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Chapter 7

Getting through Chapter 7 in Up Till Now was a real treat.  Shatner spends some time talking about what led up to the resurrection of Star Trek up to the motion picture being made.  With all of the success the original series was having in syndication and the cult following it had generated, it seems that Paramount was  going to launch a new television network and make "Star Trek II" it's major show.  There was a lot of talk about this show until the movie Star Wars opened up, and shortly thereafter Close Encounters of the Third Kind premiered.  After that, the television show was no longer on the table and the feature film was born.

From Leonard Nimoy's Twitter page - Making of the movie Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Shatner tells some interesting stories.  Apparently the motion picture was originally going to be made without Spock as Nimoy was in a dispute with the studio over merchandising rights and other legal matters.  They obviously finally came around and wrote Spock into the movie.  Another little known fact is that the director chosen for the motion picture, Robert Wise, had never seen an episode of Star Trek.  Never.  He did not have a clue how these characters should interact, their histories, or anything else about the Star Trek universe.  Shatner and Nimoy tried to inject some of the light humor that is found in the series but the director would squash it and make them re-shoot the scene.  Shatner goes on to say that he hates this movie for that very reason.  It was very cold, very stark in the relationship between the characters, and instead of focusing on those relationships that made the series work instead the director chose to make the Enterprise the focus of the movie.  This, of course, explains all of the long sequences in the movie that are focused around showing the Enterprise.

Shatner's take on the filming of the movie and the problems they encountered not only with direction but in plot makes the chapter a very interesting read.  The next chapter starts out with T.J. Hooker references so I can't wait to hear his thoughts on that beat cop...

-Jeff