William Shatner Presents: Chaos on the Bridge Page #6

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behind the scenes, oh, the in fighting, the chaos,

and the power shifts was about to get worse.

And in the center of it, a man that I've worked with and

deeply admire, Maury Hurley. Shatner:

Tell me the story

of Gates McFadden. She's let go at the end

of the first season and

then she's rehired. Tell me how that happens. At the end of the first season

Hurley became the successor to all of the other

writers and was going to be coming back as the head writer. He felt very insistant

about a new doctor. Gates McFadden:

Coming out of academia,

having done a lot of stage direction, and being

in New York theatre, I was used to you can sort of say what

you think about something,

and you're respected. You fight your argument,

and then you either win or lose. He just didn't like

the way the character of

Doctor Crusher was working out. There'd been a few issues

over that first season about Doctor Crusher's

character, and I think

they thought at times that Gates was a little bit

high handed and you know, maybe being

a little demanding. I never experienced that. I had heard that somebody

said it's either her or me, you know, one of us has to go. She was adored

and suddenly she was gone. We ended up casting

Diana Muldaur who was a pretty well-known

TV actress at the time. That never quite worked. Why? Just didn't get on with the cast

all that well and the character of Doctor Pulaski

never quite solidified. It was awkward

a lot of the time. Muldaur: They were not

that interested in renewing me, and I was certainly not

that interested. When I worked with you

we had scenes, because it was all actors. By the time you got to

Star Trek:
The Next Generation, it was a vast technical world that had some characters

placed in it. At the end

of the second season I remember feeling like Maury

was getting very frustrated. Gene would allow things

to come into the show that were against

his own concept, and I would go ballistic. Maury had kind of gotten

the show back to where

it had fallen apart because of the

writers strike. Hurley:

He said, "This episode is good,

I want to do this episode." And then he'd say,

"This episode is crap." When I have to fight Roddenberry

about maintaining the integrity of his concept,

I know I've lost the fight. He didn't seem to want

to be there anymore,

I think he was tired. I think he was tired

of fighting whoever he

was fighting. And egos kicked in

in the second year. Big time. Mine as much or maybe more

than anybody's. I get a call from the set; Patrick Stewart

won't read this line. There was an argument

and it went on a little bit

too long. Patrick got a

little angry. So now it's this. It's the producer

and the actor. And he sort of said if you guys

don't get out of here I'm getting out of here. I say to Berman,

"Fire them all. I'll build the second season

on the absolute tragedy that the Enterprise

exploded by unknown cause. And lost everybody and

now we must find the

new Enterprise crew. Systems are off line.

Core breach is eminent. All hands abandon ship.

Repeat, all hands abandon-- ( ringing ) Rick Berman called me

one day and said, "We've got a problem.

Patrick's very unhappy. He's creatively

not being satisfied. I said, "I'll fix that." I said, "Have Patrick

come over and meet me

for lunch today, I want to make sure

that he is in costume,

it'll be a one o'clock lunch." I happened to have a table

in the back of the executive

Paramount dining room. At one o'clock

the commissary is packed, so I intentionally said

to my assistant at the time, "Maris, let me know

when it's one fifteen."

She said you're meeting Patrick at one o'clock. I said let me know

when it's one fifteen. You're a game player. Patrick walks in promptly

at one o'clock, goes back to the table

in costume, sits down by himself and now

has to wait for fifteen minutes. And I walk up and

I'm out of breath and I say,

"Patrick let's just cut to it. I do know that you are not

creatively not being taxed. You're going to have to bear

with us for a couple more weeks but we've already

put the script in the works and we will write

your character out. Now, I'm looking at an actor

who isn't even blinking. What are you talking about? The one thing I don't want

is my lead actor unhappy. Let's just cut through

this thing, no harm, no foul,

I'd like to thank you. John, that's terrible. Patrick Stewart

and I never had another

discussion after that. I was interested in the

comment that John made because I don't recall

that meeting very well. I recall another meeting,

which was very different. We were advised

by the studio that Good Morning America

would be coming into town, they were going to film on

the set of Cheers and they were going to film on the set

of Star Trek. I said, "No, screw you. We are working

12,14,16 hours a day to persuade people

that we are living in the twenty-fourth century

and we're out in space. They basically said,

"There's nothing to be done, you're just an actor." I said, "Okay, can we

lay down some ground rules?" Taking this stuff very,

very seriously for the sake

of our fans. No gags, no jokes,

no Klingon jokes,

no fooling around. And they said,

"No, no absolutely not. There's going to be

nothing like that." And so I walk onto our set,

the show is going out live, just in time to hear them say,

"And now we're going over to today's weather forecast, now here's your weather man...

wearing my uniform. He's wearing

the captain's uniform. I won't repeat what I said,

but I walked off the set. "We're live, we're live,

you've been announced we're coming here." I said,

"-- you. I'm out of here." I had hardly been home

more than a few minutes

before my phone rang. ( phone ringing ) John Pike wants to see you

in his office at two o'clock

this afternoon. I stood in front of his desk

and was basically read

the riot act. He said I'd let the studio down,

I'd embarrassed the studio, they were trying to keep

it out of the press and we finished the

conversation and I was about

to leave and he said, "By the way, off the record,

I totally understand why you did what you did. And I said,

"Thank you, John." The first best

thing was when I took over Roddenberry's idea. That was the

first best thing that happened. The second best that happened

was when they didn't pick me up for the third year. When I left

the gate at Paramount I was laughing I said, this is

insanity, I have just left the coo coo house. Just go down to

Paramount you'll find a great bird of the universe only no

body knew he was a coo coo bird. Moore:

First and second seasons

of Next Generation are almost unwatchable

in almost all honesty. They're very plot driven

and very alien of the week. The shows are kind of creaky

and don't work very well. But there was some

crucial concepts that were done in the first couple years,

some things that would reverberate through the entire

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