In 1982 Nicholas Meyer directed (and wrote without credit) Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which set the standard for the franchise. He went on to write Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and write and direct Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Now we can finally hear Meyer tell his Trek story.
Audiobook clip from A View from the Bridge
In 2009, Meyer penned a memoir about his experience with the franchise and his decades-long career called The View from the Bridge: Memories of Star Trek and a Life in Hollywood, which got a glowing review from TrekMovie.com. This March, an audiobook version of the memoir will finally be released, narrated by Meyer himself.
Oasis Audio has provided us with this clip from the book, where Meyer talks about how he was originally talked into taking that first meeting at Paramount about Star Trek.
The 11-hour unabridged audiobook for The View from the Bridge will be released on March 2, 2021. It will be available on CD and digitally. You can pre-order the CD-version from Amazon for $37.99, or get it via Audible for $25.19.
I could listen to Nick Meyer until the cows come home.
Exactly. He is a wonderful orator and thinker.
New Star Trek could have benefited from his unique creative mind.
What happened to having Nick Meyer do a Paramount Plus show????
He should be headed Strange New Worlds in my opinion, ensure we get some Horatio Hornblower on the final frontier.
So help me, if Pike gets instant comms help from Starfleet Command to resolve some situation using some nonsensical non-existent Tachyon beam quickly, so he can get back to playing in the holodeck, I am going to lose it!! LOL
Sadly, Nick Meyer’s involvement with the current Star Trek seems to have perished when Bryan Fuller got fired.
I think Meyer’s time with Trek has died after his odd role in Discovery. I still wish I knew what actually happened? I know Johnathan Frakes knows. Someone just needs to ask him, he’ll spill lol.
It is only an educated guess, but I would say Meyer comes across as not a good team-player. Very arrogant, wanting you to belive he knows more than he does, badmouthing, taking credit from other people’s work…Beside that I don’t think he enjoys Star Trek enough to be serious commited to it for a periode more than doing movie, but not a series production.
Yes, the arrogance is certainly up front in his personality. In today’s culture some can take serious offensive and have power to get rid of people like that. I experienced his arrogance from a project in which I had a small job on the production side around him. A difficult stereotype of white privileged heterosexual male Hollywood swagger for sure but not intentionally mean to anyone. But man, is he intelligent and creative, whew! Brilliant ideas which he expresses with literate clarity. I was worth putting up with and I felt so lucky to have seen him work in person.
“Intelligence and creative” and ST II:TWOK should mean he earned some leeway to be arrogant.
When you are that good and make the best Trek ever, you deserve to be afforded some arrogant because, quite frankly, he does know more than everyone else in the writers room based on the work. I’ll take ST II:TWOK the series over anything Discovery, DS9, ENT, VOY, TOS any of it, any day of the week.
When you are that good and make the best Trek ever, you deserve to be afforded some arrogant because, quite frankly, he does know more than everyone else in the writers room based on the work. I’ll take ST II:TWOK the series over anything Discovery, DS9, ENT, VOY, TOS any of it, any day of the week.
Even when I read him saying he begged them not to bring Spock back, my 12 year old self though he was wrong, but my 39 year old self now realizes that he was write.
Bringing back Spock shut down Saavik et al as the real next generation and a more exciting future for Trek than what we got.Also Spock had the perfect exit of any character pretty much ever, and they watered it down with III.
I think Meyer just fights for his corner, and even with III when he thought it was wrong he just stepped aside, seems team-player enough for me.
… Does anyone watch House or that show was too entertaining?? When you are good, you pretty much should fight for your corner because you are generally right.
Well that’s certainly an interesting theory. ;)
I don’t really know much about Meyer outside of a few interviews I seen him in talking the movies, but yes he does come off a bit arrogant at times. but probably no more than a lot of directors or writers.
Anyway I was really looking forward to see him be a part of Discovery and see how he would influence the show but yes he could’ve just talked himself out of a job. And I have mentioned this before, the guy is a lot older now, he’s only worked on a few TOS films from decades ago and never did anything else. And working on a TV show is a very different monster. The fact that they now have all these different Trek projects and no one ever mentioned the guys name for any of it tells me he either probably didn’t leave on the best terms or that his ideas just didn’t gel with what they wanted to do.
And probably why his time is over doing Star Trek. But his films are still mostly my favorite Trek films, but in all honesty I care more about the shows. I think of the movies as fun distractions.
He was supposed to do a Khan miniseries.
I think that died in corporate reshuffling.
I think they should ask Nick Meyer if he could do any Trek show what would be do… (would it really be Khan!??!) and do it. Like DC comics of the era continue Trek with the Nick Meyer movie era maybe. Reboot the movie era.
Gives us all a chance to see the Connie refit again, easily the best looking ship with the best looking sets.
Was anyone at all interested in a “Khan on Ceti Alpha V” series?
Now, a “Rise and Fall of Khan” like Greg Cox’s books, maybe that would be interesting, but Ceti Alpha V? Nope.
It could work out though.. the more I think about it, the more interesting it would be to see. Something totally different.
That being said why does the story have to be Kahn where you know how it ends? Why not do a far off Federation colony that faces a similar situation?
I think they put Ceti Alpha V on the back burner, as in its never going to happen. Since you cannot recast Khan.
I read this book a few years ago, and absolutely loved it. I didn’t want it to be over. Meyer is a great writer and I loved not only the Star Trek stories, but the other stories about his time in Hollywood. I think I will actually get this audiobook from Audible, because it will be nice to hear these stories told by him.
FYI, Meyer did a fairly lengthy interview on Mick Garris’s podcast recently.
This book is the go-to source for all the dishy behind-the-scenes dirt you crave about The Deceivers starring Shashi Kapoor and Pierce Brosnans. But if Baryshnikov and Hackman are more your speed- you’re in luck. The sober, almost mournful chapter on Company Business will keep you spellbound.
Paramount could do with sending Meyer the various Hemsworth/Tarantino/Hawley ST4 scripts to Wrath them into a mid budget masterpiece (that he would also direct of course)
Good idea..only problem is Nick Meyer would want creative control & final cut most likely! Nick turned down directing Star Treks 3,4,5 & Generations!!! Paramount are well aware of him but as he turned them down so often they probably gave up in the end!
For the… GIVE HIM CREATIVE CONTROL AND FINAL CUT.
ST:II TWOK WAS THE BEST TREK EVER. LET HIM LOOSE.
LET THE MAN MAKE SOME AWESOME TREK… PLEASE!!!!
Nick Meyer actually cares about the scripts he Directs being a writer. When he says “I won’t direct Generations because the script is awful” the answer should always be to let Nick Meyer re-write the script.
I’ll take that everytime over “Yeah, this TNG script sucks, but let’s film it anyway because it’s a job”.
agreed. Paramount should really give him free ‘reign’ to go all King Kong/Irishman on anything he felt like doing. he wants to bring back Cumberbatch to do a new version of the Wrath of Khan and have Cumberkhan rip off his face to reveal CG Montalban deepfake? fine. he wants to team up with Tarantino to co write and co direct a post TOS era movie set 30years after Trek VI starring 90y old Shatner in the lead role with no CG deaging and no explanation of how he came back? Bring it on!
Nimoy also turned down directing Generations for very fine and logical reasons.
As fans I know we love some former Trek directors like Meyer, Frakes, etc because every time a new movie is being discussed these names are thrown out over and over again.
But Paramount wants bigger names and more contemporary directors. Those guys mean absolutely zip for the mass audience. We love them but they haven’t worked on a film in a long long time. Meyer last film was literally TUC. He directed something else called Vendetta but that was a TV movie and still over 20 years ago. He’s 75 years old now. In other words, he hasn’t been a working director in a long long time. As fans we have nostalgia for the past but the studio isn’t going to give money for a film to someone like that when they are trying to reach a global audience and wants more contemporary or upcoming directors. That’s why you had Abrams and Lin make the Kelvin movies and people like Tarantino and Hawley for their projects because they are either big or at least influential people working in Hollywood today.
But that’s what separates fandom from a business. I’m not saying Meyer can’t make a great film again, but the type of movies he made are really not the type of movies Paramounts even wants anymore because they want to compete on a global scale which neither the TOS or TNG films ever did. They were made mostly for fans and Americans and very little else.
Also why I’m not holding my breath for a new movie anymore. They probably just have no idea where to take the franchise next now that the Kelvin movies have lost their mass appeal. And they seem to have no interest in smaller Trek movies like TWOK. Something that small in today’s world would probably just be made for Paramount+.
“not the type of movies Paramounts even wants anymore”
Yes, it is clear that Paramount does not want entertaining Trek like ST:II TWOK, ST IV:TVH, ST VI:TUC; pretty much all the best of the Trek movies. Instead they want generic non-entertaining movies, that is clear…… but it doesn’t have to be this way!!!! So what if they want to make drivel, let’s keep pushing for Nick Meyer to get make to making some magic!!
I mean they so don’t want to make Meyer movies... yet they steal scenes from his movies almost word by word in poorly done remakes?? IT MAKES NO SENSE!! STOP IT!!
None of those movies were global hits though (although TVH did OK). That’s the problem.
Again, this says it all about fans. Yes they were all good movies but none of them really pulled in non fans with the exception of TVH and what Paramount wants now. That’s literally why the Kelvin movies were made and given real budgets with big time directors.
Meyer is over 75 years old and as said hasn’t directed a movie in over 20 years. The guy had his time, it’s over. And there is no guarantee he can make a great film with a new cast and crew, which is what most likely would be at this point anyway,.
I think you’ll find people quoting ST: II TWOK far in excess of any of the TNG movies (Generations and Insurrection are best totally forgotten anyway) and Into Darkness (apart from when Into Darkness stole ironically from ST II:TWOK).
TWOK is my favorite Star Trek film like many fans. That literally has nothing to do with my actual point man. No offense, but sometimes it’s like talking to a kid or my grandfather.
So despite having global appeal with II and IV (ST III even quoted in Seinfeld and popular culture) your point is to make more Star Trek Insurrection and Generations or set even further in the future where everything is unapproachable with less unknows hardship and adventure? Uh.. ok there buddy.
How do you explain the Mandalorian with its frontier settings, privative tech having popular appeal?
There’s an interesting thread on FACTTREK right now about how TWOK evolved from tv to feature status. https://www.facttrek.com/blog/tvtrek2 It includes memos that mention salaries, and there are some eye-openers (when it was a TV project, they had Nimoy pencilled in for 60 grand, which as I recall was much less than they were offering when they wanted him for the first episode of the cancelled revival series 5 years earlier.) It has Meyer’s salary well below what I had read he made for the film, but these are actual memos, so one has to assume the accuracy.
How I wish they had followed up ST II with a Star Trek movie era TV show…. (no Spock, add Saavik and David Marcus) if you ever read the DC comics of the time they were actually some of the best Trek stories. Then do movie tie-ins and keep that train going. Too late now.
Man, those first post-TWOK comics were great (and I’m not a comics guy at all.) The ones on the BoP, before they get EXCELSIOR, are where I thought the features should have gone, with the crew on a little ship, getting into scrapes (Would have loved to see and hear Doohan reciting the limericky song THE SCOTSMAN to his shipmates … something that somebody in a novel actually had Scott do a number of years later.) You could spend the money on where they were going instead of always blowing a big chunk showing them on Earth and in spacedock, and by making them the arbiters of their own fate, you also raise the dramatic stakes by removing the Starfleet/Fed bosses from the picture (and after the way they were treated in TSFS, I couldn’t see why they would even WANT to work for Starfleet anymore.)
They should just let him do all the Star Trek original crew movies.Recast and crank out one every year on a lower budget.I think that’s a good business model.Oui?
Meyer couldn’t keep his job on Discovery pass a year. I think people have to accept whatever prestige and nostalgia he has with the fan base today didn’t seem to translate with the current TPTB that run Trek now. No one seems to be that interested in handing him control of movies if they didn’t even trust him enough to write or direct an episode.
Which is pretty much why half a century from now ST:II TWOK will still probably be the best Trek movie.. which is sad in a way!!
It will probably always be the most iconic film, I agree.