Well, Gene Roddenberry was a very tall and imposing-looking man, first off. He was a very adamant man. He was also very kind and sweet. He had a lot of sides to him. Our life together was wonderful. It just didn't go on long enough.
So we all got basically what we wanted, and as far as the women are concerned, he figured that 30 good women could handle a crew of 300 anyway. So that's how we ended up with our crew.
They wanted a television show that had to do with science fiction and Gene Roddenberry didn't know anything about science fiction. He absolutely knew nothing. But he knew people and he was head writer for "Have Gun - Will Travel", and if you took those early Star Treks that we did and put us in a Western wardrobe and put us on wagon train going west, we can say the same lines. So he didn't bother to do science fiction, because he didn't know anything about it. Everybody accepted it. You put funny people in funny costumes and paint them green and we could talk about anything we wanted to, because that was the only thing that fascinated Gene about this particular genre. Censorship was so bad in those days, you couldn't talk about war, black-white situation, you couldn't even talk about mother love. We took Frank Gorshin and painted him half-black and half-white and his adversary [Lou Antonio] was half-white and half-black and put the two of them at each other and it got through the censors. They never realised that that was what was going on. Once it's up on the screen, it's too late and Gene got to talk about some of the problems that we had today that way. You go through at least the first two years of "Star Trek" and you find some amazing stuff. Everything that was going on Gene put into the series. He just put strange costumes on the actors and painted them funny colours and left the same situation in.
When we started out in '64, um, I was playing Number One, which was a woman second in command of a star ship.
What's nice is you know a Star Trek movie is still one that everybody wants. It remains Paramount's cash cow, so there's no danger of it going away anytime soon.
But he knew people and he was head writer for Have Gun Will Travel, and if you took those early Star Treks that we did and put us in a western wardrobe and put us on wagon train going west, we can say the same lines.
We were doing tests out in Culver City, and when lunch came along, we had to go out for lunch and Leonard Nimoy had just had the ears put on and they were funny, he was funny with this green face and he had eyebrows that came out to here and the costume which were difficult to get in and out of, so we just put robes over them, and walked outside the lot in order to go get some lunch and of course cars [were] screeching to a halt and yelling things out to us. And so there's Leonard, he looks like a pointy-eared hobgoblin and we go into a restaurant and the whole place starts yelling and screaming because we looked so funny.
You put funny people in funny costumes and paint them green and we could talk about anything we wanted to, because that was the only thing that fascinated Gene about this particular genre.
Gene had a lot of close friends who helped him. Bob [Robert H. Justman] helped him. There's a name that has been around for ever because Bob was on other shows with him. Poor Gene L. Coon... I think we killed him. He died very, very early as a matter of fact... You'd give him a script overnight and he would bring back a shooting script the next morning. One that we could actually go up on the stage, point the camera, light the lights and say, "roll them". It was remarkable. I'd say if anybody was really closest to helping him put those out I would say is Gene Coon. There was a team around him. It was a great big team. Gene didn't do it all by himself, although for the first two years there wasn't one single script that got by. That's why the writers didn't like him that much, but there wasn't one script that got by without Gene's signature all over it.
Then, all of a sudden, here I am in the Press Room in the White House and walking in with the guards, who handed me three little pieces of paper asking me to send pictures to the guards at the White House.
When we started out in '64... I was playing Number One, which was a woman second in command of a starship. Now that was innovative, but of course NBC got ahold of it and "You've got to get rid of the broad. No one will believe a woman second in control of a big starship." They said, "You've got to get rid of the guy with the ears 'cos he looks too Satanic." But the third thing was you've got to make it more men than women, because otherwise they're going to think there's a lot of hanky panky going on in the starship. Gene, realising that he was hitting his head against a wall, and realising what the mentality of the people who were making those decisions was, figured he would do in my case, although he knew it was going to break my heart, figured he would fight and keep the Spock character and marry the woman. So we all got basically what we wanted, and as far as the women are concerned, he figured that 30 good women could handle a crew of 300 anyway. So that's how we ended up with our crew.
The best way in the world to advertise is to get somebody else to run around with the name of your product on their person or showing it around somewhere and not only that but they're paying for it.
I said wouldn't it be great - when Gene Roddenberry died if we could bury him in space. And that word just got around and people started to talk about it and one day they came and said, "Would you like to send Gene's ashes up?". I got to send a little vial of Gene's ashes up - I forget what mission it was, but Colonel Wetherby was the one who took them up as a piece of his personal property. Those guys are allowed two pounds each as they go up. So he took those little vial of ashes with him as part of his two pounds. We watched it on television, the launch, and of course the tears are coming down everybody's eyes, this is the way it was supposed to be. He's up there now going around every 90 minutes looking down saying, "What have you done to my show?".
You can take any one of our stories that we use right now, put western clothes on us, stick us out in the west and they'll work just as well - any single one of them - because they're stories about people, they're stories about things.
When you think of the age of the universe and the size of the universe, of course there is other intelligent life out there. Where we can find some that we can understand, that we can communicate with, that may be the problem.
I'm going to take over on the Techno Comics so I'm going to be dealing in the children's merchandising type department. But that's just setting it up and having somebody run it.
I have absolutely nothing to do with the Star Trek franchise. I haven't had for many, many years. Gene sold out all of his rights to Star Trek way back fifteen, almost twenty years ago. So, they ask nothing. I volunteer nothing. They invite me to a few of their shindigs. I'll bet you I haven't been on that lot in two years.
You go through at least the first two years of Star Trek and you find some amazing stuff. Everything that was going on Gene put into the series. He just put strange costumes on the actors and painted them funny colours and left the same situation in.
See, Gene was a fantastic storyteller, probably the best in the business. What he did was tell stories. He didn't lay plots and ideas and things like that — he told stories. You can take any one of our stories that we use right now, put western clothes on us, stick us out in the west and they'll work just as well — any single one of them — because they're stories about people.
I don't think we're wasting people in space.
Gene's idea was how mankind is going to react to aliens once they get here. Almost certainly they are either here or they will get here, whether they announce themselves or not. Who knows?
It was the studio mainly. They wanted a show set in space. Gene wanted to do one that was more science fiction. So he decided to combine them both and see what happens.
We didn't have a background for her, so I created one. To me, she was from a different planet where they actually numbered people. She was one of a litter, let's say. The only time they would breed was when they needed people — they would clone them and try to get as much intelligence into each one as they could. As they were growing up they would take their place, and be given a position according to their excellence. She actually turned into Number One and therefore went onto a starship. It was a way of life, just a manner of being; she hadn’t done anything particularly wonderful until she got there and met people. She was bred for excellence, that's all. At the time, she was the one who really didn't have any emotions. Gene basically suggested that. That was the Number One character; that was my character.
We're having the first computer-generated comic strip in the United States.
Why should we put 24 robotic missions up on Mars somewhere? That's silly. We could put people up on Mars. Why not let them do it because when something goes wrong only men can evaluate it. They can say what went wrong. One little dial isn't working correctly. Well, what's wrong with that dial? Somebody who is up there can take a look at it probably and come back and say maybe I don't know what it is but there it is and then we can fix it.
You know what? Gene Roddenberry wouldn't have been bothered by it at all. Gene did the best work he could at the time, but he was also all about the future. I think he'd have thought it was terrific that the show was being made to look better because of new technology.
This is a new land, this is a new place, this is a new world, this is unknown. This is uncharted, this is all there is. We don't have any other place to go. I always quote Gene as saying "Why are we now going into space? Well, why did we trouble to look past the next mountain? Our prime obligation to ourselves is to make the unknown known. We are on a journey to keep an appointment with whatever we are." And that was his whole philosophy of Star Trek, of life, of everything else.
Man must be in space - that is what we are destined for. There is nothing else that we can do.
Gene Roddenberry was never really satisfied with the way any of them came out. It was just his own frustration at wanting everything to be perfect. It was nothing against the people he worked with.
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen