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June 20, 2019 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:02:30
Edition 399 - Star Trek Stories

Actor, "Star Trek Continues" star Vic Mignona with inside stories from the iconic 60s series...

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Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes and this is The Return of the Unexplained.
Well, we're almost at midsummer as you hear this, and I thought we'd maybe have a little bit of a treat this time.
Maybe something that you can listen to on your summer holidays that's not too heavy, and it's quite fun.
We're going to be talking on this edition of The Unexplained about Star Trek, the original series, the people who made it, the impact it had, and how it was able to become the phenomenon that it did become, both sides of the Atlantic, and even for years and years after the first series aired.
We'll dispel a few urban myths about it, I think, along the way.
Now, we're going to be talking about a number of things that come together here in the persona of Vic Mignona, the man we're going to be speaking with on this edition of The Unexplained.
Hope I pronounced that right.
He's made a series that picks up from the original series in which he plays Captain Kirk.
You can find that online, but we'll talk about it when we get talking to Vic in the US.
He has also been involved in the audiobook version of the book by Mark Cushman to do with Star Trek.
Now, these people both, check out Mark Cushman and Vic Mignona, both heavily involved in the Star Trek franchise one way or another, and both tremendous devotees and aficionados of it.
So I thought it is 50 years since the Star Trek phenomenon, give or take a few months or years, began.
It depends on how you calculate the pilot series and when it went into syndication and when it aired in the UK and the US and all the rest of it.
But let's say a ballpark 50 years here.
For something to survive and be revered for as many years as Star Trek has is extraordinary in its various guises.
But on this edition, we're talking about the first series and we're talking about William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and the original team.
The people who went where no man had gone before and explored new frontiers and strange new worlds.
I remember the original series of Star Trek airing almost continuously on the BBC through the 70s when I was at school.
And that for me was the era of Star Trek, even though it had begun in the 60s.
And of course, one thing that people tend to forget is the driving force behind getting the series on air was Lucille Ball, who a lot of us all around the world, of course, knew for her brilliant comedies.
But she had her own production company, Desilu with Desianez.
They are the people who put Star Trek on the air, and there would not have been a Star Trek without the business acumen of Lucille Ball.
So we'll talk about that too.
We'll also talk about Gene Roddenberry, the kind of man that he was, and maybe some details of his life before Star Trek that you may not have heard before.
So Vic Mignoner, the guest on this edition of the show, and he will tell you all about how you can see the series that he's put together online about Star Trek, and also talk about the book and audio book that he's involved in.
He's a voice actor and a man of many parts, a lot of them to do with Star Trek.
So that's what we're going to discuss on this edition.
The usual reminder that if you'd like to contact me and tell me what you think of the show, you can go to my website, theunexplained.tv, follow the link, and you can send me an email from there.
And if you'd like to make a donation when you're listening to the show, that would be great.
You can do that through the website, theunexplained.tv.
If you have made a donation recently to this show, thank you so much.
Thank you to Adam, my webmaster, for his work on it as well at Creative Hotspot in Liverpool.
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And thank you for listening to my show across all of these years.
All right, let's get to the US now.
Vic Mignona is there, and we're going to talk all about Star Trek.
Vic, thank you for coming on The Unexplained.
It is a pleasure to join you, Howard.
Thank you.
Now, look, we're going to be talking about the ins and outs of Star Trek in what may have been, it depends on who you talk to, really, the golden era of all of this.
My first question for you, Vic, is one that most people will probably ask a little later, but I'm going to ask it now.
Why, 50 odd years on from the inception of Star Trek, are we still talking about it?
You know, it's funny because I answered that question yesterday.
Someone posed that same question to me.
And what I said to them yesterday was, the reason we are still enthralled with and in love with classic Star Trek is not because of the special effects.
They were kind of cheesy.
And not because of the costumes or the sets or any of that, but it was because of the storytelling.
Star Trek was perhaps the most perfect example of telling a story of a moral question or an ethical dilemma or a social issue and couching it in a very creative, imaginative setting.
And the original Star Trek series was, you know, it was all about the human condition and the challenges that we face as humans and as a culture.
And so those messages are still as topical and relevant today as they were 55 years ago.
So it's no surprise to me that the original series is still as popular as it is.
Of course, the world wouldn't have known in the 1960s that it was going to be as prescient, it was going to be as far-sighted as it's turned out to be with so many bits of technology that have actually come to pass.
They're doing replicators now.
They're on the way to that.
They've got a little thing that will inject you through your skin through air pressure, which is what they had.
Of course, that's what Bones had on the original series.
So all of those things and communicators and you name it.
All of those things are coming to pass.
They're even working.
There's a place in the UK that's working on transmitting particles of things from one place to another.
And they tell us it'll be an awful long time, if ever, before they're able to reassemble you or me somewhere else.
But nevertheless, a lot of that was inspired by, in some way, Gene Roddenberry and this series.
Which makes you think, doesn't it?
When you compare it with the landscape of what else was out there in the 1960s, how could a series of this quality and this foresight and this excellence emerge?
Well, I will tell you this.
Gene Roddenberry, when he was planning this series, he actually brought into the equation several research and development companies, experts in science and technology, all of that, to get, he would literally get them to weigh in on technology that they logically expected would be coming down the pike.
You know what I mean?
He didn't just make up stuff.
They had experts and technical people and scientists that all came together to determine things that might be a realistic future of television or computer.
Now, isn't that interesting that he was foreseeing, far-sighted enough to do something that is quite routine in television today and entertainment generally, to get a team of people together to almost come up with predictions?
It is quite amazing.
And what's funny is that Star Trek, even with all of its amazing technical predictions, if you will, they were all a backseat to the storytelling.
All of it, whether it was the sets or the props or the technology or the costumes or the lighting or the makeup or anything, all of those things were secondary to telling a thoughtful and compelling story.
But a story of a kind that hadn't really been told in that way before.
The idea that on a really serious level, the universe may be populated by other civilizations who may be kind, they may be malevolent, they will certainly be highly different from us in the way that they look at things and do things and their morality codes.
You know, we hadn't really been there before, I don't think.
No, definitely not.
Definitely not.
And, you know, science fiction up to that point in television and literature had always been very clean and white and chrome and, you know, very antiseptic.
And Roddenberry said, hey, you know, let's imagine a future where mankind has overcome their petty differences and their stupid little adolescent arguments that keep us apart.
And we've come together and unified.
And now we're reaching out into space as one unified race, not to conquer, but to explore and to make new friends.
And he definitely was a visionary in that sense.
Definitely in that sense.
And if you think about the protocols that NASA and other agencies and governments around the world are working on at the moment for what do we do when we discover, and I personally think it's a when and not an if, when we discover we are not alone.
How do we handle that?
And how do we cope with the dialogue?
For all we know, it's already going on.
But let's just assume that it isn't, but it's going to.
How do we cope with the dialogue that will result?
And those are questions, I think, that were thrown up in a piece of fiction that aired on television, which, you know, I'm going to use the word extraordinary again, but it is.
It is.
It absolutely is.
And you know what?
It's unfortunate to have to acknowledge this, Howard, but 55 years later, I don't think our human race is any closer to the Star Trek future than they were in 1969.
Unfortunately, human beings by nature are selfish and self-serving.
And as long as there are people and governments and organizations and groups that are pushing their own selfish personal agenda, I really don't see the Star Trek future coming to pass until we put all those things behind us.
And if we were to make contact at some point in the very near future, I can't help but wonder what kind of a planet those people we contact would think this is.
I mean, for all we know, there are species, there may be a species, maybe more, watching us and what we're doing to this planet at the moment and waiting to perhaps step in and give us a little bit of much-needed assistance at some point.
But again, those are things that even this would never have happened 20 years ago, but even academics of great import are beginning to speculate on.
You know, one of the people I have on this show quite regularly, and he's become a friend of the show, is Harvard professor Arvi Loeb, the man who's been recently having a lot to say about this piece of space rock cigar shape that came from outside our solar system and passed us last year, Umuamua.
It took me three months to learn how to pronounce that.
But, you know, he's had a lot to say about that, and he's put himself out there with this thing by saying, you've got to be prepared for the fact that this might be, there's a possibility that you shouldn't discount, that this might be some kind of craft that's powered in a way that we're analyzing at the moment.
So these are exciting times.
But Gene Roddenberry made the times that he was in Exciting by coming up with this.
So, two people I want to talk about now in this conversation.
One of them, of course, is him, because we have to get a handle on who this man was and how he came to the place that he was in.
But first, you.
Now, what is the fascination?
Why have you become a chronicler of and participant in the Star Trek franchise?
Well, you know what, Howard?
I feel like I am very much a representative of millions of people who back when we were young, we discovered this show on television called Star Trek, and it inspired us.
It taught us.
It encouraged us.
It opened up our minds to amazing possibilities and creativities.
For me, I discovered this show when I was about nine or 10 years old, and I started experimenting with creative endeavors that I had never thought to do before.
I started auditioning for plays in school.
I started building prop replicas.
I started making uniforms and rounding the kids in the neighborhood up and making little Star Trek episodes where I would make them wear my uniforms that I built.
And then I would be Captain Kirk and, you know, and I would hang models up in front of a black poster board and run past the model with the eight millimeter movie camera to make it look like the ship was flying by the camera.
And so Star Trek really inspired me to try for the first time things that I ultimately became a professional in.
So fast forward for decades, and about six years ago, I decided that I wanted to pay tribute and homage to this show that had inspired me so much when I was young.
And so I rounded a bunch of people to up together who were Star Trek fans, but were also very talented artists and technicians, whether they were camera people or lighting people or sound people or actors or builders, construction people.
And we all came together.
I rented an 18,000 square foot building in South Georgia, and we came together and made the first episode of my web series, Star Trek Continues.
My vision was to pick up where the original Star Trek had been canceled abruptly in 1969 and continue the series and ultimately finish the five-year mission, return the Enterprise to Earth, and leave everybody right where they were when Star Trek the Motion Picture came out 10 years later in 1979.
So we have made 11 full-length episodes.
You would feel like you're watching episodes of the original Star Trek that were locked in a vault for 50 years.
We've had over 10 million viewers.
We've won dozens of awards, dozens of awards.
We've had all kinds of amazing guest stars, both from Star Trek and other very popular franchises like Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, Star Wars, on and on.
Even Gene Roddenberry Jr.
Rod Roddenberry has not only been to our studio and played a little cameo in one episode, in our sixth episode, but he has publicly stated many, many times that if his dad were alive today, he would consider Star Trek continues canon.
And Rod, as far as he's concerned, does consider it Canon.
It's a hard thing to do, isn't it?
You know, I was a Thunderbirds aficionado as a kid because they repeated those all the way through the 70s when I was a kid.
I remember them well.
And they were brilliantly done.
In fact, they were done not very far away from where I'm speaking to you now.
I know Jamie Anderson, the son of Jerry Anderson, pretty well, and we've had him on this show.
But they tried to make a version of that using new CGI animation techniques, and it didn't work.
You know, it was not the same.
How have you tried to stay true to that first series?
Well, I tell you what.
You know, Howard, there are a lot of Star Trek fan productions on the internet.
And there are dozens and of all varying degrees of quality.
What I came to learn as I would see some of these other productions and as I started contemplating creating my own, you have to ask yourself, what makes Star Trek Star Trek?
Well, you know, if you're not an actor, if you're just a fan, you're not an actor, if you're not a filmmaker, if you're not a scriptwriter or an editor or a cameraman, then you may put on a uniform and you may shoot video of yourself beaming down and flipping open a communicator and firing a phaser or fighting Klingons.
But if you really think about it, that's not what Star Trek was.
Star Trek was about deep, thematic storytelling.
And so when I started my series, I had committed myself from the very beginning that we were going to tell stories, compelling, thought-provoking stories in the same way that the original series did.
And if you're going to do that, Howard, you have to have good writers, a good story.
And if you're going to have a good, compelling story, you have to have actors who can communicate that story.
And you have to have people who know how to light the story and shoot the story and then edit the shots together to tell the story and then choose the right music.
There are many, many, many facets to putting something like this together.
And so what I Did that I feel made Star Trek continues so unique, and what I believe, although obviously I'm subjective, I'm partial, is that made Star Trek continues the best of the fan tribute series was that we brought together people who were real professionals in their fields, but they also loved and embraced what made Star Trek great.
And so that's what we endeavored to do.
And if you watch any of our episodes, and I would encourage your listeners to look us up at star trekcontinues.com.
All 11 episodes are there, free to watch.
Nobody's making any money.
It's purely a passion project and a gift of love back to Star Trek.
But anybody that watches the episodes, you will walk away challenged to think about topical issues and moral questions and ethical questions and social issues in exactly the same way that you did when you watched the original Star Trek series.
Because the original series, and it wasn't realized by the network at the beginning, it wasn't going to continue, but it got another lease of life, as you say, after 1969.
But the original series had something that great comedies have.
Twists and turns of plot.
So there's drama, there's pathos, there's comedy.
There are comedy moments that William Shatner plays brilliantly because he's really good at doing comedy.
Obviously, we've seen that.
And there's serious drama.
There are morality questions.
Mix that in with great music special effects and some pretty good cinematography.
And there you have it.
So how do you replicate?
I mean, you played Captain Kirk.
How do you replicate that?
Well, you know what?
A lot of people have said to me, how did you get, how long did you study Bill Shatner to get his mannerisms down and everything?
It just feels like you're channeling him.
And the only thing I can say in answer to that is when I was a little boy, I loved Captain Kirk and I loved William Shatner.
My parents divorced when I was nine or 10 and my dad was gone.
And it was exactly at that moment that I discovered Star Trek.
And here was this strong, brave, handsome leader of men who cared about his friends.
And they went on these adventures.
And he had all these amazing responsibilities and all these adventures.
And I just absorbed that character.
So when we created our series, it was not my intention in any way, shape, or form to mock or parody or satire in some way Bill Shatner's portrayal of Kirk, but it was to honor it and pay homage to it.
And without even trying, I feel like my acting very much came out of a love for Shatner and Kirk.
And so that's how I approached the character.
Now, when you start talking about cinematography, just before we talk about cinematography, you've talked about Bill Shatner, a man I would love to meet.
And I agree with you.
I think he's a superb actor to be able to portray the way that he portrays things.
And also to be able to have a life after Star Trek, but that's another issue.
Have you had reaction from him?
Actually, Bill and I have become friends over the years because of my voice acting career.
I've had the privilege to sign autographs at Comic-Cons that Bill was at as well.
And we actually even share the same event agent.
So I've had the opportunity to get booked into a lot of conventions and Comic-Con appearances with Bill.
We've had the chance to chat, had dinner together, traveled together multiple times, and I love him dearly.
I think he's an extraordinary human being.
He comes across as being, I've tried to get him on this show and we've failed up to now, but he comes across to me as being that consummate professional, of course.
But a man who doesn't suffer fools gladly.
So if he thought you were not doing justice to it or if he thought you were not very good, I think you would know about it.
Oh, yes, absolutely true.
Absolutely true.
And, you know, let me say something about William Shatner.
You know, nowadays, people love to make fun of the style, right?
People love to tease and do the parody of Captain Kirk and, you know, the big dramatic pauses and the big overacting.
But you know what?
People don't even realize that back in the day when Star Trek was getting off the ground and Roddenberry was looking for actors to cast, William Shatner was an A-lister.
He was one of the most highly respected Shakespearean actors of his day.
And it was quite an accomplishment that Roddenberry got William Shatner to headline his series.
And Bill had an enormous responsibility in carrying the show on his shoulders.
I mean, he was the star of the show.
And I want to segue into talking about the audio book, These Are the Voyages, because that's what Mark Cushman and I were going to be discussing as well today.
Mark Cushman wrote a three-book series on the making of the original Star Trek.
It is an exhaustive, very comprehensive look into the behind-the-scenes making of the episodes and the production and the personnel involved and the challenges that they face and the network challenges and the actors and guest stars and script writers and special effects companies.
And it's really an amazing, amazing set Of books.
And just early this year, we released book one, These Are the Voyages, on audio.
And I was the reader, and I brought in 70 or 80 other people, including some of the original people that were part of the original series, like DC Fontana and Joe DiAgosta and Clint Howard and Bobby Clark and Sean Kinney and people that were actually there and were part of the making of the series.
How about George Takeai?
George was unavailable, but I brought in a lot of the people that were actually there and then filled in the spaces with those who are no longer with us.
For instance, Adam Nimoy reads his father's excerpts.
I must hear that.
That's amazing.
It's amazing.
Chris Dewan, Chris Dewan reads his father's excerpts.
And you feel like, as the listener, you feel like you're sitting in a room with Gene Roddenberry and Bob Jussman and DC Fontana and Adam and Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelly as they, in their own words, talk about the making of these episodes.
Book one is the first season.
Book two is season two and book three is season three.
But your listeners, I'm sure, would be very, very happy to enjoy this audio book.
They can find it at These Are the Voyages book and Jacobs Brown Press is the publishing company.
It's just been released and it is extraordinary to listen to.
But as I was reading the book, Howard, I learned so much about how enormously respected and admired Bill Shatner was, not just by the industry, but by his peers.
And yet when you say that, and I'm sorry to interrupt here, but it's the journalist in me coming out here.
There are people, some of them, who don't like William Shatner.
And there were animosities within the cast that lasted for years.
Sure.
So do you reflect any of that?
Well, I would say, without pointing any fingers, I would say actors in general have big egos.
I think that can be pretty much agreed upon.
Actors have egos.
And for better or worse, those egos come into play.
And I'm not talking about anyone in particular's egos.
I'm talking about everybody's egos.
And, you know, in the original series, Bill Shatner was the star.
And as you say, he had to carry the series.
There's no way around it.
There's just no way around it.
Back in the 60s, every television show had a main character that the show revolved around.
And that actor was responsible for carrying that show.
And Star Trek was no different.
Star Trek is literally told through the voice of Captain Kirk.
And Bill Shatner had an enormous responsibility for making sure that show succeeded.
And I'll tell you what, as I was recording this audiobook, These Are the Voyages, book one, I was struck by how many times, dozens of times, that guest stars and directors and writers and producers all talked about how amazing and talented and energetic and funny and supportive Bill Shatner was.
Why did he fall out with Leonard Nimoy?
Well, I don't, I can't answer, you know, I can't answer.
Let me put that more fairly.
Why did the two of them fall out?
It wasn't, from what I understand, it wasn't, he wasn't the driving force in that.
Well, I can't answer definitively, but I can tell you that my understanding was that there were a lot of dynamics between the two of them.
I think early on, it might have been difficult for Bill when suddenly this secondary character, Mr. Spock, started getting so much fan mail and so much attention.
But they ultimately got through that and they became very, very dear friends.
But then just like most dear friendships, you have your ups and downs.
There will be a time where you're like not talking to your friend or you've had a bit of a bit of a falling out.
But then because you truly love each other, you come back together and you iron it out and you're friends again.
That's the way I've perceived it over the years, that they ended as friends.
They started as friends and they had their ups and downs like we all do, but they ended as friends.
Okay, because there are various accounts of that out there.
One of the things that I've read and heard about, in fact, I was listening to something about it only last week, was the way that the cast, when they weren't making the episodes or when they were in breaks from actual filming takes.
The way that they got on.
There was a kind of hierarchy in that, in the way that people divided out and who they were friends with.
I think, you know, DeForest Kelly was a good friend of William Shatner.
They were very close, I think.
But it wasn't like that with everybody.
Some people didn't associate as much with Bill Shatner and other people did.
And there were cliques and groups and all the rest of it.
Well, you know, as I read the book, the most information I have ever gotten, you know, I thought I was a Star Trek fan, Howard, until I read this book.
Until I read and recorded the audio book for These Are the Voyages, I learned so much about who these people were, how they got along.
And I have to tell you, my takeaway was that they were very much a family.
Now, whether or not that changed Over the years?
Who can really say?
There's been a lot of speculation.
But what I can tell you is, back when they were making the original Star Trek, everybody involved, as I recorded this book and read their quotes, everybody involved knew they were a part of something special.
They knew that they were a part of something groundbreaking and completely new.
And they were committed to making it the best they could and supporting each other in it.
That was my takeaway.
What about the way that the series came about, the series we're talking about now, there was a pilot series with a different captain, Captain Pike.
And then this series with William Shatner, the series that we know and love now, was made.
But it wasn't an instant hit by any means.
Well, no, what happened was Gene Roddenberry had created a pilot episode with Jeffrey Hunter in the role of Captain Pike.
And he had a first officer who was a woman, and the pointed-eared alien guy is the science officer.
And he made this pilot, was very proud of it, and submitted it to the network.
And basically, the network said, we kind of like some of it, but there are things we don't like.
And we're going to give you, they did something unprecedented, Howard.
They gave Roddenberry the opportunity to make a second pilot.
They basically gave him notes and said, we'll let you take one more shot at this.
And so Roddenberry retooled the idea.
Jeffrey Hunter was out and he brought in a different actor to play Captain Kirk.
So was Jeffrey Hunter simply not booked for the second one?
I read somewhere that he was just not available, but was there a definite decision?
And again, that's something that I learned from recording the audiobook.
Jeffrey Hunter played a very, what's the word?
Angsty Captain Pike.
Yeah, he was like somebody who would have been commanding, it seemed to me, he looked like he was commanding a naval boat in the Korean War.
He took it very, very seriously.
And I think one of the things that Roddenberry wanted to retool was to bring a different personality to that captain role.
And not only that, but I will tell you this too, and I learned this from the audiobook.
Jeffrey Hunter wanted to be a movie star.
Jeffrey Hunter was not terribly interested in being the star of a TV show.
He wanted to make feature films.
So when it came time to make the second pilot, they, you know, Jeffrey Hunter just was not interested in continuing in it.
And Roddenberry kind of was having a different feeling about the direction of the character anyway.
So anyway, they made a second pilot.
They made the changes that the network requested.
They made the second pilot, which was called Where No Man Has Gone Before, which of course now is with Captain James Kirk.
And that was the pilot that got them the series, that got the series greenlit.
Now, one of the things that the network said about the original pilot, the menagerie, the one that Jeffrey Hunter was in, they said it was too cerebral.
They said it was too cerebral, too intellectual, with not enough action.
And so that was one of the directions that the network gave him.
And if you look at the second pilot, Where No Man Has Gone Before, it's a lot more action.
And so that's the one that got them greenlit.
Well, it was a remarkable thing, but it wasn't a rating success, was it, at the time?
Well, you know what?
It was.
See, and this is one of the big stories that is not true.
So you're telling me that it's an urban myth that in the first airing, it wasn't successful.
Okay.
Yeah, it was very successful.
Let me tell you what happened, Howard.
Did you know that Lucille Ball's company, Desilu, was the production company that made Star Trek?
I did.
And in fact, I was going to ask you about that because I wondered how a company like Desilu came to make that.
Sorry.
Okay.
Did you know that Lucy's executive board, Lucy sent her board out to find some really out-of-the-box, revolutionary TV shows for her studio to make?
And they brought her two shows, Mission Impossible and Star Trek.
And when they made the first pilot and the network greenlit it, her executives came to Lucy and they said, don't make this show.
It will bankrupt your studio.
It's too expensive to make.
Don't do this.
And Lucy did it anyway because she felt like it was a great idea and there was nothing else like it on television and she was committed to it.
So when Star Trek was premiered, it started out in the top three in its time slot all the time and then moved even in many cases to number one in its time slot.
It was very successful, but it was very expensive.
And I mean every episode they did, Howard, they would fall behind and go over budget, over budget, over budget.
Now think about it.
Think about this.
Most of the television shows in the 60s were cop shows or Westerns.
Well, all you have to do to make a Western, you know, is build a Western town and, you know, or even go to an existing Western town, and everybody has guns and hats and horses and all that stuff exists, right?
If you're going to make a police TV show, well, we already have police cars and it's present day.
Everybody wears normal clothes.
It's the same settings, city settings.
But think about Star Trek, Howard.
Space does not come cheaper.
Every single week, you're telling a different story about a different planet.
You've got different aliens, different costumes, new sets, new special effects.
Westerns didn't have special effects.
Not really.
Cop shows didn't need special effects, but every week, Star Trek had laser beams and lightning bolts and force fields and phasers and all kinds of planet shots and ships, spaceships flying through space.
And I mean, every week, they got further and further in the hole financially.
And ultimately, the network, it was too expensive.
And the network started changing its time slot because they wanted to get rid of it.
Right.
So they engineered what happened.
So they kept putting it in time slots on days where nobody was tuning in.
For instance, Star Trek was a big hit with young people.
And the point at which the network slotted it on Saturday nights at nine o'clock, well, teenagers are out on Saturday nights.
So they strategically made it as such so that they would basically kill it.
And they had canceled it after the second season.
But then a writing campaign started, the first one in history, where the fans started a write-in campaign to the network and they got the network to give them a third season.
But the third season, the budgets were cut even more.
They kept cutting their budgets because they knew it was impossible to make unless they had the money.
So if you look at the third season of Star Trek, it looks very different.
There are much cheaper settings and the lighting is flatter because they didn't have the time and the money to really craft the show the way they did the first two seasons.
You know, I've noticed that, but I've never really computed it.
There was a movie feel about the first series to me.
It looked like a movie.
Yes, yes.
And toward the end, they just didn't have any budget.
In some cases, they didn't have any budget to even make a set.
Like there's an episode, the third season that I just saw the other day called The Empath.
And the episode is literally shot in complete limbo.
They are literally on a stage in complete darkness all around them.
In other words, they're telling a story and they didn't even have money to build sets.
I mean, they were doomed when the networks and the studios decided that they just could not make this show.
And ultimately, it did bankrupt Lucy's studio.
And that's why I see, so that's why later Star Treks were not made by Desalu?
That's correct.
Yeah, that is correct.
I mean, Star Trek bankrupted Desalu.
And then after it went off the air, as you know, and this is where the iconic legendary series we all know and love was born in syndication.
They started syndicating the show, and they would sell it to television stations all over the country.
And suddenly, Star Trek was on every day at 5 o'clock.
Well, the BBC started airing it in the 70s here, and it became something of a phenomenon on Saturday evenings at first.
Yes, exactly.
You know, it kind of played in the same time slot that Doctor Who used to play.
Yes, yes.
And it was in syndication that Star Trek really exploded into the phenomenon it became.
But meantime, there it was in syndication.
What becomes of William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelly, and all the other actors?
Because presumably they all started moving on.
Well, you know what's really interesting?
After the original, after the series was canceled, Shatner tells stories about literally living in a trailer, living in a mobile home that he just, you know, he really struggled after Star Trek.
And, you know, some of them went on to do a couple of different things.
And of course, you know, Shatner ultimately was able to make like TJ Hooker and Rescue 911.
And he stayed active.
He's a master of reinventing himself.
But, you know, a lot of them didn't do a great deal more after Star Trek was canceled.
Well, what did Leonard Nimoy do?
Well, Leonard Nimoy went on to do theater, and he even went on to direct.
I don't know if you remember, but he directed the very big theatrical hit, Three Men and a Baby.
Yeah, he directed that very popular movie with Steve Gutenberg and Ted Danson.
But all of them, you know, kind of moved on and looked for different ways to make a living.
And then, as luck would have it, in the mid-70s, somebody wanted to organize a Star Trek convention.
And literally the actors came in just, they didn't Get paid a buttload of money.
They just came in to be supportive of the fans, show appreciation to the fans who loved the show.
And those conventions took off.
They expected there to be 50 or 60 people there, and there were thousands.
And our modern-day Comic-Cons, whether it's San Diego Comic-Con or any of hundreds of comic conventions around the world, all began with Star Trek conventions.
There were no Comic-Cons until some people organized an event to celebrate Star Trek at the Ambassador Hotel in New York City in the mid-70s.
And that's where comic conventions had their birth.
And of course, that ultimately led to the motion pictures.
Star Trek was so reborn and became such a phenomenon in the mid-70s that they started talking about bringing back another television series called Star Trek Phase 2.
The art design was in the works.
The script writing was in the works.
All the cast and crew were signed back on.
And then Star Wars was released.
And when Star Wars was released in 77, suddenly they started talking about, well, what if we were to make movies instead of another TV show?
And at the last minute, they shifted gears and they canceled the plans to make Star Trek Phase 2 and they made Star Trek the Motion Picture, which was released in 79.
And they did that because of the enormous success of Star Wars and how it started bringing a lot of people's interests to science fiction again.
Quite often, when you try and translate, and I can think of examples on this side of the Atlantic and your side too, when you try and make a television show into a movie, it does not work.
You know, they tried that with various series over here that have been very successful.
And it just, sometimes it's embarrassing.
How did they succeed in doing this where others have failed?
Well, I think that Star Trek in and of itself is such a unique prospect.
You know what I mean by that?
Most science fiction movies tend to be dystopian and dark and gritty.
You know what I mean?
And Star Trek is the opposite of that.
Star Trek is about optimism and unity and a nobler future than the future that a lot of dystopian sci-fi films and TV shows create and present.
So I think the fact that Star Trek is unique in and of itself helped.
I think that the enormous fan base that it developed in that 10 years that it was in syndication between the cancellation of the original series and the release of the first movie helped.
And, you know, they were good stories.
They told good stories.
The characters were very, very beloved.
You know, you think about it.
If you release a movie tomorrow that has a bunch of characters, they're all new characters.
The audience doesn't know who they are.
The audience has no connection to them.
They have no great affection for these characters.
They have to get to know them from the beginning.
But when you talk about Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy and Scotty and Sulu, these are characters that are probably known all over the globe.
They were known beloved characters.
So you've got a good foundation.
Exactly.
The issue was, wasn't it, that they'd all aged somewhat, though, hadn't they?
We all aged, but they were all 10 years older.
So they must have tried to work that in somehow.
How did they allow for the aging of the characters?
Well, they just picked it up, you know, several years later.
If you remember, in Star Trek the Motion Picture, the very first Star Trek theatrical film, Captain Kirk was an admiral at Starfleet.
I mean, the five-year mission was over.
Kirk had taken a promotion, and he was an admiral at Starfleet.
Mr. Spock had gone back to Vulcan, back to his home planet, to pursue a discipline of purging all emotion.
Dr. McCoy had quit the service.
I mean, everybody had gone their separate ways.
So that's how they explained that.
But, oh, there was something else that you had just said that was – I also wanted to say that there was another very big shift that took place in the motion pictures.
And you know what it was?
In the original Star Trek, Captain Kirk was the main character.
And Spock and McCoy, and to a degree, Scotty, became supporting characters.
But it was still a Captain Kirk-centric television series.
When the motion pictures came out was when it became an ensemble cast.
When they brought everybody back and in the motion pictures, in all of the theatrical films, they started looking for ways to develop Sulu and Uhura and Chekhov and Yeoman Rand and all of these other characters that in the original series, they were just supporting roles, but in the motion pictures, it became more of an ensemble cast.
Right.
So those people like Uhura, like Chekhov, who were wonderfully played, of course they were, but they were more like foils in the original series.
Oh, yeah.
It may interest you to know that in 79 episodes of the original Star Trek.
Guess how many episodes Chekhov was in?
Boy, I don't know.
I mean, my first response would have been most of them, but maybe not.
22.
Okay.
I mean, think about that.
Chekhov is a household name when it comes to Star Trek.
And yet the reality was, you know, Walter Koenig was a very young, unknown actor, thrilled to death that he got this role in this show with all of these named famous actors.
DeForest Kelly had quite a following as an actor.
And Jimmy Dewan had done a lot of work.
And Leonard Nimoy, of course, had done a lot of work.
And Shatner was, like I said earlier, was a very, very admired actor.
So people like Nichelle Nichols and George Takei and Walter Koenig, I mean, they were complete unknowns at the time, pretty much.
And it was such a thrill to be a part of Star Trek.
But when it came time for the motion pictures to be made, the directors and the producers decided we want to give all of these characters their own story arcs, give them all something to do, and make it more of an ensemble.
And that's what they did.
Talk to me about Michelle Nichols' groundbreaking character.
Oh, my goodness, yes.
You know, there are a lot of stories told about how Nichelle wanted to quit after the first season, and she got a phone call from Martin Luther King Jr.
And he basically said, listen, I don't know if you realize this, but you're the only woman of color on television that's not a maid or a housekeeper.
You know, here you are representing, symbolizing a future for people of all races that is a place of equality and dignity.
And I implore you, don't quit.
And of course, she didn't, and she was a beacon for many.
Well, you know, if MLK asks you to do a thing, then I suspect you just have to do it.
And, you know, that show played all over the U.S. in every part.
Right.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And was, as we know, the success we're talking about.
Listen, we haven't really talked specifically about Gene Roddenberry.
Now, I was on duty on a national radio news desk and reading the news across the United Kingdom on the night he died.
So it fell to me to break the news to commercial radio listeners across the UK about that.
And I was very upset.
In fact, I put together a special package that ran later in the day on commercial stations here.
But he was such a figure.
Talk to me about him.
Well, you know, Gene was a normal human being like you and I. He had his good points and his bad points.
He had his struggles.
He had his failures and his successes.
But one thing you can say about Gene Roddenberry was he had a vision of a future that it would be wonderful if we could all aspire to.
And despite everything else, he was able to bring into existence and give the world a television series that inspired millions.
There are people today in fields of study, science and technology and engineering and philosophy and all kinds of endeavors because of a show that he created that inspired them.
So, you know, while anybody that knows him would say, well, you know, he was a man who had great strengths and great weaknesses like we all do.
But one thing you can't take away from him is he was given a vision for a show that had never been, nothing like it had ever been created.
And he gave the world Star Trek.
And for him, what led up to that?
What was he doing before Star Trek?
He was a police officer.
He started out as a police officer, but he was also a writer.
He wanted to write.
And so he started writing script ideas for other shows, for other TV series and submitting them.
And he started getting his own, he started getting scripts of his written and produced.
He wrote for different television series like Have Gun Will Travel and a couple of police series.
And then ultimately he came up with an idea and he pitched the idea for Star Trek.
And, you know, it took a lot of work and a lot of challenges, but he got it made.
But he was in the war.
He was a war veteran.
And then he became a police officer in LA.
And then he started writing.
And he ultimately produced Star Trek.
So maybe the police service was what gave him the tenacity to see through the tough times.
Perhaps so.
Hey, Howard, I am out of time.
I was told that this was a 45-minute interview.
Okay, well, if you've got two more minutes because we need to wrap this up properly.
Yes, can we do that real quick?
Yeah, we can.
And I would love to continue some other time.
Yes, well, we'll do that.
I think we need to ask you, well, let me do it this way.
What are you going to be doing next?
You've done the tribute series.
You voiced the audio book of Mark Cushman's book about the series.
You are a devotee aficionado fanatic, I think is a word.
But that would apply to me, too.
I love Star Trek.
So what are you going to do next?
Well, I am still doing voice work.
I'm still doing music work.
I do a lot of professional music work, doing acting work.
We may embark on recording the audiobooks for book two and book three of Mark Cushman's These Are the Voyages series.
I'd like to tell your listeners, check out Star Trek Continues at star trekcontinues.com and also look up the audiobook.
You can find it at Jacobs Brown Press Media or Jacobs Brown Media or thesearethevoyagesbooks.com.
And I also do a lot of event appearances.
So I am actually going to be on your side of the pond at an event in Dublin in a month or two.
And I do a lot of personal appearances.
So if any of your listeners ever see me appearing at a convention near you, please come and say hello.
And we'll put you on air if you're in London at any time.
Okay, last question.
What do you think of the series that followed then?
I love Next Generation, I have to say.
I'm a huge Patrick Stewart fan.
It's different, but in my book, it's equally as good as the first series.
I'm not so sure about all the series that came after that, although I rather liked Captain Kate Janeway.
I thought she was great.
What do you think?
Well, I'm a purist for the original series.
Everybody's favorite Star Trek is the one that they discovered Star Trek, you know, in their lives.
So people that discovered Star Trek for the first time through Deep Space Nine, that's their favorite Star Trek.
Or Voyager, that's their favorite Star Trek.
Or Next Generation, that's their favorite Star Trek.
For me, it was the classic series.
It will always be the classic series.
I felt that every incarnation of Star Trek got further and further away from what it was that made the original series what it was.
But that's just me.
Everybody has their own opinions and subjectivity.
For me, there's nothing quite like the original series.
I enjoyed Next Generation.
I've become friends with a lot of those actors.
In fact, Marina Sertes and Michael Dorn are involved in Star Trek continues.
John Delancey was a guest star in our ninth episode.
But there is a special place in my heart for the original series, TOS, as we like to call it.
I understand that.
I can understand that.
Nothing will ever replace.
Nothing will ever come close to.
Well, listen, thank you for giving me this time.
You know, I'm sure my listener will love this, and we'll try and distill the conversation and make sure that people understand that we're talking about a book, an audio book, and your series separate from that.
And I wish you well in the future.
If you're in the UK, we've got to talk.
Absolutely.
I would love that, Howard.
Let's do this again soon.
Well, my thanks to Vic for giving me his time, and we will talk again about Star Trek.
I love that original series.
I am also a big fan of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, T. Earl Grey Hot.
You know, I'm a great, I don't know, I'm a great follower of those who have the big voices in this world.
And Patrick Stewart, of course, Shakespearean actor, is a man who certainly captivated me as Jean-Luc Picard and Marina Sirtis in that series, who I really did believe was American until I interviewed her.
And I said, Marina, I thought you were American because Deanna Troy sounds like an American.
She said, Howard, that's acting.
So it was nice to meet her.
And I also got to speak with Michael Dawn on the original radio series of The Unexplained years ago.
And sadly, I've gone and lost that interview.
Maybe we'll try and do that again at some point.
Fascinating conversation and just a nice little diversion, perhaps, from the usual run of stuff that we do during the summer months here.
We'll be back on track, though, doing our usual thing with our usual gig here on The Unexplained Online.
So until next we meet, my name is Howard Hughes.
This has been The Unexplained Online.
And please, wherever you are in the world, please stay calm.
Please stay safe.
And please do stay in touch.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
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