A new in-universe book finds that famous Star Trek Vulcan and #1 identifiable character of the franchise, the great Mr. Spock, providing a first-hand account as an elder statesman from his vantage after he became the ambassador to Romulus in Star Trek: The Next Generation’s “Unification” arc and just before he attempts to take his jellyfish-inspired ship with Red Matter to create a black hole in J.J. Abrams’ 2009 movie, Star Trek. The Autobiography of Mr. Spock: The Life of a Federation Legend is edited by (actually written by) frequent Star Trek in-universe writer Una McCormack, just released by Titan Books. Readers will learn Spock intended this as a memoir for Jean-Luc Picard, with whom he melded after Picard’s meld with Spock’s father just before his death in the episode, “Sarek.”
One of the greatest–and most widely popular–chapters of the 55 years of Star Trek is coming back to the theaters this summer. The 35th anniversary of the film that expanded Star Trek beyond sci-fi fandom, 1986’s Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home hits theaters again across the country in a limited release as Paramount Pictures partners with Fathom Events. It was all about having fun while fighting for Earth’s very survival with the beloved crew of the starship Enterprise, the film that wrapped up a trilogy of sorts after the death and rebirth of Spock. It’s one of the best-received time travel movies of all time, and it sparked a generation of environmentalists who would actually take heed of the film’s cautionary story to go on to save endangered whales in real life.
This week saw the passing of Robert Fletcher at age 98. If you don’t know the name, you definitely know his work. Nobody creating the 20th century’s view of futurism through clothing was more influential than Fletcher, who created more Star Trek costumes than any other designer, including William Ware Theiss before him and Robert Blackman after him. The maroon costumes worn by bridge officers in the first seven Star Trek movies were designed by Fletcher, and are likely the most beloved of all Star Trek costumes by fans excepting possibly the original series bright Starfleet tunics. Scotty’s radiological suit is also a classic, along with the Klingon uniforms, which were probably the most enduring, used with little modification from Star Trek: The Motion Picture throughout the entire runs of The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager. The open-chested costume of Ricardo Montalban’s Khan? Also Fletcher. The widest reach outside genre fans that Star Trek ever achieved was Star Trek IV, and even those who don’t care about science fiction recall the robe worn by Leonard Nimoy’s Spock and the pink shell outfit worn by William Shatner as Kirk when they returned to walk the streets of San Francisco, managing to save a pair of humpback whales on the journey. Again, costumes designed by Robert Fletcher. He also created costumes for another sci-fi classic: The Last Starfighter.
Star Trek and its stories continue on.
By way of new stuff, in the “old is new again” context this week online megastore Entertainment Earth began taking pre-orders for a new retro series not from the movies featuring the original Enterprise crew, but from Star Trek: The Next Generation (which, if you’re paying attention, featured costumes primarily by Robert Blackman). We’ve talked at length over the past decade about Super7’s line (formerly sold by Funko) of ReAction Kenner-style retro action figures. Those familiar with Star Trek action figures will find the new line closer to that of the early, rarer Galoob line than the Playmates larger figures that dominated the market for years (and can now be found in vintage toy stores everywhere, generally for about $2). Check out all the new designs, and the new cardbacks, and pre-order them at the below links.
The most comprehensive retrospective analysis of a film you’ve probably ever read has arrived. For the 40th anniversary of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, film historian Marc Cushman saved his best for last, These Are the Voyages: Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek in the 1970s Volume III (1978-1980), the sixth in his volume of comprehensive histories of the people and productions before, during, and after the original 1960s Star Trek TV series, forming a complete biography of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry (who was born 99 years ago this week). The creative vision and determination of Roddenberry came to its zenith in the period leading up to and during the filming of 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and a series was resurrected and turned into a major franchise. Cushman reviewed archives, records, contemporary articles, and interviewed key players for this book, to flesh out once and for all Roddenberry’s successes and failures with the film’s script and his pressure on the studio to maintain creative control, successfully spurring what would become 40 more years (and counting) of Kirk, Spock, and friends.
Like the split between fans of the third Star Wars trilogy and The Mandalorian, fans of Star Trek probably see themselves aligned to prefer either Star Trek: Discovery or Star Trek: Picard. Or maybe there’s even a better contrast between Star Trek: Discovery’s first season worldbuilding vs. that series’ second season’s throwback concepts. Was your favorite character the badass Mirror Universe Emperor Philippa Georgiou (formerly Federation Captain), played by the sly and fabulous Michelle Yeoh (the only actor onscreen who could actually immobilize someone in real life with her martial arts skill and the highest paid actress in Asia)? Maybe it was the very Original Series-inspired engineer Jett Reno, who got the best dialogue and had the best style of any character in this decade of Trekdom, played by the brilliantly funny Tig Notaro? Maybe it is the series lead, the very straight-laced Ant-Man and The Wasp-inspired sci-fi-meets-superheroine, Captain Michael Burnham, played by Sonequa Martin-Green? Or maybe it is Anson Mount giving his own superhero performance as an early (and later?) famous Captain Christopher Pike of the familiar good ship Enterprise? Turns out, if any one of the above fits the bill for you, Star Trek has something for you heading your way.
Peck? As in Gregory Peck? Turns out Oscar-winning actor Gregory Peck has a grandson who took to the acting business–Ethan Peck–and he has been tapped to co-star in the next season of Star Trek Discovery. This will be the 13th actor to portray the half-human, half-Vulcan Mr. Spock in the more than five decades of the franchise–a role performed by more actors in the franchise than any other character. Peck appears in the photo below (center) with Leonard Nimoy’s family, released today (and if the woman at left looks familiar, that’s because it’s Terry Farrell, who played Dax on Deep Space Nine, Leonard’s daughter-in-law, married to Leonard’s son Adam earlier this year).
Although he wasn’t “that kid in Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” Peck did play a boy in the Disney fantasy film (which also featured former Star Trek actor Alice Krige). He has also appeared in The Drew Carey Show, That ’70s Show, and the TV series version of 10 Things I Hate About You, among other things.
Here is an excerpt from the announcement earlier today about Peck from Star Trek Discovery executive producer Alex Kurtzman:
“Through 52 years of television and film, a parallel universe and a mirror universe, Mr. Spock remains the only member of the original bridge crew to span every era of Star Trek.”
Oops. Actually Spock did not appear in Star Trek Enterprise. So Spock has been in almost all the eras of Star Trek to be put to TV or film. Kurtzman continued:
“The great Leonard Nimoy, then the brilliant Zachary Quinto, brought incomparable humanity to a character forever torn between logic and emotion. We searched for months for an actor who would, like them, bring his own interpretation to the role.”
Pretty much anyone–sci-fi fan or not–can tell you Leonard Nimoy portrayed Spock the longest, from the pilot to the original series through the second film in the J.J. Abrams movie series, Star Trek Into Darkness (and a photo of him appeared in the next film Star Trek Beyond). The character is almost without question the most iconic sci-fi character of the post-television era.
Zachary Quinto has taken on Spock for the three Abrams movies–that is, the part of young Spock in the separate, Kelvin timeline. So where did we come up with eleven other actors who performed the role of Spock well in advance of Peck being handed his first tricorder?
Audiences have seen Spock several times before. Remember in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, moviegoers saw Spock grow up on the Genesis planet, where he was played at age nine by Carl Krakoff:
Sometimes the inbox offers up something really exciting and fun. Today the HISTORY channel greenlighted ten episodes of the unscripted series In Search Of, hosted and executive produced by Zachary Quinto, who audiences all met in the series Heroes, and now everyone knows as the actor who played the parallel universe (“Kelvin Timeline”) version of Mr. Spock opposite Leonard Nimoy’s Mr. Spock. The original In Search Of… was your humble Editor’s own first introduction to Leonard Nimoy as a kid in the 1970s. The series was a weekly show between 1977 and 1982, first briefly hosted by Rod Serling, but it became synonymous with Nimoy’s one-of-a-kind narration. In 2002 Syfy Channel tried to reboot the show with our favorite FBI director actor Mitch Pileggi as the host, but that was short-lived. Inspired by the iconic 1970s’ franchise, the new series will examine unexplained phenomena from all over the world. As HISTORY stated in its press release: “UFOs and paranormal mysteries remain relevant as the Pentagon recently acknowledged a secret UFO program which investigated sightings of UFOs from 2007 – 2012.”
The Bermuda Triangle, Bigfoot, Atlantis, Amelia Earhart, Easter Island, the Loch Ness monster, Stonehenge, the Mayans, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the sinking of the Titanic and Lusitania, the Shroud of Turin, D.B. Cooper, and the Holy Grail. If you were a kid in the 1970s, the odds are you learned about all of these from Nimoy on this series. The mix of mythology and lore and fact and fiction with the authority of Nimoy prompted me to check out books on the subjects from my local library to investigate further about which stories seemed plausible and which didn’t. An updated instrumentation or at least a new recording of the classic theme song will be a must for fans of the original show.
“I am so excited to be reimagining ‘In Search Of’ and exploring new questions and phenomena with all of the advancements in science and technology from which we have benefitted in the past forty years since the original series first aired,” said Quinto. “In the spirit of my late dear friend Leonard Nimoy, we intend to honor and perpetuate his endless curiosity about the world – and universe – in which we live.”
If you missed the series, just watch this classic episode from Nimoy, In Search Of… Bigfoot:
The best production of 50 years of Star Trek, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, returned to theaters Sunday for two screenings nationwide, and audiences packed theaters from coast to coast. The 35th anniversary of the biggest summer of movies continues Wednesday with your last chance to see 1982’s The Wrath of Khan back on the big screen as Paramount Pictures partners with the Fathom Events series once more. We couldn’t wait to see it again and saw the first screening Sunday and were quickly reminded why the film was such a success. What were my takeaway thoughts this time through the film? Leonard Nimoy’s voice echoed throughout the theater with every line (was this his finest work as Spock?). Kirstie Alley’s Lieutenant Saavik fits right in as the new crewmember. The lengths director and screenplay writer Nicholas Meyer took to make the Enterprise look like a functioning military vessel: from the boatswain’s whistle, to the formality of the uniforms and ship inspection by Admiral Kirk, the pulsating real-world sound effects of the two competing vessels, and the military tactics and trickery as Khan and Kirk try to one-up the other that always connects this film for me to another favorite, The Hunt for Red October. William Shatner was so cocky and confident. Tightly edited action sequences, camera angles placing the audience inside the bridge and into every nook and cranny inside the Enterprise (Turbolift doesn’t work? Let’s take the ladder), and James Horner’s unforgettable and unique musical score. And it was fun for me to think back of all the people who made this film that I have had the good fortune to meet, like Shatner, James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, and Walter Koenig. Each of these actors seem to have done their best work in this film.
What surprised me? After watching Sunday’s screenings I heard remarks from viewers about how many new scenes they did not remember, and this was echoed across the Internet, including comments from long-time Star Trek fans and insiders. But it makes perfect sense–unless you are a rabid Star Trek fan, you probably didn’t track all the variations in the film that have been released over the past 35 years. If you have a photographic memory at all, you may hear lines in this week’s presentation that don’t quite match up. But if you only saw the film in theaters or via early DVD and Blu-ray releases, you will have seen different versions of the film (for one example, the original cut didn’t include the current title, instead it was Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, without the II). If you watched the expanded ABC TV movie re-broadcast on television in 1985–as many did before the prevalence of home video options–you saw a version different from the 1982 release, full of entirely different takes of several scenes. In 2002 a Director’s Edition was released, and if you saw the film recently at all, but before 2016’s official Director’s Cut, then you probably last saw the Director’s Edition. The differences from what was scripted and filmed and what made the original theatrical version alone literally fills ten pages of Allan Asherman’s 1982 book The Making of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, but even that book of course couldn’t include the differences found in the much later ABC TV version and subsequent editions. The version in theaters this week is the official 2016 Director’s Cut, itself absorbing so many modifications from the original 1982 release from prior incarnations. But this is the final, the version Nicholas Meyer (the reputed “Man Who Saved Star Trek”) discussed with me in my interview with him here at borg.com last month.
Wait–What’s going on here? I don’t remember this scene in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan! (Keep reading!)
So if you recall a more suggestive relationship between Kirk and Kirstie Alley’s Lieutenant Saavik, or sensed a romantic relationship brewing between Saavik and Kirk’s son David (played by the late Merritt Butrick), you won’t notice that so much in the Fathom Events presentation (below you’ll see the ABC TV version offered more “steamy” close-ups and additional dialogue amplifying the more womanizing Kirk of the original series). If you don’t recall that Scotty has a young relative aboard the Enterprise, be prepared for a pleasant surprise, including some great additions featuring Kirk and Scotty. The midshipman’s (played by Ike Eisenmann) death is more poignant in the latest cut, and an entire sequence between McCoy and Kirk gets us further into Kirk’s thoughts in the aftermath of Khan’s attack. A conversation about ego between Spock and Alley adds further justification for Kirk’s actions as he taunts Khan into the nebula.
Newspaper advertisement for the 1985 ABC television presentation of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
But do you recall seeing a child in Khan’s crew on Ceti Alpha V? McCoy mentioning he served with Paul Winfield’s Captain Terrell? How about McCoy operating on Chekov after he returns from the Genesis planet and Chekov struggling to return to help on the bridge? Sulu’s promotion to the Excelsior, or Kirk’s final line, quoting Peter Pan’s “first star on the right, and on ’til morning”? That Saavik is half-Romulan? David besting Kirk and holding a knife to his throat? How about these lines from Khan:
For fans of a good fantasy fix, you can hardly find a more exciting adventure and weekly romp than TNT’s The Librarians. For four years The Librarians have continued the world of the Warehouse 13-esque, made-for TV movie series going back to 2004, made popular by star Noah Wyle (Donnie Darko, Mark Felt, Falling Skies, ER, A Few Good Men) as Librarian adventurer Flynn Carsen. Season 4 is coming this back to TNT this Fall (and to Syfy in the UK), and will feature guest stars John Noble (The Lord of the Rings, Fringe, Sleepy Hollow, Forever) as Monsignor Vega, a Vatican bishop who is secretly the head of the Heretical Order of the Shadows bent on destroying the Library, and Rachel Nichols (Continuum, Star Trek 2009, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Conan the Barbarian) as Nicole Noone, Carsen’s original Guardian originally thought to be dead.
While you’re waiting for the TV series to return, a new monthly comic book series will provide fans with an excellent continuation. Published by Dynamite Comics, The Librarians, Issue #1, has the look and feel of an episode of the series, complete with the great banter between the Librarians the show is known for, the quirky characters protecting an even more bizarre Library full of secrets, magic, and the rarest artifacts hidden from the rest of us in the real world.
In the first issue writer Will Pfeifer (Aquaman, Hellboy) and Brazilian artist Rodney Buchemi (Uncanny X-Men) take The Librarians and readers to a classic source of the strange and paranormal, TV’s In Search Of… series that starred Leonard Nimoy. Because it’s The Librarians version of that series, this issue is not about Nimoy and the series creators per se, but it’s similar enough that fans of the series will follow all the references, and–for those that need it spelled out–the first issue is titled “In Search Of… Chapter 1.” Carsen, Caretaker Jenkins (John Larroquette), Colonel Eve Baird (Rebecca Romijn) and fellow Librarians Jake Stone (Christian Kane), Cassandra Cillian (Lindy Booth), and Ezekiel Jones (John Harlan Kim) set out to find the killer of the creator of the paranormal films, Solomon Schick, after he is murdered at a local film festival.
We’re back today with the second part of my interview with Nicholas Meyer, director, screenwriter, and storyteller, as we celebrate the 35th anniversary of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and its return to theaters next month as part of the Fathom Events series. Meyer directed Star Trek II and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and he was a screenwriter on both movies as well as Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. He chatted with me about his films and more this past week. If you missed part one of the interview, check it out here.
CB: You’ve written words spoken on-screen by Lawrence Olivier (The Seven-Per-Cent Solution), David Warner (Time After Time, Star Trek VI), and Christopher Plummer (Star Trek VI). Are there any other great actors you maybe fantasize, or would like to write, dialogue for?
NM: I’ve also worked with Jason Robards and John Lithgow (both in The Day After). I’ve worked with some really wonderful actors. Fantasizing about working with actors is interesting. When I listened to the Chandos recording of the music from Henry V–the Olivier film with Christopher Plummer reciting or acting out the various Shakespeare vocal parts–I thought, “Wow, I’d really love to work with this man.” And I wrote the part of Chang in Star Trek VI specifically for him. That’s the first time I’ve ever written for an actor other than the Star Trek cast. I said to my casting director Mary Jo Slater, “Whatever you do, don’t come back without him. Because there’s no movie unless it’s him.” It would take me longer than this conversation to rustle around in my brain other actors I’d love to work with–Benedict Cumberbatch–sure, of course.
Nicholas Meyer directing the production crew, with Christopher Plummer as General Chang, on the Klingon courtroom set of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
CB: Your Time After Time co-star Malcolm McDowell joined Star Trek in the seventh movie in the series, Star Trek Generations, after you were no longer with the franchise, and it always seemed to me to be an obvious choice to get him into the Star Trek universe. Did he ever contact you about taking on a Star Trek role?
NM: No… we never discussed it. David Warner, who actually has been in two Star Trek movies (as Chancellor Gorkon in The Undiscovered Country and St. John Talbot in Star Trek V: The Final Fronter), was the great post-war Hamlet with the RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company), and I think Malcolm at one point was a spear carrier in that company at the time when David was this huge star. In Time After Time they used to kid each other about those times. Something about carrying a pack of cigarettes under your costume.
CB: You have said you see yourself first as a writer and have been writing and telling stories since you were five years old. Are you as excited today to sit down and craft a story as you were in 1982?
NM: I think when I get going the answer is yes, and if it’s going well the answer is yes, and the hours can go by and I look up and it’s a week later. But as I’ve gotten older, the process of actually starting, of facing what used to be a blank page, which is now a blank screen, having done it again and again and again… Most of the stuff I’ve written has never been produced. Most of the stuff I’ve written for books I’m happy to say has been published, but I haven’t written that many books. But most of my screenplays–including probably my best screenplays–have never been done. So as you get older and you embark on this again and again and again there is a kind of a weariness of picking up the yoke and putting it on your shoulders. That said, getting paid for telling stories beats work any day.
On the Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Engineering set, that’s Catherine E. Coulson (later Twin Peaks’ Log Lady) with the camera, director Nicholas Meyer (in Starfleet captain’s jacket) and James Doohan as Scotty, filming the emotional finale.
CB: In your memoir The View From the Bridge, you mentioned some of your best ideas or solutions when writing come while doing laundry, while in the tub, or even building a model boat. What was your biggest revelation and strangest place you found it?
