The Unauthorized History of Trek. James Hise van
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these creatures fell to the ground quite convincingly when hit by phaser fire.
This episode brought the first season to its end. Leonard Nimoy would be nominated for Best Supporting Actor in a Dramatic Series for this year’s work.
Between seasons, in its issue of July 15, 1967, Nichelle Nichols was profiled in TV Guide.
Although her presence on the show at all was considered daring, the actress felt strongly that her character was too limited. She told TV Guide, “The producers admit being very foolish and very lax in the way they’ve used me—or not used me.” Gene Coon, a producer, defended Uhura’s small role: “I thought it would be very ungallant to imperil a beautiful girl with twenty-toed snaggle-toothed monsters from outer space.”
Nichols, however, did not feel imperiled by additional dialogue, and by the end of the first season had increased her dialogue quotient. No longer confined to “All hailing frequencies open, sir,” Nichols also began ad-libbing, including the famous line, “Mr. Spock, if I have to say ‘Hailing frequencies open’ one more time, I’ll blow my top! Why don’t you tell me I’m a lovely young woman?”
TV Guide saw this development as more important than it turned out to be, alas, as borne out by a careful examination of the seventy-nine known episodes of Star Trek. But Roddenberry commented to TV Guide at the time, “We’re thinking about taking her down on the planets next season. Maybe we’ll have wardrobe make her an appropriate costume for planet wear.” In fact, female characters in addition to Uhura eventually beamed down to planets, still wearing the daring miniskirt uniform and getting involved in dangerous, often romantic, situations.
At the end of the first season, however, Nichols was so dismayed by her character’s limitations that she considered quitting the show. But when she met civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., he told her to stay with it; just appearing on the show as a bridge officer in a position of responsibility, he told her, she was providing a positive message that would be beneficial both to blacks and to the perception of blacks by others. (And somewhere in Brooklyn, the girl who would someday take the stage name of Whoopi Goldberg was inspired by Lieutenant Uhura.)
Of the famous tension between Spock and McCoy, DeForest Kelley tried to use elements of comedy and drama in the relationship, as related in a 1974 interview with Joseph Gulick:
“I never wanted it thought for a minute that McCoy truly disliked [Spock]. McCoy had great respect for Spock, and I thought and felt that the best way was to somehow lighten it with an expression or a line. I did that purposefully. I didn’t want to lose fans by being too hard with Spock under certain circumstances. McCoy liked him. It became a kind of battle of wits.”
The on-screen battle of wits came about through hard work offscreen. Kelley and Nimoy discussed their scenes at great length, working on how they should be acted. According to Kelley, all the actors’ deep caring for the show made for a unique taping situation. Unlike other shows, where actors would read a book or the trade papers between scenes, the crew of the Enterprise worked with the producer, breaking down future scenes and working on their parts—more like old-fashioned live New York television than Hollywood shows. Kelley explained, “This had a great bearing on the show. No one was out just running around or loafing or sleeping in a dressing room. They were preparing for the next scene.”
Like the crew of the Enterprise, Star Trek’s cast often worked seven days, with grueling schedules often keeping them on the set until 8:30 or 9 P.M. That first season, Nimoy and Kelley reported for makeup around 6 A.M. Between their getting home at 10 P.M., then reporting back to the set at 6 A.M., a real starship crew may have had more time for R&R.
But by the second season the schedule had improved, and Kelley admits, “The first year was pure hell, but I think we did our best work in the first year when I look back.”
During the spring and summer of 1967, while the first season of Star Trek was in reruns, word began to spread that the next season would feature a visit to Spock’s home planet, Vulcan. Needless to say, speculation was rife. That year in New York, World Science Fiction Convention attendees were the first to see the promised episode, “Amok Time,” as well as the first season’s blooper reel.
“Amok Time,” written by veteran science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon (who also wrote the first season’s “Shore Leave”), proved to be well worth the wait. Keying in on the interest in Spock’s emotional chinks, the story opened with the Vulcan officer acting decidedly strange and sulky.
McCoy determines that Spock will die if something is not done about the physical changes he’s undergoing, and Spock admits, not to the doctor but to Kirk, that he is undergoing Pon farr, the Vulcan mating cycle, which will, indeed, be fatal if he doesn’t get to Vulcan and undergo the proper rituals posthaste. Kirk bucks orders and reroutes the Enterprise to Vulcan.
The rituals involved are remnants of Vulcan’s barbaric past (one wonders if they’re really prudes except on these occasions). T’Pau, a dignified Vulcan leader, appears, as does the first use of the Vulcan ritual greeting “Live long and prosper.” (Leonard Nimoy provided the accompanying hand gesture, which he “borrowed” from an important Jewish religious ritual; congregations were supposed to look away when the rabbi made this gesture, but Nimoy, as a young boy, couldn’t help but peek!) Spock’s would-be bride (by long-standing prearrangement, of course) T’Pring adds danger to the proceedings when she demands that Spock must engage in combat for her hand, and chooses Kirk as her champion. The fight must be to the death. Fortunately, McCoy manages to set up Kirk’s “death” in order to end the fight. Spock snaps out of Pon farr thanks to this ruse, and is greatly relieved to find Kirk still alive; T’Pau gets Kirk out of any potential hot water by asking the Federation to divert the Enterprise to Vulcan.
Vulcan was presented here in sparse but effective visual terms; T’Pau, as portrayed by Peter Lorre’s onetime wife Celia Lovsky, carries the entire implied culture in her bearing. Sturgeon provided many small but telling touches regarding ethics and customs of the planet Vulcan; photography and music added immensely to this episode. The Worldcon audience was suitably impressed.
The cast of Star Trek was altered to include a new character in the second season. The network was pressing for a character to rope in the “youth” market, something along the lines of Davy Jones of The Monkees. A press release (later revealed to have exaggerated the truth by fabricating the incident) claimed that the show was criticized by the Russian Communist newspaper Pravda for, among other things, its lack of a Russian character in the Enterprise’s otherwise multinational crew. And so to kill two birds with one stone, Roddenberry reportedly created the character of Ensign Pavel Chekov, a young officer with a heavy accent, to satisfy Soviet angst. Signing on as Chekov was actor Walter Koenig.
The second season of Star Trek began on September 15, 1967. The episode shown was “Amok Time,” which also marked the first time DeForest Kelley received billing in the opening credits of the show.
“Who Mourns for Adonais?” brings the Enterprise into conflict with no less a personage than the Greek god Apollo, actually the last of a band of immortals who once visited Earth and lived on Mount Olympus. Scotty has a romantic interest here, but she falls for the god instead. Fortunately, Kirk manages to obtain her aid in destroying the temple that provides the god with his omnipotent powers, and Apollo destroys his own physical form and lets the Enterprise go. (In James Blish’s adaptation of this episode, a final epilogue note from the original script is retained: the young woman is found to have become pregnant by the god Apollo.)
‘The Changeling” is Nomad, an ancient Earth probe which