Harlan Ellison's Watching (28 page)

But this fumblefooted, hamhanded amateurishness is not confined to Wise or the editors. It appears throughout, as if the millions chalked off to studio overhead concealed the employment of a squad of gremlins, sent in to wreak havoc on the production.

Even the special effects photography was slipshod. In the opening sequence we see three Klingon battle cruisers skimming through space. The matte lines are jarringly evident. So recurrent is this ineptitude that the editor of a prominent magazine said, "I was so busy looking for the matte fissures, I lost track of the plot. There
was
a plot, wasn't there?"

Well, yes, there was. But I'll deal with that in a while because it contains the burning core of the film's ultimate mediocrity.

But first, as I touched on it above, let me deal with the acting. What little there was.

The first human being who speaks in the film (Klingons not being
homo sapiens
) is a female communications technician in a Starfleet outpost. She speaks her lines so stiltedly, so embarrassingly sophomorically, that I had the uncomfortable feeling I was looking at somebody's daughter, girlfriend or secretary who had been given a bit part. It was common practice on the TV series, but I could not believe that in a major studio production of this magnitude such nepotism could be countenanced. I have since learned that that was precisely the case. The "actress" in question was Michele Billy, production secretary to the scenarist, Harold Livingston.

To have our first exposure to thespic technique in a film this big fall on the clearly nonexistent talent of an amateur is shocking. Further, it is symptomatic of the inbred Old Boys' Network thinking that permeates
Star Trek—TMP
.

Pork-barrel jobs such as filling the rec room scene with fans and associates like Roddenberry's secretary Susan Sackett, novelist David Gerrold, Trekker Denny Arnold and the fannish loon who legally changed his name to James T. Kirk are acceptable, because they were only walk-ons. But putting such lames as Ms. Billy and Jon Rashad Kamal (Lt. Commander Sonak) in positions of even passing prominence speaks to a loss of rationality on the part of Wise and Roddenberry that beggars pejorative description.

Yet these casting gaffes seem minuscule compared to the sins of the principals. With the exceptions of Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley, the cast is (why does this word keep springing to mind!?) embarrassing.

Doohan's Scotty is no different from what we saw in the series, no smarter, no kinkier, no older, no more lovable. It is a standard television performance, competent but instantly forgettable. Barrett, Koenig, Takei and Nichols have such brief moments it is impossible to tell if they have the stuff to transcend their stale material. They are thrown scraps from the table: "Warp five, Captain," "Hailing frequency open, Captain," "Negative, Captain," "We're being scanned, Captain." The kind of verbal make-work larded into the script to keep the series' regulars around as furniture, but wholly insufficient to let them practice the craft they have spent their adult lives developing. Uhura remains a glorified switchboard operator, Chekov is the same button-pusher with a raise in rank, Sulu flies the jalopy and is denied the space to exude even a scintilla of George Takei's enormous personal charm, Doctor Chapel carries bedpans. And if Transporter Chief Grace Lee Whitney had a line during the molecular dissolution sequence, it was drowned out by the embarrassed laughter provoked by Shatner's "Oh, my God!" condolence that stands out in a farrago of moments in which one covers one's face wishing one were elsewhere, as the Mt. Everest of inappropriate, awkward readings.

As said, only Nimoy and Kelley came off interestingly. I've been told that Nimoy wrote most of his own part but that in-depth sessions wound up—along with considerable footage of Koenig, Takei, Barrett and others—on the cutting room floor. But even before that stage of post-production, the
Enterprise
crew found their parts being whittled to nothing. During the course of shooting I had occasion to speak to three or four of the crew regulars who have remained my friends from the old series days. Each of them said, in almost exactly the same words and tone of voice, "Every day when I come in I find my lines a little shorter, my scenes a little more cut."

And to whom were those stolen moments given? To Shatner, Stephen Collins and Persis Khambatta.

Collins is a drone. His part could have been played by any rock-ribbed, lantern-jawed actor. He is totally unmemorable. I will pillory him no further. He did the best he could, and that's comment sufficiently pathetic for even John Simon.

Persis Khambatta. Oh dear.

After all the prerelease hype, one would have thought the emergence of a new Ingrid Bergman, or at very least a new Sigourney Weaver, was about to manifest itself.

Such is not the case.

This young woman is quite lovely to look at—but if shaving an esthetically-pleasing head is Makeup's idea of creating a "Vegan" alien then I fear Hal Clement will never work in films—and as for acting ability, well, the poor thing simply has none. I will pillory her no further. She did the best she could, and it is to Wise's credit that he turned her into a machine as quickly as possible, thereby permitting her to function at peak efficiency.

Which leaves us with William Shatner.

He dominates, as usual. Stuffy when he isn't being arch and coy; hamming and mugging when he isn't being lachrymose; playing Kirk as if he actually thinks he
is
Kirk, overbearing and pompous. Yet occasionally appealing, don't ask me why.

Perhaps it is that I remember Shatner from George C. Scott's production of
The Andersonville Trial
, in which he was no less than staggeringly brilliant. Perhaps it is that I
wanted
to like the new, resurgent Kirk. Perhaps it is that I am—despite the catalogue of horrors dealt with herein—hopeful that this film will not bury
Star Trek
.

Nonetheless, it is common knowledge that Shatner tried to dominate every segment of the series and that he has permitted his actor's ego to drag him down to the level of actually line-counting scenes in which another actor, even Nimoy, might have the limelight a trifle longer. I have no knowledge that such was the case with the film, though I've been told there were extensive "story-conferences" among Shatner, Wise and the scenarist; yet there is no mistaking Shatner's pushiness in the lead role. He is there, for better or worse, and if the pivotal scenes where emotionalism was necessary do not come off, the responsibility is surely his.

Nimoy remains a marvel, even in the truncated sections where he is permitted to flex his talent. His Spock is a character several degrees more interesting than when last we saw him in the series. Nimoy has aged, and so has Spock. There is compassion and a touching wistfulness just beneath the stoic surface. And in terms of advancement of the original
Star Trek
format, his is the only alteration. At the end of this movie we have seen the two new characters done away with (for sequel purposes) and we're left exactly where we were when the series was canceled. No change, no growth. But Spock has found there is a reason not to be ashamed of his humanity, his feelings; there is a positive note here—attributable to the sensibility of Nimoy, we must assume—that uplifts and enriches.

But for my money, it is DeForest Kelley who sparkles most wondrously. His Dr. McCoy is big, curmudgeonly, interesting and damned fine. Of all the people in this film, McCoy is the only one I'd care to spend an evening with. I will praise him no further. He did better than his previous best and that's praise of a high order in consideration of a film where almost everyone else is ponderously portentous, hammy or overblown, added like raisin afterthoughts to a soggy plot pudding in which the most startling aspect is an almost hysterical series of costume changes more numerous than those to be found in the most overclothed Ross Hunter tearjerker.

Bringing me, at last, and with trembling, to the script.

(This part is difficult. For years there was rancor between Gene Roddenberry and me. Now, for years, there has been amiability. The conclusions I will now draw about the quality of the film deal with Gene's talent as a writer, and with Gene as a human being involved in a project that has dominated nearly twenty years of his life. He cannot love me for these observations; nonetheless I am compelled to be candid and critically honest. I can do no other. Gene knows I'm thus trapped by my love of writing. Enthusiasts of
Star Trek
and of the film may suspect otherwise. I ask those who proceed with the reading of this essay to accept my assurance that I write what follows with difficulty, but with "clean hands and composure." There is no meanness in me.)

The mark of Gene Roddenberry's limits as a creator of stories is heavily, indelibly, inescapably on this production. No matter whose name is on the screenplay, no matter who is credited onscreen for the basic story, this is the work of Gene Roddenberry. Yes, I know that in the years between 1975 and 1979 there was a parade of writers through Paramount's gates whose abilities were sought for a
Star Trek
film. Yes, I know, because twice I was one of them. Yes, I know that runs were made at the screen treatment or script by John D. F. Black, Robert Silverberg, John Povill, Chris Bryant and Allen Scott, by director Phil Kaufman, by Alan Dean Foster, and by Gene himself. Yes, I know that Gene's name was removed from screen credit five times, and finally he was taken to Writers Guild arbitration by Harold Livingston, who wound up with the credit. Yes, I know all of that; nonetheless, this is Gene Roddenberry's story. And he has to be the one pinned to the wall.

This script has all the same dumb flaws that were perpetuated in the series . . . with bigger, prettier pictures.

It is a synthesis of
at least
four segments of the
Star Trek
series: "The Corbomite Maneuver," "The Changeling," "The Immunity Syndrome," and Norman Spinrad's "The Doomsday Machine."

The ending—what one of the
Star Trek
novelists has called "a $44 million f—k"—is a direct ripoff of the ending from the film
The Last Days of Man on Earth
, a strange translation to the screen of Michael Moorcock's
The Final Programme
.

The characterizations are monodimensional with the ghastly addition of endless winking, eyebrow-arching, nudging and mugging on the part of almost every player, so that at moments in the film we feel we're watching a parody of the Monty Python routine—"Nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more, say no more."

The basic story, for all its "latest state of the art" and its tricked-up trekkiness, is Gene's standard idea, done so often in the series: we go into space, we find God, and God is (pick one) malevolent, crazy, or a child. Not a bad idea, once or twice. Used it myself from time to time.

But even though Alan Dean Foster is given screen credit for the story, he was handed the basic story outline by Gene. It was a treatment intended as a segment of
Genesis II
back in 1973 when that Roddenberry film-for-tv was being considered as a continuing series. The title of the segment was "Robots' Return."

Thus it is ironic and no doubt painful to Gene that the realized dream is blighted by his name being absent from the writing credits. Because more than as creator, producer or guiding spirit of this project, Gene wanted to be known as the writer. And thus it was that he wrote the novel based on the screenplay. Salvation in print.

Notwithstanding the nobility of Gene's hunger for final recognition as a serious writer, it is clearly his heavy hand on the shoulders of all those who tried to beat this script that crushes any hope of originality. The critical assessment is this: for all his uncommon abilities as producer and developer of science fictional ideas for television, Gene Roddenberry is not a very good writer. And he should have accepted that knowledge, and left the writers alone.

Because
Star Trek—TMP
throws together weary and simplistic concepts that are ultimately boring because they are banal.

The plot is woebegone and predictable. It is also riddled with holes that let one perceive the vacuum lying beyond.

I will offer only one example. But not even the most rabid
Star Trek
fan can ignore it.

We are presented with an alien machine intelligence so vast and omniscient and powerful that it can wipe out entire worlds. It is clever enough to build for itself a ship that makes Arthur C. Clarke's
Rama
look like a Tinker Toy. Yet it isn't smart enough to wipe the dirt off a probe from Earth so that it knows the name is VOYAGER, not VGER.

This is the quality of cheat that obtains in television, but cannot be condoned in a forty-four million dollar epic.

The script . . .

No. I'd rather not go on. This has become too personal, and too painful. I had meant at the outset only to say a film of acceptable mediocrity had been produced. But as the writing emerged I found myself pulled on farther and farther into more damning criticism. I did not want that to happen.

I wanted to end on an upbeat note, to say that one aspect of this film gladdened me. The unswerveable dedication to the concept that the youthful human race is intrinsically noble and capable of living with equanimity in the universe. It is an important thought, and one that is denied in both
Star Wars
and
Close Encounters
. Unlike these previously adored "sci-fi" simplicities,
Star Trek—TMP
does not tell us that we are too base, too dull and too venal to save ourselves and to prevail in an uncaring universe without the help of some kind of bogus Jesus-Saves "Force" or a Pillsbury Doughboy in a galactic chandelier. It says we are the children of Creation and if we are courageous, ethical and steadfast we can achieve our place in the light of many suns.