This Labor Day weekend the Fine Arts Theatre in Beverly Hills is running a Star Trek movies marathon for the six films with the original crew, shown in 70MM. There will be discussions after each film with stars and creatives from each film, including the director (and uncredited writer) of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Nicholas Meyer. In addition to getting an update on his Star Trek: Khan – Ceti Alpha V audio drama podcast (see previous article) TrekMovie had a chance to talk to Nick in depth about the making of Star Trek II, why it endures, Trek’s connections to Sherlock Holmes (including his new novel Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell) and much more.
After 42 years, are you no longer surprised that we’re still talking about Wrath of Khan?
No, I’m surprised. Artists are not the best judges of their own work. We also know that art goes in and out of fashion. Things may be considered deathless at one time, and then they vanish into obscurity, or the reverse is true. Le Sacre du printemps [The Rite of Spring] created a riot when it premiered in 1913 and less than 30 years later, it’s the soundtrack to Fantasia, and nobody finds anything wrong with it… So when you ask me about The Wrath of Khan, I am pleasantly flabbergasted every day that that movie is still around and giving pleasure and moving people. That’s beyond anything that I could have ever anticipated.
As you note, the art of movies has changed over the last four decades. So what do you see as the enduring qualities of Star Trek II that work with modern audiences?
I’ll answer you in a different way. I have a theory which may be slightly counterintuitive to what I was saying a minute ago. And don’t take this the wrong way as sort of self-inflating, but I think all great art has one thing in common, and that’s the “great” part it. The fact that it does stand the test of time, that it does not grow old, but at the end, things that are terrific always seem to come back. Bach has never gone out of fashion. Shakespeare has never gone out of fashion. I don’t compare myself to Shakespeare. I don’t compare myself to Bach, but I suspect that there are some timeless qualities involved in Khan and I can’t say I was aware of what they were or even of putting them there, but it’s just like the dog whistle or something. It landed on a frequency that no one seems to be able to resist. I can only be happy that I was part of it.
The movie has become so iconic, it even got a nice nod in the new movie Deadpool & Wolverine – a quick homage to the Spock death scene. Had you heard about that?
[Laughs] No. That’s nice to hear.
Khan Noonien Sigh is held up as one of cinema’s greatest villains, yet he and the hero – Kirk – are never in the same room together. When you were making the film, was that ever a concern?
Well, I don’t know how good I am at analyzing my own stuff. I do know that they wanted to have a mano a mano, a fight between Kirk and Khan. And I said, “Well, they tried that in ‘Space Seed’ and it looked phony and stupid to me.” Khan is a superman. Kirk wouldn’t stand a chance against him. It just seemed kind of corny… So I resisted the idea of this mano a mano shootout, or whatever it was supposed to be, in favor of cribbing from one of my favorite movies, The Enemy Below which is a World War II duel between a destroyer and a U-boat, and Robert Mitchum, who’s the captain of the destroyer, and Curd Jürgens, who is the captain of the U-boat, they never meet. It’s just their weapons that meet.
Nicholas Meyer on Star Trek II set with Ricardo Montalban (Paramount Pictures)
For the Fine Arts movie marathon, they are showing the Trek movies in 70 millimeter. How do you feel your Star Trek movies benefit from the big screen experience?
I think movies are more fun when they’re big. I think we go to the movies, I go to the movies to sort of lose myself in something that is larger than me, not smaller. And even if I have wide screen in my house, it isn’t as much fun as having the popcorn and sitting with a lot of people. You don’t know them, they don’t know you, and you are having an experience that is simultaneously personal and intimate, but also collective. And you are looking at what is larger than life, and 70 mil is definitely larger than life! That’s the fun of it.
Let’s go back to 1982, what was it like when you first saw Khan on a big screen with an audience? Were you nervous, excited? All of that?
Well, I was exhausted by that time because the amount of delays in getting the movie going. As you may already know, I wrote what became the screenplay of the movie in 12 days, We were so far behind. There wasn’t time to draw up contracts. And I said to Harve [Bennett] and Bob Sallin, his co producer, “Look, if you want the movie, we got to make up our minds now.” We had five other screenplays which had no relationship to each other… and ILM, which was the special effects house, said they couldn’t guarantee delivery of the shots in time for the June opening, unless they had it within 12 days. This was only the second movie I directed, and I said, “What June opening? … You booked the movie into theaters, and there’s no movie?” And they said, “Well, I that’s the way it’s always done.” New one on me, but then everything was a new one on me. So it was all done at a breakneck pace. I was shooting in the day and editing all night. The first screening was at what’s now called the Sherry Lansing Theater at Paramount, which is their little theater which held about 400 people. We had no idea how this thing was going to play, and it went through the roof.
Was that just Paramount people?
No. People roped up. It was the first – That’s my recollection. I’ve discovered that my memory is good, but it’s not perfect. For example, people asked me for years have what was my interaction with Gene Roddenberry. And I said, well, you met him. You had to shake his hand and so forth, but he wasn’t part of making the movie, which was certainly true. But when I went back to my alma mater, the University of Iowa in Iowa City, I went to the library where they have all my papers, and I was stunned to see an exchange of memoranda between me and Gene Roddenberry that I had totally blocked out. Once I read them, I understand why I blocked them. It was very toxic, very venomous. He hated the script. I guess I didn’t know any better, so I was intemperate. I responded intemperately. And I had just blocked all memory of this.
So my memory is not perfect, but my memory tells me that it was a general audience. It was not Paramount people who were at that. What I remember is the reconciliation scene between Kirk and his son received applause. And I had argued with some of the executives about that scene and insisted that it remain. After the screening was over, I saw one of these execs, and he said, “Yeah, yeah, I know what I’m supposed to say, but I still don’t think it works.” And I remembered saying, “Well, it doesn’t matter what you think, just what they think, we’re of it now.” So the scene stays in. I think a lot of fathers and sons connect to this movie, because it is about fathers and sons, among the other things that it’s about.
Speaking of sons, Wrath of Khan is in a double bill with For The Love of Spock with Adam Nimoy speaking. Can you talk a little bit about working with Leonard Nimoy and the importance of his contribution to Star Trek II?
Well, I’m not sure quite how to answer that question. What I can remember about Leonard on this movie, and I worked with him three times because I did [Star Trek] II, IV (as a writer), and VI. And Leonard didn’t want to do [Wrath of Khan]. He did the movie because Harve Bennett promised him a great death scene, which I then had to write. So I remember that very vividly. I also remember I never had to direct Leonard as Spock. He knew cold what that was all about. I worked a lot with Ricardo Montalban, who was a very great actor, but he said to me, “I don’t know what I’m doing up there, so, help me.”… And I directed Bill [Shatner]. But I did not direct Leonard. He didn’t need it. He just knew. He paid me a great compliment. He said I knew how to write Spock. In a way, I sort of modeled it a lot on Sherlock Holmes. And I write Sherlock Holmes novels. And if you know how to write Sherlock, then you’ll know how to write Spock because they’re very similar. And in fact, in Star Trek VI, I had Spock claim descent from Sherlock.
Director Nicholas Meyer on the Star Trek II set with Leonard Nimoy (Paramount Pictures)
You happen to have a brand-new Holmes book, Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell. For for this one you are moving the action into World War I era, what can readers expect?
Well, Holmes and Watson, who are no longer young – Holmes is 66 – are dispatched to America. They have to cross the Atlantic and dodge German U-boats, because Holmes has learned that there is a German plan to defeat England. Remember that America is not in the war as of 1916 and there is a German plan to win the war in 12 weeks and it involves starving England by blockading the island with a submarine fleet. But they don’t know the details of the plan, and they are dispatched to America in search of a mysterious coded telegram that was routed through the German Embassy in Washington. And the telegram was sent by German Foreign Minister Zimmermann, and there’s actually two non-fiction books about it, because most of this whole novel is all true. I didn’t have to make up much.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of your first Holmes novel. This is now your sixth, what keeps bringing you back to Holmes?
And I just fished writing the seventh!… Well, I only write them when I get an idea that seems to be worthy of a Holmes story. I have gone 20 years without writing one. 1974 was The Seven-Per-Cent Solution –where Sherlock meets Sigmund Freud and undergoes a cocaine withdrawal cure. The second one, which was written very shortly thereafter, because they said, “Oh, this was such a hit.” It was 40 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. So I did The West End Horror, which was Holmes in the theater world. And that was a best seller in 1976. And then I was doing movies, but in 1992 a movie deal that I had been working on for a year fell apart, and I had to make money. So I did The Canary Trainer, which is Sherlock Holmes and the Phantom of the Opera. And then I didn’t do anything for another bunch of years, until I became interested in the most famous and vicious hoax of all time, the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” which people like Vladimir Putin are still fond of quoting, and that’s the hoax that was put out about the minutes of a secret meeting of Jews plotting to take over the world. And that was like 10 years just thinking about that [for The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols]. After that was Holmes in Egypt in 1911 and that’s called The Return of the Pharaoh.
You talked about blocking out your exchanges with Roddenberry. Do you ever envision what it would have been like to have exchanges with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?
You know, it’s very seldom that I’m asked a question I’ve never heard before, and you just asked it. And the answer comes instantly to mind, because when the American actor William Gillette bought the rights to turn Sherlock Holmes into a play, he sent telegram to to Doyle for his adaptation and said, “May I marry Holmes?,” meaning have him get married in the in in the play. Doyle cabled back, “You may marry him, or murder him, or do what you like with him.” Doyle had very ambivalent relations with Sherlock Holmes. He tried at least twice to kill him off… but even on some unconscious level, he must have felt ambivalent about killing him, because they never produced the body. And so when Holmes comes back, it’s like, “Yes, I didn’t wind up in the in the waterfall.”
Doyle identified with him, for sure. Holmes and Doyle bank at the same bank, and they’re offered knighthoods in the same year. Doyle wanted to turn his down because he thought it would make him an establishment patsy, but his mother said he had to accept as to not offend the crown. Holmes turns his down without a backward glance. So, I think Doyle wouldn’t care. He said about Holmes, “He takes my mind from better things.”… Artists frequently get pissed off because they’re recognized for the wrong thing. In my obituary, upcoming, is it going to say “Star Trek” and how do I feel about that? And the answer is: I’m happy if I’m remembered for something. So I’m not going to bitch and moan that these movies seem to have made a lot of people happy. I think that’s great. That’s the point of art, is you’re supposed to make people laugh and or cry, preferably both. And if I’ve done that, I feel lucky.
New Holmes book and tour
Nicholas Meyer’s sixth Sherlock Holmes novel Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell arrived on Tuesday, August 27, kicking off a nationwide book tour where he will be doing readings from the book along with discussions. The thirteen-stop takes him to cities across the USA, returning to LA for an event on Monday, September 30th. More details at nicholas-meyer.com.
Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell is available now at Amazon in hardcover, Kindle eBook, Audio CD, and Audible.
Meyer at Labor Day weekend 70MM TOS movies marathon in Beverly Hills
Nicholas Meyer will be one of the Star Trek vets appearing during a special Star Trek screening series at the historic Fine Arts Theatre in Beverly Hills, CA. They will be showing the TOS era movies in Super 70MM starting on Friday, August 30st, wrapping up on Sunday, September 1st. Other luminaries lined up for the event include actresses Robin Curtis (Saavik) and Catherine Hicks (Dr. Gillian Taylor), executive producer Ralph Winter, producer Steven-Charles Jaffe and composer Cliff Eidelman. Leonard Nimoy’s son will also appear to discuss his film For the Love of Spock.
Tickets are available on the Fine Arts Theatre website, fineartstheatrebh.com and on the Fine Arts App available on Google Play Store and the Apple App store, as well as at fandango.com and atomtickets.com. Free Parking is available at the Beverly Hills City Garage, 321 South La Cienega Boulevard.
Keep up with news for the Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com.
Very nice interview!
Morbidly curious to see that intemperate correspondence now…
Great interview with the man who saved Star Trek! Khan is easily in the top 20 scifi films of all time.
You just cannot diminish the huge contribution Nicholas Meyer made to Star Trek, a property he wasn’t even into initially. Leonard Nimoy credited Meyer as the guy who saved ST because if TWOK failed, that would’ve most likely been it.
Good interview although I was curious to see if Meyer had any opinion on Khan as seen in Into Darkness or as a child as seen in Strange New Worlds. I was hoping that question would of been asked. (SNW more so]
He did speak about it.
That’s must have been painful to JJ Abrams if he heard it, since Meyer knew him as a kid and I think Abrams has a lot of respect for Meyer.
I really liked Into Darkness, but I don’t think Abrams played fair with the audience regarding the whole John Harrison is Khan reveal. If you’re going to do Khan, then do Khan. Get an actor who resembles Montablan and don’t hide it. I just think that was a mistake.
And, yeah, the Khan blood bringing Kirk back to life is probably too deux ex machina. I know Khan probably heals fast, but isn’t that a little extreme after Kirk was irradiated? Whatever. I still really liked the film.
i think JJ wouldnt be pained… it’s art and opinion and hollywood moves fast… you just get over it and move on. he’s made like 50 tv and movie projects since then. professionals don’t obsess over this stuff like some fans do.
clearly meyer is haunted by the words between him and roddenberry… i went to 50th anni screenings of the films and he came for khan or the whales and he talked about the relationship between him and roddenberry… he really looked haunted and embarassed as he talked about it. sounded awful. like a young punk hurting an old guy but who’s now old himself and realizes what the old guy was feeling back then.
He probably failed to understand the depth of Mr Roddenberrys commitment to the future of Star Trek. Easy to understand since Mr Meyer was very young, brought in cold and knew nothing about the franchise. It looked very much the case in the early 80s that Paramount was in the process of phasing out the Great Bird after TMP especially as the studio did not like his ideas for the second movie. So there was no doubt alot of preexisting animosity between the two from very the very beginning.
Paramount blamed Roddenberry for TMP going over budget and bennett was seen as a more cost conscious alternative as producer of ‘khan’
I think, at Meyer’s age, like all of us who grow older and reflect on our younger selves, particularly the times when we should have been better and kinder than we were, that he wished he could have been at least more sympathetic and empathetic to Roddenberry. GR had the ST films taken away from him and I think he was angry and hurt about that. He was being really difficult with regard to what Meyer and Harve Bennett were doing with ST II, even complaining about a stupid No Smoking sign in the transporter room. I get that they were getting irritated and angry with him. GR was also suspected, I believe, of leaking Spock’s death and the destruction of the Enterprise in ST III.
So I think Meyer just wished he’d been more sympathetic and had handled GR better.
I like that Mr. Meyer did not back down from an appropriate critique of JJ’s Khan. My thoughts were similar.
Actually. ST09 is the movie I love to hate nowadays. Such a missed opportunity.
I just celebrated 14 years of hating the 09 (didn’t see it till 2for1 night at dvd rental house, many months after its theatrical release.) I was braced for it to be bad and for the visuals to be unappetizing, but had no idea how stupid it was. for all its faults, ID somehow seemed a little bit smarter, despite the grotesqueries of Pine trying to keep up with Cumberbatch in the matter of acting. I actually enjoyed BEYOND a lot more than either of the Abrams-directed ones, though wish the movie was at least 20minutes shorter.
I’d love to know what Meyer thought of Kahn as the poor guy trying to get his family back from the evil Starfleet Admiral.
There is just no parallel with TWOK there in my humble opinion.
Now imagine if we got Into Darkness where a desperate starfleet facing the Klingons and Romulans post Vulcan recruit Kahn for strategy only to be manipulated to his ends?
I still think the film would have played better if Harriman had been one of Khan’s augment followers and he was trying to keep Marcus from killing Khan too. Same movie, same homages; a decent chance of a lot less ticked off movie goers. But, the film is OK as is and definitely has it’s moments
Harrison revealed as Joachim , end climax at section 31 HQ, the Botany Bay, reveal of Space Seed era Montalban Khan in cryo, does he wake up for khanage..
I like it guys!
I think that’s a great improvement!
That said, I’m not sure JJ, Orci, and Kurtzmann even considered Harrison as another augment (I love the Botany Bay reveal FPTOT). They were centered on bringing back Khan. Y’know, I don’t have a problem with that. The problem I had was that other than the superhuman abilities, Cumberbatch’s Khan didn’t resemble Montablan’s at all. Khan was supposed to be Indian. Cumberbatch obviously wasn’t. That’s not playing fair with the audience at all. And, yeah, it would’ve helped to show the Botany Bay or some sort of flashback in the film to tie it more into “Space Seed.” That’s a really good idea, imo.
Interestingly, I believe they explained the racial disparity with Khan in the IDW comics, just like they explained why the Narada didn’t look or seem like just a Romulan mining ship. I think that’s a common problem in both films, 2009 and Into Darkness (along with why Nero just waited around for 25 or so years. The explanation, that he and his crew were captured by the Klingons after being disabled by the impact of the Kelvin, was completely cut out of 2009 to help pacing). JJ leaves cut corners on his narrative that do leave holes. I think that’s a mistake, but then, I’m not a millionaire director, writer, and producer like Abrams, Orci, and Kurtzmann do what do I know?
I’ve read that they actually wrote a version of the movie without Khan and then thought: “Hey, can we add Khan to this?”
Really?! Do you have a reference for that? I’d like to read it.
One thing I never understood: Why would Admiral Weller think Khan Noonien Cumberbatch was a good candidate to design and build starships, particularly starships better than the current models and that specifically can kick Romulan and Klingon ass? I don’t know if either movie or Space Seed said or even implied that Khan was a genius, but if they did, I would have found that believable. But a guy who is from like 300 years in the past and doesn’t know bubkes about warp drive or Klingons or Romulans (though the Ricardo Mendelbaum version did know a Klingon proverb) or the state of current interstellar relations? I don’t find that believable, even in the context of “Hey, it’s science fiction.” Even science fiction — or any fiction — has to have “rules,” otherwise they could do anything they wanted, like, say, Uhura has the ability to fly (i.e., without a spaceship or other conveyance).
Khan’s a genius. He’s a quick study.
Still made the best Star Trek movie out there nearly 40 years later. Pretty incredible.
Indeed, and I cannot stress enough how much I literally hated STID. It’s a rare thing that every time I see a clip of it, I can’t stand it even more. JJ did the franchise a terrible injustice there, imo.
Just watched TWOK again the other night, it makes me thrilled every time I see it. Meyer did save the franchise, imo.
Agree with all of this. TWOK is still the Trek film I watched the most by far. Obviously it’s not perfect and some of it feels dated today but its themes are just as strong today as when it premiered.
As for STID, it’s still sad to me that was the direction they went in and derailed a promising film series after just one film. There are so many issues with that movie but the ending was easily the worse for me.. I still remembered watching Nemesis and just really disappointed they had to remake the TWOK ending. I remember thinking they should’ve just left it alone. That was a big reason fans hated the movie…out of many.
And then two movies later they doubled down on it again even harder. It’s amazing just how tone deaf they were over the whole Khan thing. Everything about it was a trainwreck to me and I don’t even hate it as much as others; but I have zero desire to watch it these days.
I can watch TWOK again and again though.
Although as I have grown older I now consider First Contact as #1 and TWOK #2, that of course is purely subjective and many other fans will rightfully disagree. That said, TWOK is a close 2nd in my books.
The movie stands on its own so well, but I also think many fans like myself were so disappointed on so many levels with TMP (that view has tempered over time), as a teenager, I was just so relieved that TWOK didn’t suck. In fact it was everything TMP was not, so we ended up loving it.
In retrospect I now see some of the movie’s flaws including its signature “bad acting in Hollywood” moments, but overall it is still a great story and worthy of easily being the best TOS cast movie.
If you have to make a movie #1, First Contact is definitely not a bad choice! I still love that one too. For me it’s #3 after TWOK and TUC. I know the latter has become more divisive in the fanbsse over the years but I still really love it. It’s just so entertaining, an amazing premise, especially for it’s time and lines up with TNG canon fairly well but I digress.
But I obviously love FC too and sadly that was the last great Star Trek film for me and now nearly 20 years ago.
As for TMP, I have tried so hard to like that movie. People here praises it so much and I still can’t get past the first 20 minutes without feeling bored out of my mind lol. While I have seen TWOK the most, TMP is easily the movie I seen the least and only three times in my life.
The last time was when I did a grand rewatch of the entire franchise back in 2021. I had rewatched all of TOS of course and watched TAS for the first time and ended up really enjoying it. So, I genuinely got excited about watching TMP by then. It had been at least 20 years since I last saw it and being older I thought I could really appreciate it more now. I gleefully turned it on and by the halfway mark I felt like my teeth was being pulled lol. Absolutely nothing changed. I still hate it just as much as today unfortunately.
But I couldn’t wait to watch TWOK again after that and appreciated it so much more. A movie with less than a third of the budget (and it showed at times) but three times the heart. Still a really solid movie (see, I got it back on topic ;)).
Anyway sorry for the rant lol, but always love talking to you DeanH!
TMP feels like a more interesting ST film now than recent formularic entries, all ‘pew pew’
Yeah that can’t be denied, especially after the last 4-5 movies. It’s become very tired at this point; the irony TWOK becoming the template for basically all of them.
Yeah, Undiscovered Country is also very good. Being Canadian, who doesn’t like Christopher Plummer? It was also served as a great farewell to the entire TOS cast.
I also have to admit, I personally enjoy “the one with the whales”.
As for TMP, it was just such a let down. Yes, there are many elements that are great including the opening score which has become, IMHO, just as iconic as the original series theme. Also the Klingons, which drove us fans crazy when they first showed up in TMP opening scene (can you imagine the fan outrage if social media existed back then???) also went on the become iconic. I know many may disagree, but in retrospect the Klingons from TOS are actually quite laughable now (along with the TOS Gorn), so we can thank TMP for reinventing the Klingons.
All that said, the rest of TMP is not the best – although it would have made a good 1 hr episode. The only movie worse IMHO is Nemesis. That is the only movie I have watched just once and it joins Enterprise’s These are the Voyages as my “one time only” Star Trek shows.
As I recall interestingly enough it was Gene Coons original concept that the Federation and the Klingon Empire were largely morally equivalent. While not clearly stated this would have been part of the irony between the two. This is strongly suggested in Errand of Mercy. The biggest difference of course is they were an aggressive race of warriors. And Koloth hardly comes across as a savage warrior, more someone who managed to rise through difficult ranks using his brains and wits. Mr. Coon never got enough credit! It’s too bad this concept was never fully examined in subsequent episodes.
It took me nearly 15 years to enjoy fc, as I felt it betrayed its own setup and trek history by not showing how bad it was post ww3. Just a shuttle flight over annihilated cities would have said so much. Instead of nuclear winter it looks more like summer with the neatly cloud free skies as seen from orbit, another dumb Berman call.
I feel for Meyer in that he saw some magic in Trek you can see in the movies that Roddenbery basically wanted to bury Horatio Hornblower in Space, “Wagon Train to the Stars”, the Enterprise as having to represent the Federation as the only ship in the quadrant, Saavik and David Marcus as “a new generation”, starships as capital ships that aren’t a dime a dozen, the Federation as NATO in IV, even small things like the Romulans as Vulcans (in VI you have a Romulan that looks like a Vulcan, I don’t know WTF happened with the Romulans in TNG).. all this epicness that was in TOS that pretty much 60’s Roddenbery came up with (in his writer guide they compare Captain Kirk as the Captain of a modern day US destroyer in Vietnam) that ended up being rejected by the prophet Roddenbery of the 70s. I figure either Roddenbery knew he’d eventually get nailed by the Me Too movement and thus had to sell his soul or he just enjoyed being seen as a grand visionary vs. an action/adventure TV producer.
I love stories of Meyer wanting the bridge to be full of activity, corridors to be smaller, buttons/clocks, more functional, etc. All moorings clear, etc.And he was not afraid of conflict and grey areas. I think TWOK works because Meyer got Trek better than visionary Roddenbery and the long decline in Trek we’ve since since was the result of Meyer (and TOS Trek) slowly giving way to the cartoon visionary. Centuries from now though I think Trek will be remembered for TWOK where as Season One TNG will be long forgotten as dull, boring and lifeless at worst, a good setup for the comedy Lower Decks at best (and of course some great stuff where Picard is compromised by the Borg, that really saved TNG). Perfect people with free energy, thousands of starships and no conflict isn’t just hard to relate to – it’s boring.DS9 fixed that up a bit, but we ended up with starships being on par with star wars snub fighters.
Really arguable but I think Trek would have done better in the long run had Spock stayed dead, Saavik been allowed to emerge as a Romulan/Vulcan hybrid with her and David Marcus, Sulu and the Excelsior, etc. setting up the next generation. Also the Enterprise-A should have looked like the Enterprise we got in Picard S3 or an Excelsior. ST III, while part of the awesome Genesis arc, resulted in TWOK ending up peak Trek (detoothing the Klingons making them Romulans was a huge mistake too IMHO). See the DC Comics at the time as a hint of what could have been.
Well, I’ll have to disagree with you about bringing Spock back in TSFS. Nimoy’s Spock, in my opinion, is the greatest and most iconic character in all of ST. Yes, you can say that the original show is dated (it is, but that’s actually one of its strengths. It’s like a classic western). You can say the production isn’t as good, which is correct too, since they didn’t have the budget that the legacy shows had at all. You can say the stories were somewhat limited in scope, which was largely due to the sfx technology at the time (interestingly enough, adjusting for inflation, I read that both ST and TNG spent the same amount of money per episode on sfx. TNG just got more bang for their buck due to advances in sfx technology). One thing that TOS has, though, is the trinity of characters, Kirk, Spock, and Bones (and Scotty too). They’re icons and the chemistry between them just has not been equaled. The following films made them even greater, by bringing age and reflection to these characters. They exceeded what they were in the TOS series.
So, that’s why I, for one, think it was absolutely the right thing to bring Spock back. And they got a great movie out of it with TSFS.
Now, as to another of your points, using the Excelsior as the new starship, that was initially the plan from what I read. I believe they were either going to use that ship as the Excelsior or, what would have been better, re-christian it as the Enterprise-A. Unfortunately, that fact leaked, I believe, so they went with using the original movie model instead of Bill George’s Excelsior model.
Looking back on that, we definitely got more nostalgia from seeing the Enterprise model again at the end of TVH, but I think a similar effect could have happened with renaming the Excelsior as the Enterprise-A. That would have been the surprise, seeing that the ship had been rechristianed. And, yeah, I really like the Excelsior design. The TMP Enterprise was perfection, but the Excelsior was sweet. I think it would’ve worked too.
Yes many good points here. In the early 70s Mr Roddenberry was moving on from Trek to work on other projects. His interest was renewed when the early Cons began attracting increasingly huge crowds. In many cases he would talk about how NBC prevented him from telling the stories he really wanted to tell and over time no doubt saw he had a second chance and very possibly began to see himself as more of a visionary. Interestingly an argument could be made that his best skill was as a businessman! Watching TMP its easy to see how deeply influenced he was by 2001, especially with regards to the perfectibility of humanity. Decker and Ilia becoming higher forms of life were clearly his answer to the Space Child. This Utopian aspiration was central to TNG and represented a huge fork in the road between Roddenberry and Meyer. Mr Meyer frequently commented he was never a proponent of the perfect people concept. No doubt this increased the already preexisting animosity between the two. Again it would be interesting to see how different Trek would have turned out if somehow Paramount entrusted the future to Nick Meyer. This assumes of course that he had an interest in doing so as has been noted elsewhere. I think the franchise would look very different today.
‘7% solution’ also a darn good holmes/watson film
Screenplay by Meyer, too.
I have never heard this question asked before. It would be very interesting to know (and I hope someone at some point gets the chance to ask) what Star Trek VII would have been had Paramount not gotten skittish and instead gave Mr Meyer the reins of the franchise, fan reaction be damned. I know he had a solid idea for what the next movie should be about I just don’t know what those plans would have involved.
Meyer admits he is not an idea man, that he works better fleshing out those of others, so I’d be surprised if he had any idea about where to go post-TUC.
Having said that, I do recall that he was called in on TOMORROW NEVER DIES when that project was absolutely floundering (look at the finished movie, you can see it never did come up for air) and came up with a terrific idea that was way outside the lines for them, where the villain killing millions is doing so to save billions, and presents Bond with a serious ethical dilemma. Our loss, it could have been terrific.
Past bond villains have expressed same reasoning for their actions but are all psychos in the end
I would love to have seen Meyer do Generations, directing Malcom McDowell (again), Shakespearen actor Patrick Stewart (imagine the performance he’d have got out of him), a Sherlock Holmes Data scene, Obviously would’ve had to rewrite the whole thing like Nimoy wanted..and found a way to include him and the rest..
Nimoy wanted and requested to be the director of the first TNG movie. Berman met with him and gave him the script. Nimoy read it and didn’t like it at all. He said he wanted a major rewrite and that he should have been involved at the beginning. Berman told them there was no time to do that, so Nimoy walked. At that point, Paramount stopped calling Nimoy.
If Nimoy had gotten onboard, Meyer might’ve been involved as well as a writer.
I do think, if Berman had listened and brought Nimoy onboard during the writing phase, that the first TNG movie wouldn’t have been the disappointment it turned out to be.
I’ve always wondered if we’ll ever get to see to the Kahn Child cut scenes.
Isn’t it just. 2 shots, on the planet and in transporter room?
I’ve read rumors there might be a few more, mainly on Ceti Alpha V. I’m guessing just might be some additional dialogue. So far just two stills have leaked out.
What a great final paragraph. I loved the first three Meyer Holmes novels but have been neglectful in getting to the new ones.
By the end of his life Conan Doyle pretty much made his peace with Holmes. He was still a little bitter, because he’d written serious historical fiction he wanted to be known for, but he knew people loved Holmes, knew it was good writing and nothing to be embarrassed over, and knew he’d forever be remembered for it.
Arthur Sullivan was much the same: The man was a serious, professional, and very good composer who found himself writing music to one silly comic Gilbert opera after another. But as one critic put it, “There isn’t a composer out there who wouldn’t give his right arm to be forever remembered as the man who wrote ‘The Mikado.'”
Even Shakespeare seems to have preferred to be remembered more for his “serious” poetry than for the plays that brought in the money, but it also seems he knew what would be remembered.
Same with Anthony Burgess, who in a long career wrote many novels that he was much fonder of than “A Clockwork Orange.” But he’d reluctantly made his peace with the likelihood that, especially given Stanley Kubrick’s notorious film adaptation, it would be the work he’d be best-remembered for.
Thanks for this, TrekMovie staff, great interview. ‘The Enemy Below,’ is a great film, and for any WOK fan, I consider it a Must See. Meyer is one guy that got Trek right.
Meyer is wrong about them not meeting though
“which is a World War II duel between a destroyer and a U-boat, and Robert Mitchum, who’s the captain of the destroyer, and Curd Jürgens, who is the captain of the U-boat, they never meet. “
They meet in the finale. And they actually work together in an attempt to save another man’s live. And they have the final piece of dialogue in the closing scene of the movie.
That is a very important part of the message of that movie, which has a very humanistic outlook which fits Star Trek very well.
Yeah, it’s pretty interesting that the WWII movie about a destroyer/submarine duel actually concludes on a more humanist, optimistic note in this case than the “utopian” TV space opera.
I wanted to attend this celebration even after happening to fall upon it by accident and some work conflicts on Mon. After much thought, and realizing no Shatner, or any of the other surviving TOS regulars would be there for Q&A, I just said forget it. Not to put down Catherine Hicks or Robin Curtis, I am sure they’d have some experiences to share.
I would have liked to ask Nicholas Meyer about being overruled by Bennett (if true) about Kirk crying after Spock has died. In retrospect, I thought that was a cheat given their history. However, in III Kirk’s breakdown over David’s death and the Enterprise destruction was just cathartic for me. Cinematically, I don’t think TOS Trek movies have had any character reach so deep into a scene. Credit Shatner’s performance and Nimoy’s direction.
One other thing I’d ask NM is if there’s truth to Shatner demanding Photoshopping/slimming his rear in the final bridge walk scene at the end of VI.
Oh well, maybe at the 60th anniversary. :)
I see the 70mm prints are vault prints, not virgin ones. I’ve read that prints of this time turn pink as they age. Just curious as to how they look, however, the soundtrack if they hold up should be really an experience if they show the movie properly.
I saw an old print of TWOK 18 or 20 years back at a Portland theater and the whole movie looked like it took place under ‘red alert’ conditions, it was that far skewed into the red. The only thing worse about the experience was the runup … for some reason, the theater kept playing Sinatra singing, ‘in old monterey’ over and over for 25minutes before the movie started.
Thats hilarious. I-IV I saw in those grand old single movie houses.. V and VI I saw in a multiplex. V was in 70mm and the cool thing was they played excerpts from the score in the lobby and in the theater before the movie started..a lot of it the shuttle crash landing inside the Enterprise part with the Klingon theme. I live in the DC area and we never got a 70mm print of VI. So jealous of the areas that did get it like LA but they get the best of everything being the movie capital!
I almost always avoided the 70mm blowups because they looked like grain city most of the time (not counting films shot in 65mm like 2001, which were utterly glorious.) With TUC, which was shot super35, that was tons worse because even the 35mm prints have to go an extra generation, basically they are doing an extra dupe to get to the release print stage (this will mean less than nothing to the digital era folks here, I know.) But I got burned because though I picked the 35mm theater, they mixed up the prints or just labeled the screens and ticket booths wrong with the 70mm screen next door and we saw the mushiest looking thing imaginable. The scene with Bones and Kirk in bed on Rure Penthe was just BLACK – like the worst experience you ever would have at a drive-in theater bad.
There were a lot of bad theater experiences with crummy projection at the big Century theaters in San Jose. I had better luck at second-run houses where they actually paid for union projectionists and going to Palo Alto Square, where they always had the matting right for the aspect ratio (as opposed to San Jose on TWOK, where they cropped the top so badly that you couldn’t even see Jedda up on the second level of the Regulae station.)
why don’t you ask Meyer about the Kim Cattrall after hours bridge pics too lol
If you really want to see that much more of her while she still has that severe Valeris hairstyle, I suggest picking up a copy of SPLIT SECOND on blu-ray. It’s half-off this weekend according to the sales section of blu-ray.com. It’s actually a very fun, only semi-dumb little buddy movie with some ALIEN dna (the creature actually looks at times like Cameron’s alien queen mockup, the one that was made out of garbage liner and foamcore.)
Hey now, I was THINKING about that in the back of my mind but depending on the vibe I would be sensing in the theater and audience wasn’t sure if that was something I should bring up. Then again, its been 20+ years since VI, so why not. And she’s been more ‘revealing’ on her Sex in the City tv show anyway. LOL
As I remember it in stuff published shortly after TWOK came out, Bennett thought Kirk should cry when hugging David, but Meyer thought there had been tears enough already.
I’d bet what passes with me as serious money against the photoshop business you mention. ILM was only barely starting to get into the touchup business around this time, and that was simply blacking in the bald parts of Bruce Willis scalp during some flying shots in HUDSON HAWK (not hyperbole — I was at ILM doing a soon-to-be-aborted story about MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN and one of the guys there got a kick out of calling this up on his huge-for-back-then monitor screen for me), and there’s no way they’d stretch the budget any further than they did, especially not for something like that.
ILM was pretty much at capacity during TUC — they had other shows like HOOK in the works and were so busy that I couldn’t get in up there to do interviews until sometime in November of 91. In fact that whole summer preceding that was very busy too … I had my story on Spielberg’s ALWAYS assigned at the start of 91, but couldn’t get ILM interviews — which was three-quarters of the article — till after the film had come and gone from theaters, because most of that crew was out in Nevada shooting model planes for DIE HARD 2 all summer long.
I have heard rumors of one late shoot on TUC that I’ve never been able to confirm with anyone. Somebody at my then-workplace in Fremont, Ca said they had friends watching Klingons being filmed in Santa Cruz around September 1991. I don’t have any support for that, but I do know that a matte shot involving Klingons was shot on a SanFran beach around that time, for the establishing view of Rure Penthe.
Maybe I’m mixed up. But..didn’t Meyer accuse Bennett of having a ‘television mentality.’ That sticks in my mind and, given Bennett’s tv experience that description makes sense. Sadly, Bennett is gone now, so its up to Meyer to confirm! lol. He’s still with us.
That was with respect to Bennett saying, no, you can’t have kirk be a cheater, re: Kobayashi Maru. And Meyer said, TV mentality — to his credit, Bennett ‘got’ it.
For me the reaction to David’s death never worked, but the movie does have McCoy’s best post series scene in the klingon sickbay.
It never worked for me, either. Shatner’s overacting, Nimoy’s awkward staging of the scene, or Kirk’s throwaway racism — none of it added-up to what should have been should have been a key franchise moment. By contrast, the funeral scene in TWOK is a masterclass in directorial restraint that allowed Shatner to do his best work (along with BOT and COTEF) playing James Kirk.
I agree, though I also remember Doohan deriding it, saying wrinkling your face up isn’t acting.
Hell, Walter Koenig once mentioned in an interview how he’d personally complimented Shatner’s work in that scene. Past a certain point I think Doohan might have derided Shatner for curing cancer.
It turned on a dime with Doohan. Right before tmp came out he actually stated in that Shatner where no man book that while he might not have thought so before, he had to admit Shatner was the best actor in the cast.