Captain Kirk heading to space.. for real!

[fireproof78]

Yeah I think Shatner was always intended to be the star, given just how expensive the show was and the fights over actor salaries, they wouldn't have wanted to make it an ensemble show. And honestly, if you look at Star Trek Discovery right now, even TOS feels more well rounded because characters like Rhys, Bryce, Nilsson, Owo, and Detmer have literally nothing to do despite Disco fans saying they want to know more about these characters.

TOS was never an ensemble show. It became so after the fact and media hype. Discovery feels about the same as TOS to me, and the characters listed are more like Rand or Leslie than a O'Brien or Garak. TOS feels more rounded now because we have 50 years of ancillary and metatextual information to soak in, not because those characters were fleshed out more in the show itself.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

The day players were on set only when they were needed while Shatner, Nimoy and Kelley were there practically every day working their asses off to make the show work. Shatner has been widely acknowledged by many for being a total professional and working his tail off. Small wonder Shatner might not have paid much attention to day players seen periodically.

TOS is very likely the only series in TV history where day players created the expectation of being on the same level as the stars, and/or believed they should have been held in higher regard by said stars. They were delusional; even on series where billed stars worked together all of the time, they did not always get along or even speak. Such was the case on the 1966-68 Batman TV series where Neil Hamilton (Commissioner Gordon) was pretty much tied to the hip of Stafford Repp (Chief O'Hara), but Hamilton did not get along with or socialize with Repp across all three seasons and the production of the 1966 movie.
If they could not manage even a decent relationship as much as they were working together, there's no sense in a day player only occasionally around to think the very busy series stars were--or should have--paid much attention to them.

I suspect this simmering resentment didn’t really come to the fore until the cast started doing the convention circuit and fans started fanning their egos with how important and integral they were to the show.

That did happen; I was there to see the kind of ego-pumping going on at 1970s conventions and it was never based on what the actors actually contributed to TOS, but the stories about what TOS was supposed to represent. That, and the production of Filmation's animated series built on this perception when the day players were tapped to provide their characters' voices, so they believed the convention hype was justified....yet any sane person knew that still did not place them on the level of Shatner, Nimoy or Kelley as actors or their characters.

Meanwhile Shatner goes on with his life.

As always.

 

[Phoenix219]

Doohan might have eventually gotten fourth place billing.

Takei did himself no favors leaving to go film other projects. He may have never had to deal with Koenig sharing his spotlight.

Hate to say it, but considering she was yet another one consorting with Roddeberry, Nichols is lucky she retained her billing as well as she did, and wasn't attached to more drama.

They are all lucky they had recurring roles, instead of new shift crew randomly playing the background roles every week, like desalle, Leslie, Riley, kyle and stiles, or that one of them didn't get the recurring slot themselves.

 

[cooleddie74]

Leslie and Kyle appeared often enough I could see one of them becoming a supporting cast member in a fourth season of TOS.

 

[Phoenix219]

Leslie and Kyle appeared often enough I could see one of them becoming a supporting cast member in a fourth season of TOS.

Kevin Riley was also a fan favorite, and could have been the Irish Chekov. Scott, Riley, Kyle all representative of different European areas could have been enough diversity for those days. Again, Takei and company are lucky, there were quite a lot of other directions that could have been used as support characters.

 

[Ssosmcin]

Leslie and Kyle appeared often enough I could see one of them becoming a supporting cast member in a fourth season of TOS.

Eddie Paskey had left the series midway through the 3rd series or thereabouts. So he was out. Besides, his acting ability was kinda limited. He was more of a featured background player. John Winston only did "The Lights of Zetar" in the 3rd year, but since he was an actual actor, I could see it.

 

[cooleddie74]

And since he appeared as Commander Kyle in TWOK it would have been a nice bridge between the TOS we got and the movies.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Takei had made some inflammatory comments on why his space dock lines where it would be revealed he would be promoted Captain and commanding the Excelsior in Star Trek II were sabotaged by Shatner. He expressed this in a segment on E.T.* promoting his tell-all book "To The Stars" in which Shatner gave a lifeless performance where the director had to do continuous takes and as the takes went on Shatner delivered something which couldn't be saved. He claimed he knew what the director and the editor could do with a scene and it could not be salvaged; he thought it was a personal vendetta against him.

Here on this forum, I believe @Maurice had a thread where he shared an audio of that scene. From my POV it seemed to me the audio showed Shatner was pretty consistent in his delivery, most has been seen in the cut of the movie, and opens the door for Takei to have his moment. Takei, as Sulu, felt flat and robotic as if he was reading the lines on set, I believe the ratios were 1:3 and all 3 takes were Shatner got better as Takei was exactly the same to me. I guess it is easy to slander a star and a living legend about a scenario when it's believed the accusation can't be disputed because the events could never be seen or heard by the public. From what I gathered were Takei's account of the events were untrue and the nature of his accusation were disingenuous.

*Entertainment Tonight.

Here's the audio from the work print (skip to 2:50):

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Shatner delivers a fine performance on par with the rest of the scene. The dialogue was probably removed because it's filler. Simple as that.

Also, Takei can be small and petty. The documentary on him didn't really endure him to me, and I've meet the man. He's nice enough, but he's the mean-spirited type and it shows in the documentary. The type that excuses their poor behavior with a hearty laugh as if it was just a joke all along.

Re: TOS being an ensemble...

it's very clear in all the early documents that Trek was always about the adventures of Captain April-cum-Pike-cum-Kirk, first and foremost. It was always meant as star vehicle for whoever played the lead. Spock being the breakout character slightly changed that dynamic where it became a two lead show with Shatner being the star and Nimoy being the co-star.

 

[Nerys Myk]

it's very clear in all the early documents that Trek was always about the adventures of Captain April-cum-Pike-cum-Kirk, first and foremost. It was always meant as star vehicle for whoever played the lead. Spock being the breakout character slightly changed that dynamic where it became a two lead show with Shatner being the star and Nimoy being the co-star.

Yep. And the show as aired pretty much backs that up.

 

[Warped9]

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Now that I’ve heard it, whoop-dee-do.

Besides which Sulu finally got his command scenes in TUC, and he didn’t exactly light up the screen there.

So Shatner wasn’t responsible for cutting his moment in TWOK and he sure as hell didn’t plot out and write the next two films that kept Sulu from getting his own command.

Just imagine Takei’s fury if Shatner had left Sulu out of TFF because Sulu was supposedly off somewhere else with his own command of Excelsior.

 

[Ssosmcin]

Shatner's performance is spot on. Sulu's dialogue is clunky. It's written clumsily. Blame Nicky Meyer not Shatner.

 

[Warped9]

Apparently in Takei’s mind everything is Shatner’s fault.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Shatner's performance is spot on. Sulu's dialogue is clunky. It's written clumsily. Blame Nicky Meyer not Shatner.

As I've said in the past, it was a terrible plan to put stiff dialogue in the mouths of Takei, Nichols, and Koenig. They were good actors on TV, but they took their legacy slots in film series for granted. Rather than work on their craft and prepare natural performances, they came in rusty, lazy, and hammy.

Pre-Alzheimers Doohan could take awkward writing and make it real, but the other three were coasting and it showed.

Apart from casting three supporting actors who would never have won these big screen roles by auditioning, another structural problem was just coming up with things for these three people to say. Their dialogue is awkward in large part because it had to be cooked up as make-work. And what made it even harder was that they all had to be commanders or higher, to keep their age from being an embarrassment. So you have these three supposed commanders with no one to command, and nothing really needed of them but to say "Aye, Sir" and push a button.

Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty were in the main positions to tell the story, and they were played by the best actors. Whenever the script bends to serve the other three actors instead of the story, quality suffers.

 

[Warped9]

Shatner and Nimoy went on with their careers after TOS. But after the 70s and beyond the 6 films what did Takei, Nichols, Doohan and Koenig actually do acting wise?

I know Majel Barrett ended up guesting on TNG (and once on DS9) and Walter Koenig was a semi-recurring character as Bester on Babylon 5. But what did the rest of them do besides the convention circuit?

Not much noteworthy that I’m aware of.

 

[cooleddie74]

Doohan got on-again, off-again cameos and roles in movies and TV but yeah, other than Koenig having a second sci-fi career on Babylon 5 none of them went on to a thriving acting career after 1969.

 

[Ssosmcin]

Doohan was the biggest talent who got robbed. He was a solid actor who could handle a lot. He did get Jason of Star Command, but dropped out because they didn't give him enough to do. I wish he had stuck with it.

Takei, honestly, wasn't a bad actor. None of them were awful during the series. @ZapBrannigan is right, though, the lack of regular work took its toll on them in the films. Grace Lee Whitney was bloody awful in TUC, but Takei took the job and ran with it. I thought he did fine as Captain Sulu. Nichelle needed some coaching and Walter...well...maybe he felt like the idiot he was written as and didn't invest. Babylon 5 showed he had chops when he had a well written and directed role. But even Nicky Meyer wasn't exactly in top form for TUC. It was a rushed production and he did little to make it look otherwise. The background people were hammier than the original cast.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

It would not have been the worst thing in the world if Harve Bennett had said to Takei when he was holding out on Star Trek II, "George, I'd have liked to work with you, but we're moving on." I understand why Bennett didn't -- he felt like (or was convinced) that he needed the "Supporting Four" because fans wanted to see them -- and just as Roddenberry sniped at Bennett at conventions, Takei would have too had Bennett moved on. But the number of people who would have not gone to see a Star Trek II absent Takei is zero -- or close enough to zero to not matter.

 

[Ssosmcin]

"I didn't want to have to answer the question of why I wasn't in Star Trek II for the rest of my life."

Instead, just keep beating the same horse breeder for the rest of it...

 

[Yistaan]

Is any of this really about Shatner in space anymore? I do feel he gets an undeserved bad rap from his former TOS castmates and also that George was out of line at taking a shot at him this past week, but venturing into the perceived failings of their acting careers etc. seems to have gone way off topic from the subject of Shatner's space trip and also not really fair to them as everyone knows the film industry is notoriously brutal.

 

[Ssosmcin]

Well it was....until George made it about Shatner's physical condition.

But yeah, way off topic. Tangents happen.