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Before VCRs, we had the Fotonovels. And they were glorious
The serial number of the USS Reliant is NCC-1864. I’ve known that since 1984, when my family got a VCR and I could pause a rented copy of The Wrath of Khan. Pausing let me study details, and that was a game changer. Soon I was recording TOS repeats and taking 90 minutes to play and pause my way through the episodes.
I had a similar experience years earlier in 1979, when I discovered the Star Trek Fotonovels. These were essentially graphic novels that used episode images instead of drawings. Created by Mandala Productions and published by Bantam Books, 12 were released between 1977 and 1979, with one episode per book. I bought my first one at Bakka in Toronto, and grabbing one whenever I had a few dollars is one of my favourite collecting experiences.
You could linger on an image, examine the bridge and see the relative positions of the crew, look at the buttons on the consoles, note that a crewmember had a tricorder slung on one shoulder. The books were better for images than dialogue, however. The first issue in the series was, inevitably, The City on the Edge of Forever, and this pic from the opening puts words in our captain’s mouth that he never said on screen.
And it’s true that the images weren’t always stellar. This one, for example, is not kind to Scotty.
Most others, though, are great, and fans like me would often have these books fall apart from hours of use.
“Encounter with an Ellison“
A nice feature of these books was the supplemental material. Issue #1 has a good, albeit sadly brief, interview with Harlan Ellison, who wrote the screenplay on which the episode is based. The interview, conducted by Sandra Cawson (about whom I could find no information), opens with a description of Ellison’s home:
Harlan Ellison’s home is a calculated fall down a rabbit hole. Every wall scintillating with original paintings by the Italian Campanile, the German Wunderlich, the Japanese Kanemitsu, Leo and Diane Dillon — who do the covers of his books. Every corner is jammed with sculptures and toys and books, my God! the books: 17,000 in a sprawling, many-winged hillside retreat from which pour, every year, books, short stories, essays, reviews, motion-picture scripts and, of course, award-winning teleplays.
In a remark designed to tell you she had heard of Ellison’s gruff manner, Cawson writes: “To my surprise and delight, I found Ellison to be outgoing, charming, hospitable and prepared to answer my most prying questions.” As Ellison probably had approval rights on the resulting interview, this may have been more of his own world building.
The screen version of City was very different from Ellison’s script (my piece on the beautiful IDW graphic novel goes into those changes) and he was never shy about promoting his version as the superior story. In the interview, he said:
You must understand that working in television can be a singularly crippling and brutalizing thing for the creative spirit, particularly if a writer perceives himself as something more than merely a hack or a creative typist who is helping to fill network airtime in order to sell new cars and deodorants. So a writer who cares about his work puts in small touches, special scenes, lines of enriching dialogue, that give him his reason for writing it. Almost all of those touches were excised in the name of straight action sequences. Their loss diminished the value of the script enormously.
This is the writer of the episode slamming the story you just paid money to own. It was my first exposure to Ellison’s take on the episode, and at the time I had no idea what he meant. True to form, the interview ended with:
Sandra: Thank you. It’s been peculiar.
Harlan: And thank you. Yes, hasn’t it?
The Star Trek Quiz
Ten of the 12 Fotonovels also included a quiz. (The exceptions are numbers six and seven.) Even as a kid, these questions were too easy.
Here are the answers. I will cover the other Fotonovels in future posts.
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Pain on screen and in real life: Diamond Select’s Devil in the Dark diorama
I usually write about unique or rare collectibles on this site, and there are many I have yet to cover, but looking around my Star Trek room for post inspiration I was struck by the accuracy and attention to detail in Diamond Select’s The Devil in the Dark diorama.
Also, as it always does, looking at the scene on my shelf reminded me of a terrible time in William Shatner’s life, and of a behind-the-scenes story that illustrates both his professionalism and annoying sense of humour.
Behind-the-scenes TOS history
Like the company’s Space Seed diorama, this piece can be assembled to present one of two scenes: Spock standing and pointing his phaser at the Horta or a kneeling figure, grimacing in pain during the mindmeld.
I chose the latter because it’s a pivotal moment in the episode and because Shatner tells an interesting story about filming it in his book Star Trek Memories. He first names this episode as his favourite — “Exciting, thought-provoking and intelligent, it contained all of the ingredients that made up our very best Star Treks” — and then adds: “None of that stuff qualifies it as my favourite.” He explained:
Early in the second day of shooting this episode, I got a phone call that told me my father had died… The grief is long since gone, and just the joy of having known him and loved him and of knowing that he loved me remains. But at that moment in time, the pain was awful. My father had died.
He died in Miami, and…no matter how we juggled flights, there was just no way for me to avoid having to wait about five hours before I could get to Miami out of Los Angeles airport. It was almost lunchtime by the time my travel arrangements were finally firming up, and… I can remember hearing Gregg Peters, an A.D., saying ‘We’re going to break for lunch then shut down for the rest of the day. Everybody go home, we’ll not shoot today. Bill is leaving.’ And I said to Gregg, ‘Please don’t do that, my plane doesn’t leave until six, and I don’t know what I’ll do with myself for these remaining hours if I’m not here. Please, let’s continue to shoot.
An hour later, after we broke for lunch and after the tears and the anguish, we started shooting what we’d been rehearsing all morning… And even though I really can’t remember most of the day’s details anymore, the one thing that I recall perfectly and that I’ll never forget is the closeness that my friend Leonard had toward me. Not just emotionally, but physically as well. I mean, I’ve seen film with elephants that support the sick and the dying with their bodies, and Leonard somehow always seemed physically close to me.
Our cinematographer, Jerry Finnerman, whose father had also recently passed away, stayed close, too. And together, they kind of herded around me, assuring me that there were people close by in case I wanted to talk or just needed a friend. Between Leonard and Jerry, we were able to make it through that awful afternoon, and I was able to fly out that evening to my father, warmed by their love and affection.
That’s what makes this episode my favorite.
Shatner’s professionalism is impressive. In the episode, Kirk briefs the security detail before sending them into the tunnels to seek the monster and, according to Marc Cushman’s These are the Voyages, season 1, that is one of the scenes Shatner insisted on shooting before his flight. Cushman quotes actor Eddie Paskey: “I didn’t know at the time that his father had just passed away, and, as far as I knew, no one else on the set knew it.” No one there and no one watching the episode could see that Shatner had been weeping just before the cameras rolled.
Eddie Paskey (right) after Shatner got the bad news (TrekCore) Shatner continues the story:
As I flew off to my dad’s service, the crew went ahead and shot the scene where Spock mind-melds with the Horta. Now, as you know…it’s in great pain. So, of course, as Spock taps into its mind, he too experiences the creature’s anguish. With that in mind, he gets very emotional and yells out something like ‘Pain! PAIN!!’ Still, by the time I got back to the set, this was all in the can and I had no chance to see it.
When Shatner returned, the first task was to film Kirk’s reaction shots. He asked that Nimoy replay the scene, so his responses would be appropriate.
I kept pleading with Leonard until he finally gave in to my request, went over to the Horta costume and got ready to run the scene for me, at which point I said to him ‘Now Leonard, do this thing full out for me, will ya? Don’t just say pain, pain, let me really hear it. Do it for me!’ So now Leonard sighed, took a moment to prepare, and then launched into a full bore mind-meld.
“PA-A-A-A-A-A-A-IN!’ he howled. “Oh, PAIN, PAAAAAAAAIN!!!’
At which point I yelled, ‘Jesus Christ! Get that Vulcan an Aspirin!”
The crew broke up laughing, Leonard shook his head at me in disgust, and all at once I felt a whole lot better.
Shatner was dealing with a lot and probably needed humour to get through his day, but he admitted in a 2016 article in the Daily Mail that Nimoy was hurt by the prank, and he details a very different crowd reaction:
When the time came for the camera to shoot my reactions, I asked him to replay the scene, which he obligingly did. He didn’t rush it — he felt the emotion and cried out from the depths of his soul: ‘Pain! Pain! Pain!’
I went for the cheap joke and yelled, ‘Hey, someone get this guy an Aspirin!’ Then I waited for a laugh that never came.
Leonard was absolutely furious. He thought I’d set him up for ridicule. He stalked off the set but confronted me later, telling me that he thought I was ‘a real son-of-a-bitch.’
My apology must have sounded hollow because he didn’t say a word to me that wasn’t in the script for at least a week.
Great value
Diamond Select’s depiction of this scene is really good, with excellent attention to detail. The package contains two heads for Spock, two sets of hands, and two tricorders, one with the top flipped open and the other closed, because Spock’s tricorder is open when they first encounter the creature but closed as he approaches for the meld. The Horta’s wound can also be hidden or visible.
The packaging, however, is not quite as accurate. There is a notable error in the photo on the back of the box.
These dioramas are often available quite inexpensively. I paid C$15 for it at Hamilton Comic Con 2019 because the box was a little damaged. It’s an excellent piece that tells two great stories — one on screen, one behind it.
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Star Trek as Canadian content
Make a list of the people most responsible for Star Trek’s conception and early development. Roughly, that list would be Gene Roddenberry, Gene Coon, DC Fontana, Samuel Peeples, Matt Jefferies, Herb Solow and Robert Justman. They are all American.
But what they created is Canadian on a fundamental level. That idea was new to me and — once pointed out — obvious.
Sawyer I love Star Trek for many reasons, paramount of which is its optimistic view of the future, but there was always an element I couldn’t quite identify. I recently sat down with one of the world’s foremost science-fiction novelists, Robert J. Sawyer, to discuss Boarding the Enterprise, the Star Trek book he edited with David Gerrold. It’s a fascinating and unique book and you should read my article on it and then go buy it.
During that interview, Rob, who is Canadian, identified the aspect of my fandom that had eluded me.
I looked at…Star Trek first from a Canadian perspective. That peace is better than war, that multiculturalism is better than uniformity, and to me Star Trek was so Canadian in most of its vision. The rhetoric that you would hear was what Canada was supposed to be.
Rob is right. The ideals of Star Trek, the heart, the aspiration, are absolutely consistent with the best elements of Canadian society. Neither I nor Rob would suggest Canada is a utopia. We have gun violence and racial problems and poverty, but it is fair to say that we suffer those ills to a far lesser degree than do most countries.
Cultural mosaic
Although we don’t use the term as much anymore, Canada views itself as a cultural mosaic, a whole composed of pieces that are themselves distinct and unique. This contrasts to the melting-pot concept, in which being American means being the same.
Plato’s Stepchildren is about power imbalances and what the mighty do to those outside of the norm. Not the best episode, it nonetheless contains among the most Star Trek of lines. Kirk tells Alexander: “…where I come from, size, shape, or color makes no difference…” Alexander doesn’t have to be like everyone else. He can be both different and valid.
All episode photos from TrekCore Infinite diversity
The Vulcan concept of infinite diversity in infinite combinations was introduced in Is There In Truth No Beauty? and while the IDIC symbol was created for a real-world commercial reason, its sentiment is very much in keeping with the philosophy of Star Trek.
Miranda Jones’ parting words to Spock make the same value statement as Kirk’s to Alexander: “The glory of creation is in its infinite diversity.”
We’re not going to kill…today
Kirk is often presented with the opportunity to take ostensibly justified revenge on an enemy. The Horta in The Devil in the Dark, Balok in The Corbomite Maneuver and the Gorn of Arena are all at his mercy — yet he stays his hand. Even the vanquishing of Apollo in Who Mourns For Adonais? is an occasion for regret rather than a fist-pump of victory. As Rob said, time and again Star Trek tells us that preserving life is better than taking it.
The group that fashioned Star Trek in its early days were all American, and yet what they created uses ideals drawn from the Canadian example. Think of the Federation itself: a collaborative organization founded by very different people which promotes exploration, peace, and the common good, and which sends its ships out into the void to meet more people and invite them to contribute to the group. It is a cultural mosaic writ large.
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Boarding the Enterprise, a review: challenging and fascinating insights into the original series
Boarding the Enterprise is an atypical Star Trek book. It is a philosophical, scientific and cultural examination of the original series’ goals, messages and influence. The brainchild of notable and noted Canadian science-fiction novelist Robert J. Sawyer, the collection of essays is a serious and analytic examination that will gift even longtime Star Trek fans with new insights.
Despite that, Sawyer told me it was not a publishing success.
I am very proud of that book. And it tanked. It came out for the 40th anniversary of Star Trek and had a nice cover reminiscent of the Star Trek: The Motion Picture rainbow and it just did not sell for some reason. I was stunned when it didn’t leap off the shelves. With that cover and David’s name…I don’t know what went wrong. Maybe around the 40th anniversary there was too much product available.
The David is David Gerrold, another science-fiction powerhouse. He came on board as co-editor.
I asked David, ‘If I pitch a book to Glenn [Yeffeth, editor at BenBella Books], will you do an essay for it?’ I said that to him one morning at a convention and he came back to me later in the day and said, ‘Oh good news, I’m going to edit that book with you.’ So suddenly it went from being my book to being David’s and my book. But I thought, ‘Well, I can’t go wrong.’ I also figured it would do better, because David has the cachet in Star Trek.
David said we have to have something from Norman Spinrad and we have to have something from DC Fontana and from some other people. So [the essayists were] two worlds coming together: the people who had actually created the show and the people who had been influenced by the show as science-fiction professionals.
Sawyer and Gerrold
And yet, it didn’t sell. That is not, I think, because there was a glut of 40th anniversary material, but rather because it didn’t fall neatly into the two categories of Trek non-fiction that do well: gossipy personal accounts written by the actors or detailed production diaries that please behind-the-scenes nerds like me. It was doomed by its uniqueness, which is really unfortunate because it is full of insights that will resonate with thoughtful TOS fans. (Interestingly, Sawyer convinced BenBella to release a slightly updated version for Star Trek’s 50 anniversary.)
Here are thoughts on just two of its essays.
No identification of self or mission
Actor, writer and civil-rights activist Eric Greene used the Prime Directive to tackle Star Trek’s relationship to the real-world events of the 1960s, primarily the Vietnam War. He wrote:
In the course of the series, the Prime Directive was often debated, occasionally derided, but rarely obeyed. The Prime Directive was not a directive as much as it was the Prime Question: how much power should a superpower use when dealing with other peoples? That very question, the central tension driving the stories of Star Trek, was at the heart of American politics and popular culture at the time.
TOS hid its Vietnam commentary in the clothing of science fiction. DC Fontana, quoted in Boarding the Enterprise, said “no one was allowed to talk about [it] on television…but under science fiction we were able to get in commentary on Vietnam.”
Among the most biting of these is Errand of Mercy. Kirk risks his life and his ship to prevent innocent and seemingly powerless people from being taken over by an aggressive, technologically superior force. That’s laudable. But it is also the same role America cast for itself in Vietnam. As Greene writes:
Seeking to “deny” Organia to the Klingons and to win Organia’s allegiance to the Federation, Kirk offered Organia medical, educational, technical and military assistance — the trademark nation-building and counter-insurgency tools the U.S. used to “deny” developing nations to the Communists.
The Organians, however, refused the proffered benefits. “…we really do not need your protection,” Claymare tells Kirk. When Ayelborne adds that they have nothing anyone would want, Kirk replies “You have this planet and its strategic location.”
The irony is that, in this at least, the Federation is the same as the Klingons. As Sawyer said:
The Federation could have shown up at any time to offer all [that help] to the Organians, but it didn’t, until Organia turned out to be strategically useful. So, it was not like this was UNESCO going out to offer aid, it was ‘We will do all these nice things for you — because we need you.’
The difference, of course, is that the Federation would not take over the planet. Kirk tells the council “With the Federation, you have a choice. You have none with the Klingons.” That crucial difference allows us viewers to maintain our esteem for the Federation good guys, but the parallels to Vietnam are clear.
Also fascinating in the Vietnam context are The Apple and A Private Little War. Spock, Greene writes, argues in The Apple that the feeders of Vaal have “the right to choose a system that works for them…Whatever you choose to call it, the system works.” This exact argument was made by those who opposed the Vietnam War. Kirk, however, sees a people yoked unwillingly to a communal ideal of service: “They should have the opportunity of choice. We owe it to them to interfere.”
Kirk opts for force, using the ship’s phasers to destroy the foundational basis of this society, an ending that always bothered me. Is that choice consistent with his oath to uphold the non-interference directive? No, which is why The Apple does not work as an episode. But it does work as allegory. Watch The Apple as a debate about the very real problems of the Vietnam War, and it is effective.
A Private Little War premiered about five months later. It presents one interpretation of the Vietnam conflict in stark and obvious terms: two superpowers fight a proxy war by arming both sides with enough weapons to fight, but not with what Kirk calls “an overpowering weapon.” Greene wrote:
The episode thus represented the roots of the Vietnam conflict as noble and necessary, [but] it also dramatized the dilemma of that policy: Kirk acknowledged no limiting principle, no stopping point and, significantly, no strategy for success, only a strategy for stalemate.
The sheer hopelessness of the tactic Kirk must adopt is grimly powerful. Robert Sawyer:
A Private Little War is a very tricky episode for me, because McCoy is right: ‘It went on bloody year after bloody year.’ And Kirk has to argue the position that we have to take an interventionist role. Now, the United States arguably started the Vietnam War to prevent lawful elections from happening in Vietnam that would have elected a Communist government. I think the most important line in the episode is when Kirk asks Scotty for a hundred flintlocks and Scotty replies ‘A hundred what?’ Kirk says ‘A hundred…serpents…serpents for the garden of Eden. We’re very tired, Mister Spock. Beam us up home.’
He gets to say they’re coming home at a time when all those soldiers in Vietnam didn’t get to say that. It’s a very powerful moment: he realizes that he is following through because he’s in it this deep and he is going to continue, but that is the moment he realizes that it is evil. A hundred serpents for the garden of Eden.
In these episodes, the two Genes — Coon in The Apple and Roddenberry in A Private Little War — presented to TV viewers the rationales and conflicts of Vietnam in a way no one else was able or willing to do. As Sawyer told me:
No one was dealing with any of these issues on TV, so the fact that they were even touching on this is so praiseworthy. This is a time when every other prime-time show tried to ignore the fact that the United States was at war and the teenagers were dying overseas, even putting aside the many, many Vietnamese who were dying. The American-as-apple-pie teenagers that we would see on other shows were being sent overseas to kill and be killed, and America just had blinders on about it.
In both episodes, there’s a lot of arguing about whether what they were doing was right. And that’s good, because there were no clear-cut answers. If I had to choose, I’d rather watch A Private Little War, although both have terrible wigs in them, because it at least shows the cost of war when Tyree, after Nona is killed, decides he wants many more guns. You see a good person just destroyed.
Kirk slash Spock: fan fic love stories
Slash fiction is fan fiction that focuses on romantic, usually sexual, relationships between characters of the same sex. The name comes from the / when people write “Kirk/Spock” or other combinations of characters.
Slash fic The Price and the Prize
If you are new to slash fic and curious about it, check out the 61,437 Star Trek stories at Archive of Our Own.
I have never been interested in slash fic. This is not because I have LGBTQ hangups; whatever consenting adults want or don’t want to do is fine with me. Rather, I have dismissed slash fic because it is not canon; there was never any hint during the series of a sexual relationship between the main characters.
Because of that, I never gave slash fic much thought, but luckily Sawyer decided to examine it. “We had to track down an expert on slash fic,” he said, “because this had never been explored.”
The expert he found was fan fiction writer Melissa Dickinson, who explained why slash fic matters to many fans.
If we look at the canon text of the show, and the weekly romantic interests…it provided for our complex, heroic, flawed characters, it becomes very quickly apparent that they lack two essential things: intimacy and equality. Those same bright, imaginative, educated female fans who identified with Spock, who admired Kirk for his ideals and courage (or vice versa), found it impossible to reconcile their admiration for the characters with the idea that Kirk could seriously fall in love with a pretty, emotionally vacant android in about fifteen minutes, or that Spock would get high on spores, leave his work and abandon his loyalty to Kirk for the vacuous Leila Kalomi, who so clearly didn’t get him at all.
These passionate fans weighed the popular 1960s images of romantic love and found them wanting. Instead, they wanted for Kirk and Spock what they wanted for themselves: an emotional unity based on shared ideals, equality, intimacy, and trust. They were busy throwing off the roles that society had tried to impress upon them — why would Kirk and Spock not do the same?
This is such a profound idea: that the deep friendship between Kirk and Spock would find expression in romantic love not because the characters are homosexual or bisexual but because specifics of sexuality are irrelevant, and that what actually matters is an intellectual and emotional bond that, perhaps, results in physical intimacy.
Buy the book
Boarding the Enterprise is a deep well of insight, and I’ve only dipped into the surface here. It offers 14 essays, including pieces on religion in Star Trek, what happened to the space race, and a hilarious take on safety equipment in the 23rd century. Each could easily be an article in itself. Sawyer posted his introduction to the book on his site. Read that and then go buy the book. It’s available for a handful of dollars on your local Amazon site and as a Kobo or Kindle e-book.
The book is a challenging, serious, even scholarly tome that requires intellectual participation from its reader, but that effort is worthwhile. It is among the most thoughtful of books on the original series.
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Inside Star Trek 7: favourite designs and fashion advice with Bill Theiss
Inside Star Trek was a semi-official newsletter, published under the guidance of Gene Roddenberry. This connection gave the writers access to the actors, production crew and sets.
I own the complete run:
- Issues 1 to 12: Inside Star Trek, edited by Ruth Berman
- Issues 13 to 24: renamed Star Trektennial News, edited by Susan Sackett
- Issues 25 to 31: again called Inside Star Trek, edited by Virginia Yable
Here are highlights from issue 7, published early 1969.
That “real now” sound of the Vulcan harp
Reader Joanne Ektarian wrote in to ask if the Vulcan harp or lytherette (a word that also appeared in some fanfiction) actually works and, if not, how its sounds are made.
Editor Ruth Berman replied that the prop does not actually work and Leonard Nimoy does not play the instrument. That’s obvious, but the question generated interesting information on its unusual sound:
The instrument used is a harp (Terran) recorded at a high volume and played at a low volume to produce the ethereal tones of the harp (Vulcan). When the harp was first used, in the first-season show Charlie X, the composer experimented with both harp and guitar, and when Elaan of Troyius was filmed in the third season, a Yamano organ was tried — but in both cases the harp turned out to give the best results.
From Star Trek: Lost Scenes I am not clear how recording at a high volume and playing at a lower volume would change the sound itself; it would only change the resulting volume. Perhaps Berman meant speed, although again one would think the two opposite approaches would simply balance out. In any case, the sound is indeed otherworldly as early as its first appearance in Charlie X.
Berman refers to the harp in Elaan of Troyius. Don’t remember that? A sequence on the recreation deck was filmed but cut before broadcast, according to the excellent book Star Trek: Lost Scenes.
The costume designer’s favourite costumes
From Star Trek Sketchbook D.C. Fontana interviewed Star Trek costume designer William Ware Theiss. She asked which of his creations were hits with the fans.
The three most popular costumes I remember off-hand were Sherry Jackson’s costume from What Are Little Girls Made Of?…Leslie Parrish’s costume from Who Mourns for Adonais? and Jill Ireland’s costume from This Side of Paradise. I was prepared for and eagerly anticipated the storm over Sherry Jackson’s costume and pleased that Leslie Parrish’s was as well liked by the audience as it was by me. The popularity of Jill Ireland’s costume was a surprise to me inasmuch as it was a rehash of a style my mother wore when I was a little boy, which just goes to show classic designs are always good.
L-R: Sherry Jackson, Leslie Parrish, Jill Ireland (TrekCore) And what were Theiss’ own favourite designs?
I would have to mention Leslie Parrish’s costume first of all…a breathtakingly beautiful girl in one of my favorite scripts. (Because I am hung up on Greek mythology, I always preferred the script in the version the studio killed, wherein the ending becomes bittersweet rather than tragic. Dr. McCoy discovers the young female officer is due to bear the child of Apollo.) I feel this design, while Greek in feeling, was a completely fresh idea, i.e. the front of the dress was held up by the weight of the train which fell over the shoulder to the floor.
Another favorite of mine is the floor-length chiffon poncho over a black lace body stocking worn by Antoinette Bower in Catspaw. The design itself is not that unusual, but through a stroke of luck the finding of just the right black and white cabalistic print chiffon enabled me to portray a sinister, sexy futuristic witch.
Antoinette Bower, Catspaw I too prefer the original ending of Who Mourns for Adonais? The screened episode ends with Kirk’s sad question, “Would it have hurt us, I wonder, to gather a few laurel leaves?” The script, however, added a closing scene in which McCoy informs the captain and first officer that Parrish is pregnant, and wonders “What will the child be? Man? Or God?” That scene is also in the James Blish novelization of the episode, as Blish was working from the script and had not seen the episode.
From the second revised final draft script The interview also includes this fashion advice for readers:
There are lots of things you can say, like “Listen to your mother.” But, of course, your mother might have rotten taste. Or “Believe in yourself.” But you might have rotten taste. Or, “Read the best teenage fashion magazines.” But they do have rotten taste — too often. I guess the only general advice is only buy things you feel very strongly about.”
Inside Star Trek is an invaluable source of early Star Trek voices. I’ll cover each issue. Click here to read other articles in this series. -
A defence of The Way to Eden: it’s better, and much darker, than you remember
Star Trek IV is called “the one with the whales” but, where that is said with affection, The Way to Eden is often dismissed as “the one with the hippies.” Viewers dazzled by the way-out costumes, the “we reach” lingo and the quasi flower-power mysticism often don’t see the warning about messianic figures and the cults they build around themselves. The Way to Eden is closer to Charles Manson than to the summer of love.
It’s not a popular episode, so you probably haven’t watched it in a while. Here are some reasons you should fire up Netflix or pull disc 4 of the Blu-ray set off your shelf.
Solid production values
The costumes are way out and also fantastic. Tongo Rad asks Chekov “Say, tell me, why do you wear all those clothes? How do you breathe?” and their outfits fit perfectly with that world view.
All episode images are from TrekCore The dialogue is often outlandish — “Oh ho, that’s now. That’s real now. I reach that, brother. I really do. Give.” — but it is always delivered realistically, as if it makes perfect sense to the speaker.
It’s also well directed. David Alexander’s only other episode, Plato’s Stepchildren, is also considered to be over the top but he gets strong performances from the actors here. And there are nice little touches throughout. As Kirk exits sickbay just after McCoy explains Sevrin’s diagnosis, for example, a security guard hears the door open behind him and hurriedly tosses one of the egg-shaped One pins back to the blond female passenger. He does not want his captain to know he had been chatting with the group. That small piece of stage direction is not detailed in the second revised final draft of the script, and so perhaps came from Alexander.
But the direction is not perfect. In the same scene, during Adam’s “Stiff man putting my mind in jail” song, the actor stops playing his “guitar” halfway through but the strumming is heard throughout.
Good character moments
One three-minute sequence gives us wonderful insights. Kirk returns to the bridge after his initial confrontation with the group. Chekov has heard Irina’s voice from the transporter room and it is clear on his face that he once loved her. Kirk tells Chekov he may leave his post, without the ensign actually asking to do so. The moment says much about the respect these officers hold for each other, and it’s a nice performance from Walter Koenig.
Spock then explains his interest in the One movement by telling Kirk “They regard themselves as aliens in their own worlds, a condition with which I am somewhat familiar.” It’s a small yet powerful statement.
Directly after that, Kirk asks Spock to explain the group’s “Herbert” jabs. Spock reluctantly defines Herbert as “a minor official notorious for his rigid and limited patterns of thought” and William Shatner’s reaction is a wonderfully understated bit of acting.
The script was written by Arthur Heinemann and Michael Richards. The latter is the pseudonym Dorothy Fontana employed after her script Joanna somehow morphed into this episode. (I wrote about that a little here.) She was clearly displeased with the screened version, but this brief scene on the bridge is reason enough to watch this episode.
The Federation doesn’t suit everyone
The Way to Eden is a rare look at people who are uncomfortable living in the Federation. This otherwise utopian society, Sevrin tells Spock, “is poison to me. This stuff you breathe, this stuff you live in, the shields of artificial atmosphere that we have layered about every planet. The programs in those computers that run your ship and your lives for you…” Spock describes the One movement to Kirk as “almost a biological rebellion. A profound revulsion against the planned communities, the programming, the sterilised, artfully balanced atmospheres.”
That no one social model serves everyone’s needs is an important message, especially for those Star Trek fans who, like Roy Neary in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, would jump at the chance to board a starship.
The social warnings
The limits of authority. The episode is an interesting examination of the limits of Kirk’s authority. Accustomed to command hierarchies, what does he do when people simply refuse to obey? He faces the same dilemma when his crew, stoned on spores, mutinies in This Side of Paradise. In Eden, when Sevrin and his followers do not accept the captain’s authority, Kirk gives up and turns to someone who will obey: “Mister Spock, you seem to understand these people. You will deal with them.”
Religious fanaticism. It’s striking that Sevrin never really explains his belief system, and his followers seem fine with that. Asked by Spock to state the group’s purpose, Sevrin says only “If you understand One, you know our purpose.” Pushed a little, he adds “We turn our backs on confusion and seek the beginning.” But that beginning is identified as the planet Eden, so at best his religious system is built on an adaptation that replaces a garden with a remote planet in Romulan space. That certainly stretches the source material, but his followers buy into it.
Cults. Sevrin is a cult leader. Like many before him, his followers are willing to die and kill for him. They barely question that requirement. When Sevrin announces he will kill all the crew on board the Enterprise, their quick acquiescence is chilling.
Sevrin: I’m using sound against them, beyond the ultrasonic. It will stun them and allow us time to leave. We’ll go in one of their shuttlecraft.
Irina: Sound pitched that high doesn’t stun, it destroys. I remember when we read in the text that it…
Sevrin: I’ve gone beyond those texts, Irina. It’s correct for you to be concerned, but be assured also.
Rad: We are in orbit over Eden, Brother Sevrin. (pause) It does destroy.
Sevrin: We cannot allow them to come after us.
The cult leader has spoken, his followers nod, and then Adam sings an upbeat song as the entire crew is dying.
Sevrin is a deep and dark character
The fun songs and crazy outfits tend to obscure the truly dark nature of the main antagonist. While Sevrin is not one of Trek’s best bad guys, he is one of the darkest. Khan tries to kill Kirk in a decompression chamber, sends Spock to die and threatens “Each of you in turn will go in there” until he gets cooperation — and all of that is bad, but Sevrin decides to flat-out slaughter every person on board the Enterprise. He does that just so he can get a ride to a planet.
His character gives us an interesting look at madness and the power of a charismatic figure to lead others to their doom.
Of course, there are problems here too
People dislike The Way to Eden for its crazy costumes, far-out dialogue and the music. Those elements do not bother me; my criticism is far more substantive.
Sevrin and his followers tried to murder all 430 people on the ship and, at the end of the episode, everyone is fine with that.
After barely escaping certain death, the landing party beams down to Eden. Sevrin and Adam are dead, all the others are horribly burned by acid, and Chekov’s response is to put his arm around Irina and comfort her. Later, the two share an emotional goodbye and a tender kiss on the bridge.
This is the woman who agreed to his death and that of everyone around him. Worse, Kirk makes this ridiculous statement to Chekov: “You did what you had to do. As did we all. Even your friends.”
What? This band of psychopaths had to kill them all? Oh well. Shrug.
If you want to hate on The Way to Eden, do it because the ending is absurd and offensive. I believe it was an attempt to say that the methods were wrong but that the basic beliefs of the group had merit. Spock outright says that to Kirk: “There is no insanity in what they seek.” This fit with the progressive thinking of the 60s that dismissed conformity, but there is no way around the fact that the episode ends on a terrible message.
Even with its faults — or, more likely, because of them — this is a deeply misunderstood episode. It is not a hippie-dippy story about a bunch of quirky malcontents who just want to sing songs and eat fruit. It is a warning about the power of cults, the discontent that even utopian conformity can create, and a cautionary tale about a society that most viewers (myself included) would embrace.
Postscript
Victor Brandt played Tongo Rad and had a small role in Elaan of Troyius, and there are two interesting bits in this interview with StarTrek.com. The first is about his legacy as an actor: “I had no idea at the time Star Trek would be on my gravestone. It will say, “Here lies Victor Brandt, who played Tongo Rad.”
He also tells a great story about his guest shot on Shatner’s T.J Hooker:
I went in and auditioned, and I got the part. It was an interesting part, a cabbie who was being coerced into ratting out a fare. I went on the set in the morning – and this is true – and I introduced myself to Bill. I said, “By the way, Bill, do you remember me?” He said, “From what?” I said, “Well, I did two episodes of Star Trek.” He looked at me and he said, “Victor, I’ve got to tell you the truth.” I said, “What’s that?” He said, “I only remember the women.” I wasn’t insulted. We both laughed. He wasn’t kidding.
Postscript the second
Overall, I far prefer to watch my TOS with its original effects, but the remastered episode features a nicely reimagined space cruiser Aurora. The ship was originally the Tholian vessel from The Tholian Web with nacelles glued on the model. By contrast, the remastered version actually looks like a ship that would exist alongside the Enterprise. Kudos to the remastering team.
The original Aurora 
The remastered version -
Waiting on Walter. My lunchbox needs him
Star Trek’s 50th anniversary was in 2016. The premiere is celebrated September 8 for the day in 1966 when Willliam Shatner introduced the US viewing public to TOS with: “Captain’s log, stardate fifteen thirteen point one. Our position, orbiting planet M one hundred thirteen. On board the Enterprise, Mr. Spock, temporarily in command.”
Those words were actually heard first in Canada, a full two days earlier, because CTV had Star Trek on its schedule for Tuesdays instead of NBC’s Thursdays. Another bit of Man Trap trivia: the opening voiceover was added at the suggestion of associate producer Bob Justman. His memo to Gene Roddenberry read:
After viewing “THE MAN TRAP” with Sandy Courage this afternoon, I am of the opinion that we need Narration for the opening of the TEASER. The TEASER starts out with a shot of the Enterprise orbiting about a planet and then we DISSOLVE FROM that to an ESTABLISHING SHOT of planet surface and then from that to a shot of Kirk and his companions materializing on the surface of the planet. These three shots take quite a bit of time on the screen.
And since this is liable to be our first or second show on the air, I think it would be wise to establish where we are and what we are doing, over these opening shots. Therefore, feel free to write a lengthy narration for Captain Kirk. It could run as much as half a minute, if you wished it.
The bridge scene from The Naked Time Justman was right. Since our introduction to all of Star Trek is a view of Spock and the bridge crew, it is important to at least hear the voice of our hero. The opening footage of the bridge and of Spock in the command chair are outtakes from The Naked Time and What Are Little Girls Made Of?, respectively. For more detail on this, see this excellent Star Trek Fact Check article.
What does this have to do with a lunchbox?
The 1968 Aladdin box My lunchbox is not the coveted 1968 Aladdin one — which I indeed covet but do not own — but rather a nice little 50th anniversary unit made for the 2016 Fan Expo convention. And this is where Walter Koenig finally enters this post. It is signed by all the main cast who are still with us: William Shatner, George Takei and Nichelle Nichols — but not Walter Koenig. The other three attended the 2016 Fan Expo but Koenig did not, and he has not visited southern Ontario since.
(Astute Star Trek fans will note that, in discussing the 50th anniversary, I am talking about the first season of TOS — and Koenig wasn’t in the cast yet. True, but Chekov was on board the Enterprise. Khan Noonien Singh told us so.)
So, I am waiting for Koenig to visit my fair city or its environs. Without him, my lunchbox is incomplete. Of course, I have his autograph — nine times, including on a program from the Toronto Star Trek ’76 convention. Sadly, that one I did not get in person in 1976, but I really like it and will write about it soon.
So why am I bothered about the anniversary box? Well, first, because it is an anniversary item and should be signed by everyone who was still with us in 2016. Second, because collecting autographs is like eating potato chips: it’s hard to stop.
The lunchbox is in your court, Mr. Koenig. Please come to Toronto.
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Inside Star Trek 6: bubble-wrap Klingons and warm Gorns
Inside Star Trek was a semi-official newsletter, published under the guidance of Gene Roddenberry. This connection gave the writers access to the actors, production crew and sets.
I own the complete run:
- Issues 1 to 12: Inside Star Trek, edited by Ruth Berman
- Issues 13 to 24: renamed Star Trektennial News, edited by Susan Sackett
- Issues 25 to 31: again called Inside Star Trek, edited by Virginia Yable
Here are highlights from issue 6, published December 1968.
What is a warm Gorn? I still don’t know
Reader Joe Rauner sent this question to the newsletter: What is a warm Gorn? Here is the complete reply:
The Gorns were hostile, reptilian aliens in “Arena.” By analogy, since they looked reptilian, they were thought of as cold-blooded. By analogy, a warm-blooded animal with a love for Star Trek is a warm Gorn. In particular, Gene Roddenberry’s assistant Rick Carter (the first man to introduce himself as a Gorn) is a warm Gorn.
So…I have no idea. I have never heard the term “warm Gorn” and Google comes up with nothing. If anyone knows what this is about, please tell me.
On a break from being Spock
In an interview with Leonard Nimoy, we learn his studio office consisted of two rooms crammed with books, scripts, magazines and letters, and that on the bathroom door he taped a poster of himself starring in Gore Vidal’s play Visit to a Small Planet. It ran at the Pheasant Run Playhouse in St. Charles, Illinois, in 1968, and before that was adapted for a movie starring Jerry Lewis.
That poster was probably this photo. Notice the Spock haircut.
Ruth Berman asked about two films Nimoy had done recently: Deathwatch and The Balcony. He noted that both were too grim to be played on network TV, but that they sometimes appeared in rep cinemas. Too grim is about right. Deathwatch, for example, opens with a hooded Nimoy being led to a small room in which he is permitted to walk in small circles for 55 minutes, rest for five, and then walk again for 55 minutes. Prison inmates walking in small rooms is the entire first 10 minutes, but the film gets a lot better as a series of flashbacks show us how the characters ended up in stir. Nimoy is actually quite good in the role.
The film also starred Michael Forest, a few years before he appeared as Apollo in Who Mourns for Adonais?
Forest and Nimoy in Deathwatch There is a good bit at the end of the interview, when Berman observes Nimoy stepping back into his role:
Nimoy pushed up the sleeve of his uniform, revealing, rather incongruously, a wrist-watch underneath. “I’m afraid I’m due back at the set,” he said. As he rose, his face and back straightened into Spock’s formality of bearing.
Bill Theiss on bubble-wrap Klingons and placemat Elasians
In D.C. Fontana’s article on Star Trek costume designer Bill Theiss, we learn he struggled to find work after serving in the navy during World War II. He designed neckties for a summer, did a stint as an artist in the advertising department at Universal, moved to the wardrobe department at CBS, worked on two movies in Europe, and then landed a job as a designer on Blake Edwards’ The Pink Panther.
Theiss and Susan Oliver, The Cage After some time in wardrobe at ABC, Theiss worked on The World of Ray Bradbury, which brought him to the attention of Fontana. They had first met at Universal and, based on this job, she recommended that Roddenberry hire him for The Cage. He then worked on a bunch of other projects in the eight months before Star Trek began its regular production schedule with Where No Man Has Gone Before.
On Star Trek, Theiss said that one of the biggest challenges is “coming up with designs that are futuristic, because in reality they are never futuristic” as he is “limited by fabrics and materials [and] must try to find design devices which spell out the future for us here and now.”
I knew the Elasian guards from Elaan of Troyius were clothed partly in placemats and that Klingon costumes employed bubble wrap, but I had always assumed those were cost-saving choices. Theiss had a far more artistic explanation:
My main approach for turning contemporary fabrics into futuristic materials and fabrics is to employ things out of context. This device can take a number of forms. One is to use a material designed for one purpose for something totally different. For example, plastic placemats became Neo-Renaissance body armor in Elaan of Troyius. In another case, I sprayed fabrics with metallic color using geometric lace as a stencil. That was on A Taste of Armageddon, where I also used upholstery fabrics on the men’s costumes. Part of the Klingon uniform is a plastic packing material called Sealed Air.
A placematted Kryton And Theiss’ famous predilection for showing a lot of skin? That too had motivation beyond the obvious:
Clothes since the mid-nineteenth century have become less and less bulky, cumbersome, protective (both physically and morally) and headed faster and faster apparently into complete nudity. This does not mean clothes of the future will be non-existent, or that people in the future will be nude… I can only deduce the future will bring literally thousands of style changes, and nudity as one of them.
Michael Forest and Leslie Parrish
Inside Star Trek is an invaluable source of early Star Trek voices. I’ll cover each issue. Click here to read other articles in this series. -
Harlan Ellison put a drug dealer on the Enterprise. That was not the biggest script problem
Harlan Ellison submitted his The City on the Edge of Forever story outline in March of 1966. Two revised outlines followed in May, with the first-draft script arriving in June, followed by revised versions that month and again in August. Story consultant Steven Carabatsos then did a script rewrite, Ellison did another draft in December, and then Gene Coon, D.C. Fontana and Gene Roddenberry all completed rewrites and polishes through February 1967 before the cameras started rolling early that same month.
Why so many writers and rewrites? Because the script, while brilliant, was also problematic. The obvious issue was that one crew member is a drug dealer and at least one other is an addict. The addict, stoned on duty, almost destroys the Enterprise. This was a much darker vision of the future than Roddenberry wanted, and he was right to reject Ellison’s versions of the story.
But this hurdle — scripts that didn’t get the tone and characters right — was a routine occurrence, especially early in the series. Freelance writers could not be expected to understand the nuances of the shows they served. But Ellison’s work contained a much more fundamental problem, one that is surprising for such a gifted writer: the prime mover is a character we don’t know and don’t like, and therefore don’t care about.
This article is about IDW’s beautiful graphic novel of Ellison’s teleplay. It is an almost word-for-word retelling of his script, and one Ellison himself endorsed, writing in the introduction “I want you to believe as deeply as you believe in anything that I am ‘over the moon’ at what has been done with my original teleplay.”
Someday I will write a longer piece about Ellison’s own book on the episode.
The story
Ellison’s story underwent some changes as it progressed, but here are the basics. I will not spoil the ending of the story.
The episode opens with Beckwith, a hulking command-division officer who deals an illicit drug called The Jewels of Sound. An addicted lieutenant named LeBeque is begging the dealer for a hit. Beckwith will give him a dose, but in exchange he wants “to know about that planet out there, what the log says about valuable commodities. I’ll want a landfall pass, and I want you to cover for me when I trade with the natives.”
LeBeque shoots back, “After the slaughter you caused on Harper Five, you’ll do it again?” He says all Beckwith wants is to “cheat aliens, get them hooked on illegal narcotics, and steal what they could trade for cultural advances.”
Again, it’s a much darker future than Roddenberry wanted, more Breaking Bad than Star Trek.
LeBeque gets his hit and is soon being admonished by Spock for mishandling the bridge controls and almost wrecking the ship. “You’ll blow the entire drive,” Spock says.
LeBeque tells Beckwith he’s decided to turn in the dealer, so Beckwith kills him and then clubs a guard outside the transporter room before beaming down to the planet.
In a captain’s log, we learn the Enterprise has been investigating strange radiation that has the ship’s chronometers running backwards. A landing party pursues Beckwith and discovers a surreal city in the distance, which Kirk calls “A city on the edge of forever.”
Kirk then derides time travel using words that must have horrified Roddenberry: “I always thought stories about time machines were the drunkstuff of lab technicians when they’ve had too much pure grain to drink.”
Beckwith then jumps through the portal and changes history. I will end the summary there, so as not to spoil the story. It really is worth reading.
What Ellison got wrong
The complete lack of humour. When Kirk and Spock arrive in New York, they encounter a virulent racist standing on a soapbox ranting about “the alien filth that pollutes our fine country.” The mob attacks Spock and the two flee to the safety of a nearby basement. Missing is the funny televised scene of Kirk and Spock encountering the policeman after they snatch some pants and shirts. Ellison’s work is unrelentingly grim, while the screen version had moments of humor that improved the viewing experience and are true to life. Even in bad times, there are bits of levity.
The drug-dealer story line isn’t necessary. The only purpose served by placing a drug dealer and mass murderer on the Enterprise is to create a character desperate and panicked enough to seek escape by leaping through a time portal. The drugs themselves and the presence of addicted crew members have no real bearing on the rest of the story.
The rewritten script instead gives this antagonist role to McCoy, in a plot much more in keeping with the Star Trek universe. McCoy does his duty and saves Sulu’s life. A fluke caused by a lurching ship sets in motion the same crisis as in Ellison’s script, but without the murders and destruction.
The end lacks punch. The episode consistently ranked as Star Trek’s best closes with a gut blow. That punch lands with far less force in the graphic novel. I won’t give away the ending here, saying only that our hero is less heroic in this version.
We don’t care about Beckwith. But the biggest problem with the original story — and one that is surprising coming from such a talented writer — is that we feel no connection to the story’s prime mover. Beckwith is a two-dimensional villain. He all-but twirls his mustache and ties Uhura to the train tracks. He is not interesting.
By contrast, the filmed version delivers one of the strongest episodes for the TOS trinity of Kirk, Spock and McCoy. Kirk and Spock are worried about McCoy, and we share that concern because we like him. It is interesting to watch them deal with Depression-era New York. It is frustrating to see the trio almost run into each other as the currents of time draw them together. And we share their joy when they are finally reunited. We are engaged by the characters. Ellison’s version has us spend a lot of time with a guy we don’t care about, but the screened version uses that time to develop McCoy’s character and deepen the bond with his friends.
What Ellison got right
There is a lot to love in Ellison’s vision.
Our crew doesn’t ignore McCoy’s pending death. It bugs me every time I watch this episode that the crew rushes down to the planet to find McCoy before the drug overdose kills him but they then immediately get distracted by the Guardian and forget about the doctor. McCoy could easily have died while they chatted with the big talking circle. Ellison wrote the same basic sequence but it makes more sense absent the pending demise of a main character.
Janice is a badass. Ellison created a fantastic role for Janice Rand. When Beckwith locks the doors to the transporter room, Kirk orders Rand to melt them with a phaser rifle. On the planet, Beckwith grabs her from behind and she sends a sharp elbow into his midriff. And after Beckwith leaps through the portal, the crew beams up to find that the Enterprise has been replaced by the pirate ship Condor. Rand beats up some bad guys and then Kirk puts her in charge of the security squad with orders to defend the room. “Yeoman Rand…can you hold this chamber?” Rand replies “I can, sir.”
It’s a role that, in the ’60s, would normally have been filled by some large guy. Ellison’s take is progressive and refreshing and Grace Lee Whitney would have had a wonderful time playing the part.
(It’s interesting to note that Ellison had a relationship with Whitney during the production of season one, so it’s possible he was following in Roddenberry’s footsteps: writing a good role for his girlfriend. But even if true, for viewers it would still have been a breakthrough episode for one of the women of TOS.)
Spock gets some great dialogue. Ellison’s dialogue is often inspired. There is, for example, a lovely moment in the graphic novel; it first appeared in Ellison’s initial script, which he called the Writer’s Work Draft, and was also present in the June 3, 1966, teleplay he published in his book on the episode. Whereas the aired episode ends with the best closing line of any TOS episode, Kirk’s despaired “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Ellison’s version has Kirk and Spock return to the Enterprise. Kirk is anguished over the death of Edith, and the episode closes with Spock comforting his friend:
No woman was ever loved as much, Jim. Because no woman was ever offered the universe for love.
That’s beautiful and should have been worked into the screen version somewhere.
Working with this production team. The graphic novel is gorgeous. As Ellison writes in the introduction, “I could not have pictured it as perfect as it has turned out.” Much of the credit must go to artist J.K Woodward, who produced stunning images.
Needlessly dark
Overall, though, Ellison’s script is needlessly dark and not consistent with the future Star Trek presented. Ellison, always voluble in his criticism of how Roddenberry handled his work, wrote in the introduction to this book that “there have been many who have excused what was done to my script by saying, erroneously, that the technology was not available fifty years ago to approximate what I had put on the page.” That was surely a concern at the time, but that analysis ignores the story weaknesses and the misfire on tone.
I am a fan of dystopian fiction, starting with A Canticle for Leibowitz in high school and on to recent TV like The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad and The Handmaid’s Tale. But we don’t need Star Trek to be dark. We need Star Trek to be inspirational. There is already precious little out there for those who crave an optimistic view of the future. Roddenberry and the creative crew were right to recognize the brilliant core of Ellison’s idea, and right to rework it into a Star Trek episode.
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Inside Star Trek 5: James Doohan said “warp drive” way back in 1953, following a change in career plans
Inside Star Trek was a semi-official newsletter, published under the guidance of Gene Roddenberry. This connection gave the writers access to the actors, production crew and sets.
I own the complete run:
- Issues 1 to 12: Inside Star Trek, edited by Ruth Berman
- Issues 13 to 24: renamed Star Trektennial News, edited by Susan Sackett
- Issues 25 to 31: again called Inside Star Trek, edited by Virginia Yable
Here are highlights from issue 5, published November 1968.
No single topic occupies a greater portion of my brain than does Star Trek the original series, and yet Inside Star Trek always teaches me something new.
Dr. Jimmy Doohan
Acting was not a flame burning within the heart of James Doohan. He sort of fell into it and, if that happy accident hadn’t happened, he was all set to be a dentist.
He told Ruth Berman:
“I was going to be a dentist, and I don’t remember being unhappy with that choice. [Then] I heard a radio show one night, and I said to myself, ‘I can do as well as that.’ So I went to a drama school in Toronto, and I won a two-year scholarship there to the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York.
“There was no burning desire to be an actor earlier in my life. It was just like fate said ‘Go on, you’re going to be an actor and that’s that.’”
After the scholarship ended, Doohan stayed at the school as a teacher for almost three years and in New York for another 18 months after that, before returning to Toronto for Christmas. On that visit he took a few small acting roles and then “before I knew it, there were so many jobs it would have been silly to move.”
He lived in Toronto for about eight years and then decided “I had gone as far as it was possible to go in Canada, and I needed new horizons.” He moved to LA and was cast in Star Trek, but he told Berman that Scotty was not his first ongoing part. “I was on a series in Canada that ran for a year.”
Space Command
That series was Space Command, a kids’ show set on an exploratory rocket. A full season was produced and aired in 1953 and 1954 by Canada’s CBC network, but only one episode exists today. Luckily, it is on YouTube. In the episode, rocketship XSW-1 is exploring space “26 thousand billion miles” from Earth. That’s 26 trillion miles or about 4.4 light years.
The episode is worth watching just to see Doohan contend with the weird bridge design that put the ship’s controls to the right of his huge chair, forcing him to twist awkwardly to make adjustments, often reaching down between the chair and the console.
Doohan plays crew member Phil Mitchell, and for TOS fans the best line in the episode is Mitchell’s analysis of a saucer-shaped alien spacecraft:
Look at the shape. That must have come from a planet with a thin atmosphere. And look, there’s no jet exhaust. That can only mean some sort of space warp drive or, better still, anti-gravity.
The concept of warp drive was apparently created by John W. Campbell in Islands of Space, which first appeared in Amazing Stories Quarterly in 1931, but it is still fun to hear Doohan say it in 1953. The Earth rocket XSW-1 is, of course, shown expelling a thick cloud of slowly rising exhaust smoke as it powers through space.
Doohan’s Phil Mitchell, asleep in his giant chair Many online sources state that one episode of Space Command featured guest star William Shatner, and Doohan confirms that in the article, stating Shatner traveled to Toronto from Montreal just to film the show. It seems no one will ever again see that historic first appearance together.
On playing Scotty
Doohan said Scotty was a weak role in the beginning.
It took a long time to build up the character. They didn’t really care about him in the first year. They knew the ship had to have an engineer, because ships don’t just run themselves, but…it’s a one-dimensional character, nothing human. The second season they started to get more in.
The honesty of Inside Star Trek is refreshing. As a semi-official newsletter, I expected a deferential tone, but here is Doohan saying Scotty initially had “nothing human” to do.
Introducing Ed Cotter, film librarian
I believe I have read every book on the production of Star Trek, but I was not familiar with the job of film librarian. A small essay written by librarian Ed Cotter set me right on this important job.
Cotter tells us that thousands of dollars were spent creating a few special scenes, notably the moving star field shown on the main viewer and the content routinely displayed on the bridge monitors.
Cotter’s work on display in Spock’s Brain (TrekCore) This material is called ‘stock’ and my job is to catalog the negatives and the interpositives (which are reproduceables)…so that they may be quickly found and reused in subsequent Star Trek episodes. I distribute a list of information on what stock scenes are available to the various editors and assistant editors who put the show together after it has been filmed, see to it that the optical houses which do the special effects work get the proper film elements to work with, and — of course — see to it that these elements are returned to the library and filed for future use.
He adds that, at time of writing, Star Trek had three editors and four optical houses constantly working on the show’s post production.
Memory Alpha does not have an article about Cotter.
Inside Star Trek is an invaluable source of early Star Trek voices. I’ll cover each issue. Click here to read other articles in this series.
Collecting Trek
A TOS collection 40 years in the making
Collecting Trek 