The director of STAR TREK VI on his reputation for doing quick repairs on Paramount’ faltering final frontier.
By Sheldon Teitelbaum
Back in the saddle, asit were, directing STAR TREK VI, it may indeed seem to Nicholas Meyer that he has been toiling in Gene Roddenberry’s vineyard forever. It’s been over ten years since Harve Bennett enlisted him to help recapture the essence of the original series that had eluded director Robert Wise when he made STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE.
“The first film made $150 million—an enormous amount of money,” acknowledged Meyer. “There wasn't ever any question that they were going to do a second one. The theory here, though, was that a lot of people went to see it—especially overseas—under the impression that it was STAR WARS.
“[ hadn't seen the movie, and ] am not going to criticize Robert Wise. I can only say you learned a lot from watching it about the things that didn't work. But if somebody hadn't gone and done that first . . . let's just say it would be acheap shot to say how omniscient his successors were.
“I just looked at the movie and asked if it was asentertaining as it should have been. I hadnt seen much of the TV series. They showed me the ‘Space Seed’ episode from the original series, the first movie and four drafts of story ideas, none of which seemed tosatisfy. 1 was then told they had a draft comingin for STAR TREK II, and that it was unbelievable. Would | be interested?
“L asked to read the draft, and then | didnt hear from Bennett. | called and asked what had happened, and he said, “We're not happy with the draft.’ | said, ‘Let me read it,” and Harve said, “There's no point—it’s 150 pages of youwon-like-it.’ By this time, I was sort of intrigued about doing a space opera. I said, “No, really, send it,’and *Yes, it wasn't right,’ and I said, “What about the previous draft,’ and he said, ‘No, you don’ understand, it’s another story entirely—they are really different.”
Meyer asked for them all, and after reading them, suggested they compile a laundry list of elements that they liked in all five scripts. It could be a line of dialogue, it could be a scene, a plot. Meyer suggested a screenplay cobbling them together into a single story. One story was about terraforming—the Genesis project, one was about Kirk’s son, and one was about Spock's death.
Meyer said that his lack of familiarity with the original series forced him, in a sense, to re-invent Roddenberry’s format. Bydoingso, understandably, heand Roddenberry parted company. Despite the original series’ obvious imperialism, Roddenberry envisioned the Enterprise as an exploratory vessel engaged in a scientific mission. For Meyer, however, the alleged civilian character of the show was never clear, and always overshadowed by its intrinsic militarism.
“If Lhad seen more, I might not have been so free and easy with what I decided it was. And what I decided it was, was, as Roddenberry had initially declared, the adventures of Captain Horatio Hornblower in outer space. Therefore, | wanted to stress the nautical elements of this tale.
“I'm not terribly interested in space. But I was interested in real ships—RUN SILENT, RUN DEEP, frigates blasting cach other. | wanted the characters to look like sailors, not like they were wearing pajamas. | wanted the Enterprise to be reminiscent of a “tin can” [Navy slang for destroyers]. ‘These are not comfortable places,’ I said, ‘so let’s rip up the carpets, put in more instrumentation, electronic bosun’s whistles and ship's bells.” I did what I could toechoa nautical frame of reference.”
Pound for pound, said Meyer, STAR TREK II was the most successful of the film features because it was the cheapest to produce. “It was successful in two ways: inand of itself as a commercial venture and, two, because it rescued the franchise. If STAR TREK II and the milieu in which the rest of this stuff could exist hadn't been created, there would have been no subsequent film and, arguably, no NEXT GENER- ATION either.”
Meyer chose not to work on STAR TREK III because he believed that reincarnating Spock was a cheat, undermining the integrity of the preceding film. “When we talked about killing Spock,” herecalled, “there was a great outcry. I got letters saying, ‘If Spock dies you die.’ People said, ‘You can't kill Spock.’ I said, ‘Of course you can, but you have to kill him well." Ifhis death appears to be the result of a paragraph in Nimoy’scontract that says he gets to end it all, thenit willbe perceived asa nonorganic event resented as cynical manipulation. So it has to grow out of the whole story. But once you've killed him, | said, don’t bring him back, don't wrench people around like that.
“I fought very hard to make him dead, and the shots that imply a resurrection—the vision of the casket on the Genesis planet—were done over my dead body, with my strenuous objection. | objected so strenuously, and went to such lengths, that a producer on the film referred to me as morally bankrupt. He said, “You'd walk over your mother to get this the way you wanted,” and I said, ‘You know I think you're right,"”
Meyer did not, however, permit his vehement objections to jeopardize his relationship with Bennett, Shatner, or Nimoy. “Sure I was a stick-inthe-mud,” he said. “But it was only a movie. It's not worth my friendship. STAR TREK has never been just a business for me, It’s something for which | have great love, and it introduced me to a whole world of people who have become my friends, and | hope will always stay my friends. And because they are my friends, I sure as hell am not going to break up with them over a movie I'mnot involved in.
“I wasn't considering what they were doing as immoral, just aesthetically misled. I don't believe you can bring a dead person back to life. Having seen itin STAR TREK III, I still don’t believe it. But okay, he’s back, Leonard is back,and since it’s Leonard, I'm happy.”
No bridges burned, Meyer was called upon to contribute to STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME. Bennett and Nimoy had writtena story, two writers had been hired to flesh it out, but the studio didn’t like the product. Dawn Steele called in Meyer and asked him to meet with Bennett and Nimoy. Nimoy told him about their story, indicating that they would have to chuck their efforts and start a new script from scratch. Once again, Meyer's genius for cobbling together unlikely elements from disparate sources came to the fore. This time, he lifted plot elements from a movie he had hitherto directed—TIME AFTER TIME.
Bennett and Meyer divided the movie up, with Bennett writing the space scenes, or “bookends,” and Meyer taking on the earthbound segment. His segment began with the Enterprise pulling into Earth orbit and Spock saying he can identify the time period by the pollution content of the atmosphere.
There had been a scene in TIME AFTER TIME which had been left on the cutting room floor of a kid with a ghetto blaster playing loud rock. “I screwed it up when I filmed it. In STAR TREK IV, I got to put in everything | missed then.”
Meyer believes the movie did its bang-up business precisely because of its contemporary setting. “I think it had a really appealing theme. It wasn't an outer space movie. It was an on-earth movie. Fora lot of people who don't go to STAR TREK movies, the format is about spaceships. This was about whales and ecology and the environment. It was also very entertaining. Ned Tanen, then the head of Paramount, read the screenplay and said, ‘I'd make this movie even if it was not a STAR TREK film.”
Not being a Treknik, Meyer sympathizes with those who never catch on to the series’ appeal. “When I started seeing the old TREK episodes, Icould easily see why a certain kind of person wouldn't watch them. You get impatient with their pedestrian nature. They were trying to do a science fiction show every week with primitive effects. And some of the imaginative leaps, like a guy with pointy ears, may have simply appeared ridiculous unless you were the kind of person who could get past that kind of stuff and into the meat of what it was about, which is people and relationships and moral questions. There is always a group of people left out by this because they can't get past the scenery.
“The other problem with the features, of course, is that they are notall great pictures. Some are better than others, and the one that comes after one that isnt always has a problem bringing people in.
“STAR TREK at its best seems to be pop allegory,”continued Meyer. “You take things that are happening on Earth that are a little too close to think about objectively and you put them into a science fiction context, and everyone gets to contemplate these questions. Now I don’t read a lot of science fiction—I used to read Jules Verne and H.G. Wells so I'm not sure I have insight into the power of this thing. But I identify very strongly with Arthur Conan Doyle, who was very good at Sherlock Holmes, but didnt quite get it either. l understand thatitdoes work and it does have some value, but I just do it.
“You dont need to be a TREK person to do this stuff well. The Catholic Mass has a given text. Everybody knows the text of the Catholic Mass, but it’s been set to music bya lot of different composers. There is the Verdi Requiem, the Mozart Coronation Mass,and the Hayden Mass in Time of War. Each film has a different director, and each has a vision of how they want it to play.”
Meyer recognizes the mythic resonances of the TREK format, and admires its staying power. “I think it can last as long as Mickey Mouse. I used to look down my nose at modern myths because they are not old myths. Then | thought, where do myths come from? Someone must dream them up. And if they are dreamed up in plastic, and with merchandising, does that make them any less potent or textured as so called ‘older myths?”
“Tam inclined to turn up my nose less at Mickey Mouse and STAR TREK these days. Somehow you tap into an unexplored or unexpressed piece of mass consciousness, and suddenly everything comes together in psychological terms. I don’t presume to be able to say why itis that STAR TREK seems to be capable of assuming mythological dimensions. I just have an instinct as I watch it and watch people interact with it that it must be true.” Which is not to say that Meyer is big onfandom. Heisa Sherlock Holmes fan himself. But like most of the people involved in making TREK, Meyer prefers to maintain a healthy distance from the Treknicks, “I have always been very uninvolved with fandom. When the studio says the fans will or won't like something, I don't want to hear it. Art is not created by a committee, and this may not be art with acapital A, but as far as lam concerned it is—and I would never tell youa joke that I didn’t think was funny. I don’t think the fans know what they like until they've been exposed to it. Ask them how they’ like to see Spock die, they'll say, ‘No." I say, ‘Are you sure? Suppose | show it to you like this,’ and they say, ‘Oh, I didn’t know it would be like this.”
“I don’ really understand fandom. I tend tothink it’s people who have too much timeon their hands. But I would not presume to criticize people for being fans. It’s a minor point, but without those fans, they never would have made the first movie. Without their zeal and persistence, you wouldnt get a TV series which by most standards was a flop, and invest millions in a feature. I just don’t believe they haveany business in the creation of a film.”
Meyer has few fears that the feature franchise will survive the passing of the old cast and the success of the TV series. Indeed, he has the peculiar opinion that when it comes to STAR TREK, Paramount isn't necessarily in it only for the money. Not that it would continue to make TREK pictures if they had become unprofitable. And not that they'd use the TV show if it couldn't sustain a new line of features. But there is something more than rank greed, he said, in the studio’s regard for the product.
“I haven't heard about moving the TV cast into feature films,” Meyer noted diplomatically, “but it sounds eminently logical. They had to make six features for that to happen. To leave a good taste and to pave the way, if they really view the TV show as part of an ongoing franchise, which I think it's become, they have to care for it. They have enormous respect here for the franchise, and | think they honestly share the public’s affection for it. [don't think it’s because it makes money that is exclusively the source of their affection.” O
Director Nicholas Meyer with Iman as the shapeshifting alien Kirk has a dalliance with on a prison planet in STAR TREK VI, only to find out his liaison was a male.
The crew of the Enterprise, celebrating 25 years in space in STAR TREK Vi.
John Schuck returns as the revengecrazed Klingon ambassador of STAR TREK IV who accuses Kirk of murder.
Klingon President Gorkon (David Warner), daughter Rosanna DeSoto (I) and General Chang (Christopher Plummer), greeted by Kirk in STAR TREK Vi.