As Star Trek celebrated its 43rd birthday this week, I reflect on the enormous amount of interviews I’ve conducted for that franchise (easily over a hundred, including cast and crew). I’ve spoken with every principal member of the original series and each series thereafter. There are many fascinating moments on and off camera—emotional, candid, and just plain silly. Like William Shatner, who can just act plain goofy. For the first time ever, we paired him with Joan Collins to recall the acclaimed time travel episode, ‘The City on the Edge of Forever” (Collins plays Kirk’s doomed love interest). For every articulate, insightful comment from Joan, Bill would only ramble on about her beauty and sexiness. As Joan tried to stay on point, Bill would slip in aside about how ‘hot’ she was. I feared Joan was going to slap him. Another Trek original cast member, George Takei (Sulu), insisted on recounting a ‘dark chapter in American history’ during the Second World War. “Simply because we looked like the enemy,” he said, “we were rounded up and placed in barbed wired internment camps.” Then there’s James Doohan. Shortly before his passing, he allowed a rare interview at his home. Because of his ill health, James needed to read the answers to my questions off cue cards. Hampered by his struggle to articulate sentences and the amount of time it took to capture any useable footage, the interview seemed a futile exercise. But he carried on like the stalwart engineer he portrayed on TV. Then, toward the end of the ordeal, James visibly beamed and took the energy up a notch as he recalled his heroics during World War II. “I landed… on D-Day, number one off my boat,” he said, “and got shot 8 times.” He then unabashedly and proudly raised his hand to show a missing finger lost during battle. What a trooper, I thought.
On YouTube you can find more Star Trek interviews I produced:
The Cast on Kirk's love affairs.
Leonard Nimoy
Original Series stories
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