Moviefone Editorial

Tag: star-trek-original-series

  • ‘Star Trek’ Writer David Gerrold’s Tribbles Remain Popular 50 Years After Their Population Explosion

    Engadget Expand NY - Day 3To celebrate the 50th anniversary of “Star Trek,” which first aired on Sept. 8, 1966 and has continued to boldly go forward as one of the most enduring, influential and visionary television creations of all time, Moviefone is offering a week-long look at five decades of the futuristic franchise.

    In 1966, David Gerrold was a 22-year-old fledgling writer who caught the debut broadcast of a then-brand new science fiction television series called “Star Trek.” Within a year, he was not only a writer working on the show, he had created one of the soon-to-be iconic series’ most unusual — and whimsical — alien life forms. And today, 50 years later, “The Trouble With Tribbles” remains a hallmark of the original series’ episodes.

    Gerrold would enjoy a long and fruitful association with Star Trek: The Animated Series,” including the follow-up episode “More Tribbles, More Troubles”; the unrealized 70s-era sequel series “Phase II,” which paved the way for the later theatrical films; and the earliest days of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” as well as penning both fiction and nonfiction books on the subject of “Star Trek.”

    Gerrold’s television work stayed largely rooted in genre — he created the Sleestaks of “Land of the Lost” and penned episodes of sci-fi series like “Babylon 5” — and he had an acclaimed and prolific career as a science fiction novelist, most notably with his semi-autobiographical Hugo and Nebula award-winning novelette “The Martian Child,” which became a full novel and then the 2007 film of the same name.

    Over the course of Gerrold’s career, “Star Trek” fans have multiplied almost as rapidly as Tribbles and the writer has seen the phenomenon only increase in scope and influence over the course of five decades. With much of his work on the franchise now collected with the newly released “Star Trek 50th Anniversary TV and Movie Collection” — featuring all three seasons of the original ’60s series, the six theatrical films starring the original cast and, for the first time in HD, every episode of the animated series — Gerrold shared his remembrances of getting in on the ground floor of one of the most celebrated and enduring properties in television and film history.

    Moviefone: You’ve certainly have enjoyed a long and fruitful association with the “Star Trek” franchise, and you started as one of the earliest fans. I’d love to hear about the first time you watched “Star Trek,” and the effect that it had on you.

    David Gerrold: It was September of 1966 — God, I can’t believe it’s been that long ago! — and we saw this network advertising a new series, and I saw one commercial for “Star Trek.” I thought, “What the hell is that?” I was a big science fiction fan, and here comes this spaceship that doesn’t look like anything we’ve ever seen before. And I thought, “Well, that is the stupidest looking spaceship I’ve ever seen,” right?

    It was 8:30 on Thursday night, so I tuned in, and the episode was “The Man Trap” by George Clayton Johnson. And I was watching it, I was like, “Beamed down? They don’t land? That’s kind of dumb. It violates the laws of physics.” They had this guy with pointed ears who has no emotions, and I think, “Well, that’s not going to be a really interesting character …” I’m sitting there being very skeptical.

    They arrive on the planet, and the scientist is investigating some kind of alien pyramid. And I look at the set direction, the set design, and the doorway to the alien pyramid is not human proportion. Somebody on that how was trying very hard to create an alien environment — a believable alien environment!

    The story as it happened was not bad, because a little bit later on when the salt vampire creature is walking down the hall, and here comes Uhura, the salt vampire creature shows up as a very handsome black man for her. And I realized that was very clever. Because it shows the creature showing up as desirable.

    So that was when I started to get hooked, and I thought, “Well, I don’t want them to screw it up, and I know science fiction, and I know script format, so I’m going to submit an outline.” I submitted an outline, Gene L. Coon [the showrunner] was very impressed with it, and invited me to submit outlines to the show, and I submitted “A Fuzzy Thing Happened to Me,” and they bought it.

    Were you aware of what a Cinderella story that was at the time? Or did you think, “Oh, this is just how showbiz works”?

    I was very conscientious about structuring the story so that it would play as a story. I didn’t realize how funny it was until after the story was very carefully outlined, and Gene L. Coon said, “Put this piece back in. It’s the funniest piece in the show.” That was the scene between Kirk and Scotty asking about who started the fight. I began to realize there’s a lot of humor in it that I’m just going to see where it goes.

    I was very pleased that it turned out even funnier than I thought it would be, because I wanted to be quietly whimsical, and it turned out to be laugh out loud funny, which was even better. I was even happier, because I always wanted to be good at comedy.

    The night it was aired, a friend of mine was raving about how good he thought it was. And I turned to him and I said, “It’s only one episode of one TV show. In 20 years, who’s going to remember it?” It’s 50 years later. The universe must have said, “Challenge accepted, David.”

    Where did the first notion of Tribbles come to you, and did they emerge fully formed as we see them in the series?

    Well, I wanted to do rabbits in Australia [which historically bred at an uncontrolled pace], and I realized that we can’t do live creatures because of all kinds of just technical concerns, and concerns for the animals. So I thought, “What can we do to represent these creatures?” My girlfriend at the time, Holly Sherman, had a keychain with fluffy, black ball on it, and I thought, “That’s it! We use black balls.”

    I described them as black balls, and the prop man, Wah Chang, who’s worked on a lot of big movies, hired a lady — I forget her name — and she showed us about 500 or 600 Tribbles, and we used those in the show. We just had a great time with them. They photographed beautifully.

    Another one of your big contributions is Captain Kirk’s middle name, Tiberius. I’m very curious where that inspiration came from.

    I’m a big fan of Roman history, so I had just been reading a book about how the ancient Romans were experts in torture, and Tiberius was just a monster. Dorothy Fontana and I were on a panel at a “Star Trek” convention in New York, and one of the fans asked, “What does the T stand for?” Without thinking, I said “Tiberius.” That got a big laugh.

    And then a year later, we were doing the animated series, and just for the hell of it, I had somebody address him as Captain James Tiberius Kirk. Dorothy got on the phone and checked with Gene Roddenberry. He said, “That’s fine with me — go ahead!” I don’t think he was paying too much attention. He was like, “Tiberius — okay, great.” So it got put into that animated episode, and from that moment on he’s been James Tiberius Kirk.

    Gene Roddenberry was a complicated man. Tell me a little bit about your relationship with him throughout the many years you were involved in “Star Trek.”

    Well, I admired Gene a lot. He was a great visionary, and he was absolutely a charismatic public speaker. That was a strength of his: that he could inspire people, and when he talked story and said, “I want you to write the story that you can’t write anywhere else,” that was very exciting. You wanted to write the best story you were capable of. You wanted to write a better story than you were capable of.

    The problem is that Gene had a — I don’t know how to phrase it tactfully: he had a dark side. I think he was insecure around other people with talent and ability. I’m not certain. So he wasn’t very good at sharing the fame. He’d speak to an audience, he’d talk about what he created, and he rarely acknowledged what anybody else had contributed to the show.

    When I came aboard “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” at the beginning it was very inspiring, because we had this blank slate, we had this blank canvas to fill. But when his lawyer appointed himself chief of staff for the entire series, and took advantage of Gene’s failing health and brought aboard a bunch of producers who did not know “Star Trek,” and didn’t want to listen to Dorothy or myself — we did know “Star Trek” — it became a very unpleasant situation where office politics got out of control.

    And Gene was no longer quite the master of his own show. We were never quite sure what was true from one day to the next. So it was very unfortunate, and when I left the show … this was the one flaw in his character that I found most difficult: Gene always had someone else to blame. No matter what went wrong, he didn’t manage it well. It was always, “It’s NBC’s fault,” “Paramount’s fault,” “It was Harlan Ellison’s fault,” “It was the studio’s fault.” When I left the show, Gene blamed me for a while, and that hurt a lot because I had only wanted to just do the very best “Star Trek” for Gene. So I felt a little bit betrayed.

    Now, after I got past that, I realized he’d done me a favor because I wouldn’t have adopted the most marvelous little boy and became a dad, and got to write some of the best novels of my career. Thinking back on it, I think I learned a lot from Gene. A lot about how to be good, and a lot about what not to do. Despite any issues I might have had with Gene, he gave us “Star Trek,” and I think that mitigates a lot, because he was passionate about “Star Trek.” And if it hadn’t been for him, we’d have never had the show.

    So we have this incredibly iconic thing that is going to change our culture for generations to come, because it’s about the possibilities of the future, it’s about a future where we’re all thriving and doing well and all have opportunities and we’re all included. So it’s a very positive view of the future, and I give Gene enormous credit for that, because I don’t think anybody else has been able to create that kind of a vision of a future that works for all of us with no one and nothing left out.

    So despite any issues I might have had with Gene at the time, I have to acknowledge that he did something remarkable and extraordinary.

    One of the other unsung heroes of “Star Trek” is Gene Coon, and I’d love to hear more of your memories of him in particular. He’s a little bit of a mystery man to the public at large as far as his great contributions to “Star Trek.”

    I admired Gene L. Coon as a consummate producer. He understood you had to have a good script, you had to have the right actors for it, and you had to have it be about something. And he understood that Tribbles could be that way, but he also understood that with every other script that passed under his desk, under his management, under his responsibility, whatever.

    He understood that it was that every episode had to have a specific sparkle to it, whether it’s a comedy or a drama, or a tragedy, he understood that there needed to be this magic, or a statement that had to be really pertinent. So operating from that context, he encouraged writers, and he listened well to writers, and he listened to ideas, and if the ideas worked, he said, “Yeah, that’s it. Let’s do that.”

    He was a charming man, but, pardon the expression, he was also a no-bullshit man. He was focused on getting the job done. So if you were in a conversation with him, there wasn’t a lot of chitchat. It was, “Let’s solve this challenge ahead of us. Let’s tackle this challenge and see what we can do that’s clever, and exciting, and interesting.” I cannot say enough good things about him.

    I mean, I won’t say he was flawless. He smoked those God awful cigars that killed him. But in terms of, if I had to pick one producer who I would love to work with again, and again, and again, he would be way up there near the top of the shortlist. Probably the top. He respected writers.

    We know that there is definitely more “Star Trek” in the future with “Star Trek: Discovery,” the new show headed up by Bryan Fuller. You want to sit down with the producers and see if there’s a story you can pitch them?

    Well, they’re doing a story arc across 10 episodes, so everything has to be integrated into their story arc. So I think that they have a writers’ room. I know Bryan Fuller and Nick Meyer — they’re just spectacularly good writers. They’re very optimistic that they’re going to come up with something very exciting. I look forward to seeing what they’re going to do. So far, my phone hasn’t rung, but if it did, I’d be there in a heartbeat!

    Here we are at the 50-year mark in this franchise that was a huge part of your life for a very long time. What does it mean to you to see everything that it’s become: a phenomenon; a way of life, in many respects? It’s a singular, beyond-a-television-show kind of experience. Tell me what that means to you.

    Well, it’s like being one of the Beatles, only without being mobbed everywhere you go. It’s that you get to see that something you did, something you created, has had this enormous impact on the audience, and that’s probably one of the luckiest experiences a writer can have, is to see that the audience has responded so enthusiastically. It lets you know you weren’t wasting your time.

    I find it sometimes overwhelming, sometimes embarrassing because … I’m speechless sometimes. I’m amazing at the enthusiasm of the audience. That they have connected so strongly, and I’m humbled by it. It was my first show, and all of a sudden here I am part of something so iconic that it has changed the world.

  • Writer D. C. Fontana Looks Back on 50 Years of ‘Star Trek’

    star trek 50thTo celebrate the 50th anniversary of “Star Trek,” which first aired on Sept. 8, 1966 and has continued to boldly go forward as one of the most enduring, influential and visionary television creations of all time, Moviefone is offering a week-long look at five decades of the futuristic franchise.

    Over the course of her half-century-plus Hollywood career, television writer and story editor Dorothy Fontana — better known as Bonanza,” “The Streets of San Francisco,” “Kung Fu,” “The Waltons” and “Dallas,” earning prestigious awards and nominations along the way. But there’s one particular association that towers about the rest: “Star Trek.”

    In the mid-1960s, Fontana was in her 20s and had already sold several teleplays when she became the secretary for producer Gene Roddenberry, who was soon to launch his most sensational and enduring television concept. He opened the door of opportunity for the fledging writer (who’d used her initials as her screen name to sidestep prevailing gender biases in the industry), and within the first season elevated her to story editor. Along with leaving her creative fingerprints on many episodes, Fontana would particularly make significant contributions to the backstory and development of the show’s breakout character, Mr. Spock, and the culture of his home planet Vulcan.

    Fontana would go on to build an impressive TV career working across all dramatic genres, but “Star Trek” remained near and dear: she was the associate producer of the Emmy Award-winning 1973 Saturday morning “Star Trek: The Animated Series” and wrote its most acclaimed episode, “Yesteryear”; she assumed the same duties in the first season of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” including co-authoring the 1987 pilot episode “Encounter at Farpoint” along with Roddenberry.

    With the lion’s share of Fontana’s “Star Trek” work featuring the original cast now available en masse within the newly released “Star Trek 50th Anniversary TV and Movie Collection” — featuring all three seasons of the original 60s series, the six theatrical films starring the original cast and, for the first time in HD, every episode of the animated series — Fontana joined Moviefone to look back at her storied storytelling career in the 23rd and 24th Centuries.

    Moviefone: It must be fun to sort of enjoy this 50th anniversary celebration and to kind of revisit your memories about the whole “Star Trek” phenomenon. Tell me about your early interest working with Gene Roddenberry, and deciding that you really wanted to go for it and get a chance to write some episodes.

    Dorothy Fontana: Well, I had known Gene Roddenberry since 1963 when I first went on his show “The Lieutenant” as secretary to his associate producer Del Reisman. Then I got to know Gene a little better when his secretary was stricken with a terrible bout of appendicitis and I went to work for Gene in her absence, and someone came in to fill in for me with Del.

    Gene found out that I already had six credits in television — three stories, two scripts and a rewrite. They were for Westerns, so I was not unaccustomed to the action scene. I didn’t know too much about science fiction. I knew a little bit. I loved “The Twilight Zone” of course — everybody did. But I wasn’t too into science fiction per se.

    Then Gene assigned me, when we were going to do “Star Trek,” and we knew we were going to do “Star Trek,” we at least had the pilot to do, and we were promised it would be a series, he set me to reading anthologies of science fiction stories, the best of this year, that year, the best science fiction from particular writers, etc. And I must have gone through about 50 books, reading the short stories and notating, this might work for the projected “Star Trek,” this might for projected “Star Trek.” In other words, looking for stories we might buy.

    Then I broke them down for Roddenberry, and gave him a report. So that got me more into being interested in science fiction in general, and what kind of stories can we tell within the scope of this spaceship going out into our galaxy, seeking out new life, new civilizations etc, etc. But it was reading all those wonderful anthology stories, short stories, written by well-known writers in the science fiction genre that really peaked my interest.

    You’ve made so many contributions to the lore of “Star Trek,” particularly in the realm of Mr. Spock and the Vulcans. What are you proudest of as far as your contribution to “Trek,” both in its mythology — and behind the scenes?

    Well, I was the one who wanted to find out who Mr. Spock was behind that Vulcan exterior. And in “This Side of Paradise,” which is a major rewrite that I had to do, we got a chance to look behind that exterior and see who was inside. Who was the human Mr. Spock? What is he like when he’s not being Vulcan? Then, because of two lines at the end of the show where he says to Kirk: “It’s the only time I was happy,” and also there’s another reference to, “My father is a an ambassador and my mother was a school teacher.”

    That got me to thinking about, “Those are the only things we know about him personally. Let’s tell that story!” So I told “Journey to Babel,” which is the episode that I am proudest of and love the most, because we really got into “Who were his parents? Why is Spock Spock, the way he is? What is his relationship with his parents? How did he grow up?”

    And I got to explore that a little more in the “Star Trek Animated Series,” episode called “Yesteryear,” where we were able to go through the Guardian of Forever into Spock’s past and see him as a child, and find out how he grew from being a human Earther to being the beginnings of Mr. Spock as we know him.

    And because you were giving so much great material for Leonard Nimoy to play, I’m curious what your relationship with him was like over the years. Did you have a special rapport with him?

    Well, I keep telling this story because it’s a little apocryphal: In 1960, I sold my first story to television on the show I was working on as a production secretary, “The Tall Man,” and my producer was Samuel A. Peeples, who knew, because I had told him I was interested in being a television writer. I had written short stories about, horror stories, adventure stories since I was 11 years old. I did it for the amusement of my schoolmates and friends. And I said, “I want to get into this.” And he said, “You tell me a good story, and you can write it,” which I did.

    So the first story I sold to television was in 1960 in the spring. It was called “A Bounty for Billy” on “The Tall Man” show, and the guest star was Leonard Nimoy. I went down on the set and had a chat with him, I introduced myself, and he was very nice to a newbie. He was very kind, very pleasant. They liked the character enough — I didn’t write it — but they brought him back in another episode and then they killed him. So I had known Leonard then since 1960.

    In 1964 when Roddenberry showed me the first draft of his potential script, or his potential series, and he had characters, there was Captain Robert April, and there was a doctor, and there was Mr. Spock, “a Martian.” I said, “Who plays Mr. Spock?” And he showed me a picture of Leonard Nimoy, who had done a guest star role on “The Lieutenant,” and I said, “You got it!” And Leonard Nimoy is the only person who was ever considered for, who ever played Mr. Spock.

    But I had known him since 1960 now — I was 21 years old then. We had a good relationship on the show, very good relationship, because of course I knew him. And I got to know Bill [Shatner], and I had a good relationship with him. His office is about three miles away from where I work [today]. I see him often times in a restaurant that’s right in between, and I wave to him, he waves back, and I’ve interviewed for him for his documentaries and his books that he’s been doing. So I know Bill pretty well now, too.

    The funny thing is our birthdays — different years, but our birthdays are within days of each other’s. Bill’s I think is March 22nd, Leonard was the 26th, and mine’s the 25th of March. We kind of had sort of an Aries rapport going on there.

    You came back for the early days of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” as well, to see the franchise — which was only just becoming a franchise at that point — have a second chance at life, which led to where we are today. What was that moment in time like for you?

    Well, it was fun. Gene Roddenberry and Majel Barrett-Roddenberry took me to dinner. I’m trying to think, I think it was in late summer of 1986. Roddenberry said, “You know, we were going to do another movie, but they given me an opportunity to do a new version of ‘Star Trek’ do you want to be involved?” And I said, “Yeah, sure,” and he said, “Well, I’d like you to write the pilot script.” I said, “Okay. Let’s determine when it’s going to be.”

    David Gerrold had been writing, working with Roddenberry on this, putting together a lot of information, and the bible was created, and it had some basic outlined characters, but I had to put them together in story. I had to make them work. I came up with “Encounter at Farpoint,” and we were going back and forth between whether it was going to be an hour and a half, or an hour, and then Roddenberry would do a retrospective on what the series was, the original series.

    We finally worked it out that I did a 90-minute script, and Roddenberry added all the Q stuff. My part of “Encounter at Farpoint” was the mystery of Farpoint: what’s going on here? What is so strange? And what are the aliens hiding? And introducing the crew who would be going on the spaceship under the command of Captain Picard, and just this whole new setting in, new world, new ship, new captain, and this mystery of what’s going on on that planet.

    That was my story, and the Q stuff was all added by Roddenberry — and John de Lancie came back at least six times, I think, to play Q, and had a good time doing it. And he added a really interesting vibe to the story, but the main mystery was mine. We bounced off that, we went into production, and I thought the characters all worked very well.

    I did want a woman engineer and I had her in the first show or two, and then they went to Colm Meaney, who was a wonderful actor — I really love him. But I wanted to have a female engineer, and I lost that battle.

    Gene Roddenberry’s obviously an interesting and complex figure. When you think about Gene, the good and the bad, tell me what comes to mind about him as a personality and somebody you worked very closely with through a number of years.

    He was a very creative man. Sometimes we would have a problem, I remember on “Star Trek” in particular — “Next Gen” too — where a small group of people take over the entire Enterprise. How did they do that? There are 400 people on the Enterprise. Gene Coon and I couldn’t solve it, banging our heads against a wall saying, “What the hell do we do?”

    And I went into Roddenberry and told him the problem, and I had given him previously this paperweight that was shaped as like an eight-sided figure, a very nice Mexican stone, real polished up and everything. He started pushing that around the desk with his finger and saying, “How about if these invaders on the ship can do this to people? Change them into that. It’s the ultimate essence. That takes care of the crew, doesn’t it? Except for those who have to run the ship? Okay — problem solved!” And that’s what we often did.

    So he had the ability to take a question, kind of out of the blue, a problem, a script problem, maybe a character problem, and say, “How about we do this?” And that usually solved the problem. So he was a real problem solver. He was a very creative man. He didn’t always write very fast, because sometimes it would take him about four days to do a script rewrite — Gene Coon could do it in two — but the rewrites were right down to the details of everything. It was all there on the page. You knew what was going to happen, you knew who it happened to, and how it happened, and why.

    You’ve had such a prolific career beyond “Star Trek.” What were the lessons that you learned working on “Star Trek” that you’ve carried with you throughout your professional career? And on a personal level, how has “Star Trek” enriched your life in the years since you first started on the show?

    What did I learn? I think it was to tell stories about human beings. And usually, there’s a theme of love in there somewhere. Love for humanity, love for another person, love for your siblings, or your family, or whatever. Maybe a pet. But always there’s a little theme of love going on. But I really want to know about human beings. How do they think? How do they work? How do they achieve? How do they grow? Why are they this way? And why are they not better? Those really often are the themes of the stories I tell. I have found it rewarding, and I’ve sold a lot of stories. So I think it’s working for me.

    I have to say I’ve met a lot of wonderful, interesting people, and made some great friends because of “Star Trek.” In a way, my husband and I met because of “Star Trek.” We were working on a Halloween show for a mutual friend. I worked on it for many years, but this was Dennis’s first time. His brother was also working on it. Chance would be, we were doing “Creature From the Black Lagoon,” and we were working on the creature suit. We needed a suit, and I was helping work on it with him. Later on, his brother said to him, “Do you know who that was?” “No.” “That’s D. C. Fontana, from ‘Star Trek.’” “Okay!” So we got along just fine then!

    On the occasion of the 50th anniversary, why in your opinion has “Star Trek” endured and thrived over all of this time? What do you think are some of the magic ingredients that’s kept it alive?

    We had good actors in interesting roles. We told good stories, I think. I’ve said this over and over: we were telling stories about things that were going on in our world, under the guise of science fiction. We were telling stories about racism, and sexism, and political things that were going on in our country, and in the world. We were doing stories about, well, just about anything — the Vietnam War, that was a big one. Nobody else could mention the Vietnam War, or even that we were in it, but we could, under the guise of science fiction.

    We reached out to people. We tapped them on the head and say, “Hey, are you paying attention?” But we were doing it in the guise of interesting science fiction stories. We had some great science fiction writers on the show, especially in the first year, who brought that wonderful element of exploring topical themes under the guise of science fiction.

    I think we reached out and attracted the attention of a lot of people, because we got fan mail you wouldn’t believe. We couldn’t handle it all. We saw the bags come in and then they had to be shipped off to a mail answering service. Ones that were personal to the actors, they got theirs. Ones that we personal to us, i.e. to Gene Roddenberry or whatever, those came into the office. But we saw we had a vast audience, men and women, all ages. Our audience was high school, college, young professionals, young married couples, young families, all the way up. Technical people, science people, creative people, artists, who were getting something from our show.

    So we understood that we were speaking a language that people were hearing and paying attention to, and I think that has carried through all these years. You can sit down and watch “Star Trek” today and say, “Oh yeah, that was a good story. And the story behind that was this …” I just think we told good stories in a good way. We had attractive actors that made people come back too, and then they paid attention to the stories. That’s why it’s still here after all these years.

    And NBC finally realized it I think in syndication. It’s still on the air. You can cruise around, looking at all those channels, here’s “Star Trek.” There’s “Star Trek: Next Generation.” The only one that hasn’t been run very often is “Star Trek: Animated,” which is too bad because we did some darn good stories there too. They have reissued it with some enhancements. Mostly that’s the one that’s been neglected, and those 22 stories were pretty darn good, too.

    And now we have them in glorious Blu-ray, which is fantastic.

    Yes, yes.

    Well, I’ll close by asking you, given that it seems pretty obvious that “Star Trek” ain’t going anywhere, do you still have a “Star Trek” story or two up your sleeve that you’d like to tell?

    I always wanted to do the one about Dr. McCoy’s daughter, Joanna. I think I’m going to have to do that as a novel. But I tried to do it in the third season of “Star Trek,” and I was pitching it to people who has not been associated with “Star Trek.”

    I was told Dr. McCoy could not have a 22-year-old daughter who was a nurse because he was Kirk’s contemporary. I realized then they didn’t know the show, because we always played it and the actors always played it as McCoy being about ten years older than Kirk, and that was the actual ages of the actors. So they were comfortable playing that, and that’s what we did

    So McCoy could have a 22-year-old daughter with whom he was somewhat isolated and alienated because of his many absences, his long absences, and she had kind of grown up without him. Now she’s in his life, and what happens dramatically with these two, and to others around them? That’s a story I want to tell, and I think I’m probably going to have to do it as a novel.

  • Simon Kinberg Talks Star Wars Canon, Teases FX’s ‘Very Different’ X-Men Series ‘Legion’

    "X-Men Apocalypse" New York Screening“It’s like writing books of the Bible,” chuckles producer Star Wars Rebels,” the “X-Men” films) as he ponders the increasing trend toward tying various film and television projects with a big-name franchise together with a nearly unprecedented degree of shared continuity and canon. “You’re just writing one book, but it’s going to interconnect to all the others.”

    There was a time not that long ago when, if you were a fan of a TV show adapted from a hit movie, or a movie adapted from a hit TV show, you pretty much had to accept that each incarnation was an alternate universe version of the other. But today, as franchises, spinoffs, and shared universes rise to even greater prominence than ever before in the Hollywood business model, creative crossover possibilities have become more essential than ever.

    For ages, “M*A*S*H” was the TV-to-film model Hollywood wanted to recreate: filmmaker Robert Altman‘s 1970 pitch-black comedy set in the Korean War was considered in and of itself a masterwork of satirical allegory on the Vietnam experience, as well as a huge commercial success — but it seemed a complete, finite story, with little obvious sequel or franchise potential.

    The television incarnation of “M*A*S*H,” refitted in a sitcom form complete with laugh track and with only a single holdover actor from the film in the same role, debuted on CBS two years later and defied the odds to quickly became not only one of the highest-rated, longest-running, and awards-honored shows in TV history, but a pioneer of the dramedy format. It also supplanted the film in the public consciousness, and there was virtually no bleedover between Donald Sutherland‘s Hawkeye Pierce and Alan Alda‘s.

    Thus most film-to-TV adaptations of that era were essentially re-workings, rather than continuations, of the source material, from the improved and refined (“Alien Nation,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Hannibal”) to the ill-advised (“Planet of the Apes,” “Casablanca,” “Working Girl”); rare others like “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles” seemed tenuously set in the same universe as their cinematic progenitor, yet stylistically very different.

    Conversely, nearly all in the avalanche of TV-to-film projects that populated the multiplexes from the ’80s onward were complete revamps, ranging from successful, often radical reinventions, like “The Fugitive,” “The Brady Bunch Movie” and “21 Jump Street” to poorly received re-imaginings like “Lost In Space” and “The Dukes of Hazzard.”

    There were very few unique instances of small degrees of continuity: a handful of shows like “Dragnet,” “Batman” and “The Munsters” had one- or two-off big-screen ventures while still on the air; later, others like “The X-Files” would follow suit, or offer singular closure to immediately off-the-air series, as in the case of “Twin Peaks.”

    But it really took the film revival of TV’s “Star Trek,” which brought the original cast and its concept from small to large screen intact, to demonstrate that a direct continuity between both incarnations (most notably with the second film and its 15-years-later villain, Khan, played again by Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

    For a long time, “Star Trek” stood, as it so often does, as a unique phenomenon … until very recently.

    The Marvel-produced series — both the ABC-broadcast shows like “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” and “Agent Carter” and the Netflix-streamed series “Daredevil” and “Jessica Jones” — are set firmly, if in specific corners, of the Marvel Cinematic Universe of the super-heroic movies, with supporting characters like Phil Coulson, Peggy Carter, Nick Fury, and Lady Sif crossing between the film and TV camps to gain greater prominence, while seasonal plotlines both referencing and directly reflecting the big, game-changing events of the blockbuster movies.

    Now things are changing even more radically, as film and TV properties grow even more interconnected, in very intriguing ways. For example, the upcoming film “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” as well as referenced in the subsequent series “Star Wars Rebels” and a book tie-in property.

    To paraphrase Obi-Wan Kenobi, it’s a first step into a great shared universe.

    Kinberg is an architect in this new era of emerging cross-continuity between TV and film brands, both as one of the top creative forces behind “Star Wars Rebels” and a key member of the Lucasfilm Story Group, a group founded in 2013 and dedicated toward establishing a clear and consistent “Star Wars” canon between the films, TV shows, comic books, video games, and other storytelling formats.

    “I’m very excited,” Kinberg says of the emerging cross-pollination of characters, concepts, and content between “Star Wars” projects. “I think part of the fun of the way they’re building the universe is that it is interconnected between the different movies and even beyond the movies … It’s something that was true in comic books going back, the way that you’d have interconnections between characters and stories. Even sometimes from DC to Marvel. I like the way that those stories are told in the larger tapestry.

    “And, also, getting to work with other artists and filmmakers and writers, and use their talents — I like not being by myself in a room when I work,” he adds. “I like having other collaborators. You’re with some of the world’s best.”

    It’s a plan that’s been put to very effective use on “Star Wars Rebels,” with the carefully crafted inclusion of characters from the classic films — including Darth Vader, Lando Calrissian, C-3P0, and R2-D2 — and breakout personalities from the animated tie-ins — such as Ahsoka Tano and the Clone Trooper Rex — with more slated to appear in the upcoming third season.

    “What’s lovely is, obviously, we’ve brought in characters from ‘Clone Wars’ in the second season, and we keep sort of bringing characters from the original movies and sort of deepening the relationships between our core characters, the Ghost crew,” says Kinberg. “So it’s trying to balance the two different things, like the original cast from the first season with ‘Clone Wars,’ with characters from the original movies, and maybe even feeding into future movies.”

    “Star Wars” isn’t the only franchise under Kinsberg’s stewardship; he’s also an executive producer on the “X-Men” films, and, after broadening its reach with the smash “Deadpool,” he’s also got an eye on expanding the universe into television with FX’s upcoming series “Legion,” which has vacillated between being directly tied to the films’ (admittedly shifting) continuities and occupying its own distinct subset universe.

    “The success of that movie showed the studio that not just the mainline ‘X-Men’ movies, but there are characters — and characters with different tones and different vibes, that can justify their own movies as well,” he explains.

    “So ‘Gambit,’ and ‘Deadpool,’ and ‘New Mutants,’ and even others … we’re really serious about making, and then, like the way Marvel has done so brilliantly, the Marvel Studios have done so brilliantly, feeding them in and out of each other’s stories,” Kinberg adds. “Building these larger tapestries that you can watch one movie and enjoy it, and that can be your only experience of an ‘X-Men’ movie, but if you watch all of them together, you get a deeper, richer experience.”

    “Legion” marks the first step to bringing a direct connection to the cinematic X-verse to television, and is overseen by FX series with two distinctive season-long story arcs both interconnected with one another and, slyly and subtly, with the original movie.

    “Tonally, it’s very different,” says Kinberg. “Noah is a genius — he wrote and created and directed the pilot to ‘Legion’ — and it is a very different sensibility than anything we’ve done with the ‘X-Men’ movies. Almost, I would say, as radically different as ‘Deadpool’ was from the mainline ‘X-Men’ movies. ‘Legion’ is, again, in a different direction: really character-based, really granular in terms of getting inside the details of the characters. It stands as part of the ‘X-Men’ universe, but it stands apart from it as well.”

    “Legion” is currently slated to premiere on FX in early 2017.

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  • Bryan Fuller Reveals New ‘Star Trek’ Details, Says Series Will ‘Eventually’ Revisit Characters

    42nd Annual Saturn Awards - ArrivalsFifty years after the dawn of its original five-year mission, it’s clear that there’s very likely no final frontier when it comes to “Star Trek.” And even as fans celebrate its rich history on the 50th anniversary, Bryan Fuller is ready to captain “Trek’s” Next Iteration into an even bolder future.

    Following its debut in 1966 and an abbreviated three-season network run, creator Gene Roddenberry‘s “Star Trek” has become, in the intervening five decades, the most singular (and profitable) phenomenon ever spawned by the television medium, and holder of many unique distinctions: one of the earliest series ever given a second shot at a pilot when the first outing proved a bit too cerebral but showed great potential; cancelled not once but twice, after a massive, organized fan letter-writing campaign earned a reversal on its first axing; one of the first bona fide syndication sensations, broadening its cult audience into legions of viewers; one of the first series to be adapted into animated form, reuniting the bulk of the live-action cast; and the first-ever series to spawn the fan-centric convention culture and eventual online communities that reign today, attracting and uniting the passionate fanbase, both literally and virtually.

    There’s more: A sequel series was conceived to launch a fourth broadcast network that never came to be in the 1970s, but (with a little help from the sensational popularity of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” proved the durability of the concept beyond its beloved original cast — it won Peabody Awards, built a merchandizing juggernaut and launched a profitable first-run syndication market that subsequently gave birth to hits like “Baywatch” and “Xena: Warrior Princess” before ending on its own terms after seven seasons and moving into its own film series.

    Additional shows like “Deep Space Nine” built the brand, predicting dynastic TV like “Law & Order” and “CSI,” and with “Star Trek: Voyager” the franchise got around to launching a new broadcast network, UPN. After a period of cultural oversaturation and subsequent dormancy, “Trek” was successfully rebooted, reimagined, and re-youthified by former TV wunderkind J.J. Abrams into a faster, flashier, and equally popular new film series, proving yet again that “Star Trek” could continually go where no TV series has gone before.

    And this is merely the show business pedigree. The social impact of “Star Trek” over its 50-year mission — from including a multiracial crew with minorities in command roles at the height of the Civil Rights struggle to TV’s first interracial kiss; from the innumerable fans it inspired to pursue careers in the sciences and the arts to its fictional technologies turned fact today; and from William Shatner‘s musical career to the Internet dominance of George Takei — is, quite frankly, without measure or precedent.

    Which brings me to Bryan Fuller, recently anointed at the next television caretaker of the “Star Trek” storytelling legacy, which once again pioneers new ground as the flagship original series of CBS’s All Access streaming service.

    If Fuller’s pedigree as the creator of beloved, creatively adventurous series — both original, like “Pushing Daisies,” and building out pre-existing lore, like “Hannibal” — isn’t enough to excite fans looking for a return to the “Trek” tradition of provocative allegorical storytelling, consider that not only has Fuller already worked in the show’s universe as a writer for “Deep Space Nine” and “Voyager,” he’s assembled a dream team of supporting creators from “Trek’s” diverse history to work on the show.

    Among them are filmmaker Fringe,” “Hawaii Five-0″ and ‘Scorpion”; writer-producer Joe Menosky, a veteran of three “Star Trek” syndicated series; and Roddenberry Productions’ Trevor Roth and Rod Roddenberry, the son of the former airline pilot-turned-LAPD speechwriter-turned-TV writer-producer who created it all.

    While visiting the Saturn Awards, the sci-fi/superhero/fantasy equivalent of the Oscars and Emmys, I had my first chance to chat with Fuller since the new “Trek” series was announced, and as our conversation reveals, the as-yet-untitled new series he’s working on may be exploring even more new worlds, new civilizations and, perhaps most importantly, new philosophical questions about human existence at the furthest reaches of the galaxy. The series will never travel far from the legacy he hopes it upholds.

    Moviefone: You have a history with the franchise, you’re going to have more history with the franchise. As we approach the 50th anniversary, what has “Star Trek” meant to you over the years?

    Bryan Fuller: Oh, well, it’s the promise of a better world. Not only is it wonderful high-concept science-fiction storytelling, but it is the promise that we’re going to get our sh*t together as a species, fix our planet, and move out to the galaxy as a team. I think that’s the most exciting … that’s the most promising thing that “Star Trek” offers, is a vision of the future where we do all get along.

    You have a dream team assembled — creative people plucked from various eras in “Star Trek” history. What has that aspect brought to the table for you, in terms of who is putting the show together?

    I think it’s really about making sure that we maintain authenticity. One of the things that I am so excited about is working with Joe Menosky again, who I worked with on “Voyager,” and who was a pivotal writing in “Next Generation,” and a mentor of mine. So it’s wonderful to be working with him on “Star Trek.”

    It’s wonderful to be working with Nicholas Meyer, who I’ve admired for a long time. I pinch myself from time to time just being in the room and having the conversations that we’re having.

    Nick in particular is known for, arguably, the best of the movies, really: “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.”

    I agree.

    What has he brought to bear on the new series, with that distinctive dramatic sensibility that he has?

    Well, a clarity and a cleanliness to the storytelling. An ability to ground science-fiction in a relatable way, and also making sure that we’re telling character stories.

    There’s been a lot of speculation about the format and setting of the new series. What would you like to put out there now, to wet the appetite for the audience?

    I mean, it’s funny. I’ve read that we’re [set] before “Next Generation,” after [“Star Trek VI: The] Undiscovered Country,” which is false. I’ve read that it’s an anthology show, which is not accurate. So it’s interesting to see those suggestions, and seeing the truth mixed in with them and going like, “Oh, they got that part right…” But it’s sort of on the truth-o-meter on PolitiFacts. It’s sort of like some truth, and a lot of like, “No — pants on fire! That’s not true.”

    People got excited about the word “crews,” plural, in the teaser trailer.

    Yeah.

    Does that have a specific meaning? Or was that sort of a word that was used?

    No, I think we will be seeing lots of crews in the story. One of the things that is exciting for me is that we are telling a “Star Trek” story in a modern way. We’re telling a 13-chapter story in this first season. It’s nice to be able to dig deep into things that would have been breezed passed if we were doing episodic and had to contain a story to an episode.

    Would you like to revisit any characters? Is there a window open to bring in characters that have been established in the canon?

    Eventually. Eventually.

    Is the streaming aspect of it — is that going to affect it at all? Are you going to drop them all at once? Do you even know yet?

    No, it’s going to be weekly. And what it does allow us is, we are not subject to broadcast standards and practices. So we can have profanity if we choose — not that I want to see a “Star Trek” with lots of profanity. But we can certainly be more graphic than you would on broadcast network television.

    Tell me about the allegory element that is so potent in “Star Trek” storytelling, and what you want to do, what boundaries you want to push in this day and age.

    Well, I think that “Star Trek” is a show of firsts. And in researching the characters for this new iteration of “Star Trek,” I’ve been talking to Mae Jemison, who’s the first black woman in space, and who saw “Star Trek” in the ’60s and who saw Nichelle Nichols [as Lt. Uhura] on the bridge of a ship and said, “I see myself in space.”

    So there’s something wonderful about the legacy that Nichelle Nichols represents as giving a gift to people who weren’t previously able to see themselves in the future. We are going to be continuing that tradition of progressive casting and progressive character work to be an inclusive world.%Slideshow-219909%

  • The 16 Best TV Shows for When You Netflix and Chill

    %Slideshow-373873%You’re all set to Netflix and chill — but what to watch?

    You want something you love, something you can have on doing laundry, maybe, something you kind of already know by heart.

    Voila: Here is our essential list of shows you know and love and are the TV equivalent of mac and cheese. From “Buffy” to “Undercover Boss,” you know you can’t watch just one ep.

  • A New ‘Star Trek’ TV Series Is Coming in January 2017

    “Star Trek” is set to boldly go where no “Star Trek” TV series has gone before — online streaming!

    The franchise is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2016, and the timing appears to be right for another small screen debut. CBS Television Studios just announced the launch of a new “Star Trek” series in January 2017. The new show will start with a special preview broadcast on CBS. But here’s the New School twist: The premiere episode and all following first-run episodes will then be available exclusively in the U.S. on CBS All Access, the network’s digital subscription video on demand and live streaming service. This is the first original series developed specifically for U.S. audiences for CBS All Access.

    The show’s executive producer is Alex Kurtzman, who co-wrote and produced the “Star Trek” movie with Roberto Orci, and “Star Trek Into Darkness” with Orci and Damon Lindelof.

    This new series will follow closely behind the next movie, “Star Trek Beyond,” which opens next summer, but CBS took pains to point out that the new series is not related to the movie. There’s no official title for the new TV show yet, but it will follow the original Gene Roddenberry series, an animated series, “The Next Generation,” “Deep Space Nine,” “Voyager,” and “Enterprise.”

    Are you excited to see how this turns out, or irritated that you’ll have to watch it on CBS All Access?

    Want more stuff like this? Like us on Facebook.
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