by Patricia Holt

Wednesday, November 16, 1994

It may seem like another ho-hum "Star Trek memoir -- and it comes to us from one who's already published his own "Star Trek Memories -- but William Shatner's "Star Trek Movie Memories" is certainly one of the most amusing exposes of Hollywood to come down the pike in some time.

Shatner doesn't dish the dirt on movie star personalities, mind you, nor does he do more than recount the making of six "Star Trek" movies. But he does follow, in revealing detail, the strange paralysis that set in once the canceled "Star Trek" television series began to reach huge audiences during syndication in the late 1970s. The book then investigates the laughable if tragic incapacity of Hollywood studio heads to understand fiction in cinematic form.

Oh, these guys can produce action films, romance movies, Westerns and stories about the Enterprise crew "running around the universe chasing bad guys," as Shatner puts it. But put a creative genius such as "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry at Paramount studios and watch his prodigious output provoke bafflement, outrage, and, of course, the ax.

Shatner writes of visiting the old "Star Trek" bungalows and coming upon Roddenberry cranking out "The God Thing," his initial script for a feature film.

In it, "this massive... entity" that "could be God, could be Satan" arrives on the Enterprise in the form of Jesus Christ, "bleeding from hands, feet and forehead" and "demanding worship and assistance," or else. Roddenberry's script was meant to suggest that "perhaps mankind has finally evolved to the point where it's outgrown its need for gods," he told Shatner, and is able "to account for its own behavior without the religiously imposed concepts of fear, guilt or divin intervention."

Shatner writes that he "couldn't imagine Paramount or any other studio agreeing to make such a controversial, perhaps even blasphemous film" -- after all, in it, "God was gonna be the bad guy" -- and sure enough, not only did Paramount ask Roddenberry to ditch this possibly brillant project and write something else, without his knowledge they attempted to enlist every science-fiction writer from the Bay Area's Robert Silverberg to best-selling writer Harlan Ellison, who stomped out after calling a Paramount executive an "idiot."

Rejected Ideas
From there, Shatner tells the rocky yet thoroughly enjoyable tale of one rejected idea after another, of vicious Studio infighting between Roddenberry and innumerable writers and directors, of Leonard Nimoy's many ungracious attempts to leave the project, of desperate script revisions arriving on the set only hours before shooting, of costumes so itchy and tight that none of the male characters could sit down "without seriusly endangering his ability to procreate," of co-writers trying to work calmly with Roddenberry and finding themselves shouting, "Gene, this is just s---," of costs reeling from $8 million to $45 million and of Shatner's own character "fighting for his life," since "the actor who played Kirk was getting older, more expensive and more opinionated with every passing year."

That was just the first "Star Trek" movie, which, as Shatner writes, ended up so "deathly slow" that the critics panned it and even the auhtor thought it a bore, The fact that the film grossed $100 million, however, so woke up Paramount execs (big grosses they do understand, Shatner makes clear) that suddenly the characters and story for the next "Star Trek" movie, and the next and the next, took on monumental weight.

Here we find everyone from writers to producers comparing "Star Trek" to Homer's "The Odyssey"; Captain Kirk became a modern version of Horatio Hornblower, Spock a gentle Hamlet and even Khan (the villain in "Star Trek II") a contemporary modern Ahab from "Moby Dick."

'Giggling Idiots'
Typical of the hundreds of behind-the-camera anecdotes is a scene in which the exhausted crew turns into "uncontrollable, giggling idiots" when Nimoy and Shatner begin flubbing their lines. When Lieutenant Uhura announces, "Captain, the alien has expelled a large object and it's headed in our direction," the entire production dissolves into laughter. Maybe Hollywood doesn't understand much more than action shoot-'em-ups in Westerns or outer space, but in Shatner's hands it's a hilarious place to confront in print.