50 Years of Star Trek Page #4

Spock or 'Star Trek'?"

And it took me a moment. I said,

"I can do a

mind-meld on DeForest Kelley

"who's laying there unconscious,

and I can say something ambiguous

like, 'Remember.'"

And that's how that moment came about.

Remember.

And then you have "Star

Trek's" finest hour

between Kirk and Spock.

That death scene through

the radiation chamber...

Cried like a baby.

I was always very

touched by what happened

in that... in that

sequence. Ahem.

I thought it was

beautifully written, the death scene.

And it really worked in the film.

I have people still

today who write me and say,

"Every time I still see that picture

"for the fifth, tenth

time, I still cry when Spock...

At that death scene," you know?

[raspy] I have been...

and always shall be...

your friend.

Live long...

and prosper.

Narrator:
Two short years after

the success of "Khan,"

"Trek" returns to the big screen,

and the franchise is truly reborn.

"Star Trek III" was the

first movie that Nimoy directed,

and it was also his way to

come back to "Star Trek"

to bring Spock back.

Nicholas Meyer, a very talented

guy, was directing.

I thought, "I-I can do what he does.

I know what he's

doing and I can do that."

So I went in the next morning,

and I put it to them very simply.

I said, "Michael, you have two problems.

"You want me to play

Spock in 'Star Trek III, '

"and you need a director.

I solved both of your

problems with one stroke."

And that's the way it went,

and he said, "Okay, let's make a deal."

And we immediately made

a deal and went to work.

You Klingon bastard.

There are two more prisoners, Admiral.

Do you want them killed too?

It's just such a delicious badass

son of a b*tch, you know?

He's just... he's just a

bad guy with no remorse.

[both grunting]

I killed Kirk's son

and I blew up the original Enterprise.

Just freaking wiped it out.

And I could do it again. [chuckles]

I was asked to do "III,"

I didn't know how to do it.

So I said I wasn't

interested in doing it.

I was not part of "IV" either.

They had had a script written

tailor-made to star Eddie Murphy,

who was Paramount's other

big star at the time.

And Paramount didn't like the idea

of putting all their

golden eggs in one basket,

Eddie Murphy and the Star Trek people.

So I went to see Harve and Leonard,

and they told me the

story about the whales.

And Harve said, "I'll

write the outer space parts

if you do the on Earth

parts, you know, the bookend.

And I said, "Okay."

"Star Trek V" is hurt by it's budget

more than anything else. It's

not a badly directed film.

In fact, Bill did a nice

job directing for the most part,

but they just didn't have

enough money to recognize the vision,

so it looks very cheap, and as a result,

it feels like a bad movie.

We watched the movie, we were like,

"Yeah, that was great."

And I remember my brother,

he was the one who

had not been drinking.

He was looking at, like,

"I don't think it really was great."

We were like, "No, it was

great. Let's watch it again."

And we did, so we watched it again.

That's probably the last

time I saw "Star Trek V."

Then "Star Trek V" came

out and didn't perform well.

And then Leonard came,

and he had this genesis,

you should pardon the

pun, of an idea for "VI,"

which was all about the

wall coming down in outer space.

It was about the Klingons

have been their substitute

for the Russians. I went, "They were?"

And we wrote it.

His idea was that,

you know, time's change.

You know, you can't be,

you know, mad at a group

for 100 years and you don't

know anything about them.

Michael Dorn was my idea.

He could play his own grandfather.

I thought that would be funny.

Narrator:
Coming up, the

Enterprise returns to TV

with a new mission and a new crew.

When I heard that they

were doing a next generation,

I went, "Oh, afraid I

got to do this," you know?

So "Star Trek IV" does gangbusters

at the box office.

They're like, "Hang on,

this is a hot property."

Gene's like, "Guess what, fellas?

I want to do I on TV again."

- And then Paramount's like...

- "Yes, please."

- "I might as well."

- Yeah.

"Well, it's sitting here doing nothing."

- "How soon will you start?"

- So then we have

"Star Trek:
The Next

Generation" comes out.

Narrator:
In 1987,

21 years after the

original series hits the air,

"Star Trek" returns to television

with the premiere

of "The Next Generation."

Gene Roddenberry called

me and he was talking about

a new version of "Star Trek"

bouncing off the movies, of course.

He came up with the

basics for the older captain,

for the characters that we

see in "Star Trek: Next Gen."

Narrator:
Diehard fans are

skeptical of the reboot.

We got a bald, English

captain with a French name

and you got a Klingon on the bridge?

Really? You got a blind

guy driving the ship?

Gene was there during

the first couple of years

and all the spinoffs carried

on the tradition of "Star Trek."

When that cast was

first assembled and the show

first went into production,

"The Next Generation,"

I invited them here to this house,

the whole bunch of them, all of them.

"Come to my house. Let's

get to know each other.

And good luck, and bon

voyage. I think... I hope it works."

When I first auditioned for "Next Gen,"

I was one of the few people in the world

who was not quite

aware of the phenomenon

that we were about to get involved with.

When I heard that they

were doing a next generation,

I went, "Oh, afraid I

gotta do this," you know?

I got a call from my agent

who said, "You know what?

They're casting 'Star

Trek.' Oh, my God."

And she was a huge "Star Trek" fan.

I had no clue it was

going to be a big show.

So LeVar Burton and I go to eat.

I say, "What are you doing?"

He said, "Oh, you'll love

this. I'm doing 'Star Trek.'"

I said, "Well, I want to be on that."

And he was like,

"What?" I was like, "No, no.

You gotta tell them I

want to be on the show."

And I made an

appointment to go see Gene.

And Gene says, "You want

to be on 'Star Trek'?"

I said, "Yes. Yes."

And he asked me would I

please write the pilot script,

"Encounter At Farpoint." And

I said, "Fine," did that.

The question had been whether

Gene Roddenberry would do,

you know, like a retrospective

back to the original "Star Trek"

to lead into this or would

he add to my pilot script.

He added all the

stuff that had to do with Q.

Three days into shooting, uh, you know,

somebody came up behind me and

put his hand on my shoulder

and said, "You have no idea

what you've gotten yourself into."

And it was... it

was Roddenberry.

And I didn't have any

idea. I mean, you know.

Riker's relationship with Picard,

which was filled with respect.

With Data, the curiosity that Data had

about being a human being.

And I worked with Worf and Geordi,

the three of us were sort of, you know,

we made the... we kept the

[bleep] together on the ship.

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