letter from Paramount publicity as part of their first-season press kit for the series that suggested ways news outlets could cover their new show. They were desperate for some good press (any press, actually) and success was in no way assured. Buried amongst all the hyperbole about this exciting new program was the suggestion of a set visit. Sounded good to me. I proceeded to hastily arrange for myself and my two best friends (my college roommate and the copublisher of a mimeographed fanzine I
had produced since I was ten, Galactic Journal) to make the trek out to Hollywood to visit the set. We arrived in sunny Los Angeles ready to beam down to Paramount Pictures Stage 8 where the first-season episode “Too Short a Season” was filming, and we proceeded to spend the day interviewing the new cast and crew. Mitchell Rubinstein, my college roommate, still waxes nostalgic about the lobster he shared with “the very visual Rob Legato” that day in the studio commissary. For me, it would be the first of many visits.

  Shortly thereafter, a professor of mine at Brandeis, who contributed many thoughtful analyses to the preeminent genre magazine of its time, Cinefantastique, introduced me to its publisher and enfant terrible, the late, great Frederick S. Clarke. Fred was J. Jonah Jameson incarnate. A man who did not suffer fools gladly and unlike others in the field was not a cheerleader for every schlocky sci-fi film or TV series that came down the pike, but a hardheaded, even harder to please arbiter of taste. I could never watch Jason Robards in All the President’s Men as Ben Bradlee without thinking of Fred … and still can’t. He offered me a chance to write about the series’ revolving door for writers during that turbulent first year in space. And I did. Fred was happy … and I was ebullient. And it was the beginning of a beautiful professional friendship as I contributed numerous feature stories to the magazine over the next several years (prompting a deluge of mail from readers to beg him to stop covering Star Trek every issue, but they sold so well that he kept printing them incessantly) in which I used to joke I spoke to everyone associated with The Next Generation with the possible exception of the gaffer and the craft service PA … mostly because I got paid by the word. In the heady days before the Internet decimated print journalism, not to mention quality entertainment journalism in general, this gave me unprecedented access to the show for its seven-year run and its savvy creative team.