THE REALM OF STAR TREK "Much have I traveled in the realms of gold . . ." —Keats In the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., where tribute is paid to man's efforts to go where no man has gone before-—there in the halls that celebrate man's reaching for the sky, the moon, the stars—there among the memories of the Wright Brothers at Kittyhawk and the Apollo astronauts leaving footprints on the face of the moon —there beside Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis is STAR TREK'S starship Enterprise. No higher tribute could be paid to the spirit of STAR TREK ... STAR TREK LIVES! Bantam Star Trek titles Ask your bookseller for the books you have missed SPOCK, MESSIAH! A Star Trek Novel by Theodore R. Cogswell and Charles A. Spano, Jr. SPOCK MUST DIE! by James Blish STAR TREK 1 by James Blish STAR TREK 2 by James Blish STAR TREK 3 by James Blish STAR TREK 4 by James Blish STAR TREK 5 by James Blish STAR TREK 6 by James Blish STAR TREK 7 by James Blish STAR TREK 8 by James Blish STAR TREK 9 by James Biish STAR TREK 10 by James Blish STAR TREK 11 by James Blish STAR TREK: THE NEW VOYAGES Edited by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath About Star Trek STAR TREK LIVES! by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Sondra Marshak and Joan Winston STAR TREK LIVES! Jacqueline Lichlenherq, Sandra Marshak and Joan Winston RLI: VLM 9 (VLR 8-10) IL 6-adult STAK TREK LIVES! A Bantam Book / July 1975 2nd printing 3rd printing 4th printing 5th printing 6th printing 7th printing All rights reserved. Copyright © 1975 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Sondra Marshak and Joan Winston. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. For information address: Bantam Books, Inc. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For permission to reprint all works in this volume by each of the following authors, grateful acknowledgement is made to the holders of copyright, publishers or representatives named below and on the following page (page v), which constitutes an extension of the copyright page. "The Vulcan Love Myth" by M. L. "Steve" Barnes. Eridanl Triad #3, © 2972 by Gail Barton, Doris D. Beetem and Judith Brownlee. "The Vulcan Love Story" by Doris D. Beetem. Eridanl Triad #2, © 1971 by Gail Barton, Doris D. Beetem and Judith Brownlee. "The Spock Premise" by Myma Culbreath. The Fire Bringer, Vol. 1, #5, © 1974 by The Fire Bringer. Future Shock, © 1970 by Alvin Toffler, Random House, Inc., Bantam Books, Inc., 1971. "The Gemini Problem" © 1973 by Walter Breen. The Making of Star Trek © 1968 by Stephen E. Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry, Ballantine Books, New York. "The Role of Science Fiction" by Ben Bova. Science Fiction Today and Tomorrow, Reginald Bretnor, editor. © 1974 by Regi-nald Bretnor. Harper & Row, Publishers, New York. "Joy in the Morning" by Claudine Marie deSisi. GRUP #2, © 1973 by GRUP. Alternate Universe #4 by Shirley Maiewski, Anna Mary Hall, and Virginia Tilley, © 1974 by Shirley Maiewski, Anna Mary Hall, and Virginia Tilley. "A Rose for Miranda" by Ruth Berman. Eridani Triad #3, © 1972 by Gail Barton, Doris D. Beetem and Judith Brownlee. "Tower of Terror" and "The Winged Dreamers" by Jennifer Guttridge, Tricorder Readings. Vol. U, #2, © 1972 by Jennifer Guttridge and Tricorder Readings. The Crossing Lords by Carolyn Meredith, Thollan Web #6, © 1973 by Carolyn Meredith. "Ni Var*' by Claire Gabriel. Previously unpublished.' "Lament for the Unsung Dead" by Jane Peyton, Spockanalia #3, © 1968 by Sherna Burley and Devra Michelle Langsam. The Daneswoman by Laura T. Basta. Tholian Web #3, © by Laura T. Basta. "From Whatever Distant Hill" by Judith Brownlee, Eridani Triad #2, © 1971 by Gail Barton, Doris D. Beetem, and Judith Brownlee. "To Seek Thee Out" by Judith Brownlee. Eridani Triad #1, © 7970 by Gail Barton and Doris D. Beetem. "Hadla of The Iron Mountain" by Doris The Younger Beetem. Eridani Triad #1, © 1970 by Gail Barton and Doris D. Beetem. "Encounter" by Catherine Blakeley, GRUP #1, © 1972 by GRUP. "The Price of a Handful of Snowflakes" by M. L. "Steve" Barnes, Impulse #5, © M. L. Barnes. Spock Enslaved by Diane Steiner. © 1974 by Diane Steiner. "Remembrance of Echoes" by Laura T. Basta. Babel #1, © i972, by Laura T. Basta. "To Summon the Future" by Juanita Coulson. Spockanalia #5, © 1970 by Devra Michelle Langsam, Sherna Burley and Deborah Michel Langsam. "Galaxy Bookshelf by Theodore Sturgeon. © Galaxy Magazine, December 1973. "Random Factors," letter by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Algol, A Magazine About Science Fiction, Vol. 11, No. 2, Issue No. 22, © May 1974 by Andrew Porter and Marion Zimmer Bradley. "The Last Day of the Enterprise" by Joan Winston. The MONSTER TIMES, VOL. L, #2, © 1972 by The MONSTER TIMES. Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words ''Bantam Books" and the portrayal of a bantam, is registered in the United States Patent Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, Inc., 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10019, PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA DEDICATION Jacqueline Lichtenberg: To the Star Trek Fan—especially the one who lives isolated among those who cannot understand why he loves (of all crazy things) a television show. We wanted to say: "You are not alone." Or its corollary: "Let me help." Perhaps you will find some words here to help you explain why it is not, after all, crazy. Sondra Marshak: To Mrs. Anna Hassan, keeping a word I gave her long ago, as she always kept close to me as mother and more than mother. To Alan, my proof that men like that do exist. Joan Winston: To the New York Star Trek Convention Committee. To Dick Burns and Jim McGowan —for believing in me. Contents Foreword by Gene Roddenberry ix Acknowledgements xi Introduction: The Realm of Gold 1 Star Trek in the Smithsonian . . . Can the ¦ spirit of Star Trek affect the real world? Chapter 1: The Discovery Effect 9 Fans discover Star Trek, and each other . . . The electrifying effect of discovery ... Nude male centerfolds and pedigreed tribbles ... Is it crazy to be a fan? Chapter 2: The Tailored Effect 34 Star Trek pioneers the Tailored Effect for television . . . Tailored appeal vs. tasteless pap . . . Escape from the "play it safe" syndrome ... Toward a new theory of television . . . Star Trek's high intensity Tailored Effects. Chapter 3: "I Should Never Have Answered The Phone" 52 Joan Winston's adventures and misadventures as publicity chairman of the historic first New York Star Trek Convention. Chapter 4: The Spock Charisma Effect 71 The most startling Tailored Effect of all... Spock's charisma, and Kirk's... Spock Psy- chological Visibility Effect, Sex Effect, Admiration Effect, Spock Premise Effect, Future-Shock Effect, Half-Breed Effect, Kirk/ Spock Relationship Effect . . . Leonard Nimoy's exclusive analysis ... Gene Rodden-berry's. Chapter 5: The Optimism Effect 106 Star Trek creators' comments on the Optimism Effect . . . The wide impact of the show's philosophy of optimism . . . Star Trek as "Sesame Street'. . . Roddenberry's personal philosophy . . . Vulcan's IDIC as a symbol of optimism . . . Star Trek as experience. Chapter 6: The Goal Effect 126 Art as fuel for setting goals and achieving them .. . Candid interviews with Gene Rod-denberry, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Dorothy Fontana and other creators . . . Heroes like that do exist . . . A "drop" of gold. Chapter 7: "Beauty May Be Only Skin Deep, But Chopped Liver Can Get You Anywhere or Six Glorious Days On The Star Trek Set" 173 . A fan's dream came true for Joan Winston as she spent a week on the Star Trek set— a funny and bittersweet week—the last week of the filming of Star Trek. Chapter 8: What Are They Doing Now? 201 The creators of Star Trek live . . . Their goals and achievements since Star Trek —and hopes for its return ... Personal notes and anecdotes by Joan Winston. Chapter 9: Do-It-Yourself Star Trek— The Fan Fiction 221 Why fan fiction? . . . Why so many female writers of Star Trek fiction? . . . Pervasive themes of Star Trek fiction—with extensive quotes . . . Star Trek as school for writers. Foreword One thing is clear. That ugly little advertising box we presently call television has an awesome potential for moving the hearts and minds of people. Whatever the reasons for the Star Trek fan phenomenon, its very existence is evidence that television is too powerful a thing to remain much longer the almost exclusive property of purveyors of ales, cakes and ointments. If television can bend minds and capture imaginations while in its present rather primitive stage of development, what of tomorrow? It seems to me necessary that we begin to use today's telecommunications marvels to draw all of humanity together in a free exchange of ideas, art and knowledge ... or its great mind-bending potential will be used by a powerful few to own and manipulate the rest of us. The making of Star Trek was very much our effort to make the right choice now. For myself and the remarkable cast, production staff and crew who somehow came together during those bruising, exhausting, completely lovely years, it was an effort to prove that people are willing to think beyond the petty beliefs which have for so long kept humanity divided. We used to joke that we suspected there was an intelligent life form out there, and we aimed to use our show to signal some of our thoughts to them. But never in our wildest imaginings did we expect the volume and intensity of the replies we received. What of that life form which signaled back? What is the measure of the Star Trek fan? Among thousands of them I have met over the years—people of widely varied ages, occupations and backgrounds—one unusual quality seems to have been shared by all. Of course, when defining the quality of those who appreciate his work, a writer is mightily tempted to pick unusual intelligence. However, there is another quality which I choose to regard as a higher compliment to all of us who made the show. The typical Star Trek fan is invariably a remarkably gentle human being. "Gentle" as in the lovely but too often archaic concept of gentleman and gentlewoman—the kind of gentleness which comes out of an affection for this universe in general and for life in particular. It was this capacity for affection, of course, which led the Star Trek fan to approve and appreciate our view that humankind is not best characterized by evil—as the visionless would have us believe—but, rather, that its past has been a lusty infant's period of learning by trial and error. Whither this child? It is moving toward a proud adulthood, of course. And in time, perhaps beyond even that. The fans and I dream the same dreams about such things. This is our bond. Gene Roddenberry January, 1975 Acknowledgements To acknowledge all of the people who helped to make this book possible would fill the book. AcknowK edging even a few of them has filled a good part of it. But we particularly want to thank all the people who wrote us hundreds of letters or wrote insightful answers to the questionnaires we sent out for our research, especially in the early years when Jacqueline worked on that alone. And we must thank a few people very specially for help above and beyond . . . All of the creators of Star Trek, for creating Star Trek—and many of them for long hours of candid, exciting interviews and answers to questions never asked before; Gene Roddenberry, in a class by himself; Leonard Nimoy, in another one; Dorothy Fontana, DeForest Kelley, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols for many fine hours. And, more briefly, William Shatner, James Doohan, Walter Koenig. Among personal debts, Jacqueline wants especially to acknowledge Judy Thomases, a fan friend and neighbor who not only provided comments and encouragement, but often drove Jacqueline hundreds of miles on the business of this book—and wouldn't even let Jacqueline pay the tolls. Sondra wants to acknowledge her mother, Anna Hassan, for much active assistance in making travel and writing possible; and her husband, Dr. Alan Marshak, for the same and for invaluable advice—among other things. We had intended to restrain ourselves (with difficulty) from acknowledgments to each other. But Joan insists that she must thank Jacqueline and Sondra for bringing her into the project, and especially Sondra for her "endless patience and roaring temper. Sondra put me through the flame, and if I'm a better person, you can blame it on her." All three of us want to acknowledge Myrna Cul-breath, who has become Sondra's partner in working on a book based on Myrna's article, "The Spock Premise" (which is quoted and referred to at some length in this book), and on other Star Trek projects such as a television Special. Living in the same city now, these two people have become so close that they work almost as one. And through Sondra, Myrna contributed much to the final stages of work on this book. Finally, we want to thank each and every "Star Trek" fan. If they had not been able to see the merit and the lasting meaning of the magical realm of Star Trek, there would have been no book to write. Jacqueline Lichtenberg Sondra Marshak Joan Winston Monsey, New York Baton Rouge, Louisiana New York, New York January 1, 1975 Introduction: The Realm of Gold "Much have I traveled in the realms of gold . . ." John Keats, "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" In the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C, where tribute is paid to man's efforts to go where no man has gone before—there in the halls which celebrate man's reaching for the sky, the moon, the stars; there among the memories of the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk and the Apollo astronauts on the face of the moon—there, beside Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis, is: Star Trek's starship Enterprise. No higher tribute could be paid to the spirit of "Star Trek"—except that tribute which has been paid and is being paid by millions and tens of millions of people: the supreme tribute of letting the spirit and meaning of Star Trek's bright vision of man's future touch their own lives. Man has mastered the sky and reached the moon. When we have reached the stars, will the starfar-1 2 Star Trek Lives! ing adventurers of the future look back to our present and wonder what led the people of our time to dream the impossible—and make it come true? Will they wonder not only how men mastered technology by leaps and bounds, but also how man—difficult and dangerous creature that he is—survived difficult and dangerous times without destroying not only our present but theirs? Will they look for a clue in the model of the U.S.S. Enterprise hanging beside The Spirit of St. Louis? It is already apparent that Star Trek is much more than just a television show which came and went. Already it has been called the show that will not die. The efforts of millions have been directed toward its rebirth. There has never been anything like the response to Star Trek. Something in Star Trek moved people profoundly, far beyond the normal impact of a television series. What was that "something"? Will future scholars find Star Trek such a bright vision that it actually inspired people to create a brighter world? Will they conclude that the dream was father to the fact? The Star Trek phenomenon is only a very few years old, and it is by no means dying out. Perhaps it is only just barely beginning to get properly organized. Check back with us in another century. But meanwhile this we do know: millions of people have been moved profoundly. New generations of Mds are growing up with it. New adults, who missed Star Trek on the network, are finding it through syndicated reruns. The audience of the show continues to grow in an unprecedented fashion. Efforts for revival continue. Star Trek lives! At the end of the first season, when Star Trek was first canceled by the network, people wrote to protest—to the staggering total of one million letters. Star Trek Lives! 3 That should have told somebody something. As a matter of fact, the networks have since discovered that if Star Trek had been judged not by the system of ratings then in use but by the study of "demographics" brought to bear a little later, it would have been considered a smash hit. The demographic study of its audience—considering factors like age, education, buying power, etc.—would have shown that Star Trek was reaching exactly the audience the networks and advertisers most wanted to reach: young and young-minded people, bright people, people receptive to new ideas, people who often made buying decisions, people from all walks of life but also some of the liveliest, most active people—as might have been inferred from the fact that so many of them took the trouble to fight for the show they loved. That has not changed. It has only gone on and increased. The show's audience is vastly wider now in reruns than it ever was in its first-run days. Its reruns compete very successfully with new prime-time shows, and with the network news—years after it was expected to die. The syndicated reruns have become such a gold mine for the producers that they have been reluctant to undercut that market by reviving the show—despite the letters which continue to pour in to Paramount and NBC urging revival. But the hunger for Star Trek does not die. For want of new episodes, fans watch the old— for the tenth or twentieth times. Similarly, they read and reread the old episodes as adapted into narrative fiction by James Blish and published by Bantam—to the tune of several million copies sold. Most fans have all of the Blish books. The animation scripts now being expanded for publication, David Gerrold's books, and The Making of Star Trek, by Stephen E. Whitfield and Gene Rod-denberry, are all doing well. Besides professionally published books, there are hundreds of Star Trek fan magazines (called "fanzines") containing fiction and nonfiction written both for and by fans. There's a Star Trek Concordance 4 Star Trek Lives! compiled by Bjo Trimble (who spearheaded that million-letter "Save Star Trek" campaign). The Concordance indexes and cross-references everything you always wanted to know about Star Trek episodes—and only a fan would not be afraid to ask. There are hundreds—possibly even thousands— of fan clubs, small and large. There are mammoth organizations, with tens of thousands of members, which are devoted to Star Trek and its revival. One of these, the Star Trek Association for Revival (STAR), is reaching over 15,000 fans scattered across the nation with its newsletter Star-borne. STAR is still growing, forming new chapters on college campuses and elsewhere. The Star Trek Welcommittee, ably run by Mrs. Helen Young of Houston, Texas, is set up to welcome the hundreds of new fans who discover Star Trek fandom each month. They can receive a directory of clubs, organizations and fanzines—and a personal reply to their questions, which are answered by one of Star Trek Welcommittee's well-informed volunteers. Most of these organizations are new and young— some very new. Undoubtedly, the major event touching off this recent surge of activity was the first New York Star Trek Convention in January 1972. It was organized by a small committee of New York fans who thought it would be fun to get a few kindred spirits together—maybe even a few hundred. They got three thousand. And then they stopped counting and let everyone else in. The convention made the front page of Variety, the "bible" of show business, and rated a major article in TV Guide, which reaches more homes than any other magazine. Suddenly it was an explosion. Fans who had been all alone, thinking that they were the last of the true fans left, suddenly realized that there was somebody out there like them. Thousands of somebodies. Tens of thousands. Millions. If you could get three thousand people to travel Star Trek Lives! 5 to a convention—with only a relatively modest amount of advance publicity—then how many more were out there? The next year, the New York Star Trek Convention drew 6,000 people. The following year, 1974, it drew 15,000-—and had to turn another 6,000 away at the door. Meanwhile, some fourteen other Star Trek conventions had been organized across the country, many more are being planned. Gatherings of fans draw people from all over the country and almost all over the world. Star Trek is shown in virtually every country this side of the Iron Curtain—and occasionally a fan letter even wanders out to us from the other side. Looking at any gathering of Star Trek fans, it is obvious that the love of Star Trek draws people from far distances, of all shapes, sizes and descriptions, from toddlers to great-grandmothers, from all backgrounds and educational levels, from all races and nationalities. (You can even see a Vulcan or two—ears, eyebrows, Science Officer uniforms, the whole bit. Not to mention Klingons, Romulans, Salt Vampires and the like —and not only at the costume contests, which are a part of every convention, but wandering cheerfully through hotel lobbies, doubtless giving the uninitiated quite a turn.) The Star Trek ideal of delight in diversity—of taking pleasure in each others' differences—as symbolized by Mr. Spock's Vulcan philosophy of the IDIC (infinite diversity in infinite combinations), is nowhere more in evidence than at a Star Trek convention. At, say, the Vul-Con convention in New Orleans, it is hard to remember that less than ten years ago network executives raised serious objection to the inclusion in the Star Trek crew of the black communications officer, Uhura, or the alien, Mr. Spock, for fear that the show would not be picked up by stations in the South . . . particularly when you see a boy quite unselfconsciously dressed as Spock, complete with Vul- 6 Star Trek Lives! can pointed ears—and the boy also happens to be black. But when you remember, it strikes you as some kind of index of how far we have come in how short a time. And you wonder how much of that might be because of Star Trek. It is not a frivolous speculation. Most television shows, at best, follow cultural trends. Star Trek had clearcut ideals of its own. They were well ahead of their time. Some have already become the standards of the present. Racial equality— extended even to aliens, even to an alien who seemed at first to be a viciously murderous monster, (the episode, "Devil in the Dark") was only one such idea. And yet, when the show was on the air, there were riots in the streets, bombings and burnings, lynchings and assassinations. No one would claim that we have fully solved that problem yet, but we have certainly made headway. No one would claim that Star Trek was the cause of all the improvement. But it is still harder to believe that it had no effect, when twenty million people tuned in Star Trek and saw Mr. Spock being treated as friend and brother by Captain Kirk, saw the black and the Russian and the Oriental and the Southerner and the others treating Spock and each other with respect and love. Moreover, they saw Lieutenant Uhura being treated with respect and holding a position of demanding responsibility—not only as a black but as a woman. If creator-producer Gene Roddenberry had had his way, as in the first pilot of Star Trek, there would have been a woman as second-in-command of the Enterprise. This was in 1966. Few public figures had ever heard of women's liberation, except Gene Roddenberry. Ironically, Star Trek was so far ahead of its time that the network turned thumbs-down on the female second-in-command, but the ide.als of equality that Star Trek helped to promote have moved so quickly Star Trek Lives! 7 that now even Star Trek is accused of having some male-chauvinist tendencies. It's tough to be a prophet! Will the other Star Trek ideals triumph in the real world? We cannot be certain. But the deepest conviction of the creators of Star Trek was, and is, that triumph is possible, that we can win. And Star Trek said: Won't it be fun? The fun, the seriousness, the profound reasons and consequences—these are some of the reasons we wanted to write this book: to take a deeper look at some of the reasons and to share the delight. And who are we? Well, we are fans ourselves, first of all—bringing different backgrounds and sharing a common delight. We'll tell you more about ourselves, and our discovery of the effects of Star Trek on each of us, in the first chapter. Meanwhile, it's only fair to warn you that we have shared the writing and research in such a way that there is a considerable blending of our diversities, and it is sometimes a little difficult to tell who is doing what. We trust that you will forgive us an occasional editorial "we" when it is not too clear which one of us is speaking—and doesn't have to be. And we're sure you'll forgive Joan Winston an editorial "I" in her chapters on spending a week on the Star Trek set, and on helping to organize those New York conventions. (We drew the line at trying to say that William Shatner told "us" that "our" gray wool dress "fit like crazy.") You will find in this book some ideas about Star Trek which you haven't seen before—our ideas, the ideas of the creators and stars of Star Trek as they recall those years in more depth and with the perspective of time, and the ideas of fans whose lives have been changed by it. You'll find excerpts from our many hours of candid and penetrating interviews with people like Gene 8 Star Trek Lives! Roddenberry, Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner and others, answering questions they've never been asked before. You'll also find an update on what has been happening to Star Trek and its creators and stars, the latest prospects for its revival and recent developments in Star Trek fandom. And we hope you'll find some of the fun. Most of all, perhaps, we hope you will find that you are not alone! The Discovery Effect "Gazed on each other with a wild surmise . . ." John Keats, "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" It's something like discovering gold. It's like stumbling over a brand-new deposit of "dilithium" crystals—and not a Klingon in sight to mar your joy. It's like finding that the tribbles haven't munched the quadro-triticale, after all, and the Klingons have egg on their faces and the Romulans are safely behind the neutral zone and all's right with the galaxy. There you are, in the midst of whatever personal demons or small annoyances haunt your own life, and the rather large problems that haunt your planet, and then—suddenly there is Star Trek. The First Discovery is that you love it. The Second Discovery is that so do an astonishing variety of other people. They are doctors and dockworkers, Ph.D.s and students, housewives and children, businessmen and 9 10 Star Trek Lives! employees, writers and artists, actors and stagehands, NASA scientists and missionaries—you name it, and you'll find it somewhere in Star Trek fandom. And singly or in bunches—sometimes very large bunches—they do all sorts of remarkable and fascinating things. They gather—18,000 strong—at conventions. They write letters in the millions—to Paramount, to NBC, to their local TV stations, to their Congressmen, to newspapers, to anyone who even might listen. Most of them are positively determined to revive their show. They march in parades, circulate petitions, form organizations, think up zany stunts. (The entire graduating class of Princeton writes to protest the cancellation of Star Trek; MIT pickets NBC.) They even offer to take up a collection and give Gene Roddenberry the money to produce new episodes. (He had to decline for legal reasons.) Many of them create their own Star Trek. Thousands write their own Star Trek stories, or create artwork which hundreds of editors publish in amateur fan magazines. (Some run to several hundred pages and may cost as much as $5.00 apiece to print.) It was a Star Trek fanzine which was the first to shatter all precedent with a shot which should have been heard—or seen—'round the galaxy: a thoroughly nude male centerfold of the elegant Mr. Spock. The female fans who scored that coup did it long before Playgirl and Viva. Maybe they started something! They followed up with an artist's conception of the exotic Mr. Sulu and surrounded the foldout centerfolds with stories in which some heroine nearly always managed to get raped by—or, if necessary, to rape!— the volcanic if somewhat standoffish Vulcan, to the considerable delight of the logical Mr. Spock, and the greater delight of the heroines. Nor did such writers ignore the challenge to womanhood flung down by Captain James T. (Tomcat) Kirk. There are even more fascinating plans for him in upcoming fanzine stories. Some of these manage to Star Trek Lives! 11 make nude centerfolds seem almost tame in comparison. Not to be outdone in imaginative uses of Star Trek (well, not much, anyway), male fans have been known to use it to organize military units—and one real-life Captain Kirk (Captain Pierre D. Kirk) bluffed his company's way through a Vietcong ambush using Star Trek dialogue. Star Trek fans seldom do things by halves. They have been known to build entire, life-size, working replicas of the bridge of the Enterprise—to say nothing of models, miniatures, props, etc. They produce entire stage plays and make their own films. They collect everything from film clips to fanzines to pedigreed tribbles. Fans fly from one end of the country to another to go to conventions, and have been accused of supporting the post office and the phone company with mind-boggling volumes of correspondence and long-distance calls. (The writers of this book have been accused of being the sole support of both companies—-particularly by a couple of husbands and assorted friends.) Are all of these people crazy? Well, they have certainly been called that. They've been called other things—of which "trekkies" is one of the more printable. Some have defended themselves by wearing the label like a badge of honor. Some have taken a stand, saying, in effect: If this be madness, make the most of it. But—are they crazy? Are they all children, teenagers, or people with nothing to do and nothing but time on their hands? Well, some are certainly children and teenagers— and you would be hard put to find brighter, more pleasant youngsters. But many are men and women with advanced university degrees and responsible positions. Let's let some of them speak for themselves. For example, the originator of the nude male centerfold, Mrs. "Steve" Barnes, reports: 12 Star Trek Lives! I overcame a rather strict and almost Victorian upbringing to acquire the dubious honor of being known among my friends as the Original Dirty Old Broad. This came about as a result of a very pornographic Star Trek story that I wrote for a friend's birthday and wound up reading aloud at a mildly inebriated New Year's Eve party. Star Trek seems to have taken possession of my senses, and although that is not unusual, stressing the sexual side of the show is. Somehow my life does not seem destined to run down the usual paths. Starting with a long-term marriage, and encompassing activities that included archery, competitive pistol shooting, skiing, and breeding and showing purebred dogs, my life more resembles something that would interest our Mr. Sulu with its variety. The hobbies that appear to have "taken" include the dog-breeding and Star Trek. And this past year has been a bonus for both interests. It enveloped a trip to the New York Star Trek Con, and one to Milwaukee in the name of fandom; two letters from Gene Rod-denberry and one from Leonard Nimoy, the notorious and well-received publishing of GRUP's first issue and the floods of fan mail that followed. [GRUP is the fanzine with the centerfold.] The year is winding up with an assignment for me to judge my beloved beagles on the West Coast. Mrs. Barnes was one of the lucky ones. She discovered Star Trek early, had a few friends who also became fans, and remained aware of the continued existence of at least some of Star Trek fandom, despite cancellation. Many others came late to Star Trek or late to fandom. Until after the staggeringly successful first Star Trek Convention in New York, the most common path into fandom was the Accidental Discovery—some happy accident by which a friend of a friend happened to know about a Star Trek fanzine and you tried to track it down and maybe finally got in touch with one small group of fans and then another. The bombshell of the convention and the TV Guide coverage changed all that. Suddenly, isolated Star Trek Lives! 13 individuals and groups from all over the country were clamoring to be admitted to the Inner Circle of Fandom—to join the Star Trek club. But there wasn't exactly any such animal. There was no single unified organization which could be called the Star Trek club. (Still isn't. There are several good and big ones now that serve various different functions. But at that time S.T.A.R. [or just STAR], the Star Trek Association for Revival, was just getting started. The Star Trek Welcommittee had not been conceived, much less born. And it was devilishly difficult to get information.) One lady who ran into this problem eventually tamed it by taking it into her own hands. She is Mrs. Helen Young of Houston, now the chairman of Welcommittee. The mother of two teenage boys, she has a degree hi history and a long history of responsible public experience: Carnival ticket chairman three years, PTA membership drive room-mother . . . staffing clinic with volunteer moms, Ways and Means chairman for junior high; secretary for officers running subdivision affairs and local traffic committee; president, treasurer, membership chairman and business manager for large fund-raising affairs for my sorority; county Cancer Drive committee member; volunteer secretary at county Republican headquarters, also precinct chairman; Cub Scouts den mother ... And she was to need all of that experience to prepare her for what Star Trek got her into. My group of boys has plunged me up to my ears into this fantastic world of Star Trek fandom. I suddenly seem to be spending half my time writing letters seeking information, then sorting and sifting the results as received. Do not let me give you the idea that I am disinterested and only serve as their secretary—I am just as hooked as they are, if not more so. All of my boys and I, myself, are quite latecomers—we saw 14 Star Trek Lives! our very first Star Trek episode on local reruns three years after network cancellation. (You may well ask where we have been all these past years of Star Trek activity—apparently in total oblivion!) After a month of my sons refusing to eat, play or even speak between the hours of 6 and 7:00,1 sat down to see what was so enthralling— and, as Mr. Spock would say, I found it "fascinating!" Eventually, word got around that the Youngs' house was off limits between 6 and 7— phone off hook, doorbell temporarily disconnected, etc. I was put to work keeping meticulous records of every episode. My son Russ taped the episodes, and woe to anyone who so much as coughed. The reason for our peculiar behavior spread, and boys began to join us every evening, some coming from more than a mile away. (New Channel 26 can only be received clearly with a $45 antenna addition, and we naturally got one just for Star Trek.) Strict rules for attendance were rigidly enforced, due to our new popularity —no speaking on threat of expulsion, etc., and late arrivals had to scale a 6-foot high fence (kept locked because of the swimming pool), then stand visible outside a window and wait until a commercial to be let in, for fear of ruining the tape. This summer, Channel 26 took Star Trek off for a brief rest, so we all came back to the world. In the meantime, various boys have taken on jobs that appealed to them: Russ built a helm and navigation console—so far it has over 120 switches, buttons and colored lights, but all the wiring is not yet completed. Hal Wilson is the extrovert, trying to get a club organized and hunting up newly discovered fans. My second son, Curt, built models, phasers, communicators and medical instruments. The walls of his room are plastered with large, homemade drawings of the diagrams of the Enterprise, both interior and exterior. And I am record-keeper and secretary. I tell you all this so you may understand how totally dedicated and involved we were, without ever knowing or even suspecting that anyone else cared. Star Trek Lives! 15 It was the article about the New York convention in TV Guide that opened our eyes. We were both infuriated and delighted. Infuriated because we had been missing out on all those swell things the article mentioned, and delighted to know how many fans were "with" us and how much material was available to us. Finding all that material turned out to be quite a different matter, as Mrs. Young soon learned. After many unanswered letters, and many weeks of anxious waiting, it became plain to her that Star Trek fan-dom was in a chaotic state of disorganization. Mrs. Young decided to turn her considerable talents and energies to taming the problem. She made the idea of Welcommittee work as it was intended—a warm, personal way to deal with this flood of «ager, hungry new fans, offering a constantly updated directory of fandom and a personal answer to questions— even tough ones. With the help of over a hundred volunteers throughout the country, Helen Young intends to see that nobody else has to go through what she went through. (For information send Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope to: STW, c/o Shirley Maiewski, 481 Main Street, Hatfield, MA 01038.) Helen also takes a deep, personal interest in young fans whose parents may not understand then-youngsters' interest in Star Trek. At the request of one young fan who had asked her to try to help his parents understand, Helen wrote a letter which might be a letter to parents—and friends—everywhere: I am most happy with Star Trek and Star Trek fandom, and am enthusiastically encouraging interest and activity in it for my sons and their friends. I look with horror upon many things the youth of today are doing, and I am convinced that if they were busy with interesting pastimes, they'd not be into such dubious behavior and shocking attitudes. I've found that Star Trek fandom channels the young people's interests into so many diverse constructive outlets, depending upon where their interests lie: 16 Star Trek Lives! writing fiction or satire or humor, creating, organizing, artwork, poetry, cartooning, editing, publishing, study of language and cultures, technical studies, science projects, space, photography and cinematography, costume design, improvement of TV fare, serious study of science fiction, concern with mankind and the world's future, etc. And it isn't just the "kids" who are actively interested and involved in Welcommittee. There's the very dedicated physician, Dr. William Fischer, a Philadelphian; Shirley Maiewski, who is in her late forties and works at the University of Massachusetts; Janice Scott, a widow of 37, and an outstanding artist; Diana Hall, 23, a medical librarian who is in training to go to South America and work in a Baptist hospital there, and countless others, including a 27-year-old former NASA technician. We have had letters requesting information from several college deans who plan to set up courses in Star Trek—the episodes and ideas are often used as examples in psychology, logic, writing, science. There's a first-grade teacher who is using Star Trek as a teaching aid for slow learners. The Smithsonian Institution has started a Star Trek section in their archives, for they strongly feel that great advances in space science and rocketry were, and will be, made by men who were early influenced by s-f. It is not only children who suffer from the lack of understanding of those closest to them. The authors of this book have in their files hundreds of letters from "secret" fans. These are not children or teenagers, but grown men and women—respectable, solid citizens who know their own family situation to be such that they dare not confess the depth of their feeling for Star Trek. They have tried, perhaps, and have run into such derision, teasing or outright rage that they now feel compelled to hide their love like a secret vice. They may have drawers full of Star Trek stories they have Star Trek Lives! 17 written—often in total ignorance of the existence of fanzines. One of the startling—and impressive—things about a passion for Star Trek is that it can exist in total isolation or in the face of hostility. It is not a matter of being caught up in someone else's enthusiasm, of going along with the crowd. Many fans have developed a certain wry humor about the whole thing. Anna Mary Hall, who is "33, no real ambitions (I mean no great desires to be rich, famous, married, etc. I do want to see the Grand Canyon, both oceans and go to the moon), Master's in Education, trying to cope with and possibly educate 30 third-graders, lose weight, and finish the Star Trek stories I'm writing and keep up with the current s-f books," doesn't speak to anyone at all when her Star Trek fanzines arrive. Alice Eve LaVelle is 27 and plans a career in television, hoping eventually to be a producer. To prepare her for that goal, she works in a theater in Philadelphia—building sets, hanging and running lights and other jobs—and studies at an electronics school. (She reasons that, in a highly competitive business like television, "... a woman in electronics would be infinitely more noticeable than a woman secretary.") She also has reservations with both TWA and Pan Am for the first passenger flights to the moon. When the Star Trek reruns are on: ... I turn the rest of the world off. I take no phone calls and speak to no one. Any guest must be content to silently watch with me, wait elsewhere, or leave. (Most people watch with me —no guest has left yet.) I never make a curtain call at the theater because Star Trek is on from 6:30 to 7:30. They indulge me. Some fans are a little surprised at the intensity of their own reactions, and tend to surprise those around them. One of these, Jean Sellar, 25, is a financial re- 18 Star Trek Lives! search-librarian who, with her husband, hopes to work as a wilderness photographer specializing in conservation projects. She studied philosophy in college, and reads voraciously—eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English novels, natural history, science fiction and fantasy, history and philosophy, and especially Star Trek fan magazines. She discovered the show accidentally: her English professor had praised the program almost every class session, so when she and her husband finally bought a television set, she decided to risk the boredom TV always aroused in her, and turned it on. Everything was multifaceted, enough to enable an inveterate fantasizer like myself to do, literally, wonders with it ... My mother would get furious with me when I didn't come to the dinner table . . . my husband was shocked when I demanded Star Trek mail immediately after he picked me up at night ... he was even more shocked when I told him about the Star Trek stories I wrote, especially since I didn't tell him for a long time out of embarrassment over their unsatisfactory quality. My feelings are intense about Star Trek literature. I never read it until after I make dinner, partly out of deferred gratification, but mostly because once I pick it up and start reading, a photon torpedo couldn't separate the zine and me . . . The hold Star Trek has on me has started me writing again, and the kind of discipline that brings was sorely needed. - And some have found Star Trek to be, quite literally, a lifesaver which brought them back from having given up hope—as had a lady from a small town in Virginia who writes: Star Trek . . . helped me tremendously. There is a long personal history, but I will only > enumerate the highlights. In March 1970, my husband died. Until July 1971, I was as a zombi (almost). In July 1971, I became ill and had to Star Trek Lives! 19 be hospitalized for three weeks. Of course, my doctor effected the physical recovery, but it was not until I started getting involved in [identifying with] Star Trek, that my mental outlook vastly improved. All my family will say I am crazy for making the preceding statement, but / believe it to be true. When I started identifying with Star Trek, I started again to believe in the future of mankind... Crazy? But such stories are not uncommon. At all. There is such a thing as medicine for the soul. And there is such a thing as the need for enjoyment. Earl Gilbert of Deland, Florida, who single-handedly began a Revive Star Trek Campaign while in total ignorance of the existence of STAR, says quite simply that, "Star Trek is my life's breath, my only enjoyment, and I'm entitled to that." Some fans know so well what Star Trek means to them that they try not to worry about the need to defend it to others. Catherine Doyle, who is the vice president of a Star Trek fan club, writes: Star Trek has changed my life . . , opened my world to new thoughts and drained my pock-etbook trying to keep up with everyone . . . It's made me a much more real person, a lot easier to live with. I don't try to explain myself too much to outsiders. They are not really going to accept anything you try to tell them, and if you do take the time to tell them, they dismiss it as garbage. A note of pain can be heard in some of these statements. When people run often enough into the "weirdos and freaks" treatment, the "you must be crazy" looks or statements, it is a temptation to pull the teeth of any attack by saying—"Sure, I'm crazy." It can become very hard for fans to control a certain bitterness. One young man, Robert Stalnaker of Akron, Ohio, states the case poignantly and with a heroic effort to control that bitterness: 20 Star Trek Lives! Star Trek has been, and always will be, the biggest influence in my life. The turning point was when Star Trek was in danger of being canceled after its second season. I tried to figure out how this could possibly happen. After all, Star Trek was the only one of its kind, and after so many years of the same type of shows, television was just one big rerun. Surely, the audience had to notice its tremendous quality. Near perfection in all phases of production is an accomplishment to be proud of, but to do this with science fiction is an achievement that cannot be surpassed. I then realized what popularity truly was. Normality is a prerequisite of popularity, and mediocrity is the very core of normalcy. Star Trek was not "very" popular because most people are normal—certainly nothing to be proud of. Gene Roddenberry valued quality more than popularity. He could easily have adapted Star Trek to fit right in with television's normal mentality. He didn't. Star Trek was canceled. Let its epitaph read: my DEATH WAS THE HIGHEST TRIBUTE GIVEN TO MY makers. Meaning that Star Trek made history by being canceled for reasons directly opposite to those of every other series that has been canceled; they were the worst of the mediocre—Star Trek was simply too good. Mr. Stalnaker had a point. By every standard of television production, Star Trek was exquisitely done. To take it off the air was something like shooting Shakespeare before he could write Hamlet. If people could not see that, then the inference was plain: Something must be wrong with people. It was a painful inference, but one which many fans, in all logic, had to reach. But as Mr. Spock, among others, would tell you, the most flawless chain of logic will arrive at a false conclusion if it includes one false premise. In this case, the premise which needed to be checked was that few people saw that greatness. As a matter of fact, each passing year has revealed more and more that a great many people saw it. What happened to Star Trek was simply that it Star Trek Lives! 21 got caught in the high-speed, high-pressure world of television. Its proper audience simply didn't have time to find it before it was gone. It was moved from time slot to time slot, finally to a time which was terrible for young people. It was so unique that many people who would have loved it didn't even know that it was there. They had given up, perhaps, on even trying to watch most television. Or they loved science fiction but had given up on most of television's attempts in that area*. They had taken one look, say, at "Lost in Space" —and run screaming from the room. And even so, much of Star Trek's audience was there, but network executives didn't know it. Some of that audience didn't show in the ratings. Its quality didn't show. The depth of its dedication didn't show. These things have only begun to become apparent in the years since cancellation—with Star Trek's triumph in reruns, with the continuing buildup of its audience, with the accelerating emergence of the fan movement. Three years after cancellation, NBC admitted that it had made a mistake. Then there was a revival in animation. Now Paramount is negotiating seriously with Gene Roddenberry for live-action^revival. Much of this must be attributed to the efforts of the fans. If Star Trek lives again, it will owe that new life to its own merit and to those who did, after all, see that merit. And you find them everywhere. They are finding each other now, with what seems like express-train speed. There is a kind of jubilation in fandom now, a kind of wordless sense that amounts to the feeling: Wow! People are human, after all. They see it; they are not blind; I can deal with them; isn't it wonderful that they are what they need to be to see it? Did we mention teenagers? Carl Smyth and Janet Daw, ages 16, got involved in Star Trek quite suddenly, up to their ears. Within three months they had started a new fanzine, finished a Star Trek novel, started a club designed to be as big as the super- 22 Star Trek Lives! Star Trek Lives! 23 organization STAR, and made plans to hold a convention. About that time, they wrote to Jacqueline Lichtenberg about another project, their own publishing company: We call it Star Publication—this is a Star Trek and s-f and fantasy publication that I started (legally). All legalities will be handled by us, helped by my father who is an attorney. We will be handling such things as copyrights, registered trademarks, patents, etc. We will be doing (with your permission) a publication entitled The Writings of Jacqueline Lichtenberg, which will be written probably by a number of people on the philosophy behind your Kraith stories. Another thing Cheri and I did was a 30-minute radio show on Star Trek fandom, in which I did all the talking, along with Cheri and a person who asked prepared questions! This was aired the day after Thanksgiving and was on from 4 to 4:30 p.m. on KTLK-radio, Denver! We believe that this is a first in Star Trek fandom, and it didn't cost us a penny to produce, except for buying the tape! We left our addresses and phone numbers for people to call us—and we received an overwhelming response! We have been asked by two Denver area TV stations to do another broadcast such as this, and we have accepted both of them! Also a Denver area TV station picked up the broadcast and wants to do a feature story about us and the club, with us on it for a newscast!!! And because of all the demand, we have been forced to start reproducing the tape (amateurly, that is) to sell to people . .. because of this publicity, a Denver TV station is considering trying to begin showing daily or weekly reruns of Star Trek, and we will have an article in each of the two major Denver papers!!!! The radio station (and us) are still getting calls and letters about the show!!! It really went a lot further than we expected!! The really remarkable thing about Phil and Cheri is that they are not unique. They are typical of teen- agers in whom the Discovery Effect touches ofj a supernova explosion of activity. Not only in teenagers. Gennie Summers writes that she is "middle-aged, and single ... yet I doubt that any teenager could be more enthusiastic about Star Trek than I am." There is Sharon Emily, a minister's wife from Indiana, a warm, pleasant woman who looks like home and mother. It is not easy for her to get to Star Trek conventions, but she does. She writes Star Trek fiction—including a complete romantic novel, The Misfit, in which a twentieth-century girl goes forward in time and falls in love with Spock's father, Sarek, after the death of his wife, Amanda. There is Diane Steiner, who lives on a ranch in Idaho with her husband and two children. Her novel is perhaps no less romantic, but possibly more hair-raising, as might be inferred from its title—Spock Enslaved. There are the identical twin sisters, Laura and Margaret Basta, who are the principal organizers of STAR. Margaret edits its newsletter, Starborne, while nearing completion of her studies to become a musical therapist. Laura, whose ambition is to become a professional writer, has been writing Star Trek fiction since her early teens, and was recently nominated for a Hugo Award for fan fiction for her series, "Federation and Empire." (The Hugo nominations and Awards are made not by Star Trek fandom but by the whole of science-fiction fandom. In the same year, 1974, two of the fan-writer nominees were Star Trek fan writers. The other was Jacqueline Lichtenberg for her Kraith series.) Devra Langsam and Sherna Burley published one of the earliest and best fanzines, Spockanalia. Devra is a librarian and has been among the chief organizers of the four New York Star Trek Conventions. She has taken on the chairmanship of the 1975 convention. Sherna has her B.A. in animal psychology. Carolyn Meredith is a Ph.D. in chemistry and plans to teach and do research in nuclear magnetic res- 24 Star Trek Lives! onance. On the side, she writes complete Star Trek novels, such as The Crossing Lords, for one of the long-running fanzines. Another Ph.D. candidate, this time in English, is Ruth Berman. But Star Trek fans tend to regard it as much more of a distinction that she is the editor of the longest-running Star Trek fanzine, the excellent T-Negative (named for Mr. Spock's and Sarek's rare blood-type). Before that, she edited "Inside Star Trek," while the show was still in production. Her adventures there—she visited the sets, interviewed the stars, helped to handle the fan mail, and worked for Star Trek Enterprises (which is still alive and well and selling Star Trek souvenirs from Southern California)—might make a book in itself. Then there's Claire Gabriel, who was already a professional writer when she discovered Star Trek last year in much the same way. as did Helen Young. She wanted to be a good mother and see what was so deeply absorbing her three children every weekday night at the dinner hour. She now loves Star Trek so much that she has written several Star Trek stories and novelettes, even though they cannot be published professionally. Then, lest you get the impression that all the fan-writers are women, there is L. E. Wallace, who is not. He has written and (with the help of the enterprising cinematographer-director-producer Olin Thrash) produced two Star Trek plays while he was director of the Denham Springs (Louisiana) Community Theater. The first, Star Date 7113.7, electrified the Baton Rouge area and opened to standing-room-only crowds. It was followed by Romulan Encounter, which continued the first play's innovative combination of stage and film techniques, using previously prepared film as if it were on the main view-screen on the bridge stage set. L. E. received much publicity for the presentation of the plays, including wire service coverage, and was delighted to receive congratulations from Gene Rodden-berry and to be able to meet and interview him later. L. E. believes that the plays have helped him toward a Star Trek Lives! 25 promising career in television production. He has hosted a Baton Rouge interview show, "Panorama," on which Star Trek has been discussed, and recently acted as Sondra Marshak's co-producer for the one-hour television special "The World of Star Trek Fandom." And that, perhaps, should bring us (although there are still many interesting fans we would like to introduce—and we will, in this chapter and others) to the authors of this book, who have also been part of this coming together of fans. Jacqueline Lichtenberg has already been mentioned for her Kraith series. Welcommittee was her idea, conceived to help Gene Roddenberry and others respond to the thousands of new fans who have been deluging everybody with inquiries since the first New York convention. She has received much praise for her Kraith series and has published in the fan world many articles, questionnaires, and stories. She compiled the first comprehensive list of all Star Trek fanzines, and authored the first study of these fanzines' readership-overlap profiles. Welcommittee now handles this data on over two hundred active fanzines. Jacqueline has spent a good part of her time for about six years gathering data on Star Trek fandom. In addition to her work on fiction and nonfiction related to Star Trek, Jacqueline has written a non-STAR Trek science-fiction novel, House of Zeor, recently published by Doubleday, receiving some critical acclaim and scoring an unusual commercial success. As a matter of fact, she has wanted to be a science-fiction writer since her midteens, long before Star Trek. To prepare herself for science-fiction writing, she thought it wise to get a scientific background, and took a degree in chemistry from Berkeley. And after living on a kibbutz in Israel for a time, she went to work for an Israeli research and development company inventing methods of mining the Dead Sea for fertilizers and industrial raw materials. She now lives in Monsey, New York, with her husband and two children. While taking care of those responsibilities, Jacqueline nevertheless man- 26 Star Trek Lives! Star Trek Lives! 27 A-w ages to attach herself firmly to her typewriter for several hours every working day. Sondra Marshak came to Star Trek much later and from an entirely different angle and, when Sondra and Jacqueline began to come together, the combination touched off a small supernova in itself. Sondra had not been a science fiction fan—indeed was so far from that, or from being a regular watcher of television, that she missed Star Trek entirely when it was on the network and did not discover it at all until years later when it was in reruns. In fact, she found it then only after a couple of unfortunate hap-penstances and on the strength of a fortunate recommendation which caused her to give it one last chance. The happenstances were tuning in (twice!) on the last few minutes of "That Which Survives." (Try it sometime—with the image of Losira popping in and out from nowhere and announcing that she wants to touch somebody, and her touch is death—and imagine that you know nothing else about Star Trek.) However, the recommendation was strong, and on the last chance she managed to see a whole episode. It was "Bread and Circuses." Sondra took one look at the scene in the jail cell in which Spock and McCoy are worrying over Kirk, who has been taken off by his sinister "Roman" captor, while the "emotionless" Vulcan frets like a caged panther—and she was "hooked." From that time on, photon torpedoes and massed phaser banks wouldn't blast her loose from in front of the set during the hour when Star Trek was on. Sondra continued to be as fascinated by the tenth or twentieth rerun as she was on the day she discovered the show—a response which is not too unusual. What was unusual was what she did about it—and, as soon became apparent, the kind of response people gave her. What she did came partly out of the special background she brought to her interest in Star Trek. The friends who had given her that strong recommendation knew of her longstanding interest in the philosophy of Ayn Rand. They thought that she would find some of the same values in Star Trek. They were right, but it is doubtful if even they knew just how right they would be. Sondra had discovered Ayn Rand's novel, The Fountainhead, at the age of thirteen, and with much the same sense of discovering a new world that Star Trek was to bring. Sondra's interest continued through the years and through Ayn Rand's other novels {We the Living, Anthem, Atlas Shrugged) and nonfiction writing on philosophy. Sondra attended lectures on that philosophy in New York and became a representative for the tape-recorded lectures on the philosophy of Objectivism. It appealed to Sondra as a philosophy stressing reason, justice, individual rights, productiveness, freedom—and, in art, the surprising, the inventive, the beautiful, the vision of man as heroic. When Sondra chose a career to prepare for, the choice came partly out of her interest in that philosophy. She thought of one of the minor characters in Atlas Shrugged, a young man who was given the nickname "the Wet Nurse." While most of the heroic characters of Atlas Shrugged were able, after a struggle, to achieve their goals, he was not. He had come out of college badly educated, having been told that knowledge was impossible to man, that reason didn't work, that "there are no absolutes"—with slogans in place of thoughts, and the worst slogans of the worst philosophies. But he was better than anything he had been taught. In the first great moral crisis of his life, he had to try to puzzle his way through and beyond the slogans to what was really moral. He did. But it was a struggle he could have been spared. And it cost him his life. Sondra put it to herself that she would set out to reach the Wet Nurse—any Wet Nurse—with the kind of education he should have had. She worked her way through college—and argued against the slogans. When she married, her husband, Alan, encouraged her in her determination to get a Master's degree (in history), which she completed at the University of Arizona while he was completing a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. After the birth of their son, Jerry, she was planning Ji 28 Star Trek Lives! Star Trek Lives! 29 ^KJ to go on for a Ph.D. with the objective of teaching on the college level—reaching a few, or a few thousand, over a lifetime of teaching. Then, suddenly, there was Star Trek—a living vision of the kinds of goals and ideas she loved. And it was reaching millions, tens of millions. Every day. Sondra has never been accused of being slow on the uptake, and the possibilities did not escape her. Star Trek was reaching people of all ages and descriptions, reaching them with ideas that mattered and on a scale that could be important. Moreover, it was not very long before Sondra was in correspondence with Jacqueline. (Inasmuch as Sondra hates to write letters, that was no small tribute to what they began to find in each other.) Sondra had written answers to one of Jacqueline's questionnaires which was circulating in f andom. Jacqueline wrote back expressing interest in Sondra's answers and asking whether some of her comments on fan fiction applied to Jacqueline's Kraith series, or—what did Sondra think of it? Still struggling heroically against being drawn into a long correspondence, Sondra suggested that Jacqueline get together at the New York convention with Jane Thomasson, Sondra's friend who was going there from Baton Rouge, and who teaches a science-fiction course which she originated at LSU. Jane, Sondra explained, was also a Star Trek fan—had, in fact, passed Jacqueline's questionnaire on to Sondra, and could discuss Sondra's ideas about Kraith. But it was not fated to be so. Jane and Jacqueline couldn't find each other at the convention. Sondra wrote. Then the ideas and arguments began to fly thick and fast between Baton Rouge and Monsey. Jacqueline was trying to write House of Zeor. Sondra had a few small things to attend to—such as an infant son. Both of them had to give up and admit that they couldn't resist writing twenty-page letters. The convention had been in February 1972. By June, they were writing Kraith and this book together, by mail and phone. By the following February, they had brought Joan Winston in and completed a "query package"—several chapters of the book, which they sent to an agent and to publishers. On the side, Jacqueline and Sondra had completed a Kraith novel and started or planned several others— all before they had ever laid eyes on each other. That happy event finally took place in February 1973, when Sondra visited Jacqueline before they went on together to the next New York convention. There Sondra finally met Joan who had also been a long-distance friend. (They are now far closer than most sisters. Joan has visited the Marshaks several times—and they always feel that she's leaving home when she has to return to New York.) For a person who hates to write letters, Sondra develops more long-distance friends than you can shake a stick at—and half of them seem to wind up burning up the long-distance phone lines for the simple pleasure of talking to her. It must be admitted that she keeps quite a few phone lines hot in return. She really does hate to write letters. (No one can believe that she has actually written hundreds of pages of letters to Jacqueline*—mute testimony to her incredible impact on Sondra.) Talking with Sondra, even by letter, is apt to be something of an experience. She is so full of ideas— on many subjects, but especially on Star Trek—and so able to communicate them vividly, and to draw out other people's ideas, that many people around the country have been drawn into correspondence and conversations with her. Quite a few have sent her Star Trek stories—some unpublished, some not intended to be published—and sought her comments and criticisms. This ability to draw people out proved of great value in the interviews for this book. Leonard Nimoy granted Sondra an interview graciously, but somewhat reluctantly—and invited her back for a second session, for a total of eight hours. Others talked for three, four, five hours. And after his interview, De Forest Kelley told her that she must immediately go home and make a television station give her an interview show to host —she'd be terrific. He said he was dead serious. (Hmm ... Maybe that's an idea.) 30 Star Trek Lives! Sondra's friendships in fandom, and her little knack of making it look easy to move mountains, brought a great deal to the book—and brought fans from thousands of miles to be on the television special. It helped to draw diverse people like Jacqueline and Joan together—to work together across thousands of miles. And the combination of diversities proved intriguing. Jacqueline taught Sondra, among other things, to be a science-fiction fan. Jacqueline says that Sondra bullied her into reading Ayn Rand—whereupon Jacqueline enthusiastically conceded a point they had been arguing mightily over Spock's logic/emotion issue. Joan added a light touch, where Sondra and Jacqueline are inclined to get into philosophy up to their ears. And Sondra found her life and her thinking enormously enriched by these Star Trek friendships, and by Star Trek itself. And Sondra didn't even have to venture from home to find fans. Her husband, Dr. Alan Marshak, a professor in the electrical engineering department at LSU, quickly developed his own enthusiasm for Star Trek. He's been heard to dispute a scientific effect from time to time, but if you ask him straight out, he replies, "I think it's just great." And one day he quietly came in and hung up a model of the Enterprise beside a painting he had chosen for the living room. It looked, he said, Eke a Star Trek planet scene with the Enterprise orbiting it The Marshaks' three-year-old-son, Jerry, is growing up with Star Trek, and is already a fan in his own right. And Sondra's mother, Mrs. Anna Hassan, 70, was recently the hit of the one-hour television special "The World of Star Trek Fandom" which Sondra (under the patient auspices of Gary Ricketts, station manager, WRBT-TV, Baton Rouge) produced with L. E. Wallace and wrote with Myrna Culbreath. Mrs. Hassan, more often called just "Mama" (everyone seems to want to; De Forest Kelley once kissed her and told her that she reminded him of his mother), told of her love for Star Trek in words that seemed to touch everyone. Before Star Trek, she explained, Star Trek Lives! 31 she had never known that there were probably other worlds, other people, and that some of them might have cures for diseases, and not have wars that killed our people all the tune, and might even live a few hundred years. "I was born in Israel," she said, "and my husband was born in Egypt, and I've seen fighting and death, and I read about it every day in the newspapers, in books. And I keep thinking, those other people, like in Star Trek, maybe they could teach us—and we could live." Myrna Culbreath, who flew to New Orleans from Colorado to meet another long-distance friend, Gene Roddenberry (they had corresponded about Myrna's article, "The Spock Premise," which we'll discuss later), also met Sondra and Jacqueline at Vul-Con I, the Star Trek convention held in New Orleans, June 1973, and sat in on their interview with him for this book. Myrna reported being especially impressed with Sondra's way of conducting a candid and penetrating interview. Less than a year later, having made her own contribution to the support of the post office and phone company (such a heavy contribution that it threatened to burn out a couple of phone lines between Colorado Springs and Baton Rouge), Myrna Culbreath gave up gracefully, sold her private school, the Culbreath School, and moved to Baton Rouge, contending that the shade of Pike's Peak was a fine place to live, but if Mahomet—or Sondra—won't come to the mountain ... We don't know that it's the first time that someone has moved a thousand-odd miles as a result of the Star Trek phenomenon and the Discovery Effect, but this is certainly one case. Sondra and Myrna are now working on Star Trek and other writing together, and on projects like the television special. They've been to a couple of conventions together and found that they tend to take a liking to the same fans—like Mrs. Carol Brownell of Houston, Texas, who works in electronics assembly and shares some of her Star Trek hobby with her husband of eighteen years, a skilled machinist, and shares 32 Star Trek Lives! some of his hobby of motorcycling with him. Carol visited Sondra and Myrna in Baton Rouge to be a guest on the Special, and now writes Star Trek stories, sometimes for their own private consumption—though she will be in the fanzines soon. (They've thought of recommending GRUP to her—and her to GRUP.) GRUP's centerfold lady, Steve Barnes, also came from Denver for the Special, meeting Sondra and Myrna for the first time. (Myrna had lived sixty miles away —and both had to travel a thousand miles to get together—and found it worth the trip.) Claire Gabriel came from Omaha, Bob Gibbons from Springfield, Missouri, Jacqueline Lichtenberg and Joan Winston at different times from Monsey and New York City. Shows you how hard it is to get Star Trek fans together—and how easy. It might be added that all came at their own expense—for the love of Star Trek. Meanwhile, Jacqueline and Sondra and Joan Winston have been working on this book by plane and phone and Pony Express—otherwise known as special delivery mail, and sometimes almost as fast. Joan Winston holds a demanding executive position at the ABC television network, as well as be-- ing one of the principal organizers of four New York Star Trek Conventions—including that historic first one, for which she was in charge of publicity—among about a zillion other things, including truckers with seven huge crates of undeliverable NASA exhibits. Just how much of a hassle that can get to be, you will see in one of Joan's chapters. ("We" couldn't write it. Only she could. Probably only she could have lived through it.) But Joan"has always been enterprising. It isn't everyone who, while working for a rival network, (CBS, at that time) can wangle an invitation to visit the set of Star Trek during filming, nor who can so endear herself to the cast that the one-time invitation keeps getting extended into an entire week—the last historic week of the filming of Star Trek—the striking of the sets, the last cast party. Joan Winston tells that story for the first time here —complete with the laughter and the tears; William Star Trek Lives! 33 Shatner's zany stunts, his flawless performance when he was so ill that he could barely stand, the crew's love for the show, the ending that was not an ending . .. So long as there are stories like that, and fans to tell them and fans to remember them, the spirit of Star Trek is real; Star Trek lives and cannot die and cannot be killed—and will live again. And it is not crazy to be a fan! The Tailored Effect "Jack Sprat could eat no fat His wife could eat no lean . . Between them both, They licked the platter clean. The total population of the United States is over 220 million. The viewership of any ™™*f£ television show must number about 20 mta or about one-tenth of all the people from birth to old age ^^ Tboo^record that sells a million copies is considered a runaway best-seller The average successful science-fiction paperback sells on the order ot 4000^ T^gap between 40,000 and twenty million is a bone-cmsher, but Star Trek bridged rt-and m a FaleTwith the crushing demand for numbers, television people have often thought that the trick was: Offend nobody very much, please nobody very much, and hope against hope to get your "slice of the pie, 34 Star Trek Lives! 35 your third or so of the people who routinely watch television. Sheer dial-flipping will get you some of them, and if you don't turn them off, they may turn you on. Thus it has become more important that nobody hates you than that anybody loves you—a trend which has led to the "one big rerun" effect, to "playing it safe." Star Trek took a radically different tack. It wanted to be loved. Star Trek got its twenty million the hard way. What television executives didn't know then was that Star Trek was also reaching audiences never reached by other television shows—strongly, electrifyingly. Ordinarily, only a tiny percentage of all the people who watch a show or buy a book will be strongly moved by it. Only occasionally does something come along which moves some people far beyond that— transports them totally into a fictional world to which they become more devoted than most people are to reality. These people who are truly carried away are the "fanatics," or fans, and the world which they weave around themselves through their clubs, newsletters, fanzines, meetings and conventions is called a "fan-dom"—a kingdom or domain of fans. One of the most remarkable things about the remarkable Star Trek is that it has a fandom. Hardly any television shows do. And no other show has a fandom even remotely like Star Trek's. Star Trek has a fandom which is full-blown, fast growing, and which now vastly exceeds in size the model on which it was built—science-fiction fandom. If 40,000 is the typical sale of a science-fiction paperback, 400,000 is closer to the typical sale of a James Blish Star Trek paperback (of stories which fans have already seen). Total sales of the eleven Blish books are closer to 4,000,000. That's ten times, a hundred times, as many copies, reflecting people who are evidently strongly moved. And science fiction is a field famous for moving people strongly. But—only a relatively few people. So it is not merely that Star Trek was science fiction. 36 Star Trek Lives! And it is like nothing else on television. By now, it is the hottest property Paramount has. Growing numbers of people go out of their way to watch it daily— over and over and over again. It is these two factors—the vast mass audience which television absolutely requires, and the vastly energized, dedicated fans which it almost never gets, which give rise to the concept of the Tailored Effect. The secret of mass appeal has always been to please many people mildly or at least not to displease them greatly. The secret of devotion has been to please a few people, but please them intensely—to tailor your material to hit them precisely where they live. The print media has used slanting and tailoring for decades, for centuries. But it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars just to produce a single hour of television. To reach its 20,000,000, it has to reach Mom, Pop, their sixteen-year-old son and ten-year-old daughter, and be "clean" enough to allow in the house. Star Trek pioneered the Tailored Effect for television. What we can learn from Star Trek, a lesson which could revolutionize television, is that the real trick is not to avoid slant, but to find a fistful of slants —each one of which turns some people on very strongly, and all of which in combination add up to a mass audience which is also highly energized, and deeply affected. That was the secret of the Tailored Effect. It was a whole collection of tailored effects, each one suiting some group of viewers right down to the ground, binding them to the show so strongly that nothing could turn them off. That was the best kept, least understood secret of Star Trek. It is a secret yet. Network executives and most other television producers have failed almost entirely to understand it. If it were ever fully understood, television would no longer find it safe to play it safe. How was it done on Star Trek? Star Trek Lives! 37 A Tailored Effect implies a tailor. Was somebody doing it deliberately? Or was it a happy accident? The answer is both, as you will see from our interviews of the creators. A good deal of it was deliberate—and a great deal of the credit for that is universally and justly given to Gene Roddenberry. He did know what he was doing and, what is more, gathered together a group of highly talented people. Each of them contributed his own specific slant to the tailoring, very often quite consciously. But also, in part, they were doing even more than they knew. It is only in retrospect that we, and even they, can quite realize just how well they knew what they were doing, and why. In the m»in, they were tailoring Star Trek to suit themselves. This was one of the biggest reasons why it could please others so intensely—but even Star Trek's creators have been continually astonished at just how intense the response was. Where do you begin to tailor a show? ' For openers, Star Trek began with saying something—something which had profound meaning to one man, Gene Roddenberry, and came to have deep meaning to the other creators and then to the viewers. Secondly, Star Trek used a totally different kind of writer in a totally different way. It reached out into the science-fiction community and pulled in writers who had spent their lifetimes perfecting a slant tailored to create a specific effect in a very narrow audience. These writers were famous for their proven ability to affect their readers very strongly. But it did not merely toss them into an anthology format, as had other science-fiction shows. Many of their scripts did not reach the screen in anything vaguely resembling their original forms. The writer's essential slant was still there—but transformed, transcended, and brought into balance with the many other slants Star Trek was using simultaneously. Further, Star Trek developed writers of its own, capable of that high intensity of Star Trek Lives! nting—Roddenberry himself, D. C. Fontana, Gene on and many others. Thirdly, actors—the very best, and giving their st. Fourthly, it pulled in production people—each of 10m was nothing but the best at contributing his rticular tailoring—costumes, sets, artwork, props, hting, directing, camera-work, special effects, music, »zens of other things. Finally—an orchestration of all these people and fects into one integrated, complex whole. The show contained at least one character, one ot or subplot or thematic element designed to reach >r and to captivate one particular kind of viewer, jid the sum of the parts added up to a whole greater lan anyone expected. Only a few fans can see all of these elements at nee. Even for them, it may take many viewings to legin to see all the levels and layers. But for them, Itar Trek is such a rich complexity, such an intricate nosaic, that it defies description or explanation. Yet hey feel compelled to describe and explain; hence the leed to communicate with each other and the snergence of a f andom. Even a single one of the multiple tailored ef-Eects can be enough to bind a viewer to the show. That is how Star Trek escaped the "play-it-safe" syndrome. It does not have to play it safe. There is enough in it which is startlingly, shockingly good that it can even afford to give offense, even afford criticism. Star Trek's greatest fans are its toughest critics. They make a game of finding minor inconsistencies among the episodes, more seriously criticizing certain episodes where some idea seems wrong or out of touch with the overall spirit of Star Trek. Their criticism of Star Trek is aimed at improving it. It is a service. With that in mind, let's look at some of the show's most energizing Tailored Effects and how they have struck viewers. To begin with, some of the characters: First there is Captain James T. Kirk. Star Trek Lives! 39 It is one of the ironies of the Tailored Effect that many fans regard him as second—to his alien first officer, Mr. Spock. William Shatner's portrayal of Kirk created one of the most heroic leading roles ever played on television, yet there was such a vast audience which proved to be waiting for the precise tailoring of Spock (for reasons which we will see) that Shatner is sometimes even regarded as a weaker costar. But while Shatner's Kirk speaks directly to a smaller segment of the audience than Nimoy's Spock, to those to whom it is addressed it speaks eloquently and with a supreme optimism. For those viewers, any time Kirk is on the screen their eyes are riveted on his face, searching out every nuance of expression, consuming every line of dialogue, and interpreting every single shot. James T. Kirk shakes them till their teeth hurt. He touches a live nerve in them, bringing them to that state of awareness often termed "turned on"—a metaphor which some female fans will admit is also often quite literal. Their eyes are not always on his face. But for Kirk fans, male and female, there has never been another hero quite like him, and it may be that Kirk is, in a curious way, the "sleeper" role of Star Trek, gaining even more recognition as the years go by. Why?. The Kirk fans are often part of a growing avant-garde group whose values were almost undiscovered at the time of Star Trek. For them, Kirk is the Ideal Man. They see a Kirk who is unafraid of his emotions, yet very definitely masculine. He is aggressive without being brutal. He is compassionate without being weak. He is decisive without being officious. He is efficient without being rigid. He is a man who has come to terms with and mastered the supermachines of his age—without losing any of his precious human characteristics. He serves in a quasimilitary organization with fearsome destructive power at his fingertips, power to de- 40 Star Trek Lives! Star Trek Lives! 41 stroy whole planets at will. But he does not suffer from the "pushbutton syndrome" of the old s-f horror stories about the man who launches atomic missiles at the "enemy." For all his power, he is not paranoid. For him, an enemy is an adversary to be met with strength and even destroyed, if necessary, but not necessarily a villain with whom no reconciliation is possible. Peace really is his profession. His primary mission is alien contact—"to seek out new life, and new civilizations." In itself, that Peace and Contact Effect is another supremely attractive element in the tailoring of Star Trek. The Klingons, the arch-enemies of the Federation, are even allowed to use Federation space stations while not at war. And Kirk is capable of making common cause with them when needed, though he is not immune to the angers which can lead to war. He can want to kill. But he can also say, "We're not going to kill—today.". He is firm in his convictions, but he is able to get outside of his own prejudices, to think in new terms and redefine problems, to see another's point of view. A ravening monster can turn out to be a mother Horta protecting a whole generation of her race, and Kirk will hold his fire while his logical Vulcan first officer urges him to kill. He holds that fire because he is in command of the situation. He does not fear himself. He can fight without malice and make peace without shame. Even across a deep division, as with the implacable Romulans, he is capable of dealing with an enemy with respect—respect for the individual, if not for his ideology. The decision of peace or war for the galaxy can rest in his hands—and it is safe there. Most Star Trek viewers see at least some of that in Kirk and respond to it. Then, again, there are responses in a lighter vein, and criticisms, both light and serious. A small percentage of fandom has no use for Kirk at all, considering him a wishy-washy nonentity, portrayed in bad taste by Shatner. This, of course, set the Kirk and Shatner fans' teeth on edge—creating several small galactic wars within fandom. It is part of Shatner's special magic that Kirk is loved and lambasted as if he were a real person. No higher tribute can be paid to an actor. Kirk is real. Many others vicariously thrill to Kirk's sexual exploits with gorgeous females of every size, shape and type—from the stunning lady lawyers, biologists and doctors who have loved him, to the vicious and breathtaking Elaan of Troyius, who ruled a planet but was willing to risk destroying her entire solar system for him. From Shana, the statuesque Amazon who could have killed him in gladiatorial combat, to Deela, the delicate, deadly and charming queen of Scalos who chose Kirk as her mate, and kidnapped him to father the child that would help keep her race alive. Kirk's frequent romantic imbroglios have aggravated many female fans to the point of regarding him as a challenge. Maybe Lenore, Odona, Ruth, Sylvia, Deela and all those others couldn't keep him. "But," they vow, "I could!" What a challenge! Others have fingered Kirk's repeated romances as Star Trek's worst fault—the one thing that ought to be changed when the show is revived. Yet at the same time, some of the letters written by female fans to Shatner while he played Kirk would even make D.O.B.s (Dirty Old Broads, remember?) blush. Those artfully ripped shirts, that often-exposed chest, revealed a body that has driven female fans to request that he pose for centerfolds, preferably Playgirl's. Many see Kirk's loves as having a tragic element. There is affection and warmth in his response, and evidently the capacity for deep love. But very often the situation is impossible. He loses not through his faults but through his virtues, because of the demanding life he has chosen. Nonetheless, while he loves, it is real—and he is able to express it in open, undisguised ways which many of today's women long for. Yes, and some of today's men, too—long-schooled in hiding their emo- i i 1? 42 Star Trek Lives! Star Trek Lives! 43 tions, and only just now beginning to fight for the freedom to express them, a battle which Kirk has won. If Kirk can win, it gives them hope that they can win, too. For he has not won without cost. He pays a price for his victory. He is not without faults—temper, impetuousness, a certain recklessness. But he is a man who tries. Kirk has been severely criticized for what some regard as an unjustifiable tendency to take the action into his own hands. They argue that a starship commander positively should not do this. His training is too valuable. He should sit on his bridge and make executive decisions, not charge down into the forefront of the action and, worse, usually take his second-in-command with him. The captain of a present-day Enterprise wouldn't do it, nor the general of an army. There should be contact teams of expendable people trained for that. But an interesting insight on that problem came up when we spent several hours with the same Captain Pierre D. Kirk who used Star Trek dialogue to bluff his company's way through a Vietcong ambush. (That story is told in James Blish's Preface to Star Trek 6.) We found this real-life Captain Kirk quite a lot like Star Trek's Kirk—a widely educated, sophisticated man who had thought deeply about philosophy, was devoted to his duty and his military career, yet who sparkled with humor. He talked about the military's use of Star Trek in Officers' Training School, and defended his namesake vigorously, saying that in a real military situation a leader cannot say, "You guys go and do that." He says, instead, "Follow me." We could add that there is also a nonmilitary aspect to James Kirk's situation. His primary mission is alien contact—a delicate as well as a dangerous business, and one which cannot be reduced to a routine. There is no way that he can sit on his bridge and get adequate information on which to make executive decisions. The decisions may turn on a slight shade of expression, on the answer to a question only he would think to ask, and only if he were on the spot. And if he has to go, it only makes sense that he takes his best men and those who work best with him—Spock, McCoy. You don't send a second team to do that kind of job. And Kirk and Spock are even—perish the thought —expendable. The Enterprise can make it back to a starbase for a new captain and first officer better than it can blow its primary mission. The buck does stop with Kirk. He has to make decisions which are bone-crushers. The most serious criticism of all which is leveled at him by many fans is that he seems to violate the "Prime Directive"—itself one of the most interesting Tailored Effects of Star Trek. This noninterference directive is part of Star Trek's profound respect for diversity. It forbids interference with the normal development of a viable culture. It comes very close to forbidding any interference whatsoever, and it forbids it very strongly. A starship captain takes an oath to die rather than violate it. But fans contend that Kirk has (in episodes like "The Apple," "Return of the Archons," "A Piece of the Action," "A Taste of Armageddon"). What is most interesting here is that fans are conducting a very serious dispute over a very abstract philosophical question—hardly the response of an audience which is too dumb to respond to more than pap. Moreover, it is an illustration of Star Trek's success in tailoring even abstract themes to affect its viewers strongly. Star Trek's respect for diversity is balanced by a conviction that there are some truths which are universal. To be different is not to be wrong. But there are some things which are wrong and which can be objectively demonstrated to be wrong. Slavery, for example, is wrong for all known intelligent beings. The respect for differences is stated in the Prime Directive. The conviction that truth, even moral truth, is knowable is embodied in Kirk, who acts with moral confidence, when he must act against something which 44 Star Trek Lives! he sees not as merely different but fundamentally wrong. Both elements are necessary. If there is no objective truth, then there is no argument against murder, enslavement, genocide. The Federation needs to make it as tough as possible for a captain to come even close to breaking the Prime Directive—and needs a captain who will do it when he must. It has one in Kirk. The depth Kirk was given—by the writers, but perhaps most especially by William Shatner—is responsible for the strength of both the positive and the negative reactions of the fans. If Shatner had tried to portray Kirk in a way that would offend none, he would have pleased none. The wider the appeal is spread, the less intense it becomes. The Tailored Effect is based on a very narrow, sharply focused appeal which is as a laser beam compared to the floodlight of the broad appeal. In utilizing the Tailored Effect, developing his own Kirk, rather than, say, trying to have Kirk out-Spock Spock, Shatner displayed his grasp of the nature of art, as well as his own personal integrity. If he had tried to compete with Nimoy for Spock's audience rather than counterpointing the Spock character, Star Trek would not have survived. However, because Shatner created a Kirk who is the human that Spock would have liked to be, he established unquestionable command of the Enterprise and of Spock's admiration. More, he provided a dramatic window into the enigmatic first officer's soul. Each spoke fully to those who had ears to hear, and each saw deeply into the other—letting us see, too. And the relationship between them, the profound friendship and even love between two strong men, became the most electrifying Tailored Effect of Star Trek. Those who see only Spock's role, powerful though it is, miss a great deal of the point. Our interviews with Gene Roddenberry and Leonard Nimoy (see es- Star Trek Lives/ 45 pecially Chapters Four and Six) show that they are the first to recognize the essential relationship between these two characters: "two halves which come together to make a whole." Both Roddenberry and Nimoy emphasized the importance of Shatner's contribution to that very special effect. Indeed, they stress again and again the importance of all of the different artists involved in the creation of Star Trek. They emphasize how each one's particular contribution of his unique talents, and the way they fed from each other and learned from each other, all came together to make a whole. No one man had to "carry" Star Trek or try to be all things to all men. It wouldn't have worked. And what did work was for each to be the best of what he was. Through this and through the closeness which bound him to his co-workers, each was able to help generate one of Star Trek's Tailored Effects and thus hold one of the diverse audience fragments which together with all others make one audience large enough to sustain a television show. Star Trek's Tailored Effects can be visualized as a battery of tight, coherent, different-colored laser beams, sharply focused and aimed—with the precision of pinpoint spotlights and the power of the Enterprise's phaser banks—at specific targets in the audience. Each character radiates on his own frequency with his own particular beautiful color, and contributes to the whole spectrum without losing his own distinction. No character is truly minor. Certainly Dr. McCoy is a major figure—quite capable of being the leading figure in any other drama. Yet he moves in essential relationship to Kirk and Spock, like a complementary color to each, as if they were the three pure, primary colors. De Forest Kelley displayed his own acting genius by selecting McCoy's character to be the perfect dramatic adjunct to the Kirk/Spock relationship, and that triad soon began to dominate the Enterprise drama. McCoy stressed the value of human emotion and 46 Star Trek Lives! needled Spock for trying to deny it, playing the crusty country doctor with a touch of down-home Georgia simplicity and a grumbling discontent with automation and the cold logic of the computer. McCoy speaks to those with values firmly rooted in today's culture—and sometimes also to those who see that behind that simplicity is a very sophisticated man, really at home in that future. For the budding technologist, there is Chief Engineer Montgomery (Scotty) Scott, the master mechanic with a grasp of his craft that earns him great respect —yet he nurses his "poor bairns" of engines like real babies, and is anything but a mechanical man. (James Doohan says, "I concocted the story that even somebody like Scotty had to go back to school to learn how to talk in a Scottish accent, because people got bored hearing everybody talk the same way.") For the people who admire great men such as Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Scotty, but who view themselves as lesser lights, there is the Russian Ensign Chekov (partly tailored for the Russians—and for the young), the swashbuckling Oriental Navigator Sulu, the lovely Nurse Chapel with her hopeless love for Spock, and the beautiful African communications officer, Lieutenant Uhura, whose name means freedom. Each provides a different segment of the audience with a hook into that future universe, a way to identify themselves with the Enterprise crew. Together the characters create an atmosphere of diversity and caring. Ask any fan, and one of the first things you will hear about is "all those different people —and they really cared about each other." In a further extension of that, the characters cared about the people they met—even aliens, even monsters. And the fans care. Various segments of Star Trek fandom have fastened themselves on various guest roles, such as Surak, Vulcan's ancient philosopher of peace; or the sternly handsome Ambassador Sarek, who hadn't spoken to his son, Spock, for eighteen years; or Sarek's warm, daring, human wife Amanda. Many cameo parts, including some Romulans and Klingons, Star Trek Lives? 47 have drawn their admirers. Even the "Salt Vampire" has friends and defenders (poor thing, why didn't the Enterprisers understand it as well as they later did the mother, Horta? But they learned, they learned). Every single man, woman, monster and mystery that appeared on Star Trek—from "I, Mudd's" identical and beautifully functional female androids, to the Companion, the cloud of iridescent energy that joined with the body of a dying mortal woman for the sake of love—was specifically tailored to grip some segment of the audience. ¦ Part of the impact undoubtedly comes from the atmosphere of believability. These creations were taken seriously. They breathed. They bled. And the ship lived. It flew. It went to real places. Where other science-fiction shows tried to gloss over scientific inaccuracies, Star Trek fought to create a wholly believable technology and a real universe. This Believability captured a segment of the total TV view-ership that hardly ever watches other entertainment television—the scientist,. college student, professional. True, it is a small audience taken by itself, too small to support a show all its own. But in coalition with other fragments, it can. And it is an audience very important to sponsors, because it can be reached through no other show. Moreover, the unexpected bonus of Believability was that it reached not only the man on the American street and the bright kid down the block—really pretty sophisticated customers, these days—but also, as Captain Pierre Kirk told us, reached across vast culture, ideology and language gaps to communicate even with the Vietcong. The element that was supposed to be tailored for the kids and the average viewer was the element of Adventure. Roddenberry could say in the language of television, "Look here, it's 'Wagon Train to the Stars!' " —Star Trek paid off on that promise—and then some—bringing romance, wonder and unadulterated excitement. But the strangest thing about this adventure ele- 48 Star Trek Lives! ment in the format is that it is the least important element to the show's fanatic fans. In answer to one of our multiple-choice questionnaires, listing possible reasons why a fan might like Star Trek, "action/adventure" and "relaxing entertainment" were the two choices most often rejected by active fans. It would appear that this element was tailored, more for the network executives than for the loyal viewer. Granted that Star Trek fandom is composed of a very biased sampling of the total viewership, this discovery is nonetheless significant. If what people really wanted was relaxing, inoffensive blandness, or sheer, mindless action, and if Star Trek's excellence were based on how well it provided these things, then the hard core of dedicated fans would be primarily fans of this kind of action-adventure. Those fans who respond to the sharp, penetrating, energizing excitement of Star Trek wouldn't exist at all. They have to be the tip of the iceberg of ten times as many—or more—who respond to the same things and in much the same way, but who aren't actively in touch with organized fandom. What might television be like if every show created such a tip—and such an iceberg? What if Tailoring could be learned and taught—became the standard practice, or at least the goal of television? It could be done. And it doesn't have to be science fiction. Star Trek was undoubtedly helped enormously, especially in the organization of its fandom, by the fact that it tapped into an already well-established body of creative fans who have been organized since the 1930s —the science-fiction fans. But not just any s-f show would have done that. Many haven't. Star Trek's particular Tailored Effects had a massive appeal for many old-time s-f fans—an appeal so strong that it actually split s-f fandom. It also threatened to swamp s-f fandom by drawing in so many new fans who knew nothing about the old classics of science fiction, but loved the new one. Star Trek Lives! 49 Star Trek was the 20,000,000's first clue to what the 40,000 knew: that science fiction is one of the last strongholds of the literature of ideas, of real heroes fighting real battles over issues that do matter. But science fiction is a wildlife refuge for those kinds of ideas only because such ideas have practically become extinct in "mainstream" literature, films and television. Most such ideas would make good stories even outside science fiction. Thus the basic principle of the Tailored Effect could become the new standard of television, quite apart from science fiction. Even the two most striking Tailored Effects of Star Trek, and the two which it expresses most specifically in science-fiction terms—the Spock Effect and what we shall call the Optimism Effect—do not have to be confined to science fiction. In his science-fiction aspect, Spock is the alien, the outsider, the stranger—but a man does not have to come from another planet to be that. Some of us are strangers, here, ourselves. Spock is also the hero of an ancient kind of childhood fantasy—the dream and reality of being the different one, the lonely one, yet also the perceptive one, the one who understands. Children's literature abounds with stories in which the child moves into a new setting—different culture, different customs, different problems—and he is the one who is open enough to new ideas to understand, to see, to make contact. The theme finds its way into adult literature and science fiction, where the basic atom of the theme is intercultural contact, and even alien contact. It's a fascinating theme—partly because it allows us to get outside ourselves, to understand what it is that we take for granted—by looking through the eyes of someone who doesn't grant it. Better still, let us look through the eyes of someone who stands with one foot on each side of a division.-Spock is such a man—a halfbreed physically, even intellectually. Science fiction is full of forerunners of 50 Star Trek Lives! Star Trek Lives! 51 Spock, in the shape of the halfbreed hero—but never a hero quite so beautifully conceived and precisely executed as Spock, and never one more perceptively tailored to speak exactly to our most urgent problems: loneliness, alienation, changing and clashing values, the need to find home and friendship among strangers, the need to master our world and ourselves—especially ourselves. Spock is the man who has all these problems most acutely. The halfbreed hero of science fiction almost always has some redeeming characteristics which make him of value to the humans around him. Spock has almost all of them: extra-keen senses, prodigious strength, an eidetic memory, the capacity to perform lightning calculations, telepathy, imperturbability, immunity to certain diseases and dangers, vast knowledge —especially of science. But a human audience would reject a true superman. Spock is flawed. He is vulnerable to his human emotions. He is lonely and vulnerable to the friendship of Kirk and the needling of McCoy. His patchwork human/Vulcan metabolism can be as much a liability as an asset. His telepathic ability is flawed with a somewhat erratic control, tending to expose him to the raw emotion of others. His Vulcan half is vulnerable to the lethal rut cycle of all Vulcans, but the Vulcan woman chosen for him rejects him. His greatest flaw, the Spock Premise (which we discuss at more length in Chapter Four), is the idea at the core of his character: the idea that logic and emotions conflict. It is an error shared by so many humans that it makes him seem almost human to us— even more human than most human beings; more real, more vulnerable—for all his strength. Yet he is coping—and coping magnificently. He may even have within him the seeds of the solution to the problem. At least, he helps us to see our problem. And on other fronts, he has found home, friendship, love, made a place for himself in a strange world —earned that place and that love. Spock is a triumph of the fictioneer's art, and of the Tailored Effect. Actually he represents a collection of Tailored Effects so complex, and he speaks directly to so many of us on so many levels, that there is room for endless analysis. It is small wonder that he has energized more clubs, fanzines, stories and artwork, than other Star Trek characters. But the reason is not that he was designed to have breadth of appeal or a safe, soft focus. He too is a bundle of laser beams—sharp, penetrating, exciting. More, he is the focusing element at the point of central convergence of many of the other Tailored Effects of Star Trek: the Diversity Effect, the Caring Effect, the Kirk/Spock Relationship and the Kirk-Spock-Mc-Coy Triad, the Science-Fiction Appeal, the Alien Effect, the Spock Premise—the whole issue of logic and emotions which is central also to Kirk, to Star Trek and to us. Most of all, he is at the central focus of the most powerful, most pervasive Tailored Effect of Star Trek—the real blockbuster, the single most important secret of Star Trek's success: the Optimism Effect. The Optimism Effect is the message which was very personal to Gene Roddenberry, which became very personal to the other creators and to the fans. It was a message of hope. We will see how it was woven, through the particular appeal of Spock, before turning to a further exploration of the Optimism Effect itself. And before that, "we" are going to take a break —and give you one—by letting Joan Winston's cheerful "I" take over. I Should Never Have Answered the Telephone . by Joan Winston «/ just can't believe it—all these lovely people gathered to honor Star Trek." RoDD£NBERRY Of course, I never should have answered the telephone If I had known what was goingJo happen, I ^SrX^SSl to o. we liked, with no one to sneer. 52 Star Trek Lives.' 53 That is how it all started. A few hundred. Seemsi funny, now, in retrospect. We started with a meeting at my apartment, selecting various people to head various projects. Elyse was given charge of the Program because: (1) she was good at that sort of thing and (2) she knew Isaac Asimov. "Ike" would (and did) make a fabulous guest speaker. Eileen Becker opted for Registration, Allen Asherman took the Art Show, Regina Gottesman was assigned the Hospitality Room, Joyce Yasner was in charge of Fanzine Displays, Devra Langsam was going to do Slide Shows—as well as be the convention Secretary, Debbie Langsam (Devra's cousin—and pay attention, because you can't tell the players without this scorecard) was going to run the Costume Call, besides being an all-around assistant to Al Schuster, who was Chairman because he had had more convention experience than the rest of us. Steve Rosenstein was to be Master of Ceremonies, and Stuart Hellinger was to be Stuart Hellinger. I was given the Huckster Room (that's where all the dealers hawk their wares) because, as Al so sweetly put it, "You may be a girl but you've got a big mouth and you can take care of anyone who gives you any lip." I always liked a compliment, so I took the job. Besides, no girl had ever run a Huckster Room at a Con before so why not be the first? I got another assignment the next day. Since I had visited the Star Trek set, and was acquainted with many Paramount bigwigs, I was designated to get us some Star Trek episodes for the Con. Frank Wright of Paramount publicity was a perfect doll, and came through with fourteen of them. We began our campaign by renting tables at all the science-fiction conventions we could find, and selling memberships for our January 1972 convention. We had about 300 fans registered by November 1971, and were we elated! Then Allen and Elyse held a talk session at Brooklyn College, and 700 people jammed into a room that was supposed to hold 350. That started it. 54 Star Trek Lives! We began to get letters saying things like: "We are renting a bus in Montreal. Can we get a cut rate on the membership fee because there are 40 of us?" "My science-fiction club has 70 members and here is the money for our memberships." "We're coming from California. What is the weather like in New York in January?" We told them, in spades, and the memberships kept pouring in anyway. That's when we started to get nervous. By the night before the Con we were paranoid. I'm afraid I had something to do with that. Bob New-gard, then a Paramount VP, stopped by my office at CBS to say hello and to see how the Con was doing. He asked about the publicity we were getting and I said we had posters up in schools and ads in school papers. "Have you called Les Brown of Variety?" No, and I hadn't called the President of the United States, either. I said I hadn't thought the "Bible of Show Business" would be interested in our little Con. Bob picked up my phone and called Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown was more than interested; he was going to have one of his top reporters interview me. Gulp! A week or so prior to the convention, Mr. Frank Beermann called and we spoke for almost 25 minutes. At one point in the article which resulted, Mr. Beermann had me giggling. I would like to make one thing perfectly clear: I did not giggle. I may have chortled or snickered, but I did not giggle. From that interview I expected, at most, a two-inch item on page 29 of the Radio-Television section. I almost dropped my teeth when I saw the issue. We made the front page with a two-column headline: "Star Trek Conclave in New York Looms as Mix of Campy Set and Sci-Fi Buffs." Fantastic! Suddenly, my phone started to ring off the desk. United Press International! Why hadn't we told them about the convention? The Daily News! Could they send a reporter and a cameraman over Friday morning? TV Guide! Would we mind (!) if one of their men came over Saturday to interview the committee? Star Trek Lives! 55 WABC! When would it be convenient for their news crew to come? My own (at the time) WCBS news called up madder than hell—what did I mean not informing them about this event? There I was, a CBS employee trying to hold down a very demanding job, and the phone simply would not stop ringing. I was planning to go into the hospital for some surgery right after the Con, leaving my work all set up, so that other people would not be overloaded. Little did I know how desperately I was going to need that rest in the hospital! When things really got hectic, I would gather strength by looking at the framed motto over my desk (no, Dick, not the one that says "Bless This Mess"), the one that says "However, when you are up TO YOUR ASS IN ALLIGATORS, IT IS VERY DIFFICULT TO REMIND YOURSELF YOUR MAIN OBJECTIVE WAS TO DRAIN THE SWAMP." So true. We were into the last hours prior to the convention when a man I will call "the trucker" phoned me. The main topic of his call was his inability to make a delivery to the Statler-Hilton. Now, our Con was being held that coming weekend in the Penthouse of the Statler-Hilton. So, in all innocence, I asked, "What shipment?" "The NASA shipment, lady." "But that isn't to arrive until Thursday afternoon." "Well, the voucher I have here says today's date and there will be an extra charge of $90.00 for rede-livery." "Yeeck." "I beg your pardon, lady?" "Uh, can I call you back, please? I want to speak with the hotel." I got Mr. Swanson at the hotel. "Oh, yes, Joan. You know, you said the exhibit wasn't going to arrive until Thursday, and when the trailer truck pulled up ..." "Trailer truck?" "Yes, you didn't tell us it weighed four thousand 56 Star Trek Lives! and two hundred pounds and was packed in seven huge crates. I don't even think they will fit into the freight elevators." "Oh. Ah. Crates."—4,200 pounds of them! The "little" display I had asked for turned out to be a Vs mock-up of the lunar module, a J/^-size mock-up of the LEM, a full-size space suit with a model astronaut (fake) inside and a dozen lighting panels. Outside of not being sure they would fit in the elevators, the hotel also declared that they had no place to store such an exhibit until the Con, and what was I going to do about it? Well, you can't faint when the man is talking to you on the telephone, can you? Or can you? I took a deep breath and called "the trucker" and asked him the dimensions of the largest crate. He said it was about 9 by 10 by 6 feet. Oh, my. He also mentioned the fact that if he could not deliver it until Thursday we would have to pay a storage fee. "How much is storage?" I was afraid to hear the answer. And I was right. "Well, we usually charge $10.00 per hundred weight. Per day." My mind boggled as it realized that was $420.00 per day—or a $1,260.00 total! Boggle, boggle, boggle. My lovely jree space exhibit was going to put the Con committee in hock for years. Faintly, I said I would call him back in ten minutes. Frantically, I tried to get our chairman, Al Schuster, but he wasn't in his office. We had to have at least part of the exhibit; it had been advertised in our flyer and progress report. However, I was able to get through to George Col-leto, my contact at NASA. In my own incoherent, hysterical way, I explained the situation. George said he was very sorry about the delivery-date mix-up. He had told them Thursday, and that is what his records said. He also agreed to pay the extra delivery charge and would call the trucking company and tell them. Whew! Called back the hotel and the crates would just Star Trek Lives! 57 fit into the elevators. Another whew. However. Yes? The bellboys want $$$ to unload the truck and $$$ to cart it up in the elevator and $$$ to cart it into the proper room the next day (there was a wedding that night and the room would not be ready until Friday morning) and $$$ to cart it downstairs and $$$ to load it back onto the truck. That's a lot of $$$. I discovered it is very hard to see when your eyes are rolling back into your head. Sigh. Called back "the trucker" and explained about the NASA clerical error and that they will pay the delivery fee. I then referred, painfully, to the storage fee. "Gee," he said, his voice taking on the quality of an angel's choir, "we do so much business with them that we will store it for nothing if they will pay the extra shipping fee." "They'll pay it, they'll pay it!" I shrilled. I finally reached our chairman in his office and told him of my chaotic morning. He said they had called him first but he had given them my number since he knew I could handle it. If finger bones could reach through telephone wires and get at neck bones, Al would have had a very sore throat! The night before the convention, I checked into the committee suite and we started making up all the identification cards for the membership. Eileen had made up quite a few, but she couldn't keep up with the avalanche of mail. We reached a number in the 800s and started to get frightened. Al decided he had better have another 1,000 cards printed up; we suggested 2,000—we should have said 3,000. By the end of the convention people were wearing odd pieces of wrapping paper with a committee member's signature scrawled on it. We had lots of volunteer workers that night. Several hundred fans had arrived early and we were very glad to accept their offers of help. We were to need lots of that in the next few days. Among the helpers were Dana Freise, Tom Anderson, Richard Arnold, Bjo Trimble (Bjo was the woman who got 75,000 58 Star Trek Lives! fans organized for the first Save Star Trek letter binge), Maureen Wilson, President of G.R.A.S. (the Gene Koddenberry /Ippreciation Society), and Michael Spence, our resident Princeton! an. The Roddenberrys (Gene and Majel) came into town that evening with D. C. Fontana. D. C, or Dorothy, if you are among those fortunate enough to know her that well, was the story editor of Star Trek, and also wrote some of its finest scripts, such as "Journey to Babel," 'Tomorrow Is Yesterday," "Charlie X" (which she wrote with Gene), "This Side of Paradise" and several others—and among her Star TREK-animated scripts, "Yesteryear." They brought with them the original pilot, "The Cage," and the infamous blooper reel. If I may digress for one moment, I will try to explain what a blooper reel is. Sometimes an actor goofs a line and says a funny word—or a dirty word— or makes a funny face. These snippets of film are spliced together to form a "blooper reel." When you have an imaginative nut like Bill Shatner on the set, the blooper reel becomes an art in itself. He would concoct very elaborate practical jokes (i.e. the arrow bit from "Private Little War") and the crew would go along with him, filming all the way as if it were a regular scene. Nope, you can't really describe it. You have to see it. We seemed to have a premonition that we would not have time during the Con to see the above films, so we ran them that night. This was the first time anyone had ever seen "The Cage," except for a few hundred fans at the 1966 Tri-Con in Cleveland, Ohio. To say we were thrilled would be the understatement of the year. It was very different from the Star Trek we had come to know and love, but it was a beautiful show. However, the bloopers are something else. Just as our fascination with the show itself never seems to wear thin, rerun after rerun, the bloopers perpetually evoke hysterical laughter, time after time. I've seen them at least twenty times, and I still laugh. If you are fortunate enough to have seen them, you know what Star Trek Lives! 59 I mean. But even better than seeing them the first time yourself, is showing them to someone who has never seen them before. Saturday night of the Con, Bill Marsano of TV Guide was introduced to the blooper. I don't think he will ever be the same again. He turned to me and asked if every TV show had reels like this. I said I had heard that some did but not too many, as you really needed to have someone on the crew with a good sense of humor to sift the chaff from the grain. In some bloopers you can occasionally hear the director or someone calling, "Save it!" Which meant not to destroy the film. (In Chapter Seven, describing my seven-day visit to the Star Trek set, I will give you a few instances that should have been saved. Unfortunately, that director didn't catch these items, and Bill Shatner was too ill with the flu to think of doing it.) We had our first catastrophe the Thursday night before the Con when Steve Rosenstein, our resident space engineer, went to inspect the NASA exhibit— which at that point was inhabiting the center of the Huckster's Room. It was a very upset resident space engineer who called us from the Pen-Top suite. Apparently, the college that had used the exhibit before us had not only kept the tool kit as a souvenir, but had razed the models rather than disassembled them. Struts had been sheared off, screws bent or broken, lighting panels cracked—a disaster! Steve and a very nice gentleman who had come with Gene R. called Grumman, the builders of the original LEM. They said they would send two of their men down Friday morning to help put Humpty Dumpty back together again. The two men, five Princeton boys (excuse me, Princeton men) and assorted fans worked on it for two hours with spit, chewing gun, elbow grease, masking tape and Elmer's glue. Since we had sacked out at 4:00 a.m. that morning, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed we were not when, at 8:30 a.m., the phone rang with Al informing us that a crowd was milling around the hotel lobby asking where Registration was. Good grief! 60 Star Trek Lives! I was the first one dressed (I know, I know, but that morning I really was, honest), so I ran upstairs to be greeted by chaos. I'd much rather have been greeted by a cup of coffee, but that came later—much later. Needless to say, we were not ready. Registration for the Huckster's Room was to begin at noon and regular registration at 2:00 p.m. What then to do with all these 200 or more people? We corraled anybody we recognized to set up the registration tables while I raced downstairs for the box containing the name cards of the people who had pre-registered. Eileen Becker, who was in charge of the registration cards, wasn't there. She had gone off on an errand for Al, certain that no one was going to show up until 12:00 noon. Ha! Second catastrophe. We found out later that the hotel had been telling anyone who called that registration opened at 8:30 a.m. Thanks a lump. May the Great Bird of the Galaxy you-know-what on your you-know-what. By the time I got back upstairs the crowd had swelled to over 400. We had no lack of volunteers and were soon scrambling around at top speed. Every so often, one of us would pause between emergencies and do a song and dance in front of the crowd to keep them from getting too restless. Strangely enough, everyone was very patient and seemed to understand our problems. Between time-steps and arias, I was setting up signs, getting the NASA exhibit taken care of and trying to set up the Huckster's Room. Devra Langsam, Maureen Wilson and Bjo Trimble were wrestling with the Art Show because Allen Asherman was unable (at the last moment, naturally) to get the day off. All I can say is thank heaven and the Great Bird for Devra, Maureen and Bjo! But if they were indispensable, it was Al who got it together. He was all over the place, coordinating like mad. He gave Stu Hellinger a bull horn and turned him loose to convert our beloved chaos into cherished bedlam. Thereafter, Stu and his bull horn were inseparable. (I will say here and now Star Trek Lives! 61 that the rumors that he slept with it are false and completely unfounded. I know, I peeked.) It was somewhere between that beloved chaos and bull horn-imposed bedlam, and still an hour before the official opening of the Con registration, that the Roddenberrys joined us. Unfortunately, the kids at the reception desk were not familiar enough with their in-persQn appearances to recognize them. So, when Gene and Majel attempted to walk into the Huckster's Room, one of the kids asked to see their badges. "You can't come in without a badge unless you are a member of the committee or connected with Star Trek." Mr. Roddenberry's response was classic. "I am Star Trek," he announced, sweeping theatrically past the stunned group. Gene did, however, stop back to chat with the kids and prevent the hasty defenestration of the hapless fan. Needless to say, they became the Roddenberrys' fans for life. By 3:00 p.m. that afternoon, I had managed to set up my own huckster table and that is where Gene and Majel found me. The only description you could put to their expressions was "stunned." Gene kept repeating numbly, "I just don't believe it. All these great people coming here to honor Star Trek." At that point the ABC and CBS television crews showed up. I found out later that, when they were looking for me to interview, I was underneath Phillip Hecht's table, helping this thirteen-year-old entrepreneur set up his displays. So they grabbed (easy, fellas!) Elyse and she gave them an interview. All during this time, more and more fans were piling into the Huckster's Room. The crush was so great the ABC crew was taking pictures of the CBS crew taking pictures of the ABC crew taking pictures of the CBS crew because nobody could move. It was a case of toe-to-toe and tushy-to-tushy.* We had to sneak the Roddenberrys, Isaac Asimov ?Yiddish for backside. 62 Star Trek Lives! Star Trek Lives! 63 and Oscar Katz into a small side room so that they could be interviewed. Besides the TV crews, we had representatives from high school and college newspapers from up and down the eastern seaboard. Everyone was very cooperative and answered all questions at length. The question most frequently asked was, "Will Star Trek come back on the air?" Gene replied, patiently and repeatedly, that he didn't think a series would but that a movie was a distinct possibility. "I didn't think so last week but after this convention I think that anything is possible." It was quite strange that the only major network not represented was NBC, the network that had carried Star Trek in the first place. They claimed to be completely disinterested, but we heard later that they sent down some people to "take a look." They walked in Saturday afternoon, "took a look," turned ashen and left. I think that they were afraid that if anyone found out they were from the network that canceled Star Trek, they might have been lynched. You know, they might have been right. Despite cancellation, we had produced concrete proof of Star Trek's long-term viability. Our cozy little Con had become the biggest science-fiction convention in history. On Friday, we registered 1,200 people. Saturday, we registered another 1,000 and had to requisition additional rooms for film showings and panel discussions to contain them all. The convention area was designed to hold 1,800, but at times we had over 3,000. Sunday, before Isaac Asimov gave his speech, we registered another 500 or 600. Then we gave up and let anyone in, because we figured it wasn't fair to charge them full price for the last few hours of a three-day program. Later, about three hours before closing, nearly 500 more showed up, very angry that they had not been told of the Con. They were all let in free of charge. One thing I would like to mention at this time. With all these people crushed into this too small area, there were no incidents, no fights, just love. Miles and miles and tons and tons of love. We had people from every walk of life and color of the spectrum; you name them, they were there. Our youngest was six weeks old, and the oldest was 82. And it seemed that every third person to come in the door would take one look around, spot a frazzled committee member trying to cope with the bedlam and promptly offer to help out. Star Trek people, fans and professionals alike, are the warmest, most generous, Jcindest human beings I have ever run across. The nuttiest, too, and I love 'em. Otherwise, I'd have never gotten into this thing. For example, it was Friday night when I finally got down to the Con suite. Tired and hungry, I staggered down the hallway. Debbie Langsam, a tall, attractive brunette, was walking toward me. She suddenly dropped to her knees in mock exhaustion and began to crawl. I dropped to all fours, and by the time we got nose to nose we were in hysterics. Debbie slowly recovered, only I couldn't stop laughing. Debbie and her cousin Devra picked me up and dragged me into the hotel room. They didn't slap me or pour cold water on my head. All they said was, "Joanie, you have to make a decision." That stopped me quicker than a cold shower. The crucial decision was . . . no, not how many more name tags to have made up, but where we should all go for dinner! Since I had had nothing all day except a rancid cup of coffee (it wasn't rancid when my little go-fer brought it, but it was when I got around to drinking it), I was ready for food. Then Al came in and told us we absolutely had to have some more envelopes stuffed. So we sent out for burgers and Cokes. Sigh. The Con-membership souvenir envelopes had to be stuffed with an assortment of Trekanalia: a beautiful program book, entry blanks for the Costume Call, Art Show and Trivia Contest. The Trivia Contest was Elyse Pines' baby, but we all contributed questions. What was the name of the alien who stabbed Kirk in "Journey to Babel"? (1) Kor (2) Thelev (3) Fizzbin. Thelev, you dummy. 64 Star Trek Lives! Kor was the Klingon commander in "Errand of Mercy," and Fizzbin was the crazy card game Kirk's fertile imagination came up with in "A Piece of the Action." We actually had one winner, Linda Beneroff. She has since become a member of the "crew." Beware, everyone! She is helping with the trivia contest now, and she has an evil turn of mind. But we didn't stuff envelopes all of Friday night. The great thing about being on the Con committee was that you knew where all the room-parties were— especially -the good ones, such as those thrown by Phil Sueling, one of the Huckster's Room dealers and a schoolteacher on the side. After we naively judged we'd stuffed enough envelopes, we'd gather around Isaac, Gene, Majel and Hal Clement, and listen and enjoy. One time, Oscar Katz, now VP, programming, CBS, New York, but who had been head of production at Paramount when Star Trek was being made, came to visit Gene and Majel. He was to make a speech the next day on the business side of television. He is a very dear, charming man, and he was positive that no one would be interested in the business side of how a pilot gets on the air. I had assured him that many of the fans were indeed interested in just that. He was literally in a daze when over 800 fans sat quietly fascinated by his speech. Oscar was certain that the only people who'd show up would be his wife Rose, Majel and myself. Oscar and Rose stayed at the convention for the whole day Saturday, going home only to change for the Saturday night Costume Call. Oscar became so captivated by the whole fan phenomenon that he and Rose came Sunday too, and Rose ended up helping me behind my table in the Huckster's Room. After Oscar's speech came Gene's speech, which drew about 1,200 people into our largest auditorium. We were forced to open the dividing doors to the adjoining room. With the 812 officially permitted in one room and the 322 allowed in the other, we just about made it. I'm glad the fire marshal didn't pick that moment to make an inspection. Star Trek Lives.' 65 Gene spoke for about forty-five minutes. He told us about the creation of Star Trek and all the work it had entailed. Mr. Roddenberry is an exciting speaker, and he knows how to grab and keep an audience. Gene and Majel were mobbed everywhere they went. They were just delightful, and everyone adored them. Majel signed autographs for three hours Saturday and asked for more. Gene said the next morning when he reached over in bed to give her a kiss, she murmured, "Don't touch me, I'm a Star!" Majel looked absolutely marvelous. Her hair was long and a lustrous dark brown, so much more flattering than the short, blonde hair she wore for Star Trek in her part as Nurse Chapel. She added a lovely dash of elegance to our convention, seeming to be crisply poised at all times, in sharp contrast to our gradually wilting committee members. But by Saturday, things were looking up. The Con floor began to take on the air of election night at the underdog's campaign headquarters . . . when they suddenly find their man winning. Every once in a while, a new and stunning registration total would ripple back from the registration desk. And just like those campaign workers, we were waiting for NBC to concede to CBS! Meanwhile, I acquired a right-hand man, pardon me, girl. Regina Gottesman was to have been in charge of the Hospitality Room, until we discovered that although the urns of coffee and hot water were only $20.00 each, we had to buy a minimum of five a day in order to get one. That would have been $400.00 for coffee. You're right, we didn't have a Hospitality Room. So little Regina was everywhere else at once making herself useful. Everyone on the committee developed the habit of being in six places at once. You can bet one of the six places Regina and I tried to be was the speaker's auditorium. Hal Clement gave an excellent talk on Star Trek and Science, and D. C. Fontana had a question and answer period with Majel contributing her own anecdotes. One of the questions which had been on a lot of fans' minds was: 66 Star Trek Lives! "What does the T in James T. Kirk stand for?" Speculation was rife, with the most popular being "Tomcat." You know Kirk's reputation with the ladies. Dorothy informed us, however, that the "T" stood for, of all things, "Tiberius"! I don't even think Bill Shatner knew that one. We had many Spock fans who wanted to know why Spock did not have as many romances as Captain Kirk. D. C. replied that it was easier to write a love interest for Kirk because he was the "handsome hero" type, whereas Spock was the cool, aloof alien (albeit half human). It had to be a very special female to have a romance with Mr. Spock. Of course, there was always Nurse Chapel wandering around ready for anything Spock would care to suggest. We all looked at Christine, excuse me, Majel. She smiled and said all they'd let her do was make some plomeek soup. On© of the fans reminded her about the kissing scene in "Plato's Stepchildren." "Ah," she said, "but we were forced to do that by the Platonians." The Costume Call was the big event Saturday night. We had deliberately set it for 10:00 p.m. to give us time to go to dinner first. The committee had made reservations at Gallagher's 33, across from the hotel, for all the guests of honor. We had been looking forward to this during the whole gruelling day. However, that evening, at the time we were scheduled to go to dinner, ABC was running a science-fiction film called "The People"* starring Bill Shatner. I had had the luck to attend a private screening at ABC earlier in the week, but the rest of the fans were not so fortunate. As we left the Con suite for dinner, about fourteen fans were huddled around that poor, defenseless TV set watching the movie. From every room we passed, we could hear snatches of the dialogue. We think just about all the fans at the convention were watching Bill that night. It was a lovely tribute to the actor and a *"The People" was based on a series of s-f novelettes by Zenna Henderson, which had become so popular among s-f fans that it sparked a movement with clubs and zines of its own. Star Trek Lives! 67 mark of affection for the character he had made so much his own, Captain James Tiberius Kirk. Our dinner was a huge success. We had a beautiful two hours alone with all these wonderful people. That was the evening I officially christened Elyse "The --Screaming Yellow Zonker." Elyse is a pretty, natural blonde; however, she has a very high speaking voice and when she gets excited, which was often during that incredible convention, dogs have been known to howl from eleven blocks away. After the dinner, we ran up to the suite to change into our various costumes and deposit all the doggie bags. The portions of roast beef had been monstrous and no one had been able to finish their dinner. This turned out to be an unexpected sort of blessing, later that evening. The Costume Call was a gala affair, due largely to the enthusiasm of the fans. I don't know if some of the other hotel guests will ever recover, though. It must be thoroughly disquieting to ring for an elevator and have the doors fly open on a six-foot tall, Technicolor tribble . . . that says, "What floor please?" One doesn't meet a talking ball of fluff every day. And that evening, we had a plethora of tribbles. Little kids in costumes Mama had made them, and big kids in costumes they had made themselves. It was a fuzzy night. We had also an excess of Spocks, with over half of them female —strange for such a logical species. Debbie did a beautiful job of organizing the Call with assists from Allan, Elyse, Steve and Devra. The judges were marvelous, and gave each and every costume a most careful scrutiny. Isaac was especially mindful of any of the scantily clad females passing the judging stand. The other judges included the Rod-denberrys, Hal Clement, Bjo Trimble, D. C. Fontana and Oscar Katz. As the judges were giving each costume its due, TV Guide was taking pictures for an article slated for publication in March. Outside of a few fans complaining they couldn't see through the photographer, 68 Star Trek Lives! we had no disasters and not even one small catastrophe at the Call. (Which luck, by that time, was more shocking than the latest unbelievable figure from the registration desk.) The prizes were a minor problem, though, mainly because we'd run out of Excedrin, and couldn't even count the headaches. Yet, two splitting heads are better than one, so we put them together. We wanted the prizes to be a memento of the convention. Money, it seemed, would be a bit crass—besides, we didn't think we'd have any. We finally decided on making up a huge poster from a three-shot of Kirk, Spock and McCoy. I had the inspiration of getting the judges to autograph the chest of Captain Kirk (the only really large light area in the picture). We must have thought right because all the winners were delighted, or so they told us. Most of the committee had not bothered to put on costumes but I had a gorgeous royal-purple-and-pink sari an Indian friend had given me and I was going to wear it or bust. I wore it. It was a little difficult walking in it because, as I discovered early, if I took long strides it all gathered between my knees and tripped me up. A sari is not the easiest thing to wear, but it is absolutely the most beautiful. At the Costume.Call, we found three girls who had motored in from Maryland. Remember those doggie bags we had brought from Gallagher's? Well, here is where they make their contribution. Many of the fans had only heard about the convention a few days prior to the opening and were not at all prepared—moneywise—for the expenses of New York City. Yet they were unable to resist the lure of Star Trek, so they came on the spur of the moment. When th^ese three girls told us they had been living on cheese and crackers, Devra, Eileen and I quickly ran up to the Con suite, appropriated all the doggie bags, and dashed back to give them to the girls. When Gene and Majel heard about this later, they wanted to take the girls out to dinner. Since by then it was about 2:30 a.m., and we didn't know which room the girls Star Trek Lives! 69 were staying in, Gene had to postpone his good deed. I understand he found them the next day and bought them a huge lunch, accompanying it with a fatherly lecture on coming to conventions without food money. After the Call we ran films again. We always started with the blooper film and "The Cage." For many of the fans this was the first time they had seen the episodes in color and on a large screen. The detail in the films is excellent. Most of the show's sets stand up very well under the magnification—except for "Amok Time," where you can see the arc lights reflected in the red Vulcan sky. This was just one scene and not that noticeable, but fans notice everything. Afterward, the Roddenberrys and the Katzes invited me to join them for a drink. When we reached the lounge, Gene noticed some fans at another table and joined them for a while. To say that they were surprised and happy- would be the understatement of the year. Later that night we went to another party thrown by Phil Sueling. Gene was accorded a great honor that night when Art Saha invited him to become a member of First Fandom. This is an honor given only to those people who have made large and lasting contributions to science fiction. I think Star Trek falls into that category. By this time, everyone connected with the convention was existing solely on nervous energy. Three hours sleep a night and weird eating habits do not aid the disposition. Strangely enough, there were no real disagreements or fights. I know, I don't believe it myself. The fact that we all came out of this not only still speaking to each other but also still friends is a miracle of the ages. Not merely friends, either; Elyse Pines married Steve Rosenstein and Dana Friese married Tom Anderson. Which is not so uncommon; it takes a fan to put up with a fan. We had our share of mischief, of course. True love never runs smooth. The worst was the Case of the Stolen Space Suit Glove. 70 Star Trek Lives! We had security guards on twenty-four-hour duty all during the convention, guarding the Huckster's Room, the Art Show room, the NASA display, etc. Saturday night, when the room was dark for the movies, some little @#*!% took off with the glove. We were horrified. What would NASA say? How much would it cost? It was a very pale committee that gathered around the phone when I called "our man" at NASA the next day. When I gbt through to him he was very excited and happy about the coverage NASA had received. The ABC news team had opened with the exhibit, and the papers also had pictures. I first broke the news about the terrible condition of the displays and how we had had to work so hard to put them together. He was very apologetic. Then I told him about the glove. I told him we would gladly pay for it if he would tell us how much it cost. We had not made much of a profit, even with all the extra people, because of the parties, the dinner, the $$$ for moving the NASA exhibit and the bill from the hotel (oi!). He was just marvelous. He said not to worry about the glove. The coverage had been worth a million dollars to NASA. What's a $2,000 glove? After Al picked the phone out of my nerveless fingers and was again assured that they would not charge us for the glove and yes, we could have a display for the next convention, we all started to breathe again. I am sure I have left out all sorts of people and things, and I apologize to one and all. One thing, though. The last day of the convention, a delegation of fans presented the committee with a yard-wide piece of paper with a thousand or more signatures on it. It was dedicated to The Star Trek Con Committee, Thank You. Love, that is what the Con was all about. Because love is what Star Trek is about. Love of your fellow-man, and of yourself. That loving is not something to be ashamed of—it's something to shout about. The Spack Charisma Effect "Ifs quite a lovely thing where two halves come together to make a whole." Gene Roddenberry The most phenomenal phenomenon of all is: Spock. The devastating, unprecedented response to the character of Spock went beyond all bounds, beyond anything anyone could have expected, almost beyond anything anyone could be expected to explain. It is, in fact, a hazardous procedure to attempt to explain the impact of Spock. No matter what we say here, no matter if we devoted the length of a book to it, it is certain that some fans would still say: "That is not what Spock is about at all." Or, at best, others would say: "Yes, that's part of it, but you've left out this, this and this." And those latter fans, at least, will be right. The Spock effect is so complex that it deserves a book of its own and will get one. We have dealt with 71 72 Star Trek Lives! many aspects of it elsewhere throughout this book. But here we want to deal with what we call the Spock Charisma Effect and with a number of Tailored Effects which we have identified as contributing to it— not claiming that the list is exhaustive. (We could add to it ourselves—to say nothing of what others might add. But exhaustive could also get exhausting—not only to us.) What, then, do we mean by the Spock Charisma Effect, and what are some of its components? The term "charisma" is now often used loosely to mean simply popularity or appeal—and Spock certainly has that. While many fans respond as deeply to Kirk as to Spock, and some even more deeply, it is undeniably true that in terms of fan mail, or other measures of widespread popularity, Spock has drawn a response not only beyond Kirk's but beyond all normal limits for a television character. And that is no fault of the character of Kirk nor of the faultless portrayal of Kirk by William Shatter. In any other context, the strength of Kirk's role and the power of Shatner's portrayal would have received even more deserved recognition than they have. Neither Kirk nor Shatner can be blamed for running up against a law of nature named Spock. And, in fact, Kirk and Shatner and the way they related to Spock are indeed responsible for a vitally significant part of the Spock Charisma Effect. Kirk has a charisma of his own, which also deserves a book, and will get one. Charisma more properly means: "the gift of grace"—and still more specifically, a special, personal quality, usually of leadership, which captures the imagination and inspires unswerving allegiance and devotion. One can even trace the origin of the word back to Greek roots meaning: grace, beauty, kindness, to rejoice at, desire, like, yearn. Not a bad word for the kind of effect Spock has had on his friends aboard the Enterprise—especially Star Trek Lives! 73 on his friend Kirk—and on his friends and fans in our century. While Spock is not formally a leader, we know that even Kirk would follow him unswervingly, if need be, and into hell, if necessary, and would have the grace even to yield to Spock's leadership, if the situation called for it. Even McCoy would follow Spock— despite sniping and argument, and even McCoy is devoted to him, despite his protestations to the contrary. But it is not only, or even primarily, in the matter of leadership that Spock's crewmates are responding to his very special personal qualities. Spock has chosen to follow Kirk—not only as a matter of Star Fleet regulations, but as his own response to Kirk's charisma, which is not only a matter of rank, but of his own gift. So the question of leadership does not too often arise for Spock, but the question of his own personal gifts and qualities of character does. And not only his contemporaries, but ours, have responded with captivated imaginations and unswerving devotion. In fact, in our century, we have perhaps even more reasons for responding to Spock's special charisma. He speaks to things in us which even his closest associates do not share, helps us to wrestle with problems which his contemporaries have at least partly solved and gives us hope of solutions where we have seen none. Thus we have identified at least seven Tailored Effects which for our time or his—or both—are part of the Spock Charisma Effect: the Psychological Visibility Effect, the Admiration Effect, the Sex Effect, the Spock Premise (or Philosophical Effect), the Future-Shock Effect, the Half-breed or Alien Effect, and what we might call the Friend Effect—or perhaps merely the Kirk-Spock relationship. The concept of "psychological visibility" is the idea that each of us needs the pleasure of seeing and being seen, understanding and being understood—be- 74 Star Trek Lives! ing mentally visible and correctly perceived by someone—and capable of perceiving someone—on as many levels and as deeply as possible.* We enjoy psychological visibility even when it is partial—some quick, correct insight into our behavior even by a stranger, or some insight of our own even into a stranger. But what we crave is a deeper, more profound seeing and being seen. We long to be known for what we really are, underneath the faces behind which we sometimes try to hide from the world—and even from ourselves. We frequently fear being known too well, but also we want it, and even need it. Being perceived on the deepest level is like looking into a mirror which reflects not one's surface but one's soul—the core essence of the self which even the self can't normally view directly. It is the face of the soul, the inner, psychological face, which becomes visible in the mirror of another person's reactions to one's serf. One of the captivating appeals of Spock is that he seems to be a man who would "see" into us. In fact, that was one of the most astute observations which Leonard Nimoy made to us: I think what it all boils down to is, "Here's a man who knows something about me that nobody else knows. Here's a person that understands me in a way that nobody else understands me. Here's a person that I'd like to be able to spend time with and talk.to because he would know what I mean when I tell him how I feel. He would have insight that nobody else seems to have ... He would acknowledge my existence. He would verify my existence in a way that few other people would. ?The concept of psychological visibility has been defined by psychologist Nathaniel Branden, author of The Psychology of Self-Esteem, Breaking Free, The Disowned Self, and formerly coeditor with Ayn Rand of The Objectivist. Star Trek Lives! 75 Now that is quite a remarkable thought. It would be much easier to realize—and it is also part of the Psychological Visibility Effect—that the viewer feels able to see into Spock. Each viewer who responds in this way sees something in Spock's background, reactions or situation which that viewer feels uniquely qualified to understand. That viewer wants to grow near to Spock, to tell him, "I ani the one person in all the universe who does understand you." Anyone who has sensed, even dimly, the need for psychological visibility, anyone who has lacked it and hungered for it (and all of us have, at times) is drawn irresistibly into the story—sensing just what that understanding would mean to Spock in those moments when not even Kirk can "see" him in that way. But Nimoy's perception is profound. What the viewer most wants is not so much to comfort Spock with understanding as to experience directly what it would mean to be understood by Spock. Spock projects a quality of intense, penetrating percep-tiveness, a willingness and ability to see that almost makes the viewer feel seen—even across all the gulfs of time and distance between—and even across the un-crossable gulf of the fact that Spock is a fictional character. Yet in a way that is the easiest gulf of all to cross. Spock is almost more real to us because he is fictional. We can see him even in the most private moments which he would hide from his contemporaries. The key to the power of the Psychological Visibility Effect is the idea of uniqueness. Each of us is uniquely qualified to understand Spock because we do see him in ways he permits to no one he knows— and because each one of us is unique, with his own special way of looking. And we sense that, in some way, Spock can see us. Such a being could. He would. He would take the trouble to see each one of us uniquely—if we could get to him. And, if we wish, we can get to him—by joining him in the realm of fiction. This is one rea- 76 Star Trek Lives! son for the tremendous outpouring of fan stories, in many of which someone who is a dream-image of the author enjoys the privilege of being seen by the uniquely perceptive Vulcan. It is a human characteristic in our culture that our most intensely felt reactions are buried deep inside, where nobody is allowed to see: our moments of excruciating embarrassment, our flashes of illicit desire, our inner battles, both won and lost, in. the privacy of our own minds—these we might even be willing to reveal to Spock, but even if we were not entirely willing, he might be able to see them. That might be terrifying. But it would also be a pleasure, because we trust his integrity to guard our vulnerabilities. The perceptiveness of Spock is plainly related to the perceptiveness of Nimoy, as are many of Spock's other characteristics which give rise to the Admiration Effect. For example, Nimoy imbued Spock with an aura of dignity which emanates from a diamond-hard core of personal integrity. We found Leonard Nimoy to be very like Spock. The resemblance is so haunting that we wondered if we had happened on an important principle: the difference between a superbly competent professional portrayal of a character, and that "something extra" that makes a classic. So we asked the Star Trek actors if the performer himself had to share with his fictional character certain personal qualities, in order to instill the role with the special vibrancy that fires us so when we see it in Star Trek. We'll try to show you more of this in Chapter Six, but there is more to Leonard Nimoy than even that chapter can encompass. He is beautifully articulate; he constantly and easily constructs complex chains of reasoning (and is delighted when he is understood, or, better yet, anticipated); he is deeply interested in an astonishing range of subjects; and he is indeed possessed of that same aura of dignity we see in Spock. Leonard Nimoy spoke movingly to us of how much he loved the Spock Star Trek Lives! 77 character, the integrity, the achievement, the soul of that fictional but very real man. Nimoy does indeed share many of Spock's qualities, and thus he personally has come to serve as a model for hordes of Star Trek fans to admire and to emulate. And with good reason. How many actors would choose to persuade producers to free them from a contract (for the series Mission: Impossible) because, after two years, they were no longer being artistically challenged by the show—and thus forfeit half a million dollars? At first, there had been many possibilities inherent in Mission: Impossible for Leonard Nimoy. There were even occasions when he played minor roles in disguises and the audience did not even know it was him. He did it for the challenge and the exercise of his craft. But then he believed that the role had deteriorated, that he as a person was no longer given the potential to grow by this role. Growth is essential, so despite the fact that the part was easy, the job relaxed, the work simple, the hours delightful, the whole thing undemanding, he talked the producers into releasing him from the contract. The key word was "undemanding." He, like Spock, demands challenge and growth. We learned of many examples of this nature— such as his recently turning down an eight-thousand-dollar-plus-expenses offer to appear briefly in the Spock costume for a Germany-based circus. He thought the commercialism involved was improper for what Spock had meant. Suffice it to say, however, for .the purposes of this chapter, that Mr. Nimoy is indeed worthy of the Admiration Effect he has evoked in millions of Spock fans. In the role that Gene Roddenberry gave him, Nimoy had the perfect vehicle for the artistic embodiment of many of his personal attributes. Here was a character whose dedication to logic, to the rational use of the mind, was thoroughgoing beyond what one would believe of a human being—yet which one ought to find not only believeable but common. 78 Star Trek Lives! Those viewers who see Spock's dedication to applying thought rather than feeling to each problem as an admirable thing, as an attitude to emulate, as a goal to strive toward, are the ones who are struck by the Admiration Effect. We know of not one fan who seriously strives to become wholly Vulcan, to emulate that suppression of emotion which to Dr. McCoy, as to most viewers, seems inhuman and unhealthy. Yet Spock elicits such admiration from some fans that they do see him as a "model," a figure they want to become like in very many ways. One young man, a graduate student in physics, went to court and legally changed his name to "Spock" —no last name, just "Spock." He did this before becoming aware of the Star Trek fan movement and the breathtaking effect that the Spock-hero figure has had on women. He denies personal awareness of Spock's sex appeal, and wishes only to put the name "Spock" into the annals of Earth's science-history (and has chosen nuclear-fission reactors as his current research project). He just might do it, too. But if that young man was unaware of it, millions of fans did not miss the fact that Nimoy's portrayal of Spock does indeed possess a gut-wrenching sex appeal, no less now than when the show first went on the air. We put it to Leonard Nimoy this way: Sondra Marshak: You know with that port fan* business, in the fanzines, they have come up with more ways to induce that pon farr . . . ! They've got chemicals, Romulans, Klingons and just women in general—well, how do you personally feel about being a sex object? Leonard Nimoy: During the three years the show was on the air, almost any time I talked to somebody in the press, that question would come up ... and I guess I've probably responded to that question the same way today as I did then —I never give it a thought. I always approach "The Vulcan male rut. Star Trek Lives! 79 each script and scene as the work for today . . . dealing with the dramatic needs of the requirements of these scenes ... To try to deal with the question of Mr. Spock as a sex symbol is silly. But Mr. Nimoy does not deny the existence of that force which Spock exerts on so many women. He says that as an actor he deals with each scene, and one day somebody says, "Hey, you know this is a sexy character!" His response is, "Oh, really? Terrific. O.K., that's all right." To try to analyse the nature of Spock's sex appeal would lead us into a treatise on the psychology of sex in general. Yet, it seems that everyone we've talked to connected with Star Trek has some particular opinion on the nature of Spock's sex appeal. Gene Roddenberry (himself a magnetically sexy individual) attributes a great part of it to a hint of evu in Spock—or at least to the aura of tightly leashed, restrained power in Spock—physical power, intellectual power, psychic power—enough power in that one man to destroy the Enterprise and take half the galaxy with it if he so chose. But the appeal comes from the fact that Spock would never do that. If power is basically evil, and it is the good in us which keeps it under control, then Spock is an incredibly good character. But if power, personal efficacy, is the pure good, and it is the good in us which selects the goals toward which that good power will be used, then also Spock contains more good than any earthly human we are likely to meet. Either way the viewer interprets Spock's balance of good and evil, whether it is the good or the evil which is the base of that sex appeal, Spock has it in profusion. How could one character embody two opposite types of sex appeal—both the fantastically good and the satanically-tinged evil—at the same time? He is a character who is real to himself, real enough to allow others to interpret him as one would a real person. It 80 Star Trek Lives! is this dimension of reality that causes so many women to project their personal sex fantasies onto Spock, and to experience them as an intense actuality. These fantasies vary from person to person through polarities as opposite as "good" and "evil." For example, it has been theorized by several of the creators of Star Trek that a great portion of Spock's sex appeal lies in the fact that he has no emotions to give a woman, no love to give. Spock has said so, and apparently some viewers happily ignore the fact that on another occasion Spock revealed his regret at not telling his mother how much he loved her. As Nimoy put it to us: . . . Some people can't handle these "contradictions." Some people are very upset—well not necessarily upset, but don't understand how Spock could run around and hang from a tree. I've had people say to me "Oh, you were so stoic, and then all of a sudden you were hanging from a tree." Well, they didn't understand what was happening, couldn't correlate it; it doesn't compute. No imagination. But the side of Spock we see most often is that which steadfastly avoids emotional entanglements. Thus, with the rise of women's liberation, especially among younger women, the thought of a man capable of the prodigious outpouring of passion triggered by the irresistible pon farr, and yet incapable of lasting enfotional ties, is a most attractive one. This analysis is in tune with recent investigations of female sex fantasies. Apparently, a number of women are as turned on by the thought of a brief episode of physical passion without any lasting entanglements as men have generally been assumed to be. Insofar as the fanzines reveal the deepest fantasies either of the author or of what the author knows her readers fantasize, we can understand the large number of fanzine stories about Nurse Chapel and other crew women offering Spock a no-strings-attached af- Star Trek Lives! 81 fair. Examples of these stories are discussed in Chapter Nine. So Spock embodies both diametrically opposed appeals, sex with involvement and sex without involvement. But the appeal of the pon jarr concept goes far beyond that. Pon farr is the one thing which renders all of Spock's powers, whether of good or evil, useless to him. Pon farr destroys his ability to reason dispassionately, to use that tight leash of control we spoke of earlier. Pon farr renders Spock at the tender mercy of his woman. It is more than kryptonite was to Superman. He is worse than helpless before this peculiar mating drive: he becomes uncontrollably savage. M. L. "Steve" Barnes, the "D.O.B." we met in Chapter One,, maintains that it is this uncontrollable, brutal savageness in Spock that is the source of the female fascination with Spock as a lover. She says, in her article in Eridani Triad #3: Many are the [fanzine] tales that wax enthusiastic about Mr. Spoek's amorous qualities. With our hero in the grip of pon farr, the reader is besieged with stories of his tender and solicitous regard toward his current bed-partner, her sharing of his satisfaction seems to be of paramount importance. Now I also find Mr. Spock sexually exciting, extremely masculine, and undeniably intriguing. It is part of his mystique,- a projection of that restrained sexuality that is so apparent to all of us. If he were totally human, the attributes assigned to him would be valid. But he is not . . . and as such those aforementioned tender qualities come under grave suspicion. Sorry girls; but tain't so! First let us consider the Vulcan method of choosing mates, a completely parental selection evidently. There are no emotions involved—no tender expressions of devotion. Totally, coldly logical. Next the Vulcan sex drive must be investigated. Practically nonexistent most of the time. It leads us to believe that perhaps very little knowledge of the opposite sex is gained over the 82 Star Trek Lives! years. In our human relationships, we often find that the experienced lover—the fellow who has developed a few previous sexual liaisons, makes the best bed partner. He knows what will arouse, what pleases, how to bring fulfillment. He has also, through years of incidental acquaintanceship with females (and a male/female association is always sexual in connotation if not intent) learned the basic tenderness or attentiveness which females thrive on. He knows the importance, of the "courting" period, however brief, that must precede the bedroom romp. I can hear the cries of protest that have arisen. Any reader who has come this far will probably be in violent disagreement. Unfortunately, in our society, lovemaking is a learned art and Mr. Spock has had little opportunity to enroll in that school. "He could learn," the reader insists. Indeed, he might if he were able to overcome certain dominant traits. But a deep, inhibiting layer of Vulcan control overrides any normal human behavior we might expect from him. He would be far more likely to respond in the manner of any Vulcan male who has the urge to mate. And that brings us to point three. We must consider the state of mind of the Vulcan male in pon farr. He is highly stimulated and overwrought (to the point of not eating or sleeping and sometimes to the point of not thinking). A quite normal outgrowth of this type of drive. He is erotically aroused, ready to consummate his desire with a female he may not really know. To undertake a rather casual animalistic coupling . .. in short, he is in rut. This leads Mrs. Barnes into a comparison with the various animal life forms on our own planet who share the rutting characteristic. Then she goes on to describe the Vulcan analogue. It is aggressive by nature, brutal and brief. The fire is not quenched by one experience. Over a period of days every waking moment is devoted to slaking this insatiable thirst. Love and tenderness do not enter into the picture. So it must be Star Trek Lives! with Vulcans. Some authors have offered the premise that through the mind-bond the selfishness of the male's act is tempered and becomes to the female, if not pleasurable, at least bearable. But even if this is the case, until the pon farr has had time to strengthen, the female's situation must indeed be grim. .. . Now we must turn to the Vulcan mating itself. Almost total strangers, locked together solely for the purpose of 'koon-ut-kali-fee, there can be no real depth of emotional feeling. Indeed their logical minds would reject any such inclination. From what we were permitted to see of the Vulcan marriage ceremony, we are led to believe that T'Pring was not aroused by Spock's agitation. In fact so little was her mind touched by it that she defied his claim. Hardly the actions of a woman suffering from a feminine equivalent of pon farr. From this it is surmised the female Vulcan is always in a state of "passive readiness." Bluntly stated, she may be bred at any time her male has need of her services, whether she is physically and mentally prepared or not. What we are talking about is simple rape. And herein lies an unadmitted appeal to Spock's sexuality, a dark and possibly Freudian side of our human female nature; which of us will deny the secret and deeply buried thrill that this forbidden word brings to mind? The advertising world and other commercial interests purport that every woman's dream is the white knight who rescues his fair maiden and bears her off on his charger intQ the sunset. Presumably we are to draw our own conclusions as to their future relationship. The feminine mind is expected to see it all wrapped in gossamer clouds of star-dust. An analogy, rather like that of the bee shaking pollen on the flower, that has little to do with human emotions. Come, fellow! That is for little girls . . . according to psychologists, very little girls indeed. A fairy tale concocted to placate the Victorian mind. The true female is something quite different She is, in her way, as sexually motivated as the male. She may even be the aggressor, in a devious 83 84 Star Trek Lives! manner. Through this association, Spock becomes a symbol of the height of sexual experience ... She is aware of the danger posed by port farr, but is obsessed by the idea of it. She is attracted by Spock's remoteness, but desires to destroy it— to arouse him. She must subconsciously realize what getting into bed with him would be like, but she seeks to drive him to that very situation. All the while she is convinced that through her he will find an escape for his deeper emotions of love. Such is the human female—the optimist of our race. Optimism can be a wonderful quality but not when it seeks to tamper with a racial inheritance and such a basic tenet of Vulcan life ... We found ourselves wondering how these legions of optimistic females would feel about Mr. Nimoy's vision of the status of human women married to Vulcan men. We had been discussing the role of women in Star Trek, and he had just expressed the view that Vulcan was obviously a matriarchy. SM: You said that Vulcan, in your estimation, was a matriarchal society because T'Pau was the ruler and Spock kind of knelt to her . . . Well, how about in "Journey to Babel," the relationship between Sarek and Amanda, with his orders to her? LN: Amanda was a human. • SM: You think that's why he ordered her about like that? LN: Of course. (Chuckles) SM: How would it have been if he'd been married to a Vulcan? LN: I don't know. It would be conjecture. We never saw the script. I would assume the relationship would be different. After all, Vulcans are superior to humans, and a Vulcan like Sarek would tell a Terran lady what to do, wouldn't he? SM: Well, the fans have been going crazy about this for years and years because on the one hand, "Amok Time" made them think it was a matriarchal society, and on the other, "Journey to Babel" made them think it was the opposite . . . Star Trek Lives! 85 LN: But the obvious is there, we're not talking about a Vulcan male relating to an Earth lady, and a mother at that. How would you describe the function of the lady I went to Vulcan to marry? . . . What about her and her relationship to me and the matter of choice that she was involved in? And the fact that she had chosen another male? Where does that put her in the Vulcan society? SM: All right, that's a good point, but how about if she lost the challenge—she'd have become your property. LN: But she entered into a challenge based on her own choice. And had the right to do that, to gamble with her own life. She could shoot crap right along with the guys. And she chose to do that. Well, considering the surprising range of women who are attracted to Spock sexually, there must be some around who would enjoy living on a matriarchal planet, but because of the human factor be subject to the commands of her husband instead of ruling hike her Vulcan sisters. Female fan writers continue to devise methods of getting a reaction from Spock, regardless of the consequences—and they continue to believe the consequences would be satisfactory. Fantasy, by definition, deals with the impossible, and in Spock these women have found a unique combination of impossibilities. There is that in humankind which is irresistibly attracted by the necessity of accomplishing the impossible. We dreamed of the "impossible" trip to the moon —and we did it. We now dream of traveling faster than light—will we do it? Spock does. Men identify with him, and accomplish the impossible. Women identify with his lovers, and hi their fantasies they do what his on-screen lovers found impossible. Some of these women write thusly because, with Spock, they can get something "impossible" to obtain in real life. Married women, especially those becoming "liberated," or otherwise changing with maturity, 86 Star Trek hives! find that the psychological visibility component of the man/woman relationship in their marriage is not enough to satisfy them. It is virtually impossible for any man to understand any woman on every one of these deepest levels (and vice versa). In some ways, this mystery adds spice to the relationship—but female fantasy is superenergized by the concept of sexual attraction combined with psychological visibility. Because Spock combines both these effects, he has become a veritable lightning rod for female sexual fantasies of all sorts. Doris Beetem delves into this aspect of fannish writing in her fanzine survey titled "The Vulcan Love Story" (Eridani Triad #2): The aloofness and emotional control of Vul-cans has driven many of Star Trek's female viewers crazy, for the almost-stated first principle of the Vulcan Love Story of the Trekzines is to break into the inner emotional nature of the outwardly calm Vulcan. We've all wondered if perhaps we couldn't succeed where Nurse Chapel failed, and the Trek authoress is no different. ... In order to activate the inner emotional nature of their Vulcan hero into that outer passion and humanity, Trek authoresses often use relatively standardized plots, unique to their own peculiar genre. The Vulcan Love Story genre can be divided into two categories—with port fan, or without The port fair story has been traditional, ever since Theodore Sturgeon's "Amok Time," as one of the few ways to shake a Vulcan's cool. Falling back on "Vulcan physiology" in a way unknown in mainline literature, some stories practically go . to the extent of raping the hero. This eventuality is indeed both dramatic and emotion-laden. As a general rule of thumb, if Spock is being raped— by Klingons, Romulans, et al, the softhearted authoress has him fortunately rescued scant seconds before A Fate Worse Than Death. However, if the lady involved is suitable for happily-ever-aftering . . . the possibility of continued salacity is considerably greater. Star Trek Lives! 87 . . . And then, as another hook to use upon Mr. Spock's inner emotions, there is pain. There is the pain of little-known, invariably fatal rare diseases, or watching the death of his good friend Capt. Kirk (and any other good friends the authoress can scrape up) right before his eyes, and traditional," uncomplicated mangling. Suffering, of course, is an emotion in itself. It is also a manifestation of what I call the "liebestod" syndrome. Although it is rather Freudian to equate suffering with sex, one can often note that the less oblique Vulcan Love Stories also include pain—welts, hair-pulling, shrieks, what have you. For those authoresses who have given up on Mr. Spock ever feeling the softer passions, suffering is a substitute. And if these sufferings do not have a Freudian undertone, then what, may I ask, is all the whipping for? The tales in which Mr. Spock dies in Nurse Chapel's arms are reminiscent not only of Freudianism, but of Elizabethan euphemism. There is one type of woman who is attracted to Spock and who regards him as exquisitely sexy, because of the one attribute which many people would think was antagonistic to sex appeal, his keen intellect, encyclopedic knowledge, and unremitting logic. In short, to his magnificent efficacy. Spock is utterly capable of dealing with any sort of threat, be it on the cave-man level of brute strength or on the superindustrial level or the forefronts of accumulated knowledge of hundreds of planets and nonhuman races. Here is a male who can meet and master any computer ever made, a man capable of conquering any type of Frankenstein threat. He has even expressed a preference for flesh-and-blood company over that of supercomputers. Yet he is total master of any situation that technology can create. This generalized efficacy, which is Spock's because of his combination of intellect and physical strength, is for many women the prime ingredient in sex appeal. These women want a man who can bend Nature to his 88 Star Trek Lives! will and by his heroic strength create an environment pleasant to live in. Such ability is innately "sexy" to the woman who sees herself as a hero's heroine, joining strength to strength and achievement to achievement to create a fully rounded world. The Spock character then becomes, for her, a work of art, a vision of masculine perfection whose actualization provides fuel for her courage to go on to face life's severest challenges— and to succeed. This type of sex appeal in Spock calls forth a parallel response in male viewers which they might not identify as basically a sexual response. Deep down, many men know that the woman of their dreams wants an efficacious man like Spock. And seeing Spock realized on the screen as a perfect artistic creation fuels their courage to go on and attempt to make themselves into just this kind of heroic figure. These people do exist in reality and they are heroes in this world, though often unsung. A remarkable percentage of such people have gravitated toward Star Trek fandom, but as we said above, the one thing they uniformly reject is Spock's attitude toward emotion. One would think that sex and emotion ought to be inseparable, yet here we have a Heroic Figure, a work of pure art, who possesses a universally recognized sex appeal and rejects flatly any implication that he even has emotions. And this apparent contradiction does not shatter Star Trek's illusion of believability. Can it be that a deep-rooted assumption of our culture's prevailing philosophy is that sex and emotion have nothing whatever to do with each other—that reason and emotion are irreconcilable opposites? Spock insists—eloquently—that this assumption is true. Yet, perhaps his very insistence causes us to doubt this idea. Myrna Culbreath, editor of The Fire Bringer, made this idea and this doubt the basis of what she calls the Spock Premise. At Vul-Con I, the Star Trek convention we mentioned in Chapter One, we heard Star Trek Lives! 89 Gene Roddenberry introduce Myrna Culbreath to the convention and speak of her Spock Premise article as "brilliant . . . the best analysis of Spock ever done . . . 'required reading' for all Star Trek fans." Shortly thereafter, we were to get to know Myrna much better. But even on first reading, her Spock Premise article impressed us deeply. And Gene Roddenberry asked her to expand it into a book. In Volume #1, Number 5, of The Fire Bringer, she writes: . . . Noting his large female following, for example, they [people trying to explain Spock's sex appeal] have attributed it to his "great animal magnetism." That, of course, says very little except that he is attractive because he is attractive. And the little which it does say is wrong. As a female, I can assure you that Spock's magnetism is anything but animal. It comes precisely from the fact that he is not an animal— and that he is a very special kind of man. Roddenberry also understands this. Speaking of Spock's struggle with his "human side" and his effort to suppress emotions, Roddenberry says: [in The Making of Star Trek ] "[This] is one of the reasons why Spock is an interesting character: the turmoil and conflict within. As half-human and half-Vulcan, he is continually at war within himself. For some reason this makes him particularly delightful to our female viewers, and of all ages. I guess they know that somewhere inside him there is a strong, emotional Earth man trying to come out. And they would love to help." Exactly. Except that I do not think that the conflict is precisely between Vulcan-half and human-half. It is not genetic; it is philosophical. Despite Roddenberry's fine intuitive and dramatic grasp of Spock's character, I suspect that even he may not quite realize the power of what I would call "The Spock Premise"—nor realize just how deep a current in our culture he has tapped with the pure idea of Mr. Spock. Consider what Spock is: He is a think- 90 Star Trek Lives! ing being who knows that reason is a thinking being's only tool of survival, who believes that there is a deep conflict between logic and emotion, who is willing—and able—to pay the enormous price of suppressing his emotions and following to whatever end his logic may lead. ... He is the man who has chosen' reason fully and without reservation—not only for his work, but for his life; not only as his last resort in a crisis but as his first resort in every moment, in every choice of word or gesture. . .. reason is the price of life. Reason works. Facing facts—however unpleasant—is the only way to deal with them. Reason demands—and makes possible—the virtues of courage, productiveness, pride, honor, self-esteem. It is difficult for anyone, and especially for Spock—because he has accepted one crucial error. It is an error shared by Kirk, by McCoy, by the makers of Star Trek and by almost all of its fans. It is built into our philosophy—and into Vulcan philosophy. It is the idea that reason and emotions are enemies; that there is a necessary conflict; that to live by reason one must deny and destroy emotion. Believing that, Spock must try to suppress his emotions—repress them utterly and deny them unconditionally. He is Spock. He is consistent. He is extravagantly willing to pay the price. For he knows that there is a price. He knows, at bottom, that he does have emotions. Perhaps he even knows that it is not just his human half that has emotions, but his Vulcan half, too—however much Vulcan philosophy would want to deny it, however much a thousand years of Vulcan teaching have tried to destroy it. He may even glimpse at certain moments the fact that to deny something which has such an indestructible, persistent reality is a breach of reason—is, in fact, not "logical." But he cannot resolve that contradiction. He is locked into it by an error that is not merely his, but ours. Star Trek Lives! 91 Thus, the Spock Premise states that Spock's most crucial error is the idea that reason and emotion are irreconcilable opposites. This is an error—on the part of Spock, the creators and ourselves—and yet the seeds of its solution are also in Spock and in Star Trek. The error, according to the Spock Premise, is an unconscious assumption many of us share. And it is the basis for a great part of the Spock charisma effect. It is this great inner conflict we share with him that provides a dimension of familiarity, plausibility, and mutual psychological visibility—of reality—to the Spock character. But it is also the source of much of Spock's alienation from both the Vulcans and the humans around him and, undeniably, Spock as the classic alienated hero is an essential part of the total Spock charisma. More and more in our modern culture, where technology is outstripping the social sciences, alienation is becoming a universally experienced emotion. If only in isolated flashes during our lifetimes, we are all becoming acquainted with the feeling of a gulf opening beneath our feet separating us from our elders, our children, our neighbors, as if we stood on a piece of Arctic ice, breaking away from shore and floating inexorably away to sea. Alvin Toffler describes this feeling of riding helplessly on a tide of events-not-of-our-choosing, being whisked bodily into the future and immersed in a whirlwind of disorienting events. He calls it Future Shock. And it is everywhere in our society, driving all of us to the limits of our physical endurance. Yet because of the undeniably good things that technology brings us, freedom from drudgery, lengthened lives, cures for crippling diseases, uncountable wealth in terms of controlling energy, we are willing to find ways to cope with the repeated systemic shocks of encountering the future before we are emotionally and physically prepared to deal with it. One of the ways that some people seem to have found to cope with future shock is delving into science fiction. As Leonard Nimoy told us: 92 Star Trek Lives.' ... I think that science fiction always has been not only a bridge between the present and the future, but a scientific-motivator for the future. I think that much of major scientific movement started with science dreamers—somebody who's dreaming science fiction, what he dreams is s-f. Now he may or may not be a science-fiction writer, a dramatist; or he may read science fiction by a science-fiction writer that causes him to think about the possibility of accomplishing physically the things the science-fiction writer has dreamed about. So obviously there is a bridge in that sense. Since we spoke with Mr. Nimoy, The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum has begun to collect Star Trek fan-produced material to check out this theory. How many young fans of today will be historically significant scientists of tomorrow? Fifty or a hundred years from now, the Smithsonian may be able to evaluate Star Trek's impact on modern science. Star Trek reaches more people every week than all of the science-fiction books published in a whole year. Star Trek gives us a glimpse of that future hurtling toward us at dizzying speed, and shows us the kind of men who will build that world, successfully cope with its challenges, and remain free of any nerve-shattering traumas from future shock. Weekly, they confront the inconceivable—"Captain, there has never been anything like this encountered before."—and come safely to terms with it. The cure for future shock is not less technology, but more. Science fiction shows us how it is possible to use that technology to confront a universe which is not basically inimical to human life, and to carve out a comfortable place to live there. Even an unlikely and exotic half-breed like Spock could live in that world among those people. It is not just the Vulcans there who practice and respect the philosophy of the JDIC. Gene Roddenberry built that concept deep into his visualization of the whole United Federation of Planets. In that universe, "dif- Star Trek Lives! 93 ferent" is not "dead." Differences—Infinite Diversity in /nfinite Combinations—are the glory of life. This is an important ingredient in the Spock charisma for the many millions living today who are themselves racial or cultural half-breeds or aliens living among strangers. Spock is their hero. But he is also the hero of anyone who has ever felt a rift separating them from those they live with. Gene Roddenberry himself is no total stranger to this very common feeling: I come from the southern culture ... in which it's even more so than anywhere else in the country, that a boy cannot cry, cannot complain. You certainly can't come home from school crying because a guy bigger than you beat you up. What's going to happen is that the old man, who is himself an ex-cavalry man, is going to clout you a few times and he's going to give you a stick and say, "Go back and get him. And if you come home beat up again, I'm going to clout you again." So some of this [stoicism/ courage of Vulcan culture] is very close to me. ... (Yet) it occurred to me that perhaps I lacked something because I did not particularly enjoy seeing animals pinned to a line and killed in the back yard to furnish us food ... It occurred to me . . . that probably something was wrong with me. Probably, say, I was . . . [different]. "" From this experience, and the years of wrestling mentally with this feeling, Gene Roddenberry arrived at his adult growth with the deep-seated, personal philosophy that it is the combination of our differences that is the greatest beauty in all creation. So Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, the TDIC, became the cornerstone of his Vulcan philosophy, a logical philosophy. Roddenberry designed his half-alien science expert in part to be a fictional device with which to comment on the human condition from outside, to satirize 94 Star Trek Lives! mankind, to show how absurd some of our antiquated thinking would look if extended into the future—and how devastatingly malignant some of our habits of thought might become in a multicultural interstellar civilization. Roddenberry knew that real science fiction was not merely adventure stories about the future, but a running commentary on the conditions of the here and now. He told us: Of course, I was doing this from the beginning—a great many changes in our society have come out of fiction . . . You can reach many more people with television . . . You can suck them in with an adventure/ entertainment show and the first thing you know, you're pointing out the stupidity of intolerance. They may be very intolerant, but they suddenly find their hero coming out against intolerance. And if you do it correctly, he's not doing it in a preaching way, and the first thing you know, you are changing their minds. This is to say that one of the cardinal rules of fiction is that social commentary and thematic content must be illustrated, not merely talked about. Star Trek, therefore, is devoid of long erudite lectures on science or philosophy. The show depends on the viewer's active participation to the extent of decoding the message. And Star Trek's message is multifold. One part of that message embodied in Spock is conveyed by means of the fictionalist's indispensable tool: conflict. Spock is a classic conflict recipe. Good action stories have clear-cut external conflicts—man against beast, man against nature, man against man; kill or be killed. Good psychological drama has internalized conflicts, such as man against his conscience, man against his own desires, man against irrationality—his own or that of others. Most literature today is either one or the other of these. Science fiction is usually both at once. In Spock, we have a classic s-f hero, in that he is the nexus of two in- Star Trek Lives! 95 tegrated sets of conflicts, internal and external. But we are never told about these conflicts, we are shown them. The internal conflicts are" revealed in moments of breakdown of internal barriers, moments when we see |f Spock crying over the love he could never reveal to his parents, or begging T'Pau for Kirk's life, or happy to discover his own capacity to respond to human feelings. These conflicts are further underscored by McCoy's constant needling of Spock, which tells us that the doctor is aware of Spock's internal conflicts and is applying psychological judo to help the half-Vulcan resolve his problems—but according to McCoy's culture's ideals. Spock's external conflicts take the shape of clashes with the crew over decisions in Kirk's absence—clashes between his Vulcan ethic and the ethic underlying the human culture to which he also belongs, and clashes between himself and the Star Fleet Command, as well as with alien cultures. Spock represents the very problem so disturbing in our lives hi America today—the clash of cultures and their values. Today in America, we not only have the cultural mixes which we have inherited from the mass immigrations, but we also have the headlong smash between the past-culture and the future-culture so ably outlined by Toffler in Future Shock. Spock represents this type of conflict as well as the other types we have discussed, and a method of meeting it which seems to succeed against that ever-pervasive alienation surrounding us. Thus his IDIC stands as a beacon of hope before all those who find themselves . . . different. And the way that Spock integrates that philosophy into every movement, every look and intonation, is a crucially necessary part of the total Spock Charisma Effect. - Finally, given what Spock is, the absolutely vital, vitalizing element which makes the Spock charisma real to us is: Kirk. That may sound strange and even debatable to 96 Star Trek Lives! I Star Trek Lives! 97 many Spock fans, who often, though by no means always, fail to give Kirk sufficient credit—even for what they most love in Star Trek. (And, of course, it is debatable. One of the great joys of Star Trek is that such issues can be debated— hotly and cheerfully and at length, and even, intelligently—in a way which, unlike most debates, frequently sheds more light than heat. Even the most basic elements of the relationship between Kirk and Spock have, at one time or another, been disputed— occasionally even between and among the writers of this book. But in the process, from our interviews and from fans—and fan fiction and Star Trek itself—we have learned something. And we have found a growing body of fans who share or respond to the view of the Kirk/Spock relationship which we have gradually built.) Spock is not alone. He has all the qualifications to be the loneliest man in the galaxy—and he is not. The fact that he is not, he owes to Kirk. What we owe to Kirk is, in some ways, even more. Without Kirk—without the way he responds to Spock, and Spock to him, much of Spock would remain essentially invisible to us. He would be practically the invisible man, the invisible Vulcan, locked within the prison of his unwillingness to express emotions, truly an alien among strangers—a hero, but a hero not only unsung but unseen, and unseeing. That peculiar psychological visibility and vision which makes us feel that we see him—and he us-— comes very largely from his very special relationship to Kirk. Even in the moments when we see him and Kirk does not or, even, cannot, what we very often see is his feeling for Kirk: the crackling tension and utter ferocity of his worry when Kirk is in danger and Spock cannot find him, cannot get to him, cannot act; the savage release of action and single-minded purpose when, finally, he can act; the breaking of his un- breakable control when naked terror, or grief or joy, bursts through . . . and for Kirk. The only time Spock ever smiled in open, uncon-cealable delight—and in his own person, not as the result of some pathological condition or alien influence —was in "Amok Time," when he thought that he had killed Kirk, and then found him alive. And until that moment his grief had been obvious and inconsolable. Still earlier, in the arena, he had broken through a pathological condition, which should have made him incapable of speech, to plead for Kirk's life. Even before that he had revealed to Kirk what he would have revealed to no other man, what he had been willing to die rather than reveal—the incredibly painful facts of Vulcan "biology"—the deadly, logic-destroying pon farr, the time of mating. That single episode would be enough to reveal the electrifying quality of the Kirk/Spock relationship —to reveal Kirk's willingness to stake career and life for Spock—and to reveal an emotion.just as profound, perhaps even more profound, which Spock feels for Kirk, however much his Vulcan virtue tries to deny it. But the examples are uncounted throughout the seventy-nine episodes of the series. And the relationship grew and developed, as does a real-life friendship, during the series. Time and time again, of course, they saved each other's lives, staked life and honor for each other, took desperate chances, learned to trust each other with an absolute, bedrock certainty based on each one's knowledge of the other's integrity and profound feeling. They called that feeling friendship—even Spock did. They called it being brothers. Kirk would have been willing to call it a very special kind of love. But it was Spock who did, however silently, actually call it love. One of the most moving scenes in all of Star Trek is the final one from "Requiem for Methuselah" when Kirk, burdened by the intolerable memory of an im- 98 Star Trek Lives! possible love and its tragic ending, falls into an exhausted sleep, murmuring, "If only I could forget . . ." McCoy, for once genuinely and totally failing to understand Spock, lectures him on the meaning of love, which he says that Spock will never know—"the desperate chances, the glorious failures—and the glorious successes ... all of that you will never know because the word love isn't written in your vocabulary." He looks at Kirk and says, regretfully, "I wish he could forget." And leaves. Silently Spock crosses to bend over the sleeping Kirk, touching him to establish the Vulcan mind-meld. Aloud he says only, "Forget. Forget." But the word is love. That Spock we would never see if it were not for Kirk. Not the Spock who, while contending that Vulcans never make jokes and have no sense of humor, has learned to joke and tease and laugh with Kirk—even if the laugh is only the lift of an eyebrow. Nor the Spock who, while usually maintaining a severe reserve about touching or being touched, allows a touch to Kirk or touches him as needed in a crisis, often even unconsciously guiding, supporting, or shielding Kirk with his body—even in a wild scene of action when the focus is not particularly on that. (Take a close look when they are running from the tiger and the strafing plane in "Shore Leave.") But these are the sides of Spock we want to see— the power and the courage and integrity we admire, the capacity to live by his philosophy and with his loneliness, but also the ability to reach out and be reached, even across the gulf between the stars. To find a friend worthy of his loyalty and love, and capable of seeing fully his own worthiness, offering him an example by which he might one day break through to resolve his inner conflicts more thoroughly than anyone ever has. This is part of the profound optimism of the Spock character and of the Kirk/Spock relationship. Spock, the unlikely, unknown and lonely alien, is seen and known, understood and loved, in a way that few Star Trek Lives.' 99 men have ever been, and he is learning to see and love as few men ever have. What draws these two together? Call it a thousand things. Shared dangers, shared virtues, shared needs—but also each one's unique virtues, unique needs, which the other does not have in fullest measure but is able to see: Spock's passionate coolness and Kirk's passionate warmth, Spock's reserve and Kirk's openness, Spock's decorum and Kirk's mischief. Here, truly, is where differences combine to create delight in diversity. But there is also a bedrock oneness. These two are of the same kind—and the same calibre. Each would be first among men wherever he roamed. Spock's Vulcan abilities give him certain superiorities over Kirk, yet there is a certain fundamental equality— and always a thing or two that Kirk can show Spock —in fact, much that Spock has to learn from Kirk. And Kirk commands not by bureaucratic rank, but by his own charisma, which even Spock recognizes. Not the least of the powers which Kirk holds throbbing and controlled under his command is: Spock—and by Spock's choice. But there is an even more fundamental equality— an equality of moral stature. Each of them is that rarest of all things among men: a man of unbroken, uncompromising morality, a man who strives for an un-breached integrity. Each may make mistakes, even lapse from his painfully high standard of virtue under stress. Each is aware of the agonizing difficulty of some moral choices—and each has chosen a life where that agony is repeatedly stretched almost beyond mortal endurance. Yet each remains dedicated to the striving, extravagantly willing to pay the price. It is that, more than anything else, which makes each one uniquely visible to the other. Of all those around them—and they live among those whose striving is already great—they are the two who are most dedicated to that striving. Part of what it seems Leonard Nimoy put into Spock is this striving, and a constantly focused alert- 100 Star Trek Lives! ness to error. It shows in the tension lines in his face, an abrupt gesture, a stillness, a seated posture, always attuned toward perfecting himself and always acutely aware that any slacking of effort leads to a falling away from that ideal. This habit of mental focusing is so very much a part of Leonard Nimoy himself that he isn't even aware of how much it shows in his portrayal of Spock. But the astute viewer 'can see it not only in Spock, but equally in Kirk. A posture, a movement cat-quick and ever sure, a narrow analytical glance, a timed pause before speaking, all betray a constant alertness guarding an ideal integrity, a dedication to a perfection which is not in the slightest beyond his reach. This fierce dedication, each to his own philosophy and vision of life, and the integrity of character that supports that dedication, are qualities Spock and Kirk share. This is just one more battle they have in common. But this is a different kind of battle than the phaser-pistol and nerve-pinch ones they share as comrades-in-arms, and it produces a different kind of relationship between them. In the physical battles, their bodies are in danger. In this hidden battle, it is their integrity, their self-esteem, their egos that are in jeopardy. And this hidden battle is a battle which is largely unknown to those around them, because it is an invisible, silent battle, a battle of the soul. Each of them triumphs alone. But then, from their lonely pinnacles of success, across the deep gorge that separates them, they exchange brief smiles, knowing smiles, hardly more than a twinkling of the eye, that says, "Yes, I see you. I know what you've done and what it cost. And I know it was worth it." Each perceives something in the other which is shared by nobody else. "I am the only one who understands what you have done, and the meaning of your triumph." This js psychological visibility of the rarest and most precious sort. It is to be grasped and held with all one's strength. It is the meaning of a friend who is worth the price of one's life. Star Trek Lives! 101 This is what many viewers see in the Spock/Kirk relationship that is so precious to them. For each of us, especially those who strive for an unbreached integrity at the price of the most arduous physical effort, the sight of two people who have achieved this kind of mutual understanding, this mutual visibility of soul-and-mind, is the most euphoric artistic experience possible to us. The electrifying impact of the Spock/Kirk relationship on fans cannot be overemphasized. Its full significance and how the creators of Star Trek achieved it, is covered in Chapter Six, and in the discussion of Fan Fiction in Chapter Nine. This Spock/Kirk relationship is art. This is the fuel which sustains moral courage, the kind of courage that can drive a mere physical body beyond explainable limits. The courage of achievement which is all that stands between Man and cave-man, between, on the one hand, dishwashers and electric coffee pots, and on the other, dawn-to-dusk drudgery for the thirty miserable years of one's working life. " These then are the ingredients of the Spock charisma, seven Tailored Effects which are not operating like distinct entities. Any combination of them can strike a given viewer, and he will see a composite laser beam of a hue uniquely his own, as the effects interact with one another. We saw a simple case of this as psychological visibility enhanced the sex-appeal effect. But as we have seen, each one of these seven effects is infused with the pervasive theme of Star Trek: optimism. This is an optimism that says it is possible to find somebody who understands your innermost silent and lonely battles. There are people who can envision admirable characters and make them come to life for you —and you can make yourself into what you most admire. Here, in Spock, is a character who can touch off an explosion of your deepest sexual desires, yet he is worthy of everything the best within you can muster. Spock has the strength and ability to deal with future 102 Star Trek Lives! shock. He knows, intimately, the hell of loneliness and alienation, yet he has found a home with the warmth of deep, shared understanding, and exhilarating challenges. He lives life to the hilt, and loves every minute of it. But Spock is not the Ideal Man. It is his goal to be, but he is still fighting the battle. Neither is Kirk the Ideal Man, for he is still fighting his battles. Neither one of these two can see what the viewer is allowed to glimpse fleetingly—that neither one of them can win that battle without the other. They are two halves that dovetail exactly to make a whole. Gene Roddenberry designed the relationship this way and Shatner and Nimoy were astute enough to perceive that design, possibly because they knew Mr. Roddenberry personally, and knew exactly what the producer had put into that show. Mr. Roddenberry says: . . . Kirk and Spock were sort of dream images of myself. Two sides of me ... You have to give Nimoy and Shatner credit for having taken a role and, as fine artists themselves, they built on it and cemented things together. But basically, Spock and Kirk were designed as two halves of an integrated whole, neither totally viable without the other. As Roddenberry put it to us in a deep, almost wistful tone, "It's quite a lovely thing any place where two halves make a whole." This is part of what Mr. Nimoy terms "the orchestration of the characters" in Star Trek: The orchestration of the characters is something that a lot of people overlook. Star Trek is not a show about one man; Star Trek is an orchestrated set of characters that interrelate with each other in a way that's pretty unique, that you don't get to see on a lot of television shows. ... I don't think any one individual is responsible for the development of a character, cer- ? Star Trek Lives! 103 tainly not in a television series. There's no way to accomplish that ... a writer like Roddenberry puts together certain characters and says these characters will interact interestingly because they are different in this way or they have these conflicts or whatever. And then the chemistry of the actors takes place on stage and the producer or writer isn't even there to see it happen. He [the actor] is doing something maybe the writer didn't even know about or didn't anticipate. Or maybe the actor senses something that the writer had in ^ mind unconsciously. What did Leonard Nimoy sense that Roddenberry had in mind unconsciously? These two men have a great deal in common on an artistic and philosophic level. It seems possible to us that Gene Roddenberry saw in Leonard Nimoy that part of himself which he wrote into Spock—and likewise saw in William Shatner some spark of himself which he had designed into Kirk. Mr. Roddenberry has said that Star Trek was an intensely personal creation, his own statement. It seems possible that, operating on a deeply unconscious level where artistic creativity flourishes, Roddenberry experienced an almost subliminal recognition of the right actors to play the parts he had in mind. This didn't work just with Spock and Kirk—it is a strangely compelling aura that surrounds so very many of the characters/actors, and it touches off a responsive chord in all those even passingly associated with the show. If Mr. Roddenberry could respond thusly, with a kind of psychological visibility effect—seeing into the actors' deepest souls from the scantiest clues of a business relationship—it seems reasonable to suppose that the actors themselves saw their own reflections within Roddenberry's own character. This unique group of creative artists, brought together for a unique purpose, created an almost magical atmosphere which energized every other artist brought into the group. We will see details of this atmosphere through Mr. Nimoy's eyes, as well as through the eyes 104 Star Trek Lives! of Joan Winston, who visited the set for a week—the final, magical week—of filming, and came away with a lasting impression of that magic. The magic had its effect on Leonard Nimoy, and was a prime ingredient in the creation of that complex of Tailored Effects which is Spock. But as we have seen, Leonard-Nimoy-the-man will not stick with a show which lacks challenge. After two years with Mission: Impossible, he had outgrown it, and he asked to be released from his contract. He never asked to be released from Star Trek—quite the opposite, as we shall see in Chapter Six. There was an element in Star Trek which evoked from Mr. Nimoy (and all the others involved with the show) an allegiance unprecedented in television. We can only speculate on the nature of the appeal that Spock had for Nimoy. But from our conversations with him and those who watched him work, it seems that he perceived—among many other things— the Spock Premise and the drama inherent in it. Spock's battle with this premise is one which seems to hold much meaning for Mr. Nimoy, but we do not know the full nature of that meaning. It is possible that he has arrived at a resolution of that conflict, but still remembers the battle it cost him. It could be that the artist in him needs to embody that battle and its resolution in a concrete expression to share with all who need to see it. There are as many facets to Spock as to Leonard Nimoy himself, and that complexity is part of what makes Spock seem real to us. It would be oversimplifying to say that the Spock Premise is Spock—but it most certainly is basic not only to Spock but to Star Trek as well. Certainly Gene Roddenberry recognized it as being a major part of what he was trying to say with Spock—and it was a message which came through loud and clear to fans—not only that it was part of SpockVgreatness that he could make such a total commitment to logic, but that there was an error in his Star Trek Lives! 105 philosophy—one which we have made, too, and which he, uniquely, helps us to see. That is quite a complex message for a television show to convey—and an audience to read accurately —through the singular charisma of a single character. But it happened with Spock and with Star Trek— and it was not the end of the complexity of Star Trek, or of Spock. Mr. Nimoy sees all of Star Trek as a unified work of art—it is the orchestration of the characters, each one an integral part of Gene Roddenberry's own whole personality, summing up to make one extraordinary human being, a set of characters making one whole, that draws forth Nimoy's art, because Spock is a key role in that classic work of art. The prodigious battle Nimoy fought to protect the integrity of Spock, and thus of Star Trek as a whole, is also related in Chapter Six. That story shows how the Spock Charisma Effect is a vital link in the valid literary statement of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry's intensely personal statement on the nature of man and his place in the universe. This statement is the basis of the Optimism Effect, the power of which we will explore in Chapter Five. The Optimism Effect "Man will not only endure, he will prevail." William Faulkner, on acceptance of the Nobel Prize for Literature Ask any one of the creators of Star Trek—and almost any one of its fans—what is the single most important thing about Star Trek and they will answer you, in a word: optimism. Actually, being very articulate, and on their favorite subject, they will probably answer you in a few dozen, a few hundred, or a few thousand words, of which that will be the essence. Asked what he thinks is the source of Star Trek fans' "phenomenal devotion to the show," James Doo-han (Scotty) will say: I think it's really because the show was so well done and it held out hope for the future. Characters and production, the writing—was fantastic, and also that every show had a message . . . which was highly important because we just 106 Star Trek Lives! 107 never have any shows with any kind of message on them anymore. And that's why Star Trek will, to me, just live forever, unless something happens to the film. Hope for the future. A message. What message? Gene Roddenberry will nearly always begin by saying, "I think it was the optimism—because Star Trek was saying, 'It's not all over. There will be a future, and it will be as exciting, as challenging as anything we can imagine . . .'" (For Gene Rodden-berry's fuller answer, as well as Leonard Nimoy's, William Shatner's and several others', see Chapter Six.) We asked George Takei (Sum), "What would you say is the source of Star Trek's optimism?" Here again, I really think it's Gene Roddenberry. I think he's the one who felt, very seriously and deeply believes, that we can overcome the problems of today. We have so many problems that beset our society today. We told him that we called this the Optimism Effect, that it focused on how Star Trek's optimism has affected, energized and attracted so many millions of people. He said: I agree with you absolutely. And I think, based on what I've heard from people, all those people who have been very, very dedicated followers of Star Trek echo the same sort of idea ... I think that was probably one of the most important, critical contributions that Star Trek made. The media so much and so gloomily focuses on the impossibility of man to overcome, and this was a balancing factor. We got the other side—we didn't use that bomb. And to clarify it further, we asked many of the show's creators a series of questions based on our thinking that the optimism of Star Trek—its vision of a brighter future of man, and of a world charac- 108 Star Trek Lives! terized by hope, achievement and understanding—was the message of Star Trek and one of its chief attractions. Universally, they agreed—and elaborated. One of the most crucial answers for Star Trek was that of Dorothy C. Fontana, long one of the most important script writers for Star Trek, and its Story Editor. When Star Trek returned in its animated version, she became its Associate Producer and Story Editor. She has always been enormously devoted to it. She says: I think so—deep down we all want to be better than we really are, whether it's in terms of the individual, in partnership, or in terms of a country or a world community. We've all grown up with the shadow of destruction—and that look at a peaceful, successful world with formal advances in terms of philosophy and abilities to understand other beings, not just human beings, but other beings, is a goal that we'd all like to say, yes, we can do that, instead of the doom and destruction that's hung over us ... We'd all like to say, "All right, we've survived this irrational and pretty illogical time of our development and have gone on, gotten past that danger to be better human beings, to be wiser, saner, and I think more compassionate and gentle than we are now." I think we'd all like to look forward to that, unless you're totally corrupt. And that was what Star Trek was holding out—saying yes, we can do it—we can be that better thing than we are now.. In answer to the same questions, DeForest Kel-ley (Dr. McCoy) told us: Very definitely. We've waited almost too long ... I agree [with you]. Yes, I feel that this is what Star Trek means to the young people. They see it as their future. We've been brought up in a negative generation. Some of this is left Star Trek Lives! 109 over on the kids. They're very bright—are reaching out for something to latch on to. If you think negatively, your life will go negative . . . There's a positive way of thinking deep down in them. Star Trek represents to them a future they can believe in, that they want. They're reaching for it. It's a phenomenal thing, what's happening today—Star Trek is more popular now than it was. It hasn't even reached its apex yet. Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) agreed emphatically, and told us that at first she had regarded Star Trek as just another acting job, but as she began to see what it meant—the optimism, the hope, the caring, the love—it became much more than that for her. She believed emphatically in the power of its message to affect the world. She still does. We caught Walter Koenig on the run in the midst of a hectic Star Trek convention in New York, and he thought about our questions briefly. He said essentially that he hadn't really thought of it that way, but we were right and he did, in fact, agree with us. Again and again, we heard each one of the principal creators of Star Trek credit Gene Roddenberry as the original source of its essential optimism and hopeful vision of the future. All of the creators also stressed their own agreement with these ideas, and the vital importance of that optimism in making Star Trek mean so much, first of all to them and then to the fans. Plainly, the Optimism Effect had its effect, first and most profoundly on those who helped to tailor it for Star Trek. But if you ask fans who have thought seriously about the show what its most important meaning was to them, you will get the same answer. And frequently you will get the answer in their lives. Gene Roddenberry tells of receiving a letter from a young man who had been ready to drop out of high school until he happened to encounter a Star Trek episode on television. For him it rekindled an interest 110 Star Trek Lives! in the future, and in machinery. The letter came from the University of Wisconsin, where the young man had become a cum laude student in engineering. For him, the Optimism Effect of Star Trek had been the essential fuel needed to change his own life. How can a television show have that kind of impact? And what does produce the Optimism Effect? There is no single character, no one concrete element which we can point to and label as the one tailored to produce the Optimism Effect. It is easy to imagine a show which could share many concrete details with Star Trek—a starship, a captain, an alien, a doctor, action and adventure—and yet not produce that impact. What, then, does produce it? An extremely perceptive analysis of the impact and meaning of Star Trek by a creative person not directly related to the show, stressing its impact on other creative people in television and its meaning to society, is worth quoting in full. Here, then, is a letter by Helen Jean Burn, Head Writer for the Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting, which she addressed to network and studio heads: Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting Division of Programming and Operations May 26, 1972 Living in the midst of filmmakers, television directors, studio cameramen, tape editors, and writers who work in both TV studio and film production, you get the distinct impression that for individuals deeply into this medium the Golden Age of television was not "Omnibus," not "Playhouse 90"—but Star Trek. When you ask why those working the night shift arrange their dinner breaks to coincide with some of the 12 hours of Star Trek reruns programmed in the Baltimore/Washington area each week, or why those working days arrange their schedules so they can split in time to catch the show at home on DCs Channel 5- at five o'clock, you get some curious answers. Some Star Trek Lives! Ill speak vaguely of "the consistently high production values." Others, generally London Film School types, refer to "the orchestration of movement in the shots and editing." What they mean is that viewers of Star Trek were never subjected to artsy-craftsy film work. They were given nice, wide, comfortable establishing shots so they always knew exactly where the characters were placed; then the shots built with precision and restraint from wide to medium to close-up, with extreme close-ups being judiciously saved for moments of real tension. Conflict and suspense were built into the scripts, into the characters and their interaction with one another. There was no need for showy and distracting pulled-focus stuff. There was never an attempt to use short clips butt-spliced together and cut to the beat of fast-paced music as a substitute for genuine excitement in the program itself. Even the opticals were not distracting; they were done well, with a minimum of razzle-dazzle, and used intelligently. All right, what difference does it make to network and production house decision-makers that individuals working in the business still groove on an old series? None. Except that in any area of the arts and crafts, the products insiders dig usually turn out to be the classics. There's nothing particularly mysterious about that. Having learned from our own failed experiments, we have managed to figure out what works. For this reason Star Trek's persistent and devoted following of viewers, from college students to that stereotyped little old lady in tennis shoes, should come as no surprise. They obviously find the show deeply and continuously satisfying. The "production values" surely play some part in this. Viewers see a great deal and are becoming increasingly hep to the nuts and bolts of production. You hear them ask, "How do Sonny and Cher get themselves on the screen in all those different costumes at once?" There is no way to explain to them multiple chroma key inserts/but the fact that they enjoy the result shows they have become increasingly sensitive to and appreciative of those devices we sometimes consider too ex- 112 Star Trek Lives! pensive and too time-consuming to be valid. The viewers have no idea how much work goes into effects; they have no idea how or why such devices operate; but they are aware of them and they like them. But there are other reasons for Star Trek's inexhaustible appeal, and these seem to be psychological. The series gave us a future characterized by hope: a world where the computers which threaten our personal privacy are man's obedient servants; where Man the Predator can decide not to kill, not to wage war; where a Swahili communications officer and a doctor from the deep South and an Oriental helmsman and a Russian navigator and a Scots engineer and a half-alien science officer not only work well together but love one another; and where in episode after episode we have satisfied for us mankind's age-old yearning for a superman (characteristic of all cultures, primitive and classical, right down to this country's legendary Paul Bunyan)—Mr. Spock, smarter than anybody, stronger than anybody, invincible and nonviolent, thoroughly at home in a highly technological milieu, gifted with those extrasensory powers we are beginning to believe may be possible for us all, and yet still struggling to master the emotions which wrack and terrify us all ... and succeeding, while still depicting the struggle so clearly that we are continuously able to find in him the alien within us all, that part of ourselves which has lost the ability to relate to passersby on the street, to neighbors, even to friends and family, and which feels increasingly frequent moments wherein we wonder if we belong here, or anywhere at all. All right. It's all there in the old series. Why not play the reruns forever? Why bring it back anew? Because the problems to which the show addressed itself not only still exist, but have in recent years become magnified, and because other aspects of the times have changed. The vision of hope Star Trek provided needs updating. For one thing, Women's Lib (for good or bad) is upon us. More and more women and girls Star Trek Lives.' 113 are asking, How do I fit into this system? What does the future hold for me? Where do I belong? What am I? The old series, reflecting the time in which it was made, barely dealt with those questions. Lieutenant Uhura's second most common line (after "Hailing frequencies are open!") was, "Captain, I'm frightened!" The truly competent women were usually aliens. The wife of a Klingon was a skilled engineer, while on the Enterprise we encountered no women in engineering. The only female ship captain we saw was a Romulan. Among human women, the doctors and historians and psychiatrists were guilty of bad judgment, envy, inability to cope with their femininity, or so badly hung up on some man they were often incapable of functioning intelligently. Come to think of it, even the Romulan lady ship captain was totally freaked out by Spock. Further, science fiction had become increasingly less fiction and more science. Freud said, "Every time we scientists think we have made a discovery we find some poet has been there centuries before us." There is something in the creative process which enables perceptive minds to reach beyond the senses into truths not yet uncovered and further, to translate those truths into terms ordinary people can understand, become prepared for, and in time learn to live with. Star Trek, for many of us, took the fear out of the flying saucer rumors. It prepared us to face the possibility of life in other forms, prepared us for the possibility it might not only be ahead of us, but even benevolent. Yet there is more to be done, and it is a job only television (which reaches people who may never read heavy books) can do, and which can be done only by Star Trek—which is, in what I intend as the most complimentary sense possible, the "Sesame Street" for viewers worried about themselves and their future. Kurt Vonne-gut, in an NET Special which dramatized five stories about the future, a couple of years ago touched upon the problem facing writers of prose science fiction. He said they are dealing in a little Newtonian physics and facts everybody knew as 114 Star Trek Lives! far back as 1939. He added that the real truth about physics and astronomy and space travel is so incredible, so complex and mind-boggling, that most writers cannot comprehend it and the scientists who understand it cannot translate it into terms the reader can absorb, much less believe. Star Trek did, and could do much more. "O.K.," you say, "PBS is the Great Educator of the Wave Bands. We are in the entertainment business, the business of selling time, of delivering the largest possible chunk of viewers per advertising dollar. An audience of thousands is fine for you PBS 'narrowcasters,' but we are broadcasters." And in reply I submit for your consideration that the fear of the future, anxiety about racial tension, urban violence, decades of war, overpopulation, disease, hunger, and the potential ecological death of this planet concern the broadest possible audience; and, further, that Star Trek's philosophy, its format, and its characters provide the best possible vehicle for capturing the interest of this great mass of viewers, entertaining them with genuinely suspenseful plots and at the same time satisfying their deepest unconscious psychological needs with programs which are profoundly relevant to the human condition. Most Sincerely, Helen Jean Burn Head Writer Its philosophy, its format, and its characters, but especially its philosophy. That element in Star Trek which is tailored to create the Optimism' Effect is the same element which surrounds all of us in our daily lives with a kind of plasma-like pervasive presence— philosophy. "Philosophy" is something that most people shy away from, under that label. But just as people have begun to respond to the sophisticated "production values" that Ms. Burn speaks of in her letter, people are responding more and more strongly to the philosophi- Star Trek Lives! 115 cal element behind fiction—without being aware that it is philosophy that is causing their reaction. Philosophy is the study of the most comprehensive principles of reality. That means that there is nothing in all creation which is not the realm of philosophy. And that is why the Optimism Effect is the broadest effect, and the most powerful. It reaches people who have absolutely nothing else in common except a readiness to respond to a philosophy of optimism. Most people think of philosophy as a remote academic subject of no possible importance to their real lives or, worse, as a kind of gloom-and-doom preaching telling them to resign themselves to their fate. What is still worse is that, with respect to most of modern philosophy, they are right. Most academic philosophy in this century has concerned itself with nitpicking arguments over the meanings of words—not unlike arguments over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin—or with saying flatly that knowledge is impossible to man. Small wonder that most real and decent people have no use for that. Their hunger for a philosophy which speaks to their real needs and concerns is profound. Star Trek was food for that hunger. The show openly and dramatically tackled the toughest philosophical questions, and the answers it suggested, or drew the viewer to reach, were the essence of hope, the soul of optimism. It said: The nature of the universe is such that we can survive, we can cope, we can know, we will prevail. It said: Man is a difficult and dangerous creature; "To be human is to be complex." There is a darker side to man; it is a great and terrible thing to be a man, but we can choose the great. It said: We can learn to live together as human beings, as intelligent beings even when we are not "human," and we can learn to cherish our diversity and not destroy each other. It said all of that and more, and said it not as 116 Star Trek Lives! preaching but as an essential part of its drama. It showed heroes running up against the tough questions and finding an answer—sometimes only a partial solution, but a partial solution that was better than no solution. And it showed that ^we must always be ready to re-examine yesterday's solution, lest it become part of tomorrow's problem. In the beginning, this philosophy was very personal to Gene Roddenberry. If he had not had it, he could not have created Star Trek. The indispensable condition of being able to say something is to have something to say. But this was a very powerful statement, and through his untiring efforts, it became infused into every element of Star Trek—a pervasive presence which shaped every detail of its tailoring. Roddenberry chose other creators who shared some spark of that philosophy, or who were open enough to pick it up, amplify it, play with it, integrate it into their characters, their scripts, their particular jobs. Beautiful, daring costumes? Yes—because the universe is a beautiful, exciting place and beauty is important. An alien hero? Yes, because diversity is delightful and we can learn to see through another's eyes. A star-going civilization of peace and friendship? Yes, because we will prevail. It proved to be a supremely energizing vision, the very vision millions had been waiting for. It captivated the creators of Star Trek, and its fans. It spoke to ordinary people and to extraordinary people. But it affected them all in much the same way— as a lift of hope in the midst of hopelessness. And for many that hope provided a supercharging of their vitality tanks, providing the propulsion to do whatever it is that they desire to see done. The Optimism Effect provides energy. But where does that energy come from? One thing that physics teaches us is that nature's systems always draw energy from contrasts. Hurricanes occur when highly dissimilar air masses meet and mingle. The world's most energetic societies exist in the temperate regions where the seasonal contrasts are Star Trek Lives! 117 greatest. And the cornerstone of all fiction, as every would-be writer learns immediately, is contrast in the form of conflict. Star Trek's philosophy of optimism was in high contrast with the prevailing philosophy of pessimism and the prevailing climate of gloom in the real world. For so long, most of philosophy and most of art had preached the gospel of give up, give out, and give in. The world was beginning to look like: Situation normal—all fouled up. Then, suddenly, there was Star Trek. The energy transfer between that fictional universe which was highly charged with optimism, and the real universe which seemed almost devoid of optimism, was like a lightning bolt. Millions of decent; common-sense people, who had been trying to hold on to some scrap of optimism— barely succeeding or sometimes failing—found their courage recharged. For many of them, it was enough to change the direction of their lives, to get them under power and underway and moving again. For others, who were already moving, it was a living vision of their distant goal. The Optimism Effect touched every tailored element of Star Trek. Kirk gives us hope for the development of the Ideal Man—strong, compassionate, sensitive, warm, rational, brave, able to deal even with his emotions. The whole universe of the United Federation of Planets strikes us as man's proper future—wiser, more peaceful, challenging, respectful of diversity, hopeful. But the power of the Optimism Effect is perhaps nowhere better seen than in the character of Spock and his relation to the humans around him. His mere existence on the Enterprise speaks volumes. And the philosophy of the whole show is often put into his mouth or into his Vulcan culture. In the previous chapter, we saw how seven Tailored Effects converge in Spock to create a study in contrasts. But his contrasts are more than internal. He has been given the dramatic job of representing a whole 118 Star Trek Lives' culture based on a value system which is in high contrast with the prevailing value system on earth today. He is both a living illustration of the value of diversity, and a spokesman for it. The heart of the Vulcan value system is the Idic. The greatest joy in all creation is in the infinite ways that infinitely diverse things can join together to create meaning and beauty. This is a part of Gene Rodden-berry's personal philosophy which grew out of his boyhood environment—and his personal experiences with intolerance—to become one of his most serious mature convictions. It is greatly relevant to our real problems. This basic IdiC philosophy is a primary ingredient in the Spock Charisma Effect, and it is one of the Spock character's largest contributions to the pervasive energy plasma of the Optimism Effect. Conversely, the Optimism Effect is an ingredient in each of the seven Tailored Effects which make up the Spock Charisma Effect. Spock's Psychological Visibility Effect says, yes, you can be understood. His Admiration Effect says, yes, there are admirable characteristics possible to mortals. His Sex Effect says, yes, life is fun—live it and pass it on. His Spock Premise Effect says, even in error there is hope. His Future Shock Effect says, we will survive even this. His Half-breed Effect says, accept what you cannot change and don't worry, you can learn to live with it and profit from the experience. And the Friendship Effect says that you, too, can find friendship, someone to admire. Likewise, the Optimism Effect is an ingredient in every other element of the show. It pervades. The cumulative effect is not additive, it's geometrically multiplied by interactions between the effects. The Idic is the symbolic summation of all that Spock stands for. And that is not "live and let live." The Idic is a positive statement of deep concern for people, and of personal profit to be derived from a life of zestful involvement in combining our differences. And Spock actually lives that philosophy right before our eyes. Repeatedly, he has chosen to stay on the En- Star Trek Lives? 119 terprise among humans, where he is "different," partly because, as he said in "I, Mudd," he's needed there. His presence has changed him (third-season Spock is notoriously humanized), and it has changed those around him in subtle ways. In other words, the Idic is the key to arguing without fighting, to disagreeing without destroying, to competing without losing, to growth—which is the essence of life. The Idic implies that there is no particular virtue iii winning, nor any particular disgrace in losing, any competition. The joys come from participating in a new combination. The winner of .a contest has gained nothing because if he is reasonably mature, he doesn't need to prove his worth to himself, and he does not need the opinions of others to convince himself of his identity. The loser, however, has gained an enormous personal profit. He has observed a more successful technique, he has gained information and insight, and/or he has corrected some misunderstanding; he has grown. The optimism of the Idic is implicit in the fact that this philosophy is practiced, lived, realized by a planet-wide culture, the Vulcans, and it works! The Vulcan nature.is said to be more violently warlike than that of humans, but their world has enjoyed peace for hundreds of years. A large part of Star Trek fandom is energized by the belief that this Vulcan concept of peace is the only one which will help our world survive, and by the optimism that if the viciously warlike Vulcans can do it, so can we, and we can do it without losing our basic joy in our emotions. In this way, Spock fans reject the error within the Spock Premise—asserting by their actions that for humans, at least, it is possible to have both logic and emotion without conflict. Something deep inside us insists that this must be so, but on the conscious verbal level of thought we often cannot see how to accomplish it. . But Spock gives us another clue. 120 Star Trek Lives.' He represents not only diversity but rationality. When he says "logic," that is what he means—the use of the mind to understand reality. He is devoted to that unconditionally: to facing reality squarely with the clear-eyed conviction that it can be understood. That is the most hopeful attitude of all. And it is really shared by all of the heroic characters of Star Trek. Spock adds the willingness to pay any price for reason, even to denying emotion, and the error of believing that this is necessary for him, even though he is half human. The others see that human emotions, however troublesome, are also part of reality and can be understood. The fans have gotten the extraordinarily complex message that Spock's devotion to reason is to be honored and emulated, while his rejection of emotion is to be questioned. And from the whole of Star Trek, they have gotten the message that the Spock Premise, and all premises, are to be questioned, but that answers are possible. That is the ultimately optimistic message. For if knowledge is possible, there is little that we cannot achieve—from understanding a man with a black face or pointed ears, to going to the stars. Knowledge is the basis of love. Ignorance is the basis of hate. Knowledge, intellectual efficacy, is the foundation of trust, trust of self and then of others; ignorance, intellectual helplessness (the doctrine that nothing is knowable, so why try), is the basis of fear, fear of self and of others and of an incomprehensible universe, because the Unknown is terrifying if we believe our minds to be basically incapable of dealing with it. Knowledge, intimate personal knowledge, is even the basis of personal love and friendship. The psychological visibility which enables us to see one another can span the gulf between stars and help us to meet strangers unafraid—in the hope of finding that special see- ing- Spock and Kirk and the whole realm of Star Trek Star Trek Lives! 121 speak to us eloquently of knowledge and efficacy and hope, of striving and prevailing, of seeing each other. And the sum of the message is love. Love of life and of the living of it, love of living, thinking beings, and of particular, unique beings. Here is the supreme optimism of a primary kind of love which is not sexual and yet may find expression in sexual terms, or in terms of simple caring which may be extended to everything which is different, strange and yet delightful. To experience the concrete sense of that love and that hope, people watch Star Trek. And frequently they try to create something of the spirit of Star Trek in their own lives. Thus, they become participants in the philosophical war which is being waged in our real world. The philosophical choice is optimism or pessimism; the question is whether the nature of reality is such that the mind can understand reality and be a useful tool of survival, or whether the nature of reality is such that the mind of man does not belong to it and can never comprehend it, but is doomed to being battered from pillar to post by incomprehensible and fearful forces forever beyond our ability to control. For the love of Star Trek, believing in its vision of hope, people throughout all of American society, and in at least sixty countries around the world, are tearing their lives apart and putting them together again based on the philosophy that they can succeed by using their minds. That their minds are the cause of success, just as the lad who wanted to drop out of high school reshaped his life. These people do not see their acts as basically philosophical, because that word has come to mean pessimism and they are driven by the Optimism Effect. As Helen Jean Burn pointed out, there is a job only television can do and which can be done only by Star Trek. That job is not educative and does not belong on a PBS station. That job is experiential—a new but highly marketable industrial product for which demand is increasing, experience. In his bestseller, Future Shock, Alvin Toffier says, 122 Star Trek Lives! ... we shall also witness a revolutionary expansion of certain industries whose sole output consists not of manufactured goods, nor even of ordinary services, but of pre-programmed "experiences." The experience industry could turn out to be one of the pillars of super-industrialism, the very foundation, in fact, of the post-service economy. Toffler goes on to say that the "psychological loading" of a product will become increasingly important in tomorrow's marketplace. One might well ask, "What is the psychological loading of Star Trek?" The answer, optimism, tells us that since Toffler wrote his book the future has arrived (again). Star Trek originally got on the air almost as a fluke, since the network executives didn't really like the show. They weren't sure who would watch it. They weren't sure of Star Trek as a commercial product because they didn't know they were not selling entertainment but rather a psychological payoff packaged experientially. Star Trek was not only about the future, it was the future of their own industry. That fact is only just now beginning to be confirmed by the increasing popularity of Star Trek in reruns, its steady commercial returns, and the concomitant success of other, new shows based on (1) optimism, and (2) "an attitude toward the universe." Star Trek fandom is an experiential industry that allows you to experience what the creators of Star Trek went through to create Star Trek. Star Trek fandom lives because Star Trek, unlike a novel or series of novels, was not created by one person, and thus was not a kind of closed creation, but was precisely what TofHer describes as the industry of the future: Simulated and non-simulated experiences will also be combined in ways that will sharply challenge man's grasp of reality. In Ray Bradbury's vivid novel, Fahrenheit 451, suburban couples desperately save their money to enable them to buy three-wall or four-wall video sets Star Trek Lives! 123 that permit them to enter into a kind of televised psycho-drama. They become actor-participants in soap operas that continue for weeks or months. Their participation in these stories is highly involving. We are, in fact, beginning to move toward the actual development of such "interactive" films with the help of advanced communications technology. The combination of simulations and "reals" will vastly multiply the number and variety of experiential products. Toffler does not mention Star Trek, but he draws heavily upon the classic science-fiction literature. It may very well be that Star Trek fandom is the forerunner of this type of experiential involvement in televised fiction. You will see in Chapter Nine that fans are in fact participating in the creation of Star Trek, whole universes full of Star Treks. No fan author has yet captured, in one story, all the diverse Effects that make up every episode of Star- Trek, because these fan stories, unlike the screened stories, are usually conceived and executed by one mind working alone. While screened Star Treks were the product of many carefully selected and attuned minds working in nearly perfect concert, feeding each other creatively. Only in television is the art of fiction catapulted into this futuristic mode of creation. Television has, until Star Trek, produced just that "one big rerun," but Star Trek proves that a show which has "an attitude toward the universe" shared by the actors, writers, producers and production crew can create something so precious and unique that those sensitive to it cannot bear to let it die—that they must experience this act of creation themselves, personally. The psychological loading of Star Trek is optimism. The desire to experience the creation of that optimism while living in a pessimistic world can be so intense that it engages the imagination in an unprecedented way. This desire is such a common denominator that it affects people engaged in mutually exclusive, opposite pursuits in an identical way—energizing them to succeed despite all barriers. 124 Star Trek Lives! Star Trek Lives' 125 Two completely antagonistic people affected by an experience like Star Trek in identical ways can find themselves with something in common for the first time: a basis for arguing without fighting, a means of resolving conflicts, a language in which to communicate, to dispel the ignorance that is the basis of fear, hate and war. We have seen how nature's systems draw energy from contrasts. We have seen how Spock, himself, is a study in internal contrasts, how his Vulcan values are in contrast with those of his fictional contemporaries, and we have seen how that Vulcan value system stands in high contrast to our real-world situation. We have also seen the real-world battle between optimism and pessimism creating contrasts in our real world. Star Trek fandom's primary energy source is a combination of these internal contrasts within Star Trek, and the contrasts in our external-to-STAR-TREK real-world situation. When these two sets of contrasts meet on the philosophical plane, there is an exchange of energy between the fictional system and the real world. When Star Trek says, "The universe is a place where the mind can know. Success is the result of deliberate actions," to a viewer who actually lives in an environment where people say with their every word, expression and deed, "Knowledge cannot cause success. My failure isn't my fault. You're not better than me, you're just lucky!"—then Star Trek feeds tremendous, vital energy to the real world. That is the Optimism Effect. The Optimism Effect is possible in any art medium, but television lends it a superheterodyne power, a power strong enough perhaps to change the course of history, to win the war against pessimism. When Star Trek was canceled, many people thought it dead, the war lost forever to the forces of darkness and chaos. It was as a physical blow. But Star Trek lived on in fanzines. Now we have, among other professional products, eleven Star Trek books from Bantam, three nonfic- tion works from Ballantine Books, animated Star Trek on the air, and Ballantine's books based on the animated series. And still the fans persist in creating their universes for the sheer joy of participating in creating the Optimism Effect. They not only create their universes in fiction, they create them in fact. And it should be pointed out that they do not appear to have any trouble telling the difference. They find Star Trek highly involving. They write Star Trek stories and sometimes write themselves into the stories. But unlike the characters in Bradbury's novel, they do not get lost in the stories to the exclusion of reality. They do not merely see the specifics of Star Trek. They see its real message. They do not say, except as a pleasant fantasy or fiction, "If only I could be on a starship . . ." They say, "I'd better stay in school; I'd better go to college; I'd better start writing again; I'd better get involved in life again." Hence the would-be dropout who became a cum laude student. Also, Star Trek, runs counter to another trend TofHer ably pointed out: the transitory nature of our images, the rapid turnover of instant celebrities going to instant oblivion, the swift appearance and disappearance of works of art—even of whole "schools" of art. Star Trek did not disappear into oblivion. It remains as real and vital and energizing today as it ever was— in fact, even more so. In a world of increasingly rapid change, it now appears destined to remain a long-lasting feature of our mental landscape. Perhaps it will even "just live forever, unless something happens to the film." What makes it that kind of art? The Optimism Effect and the Goal Effect. Star Trek Lives! 127 The Goal Effect "He who fights for the future lives in it today." Ayn Rand, "Ayn Rand Letter," 1974 "Life is not like that." If you listen very carefully, you can still hear "the voice of your Aunt Rosalie," saying: "Life is not like that." The image belongs to one famous writer, but somehow the Aunt Rosalies of this world belong to us all. They are people who, when we first respond to some heroic vision of the world suitable for a young mind, say with crushing superiority: "Wait till you grow up. You'll see. That's all foolishness; people are not like that; life is not like that." Most of us don't know, at that age that the question we ought to ask is: Should life be like that?_ We know, even then, that in some sense they are right. Life is not like that, exactly. It is not even Buck Rogers that we want, exactly. What we want is the vision of man as heroic, of 126 man as he could and should be, of the world as it should be. If we were allowed to grow up with our heroes, they would grow up with us, and presently we would find in the world of fiction heroes who could live in the real world. We would find worlds more like the real world should bt. And these would help us to set our goals in the real world—and work to achieve them. But too often we listen to the Aunt Rosalies. We are nagged by the doubt that our heroes could not exist. Too soon we begin to run into a kind of art which says that they don't and can't—that heroes are not real, but villains are—and cowards and weaklings— and the confused, the hopeless, the purposeless, the goal-less. The art reads like newspaper headlines—and the newspaper headlines read like obituaries for the human race. And it is enough to make you want to ship out for the next universe—but they tell you you can't do that, either. The Goal Effect of Star Trek, the last and most complex of the Tailored Effects we will study, is powered by our need for a kind of art which can help us to set our goals in the real world—and give us the experience of what it would be like to live in the world as it should and could be, among human beings as they could and should be. Star Trek is a work of art which fills that need with staggering perfection—perhaps better than any work of art ever has—and as such it is of inestimable value to anyone who has ever longed for a shining, yet believable, vision of a world closer to his heart's desire, both as a goal to strive toward and as fuel to power him in striving to reshape the real world closer to that heart's desire. The Goal Effect is tailored to touch anyone who has ever had such a longing—the youngest, before they are ever convinced that life is not hike that, the 128 Star Trek Lives! Star Trek Lives! 129 young, who are well-known for wanting to remake the world and, as Gene Roddenberry is fond of saying, the "young-minded"—those, perhaps, who in spite of all Aunt Rosalies, were never convinced that the longing was "illogical." Or even those who once had lost heart but who found life and hope rekindled by Star Trek. Young adults—high school, college age, a few years beyond—are perhaps the best known for wanting to change the world, and we see that characteristic in outpourings of energy like the civil-rights movement, assorted political activities, and even something like the campus unrest of the late Sixties, or the later women's movement. It is with this age group of young crusaders that Star Trek is most popular, most edifying, most energizing. It is this group which, more than any other, sees Star Trek as being "about something," or having a "message." But there are also many, like the older woman from the small town in Virginia whom we mentioned in Chapter One, who found that Star Trek had reawakened her belief in mankind and rekindled her will to live. Her family may think that she's crazy, but she's not. Nor are all the uncounted others of all ages who have found that Star Trek has recharged their will to live, given them new goals—or the strength to fight for the old ones. How can a mere television show have such an impact? Where does the energy come from? These people are responding to the Goal Effect— the liberating sense that important goals are worthwhile, worth striving for and—attainable. The contrast which powers the Goal Effect is the almost shocking contrast between Star Trek's vision of mankind, a vision of what is possible to man, and the stark image of men as they seem to be in newspaper headlines, newscasts and too many kinds of art. Star Trek shows the goal—of battles reached and won, and yet still opening up new challenges. And the headlines show us how far we will have to go, and how hard we will have to work, to reach that goal. Yet Star Trek also gives us the energy and the fuel to make the effort. By its mere existence—by the kinds of things it is saying and the kind of effort it took to say them, it gives us the sense that great efforts are possible and can succeed. It gives us the courage to tackle goals of our own— on whatever scale and in whatever direction seems suited to us. But it does even more than that. The famous writer whose image of one of the worst goal-destroying effects is the voice of your Aunt Rosalie is Ayn Rand, a novelist and philosopher whose own work has had an energizing goal-effect on millions of people. The image is from her theory of the nature and function of art, to which, among other aspects of her work, this book and its authors owe a major debt, which we gratefully acknowledge, here and elsewhere. Our interpretation of her work and of its application to Star Trek is, of course, our own, but that interpretation has proved strikingly relevant, and has struck a responsive chord with a number of the creators of Star Trek. Ayn Rand's theory of art holds, among other things, that art is a selective recreation of reality according to the artist's sense-of-life—his deep-down answers to the most fundamental questions: What kind of universe is this? What kind of being is man? Are my goals possible? The artist selects according to his sense-of-life those aspects of reality which he will include or ignore in his creation to make it reflect his basic view of man and of existence. And it is the reader's, or viewer's, or listener's sense-of-life which approves or condemns—automatically. Our response to art is a deeply personal value judgement which says, in effect: "This is my view of life," or "This is not my view of life." But our sense of life is also largely shaped by art, which helps us to form our most basic estimate of existence. 130 Star Trek Lives! And there is more than one kind of art. "Roman-" tic" art deals with values—with things as they might be and ought to be—with choices and decisions and good and evil and man as a being capable of choice—capable of being heroic. "Naturalistic" art attempts to make no value judgements—to deal with "things as they are" —a kind of journalistic approach. (But the artist's sense-of-life still operates unconsciously—deciding, perhaps, that heroes are not, but weaklings are.) It is especially from fiction and drama that we form our sense-of-life. Romantic fiction can exist on any level, from a comic strip to high art, from a children's story to a great novel, from a thriller to a classic drama. In fact, more and more in recent decades, romanticism has found refuge mainly in comic strips and children's stories (a few—certainly not in the "Run, Jane, run" books) and in specialized genres like thrillers, westerns, detective stories, fantasy and—especially —science fiction. The prevailing "mainstream" theory of art has been naturalism—and its idea of "things as they are" has gone from bad to worse, until it now portrays mostly horrors and hopelessness. Critics have been taught to praise it, but it is questionable whether even they like it. What people overwhelmingly do like and turn to for enjoyment is anything which has even traces of romantic art. And what they love is real romantic art of the best kind. The reason for that love is to be found in one of the most important functions of art. As human beings, we live by choosing goals and working to attain them, by reshaping the world to suit our purposes—else we would have remained naked savages huddled by some tireless cave, lacking heat— or light—to say nothing of air-conditioning, miracle drugs, supermarkets, television and—the ability to reach to the moon and beyond. We even reshape ourselves, choosing our goals for Star Trek Lives! 131 what we will be as human beings, building our own character and courage. We need a vision of our goal—a specific projection of our values in the likeness of which we can reshape ourselves and our world. Art can give us this, allowing us to experience by direct, immediate perception the vision of our future goals. Even more than that, since choosing and attaining goals is a daily, ever-widening process—and the more ambitious the goals, the more difficult the struggle, we need some moments when we can feel what it will be like to have achieved our goals. We need— even daily—or as often as we can get it—a moment to say, "Yes!" It can be considered a moment of recharging our batteries, of gaining fuel to continue. Art furnishes that fuel, affording us the joy of experiencing what it will be like to have reached and to live in our ideal universe, a moment of celebrating our love for existence. But it takes a very special kind of art to do that fully. Even fragments of that feeling are so valuable to us that we keep searching for them through all kinds of art and finding them, like bits of gold, in the most unlikely places. Television could be a fantastic medium for such art, an enormously powerful tool capable of presenting more "information per second" than any other medium, and presenting that information in a form most closely resembling reality—a window on reality. It could provide that direct perception of our goals, that fuel, as no other medium can—at the flick of a switch, every day. But not much of television has done so, providing, at best, a very watered-down form of romantic art in which we pan for a few traces of gold. And then, suddenly, there was Star Trek. Was it an accident? Was it something that just happened, something we can't analyze or understand, so that nothing like it can ever be done again? Or, if not, how did it work? How can a producer, a writer, an artist deliberately put such values into his work? 132 Star Trek Lives! When we asked Gene Roddenberry a question about the function of art, he put it this way: I think ... it answers the question why . . . why go on. The function of art, to me, is to give answers . . . less to give the raw courage than to give reason to have courage. Plainly, he had an idea of what he was doing. As a matter of fact, he had a very good idea, and was even familiar with the theory of art we have been discussing. ("Ayn Rand? Oh, yes. I read The Fountainhead four or five tunes, Atlas Shrugged, but also some of her nonfiction—her book on art. ..") We discussed this with several of Star Trek's artists by using two main questions presented within the following context: Star Trek has often been called an almost flawless work of art, whose value to society is significant indeed. Is it? And if it is, what conclusions can be drawn? Can there be such a thing as a work of art which is valuable to society? Is that asking something outside the definition of art? Outside the function of entertainment? But if it is not, was Star Trek that kind of art and was it done deliberately—and what went into it? In that context, we asked (among many others) the following two related questions of each person we interviewed: 1. Do you think that the emphasis of man in the United Federation of Planets world, man as he could and should be, achieving rational values, expanding his horizons, caring for and respecting other lifeforms and their values, is what is proper for mankind, and do you think that this view in our present irrational society is one of the major appeals of Star Trek? 2. Do you think that art is a form of necessary fuel giving an individual an immediately perceived sense of his values, of what he and life could and should be like? And if this is so, then the sense-of-life we commonly see portrayed to- Star Trek Lives! 133 day—in books, movies and so forth—degradation, hopelessness, man as a plaything of forces beyond his control rather than as master of his fate, do you think it would be damaging to our young people—who need the model of man as an efficacious rational being who can achieve his goals and earn happiness—to be exposed only to this common pessimism? To Gene Roddenberry, we added, "We do, and we wondered if you had done this deliberately." Yes, I think it definitely is, and I did it deliberately in this sense. Star Trek, for me, was, among other things, a vehicle by which I could express certain philosophical beliefs I have . . . some of them deep and some of them not so deep. Some of them are more simplistic, some not. I think when we get very wise, the most prized thing in the universe well have learned is the fact there's diversity. I think the fact that you are different from me is a delightful thing. I think that man should stop seeking uniformity. Unfortunately, people today feel threatened if someone believes differently than they do. I think when we're wise, we're going to be delighted by the fact that other people do, and ask why. And why is a delightful question. Star Trek was trying to say some other things. That to be different is not to be ugly. To be different is not necessarily to be wrong. That for different people, different lifeforms under different situations, there may not be just one truth, there may be many truths. If we don't start living together and respecting each other, we're not going to make it to the age of Star Trek. By showing Star Trek a multiracial, even multilife-form show—I'd say the principal greatest pleasure I've had out of Star Trek is the fact that these ideas of mine, these philosophies, have been so strongly received. Movements started on the campuses—as you recall, Star Trek came out in the days of getting very heavily into the Vietnam War. Star Trek was very anti- that type of thing. And the fact that the students on campuses 134 Star Trek Lives! grabbed hold of it was a source of great pleasure to me ... And I think on that question you have asked —not many people recognized that this is the principal appeal of Star Trek to large groups of people. That Star Trek was a show that said something and had points of view of life and whither Man, and who am I, and to what ends am I; and other shows just simply haven't wrestled with this. One of the funny things about Star Trek is, with that appeal . . . that is, saying there is a tomorrow, and tomorrow can be more challenging than yesterday, and all these things that appeal to young-minded people [that's] something that's been constantly missed by the networks and the other studios ... William Shatner would seem to agree. He told us: I think that the shows on the whole were of very good quality, that in the category of week-to-week television, it was superior. It was also different. In its kinds of stories, and its means of storytelling, it lent itself to dualities of meaning, so that there were stories that could be told with significance and yet be entertaining. I think a contribution of that kind of entertainment is very rare today. Leonard Nimoy echoed this strongly: There's nothing on the air that is quite like this team of people who work together dealing with the phenomena that the Star Trek crew deals with. The relationships are unique. The values are unique. Their approach to life. Their approach to society. Their attitude toward the universe. He paused and asked significantly, "How many of these [other TV shows] have an attitude toward the universe?" Then he continued: It's [Star Trek] a unique thing! It's refreshing, it's imaginative. Buck Rogers lives in a very sophisticated, exciting new way. The con- Star Trek Lives! 135 cept of interplanetary travel that has intrigued all of us for so long. And that leads us to the next major question—are we the center of the universe? Are we the universe? And if not, then who else is out there or has been or will be? Are we not now being visited, or have we not been visited, by extraterrestrial creatures? And if so, are they benevolent? Are they interested in who we are and do they care, and are they nice people? And will they teach us something about how to get along, and what to do about pollution? These are all very exciting, very provocative questions, if anybody wanted to deal with them. On another level you have the most simplistic kind of entertainment. You've got a spaceship, that gets into trouble, and how do they get out of it. You have these terrific optical effects taking place where kids can be fascinated about how you disintegrate a body on the ship and beam it down to Earth. Or how do you knock a guy out by pinching him in the neck 'cause I got a friend I'd like to do that to. So there are so many levels that operate that it's pretty exciting stuff for television. Majel Barrett Roddenberry would seem to agree. Her husband, Gene, told us: Majel has a point in that area. She says a very big appeal of Star Trek, she believes (particularly working with fans),* is also that it was a romantic journey and adventure. She points out that, when you're kids, and you build your first raft in a pond, you always pretend that you're shoving off for some uncharted island, some unknown place. I think that, certainly, the total appeal of Star Trek was not philosophical, because * I think that the very words "journeys to unknown worlds" is the exciting thing that grabs us. And Mr. Roddenberry continues: I think Star Trek did have the attitude that we belong out there. In fact, I was delighted in *As you may know, Mrs. Roddenberry now owns and operates Star Trek Enterprises, which still sells souvenirs to the fans. 136 Star Trek Lives! 2001 that Kubrick would do things like the Blue Danube waltz over the landing of the vessel on the moon. The Blue Danube waltz said in music that this is as much our universe out there as the green fields and rivers of home. We had to reply: "But it is your sense-of-life that perceives this. You have the confidence and the self-esteem that feels that your place is out there. You, personally. I'm not talking about man-in-general. But to people who are frightened, fearful, pessimistic, deep-down on a level they don't even face—what would their response be? Perhaps like network executives . . ." (Even after four years, those who have been touched by Star Trek cannot quite fully control a bit of vitriol when thinking of Star Trek's cancellation.) We wanted to delve into this point, since we believe that all children start out with a benevolent sense-of-life, a Star TREK-universe sense of the glowingly possible, the rationally predictable, and as Majel Barrett Roddenberry put it, that life is exciting and the unknown is to be joyfully conquered. They absorb much of this idea from the adventure novels and films (and Star Trek) which focus on men as heroes, and the underlying attitude that life can be a big adventure filled with excitement. But what happens to this spirit? It is bludgeoned out of them. They are told, "Wait till you grow up, you'll see that life isn't like that, people can't be like that. You'll grow up." And the underlying and explicit message is, "You are being stupid ' and unrealistic if you think it is. You'll learn." And what is worse, most of them do learn. And then they don't expect life to be exciting, zestful, intriguing, adventurous. The Goal Effect of Star Trek has revived this attitude of glowing expectation in many people who had already endured years of hearing that life is not like this, that it should not be full of striving and the setting of greater goals and achievements. Star Trek has renewed them. Can we thus say that Star Trek has really Star Trek Lives! 137 changed people? Can a television show do this? Can any work of art, no matter how near perfect, be of importance to a whole society? We have attempted to show throughout this book, from fan letters and personal interviews, just how significant a change Star Trek has wrought in the lives of countless people. In discussing a related question regarding this with Leonard Nimoy, we ran into some resistance. LN: I don't know. I think it would be pretty presumptuous to say yes to a question that reaches that far. I would hope there might be some young people flexible enough to grasp pieces of the concept, and then to incorporate that into their thinking for the future. But to actually say it's changed people, affected them enough that they would change their lives, change their way of thinking about humanity, or change their way of thinking about themselves as humans, that's an awful lot to expect. SM: Perhaps just the initial spark. LN: Yeah, maybe in some young people who are looking for a way. And then again, even if they admire and respect, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to be able to make the change or incorporate it in their lives on a daily basis. After all, to develop any kind of a personal ethic takes time and work. To adapt it into your lifestyle—just seeing somebody function a certain way once or twice, doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be able to change your ethics. SM: See what you said a minute ago, to adopt an ethic into your personal life takes constant work. This is what I thought I was arguing withvyou the other night, that you chose to do this is a tribute to you. To those who do not choose to do it, they're much lesser people. It's not just necessarily that the barometer is wrong, or the condition of their hormones or organs at the moment that's responsible for it, but the individual choice that this is what it costs or what it takes. LN: Okay, I won't argue with you any more. I accept your argument. What we're talking about, discussing, is how does a person become what he 138 Star Trek Lives! is. And I think we both have to admit that it happens in many, many ways. There are great influences in our lives—parents, teachers, relatives, friends, anybody you run into can be an influence, and some people can be a great influence in your life . . . You feel that I am what I am because I work at it. I can accept that. On the other hand, there are times when, and maybe you're right, I find myself functioning a certain way, or reacting to certain input just because that seems to me the right thing to do. Now, that may be because I've previously worked to arrive at that certain condition which gives me a frame of reference to the stimulus. That's possible. I don't know. I don't spend an awful lot of time thinking about why I do what I do, or why I am what I am. I try to deal with specifics, specific acts on a day-to-day basis. We were also discussing part of Question 2, dealing with what would happen to a culture that does not have Star Trek, or a reasonable facsimile of it. LN: I can't say . . . any one of us connected with Star Trek who would take the individual position that the world would be better or worse with or without Star Trek, I think would be going beyond the bounds of reasonable humility. It's a drop, a drop at most in an ocean of experience. It may be, in some people's lives, a tidal wave, but in terms of the ocean of experience, of what takes place in the world at a given moment, among the billions of lives we're talking about, it's a drop .. . ... if you're talking about mass communication and mass effect, that's different. It's a drop. Maybe an important drop, maybe the drop that can send a ripple across the lake that doesn't stop. Personally, asking me very personally what I perceive to be the nature of things in the world, I can say, O.K., it was terribly important because I believe there was an ebb and flow of the reality of existence, an accounting that takes place. Anyone who does a good or sensible act is adding to the total of important and real things Star Trek Lives! 139 that take place in the world. I mean, the only things that matter and take place are those things that are of substance and value, of one kind or another, positive or negative. And there's a constant sum-total taking place. There are people contributing to the positive and to the negative. I believe that every real thing that one person says or does to another or that one person offers to society is put in the bank of reality. That there's the building up of a force of decent reality, and I think it's very important for anybody who can offer something to that bank to make a deposit. That's the kind of bulwark or protection against the onslaught of the negativism that does exist, and will be there all the time. I don't think we're going to wipe out the negative aspects of existence. They are there. And if we make that kind of a contribution—fine. I don't know that any of us were thinking about Star Trek in that sense when we were involved in doing it. We were trying desperately to get the day's work done. Twelve pages to shoot today. Nine pages to shoot today. And we've got to get through by 6:30. You deal with those very tough physical realities. At the same time, there's another physical level operating. Maybe some people are aware of it and some aren't, and maybe I happen to be attuned to it more than somebody else, or less than somebody else. I don't know. I try to make my contribution to the art. If the art is valid, and if it has something to offer to that bank of decent reality that's building up in the world, or that is necessary in the world, I'm very grateful and very thankful I can make that kind of contribution. But you don't go to work in the morning saying I'm going to make a deposit in the bank of reality or the bank of decency. You say, today I've got twelve pages of dialogue that have to be delivered on time, and these seven scenes to be played, and there's this scene with this guy, and there's a scene with this lady, and there's a scene with the captain, and there's a scene on the bridge and can we get the excitement into that scene | 1 140 Star Trek Lives! which will capture what's happening at the moment. You do it as a craft, as an art, as a technique. You deliver the goods, and if at the end of the day you've delivered the goods, that's what you're getting paid for. And if out of all that, some residue remains which is greater than the sum total of all the parts—that is gorgeous. We wonder whether Mr. Nimoy's thought that for him or any Star Trek creator to take "the individual position that the world would be better or worse with or without Star Trek . . . would be going beyond the bounds of reasonable humility"—his description of Star Trek as "a drop"—is not almost too far within the bounds of humility. Perhaps he should not be the one to have to say it, but we would say: In the ocean of reality, Star Trek was far more than "a drop"; in the bank of reality, it was gold. And Leonard Nimoy's experience really confirms that for, earlier in the evening, he had told us of a personal Star Trek effect that he would treasure always within his deepest soul. It was during the worst times of the Sixties. Our country was being ripped by the violent reactions to the Vietnam War. The ghettos were overflowing with eruptions of savage rioting, looting, sniping. The news media were filled with scenes of the fates many people met when they got caught up in this. The memories Mr. Nimoy treasures are of walking into any ghetto in any city, including Watts, at any time, and knowing he would never be harmed, but loved and revered and cherished. The tribute to Spock was magnificent. Is this truly a drop? Or is it that essential fuel? The creators of the' Star Trek vision were deeply aware, of course, that there are many ills in our society. Thus Star Trek could have focused on this and sculpted its figures as the artists of the Middle Ages sculpted man in stone, as a deformed monstrosity symbolizing torture, ugliness, fear and pessimism as man's natural, proper state. The medieval sculptors were, of course, aware that many men were godlike, strong, beautiful, efficacious—but they considered these Star Trek Lives! 141 conditions as accidental and irrelevant to man's essential nature. But Star Trek focused on a different vision for a different purpose. Like the sculptors of ancient Greece who depicted man as a heroic being, they knew that many men were diseased or misshapen or helplessly pessimistic, but these conditions were regarded as journalistic accident, as basically irrelevant to man's essential nature. And, as in Star Trek, man is shown as he could and should be, strong, intelligent, beautiful, confident, solving his problems, heroic—thus furnishing us the fuel to become that way, to reach for the stars. But how exactly can art give a reason, as Gene Roddenberry told us, to have courage—to provide this fuel? Specifically, how can an actor on the TV screen, or even more remote, the writer who invented the story and the dialogue, reach out and touch a viewer he's never met and probably will never meet? How can he create, within an anonymous viewer, a specific shade of the Goal Effect? Of all the characters of Star Trek, the one who seems to be able to do this for the greatest number of viewers is Spock—so we asked Leonard Nimoy about Spock: I learned a lot about humanity, human nature, through the character of Spock and the response to Spock . . . There are these . . . parts of the lives of all people that respond to a character like Spock in a very personal and very private way, and each in a very different way. But I think what it all boils down to is, "Here's a man who knows something about me that nobody else knows. Here's a person that understands me in a way that nobody else understands me. Here's a person that I'd like to be able to spend time with and talk to because he would know what I mean when I tell him how I feel. He would have insight that nobody else seems to have ... He would acknowledge my existence. He would verify my existence in a way that few other people would. I exist and he knows that I exist. And I know that he exists. I know what he is going 142 Star Trek Lives! through. I know what his problems are . . . And I know that he would understand mine. Since all viewers are different, no one actor and no one character can reach all viewers. We select the fictional characters that we become attached to in the same way we select friends. But a fictional character is a work of art, and to be commercial art must appeal to as wide a range of people as possible. And of all fictional characters, television characters must appeal to the widest range of all. Leonard Nimoy, who taught acting for several years, has become quite articulate on his methods of achieving this wide appeal to a vast and varied audience. And that method explains to a large extent why, for example, there are such diverging interpretations of the Spock character, or why the Spock/Kirk relationship has such an electrifying impact on fans: I've heard all of these theories (of the Spock/Kirk relationship), and many many more. Practically all of them contain a certain validity. Very few of them were actually intended in the sense that we thought about them consciously. As an artist, I try not to ... anticipate all the various levels of a relationship, because I think if .you do you take the art out of it. You take the potential power out of a performance. If you very carefully design a performance to the extent that you know all the levels that are going to operate, then you limit the performance to the extent that you are capable of imbuing the performance with each of those levels. _ . . . You may have thought up some great colors, but maybe you've eliminated odors. You may have thought up certain odors, but you've eliminated form. You may have thought up a perfect form, but you've eliminated texture, . . . and it almost becomes opaque as a result. The character becomes opaque and the audience can't see into it, can't see into the relationship. Star Trek Lives! 143 I try to work thematically, rather than specifically in terms of the textures. / like to leave some of the weave open in texture so the audience can breathe with it. (our italics, note the term "open texture") ... if the thing only says what you intended it to say, then it's not art. It should say a lot of things to a lot of different people. . . . That's food for the mind, for the audience. If you don't give them an opportunity to breathe with the character in that sense, then you're creating something other than a flesh and blood character. You're creating a mechanical, non-dimensional piece of material that nobody's going to care about. It has to do with art. For example, the basic facts of the Spock/Kirk relationship are easily available in Gene Roddenberry's original outline for the series as well as in The Making of Star Trek. But such things as whether Spock actually liked Kirk, was jealous of Kirk's position as captain, or admired and worshiped Kirk's superior ability as a captain, such things Mr. Nimoy relegates to "texture" and refuses to think about consciously in order to avoid limiting his performance. He admits that there is a certain intention to start out with, but that it is most important to leave room for an audience to project into a performance, so that each viewer can see the character and the relationships to other characters as he sees fit. This allows each viewer to project his personal fantasies onto the character and thus become, at least for a short moment, a part of that work of fiction. Possibly, this is one important aspect of Star TkEK's air of believability. But that air was created, to a large extent, by one man, Gene Roddenberry. And, as Mr. Nimoy points out, the artist must start to create with some particular intention in mind, even though he's willing to allow his viewers to reinterpret the creation in terms of the colors and textures of their own personal goals. We were wondering if the Spock character might 144 Star Trek Lives! in any way represent some aspect of Mr. Roddenberry's personal Goal Effect, and asked him how he arrived at the Vulcan concept of nonemotionalism: . . . Kirk and Spock were sort of dream images of myself. Two sides of me. I've always been sort of in love with the idea that if I could just suppress my foolish emotions and really be logical—ah!—the things I could do! Then, on another day, I'll say, "Oh! If I were captain of the vessel I would be in love with the vessel and I would be such a captain, my men would love and swear by me!" And that's just two sides of myself, of my own fantasies. I think when you create a strong character it's always necessarily where it comes from, some dream image of yourself. ... in the early days, the continuity of the characters . . . was intensely personal from myself. At the beginning, it was not a committee— Star Trek was my baby, my expression. Everyone on it was some expression of some dream very personal to me. And that gave it a certain cohesiveness . . . Star Trek was an intensely personal piece of writing ... I never called a committee and said, "Let's vote on the sound." ... I knew what it was going to be. So, while Mr. Roddenberry was creating Star Trek, he not only had his own personal Goal Effect driving him, his own vision of how Man could and should live, but he fought to imbue every aspect of the show with that Goal Effect. He chose the people who would act out his visions of himself as he could be, and constantly ask the questions: "Is this how I should be? Can I not learn from the various dream images of myself to be even better?" And Roddenberry chose those people superlative-ly. The depth of William Shatner's Kirk leaves us speechless. But only figuratively, for throughout this book we have tried heroically to restrain the outpourings of boundless admiration that Mr. Shatner's Star Trek Lives! 145 achievement has aroused in us. Captain Kirk is, as we have indicated, an almost ideal man to millions of viewers. How much of Kirk is William Shatner? We judge: a prodigious amount. One of the questions we showed him stated: We have been wondering whether an actor must actually have some of the characteristics of the part he plays in order to be able to imbue that role with so much—as you did with Kirk. We're thinking of the vision, the interpretations you gave to Kirk. Where does it come from— from inside the actor? Unfortunately, we did not have the many hours of conversation with Mr. Shatner that we had been so fortunate to have with others such as Gene Roddenberry and Leonard Nimoy. The only time one of us, Joan Winston, could meet with Mr. Shatner was on the set of a movie he was filming. And it was chaos. He was called away for takes every few minutes, and Joan had to fly right back to New York. But at least Joan was there—a delight for her as a Kirk fan and a Shatner fan. The other two of us had to content ourselves with gnashing our teeth and hearing Joan's report—and Sondra could be heard muttering, "Next time . . . !" William Shatner is fascinating, not only to us. His life reads like the concept of the Renaissance Man (and this is how many fans see Captain Kirk). Mr. Shatner is an expert at numerous endeavors—he. can fly planes, gliders, handle motorcycles, is master of a startling variety of sports and Joan has even seen him break boards with his bare hands. He has been observed on the Star Trek set reading books ranging from philosophy to foreign language texts. He has struck those who have met him personally, and those who have observed him at length on the Star Trek sets, as intensely eager to learn, relentlessly hardworking, possessed of enormous warmth and humor, and he seems to be a man who regards this world as a marvelous challenge open to him. And this is Kirk. Shatner changed the captain 146 Star Trek Lives! from the woodenness of Pike (the Enterprise's captain of the first pilot episode) to a Kirk who had all the qualities and warmth and humor of himself, making Kirk the true Captain, the Hero, the Ideal Human Being. Are they the same person? William Shatner used a word here that we consider utterly revealing. Kirk and he were "metamorphosized," he told Joan. Joan asked him if he referred to the Star Trek episode, "Metamorphosis." He paused and then simply smiled. Since William Shatner's smile is the same as Captain Kirk's, it has the same devastating effect on twentieth-century women as it does on the legions of twenty-third-century females throughout the galaxy. Until the effect wears off, it knocks everything out of their heads, including the questions they were asking. (Next time Joan promises to wear blinders.) We remain convinced that such a metamorphosis did actually occur in the creation of Captain Kirk. Knowing Mr. Shatner's previously quoted admiration for "dualities of meaning," we think that he meant both possible interpretations of the word "metamorphosis." The first is that Kirk had been changed because of the artist who was portraying him and imbuing the role with his own qualities and visions and goals. Star Trek fans will at once realize that there is a second, related possibility: that Shatner did indeed refer to the episode in which the ethereal "Companion" merged her life form with that of the dying woman, Commissioner Hedford. Thus was created a single life entity composed of both beings. And that describes Kirk. As a matter of fact, as this book was going to press it finally did become possible for Sondra to interview William Shatner by telephone, in the midst of his incredibly busy schedule. (He told her that he has been working "fifty-two weeks a year" since Star Trek, with no time even for a vacation. That is a phenomenal record for an actor—and a crushing schedule, with work often running from early morning to late night. Yet when Sondra explained more fully the Star Trek Lives! 147 ideas behind this book to his wife and then to him, he took time between a long day's work and an evening commitment to return a call, and in discussing the ideas to give fascinating, frank answers to Sondra's questions.) One line of questioning which Sondra pursued was that of how much of William Shatner was in Kirk. And Shatner's answer, too, was: a great deal. In fact, he stressed that it was necessarily so. "When you work in a series, seven days a week, sometimes from seven a. m. to eleven p. m., there is no way to dissimulate, to hide what you are. Inevitably, your guard is let down and you become yourself." But it was also a conscious and deliberate effort which he made. He says that as an actor he "never stops striving to make the moment better," trying for a "better story, line, scene. How can I express what the author's intention was?" In playing Kirk, he was always making efforts to "shade the meaning," to add more depth. He watched himself on the screen to learn to make Kirk better. One element which he particularly tried to add was a certain lightness. Watching the screen, he decided that everyone on the ship took the captain very seriously; he could afford to take himself less seriously. Shatner began to add an element of his own humor to Kirk, to "reach for a lighter way." When Sondra mentioned that many fans see Kirk as a Renaissance Man, Shatner added a note of surprising interest. He sees Alexander the Great as "the original Renaissance Man," and he deliberately brought that to Kirk. Mr. Shatner had studied Alexander the Great and played that role a few years before Star Trek, and had admired Alexander for his wide-ranging knowledge, broad vision and enlightened attitudes. And in spite of many differences, Shatner saw Kirk as something of the same kind of man. As a sidelight, Kirk was the beneficiary of the Alexander role in another way, too. And it cast an interesting light on Shatner's dedication and thorough- 148 Star Trek Lives! ness as an actor. When he realized that as Alexander he would have to be "riding around half-naked on a horse," he deliberately exercised and worked out to build up the musculature he considered appropriate for Alexander—and which many fans have found so delightfully appropriate for a starship captain. Metamorphosis? Yes. There's a great deal of a very interesting man and a very fine actor in that Starship Captain. Gene Roddenberry's choice of Leonard Nimoy to portray Spock also reveals great genius. Leonard Nimoy approached the Spock character in the series as a whole and in each script individually, in thematic terms, which was precisely what the role demanded, just as the captain had to be "metamorphosized" with a certain type of human being. That Star Trek contained the themes to support Mr. Nimoy's art was a source of great personal pleasure for him: One critic goes to see a play and says, "This is a play about dope. This is a play about a family whose son is a junkie." The critic sitting next to him goes and writes a great thesis that this is a play about life and death in the American suburbs. So that's the way I try to approach a character. Find out what he is about, not what he says and does. . . . There are thousands and thousands of people who can stand up and say those lines and move from here to there when they're told to, and press the button and pull the switch and slam the door and say these words to a lady and say those words to that man, but there are thousands of actors who can do that. But—what —is—he—about? What's going on here, what's the play about, what's the thematic structure? That's what was exciting about the best Star Treks. They were about something. They were not simply a story about a man who has com- -mitted a murder and the detective goes looking for him all through the show and finally catches him at the end. See, that's the difference between f Star Trek Lives! 149 Star Trek and some of the very well-produced detective series—"Mannix," "Columbo." Star Trek was about something. And what Star Trek was about was Gene Roddenberry's own personal Goal Effect, his own vision of what Man could and should be, of how one person should relate to another, and how we should deal with our problems. As we said in Chapter Three, what Star Trek is all about is love. Star Trek is about one man's love for his goal. Star Trek is about that man's ability to communicate that goal to his co-workers, and to evoke in their hearts a similar love, a burning passion of total devotion to this image of how Man could and should be. (Yes, they do use words like these. We were deeply moved to hear how William Shatner spoke to us of the "passion and poignancy" he had felt for Star Trek.) The result of this glorious love affair with the future is a love affair with the present, with those elements in man which already dominate. And one of the most important such elements is man's ability to love, the capacity of both male and female to love their fellow beings. Behind the scenes, this resulted in a tremendous personal outpouring of loyalty and affection for Gene Roddenberry, the man who had concretized this vision of the possible. In one sense, then, Gene Roddenberry has achieved in actuality the fantasy-image of himself as captain of the ship to whom his crew gives such loyalty that they swear by him. The Great Bird of the Galaxy was the on-the-set appellation for Gene Roddenberry, and if the Great Bird should nest on your rooftop you were more than blessed, you were assured of success here and now. George Takei (Sulu) told us, candidly: ... I hate to deify any human being, but Gene Roddenberry, as Dorothy (Fontana) said, really is like a god to us because he did bring us together. 150 Star Trek Lives! But his crew doesn't only swear by him, his crew refuses to sail without him. Again and again, when approached by reporters asking about a revival of Star Trek, the actors all agreed they would like to return to Star Trek, but only if Gene Roddenberry has full control. In front of the scenes, before the camera, this gigantic love affair with Ufe shows up as a deep-textured affection between the characters which lends an uncanny air of reality to them as people. If the people are real to the viewer, then no matter how incredible their adventures, their problems become real and believable. Not only were the characters' problems of the week real and believable to the audience of the late Sixties and early Seventies, the problems which the characters had already overcome were real and believable. During that period of social upheaval, the mores of social interaction in the world were in flux. The very definition and concept of "love" was changing. For many people, a vision of a new morality was just dawning on their horizon. It was a time of great personal change, not only for the viewers, but also for some of those actors as well.. George Takei put it to us this way: I must confess I've been tremendously liberated by the women's liberation movement as a man, because before, I'd go on a busman's holiday to theaters, to movies; they are an important part of my life. Whenever I'd go to a tearjerker with my date, I'd feel somehow that as a man, I must not respond to the stimulus that's presented me in the tearjerker, and with all the energy and the muscle in my body, I'd try to contain those emotions. But you know I'm responding. It's welling and welling, building up in me while watching the movie, and it's embarrassing. It gets to the point where I just can't contain it. It's like a dam bursting. Here I am in a tearjerker with my date sitting right next to me and she's very gently and very femininely sniffling away, and I get to the point 1 Star Trek Lives! 151 where I just have to break out with a sob—and it was so embarrassing and they always seem to bring the lights on immediately, and here I am with my wet glasses, and I'm trying to unfog them and get the bloodshot veins out of my eyes. But now I go to a tearjerker with my date, and when it gets to me I sniffle, and my date understands and will squeeze my hand like this, she understands. Before, I was just so uptight, my muscles all constricted trying to hold it in. I was there with my date, but I don't know why, because we weren't sharing that moment at all. She might as well have been at home . . . But now I can be like this, holding her hand, and she's feeling the same thing. "We're sharing that moment ... That's why we go out together. This has been the impact of various recent movements on a large number of men, and to some of them, the social sanction of their right to express emotion without in any way detracting from their essential masculinity is a goal, a far-off distant goal, almost a fantasy. That it is a fantasy which is shared fervently by many women is testified to by the electrifying effect the Kirk character has had on them. As Shatner portrayed him, Kirk had conquered the problem. He was perfectly capable of expressing the .gentlest and deepest emotions in strongly masculine terms. In this way, Shatner concretized a vision growing throughout our society, and gave many people a glimpse of a goal achieved, a battle won, a beauty created. Kirk is a man capable of vibrant love affairs with ideals and abstracts as well as with people. His love is kindled by the abstract concept of his "Ship" (meaning not just the nuts-and-bolts, but the living entity which is a functioning microcosm complete in itself), as much as it is by the women in his life. Time and again, he had to make the choice between a woman and his ship—and his ship always won. The way Kirk has sidestepped that choice—between a love of an abstract and the love of a person, is. by transferring some of that love to his senior offi- w 152 Star Trek Lives! cers, Spock and McCoy. His love for Spock in no way interferes with his love of his ship. His love for McCoy, likewise, is totally compatible with his primary passion, his ship. His ship is his mistress, Spock and McCoy are his friends. But their relationship is love. When we asked how Spock and Kirk regard one another, what in fact their relationship consists of in texture, Gene Roddenberry said: ... I definitely designed it as a love relationship. And I hope that for men . . . who have been afraid of such relationships . . . that they [Spock and Kirk] would encourage them to be able to feel love and affection, true affection . . . love, friendship and deep respect. That was the relationship I tried to draw. I think I also tried to draw a feeling of belief that very few of us are complete unto ourselves. It's quite a lovely thing ... where two halves make a whole. In Spock and Kirk we have two men who have shared so very much, a fierce, dedicated love each for his own ideals, soul-chilling dangers, and a traveling world of their own cut loose from normal ties to house-and-family, who share loneliness and responsibility so much that they perceive each other in the same way that Leonard Nimoy describes in the viewer's perception of Spock. They know things about each other that nobody else could ever know; they understand each other in ways that nobody else can; they verify each other's existence. We have a similar relationship between Spock and McCoy as well though, as Mr. Roddenberry admits, the texture is different. I think the surface quarreling (between McCoy and Spock) is the fun of testing each other's ideas. Very often, people who are very deeply affectionate of each other have a surface fight go-' ing all the time. I have dear friends who I would never in a thousand years refer to in any way other than "you ugly bastard." I don't think it's as close (between McCoy Star Trek Livesf 153 and Spock) as between Kirk and Spock. I don't think McCoy has the need to understand Spock the way Kirk does. I think Kirk's enormous responsibilities make him peculiarly and particularly vulnerable. Where Kirk's lonely vulnerability as captain provides him with a need to understand his friend Spock, Spock's own peculiar vulnerability impels him to allow Kirk that understanding—where he would not allow it to anyone else. There is a deep-seated human need to be psychologically visible to at least one person in one's life. The viewer may feel visible to Spock, as Mr. Nimoy seems to have discovered from his contact with fans. But more than that, the viewer sees two almost ideal men, two magnificent heroes, Spock and Kirk, who are already psychologically visible to one another. This kind of visibility is a deeply human goal, and the portrayal of the achievement of that goal on our television screens produces the Goal Effect in many viewers. They see love, and they respond to love. Some viewers respond so strongly that they are convinced they see that love for Kirk in Spock's every gesture, expression and behavior pattern. We have observed, as just one example from the scores among which we must choose, that Spock swallows convulsively whenever Kirk is in danger, but when this observation was put to Leonard Nimoy, he responded in total, incredulous bewilderment: LN: Where was this? SM: The one that occurs to me right offhand is "Obsession." Kirk and Garrovick are on the planet and they're about to beam up, and there's trouble with the transporter. Spock is in the transporter room ... LN: Swallowing con-vwZ-sively? SM: Yes, you've done this several times. LN: Convulsively?! SM: . . . beautifully, but you can see the Adam's apple. And you always do it when he's in trouble. LN: Really? (genuine surprise) 154 Star Trek Lives! SM: Oh, yes. Everybody has noticed it, everybody who has seen each show six or sixty times. LN: Well, that's probably because Spock is worried that if anything happens to the captain he's going to have to take over the ship, and it's too much bother . . . SM: Come on, are you really going to say that the artist had no deliberate putting in of love and feeling for that captain, and that friendship? LN: I can't discuss it because it's in that area that's operating unconsciously. Leonard Nimoy, like any good actor, does not tell his body exactly what to do to project a given impression. He focuses his mind on the theme, on what the script is about, and lets his subconscious paint in the texture for the viewer to interpret in whatever way he chooses. He adamantly refused to discuss the question of whether Spock really does have deep-down emotions, and whether any of those hybrid emotions were engaged by the Spock/Kirk relationship. You want to see Spock loving the captain, and being concerned and horrified and terrified that the captain might be hurt, so as a human you would project that. You've got to come back to the root of the thing and realize that if you were talking to Spock, he would tell you that you were insulting him. "I did not show emotion. You may have projected that because that's what you'd expect me to do in that given situation, forgetting that I . am not human. You are. And what you felt was what you wanted to feel for the captain or wanted me to feel for the captain." That's projection. . . . Now you can say, well, Spock is feeling emotion and denying it. That's another game you can play. And that's O.K. That's what makes it all so fascinating—that you can play so many different games . . . but there's no point at which you and Spock are going to arrive at an agreement on what is happening. Star Trek Lives! 155 Well, maybe we can. One of the episodes that really strips Spock's emotions bare is "Naked Time." It was one show which contributed texture to the Spock character and brought him to the attention of the viewers. In that script, Spock becomes infected with an intoxicating virus which brings him to tears. There was one scene in that script upon which the foundation of the Spock character was laid. It is a scene which seems to define Spock's relationship to emotion, and it is a scene which is built on a nearly schizoid tension between two different Spock personalities. It is the scene where Spock, wracked by irrepressible sobs, reels into a vacant briefing room and collapses over the table and faces what seems to him at that moment to be the fact that he loved his mother but could never tell her so. Leonard Nimoy saw the vast potential in the script for the establishment of the nuances and textures of the Spock character, but he was acutely dissatisfied with the way the Spock breakdown scene was written. So he reconstructed that scene and, to establish the scene's orchestration, he had to sell his idea of the way the scene had to be shot—but it wasn't easy: I felt strongly enough about it that I went to Gene Roddenberry and said, "I have already discussed this with John Black. He turned me down, but I feel very strongly about this and I'd like to tell you my idea." I told him my idea and he said, "Let me talk to John about it." So about a half hour later, John came back down to the set. We were already shooting the show and the scene I was talking about was going to be shot the next day. And John came back and said, "O.K., tell me again, maybe I wasn't listening." ... And I told him the story. I said, "Just give me a room, any room. I leave Christine after the physical contact, and it's established that something is starting to happen to me. "I'm walking down the corridor alone, and instead of going into all this business with the cry- 156 Star Trek Lives! ing and the laughing and so forth, I'm walking down the corridor alone, and suddenly tears start to flow. When I sense that, and I'm out in public, I duck into the first available room, which eventually turned out to be the briefing room. And I step inside and lock the door. "Now the monologue starts: 'I'm a Vulcan. I'm a scientist. I love my mother. Two plus two equals four. C equals pi R squared.' There were voices operating." And John says, O.K., and he wrote it, and gave me about a paragraph of good material to work with. And that's the way we shot the scene. Now there was even more to it than that. Marc Daniels, a very dear friend from "The Lieutenant," came to me early in the day and said, "Tell me how you see this. Tell me how you want to do this." And he literally put the camera where I asked him to and shot it the way I asked him to shoot it. It was all done in one take, all in one piece, which I felt was very important for the validity of the material. It was done in such a way as to show the individual man in this briefing room which is normally heavily populated . . . The door is there, and there's the table, [said Mr. Nimoy, walking about the hotel room and setting up his stage to demonstrate] and here's the camera. Put the camera way back, and bring Spock in the room and do what, for the television series shot on a tight budget, is a very complicated shot. Because the camera had to do a complete 180-degree turn, the lighting for that kind of shot is very complex and takes a long time. We wish we had a film of how Mr. Nimoy moved about that room as he described these events to us. He looked* catlike, controlled—and beautiful. So here's the shot. Spock is coming in the door, and here's the chair he's going to sit in eventually, and here's the briefing table and the camera is here, laying way back holding the whole room or as much of the room as possible, wide angle lens, and as Spock approaches that Star Trek Lives! 157 chair, so he's walking across, the camera slides this way, and at this point reveals Spock alone against this empty room, to establish the loneliness, and then comes around this way and Spock first sits down there, facing that way, and gradually turns as the camera comes around here, and the camera and Spock meet on this side. Now the camera is pointing this way. Well, I showed Marc what I had in mind and he said, "O.K., that's what we'll do." We were supposed to break at six-fifteen that evening, and we got to the shot about five-thirty. The crew moved in, and Marc and Jerry Finnerman and I laid out the shots and said this is the way it's going to be. And Jerry said, "O.K., lovely shot but it's going to take a little time. Everybody relax." And he went to work with his crew to set up the lighting. About twenty minutes later, I was in the makeup department getting my makeup touched up, and just to show the emotional involvement of the crew at that time, the guy who was pushing the camera, the Dolly Grip, (certainly not a creative job, I mean not the kind of a job where you'd go to him for an opinion on how to do a shot), he came to me in the makeup department and said, "Listen, you've got a beautiful shot out there. You'd better go out and get involved in what's happening because they're out there talking about changing it." And I said, "Why?" He said, "Because it's going to take a long time to light, and the production manager's on the set." They come down on the set about ten minutes to six or six o'clock and say, "What time are you going to finish?" ... If you go over, you start to run up a lot of money in overtime. So I went out and here were Marc Daniels and Jerry Finnerman talking with Gregg Peters who was then production manager, later became associate producer. Gregg's a nice guy, but his job is to control the budget. He's standing there like this, and Jerry's painting with lights, and he's saying, "Well, it's a tough shot . . . I've got to light it this way, I've got to light it that way . . . It's a lovely shot, but . . ." 158 Star Trek Lives! But how else could you do it? Well, the television way to do it would be, you set the camera here, Spock comes in, and walks toward the chair, and as he walks toward the chair, the camera moves in on him. The lighting is very simple and direct, all one way. And then maybe you cut for a closeup here, and cut for a closeup at the door, each of which takes two or three minutes to light, and you're through. We could have been out of there ten or fifteen minutes early! But, you have missed the fluidity of this whole scene. It would be shocking, it would be cutting to pieces. You'd miss this whole mood of the expanse of the loneliness of the room, but you'd avoid having to light the whole room. These were the factors they were debating. Now, what they were really saying to themselves was, "Is it worth the extra five or fifteen hundred dollars, whatever it's going to cost, to shoot the shot this way?" And my argument was, "Yes. We're establishing a character here for a series." And Marc agreed, but he's at the mercy of the production department. If they tell him, "No, you cannot shoot it that way, I want you out of here at six-fifteen," then he's going to have to do what they tell him. Then he's going to hand it to Jerry Finnerman, can he get it lit by six-ten and have maybe one shot at it, one crack at it, to do it. Well, we went over, about five or ten minutes. By the time we went to do the shot, everybody was on the set. The producers were on the set. The production department was on the set. They were all sweating, sweating. But at the same time, I must say, they were emotionally involved. They could see what we were trying to do, and they could see the value of the shot, and we shot it that way. That, to me, was the essence of what the character was. From that moment on, I felt we had said definitively "This is what's going on," for anybody who wants to see, to explore that. It may have been coincidental, but I can tell you that that show went on the air, I think about the fifth or sixth week. And within a week or ten days after the show was on the air, my mail Star Trek Lives! 159 started to multiply geometrically. It may have been coincidental. It's possible that it was just time for the thing to start snowballing, but I felt that that episode and that piece of material was vitally important in letting people know that Spock is everybody. Spock is Everyman. What this scene was saying, in terms of psychological visibility, was that Spock has had the experiences that you have had, so he is able to understand your loneliness, your unexpressed loves and your battle to achieve rationality. Here is a man who prides himself on having a mind rigorously trained to dispassionate logic;—he has won that battle, has indeed attained total rationality—yet it was not easy to do so. This scene reveals to us his past battles, the ones that we have seen he has won. The obstacles he overcame are far greater than those any human must over-Come, hence it is possible for us to reach our goals. The nature of the universe is such that the battle can be won. Triumph is possible. That is the Optimism Effect. And that is how the interaction of all these Tailored Effects augments the power of the overall impact of Star Trek on an individual who is still fighting a similar real-life battle. In Star Trek, the fan escapes not from reality but to reality—to a reality where failure is only the prelude to success, where strength, determination and integrity can earn triumph just as Spock has won his battle by virtue of his strength. The realism, the believability of Spock as a person, rests in part on the fact—so ably dramatized by Leonard Nimoy in the scene just described—that it was not easy for him to win this battle. In fact, it still returns to haunt him occasionally, as do such things in reality. Freedom of mind, spirit, and body can be maintained only through constant vigilance. We are real people, and we know this through real experiences. Spock knows this. Spock, too, then, is real, at least for a moment. This reality enhances the Goal Effect of Spock on 160 Star Trek Lives! his fans. Although most of those fans do not aspire to become "Vulcan" in the sense of becoming nonemo-tional beings, he represents to them a human goal achieved. He represents rational man succeeding in a predictably rational universe. He represents the triumph of the mind as man's primary tool of survival. Many of his fans (not only those with high IQs) are drawn to him because he's so "smart." But mere intelligence cannot electrify the millions who are touched by Spock. The emotional quality of the character draws people to him because they believe they understand him as nobody else could. The visibility that Leonard Nimoy put into the character evokes what can only be described as love. The essence of what we have said in these last few paragraphs also applies to the effect the Kirk character has had on millions of fans. Perhaps we can summarize this best with some lines from the episode "The Conscience of the King." A beautiful woman, Lenore, tells Kirk: Lenore r . . . This ship, all this power—surging and throbbing—yet under control. Are you like that, Captain? (Yes! answer the millions of fans who worship him for this.) Lenore: All this power at your command, the decisions you make ... Kirk: Come from a very human source. Lenore: Are you, Captain? Kirk: You can count on it. Human, indeed, but not regarding that as meaning what some people mean when they say, "I'm only human." But meaning: "Don't blame me." And not regarding the power under his command as a threat to his humanness, but as an expression of the best of what it means to be human. Later in that story, Lenore's father would tell Kirk accusingly: Star Trek Lives! 161 There you stand, the perfect symbol of our technological society, mechanized, electronicized, not very human. You've done away with the human, the striving of man to achieve greatness through his own resources. And Kirk, knowing the greatness it took to achieve this mastery of our environment represented by the Enterprise and himself, to create the technology, the mechanization, the electronics that hurled us from the caves to the stars, would answer firmly: "We armed man with tools. The striving for greatness continues." Kirk is an ideal—but human as we are. And where he succeeded, so can we. The striving for greatness continues. Not all Star Trek fans are Spock or Kirk fans, however. Nobody is more aware of this than Leonard Nimoy. When we asked him for his analysis of the energy source of Star Trek fandom, he said: There are various ways to approach this question. You could start with let's take a group of television viewers . . . people who like to watch television for various reasons . . . and within that context, that framework, stack up Star Trek against 99 percent of the other material that's shown on TV . . . and you've got to come up with a hardcore group of people amongst those viewers who are interested in something that's provocative, imaginative, different, refreshing, dimensional, dynamic, the characters are unique, the concepts are provocative—how much of that do you get on television? Within the framework of television viewers, you've got to find the people who are looking for and are excited by the kind of thing Star Trek offers. Then again, there are a lot of people who are not typical television viewers but are interested in the kind of theater or entertainment or sociological or psychological concepts that a Star Trek offers. You've got the characters that Star Trek offers. The orchestration of the characters is something that a lot of people overlook. Star 162 Star Trek Lives! Trek is not a show about one man, Star Trek is an orchestrated set of characters that interrelate with each other in a way that's pretty unique, that you don't get to see on a lot of television shows. A writer like Roddenberry puts together certain characters and says these characters will interact interestingly, because they are different in this way, or they have these conflicts, or whatever. And then the chemistry of the actors takes place on stage, and the producer or writer isn't even there to see it happen. He sees it the next day on the film and suddenly, he says, "Oh, look at the way he looked at him, or the way he read that line." . . . He's doing something that maybe the writer didn't even know about or didn't anticipate, or maybe the actor senses something that the writer had in mind unconsciously. So you feed each other, you really do. At best, when the thing is really working best, you feed each other. Now, he sits down and in the script he's writing now for next week he begins to incorporate some of the chemistry he saw on the film yesterday. Then there are the very specific things like the Spock nerve pinch or the mind-meld, things like that start to operate —as, oh yeah, how would you do that? And you say, "Well, I would put my hand right here on the man's face." And he says, "Oh! Got it!" Then he runs to the typewriter. It's that you feed on each other, you use each other, and you stimulate each other, There are no solo functions in a series. It's just impossible. If somebody's functioning in a totally individual way, without that kind of rapport, then the work shows that. And it has that sense of strain in it. For the work to have the sense of that kind of community resolution, then everybody's got to be on the same soundwaves, you've got to be operating together. Everybody we talked to who had been connected with creating Star Trek repeated, again and again, Star Trek Lives! 163 that the lion's share of the credit didn't belong to them, personally, but to the atmosphere of creative cooperation that prevailed, to the understanding support of behind-the-scenes personnel, and to all these complex factors that allowed them to work their own specialty to a unique perfection. Gene Roddenberry told us, "You have to give Nimoy and Shatner credit . . . Not for a moment would I say that everything that happened was something that I thought of and cleverly and carefully arranged." George Takei responded with, ". . . Star Trek brought together many people whose affection for each other continues beyond Star Trek, and I think it's because he [Gene Roddenberry] was able to recognize that kind of commonality in all of us, despite the fact we were all such different personalities." Not to be outdone on the genuine humility circuit, Leonard Nimoy said, when we put the same question before him: "They all deserve a great deal of credit." After a five-minute roll call of everybody he could think of connected with. Star Trek, he went on to insist: I could not have come up with that idea if I had not been given the environment by all these other people .. . The director had to be there and interested enough to listen to the ideas that the actors had and to be able to recognize them. I came up with the Spock nerve pinch, same thing happened ... a director who was willing to listen. And Bill Shatner, who had to find a way to respond to it and establish the way that one responds to a Vulcan nerve pinch. This thing here, I came up with in "Amok Time." (demonstrates the Vulcan salute) That was really lucky, because Joe Pevney, the director, bought it. But the question was whether or not Celia Lovsky [T'Pau] could do it. Celia Lovsky was playing the matriarch. If she had not been able to do this in response, we might never have been able to get that into the show. Now, not everybody can do that. Yeah, 164 Star Trek Lives! there are a lot of people who cannot do that! So I talked to Joe about it. "I think when they bring her in and sit her down, before I approach her, there should be some sort of a thing." He said, "What do you have in mind?" I said, "This. Let's ask her if she can do it." Well, that's a crucial moment when you walk up to a lady actress and you're about to shoot the scene, saying, "Celia, can you do this?" And she went kind of, tentatively, like that (demonstrates) and said, "Is that what you mean?" Well, she couldn't really do it as easily as I can. What she did was during the moment when she was being carried in, she prepared her hand, hidden, so that when it was time for the hand to come up, it would be in position. O.K., so it worked. The director understood what I was trying to do and accepted it. He has the right to say, "No, it's wrong." Then we have a fight, you know, because I thought it was right. Could anything destroy this unified achievement? Yes, and it bears close examination for the remainder of this chapter, because it tells us something of marked significance about the energy source that drives the Goal Effect. And then when the writers start giving you material, or the producers start giving you material, that doesn't give you an opportunity to get your creative juices going, and you complain to him, and he tells you just go out and do it—"I know what I'm doing and this is going to work." Then you have a total impasse. Death sets in. That's death. For example: ... when we were doing the script, maybe one of our worst ever, with the kids in the third season, "And the Children Shall Lead," I thought it was terrible—terrible ... So I went to Fred Freiberger and said, "Well, we've got some problems with the script." He said, "This script is Star Trek Lives! 165 going to be what 'Miri' should have been." Well, "Miri" was a lovely story, lovely story, beautifully told and beautifully played. And we had all loved "Miri" as an episode. And he was saying that "Miri" was a piece of trash ... There's no communication. That's when death starts to set in. But Star Trek did not die. The first season shows still live and attract thousands of new viewers and fans every year. And they love the second season shows. And many of them groan over some third season shows—but they watch them, over and over. They see love. They respond to love with love. And they love it! In each of the people we have spoken with, we have found some innate appreciation of Star Trek's vision of man as he. could and should be. Each of the creators has put himself, his own visions, his own childhood fantasies of how he wanted to be when he grew up, into Star Trek. Perhaps the magic came from the fact that each such contributor found, within the scope of Gene Rod-denberry's vision, room to insert his own fantasy passions into that remarkably intricate universe, room to create some segment of his own Goal Effect. Each viewer, each real person, is capable of envisioning and responding to many such ultimate goals and visions. Star Trek's richness of texture may be the result of each one of its creators contributing something as dear to his heart as the total conception was to Gene Roddenberry, who admits: . . . there has to be a central core around which the contributions form . . . there was that central, very personal, writing expression .. . this was my statement. And the statements all these people are making are enough, on their own, to recharge our batteries, to give us the necessary fuel—a confirmation of the Star Trek view of existence. We have touched some 166 Star Trek Lives! of this earlier in the book, notably in the chapter titled "The Spock Charisma Effect." But we have heard it said that such men as the Star Trek heroes, as Spock and Kirk, cannot exist. "Wait till you grow up, you'll see that life isn't like that, people can't be like that!" Can they? And what does it mean to us if they can? Can men of. the integrity of Spock and Kirk exist and thus serve as possible, valid models for emulation? Many sources have recorded the heroic battle Gene Roddenberry fought to bring Star Trek to the screen. He put everything he had into that struggle. What would he not have paid to achieve that goal? GR: I admit I had to make a lot of compromises—of the female second-in-command. I realized that if I insisted on that, I would not get the show on the air. You have to choose where you can afford to hold your ground and where you can give. Now, you have to have certain principles that you won't... won't give up. I mean to get Star Trek on the air I would not have made it an all-WASP crew, with the ship probably the flagship of the United States of America in the twenty-third century. You have to have a certain position you won't back up beyond, but you then have in front of that a lot of slight retreats. If they put your back against this one then, sure, you'd have to say screw the show. But you make strategic retreats in order to do your job. He would not have forfeited his integrity. We also asked Dorothy C. Fontana: SM: For the love of Star Trek, what would you do, or have you done; to what lengths would you go, and to what lengths would you not go— what price would you not pay—what kind of compromise would you not make? She answered: DCF: I wouldn't write a bad story no matter how much somebody else may want it. I wouldn't Star Trek Lives.' 167 write a story untrue to any of the characters, which is why I threw over something like an $18,000 contract. I had a multiple-script assignment to do six scripts—had completed one, "The Enterprise Incident," and had started work on "Joanna," and when it became absolutely clear that what they Wanted was a Star Trek completely foreign to my knowledge of the characters and my feeling for the characters, and what was a bad story, then I had my agent have them pay me for two and took my name off of what became "Way to Eden" ("Joanna") and "That Which Survives." So I sacrificed about $10,000 for Star Trek. I've worked weekends, days, nights, holidays, everything else to make it the best show I could. I even took a pay cut for the animation, because they couldn't afford the price that was my salary and keep on going. Again, integrity. William Shatner says that he doesn't think in terms of sacrifices, but he expressed a similar commitment to the integrity and professionalism of his work, saying that he is always concerned with how he could do better, would do better at the job. He says that he is "motivated by a sense of pride about my work," and that that is the wellspring of much that he has tried to do in Star Trek and since. He considers it part of his honor as an actor to "learn the exact words," keep professional commitments, even frequently to do things the hard way—"to argue when it would be easier to accede, to accede when it would be easier to argue." That thoroughgoing professionalism is as much a part of William Shatner as it is of Kirk. That willingness to fight when a fight is needed and not merely when it is easy is a part of both—and it is not unknown to another actor, as it is not unknown to Spock. In Chapter Four, we have indicated that the qualities which enabled Spock to guard and maintain his integrity were mirrored in the specifics of the life of the actor who gave breath to the fictional character. We 168 Star Trek Lives! Star Trek Lives! 169 have discussed some of the relevant personal details. But there was another battle that Leonard Nimoy fought, one that evokes within us a response of total admiration. Yet not only was he never honored for that battle, but the outline of it has been blurred and totally misinterpreted. As Gene Roddenberry would have given up Star Trek rather than compromise his deepest principles, so was Leonard Nimoy prepared to give up Star Trek rather than see its. integrity destroyed. The battle he fought was total, debilitating, exhausting— and monumental. We have discussed Nimoy's attitude toward Star Trek during its first two seasons, his feelings of excitement, challenge, belonging, achieving. But the third season became a nightmare for him. Gene Roddenberry, in another fight for integrity, had felt it necessary to tell the network that if a certain dispute were not resolved in favor of Star Trek, he would not actively produce the third season. They refused, and he backed his word—something roughly as difficult for him as leaving his own baby in somebody else's hands, but something he felt was necessary. That left Nimoy with his own fight. The new head of the production crew was changing the Spock character in ways that legions of fans would conclude were destroying it. And a man of Nimoy's (or Spock's) integrity cannot live with this. He has said: There is a blame if one has these insights ' based on the way you're working, and based on the environment in which you're working and don't make use of them. And are not awake and alive enough and in touch enough with what you're doing, then you're not performing your function. All you're doing is coming in and saying the words that are on the script, and do what the script calls for and go home. That's the difference between somebody who's working on an assembly line, simply contributing rivet number 432 to a product, and somebody who's emotionally and actively involved in the creative process. Nimoy could not simply stand by and watch what was being done to the integrity of the Spock character and to the viewers. The final blast . . . came in the show ["Whom Gods Destroy"]. We were dealing with a madman who could take on the physical appearance of anybody he wanted to. And then I walk into a scene where there are two Captain Kirks, and one is this escaped madman and one is the real captain. Spock walks in with a phaser in his hand, and here are these two people, both saying, "I'm Captain Kirk. Shoot him, Spock!" "No, Spock, don't you recognize that I'm the captain, shoot him." Well, if you had a good writer, this becomes a great opportunity to demonstrate the very logical procedure to determine which one is the captain. But that's not what the producer had in mind . . . His major aim in that show was to shoot a sequence where Captain Kirk is fighting Captain Kirk and the audience doesn't know which one is which. And Spock in the original scene, Spock walks in with the phaser, and asks a couple silly questions, and the phony Kirk jumps him, knocks him out—knocks him out!—and then with Spock lying on the floor unconscious, the fight begins. And when the fight is over, Spock recovers and there stands the real Captain Kirk, obviously victorious. So, I said, "This is wrong." And he said, "No, it's perfectly right." That battle went on for several days, and I argued several things. (A) It would be a lie to tell an audience that - Spock could enter a room with two Captain Kirks and not be able to find out very cleverly which was the real Captain Kirk. (B) It would be a lie to tell an audience that Spock could walk in with a gun in his hand and be disarmed and rendered unconscious by the phony Captain Kirk. (C) It would be a lie to tell an audience that any Captain Kirk or any man could render Spock unconscious. Never done it in the series except through some mechanical means—but to hit Spock and, one punch, drop him to the floor 170 Star Trek Lives! unconscious went against everything we'd established. Among other things, we'd tried very hard during the course of the three years to never show specifically Spock's capability for taking punishment or for remaining conscious under a blow. We'd never established the measure of his capacity as opposed to a human capacity. There was always that vague question about what does it take to hurt him physically, to knock him unconscious or whatever. And there you have a scene where quite the opposite is being done. You're saying, "O.K., here's a punch—boom— Spock is down." Well, that Spock is human. You don't have a Vulcan in that scene. You're destroying the Vulcan! You're destroying the whole concept of a Vulcan character. Well, we argued about this for days . . . He kept saying, "We're going to have this fight." And I kept saying, "I don't care if you have the fight but you've got to do it in such a way that Spock is not destroyed in the process. Just not going to do it. I will not stand by and let you do it." Does this sound like Spock? It does to us. But what could he do, we wondered. He had already tried everything we could think of. So finally I came up with a couple ideas . . . I called Gregg Peters, I called everybody in the lot! I had the head of the studio in my office discussing it with me ... I mean we went into ' arbitration on how we were going to do this. I called Gregg Peters who was associate producer and production manager, and I said, "Gregg, we're going to shoot this scene . . ." He knew what was going on. ". . . My contract calls for me to be here. And I will be here. And I will be on the stage to shoot that scene. But ... I don't know how to do that scene. I don't know how to play it. The character that's in that scene is not the character that I know how to play. And I don't know if the director or Bill or anybody Star Trek Lives! 171 is going to be able to come down to that set and show me how to perform that scene ..." So, in my argument with Freiberger, I said, "Let's say you're the captain and here's the other guy." And he had Arthur Singer in his office with him. I said, "Will you both please stand? And Spock comes in with the phaser, this close, like this, and here's the other guy; now if one of them starts to move, I'm just going to shoot him, that's all. The first one that moves, I'm going to shoot him. "Obviously, I'm fast enough to do that. Obviously, Spock is clever enough not to stand with his back to one of them. You cannot construct the scene in such a way that you destroy the character." So this is what I told Gregg Peters. And that's when we finally got a break in the dam . . . A star is going to arrive on the set and say "Show me what you want me to do." And the director says, "Well, you're standing here, and he's there and this guy jumps you." "Well, how's he going to jump me?" "Well, he lunges at you and knocks you off balance." "Well, O.K., let's see him do that. Show me, let's have an actor do that." He starts to move across, and obviously, I shoot him. "Well, that doesn't work, does it? And if I can shoot him, as a human, Spock can certainly shoot him, with Spock's reflexes. Doesn't work." "Well, O.K., suppose you're standing over here and hs's behind you." "Come on! I'm not going to let him behind me! You know, we're in a crisis situation here and I know that. I'm not going to let him get behind me." "Well, suppose it was this . . ." "No, that doesn't work." This could go on for hours ... So they finally reconstructed the scene and the concept eventually was that Spock never is unconscious. That Spock asks these two or three questions, the man jumps him, Spock plays unconscious and watches the fight consciously from the floor ... The point was that Spock chose to do Ihis 172 Star Trek Lives! rather than having it happen to him. At least we could save some of the integrity of the character. This is what Leonard Nimoy endured, a constant struggle to maintain the integrity of the Spock character (a struggle that serves as mute testimony to the integrity of Leonard Nimoy). This is the measure of what Spock means to him. Would he have done a fourth season? He was never asked, not by anyone. Our impression is: he would have. "There would have to have been some changes," he told us, and we agree. He should not have had to struggle merely to maintain integrity and a sense of responsibility to his viewers. Nimoy spoke of this, by the way, with some reluctance, and was concerned even afterward lest the discussion of the conflict should hurt or reflect in some way upon Star Trek or anyone associated with it. He understood that those with whom he disagreed were also doing what they thought best, and was reluctant to attach blame. But we thought that the story was of such importance to fans, and to the meaning of the kind of integrity that Star Trek represented in the real world, that it really should be told. This, too, is how man fights for his goals. Gene Roddenberry told us, "Art is really people asking the eternal question, 'What is it all about?'" Star Trek has indeed given us both the vision of what men could and should be and, in the lives of its creators, the confirmation that such goals can be achieved. If men and women of the demonstrated caliber of Gene Roddenberry, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Dorothy Fontana and others (even some of the fans you have met in this book) do in fact exist, then we can work to create a Star Trek universe, and perhaps can also achieve the greatness of Kirk and Spock within ourselves. Beauty May Only Be Skin Deep, But ChOpped Liver Can Get You Anywhere! or My Six Glorious Days On The Star Trek Set by Joan Winston "Spock, Spock, ifs always been you, Spock." William Shatner That's right, chopped chicken liver and a Paramount bigwig who was a glutton for same. I met him at the CBS offices on one of his periodic visits to the Big City. (Los Angeles is not a city, it is a lot of little towns looking for a city.) "When you come out to the Coast, come over to the studio and I'll show you around the lot. You know, 'Mannix,' 'Mission: Impossible' ... he murmured enticingly. "Star Trek, too?" I asked. 173 174 Star Trek Lives! "Oh, do you like that show?" A glazed-eyed half hour later he had gotten the message. "I tell you what, you bring some of that homemade chopped chicken liver and, well, maybe I can get you a lunch date with Bill Shatner." Leapin' lizards! Lunch with the captain of the Enterprise. I couldn't wait for December 1968. I had already written to Gene Roddenberry that he had to get renewed for the rest of the season because / was planning a visit. Not that I think this had anything to do with NBC picking up the additional programs, but... My first day at Paramount was frustrating, to say the least. Star Trek was on location and my "influential" friend was out of town until Monday. Here I was, all set for the Star Trek set, but the Star Trek set wasn't ready for me. Bright and early on Monday, I called Paramount. Joy of joys, he was in! Yech of yechs, Star Trek wasn't. Still on location. Hey, fellas, my vacation is only for two weeks. Tuesday: Well, Monday they had just finished "Savage Curtain" and today they were beginning "Turnabout Intruder." Perhaps after lunch, the man in the office said, yes, that's it, I could go on the set for a few minutes after lunch. Under these circumstances, one does not quibble—a few minutes—I'll take forty-five seconds, just let me get on the set. A little after two o'clock I walked through that huge ominous door with the red letters proclaiming: Closed Set. I made very sure that the red light wasn't on so we would not interrupt a scene. Guess who was standing right inside the door, talking on the telephone! None other than our beloved Captain. The second assistant director bustled over to find out what business we had on the set. He left us alone as soon as we were able to prove that we did have an appointment. (I was with bigwig's secretary.) The next person I spotted was DeForest Kelley. Since he looked as if he were free at the moment, we headed over. De is an absolute, unadulterated Southern- Trek Lives! 175 175 pecan delight. A real pro. He was always ready when needed, knowing his business and his lines. One evening on the drive home from the studio (De was kind enough to give me a lift several times), De talked about his lovely wife, Carolyn, his schnoodle (half schnauzer, half poodle) and how much they loved their house. They might have to move anyway, because the kids in the parochial school up the street had discovered that "Dr. McCoy" lived there. They were knocking on his door all day, hoping for a glimpse of their hero. "It really is something to get this kind of popularity after so many years in the business." Nimoy had had to move for the same reason. Shatner, in the process of his divorce, had moved in with friends, no one knew where, but if the constant calls on the set were any barometer, half the female population of Los Angeles county was trying to find out. Looking around the set after leaving De, I noticed three small girls sitting on the sidelines. They looked very familiar. As I watched Bill Shatner go over and tousle the hair of one and caress the cheek of another, I suddenly realized they were his daughters. They had come to visit Daddy on the set. Since he was not living at home at this time, I guess he took every opportunity he could to see them. The children seemed very happy to be with him, and he seemed equally happy to have them there. I spoke to them for a little while and found them charmingly shy and well-behaved. Leslie, the oldest, was about ten and very lovely. Lizabeth was eight and the most outgoing of the three. Melanie was four and will be a real beauty when she grows up. I had just asked her if she knew where her name had come from, and she said, "My Mommy and Daddy gave it to me." "Yes, but there was a lady in a book called Gone with the Wind, a very pretty lady, called Melanie." Just as I said that, I heard an "Ahem," turned around and there was Captain Kirk looming over me. "Oh, excuse me," I said, and walked away. I 176 Star Trek Lives! didn't want him to think I was intruding. He looked after me for a moment, smiling, and then started to talk with the children. I was standing on the side of the set talking with Gene De Ruelle, the assistant director, when we suddenly heard a childish voice piping, "But we don't want to go now." "Now you know it's time," I heard Shatner's firm but sad voice saying. "I don't want you to get caught in traffic. Your Mommy would be worried. Now, you have to go." Suddenly, three comets launched themselves. There was a little girl wound around each leg and' another around his neck, all crying, and you could see that Shatner was well on his way to joining them. "Now you know I'm going to see you on Sunday. Don't I always see you on Sunday?" Three tearful faces brightened. "O.K., whose day is it?" Bill said, as if he didn't know. Little Melanie perked up. "It's my day, Daddy!" "And where are we going to go, as if I didn't know?" "The zoo! The zoo!" "And where are we going to eat after the zoo, as if I didn't know?" "McDonald's! 'Cause they're our kind of people!" And the whole set broke up. Bill turned to everyone and laughed, "Everytime we go there, I wear sunglasses and an old hat jammed down over my eyes, but the kids go running from car to car saying, That's my Daddy, he's on television! They do it every time." He sent them off with hugs and kisses, and the set returned to normal. Well, as normal as a Star Trek set could ever be—which is a kind of disciplined insanity. We were finally going to see a scene from "Turnabout Intruder." That was the official title, but the set crew's title was "Captain Kirk, Space Queen." It's the one where Kirk and Dr. Janice Lester exchange bodies. Star Trek Lives! 177 I told Bill that I had never seen anyone who reminded me less of a woman. "Keep that thought," he grinned. Meanwhile, back on the set, they seemed to be having a bit of a problem. They were shooting the scene in sickbay where Kirk (in Janice's body) is just coming to. Harry Landers, who played Dr. Coleman, was having trouble with his lines, and they were on the fourth take. This is very expensive when you are shooting in color, and he was getting more and more uptight. One of the assistant directors was reading Kirk's lines, as Bill did not appear visually in the scene. I guess Bill thought it would help if he himself read Kirk's lines, so he perched himself very precariously on a two-inch bar sticking out of the camera frame, and began reading his lines with verve and passion. Fifth take. Fluff. Sixth take. Oops. Finally, quite disgusted with himself, Harry turned away with an angry "Shit!" He apologized profusely to the cast. Bill laughed and said, "Look, don't apologize. We just saw this season's blooper last week, and they had two solid minutes of me saying nothing but 'shit.' So don't you worry about it." (By the way, the blooper that has been seen at conventions doesn't have this in it. Is there more than one blooper? Mr. Roddenberry, how about it?) We didn't want to overstay our welcome, so we said good-bye. As we were leaving, I asked the first assistant director, Gene De Ruelle, if this flubbing bit happened very often. "Oh," he said, "this is nothing. You should have been here when we did 'Court Martial' with Elisha Cook, Jr. We practically had to loop every other line in some scenes. You'd never know that when you saw the episode. Then there are times," he continued, "when the actors are uncomfortable with a line of dialogue, or feel that their character would not say or do that particular piece of business. Very interesting." Now I know all of you are wondering why I haven't mentioned Leonard Nimoy? Well, friends, he wasn't on the set that day. 178 Star Trek Lives! The next day was New Year's Day, and Bill was to appear in the Rose Bowl Parade as Prince Charming, which meant he had to be in Pasadena at about 6:30 in the a.m. This meant that he either celebrated a very early New Year's Eve or that he didn't get to bed at all. I didn't get to bed because I was partying and got home just in time to see the parade. There he was, orange tights and all. Thursday: This was the day I was supposed to visit MGM and meet all sorts of marvelous people. Yet there I was, back on the Star Trek set. I never did make it to MGM, 20th Century-Fox, Warner Brothers or any of the studios that I planned to visit. My friends called to find out where I was spending my time and when informed, "On the Star Trek set," they said, "We should have known." I met John Dwyer and Mike May. John was the set decorator and Mike was his assistant. They made quite a pair. John is six foot, six inches and about 200 lbs.; Mike is much shorter and a bit chunky. During a break on the set, I asked John how tall Shatner was. "Oh, Willy is about five-ten, or so." "Willy?" I gulped. "Does he like being called Willy?" "Well, the first time I did it to his face he picked me up and carried me off the set. He's a strong little feller." Since John was eight inches taller and about forty pounds heavier than Shatner, I had to agree. Between giggles. Later, as we were eating lunch, John and Mike told me some of their problems as set decorators for Star Trek. One huge problem was that Star Trek did not use ordinary sets very often. Not many theatrical rental places have a Stratus City palace sitting around the back lot. A big problem was money. A lot of the budget went for the opticals that were so important to the physical appearance and success of the show. Most of what was left went for actors, writers, directors, etc. "We spend most of our time raiding trash cans Star Trek Lives.' 179 from 'Mission: Impossible' to see what they've tossed away that we can use. Many times those strange alien sculptures and wall decorations are just pressed-foam forms that protected a tape recorder or a piece of machinery. Spray it gold, put a light behind it and Presto! An Aldebaron work of art." We got back from lunch early and the boys took some more pictures of me on the set. We then left so John could show me his workshop. We raided a few trash cans on the way. I think the Star Trek people resented the M.I. people just a little. They had three sets to play with and S.T. only had two. And they did not have the problem of opticals every week, either. Before we left for lunch, they had been setting up a scene in sick bay. McCoy was to examine the captain, to see if he could find some explanation for his erratic behavior. Shatner had been in the makeup room getting body makeup applied, and that was holding things up a bit. One of the men on the set said that reminded him of the time Leonard had pulled a beautiful practical joke on Bill, the King of the Practical Jokers, perhaps to make up for the famous Vanishing Bicycle. It seems that one morning Bill had had to come in half an hour early to get a body makeup. The night before, Leonard put the body makeup bottle into the set refrigerator. Then he took it out, just before Bill's arrival. Well, Bill may not have been awake when lie walked in, but that first handful of ice-cold liquid between his shoulder blades shot him right out of his chair and ten feet across the room! The makeup man and Leonard were doubled up for about five minutes, and Bill joined them after the first shock had passed. (I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall that day.) It was Bill who really loved to break up the set. He felt that it relaxed tension and, since no one ever told him to stop, I guess he was right. He and Leonard loved to try and break each other up. At that point, Bill was leading by about 4 to 1— because he was just a little nuttier, that's all. 180 Star Trek Lives! Getting back to the sick bay scene, Bill finally arrived on the set. He wore a heavy bathrobe, with his arms folded across his chest. The camera was focused on De and the crew could not see what Bill was about to do. At first. Bill took off the robe, and there he was, wearing these huge falsies pasted on his chest. He lay very calmly and completely straight-faced on the examining table. De kept a most serious expression on all throughout the scene (great actor, that man), and went through the entire examination. His first opinion was that the captain had a tumor in his breast, but the final diagnosis was that Kirk was pregnant! At this point, Shatner collapsed in hysterics and rolled right off the table. It was one of the funniest things I had ever seen, where one of Bill's jokes had backfired and De got the last laugh (which happened often, I later heard). Returning to the set from John's workshop, we found out that Bill wasn't letting the morning's backfire deter him. There was a huge screen surrounding the captain's chair and a lot of snickering stagehands standing around. Suddenly, the screen was lifted away and lo, there was Captain James T. Kirk in a long black fright wig, huge purple sequined eyelashes, bright red lipstick, falsies and a purple (to match the eyelashes, no doubt) ukelele, sitting with his legs primly crossed in the captain's chair. When he was sure everyone's attention was riveted (and it was!), he broke into "Tip-Toe Through the Tulips," a la Tiny Tim. Three light stands were knocked over, and two technicians almost fell off the catwalk because people were laughing so hard. I got the hiccups and had to redo my mascara because I laughed so hard I cried. Ul that time I was wishing I had the nerve to take out my little Instamatic, because it would have been a picture worth about $10,000! It was one of the funniest ihings I have ever seen. Friday: No visitors; this means you. The show secretary was adamant. Too many people had been \isiting the set and distracting both cast and crew. To Star Trek Lives! 181 say I was disappointed would be putting it mildly. Very mildly. Desolate and distraught, I was wandering around outside the set taking pictures of the Galileo and the big door that said: Closed Set. Just as I took the picture De Kelley walked out the door. "For heaven's sake, Joan, what are you doing out here?" "Hi, De [he insisted everyone call him that], they said the set was really closed today." "Nonsense. You come with me." He did not have to issue a second invitation. I walked onto the set and there, finally, was Mr. Spock. He was sitting with his script in his lap looking very unSpockian, because he was laughing hysterically over someone's joke. De took me over and introduced me. Now DeForest was always called De, James Doo-han was Jimmy and Bill was called: BUI Billy Willy Shat The Kid in the Yellow Shirt Take your pick. Although, if you're going to call him Willy, I would have on a good pair of track shoes. Everyone called Mr. Nimoy, Leonard. He's a dignified, sensitive man, quiet and very contained with a sly sense of humor. Leonard and I had only a few minutes for conversation, as he was needed in the next scene. Essentially a very serious actor, he said he would love to-do something on Broadway; he got his wish. He did "Full Circle" to excellent reviews in the 1973-74 Broadway season; distinctly unSpockian. Not that he did not enjoy the character and appreciate the fame Spock brought to him, but he wanted to prove that he could do other parts as well. He was very warm and friendly. Somehow we got on the subject of chopped chicken liver. "Vulcans can't eat that, you know. But skinny Jewish actors love it!" He laughed. Of course, I brought him some the next day. When Leonard left for the scene, I wandered over 182 Star Trek Lives! Star Trek Lives! 183 to De Kelley. I passed Mr. Shatner, on the phone again, with the kind of expression a man has when a pretty female is on the other end of the phone. I was determined I would at least say hello to the man. But he always seemed to be talking to someone, acting a scene, or being busy on the phone! I just couldn't seem to get my figurative hands on him. At that time I didn't know that you were not allowed to bring a camera on the set without permission. There, in my handbag (the size of Yankee Stadium; you never know what you may want to smuggle here and there and hither and yon), was my trusty little Instamatic. De was marvelous. He spirited Leonard away and got George (Sulu) Takei to get some pictures of the three of us on the transporter platform. In one, I got to hug De (and he hugged back!) and in the other I got to hug Leonard (and he hugged back!). To say that I was transported would be very corny, I know, but I'm going to say it anyway. We went back, and they were setting up on the other side of the set, so De took a quick picture of me in the captain's chair. I didn't tell him I wished the captain was in it at the time, but I think he got the idea. Jimmy Doohan was standing over on the side of the set, and I started to talk to him. (We had Jimmy at the Second International Star Trek Convention and he was a marvelous guest, and a warm and darling gentleman.) I noticed that he had a pack of cigarettes in his pants pocket. I remarked that I thought the Enterprise uniforms did not have pockets. "You'd be surprised what other little secrets we have." But he wouldn't go into detail, darn. He told me how much he enjoyed working on Star Trek, the fun they had, but how he wished that Scotty had a bigger part to play. However, Scotty had a love story that season and he was very happy about that: "Lights of Zetar," for the very few who don't remember. He walked away to make a phone call, and there was William Shatner —all alone and nobody near him. I walked over and said, "Hello." He looked at me and smiled. They never let him smile much on Star Trek, and I could see why—it's almost lethal! "My name is Joan Winston." "Don't I know you?" "Well, you probably don't remember, but I was here last week." "Oh, I remember all right. You wore a gray wool dress that fit like crazy." He grinned again and I grinned back. Oh my. "I hope you didn't mind my talking to your children. They are just charming." His whole face lit up. "Aren't they, though . . . They're so beautiful." Suddenly he turned serious. "But you know, I get so worried about them, the world is such a crazy place today . . . Do you think a convent would take three little Jewish girls?" I broke up. "How come you've honored us with two visits? Are you here on business?" "No, just on vacation. Howard Rayfiel (he seemed to know the name) used his influence to get me on the set. I wouldn't have any trouble getting into the studio, as I could have that arranged through my people." "Your people?" "Yes, I work for CBS ..." "Aha, the enemy. Are you a spy?" He grinned again. "But I'm sure I know you . . . Haven't we met ... before?" I mentioned the time several years before in the CBS commissary, when he had been doing one of our Sunday morning religious programs. I also told him about the outline I had written for a Star Trek episode, and he was polite enough to ask if he could read it sometime. Jimmy Doohan and De had come back, and De still had my camera in his hand. As we were all talking, De said, "Oh, Joan, let me take a picture of all of you." It was as if he could read my mind. The three of us posed, with me in the middle—a very happy sandwich—when Bill suddenly turned so we were nose to nose. The picture's a bit unusual, mostly because of my bemused expression. Do you 184 Star Trek Lives! Star Trek Lives! 185 remember, as a child, doing that and seeing just one huge eye? His are hazel. I was just screwing up my courage to ask if he would pose with me in the captain's chair when he was called away for a scene. Do you remember the scene where Sandy Smith, who played Janice Lester/Kirk, comes running into sick bayto seek the help of McCoy and Spock? Kirk/ Janice gives her a karate chop on the neck, and two security guards carry her away. Only she kept falling wrong—out of camera range. They did the scene several times, and each time Bill really had to hit her just a little, to make It look good. During each set-up he'd come over and ask my opinion of the take. When they finally got a "Print it," Bill celebrated by beating the medikit like a tom-tom. As Sandy Smith walked off the set, rubbing her neck, I offered to massage it for her. I plunked myself on a makeup table and, with her standing in front of me, I began to knead her neck. Shatner walked by and asked if I was any good. "Oh," said Sandy Smith, "she's just great." He sat on the table next to me and said, "O.K., I'm next." I massaged Sandy a few minutes more while trying to think of something witty to say, but of course nothing occurred to me. Sandy was called away for a close-up, and there he was. He really needed a good massage. The tension in his neck and shoulders was so strong I had a difficult time getting a good grip. It was strange, because he seemed so loose and relaxed on the set. He turned his head so that we were inches apart and said, "You have a very good technique." Then the director broke in. "O.K., you two, break it up. I need you on the set, Bill." I felt a definite urge to injure! Later, I recalled Howard's suggestion of a luncheon date. Had he mentioned it to Bill? Bill said this was the first he had heard of it, and unfortunately he was busy. Maybe he could work something out. As I walked off the set, De Kelley asked me to go to lunch with him. And I did. The first thing we discovered we had in common was our hatred of cafeteria toast. I told him I make great toast, and he asked how I did it. "In the o\^n, of course." "Oven toast. That's the best." I told him my little secret of buttering it and putting it back into the oven. He smiled; that was his secret, too. We were bosom buddies from then on. I mentioned the surprise I felt at the tension I'd found when I was massaging Bill's neck. "Well, I think I might know the answer for that. Bill, being the star of the series, feels a certain responsibility for the well-being of the cast and crew. He feels that the best atmosphere for a successful series should be a loose and easy one. And I think most times he succeeds, as you surely noticed today. The tension comes from burying his own problems, so he can joke and keep things light on the set. This takes a great deal out of him, and his performances take the rest. He is not a man to do things by half measures. I know that when he goes home at night, he is completely drained and exhausted. "We aU feel that to a different degree. Some of us can unwind more quickly than others, and that keeps us going." We went back to the set after lunch. I wasn't supposed to be there, but there I was. Unfortunately, so were about twelve obnoxious kids, who proceeded to tear up the joint. There was one couple and their son acting human, and so was I, I thought, when suddenly there was the show's secretary glaring balefully. "I thought I told you this was a closed set. How dare you come in without permission?" Before I could open my mouth, an arm slipped around my waist and a voice said, sweetly, "She's my guest. That makes it all right, doesn't it?" I turned, and was once again eyeball to eyeball 186 Star Trek Lives! Star Trek Lives! 187 with that one large, hazel eye. All the girl could do was apologize and walk away. Some days it really pays to get up in the morning! They were shooting a scene in the curve of the ship's corridor, and unless I climbed on the cameraman's back, there was no chance of my seeing what was happening. I joined some bit players and extras on the other side of the set. They were all seated except for me, but the only empty chair bore the legend "William Shatner" on the arm. "Go ahead and sit in it ... Bill won't mind." So I sat. There was a long canvas pocket on the side of the chair, and my curiosity got the better of my good manners. There was a box of tissues, and two books. One was on learning Spanish, and the other on flying. He certainly has diversified interests. I was talking to one of the bit players when I caught sight of Bill heading toward us. I started to rise and he waved me back. He reached into the pocket and got out a tissue. "Sit there. I like to look at your crazy legs." Oh, my! Suddenly a booming voice broke through the mayhem and noise of all those kids. "All right, that's it. Everyone off this set who doesn't have strict business here." The director had had it, up to the nosebone and beyond. "I guess that means me," I said to the actor. "I guess that means everybody. He's mad!" I went. After spending some time in my friend's office I started to leave the lot when I suddenly remembered De still had my camera. With great trepidation, I walked back on the set. De greeted me with, "Where have you been? We've been looking all over for you." Finishing the scene, Bill walked over and said, "Where did you disappear to?" "Well, the director said to clear the set, so I . . ." "That didn't mean you, that was meant for those kids. Besides, I told him you were my guest." Sighing with delight, I settled back into Bill's chair to watch the rest of the day's shooting. They were doing close-ups of all the performers either reacting to someone else's lines or repeating their own. It was strange to see Mr. Spock looking intently into the camera, when it will seem as if he is closely examining the captain, and McCoy arguing with the camera in place of Spock, while the assistant director reads Spock's lines. It was a delightful way to end the day. Monday: This time I didn't ask anyone's permission. I just walked on the set. I guess the magic still worked. Bill had said I was his guest and as long as I minded the rules and didn't let my shoes squeak in a master shot, I was welcome. The sound mixer, Carl Daniels, was a honey. He showed me where the coffee machine was and got me a Danish bun because, as usual, I had not taken any time for breakfast. "This is the greatest cast and crew I have ever worked with, bar none. Most of us have been with the show since the beginning, and it's like a real family. You know, we spend anywhere from eight to twelve hours a day working together. In fact, I probably see more of the crew than of my own family." Bill had just sent the set off into another round of laughter, and one of the technicians came by shaking his head and chuckling, "Shat has done it again." Carl turned to me and said, "He is one of the reasons this is such a great set to work on. He's like that from eight in the morning to eight at night. It's a shame it has to end . . ." He stopped, sighed. "Well, maybe a miracle will happen." I saw De standing on the other side of the set, and started to walk over to say hello and thank him for the gorgeous picture he had given me. It was an 8x10 black and white portrait of him as Dr. McCoy, and on it he had written, "To Joan, You are absolutely delightful, from the Galactic Quack, DeForest Kelley." I loved it. Suddenly the director yelled, "Action," and there I was caught, one foot in midair as the cameras 188 Star Trek Lives! started to roll. It was a master shot and seemed as if it were going to last forever. I didn't breathe or move he-cause my #@%$& shoes squeaked! After what was surely an eternity, the director said, "Print it." Thank God! I thought I was going to have a spasm. And looking over at me, bent over in hysterics, was De. I could have hit him, almost. If you are not aware, most scenes are shot in very short sequences of 20 to 30 seconds in length. A master shot is a long panning shot taking in all the action, and setting up the scene for all the group and individual shots to come. Usually, the director and the cameramen set up the shooting schedule before the episode even goes into rehearsal. Each afternoon, a schedule for the next day is distributed and the cast and crew find out if and when they are due on the set. Each actor is given a number (Kirk was #1, Spock #2, McCoy #3, etc.) and by just glancing over this sheet, he can tell if and when he is needed, and what scenes are being shot. Looking at the schedule, you can see that all bridge scenes are grouped together, as are all sick bay sequences, and so on. A script is never shot in proper order, as that would be too expensive and time-consuming. It takes hours just to set up the bridge. To use that for one shot, and then tear down and set up in Spock's quarters, and -then go back to the bridge .. . You see what I mean. Many times an actor will come in for a 9:30 a.m. call and, because of delays—technical and otherwise— not work till 12:30 p.m. This does not make the actor or the director very happy. Especially the director, since one of his major objectives is to bring the show in on schedule, and within budget. Every hour of overtime (golden hours, they're called) takes a bite out of the specific sum of money allocated for each episode. The contract with the network states that they will pay so many dollars for each episode. This means every time Star Trek went over this amount, Paramount had to "eat it," meaning they had to pay out this sum and hope to make it up later when the program went Star Trek Lives! 189 into syndication. And, boy, have they made it up. At the last report, Daily Variety said that Paramount had made over $11,000,000 in gross profits from Star Trek syndication. This is phenomenal, with only seventy-nine episodes, and a justifiable tribute to the show's ever-growing popularity. Back to the set. O.K., you know what the director does, but what about the assistant director? One of his main duties, Gene De Ruelle told me, was to make sure that all the performers are ready and on the set when shooting is to begin. It is amazing how many places an actor can find to wander off to between one set-up and the next. The john, the coffee wagon, the John, his dressing room, the john, the telephone, the john . . . well, you get the idea. He also has to be a good yeller, because he's the one always bellowing, "Quiet on the set!" Gene was a good yeller. There was an air of excitement on the set that day as O. J. Simpson, football star, was visiting. He and Bill are built much the same and, when they were introduced, he grabbed Bill's bicep and said, "Gee, they're real." Bill grabbed O. J.'s arm, saying, "So are yours." Gene Roddenberry was on the set, and De introduced me. At that time he and Majel were not married, but they were making plans. They looked very happy and she looked lovely. Her hair was dark, its natural color, and it was so much more flattering than the blonde coloring she had used through most of the series. Looking at me, Gene mused, "Joan Winston, why do I know that name?" "Well, I've sent you several letters," I said, mentioning one in particular. "Oh, yes, we had that on the bulletin board for weeks. It was delightful. But I know that name from somewhere else." I told him that one of the letters had had an idea for a script, and he had told me to submit it through the proper channels. "I remember, whatever happened to it?" 190 Star Trek Lives! "It was returned because it wasn't sent through an agent." "Hmm. Do you happen to have it with you?" "Uh, yes." "Why don't you work it up into a full outline with a teaser and four acts," he said. "We might be interested if we go for a fourth season." Wow! I asked how it looked for renewal, and he said it wasn't too good. NBC had just informed him that they were passing on their option for two additional programs for this season. "I just told Bill and he was quite disappointed. He was to direct the last episode." I had seen Bill's face fall when Gene had been speaking to him, and now I knew the reason. They were now ready to shoot another scene. Sulu and Chekov talk of the coming execution of Spock, McCoy and Scott on Benecia—Kirk/Janice enters onto the bridge—no one will obey his orders— he panics—almost faints—exits to elevator. It was a long involved scene, containing many changes of pace for Kirk. It was all done to perfection in just one take. The director, Herb Wallenstein, called, "Cut! Print it," and everyone started to applaud. Gene Roddenberry turned to O. J. Simpson and said, "You have just seen an actor at work." I don't think there is any finer compliment a producer can pay his star. Herb turned to Carl, at the sound machine, to ask if it was a good take, soundwise. Carl nodded and so did the cameraman. It was a perfect shot, but they decided to do a "cover shot" just in case something showed up in the dailies. They went through it again. And again. And again. After that one perfect take, Bill kept on flubbing bis lines. After the fourth time, he got so mad at himself he turned around and went "Shii—" facing so he looked straight at me. Obviously in midword, he changed his mind and ended up saying, "Shiiiaatner, you've done it again!" Everyone broke up because they knew what he meant to say. If you have Star Trek Lives! 191 seen the blooper film, you know what his favorite word is and it isn't spelled s-h-a-t, either. When they had finished with the scene, Bill went off somewhere to read his script. Leonard was giving an interview for a magazine, and everyone else did "their thing." I found most of them clustered about what I had heard referred to as the rehearsal table. I understand that Bill had requested it at the beginning of the series, so that on the first day of shooting each actor could read the script and discuss any ideas or bits of business they might come up with. As they were sitting there, Bill came up, script in hand and cried, "Will somebody please help the captain—with his lines." I think De volunteered. De did some more volunteering that evening. He drove me home. I was staying at a friend's apartment -and he said it wasn't out of his way at all. A real love-boat. Tuesday: I arrived late on Tuesday. Remember those pictures I had taken on the set? Well, the drugstore (the famous Schwab's) had lost them and I was furious. I saw Bill standing over on the side of the set and told him of my predicament. Would he pose for me again? He would. As soon as he had a free minute. Whew! Carl came over and we went to have some coffee. By this time, I was considered family and treated as such. Heaven. They were cleaning up a lot of the old stuff from Monday's filming, close-ups and such, so I just wandered around poking into corners. In one corner I found Jimmy Rugg working on some broken phasers. The-actors loved to play with them, and were always forgetting how fragile they were and how easily damaged. The same applied to the tricorders and communicators. Jimmy kept them all locked up in a big wooden trunk on the set, only unlocking it when the props were actually being used. I met another Star Trek fan on the set that day. Her name is Paula Crist and you can blame her for my 192 Star Trek Lives! entrance into Fandom. Paula was the person who in-' traduced me to Rita Ractliffe, then president of the William Shatner Fan Club. Paula was recording secretary of one of the larger Nimoy clubs. Through them, I met Elyse Rosenstein (nee Pines) and Eileen Becker. If those names sound familiar it is because they were on the now famous (infamous?) committee that ran the first Star Trek convention in New York, January 1972. This was one of several visits that Paula has made to the set. She was a Spock nut. Need I say more? She was also very friendly and a generous person, for she volunteered to be my "wheels" while I was in Los Angeles. A typical New Yorker, I did not know how to drive. I still don't. Now I would not have to ' bother De. Southern gentleman that he is, he said it had always been a pleasure, not a chore. Spock's court martial scene was to be shot, and the lighting crew was setting up their equipment. Meanwhile, the scene was rehearsed. Bill was chewing gum, and every time they would do a scene he would find a different place to park his gum. He reasoned: it was a fresh piece, so why throw it away? The first place he put it was behind his ear. The director looked a bit askance. "What will you do if it falls off in the middle of the scene?" Bill's reply was beautiful. "Til just say the captain lost his earring." And grinned. The next scene it was under the table, then on the nose of one of the technicians—well, he wasn't in the scene, was he? The director just threw up his hands and gave up. Gee, if the technician didn't mind ... As a matter of fact, he seemed to get a kick out of it. They encountered a small sound problem in the scene. The witness chair had an air cushion and when Janice/Kirk (Sandra Smith) sat down in it, you heard this loud whoosh right in the middle of Bill's line. He stopped dead and started that famous Shatner machine-gun giggle. Sandra hooted, the crew haw-hawed and the sound man cried, just a little. Then came the big dramatic sequence with Spock, Star Trek Lives! 193 as Kirk/Janice attempts to get him to retract bis statements and accept K/J as the real Kirk. Bill's lines were something like: "Spock, Spock, come back to the Enterprise family, forget the madness that overcame all of us on Camus Two." Well, either he forgot his lines or that maniacal mind was at work again, because what came out was, "Spock, Spock, it's always been you, you know it's always been you. Say you love me, too." By the second "always," Nimoy was sliding down the wall in hysterics and the cast and crew were whooping wildly. Bill turned a completely straight face to the crew and putting his finger under his chin made a polite, and for him, very feminine curtsy. What a beautiful blooper that would have been, but I don't think anyone thought of saving it. I know the camera was running, because the cameraman was folded over it laughing, and hadn't the strength to turn it off. Darn. Then Bill got into an argument with Herb Waller-stein, the director. Well, not an argument exactly; a discussion. Herb wanted Bill to shout at Spock, get red in the face and walk off in a rage. All of which Bill can do and well, but. Walk off—not through the doors of the briefing room, just walk off. That is what they were, uh, discussing. Bill was very polite and quiet but also very adamant. First he tried joking. "I know this is the last scheduled episode, but do you really want to kill me off by sending me into the cold, dark vacuum of space?" The director looked very startled. "What?" Now that he had Herb's attention, Bill got serious. "Look, the fans know this ship backward, forward and blindfolded. They know there is only one exit from this room and it's way over there, not here." Herb looked at Bill as if he were crazy. "What difference does that make?" They "discussed" this for a few more minutes but Herb, being the director, had the final say. Bill, however, gave him fair warning that the fans would send in a pile of letters about this. And he was right. 194 Star Trek Lives! The scene was very well done, with Spock calm and Kirk hysterical and actually red in the face (how does he do that?). When the scene ended and Bill walked off the set, all of the crew applauded. You don't hardly see that on a TV production set. Bill was very touched. After lunch, we adjourned to Stage 10 to shoot the teaser and opening scenes. De's stand-in had not shown up that day, so I asked Gene De Ruelle, the assistant director, if I could take his place. He looked a bit startled for a moment, then said, "Sure, if you want to." So there I stood under the huge, hot lights with Roger (Bill's stand-in) and Frank (Leonard's stand-in) . Everyone warned me not to look directly into the lights; Roger, especially, since he had not listened, and had damaged his eyes somewhat. A thought suddenly occurred to me. "Gene, I just realized, I'm not as tall as De." Gene grinned, "Don't worry, honey, neither is his stand-in." I soon found out a stand-in's Me is no bed of petunias. We stood under those blazing lights for fifty-five minutes, till the scene was lit to the director's and cameraman's approval. The lights were being set up for the three stars beam-down in the very beginning of the teaser. Spock, Kirk and McCoy finally took their places and they shot the scene. Again, and again, from a dozen different angles. In the next shot, Bill was supposed to sit on Janice's cot and talk with her. Well, not quite. Bill was having a bit of trouble with his phaser. Since he was not going to use it in the scene, it was sewn on instead of being held on by the Velcro patch. Evidently, it was in the exact place to prevent him from sitting naturally, and he did a big thing about the peculiar positions he would have to take if it were not resewn. It was resewn. Bill was not really himself that day, and I realized later it must have been a flu bug starting up. He ad- Star Trek Lives! 195 , mitted later that he had been feeling terrible all day. Anyway, I had finally brought in the famous chopped chicken liver onto the set. Most of the crew and Leonard had made vast inroads in it, but when I offered it to Bill he took one look and waved it away. I was a bit hurt; at least he could have tasted it. I realized later that if the flu hits him the way it hits me, his stomach was in no mood for anything as exotic as CCL. I'd like to think so anyway. Paula had driven me to the studio that day, and all she could talk about was Leonard's hair. She desperately wanted to run her fingers through it. That sleek, shiny mass fascinated her. Finally, as he was stuffing the third helping of CCL in his mouth, she asked him. He looked very startled at first. Then smiling, he bent his head so the tiny Paula could touch his hair. "Oh, it's Like silk, just like silk," she sighed. I'm pretty sure Mr. Spock blushed, just a little. When Paula drove me home that evening, every time we stopped for a light, her fingers would make a quick patting motion. And she'd sigh. Wednesday: I got there just in time to see Leonard slowly and ceremoniously remove his ears for the last time. There was a moment of silence, then everyone dived for them. A person could get killed! He then left the set to remove his Spock makeup for the last time. I remember one evening, when I was waiting outside the makeup room for De to take me home. He and Leonard were removing their makeup with gobs of cold cream. Bill, flashing me a tired grin, walked into the room to join them. Instead of cream, he washed his face over and over with Ivory soap. On the drive home, I asked De how come? He said that Bill has very sensitive skin and doesn't like to use the cream. I don't know if you have ever noticed, but Bill Shatner has beautiful skin. I've used Ivory ever since. De had come over to say hello when I spotted Bill in a corner shivering, I asked De what was the matter and found out what had happened that morning. De had been in the makeup room and in the 196 Star Trek Lives! ft mirror he had seen Bill crossing the set with his Dober-man, Morgan. He saw Bill suddenly go white and sit down on the floor. De ran over to see what was wrong. He helped Bill into a chair and asked what was the matter. He had hold of Billy's arm and could feel great heat radiating from him. Bill said he had felt dizzy and his legs had turned to rubber. De called the medical department and they sent over a nurse. She said it looked like the Asian flu, and he should go to the hospital or at least his home. (That was the beginning of 1969, and they were having an epidemic of a very virulent strain of the flu. Many people had been hospitalized and some had died.) Bill said he couldn't possibly go to the hospital. It was the last day of shooting and it would cost a fortune to keep all those people on call until he was well again. The nurse called the medical office, and they found a doctor to give Bill some medication so he could finish the day. I don't know what his temperature was, but they had to apply new makeup after every scene because it was melting right off his face. He walked as if every joint ached, except on camera. I don't know how he did it—just pure force of will. It was a perfect case of "the show must go on." And he went on, too. Even made a few funnies now and then. The director was giving some instructions for the next scene. "O.K., Bill, I want you to pull out your thing [meaning the communicator] and call the Enterprise." Bill looked at him, blinked and said, "Right, I'll just whip out my 'thing,'" and reached for the fly of his trousers. Herb went beet-red. "No, no," he shouted. "Oh, not that thing," Bill deadpanned. "This thing." Holding up the communicator, his face a perfect picture of innocence. Poor Herb. If you remember, in the next scene Janice Lester traps Kirk into an ancient transfer machine and takes Star Trek Lives/ 197 over his body. After they had shot that from a dozen angles, they got to the doozie. Here Bill had to pick up Sandra, a good-sized healthy girl, and carry her about twelve or fourteen feet to a couch, where he proceeds to strangle her. At least that's the way it was supposed to be. The first take, just as Bill got to the couch, a plane flew over and Carl, the sound mixer, shook his head. -No good. Second take: He made it to the couch but someone made a sound. Third take: One of the lights flickered. Sigh. Fourth take: One of Sandra's combs fell out of her hair. All Bill said to the hairdresser was, "Glue it!" They took some time out and reapplied his makeup. He looked very pale. Fifth take: They ran out of film as he reached the couch and had to change cartridges. Sixth take: Bill hoisted Sandra with an audible grunt and spoke his dialogue. Just as he reached the couch, his face went ashen, he staggered and his arms just gave out Sandra dropped like a stone. Luckily, she was right over the couch. Since it was made out of foam rubber, she bounced. Two or three times. We all thought Bill was going to pass out, and for one moment I think he did too. But he just looked down at Sandra's startled face, and said, "You know I love you, baby, but you've got to lose about six inches off that ass." The set exploded in relief and Bill sat down on the couch, wiping his forehead. Sandra, a groovy person, laughed louder than anyone else. Bill managed to smile at her, and then went off the set to get a glass of water and whatever medication they were giving him. It must have helped because he managed to complete the scene without any further trouble. I was kneeling right behind the cameraman as, he was shooting the scene in which Kirk/Janice tells Janice/Kirk why he is killing her, uh, him. I know it sounds confusing, but if you know the episode (and 198 Star Trek Lives! Star Trek Lives! 199 what ST fan does not?) you can figure it out. Bill's eyes were very bright with the fever, and his voice had a slight tremor, but when you saw it on television, it was very effective. They took a lot of close-ups and it took some time. When they finally finished, Sandra got up from the couch and Bill lay down. He looked exhausted. He put one arm over his eyes and just let himself sag for a moment. The stagehands were clearing the set and I saw them eye Bill and talk among themselves for a minute. They nodded their heads, walked over and picked up the couch with Bill still on it. He started to get off, but they waved him back and carried him off to the side of the set. Bill lay down again, but looked a little sheepish. As he passed me, knowing his familiarity with classical drama, I murmured, "With your shield, or on it." He looked up and gave me a tired grin. Sandra got him some water and massaged his neck and shoulders while they set up the next scene. We were all sitting around talking, when someone commented on the noise filtering through from Stage 9. It was the moving crew dismantling the permanent sets for storage. "There goes the bridge," someone said softly. "There goes the transporter." "There goes Bill's dressing room," someone joked. Bill looked over at him. "Not with Morgan in it." Anyone familiar with his huge black Doberman knew what he meant. I have my own story to tell about Morgan. One morning I was looking for De, and was told he was in his dressing room. All the dressing rooms were on a side road outside of Stage 10. When I got there, I called out but no one answered and I turned to go. As I headed back I heard a movement in the next dressing room, which had Bill Shatner's name on it. I had been meaning to tell him how much I had enjoyed my week on the set, so I knocked on the door. It was unlatched and began to open. I caught a glimpse of a couch with a jacket tossed across it, when a gigantic black form launched itself at the doorway. It was Morgan. The door slammed shut and I slammed into a wall ten feet behind me. I must have lost five years' growth! I was still shaking when I returned to the set and found De. I told him what had happened and he laughed. "Hell, Morgan does that to me every time I leave my dressing room. Don't let it bother you." Later, when Bill introduced me to Morgan, I was shaking in my high-heeled boots but I received a big wet kiss and a hand—excuse me—pawshake. If Bill was around, that dog was a 150-pound puppy. But if he wasn't, watch out! He then told Morgan that I was a friend and, from that time on, Morgan was as sweet as pie. Even with as much as eight months separating meetings, I would get my kiss and paw-shake. Do you think he was trying to make up for the scare he had given me? They were still setting up and I walked around stretching my legs. Bill was standing over by one of the big lights, kind of holding on to himself as if he were afraid he was going to fall apart. I put my hand on his forehead. It was on fire. "That feels good," he said. "How are you getting home? You can't drive this way." He smiled. "I'll manage." For the first time in my life, I regretted not knowing how to drive. He then went over to his script folder and pulled out an autographed picture for me. Even with his illness, he had remembered my asking him for one several days before. "Are you staying for the party?" he asked. That was the cast and crew's Last-Day Party, the one they had at the end of every season. I had been asked to come and was greatly honored. "I don't think; I should come. I don't really belong." "That's silly, we'd love to have you." Just then he was called back to loop some dialogue. 200 Star Trek Lives! They finally finished and all the crew gathered around shaking his hand, some with tears in their eyes. Bill looked as if he were going to break down too, and he quickly left the set. There were tables with food and drinks set up on the side of the set, and people were already gathering. Jimmy Doohan came by, Judy Burns, who co-authored "The Tholian Web," was there, as well as some of the past directors. After about an hour, Bill showed up. He had on a heavy robe and was shivering. He looked ill, but smiled and talked to people anyway. It was a quiet party, no one really felt in a party mood. Some gifts were exchanged, good-byes were said. Soon the set was cleared, all the props were put away and just the empty sound stage was left. 8 What Are They Doing Now? "Every real thing one person says or does to another, or that one person offers to society, is put in the bank of reality." Leonard Nimoy At any Star Trek convention, indeed wherever two or three are gathered together in the name of Star Trek, one of the favorite topics of conversation is, "What ate they doing now?" Nobody has to ask who "they" are. The creators of Star Trek have taken hold of the fans' imaginations nearly as much as the show itself, probably because the fans recognize the enormous quality of these creative peoples' work, the heroic effort it took, and the depth of their love for Star Trek. They are still delighted and proud to have been a part of that magic realm, still warmly affectionate toward each other and toward the fans. The fans affection for them is unbounded. Most fans follow any scrap of information they can get on any star, watch for television and movie appearances, drive hundreds 201 202 Star Trek Lives! Star Trek Lives! 203 of miles to see their favorites in person, even watch game shows for them. And, of course, fans turn out in droves to be close to them at conventions. If network executives and movie producers knew just how much these stars can increase ratings and attendance, doubtless their agents' phones wouldn't ever stop ringing off the wall. But they have been busy with a wide variety of creative activities. And of course they have all come back for the animated version (with the exception of Walter Koenig, and he has written a script for it). And they all want to come back for the new Star Trek movie or revived series. They aren't the only ones who want that. When Paramount wanted to change the cast, fans threw a fit and started a Save the Star Trek Cast campaign. And it is not only the stars. Gene Roddenberry has a fan following which is doubtless equalled by no other television producer. Dorothy Fontana is a top favorite with fans for her excellent scripts and her well-known devotion to Star Trek. We have mentioned her refusal to compromise the quality of her Star Trek scripts in the third season and the pay cut she took to work on the animated version (where she has been safeguarding the integrity of Star Trek as associate producer and story editor). Indeed that example, and the others we have cited throughout the book, are only a small part of what these people contribute to the Goal Effect by giving us the living sense that heroes like that can exist and do exist. From our interviews and our experiences with them, it is apparent that these people have a very high standard of integrity as artists, as professionals and as human beings. They make their deposits in Leonard Nimoy's "bank of reality." To a man or woman, they seem concerned with the quality of their work and of their lives, with the state of the world and its problems, with working toward that hopeful future which they created for us in Star Trek. Nimoy's fight for the integrity of the Spock character, the gallantry of William Shatner's effort to keep on with a flawless performance—and keep the crew's spirits up—while he himself was so ill on the last day of filming, these are remarkable but not isolated cases. As William Shatner told us, "You don't start out a day thinking, 'Today I am going to be heroic' " Nor is it necessary to think in terms of sacrifice. But if you keep trying to do your best, keep your commitments to yourself and your work, "keep making the moment better," what frequently results is something that someone else can come along and call heroism. That's what we've done. These people don't talk about heroics. They talk about "the moment," "the bank of reality," or just of doing the job. In most cases, it took us hours of patient interviewing to dig out the little stories of things which we would call heroic. Some, like. William Shatner, didn't want to talk in those terms at all, and there wasn't much time to draw him out. Yet the "striving for greatness" which he spoke of as Kirk can be seen in his real life in the tireless dedication to his work, which keeps him working fifty-two weeks a year, and in the goal which he is willing to name: as an actor, to fulfill each aspect of himself as fully as possible. For him Star Trek was a particularly fulfilling role, the kind of acting assignment in which he says the actor "works out of love and passion—billing and money and publicity don't matter." He still seeks that kind of role, would in many ways love to create the Kirk role again, but feels that it is also possible to find a certain fulfillment in lesser roles, in almost any role. If the role is not great, you strive to make it better, to add some spark. Nowadays, he says that his life is "full in a number of areas," including especially his recent marriage to Marcy Lafferty, who he says has helped him to learn a great deal about human relations. Most of the creators of Star Trek seem to have full lives, and to continue to throw themselves into 204 Star Trek Lives! their work as fully as they threw heart and mind and soul into Star Trek. Perhaps theyxould rest on theii laurels from Star Trek, but they don't seem inclined to rest or to coast on the reputation of Star Trek, and they have repeatedly refused to exploit the show in any way that might demean it. Gene Roddenberry refused a $50,000 offer from Paramount for the animation rights—for him to "get lost" and let them make it complete with kiddie space cadets. He held out for creative control, and got it. He refused an offer for movie rights—to let them make it with another producer. ("How do I know that you won't have them go down and settle the problems of another planet with their zap guns? You're not offering me enough money for me to sell my baby to you.") He has held out through a long period of negotiations for a proper revival of Star Trek. He has held out for the original cast. ("We compromised on that by their giving in.") Roddenberry's pilot "The Questor Tapes" played to the best reviews in years. It was excellent science fiction with many Tailored Effects comparable to Star Trek's—including the beginnings of a fine Psychological Visibility Effect between the android Questor and his human friend, Jerry Robinson. The network wanted to buy the series but take Jerry Robinson out. ("See, we make it 'The Fugitive.' " Roddenberry refused. Later in this chapter, in her personal notes on the creators' activities, Joan asks plaintively ". . . explain to me, please, why it ['The Questor Tapes'] was not picked up. If you can." We can't. What they did can be explained. Why is harder. Here they have a man with a proven track record for creating mass appeal— and lasting appeal—on an unprecedented scale. They have critical acclaim and good ratings. They want to buy it. And instead of giving him freedom to develop it, they put his back against the wall on probably the most crucial Tailored Effect of Questor—in favor of formula. Why, indeed? Moreover, "Genesis II" and its second pilot, Star Trek Lives! 205 "Planet Earth," were also far-and-away better than most of what has been on television for years. They were also relatively well-received, though not so well by Star Trek fans as Questor. But both had promise. The first pilot for Star Trek, "The Cage," while excellent, lacked many of the Tailored Effects which later proved so electrifying. The second pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before," had many of the crucial ones: Shatner's Kirk, Spock's Logic-Emotion premise, the beginnings of Psychological Visibility in the Kirk/ Spock relationship, the Optimism Effect, etc. But it also lacked some: McCoy, to counterpoint the triad, a first-rate female character, the stress on peace and alien contact, among others. Genius does not necessarily spring full-armed even from the brow of Gene Roddenberry. But the promise can be seen. "Genesis II" and "Planet Earth" had a few problems of casting and other details. Perhaps most seriously, while Roddenberry intended an Optimism Effect in the form of "We can survive even this—here's a second chance for man in spite of catastrophe," people probably found it hard to see as high an optimism in recovery from a world-destroying war. But the shows were full of excitement and ideas. Ted Cassidy was a standout in casting in both shows as Isiah, the white savage. Roddenberry knows a Tailored Effect when he sees one. Hardly anybody else does. Why not take a man like that and turn him loose? Shoot him down after a fair trial if he doesn't deliver, or if the Tailored Effects don't quite click— but meanwhile let him perform his proven function? Men who can even begin to do that at all are scarcer than gold. Why? Somebody explain to us, please. If you can. Even apart from their work, a number of the creators work for various causes and ideas in the real world. Leonard Nimoy and George Takei are particularly active in civic affairs and politics. 206 Star Trek Lives! George Takei put it to us that he hoped that Star Trek's optimism had succeeded in: . . . giving the people that watched it and appreciated it an awareness of the need for them to act on it. That this optimism is just sheer brainless hopefulness, unless we also recognize that that optimism has to be based on solid foundation. Unless we deal with the problems that we see today, unless we deal with the problems optimistically today rather than seeing it as an insurmountable problem, that we're going to be defeated by it. But that these problems can be overcome and beautifully—then we won't get to that point. Sometimes the fight for the integrity of one's work merges with a real-world battle. Dorothy Fontana spoke to us of a long effort to win recognition that a woman writer can write for television not merely as a "token" woman, or with the token "woman's angle" story, but on any subject which a man can tackle— war, police work, whatever. She herself has made significant inroads on that front. Beginning to write as D. C. Fontana so that her scripts would be judged on merit and not on the fact that she was a woman, she made that merit so impressive that many barriers fell before it. With a "Streets o? San Francisco" script, she became the first woman to write for the many Quinn Martin television productions. She spoke to us, too, about the reasons and goals behind the Optimism Effect which went into Star Trek and did not die, as it did not die: It's one of the things that Gene hit upon once again in "Questor" and "Genesis II"—we've survived, we're better than we were before . . . All of these things are things he's promulgated. I think that it comes out of his desire to see a world that's better for his children, grandchildren -^-more compassionate and harmonious than it is now. Star Trek Lives! 207 Perhaps that goes for all of the creators of Star Trek. What are they doing now? Much the same thing, each doing the work that his hand finds to do. Doing it superlatively. Doing it as nice people. And as heroes. Joan Winston has had a chance to keep up her acquaintance with them, been with many of them as she served as publicity chairman for the New York Star Trek Conventions in '72, '73, '74 and, by the time you will read this, '75. Sometimes she runs into them through her work as an executive at the ABC television network. (No, Joan, you know you're not one of those "network executives" we say nasty things about. You're a nice one. Bright. Charming. Excellent taste. So why haven't you revived Star Trek?) In any case, she's been in touch with most of them recently. What are they doing now? Let Joan give you some personal notes and anecdotes: GENE RODDENBERRY This portion should be called, "For the Love of Gene." He has been making personal appearances at universities and colleges all over the country with astounding results. Many have been repeat engagements since they could not seat all the people who wanted to attend. In Morgantown, West Virginia, 1,200 fans were expected to fill the school auditorium. When 6,500 people showed up from the three surrounding states, they had to move Gene and his speech to the huge basketball coliseum! At C. W. Post College, they had a riot when the 700-seat hall was filled. The doors were broken down and fans sat in the aisles and on the stage. When over 1,200 people were turned away at the University of Arkansas, they invited Gene to speak the next night. Once again, the 2,400-seat hall was filled to the rafters. All this to hear about a program that has been 208 Star Trek Lives! off first-run prime-time television for five years. Gene says these demonstrations helped prove to Paramount that there really were Star Trek fans out there. That those hundreds of thousands of letters they had been getting were not written by five thirteen-year-olds in Brooklyn. Because of these appearances and the many successful conventions all around the country, the long awaited Star Trek movie may soon be a reality. In fact, it might very well be in production by the time this book is published. Despite all the many things Gene has done since Star Trek, the movies, the television pilots such as "Genesis II," "Planet Earth," and "The Questor Tapes," one of the best things seen on the tube in years—and explain to me, please, why it was not picked up, if you can—he has not taken on any long-term projects because of his belief that, one day, Paramount would come to him and say, "You know, there really are a lot of people who like Star Trek, aren't there?" Yup. Gene said, "I'm so glad they're finally getting that. Every time the fans would flood them with letters over something, they would call me and ask me to stop it. I told them I had nothing to do with it and couldn't control it if I tried. I particularly remember the time that Paramount was toying with the idea of casting the movie with big-name stars. They were deluged. I told them it was no good. I also told them I would not do the picture if there were cast changes unless those actors were unable to do their original roles." Amen. Although most of his time, is taken up with the Star Trek movie, Gene does find time for some other projects. He wrote a Tarzan movie but it was never filmed. I asked him why and he said, "Well, they said it was too adult. I mean, if Tarzan was brought up in the jungle he knew the difference between girls and boys, if you know what I mean. I just wrote a few scenes illustrating that fact. The producers didn't think Star Trek Lives! 209 the public would accept it. I think the public is more mature than that." He is now working on a futuristic underwater film called Magna I. However, when the call comes from Paramount for him to start on the Star Trek movie, I think we all know where his heart lies. By the way, if any college or university would like to have Gene talk at their school, they may contact: The Leigh Bureau, 1185 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10036. The last time I spoke with Gene, we talked about some of our favorite episodes of Star Trek. He asked if I knew that psychiatric hospitals were always requesting "The Enemy Within." It seems the doctors feel it can demonstrate to patients, far better than they, what the "good" and "evil" sides of a person are. That the evil side may just mean strength and that the good side may not be able to survive without some of that strength. A complete person must have all these factors to get through life. The episode can do this because it is a dramatic presentation done in a way the patients can understand. If Star Trek has helped just one patient find his way out of that long, dark tunnel, we can all be proud. WILLIAM SHATNER Through the "underground" I have established at ABC, I found out that Bill Shatner was taping the "$10,000 Pyramid" game show at one of the studios. I thought it was a good opportunity to let him see one of our convention progress reports, especially as it mentioned his name. So there I was, waiting at the top of the stairs leading to the make-up rooms, talking to the stage manager. "You're sure he knows you?" "Well, he's not going to charge up the stairs and hug and kiss me but he will say hello." ' Just then, this young, slim, dark-haired dynamo dashed up the stairs. He was clad in well-fitting gray jersey slacks, a blue open-necked shirt with a scarf at 210 Star Trek Lives! the throat. He looked fantastic. I held out the envelope with the progress report in it. As he reached the top of the stairs, I said, "Oh, Bill, I wanted . . ." That was all I was able to get out as he said, "Hi, Joan." Hugged me, kissed me and whizzed up the stairs to his dressing room, leaving me gasping, envelope still in hand. "Well, I guess he really knows you." I turned, eyes still slightly glazed, to see the stage manager grinning at me. I grinned back and gave him the report to give to Bill. I could only stay for one or two of the shows they were taping. Five shows, a week's worth, all done in one day. First they do two shows, then have a lunch break and then do three more. It is a very draining day as the players are at a very high pitch for a long period of time. Bill loves to do game shows and is very good at them. One of the technicians told me that he really gets upset if he feels he made a mistake or that one of his partners missed out on one of the prizes. One of the cameramen made an interesting comment. "He does this show a lot, you know, and the ladies scream and sigh. Well, with him we don't mind. He's a real man, you know, I mean you can tell. I've been in the business a long time and you can tell. He's funny, too. He jokes around with everyone and makes these wild faces [shades of the blooper reel] and seems to have a ball. We really look forward to his being on the show." Bill has done more than game shows since Star Trek's demise. The over seventy television shows that he has done in the U. S. and Canada have kept him in the public eye.* He's also done some movies and quite a bit of theater work around the country. The first show he did after Star Trek was a ?They include "Name of the Game," "Kung-Fu," "The Six Million Dollar Man," "The Bold Ones," "Marcus Welby, M.D.," and "Hawaii Five-O." Star Trek Lives! 211 CBS Playhouse called "The Shadow Game." It turned out to be a very important program for him, since it was on this show he met Marcy Lafferty for the first time. They were married on October 20, 1973. We have all seen Bill on television, but the fans who have been fortunate enough to see him in the theater* have gotten a real treat. All of the plays were either comedies or farces. Farce is one of the most difficult of the arts to perform and Bill does a brilliant job. I remember going to see him in The Tender Trap when they were showing "The Andersonville Trial" on television. At the intermission, I overheard a man talking to his wife. "Are you trying to tell me that that nut we just saw is the same guy we saw last night on television? It can't be, this guy is really funny and the guy we saw last night, he's a fine, serious actor." I understand actors go through this all the time. People find it very difficult to accept them doing anything out of the norm. I think they call it "type casting," fellas. LEONARD NIMOY I was sitting in the office of one of the program attorneys on my floor discussing a problem, when my secretary came galloping around the corner. "Joan, telephone!" "Tell them I'll call back." Eyes wide, she squeaked, "It's Leonard Nimoy!!!" "You're kidding!" I gasped. "Noooooo!" she shrilled. So we both galloped back to my office. Taking a deep breath, I picked up the phone. "Hi, Leonard." "Hi, Joan, how are you?" Those deep, resonant tones flowed over the phone wires and into my eager ears. *Such as "Arsenic and Old Lace," "The Tender Trap," "Gold in My Soup," "The Seven-Year Itch." Some of these he has directed. 212 Star Trek Lives! "I was in town relaxing and thought I'd call up a few friends." Oh, bliss, oh frabjous joy. We then spoke for about forty minutes on many different topics. He wanted to know what was new about the convention, and told me if it were at all possible he would try to be there on Monday, February 17, 1975. Great. He also said that he couldn't make it any more definite than that because something might come up to prevent his coming. "I won't take any money to come to a convention, just for that reason. If an exciting part comes along, I would want to take it and would feel terrible if I had to cancel a convention when all those fans were counting on seeing me. That's why I never like anyone to make an announcement about my coming. "I like to come to your [meaning our] conventions because they are always so well done, and you put them on with the fans' best interests at heart." If you saw little white things scattered over the city one day last November, it was all those buttons the Con committee members popped when they heard that last remark. I asked what he was working on and he laughed and said, "I just finished a Movie of the Week for ABC. Didn't you know?" I said, "Yes, Contaminated. I'm really looking forward to seeing you on TV again. It has really been a long time between shows." "I know. My agent reminded me that this was the first piece of film I had done in two years. You see, Joan, I could work almost every week if I wished but a role has to have some excitement and meaning for me to want to do it. "At my college talks, kids come up and say, gee, we see Bill all over the tube, why can't you do more television? I tell them just what I told you." "Well," I said, "I've heard BUI say he feels that an actor should work at his craft at every opportunity. If f1' Star Trek Lives! 213 it's not a great part, you give it something to make it great or at least better than it was. I also heard that he gets very restless if he goes for more than two or three weeks without working." "I can understand that. He is a very active guy, physically, more so than I. But I get a big kick out of these college engagements. The kids are, can I say it, fantastic. They are so bright, so with-it. It is a mind-expanding experience just talking with them." I was lucky enough to see Leonard at New York University when he gave one of his talks. He blew everybody's fuse. They did not expect him to be such a groove! And funny! What a truly delightful man. Have you been among those fortunate folk who have seen Leonard in the theater? He has toured with Fiddler on the Roof as Tevye, and with Oliver as Fagan, and in 6 RMS RV VU, among others. All played to excellent reviews. He also appeared on Broadway in Otto Preminger's Full Circle, to great critical acclaim but, unfortunately, not great crowds. A shame, since it was an interesting play and he was excellent. On television, he's been on shows like "Columbo," has done several TV movies—among them Baffled and Assault on the Wayne and a theatrical release, Catlow. And, of course, you all know that he played Paris for two years on "Mission: Impossible," after Star Trek was canceled. Leonard has also written two books, containing his beautiful poetry and photographs he took—and that, dear fans, is why you do not see as much of Leonard Nimoy as you would like, if you had your druthers. DeFOREST KELLEY We love De. It is as simple as that. Jackie and Sondra have only known him since the 1974 convention, but I have known him, on and off, for about six years. He is one of the kindest, most considerate men I have ever met. He was so great at the convention. He granted every interview requested and was really overwhelmed 214 Star Trek Lives! by the fans' reactions. During his speech, he was almost overcome with emotion and had to wipe his eyes. He would have loved to have been able to talk with all the fans, but with the huge crowds this was impossible. I remember one time we tried to get him out of the hotel without the fans seeing him. He had to go to dinner with some friends. The main thing we had to keep in mind was . . . step over the fainting females, it's the only way. If you have been wondering why you didn't see too much of De after Star Trek, there was a very good reason. He decided he needed to catch his breath for awhile and took a long vacation. He has done some television, "Ironside" and "The Cowboys," and some motion pictures. The thing that seems to be occupying most of his time lately is theater work. De has been playing dinner theaters all over the west and southwest and doing "boffo" business. He enjoys it tremendously, since it has audience contact. You miss that after working in television and films. So start scanning your newspapers for word of one of his appearances. You might be one of the lucky ones. DOROTHY FONTANA Dorothy has been so busy lately, you're lucky if you can catch her on the fly. Besides attending Star Trek conventions all over the country, she has been writing scripts for television. For example, three for "Streets of San Francisco" and two for "Six Million Dollar Man." Is it just a coincidence that they are all for ABC? It just shows our good taste and intelligence. As if that were not enough, she has come out with a book based on Gene Roddenberry and Sam Peeble's "The Questor Tapes." When I spoke to her last she said she just finished another book which would be coming out sometime in the summer of 1975. It is a regular science fiction novel, and not on Star Trek. Dorothy had been kind enough to send me a draft Star Trek Lives.' 215 of a script she did for NBC as a series idea. It was called "The Winds of Space" and, I think, had all the elements needed for a good adventure series. Of course, NBC didn't buy it. What else is new? We have always enjoyed having Dorothy at our conventions. The fans always looked upon her as a kind of guru figure. I know, she has a better figure than any guru I ever saw, too. You know that if you saw her in the Costume Ball at the 1974 World Science Fiction Convention in Washington, D.C. Remembering World Cons, who could forget Dorothy lugging the first animated Star Trek episode, "Beyond the Farthest Star," to the 1973 convention in Toronto? Ill never forget that evening when the fans went crazy as Bill Shatner's voice came over the credits with, "Space, the final frontier..." It was beautiful. And the times she carried the Blooper Reel to our conventions and many other conventions from New York to New Orleans. She's a real people. JAMES DOOHAN At first the fans didn't recognize Jimmy at the , 1973 convention. His hair was long and shot with gray and he had a beard. But once they heard that-voice, he was no longer incognito. I walked into the Con suite the night before the opening of the convention. I was talking a mile a minute, as usual, and didn't see the gentleman smiling and waving at me. I suddenly gave a shriek of joy and ran into a huge bear hug. Ummm, nice. I remember one lovely thing Jimmy said. We were at the Sunday brunch and the committee was all a-twitter because Leonard Nimoy was to make an unexpected appearance that afternoon. I turned to Jimmy and said, "What do you think about Leonard's appearance today?" "Well, George Takei and I have had all this love and adoration for three glorious days. We've been floating around on clouds of it. Leonard is only going to 216 Star Trek Lives! Star Trek Lives! 217 have it for an hour or so. I feel sorry for him that he can't spend more time with us. George and I are very lucky." I was floating on a cloud after that. Jimmy is a lovely man. We would have had him back at the 1975 convention except he answered too late, and we had already made our commitments. But if we have a convention in 1976, Jimmy, you're on! Jimmy has been doing lots of things since Star Trek. He and Bill Shatner must have been bitten by the same bug, since the two of them have recently gotten married. Mrs. Doohan is the former Wendy Braunberger, and I understand she is a charming young lady. Jimmy has also done some television work, including commercials. He has also attended several other Star Trek conventions all over the country, and was recently one of the guests of honor at the first convention held in England. Jimmy, like De, has also gone back to his first love, the theater. That was the reason he answered our letters so tardily. He was touring with a production of "The Trial of James McNeiU Whistler." They were traveling up and down the western seaboard (you can say that, can't you?) and his mail couldn't catch up with him. GEORGE TAKEI George is an honorary member of the committee. George has been at the last three conventions so you know what we think of George. He is our liaison on the West Coast. If we can't reach someone, he will try to find them for us. He is a pussycat. Whenever he is in town he calls us and we all go out for dinner. All fourteen of us. He is a brave man. The last time we saw him, he was in town to tape an NET Special called The Year of the Dragon. It's about a Chinese family and their problems. It should have been on the air in December or January. We had dinner in a Chinese restaurant, a rather exotic place since almost every dish arrived lit up like a Christmas tree. George had ordered a lobster dish and it came with the eyes alight. The first thing he did was disconnect the batteries. "I don't think they're edible," he said. Frankly, neither was much of the food. Never again will we take someone to dinner without having tried the food first. George has done a bit of television since Star Trek went off the air, including a "Six Million Dollar Man" and "O'Hara, Treasury Agent," and some films, too. But politics seems to be taking up most of his time these days. He is a member of the board of the Southern California Rapid Transit District (RTD). He also ran for a seat on the Los Angeles City Council but was defeated by a small margin. During the campaign, they had to reschedule an episode of the animated Star Trek because of the protests from some of George's opponents. They felt that George's voice on the air was an unfair advantage. They were probably Klingons in disguise. George also has a talk show of his own in Los Angeles. It is called "Insight: East and West." He produces as well as hosts the program. WALTER KEONIG We had the pleasure of Walter's company at our 1974 convention. He seemed to enjoy the convention and the fans, especially the Dealer's Room. I think he was trying to add to his collection of Big Little Books. One afternoon, however, Walter's timing was bad. He walked out of the Dealer's Room just as the ballroom across the way was emptying. The fans spotted Walter and a cry of "Chekov!" rent the air. He took one look, blanched and took off down the hallway toward the Art Show Room. If Elyse had not heard the commotion and opened the door, he might not have survived. She reached out and literally hauled him inside to safety. The committee has very quick reflexes in a situation like that. The fans don't usually behave that way—they 218 Star Trek Lives! just had not expected to see him, and got carried away. If it hadn't been for Elyse, Walter might have been carried away. Although well known through Fandom for his role as Chekov, he has been exploring other facets of his talent besides performing. He's been working with various theater groups as a director and has been very well received by the critics. Remember the Retlaw plant that almost did in Sulu in "The Infinite Vulcan" episode of the animated series? Yes, it is "Walter," spelled backwards. But, if you saw the episode, did you also see his name in the credits as the writer? Uh huh. Dorothy Fontana told me that Walter has written a script for NBC for a 90-minute Movie of the Week. He also has several scripts under consideration, one with Gregory Peck for a motion picture and another with ABC for a series. Bravo, Pavel! MAJEL BARRETT RODDENBERRY Majel was the big hit of the 1972 convention. The fans adored her. She never tired of signing autographs or answering questions. "Fantastic" is the word for Majel. I remember her talking about why she began Lincoln Enterprises (also known as Star Trek Enterprises). The program had been getting so many requests for scripts, clips, pictures, uniforms, scraps of the sets, anything connected with the show. Majel got together with Paramount and got permission to form the company. It was the first time anything like that had ever been done. It was a fantastic idea, and she does a fantastic job of running it. I always felt Majel was not really appreciated on Star Trek. The role of Christine Chapel was not a major one, but Maiel managed to give many subtle nuances to the role and make her a real person. Very often, just a quiver of that mobile mouth of hers could tell you more than five pages of dialogue. That's acting, fellas. Besides taking care of Lincoln Enterprises, Majel has found time to do some "F.B.I."s and a "Here Come Star Trek Lives! 219 the Brides," plus the movie Westworld. And she has been in "Genesis II," "Planet Earth" and "Questor." The thing, or rather I should say person, that has been keeping her busiest and happiest these days is one-year-old Rod, Jr. Gene and Majel do good work. Gene Roddenberry, Jr., is a beautiful baby. NICHELE NICHOLS Nichele knocked us all for a loop and a half. She is so tiny. The voice and personality belong to someone at least six inches taller. She thrilled the fans with her speech. She not only spoke, told jokes and stories but she sang ... a cap-pella. If she hadn't been wearing boots they'd have drunk Pepsi out of her slipper. (ST fans are not known as a "drinking" crowd.) They would also have carried her out of the hall on their shoulders, only the security. squad was too good (thank heavens). She is a very special lady. I remember one incident. We had sent out for Chinese food about an hour before the Costume Call (the committee exists largely on Chinese and Japanese food. We like it, that's why). There we were slurping and chomping when Nichele entered the room. "Hey, that looks good." "It is good, do you want some?" She soon pattered away with some won ton soup and chow mein. Five minutes later, the phone rang. "This is Lt. Uhura. Who's got the soy sauce?" Nichele has been quite busy since Star Trek. She has also worked with some theater groups in Los Angeles as a director just- as Walter has done. However, she has been busiest doing night club engagements and singing tours. In December, she finished a t^ur of Japan that lasted much longer than originally planned. Both Nichele and Star Trek are very popular in Japan. No need to add how popular they are with us. No, Joan. No need. But we should add that this is not all of the story of the creators of Star Trek. 220 Star Trek Lives! These are the people the fans know best of all. But at a Star Trek convention like Equicon, in Los Angeles, even actors who played a single guest role in a single episode will turn up, still loving the show, still finding themselves remembered and loved by the fans. Arlene Martel will come and answer questions as herself or as T'Pring. Mark Leonard will put in an appearance and be met with the total adoration which fans feel for his portrayal of Sarek. And production people—from Bob Justman to a cameraman or "grip." Bill Theiss will find himself known—if not by his face, by his name—and remembered for those ingenious, astoundingly beautiful costumes. Star Trek undoubtedly has the best-known production people in television—thanks to The Making of Star Trek and other publications. And thanks to the fans' recognition of those very special Tailored Effects. Quite a number of writers of Star Trek scripts returned to write for the animation, although the pay for animation is necessarily low. For all of these people, Star Trek touched their lives as far more than just another job. What are they doing now? Remembering the magic. Hoping for a chance to create it again. Bo-It-Yoiirself Star Trek-The Fan Fiction "Listen, we can write that, too." Ruth Berman As with so many other things about Star Trek, the outpouring of fan fiction (not to mention nonfic-tion, jokes, cartoons, poetry, artwork, and the myriad other things that fill hundreds of fanzines) is absolutely unique. The characters of Star Trek—especially the central characters—have taken such a grip on so many imaginations that an astounding variety of stories has come pouring out—and still failed to slake the insatiable thirst for more and more Star Trek.- The stories range from outright sexual fantasies— not a few of them so flaming that they circulate only very privately or even never get out of their author's most secret drawers—to straight adventure, to tender love stories, to hilarious parodies, to. provocative, vo- 221 222 Star Trek Lives! luminous long-running series fiction like Kraith. In quality they range from absolutely horrendous (until you've seen a truly awful Star Trek story, you haven't lived) to well-intentioned, to promising amateur, to professional, and perhaps even to great. Close friendships at distances near and far have sprung up over the writing and editing (Star Trek fanzine editors have a tradition—perhaps started by Spockanalia—of helping writers polish their stories) and criticizing of Star Trek fan fiction. Writing partnerships have formed. And out of this fan fiction is beginning to come a whole new crop of professional writers now selling their work on the open market— but usually continuing to write Star Trek fiction for their own enjoyment. The question that comes to mind, of course, is: Why? Why all these thousands and thousands of hours of writing and reading—to say nothing of coolie labor like cutting stencils, cranking mimeographs, collating pages and the like? The simplest—and perhaps in the long run the most complete—answer is: for the sheer love of Star Trek. People have become so entranced with that world that they simply cannot bear to let it die and will recreate it themselves if they have to—or if given half a chance. We have seen some of the reasons for that en-trancement. But there are also more specific answers having to do with how and why that entrancement works—and works on some people while not on others—to produce fan fiction. One of the most immediately striking things about Star Trek fan fiction—and one which may hold a clue to some of the other answers—is that most of it is written by yvomen. Men are better represented in Star Trek artwork, craftwork, science articles, humor, organizational work and a rare poem here and there in the fanzines. But almost all of the stories are by women and, Star Trek Lives! 223 so far as we know, all of the new crop of professional writers emerging out of Star Trek writing are women. (Though one or two promising men may surprise us any day now.) The phenomenon is worthy of note—and more than a trifle strange. There is no such preponderance of women in Star Trek fandom generally. The fan-dom appears to be composed about equally of males and females—possibly a slight edge for females. And almost half of those who buy and read Star Trek fanzines are male. This is in contrast to the wider field of science fiction where, until recently at least, the readership has been heavily weighted toward the male side and, with rare and notable exceptions, most of the writers have been male. Star Trek is in many ways straight science fiction—or what has been called "old wave s-f" relying on action/adventure plots and cleancut heroes. But it has the curious ability to attract the allegiance of many "new wave" science-fiction fans, people who like the way modern literary trends are showing up in science fiction these days. But Star Trek is also drawing to itself a whole new fandom composed of people who did not cut their teeth on science fiction—"old wave," "new wave" or otherwise—and a much larger proportion of these people are female. That is not altogether strange, since Star Trek was the first inkling many people had that science fiction could be about people rather than technology, and about ideas rather than gadgets—something s-f fans had known for decades. But what is strange is the almost shocking scarcity of males among the new Star Trek fan-fiction writers. Writing science fiction has been a perfectly respectable field of activity for men for a century or so —and for a long time, from H. G. Wells and Jules Verne forward, almost exclusively a male province— a few intrepid female trailblazers to the contrary, notwithstanding. Isaac Asimov has even pointed. out somewhere 224 Star Trek Lives? (as what hasn't he pointed out, bless him?) that the old wave of science fiction—say, roughly, from the days of Hugo Gernsback through the crop of writers, including himself, raised mainly by editor John W. Campbell, Jr. (of Astounding/Analog magazine)—was often written for and even by adolescent males—and was almost sexless. Even when the writers and readers grew up, the stories frequently didn't, and retained a kind of pristine purity, in which the focus was on the physical action-adventure or the physical problem—with close human relationships or psychological tension of any sort not too much in evidence, emotions tending to be hidden with stiff upper lip. And women—if in evidence at all—tending to be damsels to be rescued or virtuous rewards for the hero's virtue. There were exceptions, of course, but that was the pattern. Even women who did write science fiction tended to stick to that pattern. And it is to be suspected, if a few of us are any example, that many of the women who read science fiction tended to identify more with the male heroes of the genre—the adventurers and problem solvers—than with the damsels. But science fiction was almost the last refuge of romantic art, of the heroic vision of man, of the literature of ideas, of optimism. Women, as well as men, read it for that. And as far as any commercial editor knew, they didn't mind the emphasis on technology, the distance from emotion and the lack of psychological action that created sexless stories. Then, suddenly, there was Star Trek, and presently Star Trek fan fiction, which has the look of being a whole new genre of fan fiction and perhaps of science fiction generally. And, suddenly, the men have made themselves scarce as writers but have become avid readers, while women have come into their own as both. Why? Perhaps the answer lies in the nature of Star Trek—which can be seen even more clearly through the kind of fan fiction it has stimulated. Star Trek Lives! 225 Star Trek shared with the old wave of science fiction the romanticism, the heroism, the concern with themes and ideas, the optimism. What it added to science fiction was an absolutely startling new element: It did not keep its distance from emotion; did not deny close, warm human relationships even among males; did not call for a stiff upper lip; did not deny the existence and importance of sex; did not ban psychological action as a plot-moving force; did not deny the possibility of women who might be more than damsels. Remember, too, that this was before the women's liberation, movement, before most people had begun seriously to question traditional male-female roles, before most of the "sexual revolution," before encounter groups directed at getting in touch with emotions. There is no telling to what extent Star Trek might have caused or reinforced some of those trends in the real world. But it seems plain that wherever it touched such intimate themes, it touched people—and intrigued them profoundly. For example, although it was filmed with decorum and under the watchful eye of "Priscilla Goodbody," Star Trek was startlingly sexy—sexy in theme, in attitude—not merely in gratuitous scenes of bodies. The essential theme of "Amok Time" has to be one of the most daring ideas ever filmed: an intelligent, highly civilized being—and one we know and love—subject to an animal-like "rut" cycle that is compelling and even lethal. Spock with his logic. It staggers the imagination. Or take "Turnabout Intruder"—a highly masculine man, Kirk, forced to exchange bodies with a woman. Dozens of others: societies where women rule, androids capable of having their emotions and passions aroused, bodiless entities willing to kill to possess living, feeling bodies again, women as gladiators, a woman commander of a Romulan fleet, women as doctors, lawyers, scientists, security officers—and men who are drawn to them not in spite of but because of their competence. 226 Star Trek Lives! It was a heady brew. And we submit the hypothesis that these were some of the elements which most intrigued people, which hooked into their own fantasies in profound ways, which cried for more exploration—hence was one of the main sources of the need for fan fiction. Further, in our culture men have been severely taught in a hard school to repress emotions and to keep their deepest desires and fantasies to themselves. Women, however, have been left a little more free—and in recent years have been making a prodigious effort to liberate even further, both themselves and their men. Is this the root of the difference between males and females in the reading and writing of Star Trek fiction: that the men are interested, but, apart from a rare Roddenberry, do not quite feel free enough to write it—while the women feel almost compelled to do so in a continuing effort to break free? We think that it may be. Let's explore that—and some other sources and meanings of fan fiction— through the fiction itself. In fan fiction, there are, of course, straight adventure stories where the focus is mainly on physical suspense, on the external problem—aliens, invaders, scientific difficulties solved by physical action. But even in those, there is a good deal of emphasis on the characters. In the majority of fan fiction, however, the focus is primarily on the characters and their human—or Vulcan—problems, on psychological suspense and action embodied in a number of themes which dominate most plots: women in command; role-reversal between male and female; man-woman and general sex-love relationships (with or without the complications of Vulcan or other nonhuman physiology, culture or mind-melds); belonging, or ownership of a person— with or without love—sometimes even involving literal ownership or slavery; twentieth-century people or their alter-egos in the twenty-third-century world meeting and sometimes loving those people; sexual fantasies—some more, some less explicit and some with a touch of humor; alternate universes where extreme ideas and Star Trek Lives! 227 reversals of morality can be explored. The list could be elaborated, but that is a beginning. And, perhaps most pervasively, a theme of human closeness, human love, transcending role stereotypes, spanning even the gulfs between aliens, permitting closeness and love even between th6se who claim that they have no emotions. One of the most significant ways in which this theme is handled is through the Kirk/Spock relationship. Often, many of those themes can be seen in combination in the same stories, and the skill with which they are handled grows with the skill of the authors. Many Star Trek fan writers start in their teens. However, even for older people, Star Trek fiction is often the first they have written. Laura Basta, nominated for a Hugo for her "Federation and Empire" series, began as a teenager, and one of her earliest efforts was another series The Daneswoman, beginning with a novel of that name (in Tholian Web #3) and focusing on a theme which has intrigued man: woman in command—in this case "The Daneswoman," first female starship captain in Star Fleet. (Why should the Romulan Commander have all the fun? Or: What's she got that we haven't got?) The Daneswoman has command of the starship Republic and, when her crew and the Enterprise's take shore leave on the Daneswoman's home planet, it turns out that she even gets—Spock. She walks in on a sizzling discussion between starship captains on the inability of a woman to command; Spock defends the possibility that a woman could be qualified; presently the lady captain symbolically trounces the most outspoken male captain at chess; in the due "logical" course of events, she invites Spock to her secluded home, where she engages him in a game of chess—also symbolic. Here is the scene: Captain Morrow Akal Damion played a complicated, brilliant, emotional game. She was fully aware that the half-Vulcan was struggling 228 Star Trek Lives! with himself over her. He could conceal his thoughts from her, but Spock could not hide everything. She felt his desire and it stirred the desire within her. The game was slow-paced. Neither one made a careless move. Each was calculated, part of a master plan. Both became slowly aware that the outcome of this game would bear meaning on their relationship, and perhaps they were afraid to end it. Damion was good. She could perhaps beat James Kirk at chess, and his captain could beat him. Mr. Spock . . . became aware of this, but knew anyway he would win. That fact was not based in logic, for Damion was still evenly matched in position and pieces to his own—but he would win. Mr. Spock did. The end of the game came swiftly and suddenly. She played a bit like James T. Kirk and one of her few weaknesses of the- game was also his. Mr. Spock spotted the one fault of her defense and worked around it ... Damion looked up steadily into Spock's face. She had not seen it until too late ... Damion had played the best game she felt she had ever played, moves good enough to destroy the defenses of any other man she had played with, . but not him, not Mr. Spock. She had played her best game and she had lost. A silence and tension that not even the crackling of the fire could dispel filled the tiny chalet as Damion waited for the word that would end the game . . . The tension and fire in them both increased. Morrow broke it by a sudden, swift move of her hand, knocking over her king in defeat. She then reached across the board to touch the Vulcan's hand. It was the first time there had been physical contact between them. It was not, however, the last. The "game" continued, with many pages of explicit narrative, on the appropriate playing field. Laura is not the only one to be interested by the Star Trek Lives! 229 idea of the first woman captain. Judith Brownlee gives the Saratoga series of stories and novelettes, and— Spock—to her Vulcan character, Captain T'Pelle. The first story, "To Seek Thee Out" (Eridani Triad #1) has the Enterprise taking the newly appointed T'Pelle to assume command of the starship Saratoga, which has been damaged in an alien attack. In the process, Kirk is hurt. T'Pelle briefly commands the Enterprise, then turns it over to Spock and charges off alone to rescue the Saratoga from a demented officer who controls its bridge. When things are sorted out, she pops a question to Spock. There has not been much of a personal exchange between them before, but she is under pressure from Vulcan to be bonded. She knows of the matter of T'Pring. It would be logical . . . After some thought, Spock agrees and they enter the mind-link to touch thoughts and establish the bonding, "always and never touching and touched." That proves pleasant, but is as far as it can go without the pon farr. "When the time comes," Spock says, "I will seek thee out, from whatever distant hill my camp is on." "From Whatever Distant Hill" opens six rnontis later with T'Pelle firmly in command of the Saratoga, backed by a likable first officer, Mr. N'Wambe, and off on another mission which raises some further interesting themes of role-reversal. T'Pelle must negotiate a treaty with the planet Hippolyta, which was colonized from Earth "by a group advocating female civil rights." "As a result," the admiral says, "their culture is a despotic matriarchy." (As a result?) Male diplomats have had no luck. T'Pelle and N'Wambe tackle it and promptly find that they will have to pretend that he is her "First"—meaning her first consort. That raises assorted problems, but they manage, with some help from the maid, Neris, assigned to T'Pelle, and from Hector, a "First" who coaches N'Wambe in proper behavior. The "Anna," the matriarch, is old and dying, and her adopted daughter, 230 Star Trek Lives.' the Annasdot, Alcibie, proves to be the scheming vil-lainess who tries to discredit T'Pelle, and block the treaty. But T'Pelle wears the Idic necklace, which Spock has sent her as a token of their bonding—wears it like a talisman, and succeeds in treating N'Wambe like her "First"—at least in public. But they are in trouble when they are conferring in her bedroom, and Neris tells them Alcibie is watching them through a mirror peephole but cannot hear them. Neris leaves. They must convince the viewer that they are making love. N'Wambe points out that Alcibie is not a fool and that the lovemaking must look real. He is pursuing that idea somewhat energetically when T'Pelle begins to have trouble maintaining her Vulcan mental controls and their minds begin to link. N'Wambe's cry shook T'Pelle and she snatched her hand away from his face. He seemed groggy as he stared down at her. "N'Wambe! I beg pardon," she whispered. "I did not know . . . there is danger here for both of us." He didn't seem to hear her. With a strange look in his face, he gripped her wrists and lowered his head to hers. He kissed her gently, and her lips were hot and soft. He smoothed back her hair with his palm, uncovering her ears. He traced the line of one with tender touch. He gripped a handful of black hair and pulled her head to his. He saw the alarmed look in her eyes, but paid no attention. He tasted her burning mouth again, like drinking fire. There was a rap at the door and Neris called out, "She's gone!" He paid no attention, but put his arm around her waist to draw her closer, his senses still lost in flame. Suddenly, with a strength he knew, but had forgotten, she pushed him away and pulled free. Star Trek Lives! 231 She rose and paced to the far side of the room, her fingers gripping her arms. As soon as she broke away, lucidity began to return to him swiftly, and embarrassment. "I ... ah ... Captain, I'm sorry, I don't know . . ." He shook his head and put his hand to his forehead. She made a deep sigh, which startled him. "Not your fault, Number One. I could not maintain my mind block ... I never had to under these conditions." "Uh ... the ... kiss ... if that—" "That was not the problem, N'Wambe. Vul-cans do not kiss. The touching of lips is pale compared to the touching of minds." She seemed sad, which was also startling, and turned away from him. There was another rap at the door and Neris was heard again. "She's locked you in, Lady, and taken the key!" Turns out, that is a problem. TPelle's communicator and phaser have been stolen. They can't contact their ship and they need to get out right away. T'Pelle tries something unprecedented—reaching Spock on his "distant hill"—light years distant on the Enterprise—through their bond. It works. Spock relays the message to the Saratoga. T'Pelle and N'Wambe get out and make fairly short work of Alcibie, who has murdered the Anna. T'Pelle talks the women into elevating Hector, the Anna's son, to the position of "King." He marries Neris, signs the treaty and, presumably, lives happily ever after. Apart from that last part (talk about Kirk's playing fast and loose with the Prime Directive!), the story is well done and shows a marked improvement in writing over the first T'Pelle story. It doesn't quite come to grips with the real issues of a society ruled by women (what if the natives—even the men—liked it that way? What if it wasn't a matter of incidental villainy to be resolved conveniently by elevating Hector? What 232 Star Trek Lives! Star Trek Lives! 233 if T'Pelle had to deal with real, strong and committed matriarchs?). But—it is fun. Some fan writers have taken the idea of matriarchy rather more seriously. One place, obviously, to do so is on Vulcan. The man doesn't live who wouldn't have to take T'Pau seriously—and where the devil did she come from? What kind of society and history could have produced a T'Pau—capable of ruling strong men like Spock and Sarek? (Kraith has taken one tack at explaining that: "Daughters of the Tradition" —sterile females born to the male Kataytikhe, inheriting a special gene complex for extraordinary mental and psionic powers necessary to the preservation of the Tradition. Sarek and Spock are Kataytikhe and, for example, Sarek's daughter by his first marriage, T'Uriamne, would be a Daughter of the Tradition— free of the madness of the pon farr and thus trusted as a stabilizing influence, a dispassionate judge.) Others have projected the question back into Vulcan prehistory—say, to the time of Surak, the reformer credited with Vulcan's many centuries of peace (in the aired-episode "The Savage Curtain"). Eridani Triad #1 contains a trilogy of plays by Doris "The Younger" Beetem set on the ancient Vulcan of Surak's time. "Hadla of Iron Mountain," written first and later surrounded by "The View from Glass Hill" and "The Weregild," is perhaps the most interesting, for some of these questions. (In the first play, Surak discovers the meaning of the Glass Hills —evidence of an old atomic war—and develops his philosophy of peace together with the nonviolent neck pinch, and wins over his own clan. In the last play, he is murdered and his death requires a distant clan to pay the price of not killing the next ambassador of peace from the many clans adhering to his philosophy, which is by then sweeping the world.) In "Hadla" we have a woman of the title role, eldest daughter of an eldest daughter, one day to be the matriarch of her clan—and a woman who sounds as if she could manage it. She is loved by Bernil, but has eyes only for Sotram, Surak's kinsman and fol- lower, from another clan. In fact, Hadla is downright determined to marry Sotram—and has taken rather forthright action in the matter. As the play opens in Hadla's sumptuous room in a high tower of the Iron Keep, Hadla idly strums a harp; Bernil enters: Hadla: You come from the prison to me. Have you news? Bernil: It would appear, Hadla, that you get your way. Hadla: (excitedly) He has agreed? After so long? Bernil: (moving to the window.) Hadla, I do not understand you. Sotram has rebuffed you utterly for three long years. He despises our clan and you. You had him stolen from a marketplace j to satisfy your desire, imprisoned him here in ji Iron Keep, begged him to become your husband. r|. He ignores you, and your actions diminish your >f honor, (hotly) Hadla, love me! To marry him is madness. Reconsider, before you shackle yourself to a man harder than our mountains. Hadla: (laying down harp) Tell me of Sotram. Bernil: (in resignation) Your will is strong— Hadla: Yes? Bernil: But his is stronger. However—for three days he has not eaten, although starving is illogical. He has not spoken, even to convert his guards to his logic, (evenly) And his eyes are flame, Hadla. Hadla: I had hoped I could persuade him. But what I will have, I will have. Bernil: Almost I pity him. (rings a bell in her chambers) He will be brought. Sotram is in pon farr now, but he argues peace with Hadla's brothers, who are about to go to war against bis clan, and he still resists her, but: Hadla: We both realize that is not a solution. You cannot wish to die in madness. Choose now, Sotram—unforced. 234 Star Trek Lives! Sotram: (genuinely startled) Unforced? Hadla: (choosing her words carefully) I mean that it would be your decision. Sotram: Very well, then. I choose. I will not wed you. Hadla: But you must! Sotram: Hadla, I have explained to you. If I were your husband, the conflicts between my philosophy and the duties of your clan would provide an unsolvable paradox. Hadla: Sotram, love solves all paradoxes. I know you cannot love me now, after what I have done to you. You are right when you say that my actions are dishonorable. Only my love could have driven me to them. Sotram: When you first saw me. At the Glass River trading center. It was during the summer. Your clan came to sell knives, and mine came to buy water. • Hadla: That is right. Sotram: I stood up before everyone and spoke of the philosophy of logic and peace. And the next night I was kidnapped from my tent by your brothers. Hadla, could you not have seen then that we were unsuited? Hadla: But I believe in logic and peace—in moderation. Sotram: Hadla, there can be no moderation in either. It must be as absolute as—as the love - you say you have for me. And now your clan goes to slaughter mine. Either we will be killed like cattle—or twenty years of striving for emotional control will be wiped away. Hadla: You are quite sure that our philosophies are diametrically opposed? Sotram: It seems so. Hadla: And neither of us will budge an inch, (pause) Then the victory must go to the stronger. (She strokes his shoulder gently. He shudders.) It appears I am the stronger. Sotram prepares to die of the pon farr, still refusing her firmly. But eventually Hadla comes up with a solution: If he marries her she will do what she can to Star Trek Lives! 235 get her clan to accept the philosophy of peace and stop the war—specifically, get safe conduct for kinsman Surak to attend the wedding and speak to her grandmother, Norla, the matriarch. That suits Sotram. Surak can charm the birds out of the trees. Grandma proves to be a tough old bird—but is nonetheless charmed—or logicked—since she herself knows of clans armed with devastatingly superior weapons approaching slowly from the north. Peace is worth a try. It's happily*ever-after time again (apart from the fact that the battle for peace still has to be fought with every clan on Vulcan, and many ambassadors of peace like Surak himself are killed before it is won). But it is not overturn-the-matriarchy time. Grandma rules and Hadla will inherit; the men have a voice, but the matriarch decides—and these are not men who are cowed or kept as slaves, but warriors. Interesting notion, faithfully carried out—and the writer and her coeditor, Gail Barton, comment: "We got into the plays out of a sincere desire to pick Mr. Spock apart—psychologically, physiologically, emotionally and anthropologically—all in the interests of science, of course. Then there is the fact that Gail is a Surak fiend (as in dope fiend)." This desire to pick Spock apart runs deep in fan fiction. So, naturally, there are also Sarek fiends. Ambassador Sarek is universally admired, and has a large and devoted following among fans and in fan fiction. We saw him only 6nce, but there was such an . impression of strength, controlled power, leashed ferocity—and yet a curious gentleness and warmth—that he has become second only to his son as a romantic figure among Vulcans. And for many fans, he has become first. Sarek stories are legion. Sharon Emily has written an entire novel, The Misfit {Star Trek Showcase #i), in which a twentieth-century woman, none too well accepted or loved in her own time, a rather plain 236 Star Trek Lives! girl, goes forward to the world of Star Trek, blossoms, and becomes lovely and loved by Sarek, after the death of Amanda. For others it is the combination of Sarek and Amanda and their improbable love which intrigues. Probably the most provocative one-liner in all of Star Trek was Sarek's answer to Spock when he asked why Sarek married Amanda: "At the time, it seemed the logical thing to do." Fan writers have been beating their heads against that priceless Vulcanism for years, especially considering Spock's statement in "Amok Time" that such things are not done logically, while parents choose mates for their sons at the age of seven years. For the most part the assumption seems to have been that the pon farr drove Sarek to Amanda through one circumstance or another. Perhaps the most famous one, Ruth Berman's "It Seemed the Logical Thing" (T-NEGATIVE #9), has been summarized as "You're what?"—"You heard me." And sure enough, she is, and doesn't want to end it, and they decide that the child's dual nature will logically require them both to raise it. But Amanda feels love, and—paradoxically— feels loved. Most fans feel that she is. And most fan writers feel entitled to a shot at explaining how this could be true. Judith Brownlee's "Let Me Count the Ways" rejects the pon farr idea, and has Amanda volunteering for a political marriage designed to bring Vulcans and Terrans closer together. She goes through several years of training before the time comes for the marriage to be consummated. Judith didn't tell us much about what Amanda does between pon fans. But other fans have elaborated on those years, especially in- the case of Spock. He has, of course, the most famous unsolved problem in all of Star Trek: How is he to keep from dying in his next pon farr? But any number of fans are dying to solve it for him. Star Trek Lives! 237 The alter-ego story, in which the fan writer projects some version of her fantasy self into a story in order to get to Spock (or some other character, but especially Spock), has become famous—or infamous. These stories have often been criticized, sometimes ferociously—and with some reason. They are frequently the earliest stories a fan writer attempts, and one can often see lack of skill and simple wish-fulfillment getting in the way of the story. Yet, fundamentally, they are to be regarded with sympathy and affection, and sometimes even as signs of promise. What was it Gene Roddenberry said? "I think when you create a strong character, there's always that—some dream-image of yourself . . ." Some fan writers may never learn the discipline needed to abstract and refine and divide and recorri-bine elements of themselves into powerful characters —but it is likely that if the dream image were not there, they could not even begin—and would not want to. Besides, even the pure alter-ego story can often be fun—and when well done, a delight. One such delight is the Dorothy/Myfanwy series by Dorothy Jones and Astrid Anderson (T-NEGATIVE #1-9). It's about "two-girl-friends-aboard-the-Enterprise" and, sure enough, Dorothy finally gets Spock ("The Vigil"), while somewhat later Myfanwy gets McCoy ("The Rainbird"), but it's done with such a light touch that one can't help but forgive any sins. Unlike some stories of this type, here we find at least some attempt to show why Spock should choose Dorothy. She's a language expert and a long-time student of the Vulcan language and of her particular Vulcan. She's a fairly enterprising sort in several adventures with him, and finally in "The Vigil" she backs him up and interprets for him during a long, frantic search for Kirk, who is lost on a planet. Spock neither eats nor sleeps, and his worry for Kirk is such that he eventually lapses into long silences and sometimes into the Vulcan language. When Kirk is finally found safe, 238 Star Trek Lives! Star Trek Lives! 239 Spock's relief and gratitude are profound, and finally he speaks to Dorothy of a future for them. With or without alter-egos, fan writers have tried to solve Spock's problem in innumerable and sometimes ingenious ways. They've married him to Vul-cans, Terrans, Vulcan/Human hybrids, Romulans, and assorted Romulan/Human or Romulan/Vulcan hybrids. But marriage is not always involved. A favorite theme is the "no strings attached" meeting of his peculiarly urgent need. Various females have volunteered for that with alacrity. (Practically everybody, it sometimes seems.) Uhura has not been neglected. Miscellaneous pretty yeomen. But the all-time favorite is Nurse Christine Chapel, whose unrequited love for Spock is well known—and perhaps strikes a responsive chord in others who cannot reach him.. In "Encounter" (GRVP #1) Catherine Blakey puts Spock in the grip of that problem—in the midst of a crisis for the Enterprise, of course—and Chapel, overhearing the diagnosis, goes to him as he lies on the sickbay bed and works her way up to the following: "You're aware of my feeling for you, and I've had reason to believe that you might have some feeling for me . . . No, don't interrupt me, please. Even if what I feel is not . . . mutual, what I offer is ... is ... without conditions. "If your physical needs aren't fulfilled, you'll die. There's a faint possibility that something, like a battle, might sublimate the drive; but it's not definite, especially since the last time was ... unconsummated. "You're of more value to the ship alive than dead. I offer myself as an alternative. Giving vent to your ... ah ... sexual needs, may, with the help of medication, enable you to be of use to the ship." He accepts, with gratifying results for both, and no visible strings remaining attached afterward. Very many fans seem to identify with Chapel in exactly that way, some perhaps even preferring the lack of permanent involvement. Others perhaps seeing it as at least some consolation for her suffering. Possibly, there is even an element of seeing that Chapel is not quite fully up to winning Spock of his own choice—as, indeed, few women would be—and there is a certain interest in the idea that he could be compelled to accept her. On the other hand, there is heroism and gallantry in Chapel's offer. It is perhaps even harder for her than it would be if she didn't love him. On the whole, we have seen her bearing her problem with considerable dignity—and seen Spock doing his best not to make it intolerable for her. There is great attractiveness in that.. But it is possible to see even beyond that. Perhaps one of the most subtle stories in Star Trek fan fiction is "The Price of a Handful of Snowflakes" by M. L. "Steve" Barnes (Impulse #5). The story is told from the viewpoint of Nurse Chapel, beginning: Spock had once said that we all make our own purgatories. And I find that once again his sensibilities have served him truly. For I live in one of my own making and the bitterness of it will last me all my days ... He sits across the room now, that still face frozen perhaps forever in its stillest mask of all. Once or twice lately I have been aware of something, a look, a depth to those eyes. It has its antecedents in the eyes of an animal caught and held in a trap ... She tries to think when she first began to make the decision—surely not at first when the Gorgon's planet held them—with something which caused delusions, hallucinations, madness—even at a distance on the ship. What would it be like to face the Gorgon? But someone had to go. Personal combat seemed the only way to satisfy the thing. I was 240 Star Trek Lives! there when he made the choice for us. The usual request, "Captain, I'm the logical one to go . . ." And the usual denial, "I am the captain, Spock. You will remain here. If anyone's to face that thing, it will be me . . ." Quick hand reaching to that apex of neck and shoulder. The captain's look of disbelief . . . Where he found the courage to face what he discovered on that somber plain, I shall never know. It is said that the Vulcan can never know the emotion of love. It is not for me to say. All I know is that it was something more than duty that sent him out to meet madness in the dark. They bring Spock back, the Gorgon defeated, but Spock almost dead. She and McCoy labor over him all night. Then McCoy must tell a grief-stricken Kirk, ". . . aphasia, agraphia, organic damage—perhaps . . . catatonia . . . Face it, Jim. He's through .. ." That is when she made up her mind to go with him to Cestus Two, the rest and rehabilitation center for space-fatigued crewmen to which McCoy must commit Spock. Through all the hours that he was in- a coma, she was with him, no longer caring if he knew that she held his hand. And finally there was a faint response. She knew he was trying to communicate that he was aware. But she was the only one who knew, and she wanted to keep it that way. When they came to prepare him for Cestus Two, she did not tell. He rallied then, one last time. His eyes grew intense, his face worked with the effort. "Christine . . ." he said. I shall never know if it was entreaty or accusation. But no matter. McCoy had left the room. It took but a brief second to inject him. The sedation took effect almost immediately. The quickly administered shot made him mine. It was as simple as that. They would never know how under the useless body his brain was still alive . . . How desperate he must have felt knowing that I was the only one who could save Star Trek Lives! 241 him, and how little it suddenly mattered to me. My hand did not even hesitate ... I would have this man for all the high price. If I could not have him as he was, and his actions had too often told me this, I would have him on my own terms'. . . But he would be mine . . . And we would spend all those countless years left to us side by side. And she does care for him. But finally: And so at last, driven by the demons I have tried to kill inside me, I did the thing I knew I must ... I have contacted the Vulcan Healer, T'Fave ... If anyone can reach the dark well to which he has retreated, it is she. I have told him what I have done and I know unmistakably there was a gleam of gratitude in those dark eyes . . . I will consider the consequences of my act in the loneliness of my bed tonight. And when I wake my pillow will be wet. But I cannot betray him further . . . [And] Vulcans feel their obligations stronsly. When he is himself again, he will owe me. For despite all I have tried to do to him, one fact remains: without my intervention there would be no T'Fava ... It will be up to me to decide in what coin his debt is paid. And I have gone beyond pride now. No matter how bitter the price to him, he will never let me know it and I shall accept it ... If that both chills and warms you a trifle, that is doubtless what was intended. One of the things which is becoming more apparent from the best efforts of fan writers to grapple with such themes is that love has many levels, most of them not altogether simple, some of them not altogether pleasant, all of them having a price. Perhaps possession should not be a part of love. Perhaps it is an essential part. Why do we keep hearing: "mine," "have this man," "mine," "prisoner," "specimen," "mine . . ."—not only in this story? In 242 Star Trek Lives! our love songs—"you belong to me . . ." In our ceremonies—"to have and to hold . .." Is it only that we are not so far from the days of customs like the one which made T'Pring the "property" of the victor? Or is there some central attraction in the idea of possession, even of ownership? Does it pertain only to love—or does it have a fatal attraction even without love? Are there kinds of love which are free of it— or which set one free? And at what price? These are questions which some of the new writers are, if not answering, at least asking. It was Christine's love which made Spock a prisoner—and which set him free—but not quite. Yet even in the possessiveness of her love she could recognize the importance and value of a love which was greater —the love between Kirk and Spock. What price would Spock not have paid for it? Even this price. What price have they not both paid, time and again? It is a rough universe out there, and tough going for any love, and what we have seen on Star Trek is not necessarily the half of it. It could get much worse. Diane Steiner's novel, Spock Enslaved, tackles the question of possession in its baldest terms: literal slavery. Star Trek has touched the edges of that theme, but it has usually had a rather antiseptic, hands-off version of slavery. (Necessarily, given its situation on television.) Spock Enslaved also leaves a good deal to implication, but is closer to slavery as we know it to have been practiced. Kirk, Spock, McCoy and about a third of the Enterprise crew are taken by treachery, and the Enterprise is destroyed. (Apparently, they believe its destruction to be almost certain, especially as the months go by.) The captors call the place Atlantis; it looks vaguely Greek or Roman, has a high technology decayed from a still higher one which once included star-flight, keeps slaves from many races— even from other planets—and keeps them effectively with its technology. Star Trek Lives! 243 The prefect is Octavian. He regards Spock as a prime, exotic specimen, is somewhat less interested in Kirk and McCoy, uses threats against them to try to control Spock and is apparently not at all interested in the women of the Enterprise crew. He keeps a large number of more exotic women slaves. But his chief concern is breaking Spock, who is obstinate, but moved by threats to Kirk and McCoy. After three days of preliminaries, Octavian has bought Spock officially from the government and: "Now," Octavian continued, "it dawns on us that I have bid the highest price ever paid for a slave, without even seeing what I paid for." The guests laughed. "Strip him!" Octavian ordered suddenly. Spock stood frozen in mid-breath, unable to believe what was happening to him. His guards moved quickly, pulling off his shirt and undershirt, then proceeded to remove the rest of his clothing. Spock closed his eyes, forcing all the resistance from his muscles, as he tried to fight down his rising rebellion. He thought of Kirk, who was counting on him, and of what might befall the Captain if he didn't control himself. The guards had completed their task. "Your money was not wasted, Prefect," Cornelius said appreciatively. Octavian chuckled. "I had no doubts of it, Cornelius. But see for yourself." Cornelius arose, smiling, and moved toward the Vulcan. Spock steeled himself as he sought to fix his mind on anything other than what was happening to him. He filled his thoughts with the horrible images his memory had retained of the experimental labs, and of what the Prefect had threatened for Kirk and McCoy if he resisted. But it did him little good . . . Logic suddenly gave way to blind fury . . . But that was only a beginning. A little later, he resisted again and as a punishment was branded. Still later, he was thrown into an enclosure with other slaves and beaten by them for receiving preferred treatment. 244 Star Trek Lives! While recovering from that, he began to fall in love with a slave girl, Deeja, who helped take care of him. Later, he was trained as everything from gladiator to Octavian's "bath boy." Always the threat of. Kirk was held over his head. And they were able to see each other from time to time. One day as other slaves were taunting Spock, neither could take it any longer and both got into a roaring good fight. Finally overwhelmed, they "glanced at each other triumphantly . . ." knowing that the punishment would be "a beating, or worse," but taking "a grim joy in their rebellion." Octavian threatened to have Spock flogged to death, and the Vulcan was merely scornful. But then Octavian turned to Kirk, beginning to make remarks about finding a better use for him, and ordered the guards to take Spock away while he kept Kirk. Spock seemed to come out of his shocked enhancement as the guards started to pull him away. He struggled violently if uselessly. "No!" he pleaded. "Please, I ask forgiveness, Prefect. It will not happen again. The fight was my fault alone, not his ... If anyone is to be punished, it should be me." "Oh, you will be, never fear. But would you take your friend's punishment willingly, as well as your own?" There was not a moment's hesitation in Spock's answer, "Yes." But, no. Spock had paced his cell for six hours and forty-one minutes. The guards brought Kirk back and flung him, staggering, into the cell. "Captain?" Spock called. There was no response from Kirk. "Captain! Jim!" Kirk seemed to pull himself together slowly, like a reluctant dreamer coming from sleep, then pulled back slightly, still steadying himself against the Vulcan's strength, to meet Spock's worried eyes. What Spock saw there was nearly enough " Star Trek Lives! 245 to make him drop his gaze. For he had never seen such a terrible expression on Kirk's face, such naked hurt in his eyes in all the time he'd known him. There was a pain in them beyond anything physical Spock could see had been done to him. It cut into the Vulcan like someone running a knife through his heart. Spock tended the injuries in silence while Kirk kept his eyes closed. "Is there something more I can do?" Spock said. This time Kirk spoke, though still sightlessly. His voice was no more than a hoarse whisper. "No, Spock . . ." His voice seemed to break off suddenly. "Captain ... I ... I am sorry. This was all my fault. I ..." Kirk shifted forward suddenly to bury his face in his hands, and when he spoke his voice was muffled. "I don't want to talk about it, Spock. Nothing that happens to any of us here is your fault. . . Oh, God . . . just let me live long enough to kill him for both of us!" Finally, Kirk fell asleep, while Spock thought his own thoughts, and then he reached for the mind link. His eyes closed in concentration, then his entire body stiffened with mental agony as he contacted the memory he was seeking. Spock's hands began to tremble and almost broke the mental contact of their own volition. Though he had known what to expect, he still found himself unprepared for the full impact. But he bore it all out, as Kirk had. And then, with great effort, for Kirk's mind was formidable even sleeping, Spock rearranged the sequence of events in his friend's memory, blocking out of the pattern the worst of them. Then, as he had done once before, he whispered aloud to Kirk, "Forget ... forget . . ." 246 Star Trek Lives! But what was to keep Octavian from repeating it—or at least taunting Kirk with the threat. Nothing. Seeing the hopelessness of their position, Spock considered killing Kirk quickly himself, but recoiled at the thought and would not do it. No. But Kirk's position would be improved greatly if Spock killed Octavian—and died for it. He would do that. As it turned out, he didn't get the chance for a long time. After many more difficulties, they staged a slave rebellion, which failed, costing the life of Deeja and Spock's unborn child, although he did not know that until later—until after Kirk had narrowly managed to talk him out of killing Octavian. The Enterprise finally did return, after long repairs and with reinforcements. Eventually everything was mopped up, slaves freed and set up to govern themselves, the three men were left with only their memories—and Kirk without one of his. Certainly, this story makes Spock's concern for Kirk clear enough—and the price he was willing to pay. And although the handling of the character of Kirk is less effective than the handling of Spock in this novel (as is frequently the case), there are many scenes which show Kirk's willingness to risk life and sacred honor for Spock. This theme of the special bond between Kirk and Spock runs so deep in fan fiction that you are likely to find it in the most unlikely places—in a long novel which does not particularly focus on it, in a dream sequence, in a nightmare where one sees the other dying, in stories where one or the other does die, and even in places where it seems totally impossible. We have mentioned Laura Basta's Federation and Empire series, based on the deadly alternate universe of the episode, "Mirror, Mirror." Now the premise of the mirror universe is a reversal of morality in which one gains rank in the empire not by merit but by assassinating one's superior. The mirror-Spock has not tried that on his Kirk. He claims that the reason is merely that he has had no ambition to do so. But Star Trek Lives! 247 when our Kirk is flung into that universe, the two are powerfully drawn together. Kirk sees him as "very like our Mr. Spock" and takes a risk to save his life, and urges him and the captain's woman, Marlena, to take steps to end the Empire. The mirror-Spock protests, "One man cannot summon the future." But our Kirk tells him to try. Laura assumes that the first "logical" thing that the mirror-Spock has to do is to assassinate his Kirk. In the first story, he does, not without some regret, but does ("Remembrance of Echoes," Babel #1). His loyalty is to "the Other Kirk's proposition"—or perhaps merely to the Other Kirk. Certainly that is where Marlena's loyalty lies. As they discuss it some time after their Kirk's death: She punched for a drink. "I grieve, Mr. Spock. Yet I feel guilty doing so." She shook her head, long dark hair tumbling. "He was cruel, a sadist. Ambitious, ruthless. He'd have killed both of us slowly, without a second thought if he'd realized we knew of the Other Universe. We were lucky there. But . . ." her voice broke for a moment. "But . . . there were times . . ." "The Other Kirk was things ours could barely comprehend. Kirk was not better or worse than other starship captains. Just more dangerous. He knew of the Other Universe, and comprehended that the Others had been on this ship for awhile, but nothing else. We were ... contaminated by them. With the Field we will change." And that Spock has thought of the Other, too— enough to turn his world upside down. But Juanita Coulson has perhaps seen the whole issue even more clearly in her "To Summon the Future" (Spockanalia #5). For her, the mirror-Spock's loyalty is not merely to the Other Kirk, but, in a curious way, still to his own. Told from the viewpoint of (their) Nurse Chapel 248 Star Trek Lives! who has joined Spock in laying a deeper plan, it opens on the night when that plan is bringing the empire down around their heads—and revolutionary missiles and bombs down all around them. They walk in on the Premier, who has just heard an intelligence report about them: Vise-strong fingers suspend that murderous lunge. He could have killed the Premier, and we all knew it. There was a moment of frozen waiting. The anguish mingled with the anger in the Premier's haggard face. "Why? Why, Spock?" "There is a converted Deep-Prober awaiting us, and there is sanctuary in a small system without the Empire." He said this with remarkable gentleness, still holding those hands away from his throat. Marlena pleaded with her man, almost frantic. "Take it! Oh, take it! He can get you away from here, don't you see? It's your only hope." Premier Kirk wrested his hands from Spock's grip, and the Admiral let him. "Hope? Don't you realize he's the one who's done this to me? And you . . ." . . . When he turned again to Spock, it was with the betrayal of dreams and friendship brimming in his eyes. "Why did you do it, Spock? You made it all possible. I'm not blind . . . you were subtle, but I know you, I trusted you. Spock, you were my kingmaker! Another year, and we could have had it all." "Another year and the inevitable conclusion would have been more difficult to accept. Escape also would have been more difficult. The Emperor is already dead." I suppose to some the voice would have seemed dispassionate, cold. But I could hear the concern in it. He was trying to ease the hurt with reason, for all the good it seemed to be doing. Spock delays while the city crumbles around them, letting Kirk figure it all out, helping him. The revolutionaries do not know that Spock has helped them. If they catch him, he will die, and not quickly. Star Trek Lives! 249 Kirk tries to refuse the offer of his life, which Spock had promised Marlena from the beginning. She pleads with him and for him: "Please," and she turned her entreaties toward Spock. "He'll die here. You know his blind, foolish pride . . ." Spock did not turn, but he was listening. His eyes were on Kirk, on his friend. His former friend? His victim? "He has the right to choose." For a moment there was a flicker of gratitude in the Premier's eyes. But Spock argues further the uselessness of Kirk's death, and seeing a flicker of hesitation, doubt, does not, after all, give him a choice. He uses the neck pinch and carries him off to safety. And on the escaping scout ship Christine Chapel wonders about the sleeping Kirk: But when he wakes? Will he ever forgive us? Will he ever allow us to forget the conspiracy we have framed around him in the name of the future? For the bond between Kjrk and Spock to extend even into the mirror universe, even in those strange ways, it has to be made of strong stuff. There are those of us who much doubt that the mirror-Spock would murder his Kirk (sorry, Laura), and like better the second idea: if the mirror-Kirk were truly unreachable; but would like even better a third story, in which the mirror-Spock would give his Kirk a good shaking and a good talking to, and they would set out to summon the future—together. (Any volunteers to write it?) Quite possibly someone will write (or has written and hidden) that story. The Kirk-Spock relationship is so electrifying, and some fans have been so energized by it that they are spreading their ideas throughout fandom. And gradually the understanding of Kirk 250 Star Trek Lives! himself is improving, and we are beginning to get more of the really good Kirk stories. It has sometimes been a little hard to see Kirk for Spock. Spock is such a. startling figure, so obviously full of strengths and virtues, so intriguing in his alienness, such fun to speculate about—and, in some ways, so easy to write about. (At least in surface mannerisms and plot functions.) Kirk's character is a good deal more subtle, harder to capture. It is much easier to be "off" on his characterization—and you will get vast arguments about what is "on." Some fans have not even seen Kirk as a hero. Most do, but perhaps do not see him fully. Some writers have been able to see his virtues only, or mainly, because Spock sees them. Spock respects and loves him; therefore some fans are able to see that there must be more there than they have perceived before. But they can't quite define it. (Why, for example, in the mirror stories, if their Spock, Marlena, Christine or others can be won to a different morality, why should it be assumed that their Kirk cannot? It was, after all, our Kirk's idea.) Kirk is a complex and subtle man, as much in character as in countenance. And in some ways we know much less about him than about Spock. There was less backgrounding on him in the series, and there has been less in the fanzines. Vulcans have been analyzed down to their teeth and toenails and the last drop of their green blood. Treatises have been written on the Vulcan language. Thousands of years of Vulcan history have been reconstructed. There has been less motivation to do this for Kirk. We have met his background—and it is us. Nonetheless, there have been some attempts— some of them lighthearted. (Yes, there is a lot of humor in the fanzines—much of it in the short features: jokes, graffiti, nonfiction and trivia contests.) One notable attempt is billed as "Joy in the Morning" or "Time and Time Again—An Immorality Tale by Claudine-Marie de Sisi" (in, where else, Star Trek Lives! 251 GRUP. Most fan editors would not print the adult material that appears in GRUP). It is headed by the quote from Kirk to McCoy in "Shore Leave," the one which brought up memories of Kirk's days at the academy and conjured up the replica of his old tormenter, Finnegan: "Serious? Bones, I tell you, I was positively grim!" And it takes Kirk back to the academy days when he was very grim—or, at least, was very young and very earnest. And that was almost the least of his problems. There was Finnegan. Finnegan turning Kirk's room upside down, parking the furniture on the ceiling with antigravs. Finnegan divining the worst of Kirk's problems and programming the computer to answer his engineering problems with illustrated lectures, complete with moving parts—the Female-Superior-Male-Sitting Position, working up to the Double-Erect-Female-Superior-Native-Semi-Supine Position. Just as Kirk is yelping that that is impossible, Ad-. miral Coq walks into his room. She cocks an interested eyebrow and insists on seeing more, over his protests and anguished protestations of innocence. And as for the Venusian Triangle, she mutters that she always wondered how that worked. As he continues to insist that he would never have programmed the computer for that, she soothes him maddeningly, assuring him that it's perfectly normal. But she completes the errand she came for and chews him out for fist-fighting with Finnegan. They are interrupted, not helpfully, by the arrival of Finnegan's girlfriend, Joy Laidlowe (what else?). Finnegan has sicced her onto the shy, modest, virginal Kirk. She has come to stay, complete with overnight case, and her intentions are only too apparent even to the admiral. The admiral leaves and Kirk throws Joy out, forcibly. But Joy and Finnegan continue to tease and humiliate Kirk, privately and publicly, and she keeps 252 Star Trek Lives! coming back, finally driving him to distraction and even to tears. And then she truly realizes that he really hasn't ever— Suddenly, Finnegan's joke doesn't seem so funny to her, after all, and she begs Kirk to let her apologize—properly. He does. And she does. And the next day, she walks into class on Kirk's arm to tell an apoplectic Finnegan that she's tired of his games; she's found a better deal. That inexperienced little boy? But she whispers to Finnegan that he never bothered to ask her whether she was experienced either. Finnegan stutters. She is ... she was . . . and she let that Kirk . . . ? Yep. And she even enjoyed it—every single time. We can't vouch for the veracity of the story. (Personally, we tend to suspect that Kirk would haye been rather more precocious.) But it's cute. And even through its humor and Kirk's seriousness there are moments when you can glimpse what many fans who do see Kirk do see in him—a startling sexiness. The heroism of Kirk is also beginning to be better recognized. An interesting effort in that direction is explicitly dedicated to that purpose. In their introduction to a novel published as a fanzine in itself, authors Shirley Maiewski, Anna Mary Hall and Virginia Tilley state that Alternate Universe #4 was created to honor Captain James T. Kirk. (They count aired-STAR Trek as Alternate Universe #1, "Mirror, Mirror" as #2, Kraith as #3—other fans count differently, but the habit of numbering sub-universes is spreading rapidly.) A Iternate Universe #4's first chapter, "No Tomorrow," opens with Captain Kirk being court-martialed —this time convicted—and believing himself guilty. "James Kirk had made the first and only mistake of his career. It proved sufficient." A "doomsday machine" type of alien—Kirk dis- Star Trek Lives! 253 tracted by an excruciating headache caused by exposure to a faulty phaser connection. And failing to note the significance of a crucial course change which led the alien to the Stanless System—where it destroyed the system, including three populated planets, Kirk taking the Enterprise on to destroy the alien, too late. Kirk offered no defense, never mentioned the headache. "Culpable negligence" was the charge. "He was completely convinced of his own guilt." Convicted. Might have been sent to a prison planet. Others interceded for him, brought pressure. Spock. Sarek. T'Pau. But he was stripped of his rank, fined, forbidden to set foot on a starbase. Spock and McCoy helped pay the fine, over his objections. He was left with nothing. "Look, Spock, that's all he has. Eighteen years in Star Fleet and all he has left is a half-filled case of old clothes! Oh, damn it, Spock!" McCoy's eyes filled. In a farewell scene with Spock and McCoy, he even tried to throw himself out of a window. Kirk turned slowly and looked up into the face of his old friend. Tears were streaming from Kirk's eyes. Spock's grip on his shoulder tightened; he had never seen James Kirk cry. There had been times when he thought he might—when Edith Keeler had been killed, when Kirk's Indian wife had died and with her the unborn child Kirk never had—but those times Kirk had hidden his grief behind a stony exterior and a crushing load of work. Now, at last, Spock knew to what depths of despair his friend had descended. He didn't say anything at first, just stood gripping Kirk's shoulder, tighter and tighter. Human emotions had once been a mystery to him, he had grown to know what joy, happiness was. He had felt love, anger, even hate in himself, but this—this utter loss of hope and black despair—-shocked him to his very core. Finally he said, "Jim, you must get a hold on yourself, you must! You have to go on, make a life for yourself, you cannot let one mistake—" 254 Star Trek Lives! Kirk wrenched himself from Spock's grasp and fell back against the window ledge. A wild look of absolute horror grew in his eyes—he was trembling visibly . . . Then the words tumbled out—carrying with them all his feelings of guilt and remorse and self-loathing: "One mistake: My God, Spock! Wasn't that enough? All those lives! All those people—dead! Because of me! How can I live with that?" He whirled around to the window, flung it open, and started over the sill. And Spock stopped him, used the nerve pinch, helped him—a little—with the mind-meld. He sent them off, saying that he "wouldn't starve," would take a minor job with a space freight line. Now, the interesting part of the story begins with the next chapter, "Tomorrow," and the later chapters dealing with Kirk's heroic effort to go on, to reconstruct himself, to fight the nightmares and the loneliness and the black despair—to survive and finally to live again after this disaster. And there we do get a vision of some of his extraordinary qualities. But meanwhile, it is that first chapter which raises the hair-pulling-out problems. (Not the authors' hair. Your own.) Here, with the best intention of honoring Kirk, the authors have raised questions which go to the heart of the Kirk character—and answered them in a way which is wide open to dispute. Would Kirk consider himself guilty? (Is he, in fact, guilty? Is this Star Fleet justice?) If he didn't, would it break him? If he did, would it break him? And, in any case, is his bond with Spock and even McCoy such that they would let him go off alone and broken—no matter what he said? Are their careers more important to them than he is—when he's offered his life for them a dozen times over, and they for him? Would Spock, at least, and probably also McCoy, resign and carry him ofi somewhere and help? You can see why the authors have done it: they wanted to have him alone and facing the toughest pos- Star Trek Lives! 255 sible situation he could face, in order to examine the inner core of the man and the hero. But it is part of his inner core that would determine how he would respond to the question of his guilt. Kirk has demanded a very high standard of perfection of himself, a constant watchfulness against error. Yet he has had to live with the fact that he can make errors and that his errors can cost the lives of millions, billions, whole star systems, perhaps the whole galaxy. And he has learned to live with that fact. No rational morality can demand of a being capable of error that he never err. And Kirk knows that. He would undoubtedly be desolate with grief over the loss of the three planets and their people. He would be hard on himself. But he would pull himself together to know that he cannot be held morally guilty. Similarly, no system of justice can be run on the basis of destroying a man for unavoidable error. No starship captain could function if this were Star Fleet justice. If, now, Star Fleet tried that, he would have to fight it. If it happened anyway, he would still know that it was wrong and that he was innocent, if the whole universe damned him. And if he, for a time, didn't know it, Spock would —and would somehow get through to him. But that is another story. The main theme of Alternate Universe #4 is the psychological study of a hero rising again out of the ashes of his own destruction. On the whole, it is closer to the spirit of Kirk than the way he is handled in much of fan fiction—which is perhaps why one feels impelled to criticize it. That is part of the grief and the challenge of writing this fan fiction—and reading it and criticizing it. There is so much in Star Trek—and so much which could have been in it—that it is almost impossible for one or two lone authors to get everything working properly. If you get Spock right, you are almost certain to get Kirk wrong; if you get both of them right— 256 Star Trek Lives! and the very complex relationship between them—you are almost certain to have ignored or downgraded McCoy. If you should happen to get all three right, you've probably mislaid the minor characters or lost track of the science-fiction elements or gotten bogged down in philosophy. But even the professional writers of Star Trek, working in that magical atmosphere that created the Tailored Effects, had those problems—and the fans screamed at them. Politely, but screamed. Star Trek fanzines are a tremendous school for writers. Maybe the very best. It could take a writer decades—or forever—to arrive at as interesting a combination of characters, as fascinating a set of possibilities for conflicts and adventures and the examining of tough problems, as aired-STAR Trek is. That is undoubtedly one of the major appeals of writing this fan fiction—and one of the reasons why it is being effective in turning out professional writers. But even the tremendous work done by the creators of Star Trek does not make it easy—makes it, if anything, harder. There is such richness there that even the professionals and fans combined have barely scratched the surface of the possibilities. We want to know all about these Star Trek characters—their innermost thoughts, the most trivial details about them. They have become friends in a way that few flesh and blood people are, and almost no fictional characters are. We want to know what happened to them after the end of the episode, what happened when the screen faded to black. The foremost pioneer of that kind of "postscript" story is Ruth Berman. Ruth is a foremost pioneer of a number of things: sardonic and hilarious verse retelling the episodes, Kraith stories which start out as parodies and get adopted into Kraith, Star Trek stories with bits of Gilbert and Sullivan tossed in. Not to mention being the editor of the longest-running fanzine, T-Negative, and now a professional writer selling both stories and poetry. Star Trek Lives! 257 Her "postscript" story, "A Rose for Miranda" (Eridani Triad #3), is a good illustration not only of that kind of story, but of several things we've talked about—Kirk, Spock and their relationship—and one which we haven't discussed: McCoy and what he adds to Kirk and Spock and to the total picture. McCoy has his fans, too. There are stories which focus on him, and he is in most stories. But too often he does little more than snipe at Spock. Most writers pick up on the feuding, and many on the friendship which underlies it, but it is easy to let it be mere feuding or to let McCoy be mostly in the wrong. It is easy to forget the close friendship among the three which really does exist, to forget McCoy's astute understanding of it, to forget even the bright ideas with which McCoy has frequently saved the day —but Vulcans don't forget. There is a tiny scene in "A Rose for Miranda" which almost says it all. At the end of the episode, "Is There in Truth No Beauty?" Kirk presented the blind, beautiful Miranda with a rose, as she left in telepathic link with the Medu-san ambassador, the sight of whom drove humans mad. Then Kirk lingered in the transporter room—although it had been established that this was dangerous. Ruth opens with Kirk's thoughts as he picks the rose. How could Miranda go off with Kollos? He might have a beautiful mind, but a human woman has physical needs . . . Kirk had been drawn to her, and more than half suspected that Spock and McCoy had, too. They'd all lost her. He gave her the rose:—and lingered. The transporter dissolved the concealing box first and he saw the Medusan—and went mad. After he was subdued and in sickbay, Spock tried the mind link. No luck. In his nightmare Kirk thought Spock was attacking him, as in the challenge arena on Vulcan. McCoy slapped Spock's face to bring him out of it. They talked, rejecting several things that wouldn't work. Then: 258 Star Trek Lives! "Doctor," Spock said abruptly, "how would you try to reacli him if you were a telepath?" "Me? ... I ..." McCoy cocked his head and almost smiled. "I don't know. But I know what I'd do if I were you." "Indeed." "Yes. I'd cry." Spock raised both eyebrows. "If Jim thought either of us was in trouble— seriously needed his help—I mean—he'd do his damnedest to reach out," said McCoy slowly, thinking the hunch out more fully as he went along. "Now it'd be one thing if you could . . . project a mental stage set, if you see what I mean, and project some kind of menace to put you in danger. That might do it—" "That is beyond my skill." ". . . but if you could pretend to be terribly unhappy about something, he'd want to comfort you, and that would do it, too, I think. Especially if it was you. I'm human. Emotional display doesn't signify as much with me as it does with you—as you've pointed out to me on any number of occasions. So, if he saw you crying . . ." McCoy trailed off. Spock's normal expression resembled the proverbial Great Stone Face, but that was jello to the frozen hardness confronting him. "Any specific grief, Doctor, or do you suggest an attempt at general misery?" said Spock. "Hell, I don't know. You could pretend you were broken up over losing Miranda. I think he might empathize with that." McCoy stared at the floor, recalling Miranda's face as she stood on the transporter. "I don't know," he repeated. "Get out," said Spock. "Wh . . . ? Oh. Yeah." McCoy retreated to his office next door. It worked. Again and again, the Kirk/Spock bond crops up. One writer who is captivated by it is Jennifer Gut-tridge, a British fan and long-distance friend. She has written more than one story in which some alien force Star Trek Lives! 259 knowingly or unknowingly tests the strength of that bond beyond what should be all limits of endurance —without finding a limit. In one story, "Tower of Terror" {Tricorder Readings #11), Kirk disappears from the bridge of the Enterprise, Spock beams down with a landing party, but finds himself alone, equipment not working, in bitter cold rain and wind at the base of a sheer cliff topped by a tower where Kirk must be if he is anywhere at all. What follows is a saga of heroic physical and mental endurance as an alien presence throws at Spock everything from illusion to very real monsters, rat-like creatures, corrosive acids, fire—everything, to break his body and his mind. Jennifer's descriptions of the physical damage and of the terror, weariness and hopelessness are brilliantly, painfully graphic, hitting on almost every primordial human nightmare, leaving the reader totally shaken. Yet Spock keeps on. "There was only one thought in his mind, one memory—Kirk's face looking at him sideways with that half-smiling understanding expression about the eyes. And it was that which made him climb on." The alien says, "Let us say that my reason is to find the measure of the man." What is found is the measure of two men and what is between them. In "The Winged Dreamers" {Tricorder Readings), Jennifer makes it even more clear. The Enterprise runs into a planet rather like paradise—again too good to be true—having some mysterious effect which gives each man the illusion of what he wants most, or luring him into danger with a threat to what he cares most about. Kirk is lured with an illusion of Spock's death— almost to his own. Spock is resistant to the effect, and Kirk and McCoy must trust themselves to his senses, against their own, to try to get out of it, to solve the problem. But the effect reaches even to the ship, in orbit above. Most of the crew has deserted. Kirk walks into the bridge to see it with a full crew—what he wants most at that moment. But in reality, there is only Spock: 260 Star Trek Lives! "Jim!" Spock shook him so hard that his teeth rattled. "It's an illusion! Just an illusion!" Kirk looked at him and shook his head again. Not believing. Not wanting to believe. Spock stared into his face. "Jim, have I ever lied to you? Believe me! Now of all times, believe me!" Kirk gazed into the dark, alien eyes. The Vulcan seemed to see into him, into his very soul, and the bond between the men asserted itself. Kirk believed. He relaxed and let Spock go. But for him, too, the bridge was empty. McCoy and a skeleton crew come in and they try desperately to set a course for a Starbase, to get out of the effect, come back for the crew later. Kirk gives the order, but finally the effect gets to Spock: Spock reached for the computer, and then his hand hesitated. He turned in his seat and looked down at Kirk. In the depths of his eyes something was kindling. His face was intent with what was almost a dawning joy. Kirk stared back at him with mild alarm. "Mr. Spock?" "Jim," Spock said in a whisper, "why do we have to leave here? We can stay. Just you and I. We don't need those others." "He's off hjs head," McCoy grunted. "He's finally cracked." "No. The thing's finally got to him," Kirk said, climbing out of the command seat. "It's offering him the one thing . . ." "Jim ... we can go down to the planet," Spock explained reasonably. "We can be together always ..." "Spock!" Kirk dragged him onto his feet and shook him. "Jim, you don't have to hurt me." "Snap out of it or I will hurt you!" Kirk snarled into his face. Spock shook his head, bewildered. Kirk hit him hard across the face—once, twice, three times. A small trickle of blood ran from the Star Trek Lives' 261 corner of the Vulcan's mouth. He lowered his eyes and very slightly shook his head. Kirk carefully let him go and he put a hand against the computer console to steady himself. "I'm sorry," he murmured, so low that only Kirk could hear. Kirk touched him on the arm and turned to meet the curious stares of the crew. "We've got a job to do," he said. "Let's get back to it." McCoy has an idea about the source of the effect, and with Spock's mental powers they solve the problem. But when everything is back in order, McCoy watches Spock go out: "Jim, what was he saying about you and him on the bridge a while back?" Kirk didn't look at him as he started for the turbolift. "As I think you remarked, Bones, he was off his head." Of course he was. And yet... What is the fascination of that theme? It crops up even where it is not the main focus, as in a long and interesting novel, The Crossing Lords (first novel of Carolyn Meredith's Sargonite series of Star Trek stories, taken off from the episode "Return to Tomorrow," much as Laura Basta's Federation and Empire takes off from "Mirror, Mirror," published by Sylvia Stanczyk in her fanzine Tholian Web). Carolyn is a Ph.D. in chemistry, and most of her focus in her fiction is on science and some rather involved plotting (in her early stories). Yet there is a good deal of the Kirk/Spock closeness. In an important scene, Nurse Chapel tells Kirk how Spock acted when Kirk was in danger of death—and the ship in danger of destruction—leaving his post and leaping over the railing to help her and McCoy with Kirk: "Mr. Spock said something and Mr. Scott must have answered—I didn't hear what they said. Then Mr. Spock jumped the railing, pushed 262 Star Trek Lives! Dr. McCoy away from the head-end generator and held it in place with one hand while he worked the life-support controls with the other. Dr. McCoy and I together managed to hold the other generator steady . . . "... I think Mr. Spock is planning to report himself for what he considers abandoning his post to help us, and I think you should know the circumstances. Captain, Mr. Spock scared me then. I've never seen him look less human, or any Vulcan more alien. That's the only word1— alien, unreachable, cut off from us. To him we didn't exist." That surprised Kirk—that Spock would come to his aid when once it had taken conspiracy and nearly force to get the first officer to relinquish the bridge to save his own father's life. The theme is a central focus of a novelette, Ni Var, by Claire Gabriel (a professional writer irresistibly drawn out of the "mainstream" and into science fiction by way of Star Trek), even though Ni Var has a rather nifty idea for a science-fiction plot, and she could have stuck strictly to the more obvious aspects of that. An alien scientist, who has a half-breed son with grave problems, has developed a method of hybrid-twinning. He applies it to an unwilling Spock, dividing him into two seemingly identical halves— one with the internal biology and emotions of the human, one all Vulcan. There are many ramifications to that, but one of the most crucial is the question of Kirk's friendship. In the final scenes, as the Vulcan and the human Spock are about to be reunited, Kirk has learned that even the all-Vulcan Spock is his friend. [Kirk] half expected the Vulcan to stiffen up, perhaps even pull away. Instead he turned from the computer and looked directly at his Captain, Again Kirk was reminded of his brother, Sam— searching, concerned. And again he felt shame, remembering that he had once believed that that particular response sprang only from Spock's hu- Star Trek Lives! manity. "I'm all right," he said, managing to sound faintly exasperated so as not to appear moved. "I told you that." The Vulcan's gaze shifted to that of his alter, and after a moment the human said softly, "Kipling's Thousandth Man." "Indeed." The Vulcan's response was almost immediate. At a loss to understand what they were talking about, Kirk glanced from one to. the other as their gaze held. Their emotional unity at that moment was almost palpable, and he wondered briefly if the fact that he was in physical contact with both of them made him some sort of telepathic conductor. Well, whatever the reason, the unity was there, and perhaps for the first time since the beamdown. It might even get the two of them through until tomorrow . . . [After the rejoining] . . . "Thank you, Captain," Spock said lightly, still facing his hooded viewer. And then slowly, he turned to look at Kirk. When he spoke again—in quite a different tone— the bridge became for both of them a mirror image of a time long gone. ". .. From both of us." The Captain and the First Officer continued to lock gazes as Kirk's grin faded but did not entirely disappear. "Shall I pass that along to the crew?" he quoted back softly, expecting no answer. And in his mind he saw the words of Rudyard Kipling that he had located in the ship's library only a few days before. One man in a thousand, Solomon says, Will stick more close than a brother . . . But the Thousandth Man will stand by your side To the gallows' foot—and after . . . The only answer the Captain got was a faint echo of the human Spock's smile—just be- 263 264 Star Trek Lives! fore the First Officer of the Starship Enterprise turned again to his duty. For both the "human" and the "Vulcan" Spock, their joy was in that bond—and for all of these Spocks and Kirks we find in fanzines, it is their joy, and their agony. It is too precious to lose, and it is at risk, always. By the nature of everything they share which forges that bond—the dangers, the experiences no one else can share, the seeing of each other, the prices they have paid—by the nature of the universe they challenge together, the bond can be snapped at any moment and with finality. Consider that they know that, consider how close it has been, how often, and perhaps you will feel the shiver that has gone down many spines at the meaning of Jane Peyton's "Lament for the Unsung Dead" (Spockanalia #3). The "lament" is, in fact, a chillingly simple prose poem. With the utmost restraint it tells of the one time when Spock did not arrive in time to save Kirk. Gradually, the reader realizes that it is Christine Chapel who tells the story as she paces her room, while Spock lies collapsed across her desk in sleep, having come to her at last, but only with a grief which he can neither contain nor endure ... It has been only a month since they went down to the captain's aid, using the shuttlecraft, since the transporter was out, Spock berating himself all the way for not having gone sooner, despite the captain's order. Spock cut their way through the enemy lines with the broadsword demanded by regulations, but by the time they reached the stronghold, the captain was unconscious, and while Spock defended the entrance alone, the captain passed away in spite of all that they could do. The doctor smashed his medical kit against the wall. Spock's fighting increased in ferocity, but otherwise he seemed unmoved. Star Trek Lives! 265 And he had held up through the month, through the family funeral where he did not fit in, through all of the days. But today he had come to her, not knowing how to say it, but asking her whether she had ever lost a friend, an important friend. Carefully, she told him that she had, but that the emptiness passes, becomes filled with life, with other people. But he could only say: Not when there are no others. He started to leave, but she persuaded him to stay a little, and finally he fell asleep. She could only pace the room, thinking that because of the stoicism he had unwittingly taught her, she could not even cry for him. Simple. Chilling. And altogether too probable. By the simple logic of the kinds of dangers they face, the odds are that one day one of them will not come back. Perhaps they would be lucky if it were both of them. Yet consider that Kirk and Spock know how easily that can happen on any day, and yet dare to allow themselves that love—and you have the measure of two men. Fears. Prices to be paid. Love. Daring to love in the face of the price. That is what we see, what we love, what we write about in those people and that world. Laughter, also. The kind of laughter that is a substitute for crying. And the kind that is not. We cannot adequately display here the parodies, the jokes, the graffiti, the tongue-in-cheek humor with which the fans lighten the fanzines. Even the most serious stories seldom lose sight of the humor that was so much a part of Star Trek. But it is also plain that the fan fiction is not only fun but very serious business. You would learn this, if nowhere else, in the criticism which fans make of each others' work. The criticism is often constructive, some- 266 Star Trek Lives! times humorous, almost always seriously intended—and frequently fierce. Clearly there is more going on here than mere playfulness. But it took our own experience to give us a clue to what was going on. If writing fan fiction is crazy, we are undoubtedly the craziest of the lot. And while that is not beyond the realm of possibility, we admit to a certain preference for finding another answer. We think we've found one. But the story of the quest for such an answer— for many answers about Star Trek—is a saga in itself. It might almost be called the Kraith Quest, for it began with our own fan fiction, the Kraith series— which was Jacqueline's first, and then also Sondra's. We had wanted to tell that story here, for it has led us through "the realms of gold" and to many a "wild surmise," which proved not to be so wild. But we flat ran out of room. It came down to a question of that or much of the other fan fiction, that or some of our interview material. And each of those selections had been a bone-crusher in itself. There are dozens of other fan writers or stories we would have liked to include. And how do you reduce eight hours of interviews with Leonard Nimoy or several hours with Gene Roddenberry, Dorothy Fontana and many others to fit within a book— any book? How do you begin to cover the impact of something like Star Trek and the reasons behind it? In the end, we decided that the Kraith chapter had to go. But not forever. It will be in the Spock book Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath are now working on, and will include Jacqueline's fascinating analysis of the roots of Kraith in Star Trek and science fiction, what the incredible response to Kraith taught her about both, how Sondra became involved and they fought a small battle of Titans over issues like the Logic/Emotion question and Star Trek Lives! 267 ------- -Z07 the alienness of Vulcans, how they came together later to write Kraith and this book, how even Myrna and her Spock Premise were drawn in. It will include what amounts to a new theory of how to write fiction—the kind that Star Trek was, the kind that can spin off something like Star Trek's fan fiction. While we can't give you the story of that quest here, nor all the evidence, surmises, premises and conclusions it led to, we can perhaps give you just a taste of that theory as it relates to fan fiction and a taste of how the response to Kraith led to that theory. You have to realize that Kraith, as Jacqueline says, blew up in her face—"instructively but messily." Originally started partly as practice assignments for a writing course, Kraith quickly began to give Jacqueline more of an education in writing than any she had paid for—almost more than she could have wanted to know. (Each early story in Kraith exaggerated one element of writing—theme, plot, characterization, etc. —before trying to put them all together. Jacqueline says, "This is something like trying to learn to nod your head, clap your hands, do a hula, and tap dance, all in different rhythms at the same time. Without coordination, the result is a mess. People can't figure out what you are trying to do no matter how well you do the individual movements. But they can tell you what they'd rather see you do with your skills.") Kraith, however, didn't turn out to be exactly a mess, although Jacqueline is inclined to be its toughest critic. It did turn out to be the most hotly disputed, savagely contested series in fan fiction. The instructive explosion arrived on Jacqueline's desk in the form of twenty-page letters, written at incandescent heat (and it isn't easy to keep up incandescent heat for twenty pages), fiercely disputing her premises, her conclusions, her interpretations of Spock and of Vulcan culture—every detail of the massively detailed Kraith universe. 268 Star Trek Lives! It began to dawn upon Jacqueline that every fan was seeing a different Star Trek—an idea which eventually led to the concept of the Tailored Effect. Moreover, for all their differences, they were united by taking their Star Trek very seriously. That raised the question: How were these different people alike? Was there some single trait which led to their seriousness? Why were they interested in fan fiction? Why did they write it? Why criticize it as if their lives depended on it? Presently, the question arose even more seriously as Kraith began to evoke a sub-category of fan fiction all its own. Other writers, fans and professionals, were drawn into writing Kraith, accepting Jacqueline's framework and writing stories within it, with her aid and consent. Eventually, more than forty such writers were drawn in. Kraith developed its own literature of criticism and its own writer's guide, the Kraith Creator's Manual. Kraith was collected and published in four volumes (to date, ten are planned) of microscopic print, lovingly edited by Carol Lynn and Deborah Goldstein. Comments ranged from, "Kraith is a cherished thing, a beautiful thing, in places nearly a magical outline of what Vulcan society is . . ." to a terse, "Kraith seems to be getting longer and more abominable." Plainly, something was going on. What? Not satisfied with attributing the furor to her own qualities, Jacqueline sought a more general answer. Through the thousands of letters of Kraith cor--respondence, through the sorting out between Jacqueline and Sondra in several volumes of such letters, through the five-week-visits in each others' homes to work on Kraith and this book, an answer began to emerge. The trait that seems to unite Star Trek fans we call Demanding Fantasy. Having it won't necessarily make you a Star Trek fan, but not having it will almost certainly make fan activities, and especially the writing of fan fiction, incomprehensible to you. Star Trek Lives! 269 Demanding Fantasy is a combination of the need for a demanding pleasure with the need to work out answers to certain fundamental human questions. Those questions—"Whither man?" and "Why?" and "What's it all about?" and "What is the proper relationship of man to himself, to his group, to the universe?" are so complex that almost the only way to think about I them is by building a model, a simplified model such as f: a physicist uses to try to figure out a physical problem. The model for human questions is the fictional character in the fictional situation. The mechanism for constructing such a model is the human mind's fantasy mechanism, and it can be operated on the level of simple wish-fulfillment or rise to the level of Demanding Fantasy. Certain kinds of fiction evoke Demanding Fantasy, prompting people to construct more scenes, further elaborations, even opposite and contrasting models to try to work out unanswered questions. Star Trek did. It seemed likely that Kraith was doing something of that. If Demanding Fantasy deals with absolutely vital human questions, it is no wonder if people take it seriously and feel threatened if they run into a strongly stated world-view that clashes with their own. Small wonder if the criticism of Kraith has a life-or-death urgency. It is both close to the world-view of Star Trek, I which so many found so captivating, and yet different I from it. The difference comes from premises which Jac- . queline selected, some consciously, some unconsciously, sometimes in total unawareness of how they clashed with her readers' conscious or unconscious premises. The untangling of that clash was hazardous and "fascinating"—and led to further questions. Can Demanding Fantasy be evoked in a reader or viewer deliberately? If so, how? Could the technique be learned, taught? Can Demanding Fantasy not only be evoked but kept from raging out of control, as in the explosive response to Kraith? Is there a technique for that? 270 { Star Trek Lives! We now believe that the answer to all of those questions is: Yes. The theory of writing fiction now developing out of the Kraith Quest and our study of Star Trek includes techniques and concepts designed to evoke Demanding Fantasy. One of these techniques is related to what Leonard Nimoy described in Chapter Six as "open texture." Others have to do with theme and premises and the artist's understanding of his own unconscious premises and those of his reader or viewer. The technique for keeping Demanding Fantasy under control has to do with a concept Jacqueline calls "Attitude of Intimacy"—compounded of the above and a crucial factor she calls deep personal sympathy, a profound seeing-into characters and their inner needs and differences and opposite points of view. The full exposition of that theory and the evidence for it will have to wait for the story of the Kraith Quest in tire Spock book. By that time we may have even more to report. Jacqueline has another experiment in progress testing that theory of fiction: her Sime series, non-STAR Trek science fiction of which the first full novel, House of Zeor, was published by Doubleday in the spring of 1974. Preliminary results seem to be encouraging— with people writing to say that they've read Zeor from two to eight times in a single week, and some of them evidently coming down with an even more severe case of Demanding Fantasy than Kraith usually evokes. But it seems to be more controlled—perhaps reflecting the effect of better understanding of the "Attitude of Intimacy." Meanwhile, the Kraith novels which Jacqueline and Sondra wrote together are just beginning to be published in fandom—reflecting a whole new direction for Kraith and a further development of its themes. Most of those themes, the exciting plot lines of both early and later Kraith, the contributions of other writers and some examples of the writing will also have to wait. T-Negative's reviewer, struggling to discuss even Volume One of Kraith Collected, wrote, "It's something like being asked to review The Complete Works of Star Trek Lives! 271 Edgar Allan Poe." By now it's more like Poe, Shakespeare and about forty other guys—or gals. No comparison of quality intended, but the sheer volume is mind-boggling, as is the scope of Kraith's background. The Kraith series is the story of the collision between the staid and reserved Vulcan culture and the boisterously vigorous Federation culture. But more, it is the story of two men, mortal and fallible men, Kirk and SpdcR; whose lives are directly caught between these colliding forces. Under threat of being ground to extinction, they find within themselves sources of strength and determination—and eventually success— which weld them into a friendship even more profound than we observed on the screen. That friendship changed their lives and also changed the direction of the Vulcan culture as well as that of the cosmopolitan UFP culture. Several themes pervade Kraith. One is, of course, the tale of Spock's private anguish—the search for the wife who will prevent his death in pon farr. Complicating this, however, is the clash between humans and the many nonhuman Federation member races who believe that humans are dominating the Federation and imposing their values on other cultures. In one Kraith novel, Spock undertakes to prove, by Vulcan formal public argument, that Vulcan withdrawal from the Federation, and the deportation of all humans from Vulcan, would be not only ineffective but also detrimental to Vulcan. In this novel we meet Spock's opponent, his half-sister, T'Uriamne, T'Pau's successor-in-training. (In Kraith, T'Pau's behavior in "Amok Time" is attributed to her conviction that humans are destroying Vulcan culture.) T'Uriamne is brilliant, beautiful—and Spock's implacable, deadly enemy. She has not spoken to Sarek for the forty years since he married the human Amanda. To make matters worse, Sarek and Spock invite Kirk to become (for several inescapably logical reasons) an adopted son of their (and T'Uriamne's) ancient and revered family without in any way relinquish- 272 Star Trek Lives! ing his pride in his emotions. Their avowed reason is that Kirk is to become the living bridge between the emotional Federation culture and Vulcan's unbending rationality. Privately, both Sarek and Spock have deeply personal reasons for this move. Kirk's acceptance of their invitation is followed by a short visit to Vulcan, where the formalities are completed and Kirk's training in Vulcan traditions begins. For this specified period, Kirk accepts Spock as his absolute superior, in a special Vulcan relationship used for teaching purposes called a "warder-liege." The emotional consequences of this turnabout are far-reaching for both of them throughout the remainder of the series. There are four novel-length stories, which Jacqueline and Sondra wrote together, which tell the tale of Kirk's training in the Vulcan science of mind, his induction (both voluntary and involuntary) into the mystique of Vulcan life (a process which occasionally threatens to make him wish that he had stayed home and taken up knitting) and of galactic events which make it seem that Spock's and Sarek's clandestine political maneuver (of which Kirk is the kingpin) will come to fruition far too late to do Vulcan any good. Kirk becomes increasingly entangled (both emotionally and legally) in the personal lives of Vulcans, especially Vulcan women. A warder-liege with Spock is one thing. But what about one with a Vulcan woman? What if Vulcan women are as strong or nearly as strong as Vulcan men? (Wouldn't they have to be to survive the port fair?) What if they are much stronger than Kirk? What happens when Kirk meets T'Uriamne, and finds himself totally in her power—legally? These are the kinds of questions Sondra's mind generates, and Jacqueline and Sondra sit up to the wee hours answering. Myrna Culbreath also generates provocative answers to Sondra's "what ifs," very different answers from Jacqueline's or Sondra's own. (A full three-way combination has yet to be tried.) Star Trek Lives! 273 At this writing, Sondra and Myrna are working together on some experiments in fiction, Star Trek [1 and otherwise, some of it a kind of alternate Kraith, '{'¦ raising many of the same questions, and some new ones. So stick around. At the very least, you can get as satisfyingly mad at us and at Kraith as others have before you. ~ Until we can give that fuller report, consider this a preliminary peek at research in progress. What then leads people to write Star Trek fan fiction? Is it a frivolous activity—as the writers' friends and families often believe—and as the writers themselves sometimes tend to suspect? We don't think so. Whatever one's first motive for writing Star Trek fan fiction, even fiction on the level of simple wish-fulfillment and a desire to get into that magical world, it is almost impossible to write Star Trek without becoming ever more aware of the challenges and demands that are built into it. Even the simplest first efforts often have merit, if only the merit of Star Trek—not at full power, but still strong. And the writing usually improves with the effort. Quite a lot of Star Trek fiction is professionally intended, at least in the sense that the writers intend to use it to sharpen their writing skills with a view toward becoming more professional. They could not find a better school. Star Trek may even be a new kind of science fiction, even a new kind of fiction. It has its roots in the old, of course, but it seems to be communicating a new kind of fusion which makes it a staggeringly effective model for dealing with deep human questions. Until that new fusion can be defined and conceptualized and broken down so that it can be learned and taught—a process on which we are trying to make 274 Star Trek Lives! a beginning—the very best way to study it is through Star Trek. Then one can perhaps apply the results to other fiction. That is what many fan writers seem to have been doing—and with considerable success. And it is hard to regard such efforts as frivolous or crazy. But if this be madness, let us by all means continue to make the most of it. We're certainly having too much fun to quit! ABOUT THE AUTHORS Jacqueline Lichtenberg was born in New York and grew up in California, where she was graduated from the University of California at Berkeley. Star Trek Lives! is the result of her collaboration with Sondra Marshak and the culmination of extensive material they collected over the years of their involvement in the Star Trek movement Ms. Lichtenberg has recently completed The House of Zeor, a science fiction novel published in 1974. Sondra Marshak was working toward a Ph.D. in history when she became involved with science fiction and in the Star Trek movement. She is currently producing the second TV special on Star Trek and also co-authoring a book on Mr. Spock, Star Trek's hero, with Myra Cul-breath. Joan Winston is the manager of administration in the contracts department at ABC television. She has also been the publicity chairman of the New York Star Trek conventions from 1972-1974. Her contributions to Star Trek Lives! are the first-person narrative chapters about the inside workings of the conventions, as well as some revealing personal anecdotes about the stars of the show. 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