<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The last time my wife surprised me with a book she found at our local St. Vinnie\u2019s, we both had a few moments of head scratching trying to remember if I had already read it.\u00a0 Published in 1994 by HarperCollins, <\/span>Star Trek Movie Memories<\/span><\/i> by William Shatner (with Chris Kreski) certainly seemed familiar.\u00a0 The puzzle was solved a short time later when a pile of books I had loaned to another Trekkie fan were returned.\u00a0 In the stack was the Shatner\/Kreski collaboration that had caused our head scratching:\u00a0 <\/span>Star Trek Memories <\/span><\/i>(1993, HarperCollins), a book I had read some years back.\u00a0 The <\/span>Memories <\/span><\/i>book is centered on the TV series <\/span>Star Trek, <\/span><\/i>commonly referred to in Trekland as <\/span>TOS <\/span><\/i>(<\/span>The Original Series<\/span><\/i>).\u00a0 <\/span>Movie Memories<\/span><\/i> picks up the story just as the TVseries enters its third and final season but well before the franchize hits the big screen.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As he did in the first <\/span>Memories <\/span><\/i>volume, Shatner admits his interactions with others sometimes caused feelings of ill will with his fellow cast members.\u00a0 Looking back, Shatner notes these actions were mostly unintended and often stemmed from what he calls \u2018leading man ego\u2019.\u00a0 In both of his Trek books, he made it a point to let others give voice to what was happening without adding any \u2018leading man filter\u2019.\u00a0 Sure, being a TV\/movie star is a glamorous life, but kudos to William Shatner for pulling back the curtain far enough to give us a peek behind the scenes without whitewashing parts to make himself look better.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0On July 16, 1968, William Shatner (aka, Captain James T. Kirk) was on top of the world.\u00a0 They (Shatner and Kirk) had been summoned by NASA.\u00a0 The gig was a party arranged as a thank you to the NASA engineers and techies who had done the heavy lifting to put the Apollo moon landing program on track for the Apollo 11 mission scheduled to blast off one year later.\u00a0 Shatner found himself backstage making small talk with various NASA officials and the three Apollo astronauts assigned to the flight, Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin, and future first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong.\u00a0 As the speeches and congratulatory comments flowed from the podium in front of the curtain he was waiting behind, Bill realized he was going to be the big finale.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Shatner recalled the moment when he was finally summoned from behind the curtain:\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m absolutely stunned by the thunderous ovation that greets me.\u00a0 These guys are literally standing o their chairs cheering, even chanting from the floor,\u00a0 Trust me – I was excited just to be in attendance, but to receive this sort of overwhelming reception was beyond belief.\u00a0 Somehow it just didn\u2019t seem credible that a make-believe space explorer should merit the center of attention amid these real-life heros.\u201d\u00a0 On the flight back to Los Angeles, Shatner was pleased that his run as a \u2018make-believe space explorer\u2019 had captured the imagination of people in the \u2018real\u2019 space business.\u00a0 \u201c<\/span>Star Trek<\/span><\/i>,\u201d he mused. \u201cWould be around for a long time.\u00a0 The show had been penciled into a high-profile, \u2018can\u2019t miss\u2019 time slot in NBC\u2019s fall schedule and (creator) Gene Roddenberry would be returning to the show on an everyday basis.\u201d\u00a0 This optimism was followed by events in L.A. a few days later Shatner would describe as \u2018the beginning of the end\u2019 for <\/span>TOS.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Star Trek\u2019s<\/span><\/i> prime Monday slot was suddenly reallocated to a new hip comedy show called <\/span>Laugh-In.\u00a0 Trek<\/span><\/i> was pushed into a much less prime time slot – Friday nights at ten P.M., just the time when their prime viewing audience would not be home watching television.\u00a0 Furious, Roddenberry told the suits, \u201cReturn <\/span>Star Trek<\/span><\/i> to Mondays at 7:30 or I walk.\u201d\u00a0 The suits responded. \u201cBeen nice working with ya,\u201d and over the next eight months, budget cuts and an overall sense of doom and gloom about the pending cancellation hovered over the set.\u00a0 A smaller budget meant no more shooting on location.\u00a0 One notices much of the third season\u2019s \u2018action\u2019 takes place on board the <\/span>Enterprise<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 The cast and crew pretty much went through the motions of producing a TV series and the decline in quality showed.\u00a0 The Nielsen ratings tanked and to no one\u2019s surprise, season three would mark the last of <\/span>TOS.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Shatner\u2019s life went from \u2018on top of the world\u2019 in the summer of 1968 to \u2018down in the dumps\u2019 as the series spiralled slowly toward it\u2019s inevitable death.\u00a0 First, his marriage fell apart.\u00a0 He moved out and the wheels of \u2018separation and divorce\u2019 spun him into, \u201cA nagging grief and loneliness in regard to what I\u2019d lost.\u00a0 Worse than that, I could not even begin coming to grips with the fact that my three daughters, more beloved to me than anything else on the face of the planet, were suddenly gone, living, sleeping, laughing, singing, and playing in a different house.\u00a0 I learned that there\u2019s nothing more disheartening than the luxury of forced free time.\u201d\u00a0 As if it couldn\u2019t get any worse, Shatner was soon to be an \u2018unemployed starship captain\u2019 covering a divorce settlement based on his \u2018TV star\u2019 salary.\u00a0 Finding any work as an actor proved difficult now that William Shatner was so widely known as Captain James T. Kirk.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The first summer after <\/span>TOS<\/span><\/i> was cancelled, Shatner\u2019s agent found him work, of sorts, back in theater.\u00a0 He joined a small traveling troupe in the Northeast where he would direct and star in standard summer-stock comedies like <\/span>The Seven-Year Itch<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 Touring resort towns from mid-May to early September helped distract Bill from his \u2018how the mighty have fallen\u2019 lifestyle and the incumbent financial troubles he was facing.\u00a0 To cut his costs, he purchased a pop-up camper to set up in a parking lot or whatever space was available for each weeklong engagement.\u00a0 With a generator to power his postage stamp sized TV, rudimentary kitchen and bathroom facilities, he had all the comforts of home.\u00a0 With his black Doberman, Morgan, along for company, Shatner roamed the \u2018straw-hat circuit\u2019 with his no-frills set up for the summer of 1969.\u00a0 On July 20, 1969, he and Morgan watched the first Moon landing from East Hampton, New York – a far cry from the elaborate celebration he had attended at NASA the previous July.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When the summer season wrapped, Shatner was on a blacktop bee-line back to California to see his daughters ASAP.\u00a0 He kept deflecting his agent who wanted him to turn around and go back east;\u00a0 his presence had been requested by none other than the Kennedy clan.\u00a0 Rose Kennedy was a major <\/span>Star Trek<\/span><\/i> fan and really wanted him to sit at her table at some big charity event, but it was in the wrong direction as far as Shatner was concerned.\u00a0 Bill resisted to the point where they offered to send their private plane to pick him up.\u00a0 He later realized he could have had the Kennedy\u2019s plane pick him up as he was passing through Phoenix, fly to L.A. to collect his girls, take them on a joy ride to the charity gig, and return them all back to California.\u00a0 Shatner was so focused on getting home he was not clear headed enough to think all of it through to propose the \u2018family vacation\u2019 angle.\u00a0 Ironically, he got home, called his daughters so he could rush over to see them . . .\u00a0 only to find they were on the way to a slumber party (\u201cSee you tomorrow, dad.\u201d).<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The next several years would find William Shatner accepting any and all offers of employment. He had the big divorce settlement to keep ahead of and his own living arrangements to cover.\u00a0 His agent kept him busy guesting on shows like <\/span>Mission Impossible <\/span><\/i>or hawking products like Promise margarine.\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t a starship captain or the lead on these shows, but he was working.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Star Trek<\/span><\/i> was dead, but not completely forgotten.\u00a0 The series had cost so much money to produce that Paramount began offering <\/span>TOS <\/span><\/i>for syndication.\u00a0 It was offered cheap to local stations to help recoup some of the money the studio had sunk into the show.\u00a0 As a small station time filler, the <\/span>Trek<\/span><\/i> brand name was kept alive and even began attracting a new audience.\u00a0 The cancelled series actually became a syndication hit.\u00a0 Even when the seventy nine episodes of <\/span>TOS <\/span><\/i>were aired again and again, the ratings it was garnering kept climbing.\u00a0 <\/span>Star Trek <\/span><\/i>watching parties were springing up on college campuses across the country.\u00a0 Interest in the series even developed a new entity no one could have predicted during the <\/span>TOS<\/span><\/i>\u2019s original run – things known as <\/span>Star Trek Conventions<\/span><\/i> suddenly came into vogue.\u00a0 Gene Roddenberry saw these gatherings as an opportunity.\u00a0 As early as 1972, he began making appearances on the convention circuit spinning tales and insider intel about <\/span>TOS<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 Gene fanned the flames by saying, \u201cI would love to bring <\/span>Star Trek<\/span><\/i> back to television or maybe even on the big screen, but the networks and film studios just won\u2019t get behind it.\u00a0 Perhaps with your continued enthusiasm and support, they\u2019ll see the light and give us a chance.\u00a0 Would you like that?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Of course they would!\u00a0 When Paramount eventually did come to ask him about bringing the series back, he refused!\u00a0 Roddenberry knew they could not contractually move forward without him.\u00a0 Gene also knew the game – hold on long enough to let the clamour for <\/span>Star Trek<\/span><\/i> to increase and up the value of the project.\u00a0 Roddenberry now had leverage to push other projects to his own advantage.\u00a0 While he held Paramount at arm\u2019s length, Roddenberry was pitched an animated Saturday morning <\/span>Star Trek<\/span><\/i> by Filmation Associates.\u00a0 What better way could there be to grow an even larger (and younger) audience.\u00a0 He got Dorothy Fontana from <\/span>TOS <\/span><\/i>set up as a story editor \/ associate producer who in turn persuaded many of the better writers from the series to pen scripts.<\/span><\/p>\n The animated series served Roddenberry well:\u00a0 It was a money maker, kept <\/span>Star Trek<\/span><\/i> fan\u2019s hopes alive, and allowed Gene to pitch other pet projects with strings attached.\u00a0 The carrot he held in front of the donkey was a \u2018maybe someday\u2019 return to the mothership – <\/span>Star Trek – <\/span><\/i>in either TV or big screen form.\u00a0 It would be 1974 before Roddenberry and Paramount would begin negotiating future voyages of the Starship <\/span>Enterprise.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Cut to 1975.\u00a0 William Shatner is still eking out a living as an actor.\u00a0 The residuals he had been receiving for <\/span>TOS <\/span><\/i>had run out and he was, \u201cEntirely unaware that anything was brewing in regard to <\/span>Star Trek.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>A ski vacation at California\u2019s Mammoth Mountain would open his eyes.<\/span><\/p>\n A fellow skier recognized him on the slopes (\u201cHey you\u2019re Spock\u201d) and aseds him if he had seen, \u201cThe <\/span>Star Trek <\/span><\/i>thing down at the ski lodge.\u201d\u00a0 The man has now gotten his attention so Shatner paid a visit to the ski lodge to see what he was talking about.\u00a0 The ski lodge was showing a film of outtakes from <\/span>TOS <\/span><\/i>they had purchased from none other than The Big Bird of the Galaxy himself, Gene Roddenberry.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The clips of actors flubbing lines or cracking up during takes were assembled for the cast.\u00a0 Typically they would be screened for the cast and crew at their annual Christmas party.\u00a0 Shatner looked into the matter and found Roddenberry was making some pretty good coin with his blooper reels, but without any compensation for the actors (let alone their permission for him to use their footage).\u00a0 Leonard Nimoy tried to tell Roddenberry that he was damaging Nimoy\u2019s reputation by peddling these out-take reels.\u00a0 Gene offered to give him his own copy.\u00a0 The income supported Roddenberry in some of his lean years, but it caused considerable friction with some of the actors in the <\/span>Star Trek<\/span><\/i> family.\u00a0 Bill said he didn\u2019t give the whole continued <\/span>Star Trek<\/span><\/i> phenomenon much thought until 1975 when he says, \u201cI accidentally got smart.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Shatner recalled, \u201cIn early 1975, I was appearing in a little one-man show that I used to do, full of Shakespearean sonnets, monologues, poetry, all kinds of stuff, all of it highbrow, none of it bearing the slightest relation to <\/span>Star Trek.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>Still, every night the theater would be mostly full of people curious about seeing Captain Kirk live and in person,\u00a0 I was not naive enough to believe otherwise.\u00a0 The audience wanted more, some stronger connection.\u00a0 A stagehand figured it out for me:\u00a0 \u2018They probably just want to talk to you.\u00a0 These people aren\u2019t here to see you act, they\u2019re here because they admire you and because they feel like they know you.\u00a0 I think they see you as a friend.\u00a0 Somehow, watching your friend reading the greatest sonnets ever written isn\u2019t nearly as interesting as having a simple, face to face chat.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The next night, Shatner took his final curtain call and then told the crowd, \u201cTonight, if it\u2019s all right with you folks, I\u2019d like for us to spend some time together,\u00a0 I\u2019d like to throw the floor open for questions.\u00a0 Over the next sixty minutes, I fielded whatever questions the audience wanted to throw at me, and as I expected, nearly all of them were <\/span>Star Trek<\/span><\/i> related.\u00a0 However, what I didn\u2019t expect was that the questions were smart, thoughtful, and extremely insightful.\u201d\u00a0 Several weeks later, Shatner found himself backstage in New York City waiting to be introduced to another eager crowd, only this time at a true <\/span>Star Trek <\/span><\/i>convention.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When he was announced, \u201cI threw open the stage curtain with a hammy flourish, stepped out onto the hardwood, and stopped dead in my tracks.\u00a0 My jaw dropped.\u00a0 My face went white, my eyes rolled up in my head and I was genuinely stunned.\u00a0 Five thousand people were now staring back at me, all of the cheering, all of them standing atop their chairs, all of them expecting me to be charming, full of absolutely fascinating <\/span>Trek<\/span><\/i> lore, and unceasingly entertaining.\u00a0 I was horrified.\u00a0 When the crowd plopped into their wooden folding chairs nearly as one, the roar slowly faded away and was replaced by my own deafening silence.\u00a0 I had gone blank.\u00a0 \u2018Uhhhhhhhhh\u2026does,,,,uh, does anyone have a question or something?\u2019 at which point five thousand hands shot into the air and my stomach shot into my throat.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Shatner soon got the hang of reliving <\/span>Star Trek<\/span><\/i> moments with the fans, but he had no inkling the universe would soon lure him back into space.\u00a0 While filming a new stock western series for Paramount and ABC called <\/span>Barbary Coast, <\/span><\/i>he took a nostalgic wander through the sound stage where <\/span>Star Trek<\/span><\/i> had been filmed.\u00a0 To his surprise, he found Gene Roddenberry pounding away on a typewriter in his old office.\u00a0 Shatner thought Roddenberry had lost his mind.\u00a0 It was 1975 and <\/span>Star Trek<\/span><\/i> was a relic of TV history, yet there he was, working on <\/span>Star Trek<\/span><\/i> scripts.\u00a0 Bill did not know that Gene and Paramount had negotiated a deal for him to work up a low-budget, feature-length <\/span>Star Trek <\/span><\/i>movie treatment.\u00a0 They wanted something that could be done in the two to three million dollar range.\u00a0 \u201cWhat\u2019s it about?\u2019 Shatner inquired.\u00a0 Roddenberry looks up with his eyes widening and says, \u201cSomewhere out there, there\u2019s this massive . . . entity, this abstract, unknown life force that seems mechanical in nature, although it actually possesses its own highly advanced consciousness.\u00a0 It could be God, it could be Satan, and it is heading toward Earth.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Shatner could not know he had just been sucked back into the <\/span>Star Trek <\/span><\/i>canon.\u00a0 <\/span>Barbary Coast<\/span><\/i> was canceled after thirteen episodes but Bill would continue his career elsewhere.\u00a0 The wheels of progress may turn slowly, but those \u2018big screen resurrection of <\/span>Star Trek\u2019 <\/span><\/i>wheels turned at a glacial pace.\u00a0 William Shatner would not be seen on the big screen back on the bridge of the Starship <\/span>Enterprise <\/span><\/i>until the end of 1979.\u00a0 We will pick up the story in Part 2.<\/span><\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 A little nostalgia from the first season of TOS . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The last time my wife surprised me with a book she found at our local St. Vinnie\u2019s, we both had a few moments of head scratching trying to remember if I had already read it.\u00a0 Published in 1994 by HarperCollins, Star Trek Movie Memories by William Shatner (with Chris Kreski) certainly seemed familiar.\u00a0 The 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