Putting the Shatner "ego issue" from TOS to rest
- Thread starter Gary7
- Start date
This really cracks me up, because I ACTUALLY thought both Bain and Landau had NO facial muscles in the 60's (Mission Impossible). (I was even more amazed to learn well over a decade later, that they were married to each other! ...what were the chances of two people suffering from lack of facial muscles syndrome (LOFMS) meeting any marrying?)
Ok, thank you. That explains my experience in January 1988. I was staying in a hotel and having a few late night drinks to pass the time when I came across TWOK. Watching it, it seemed different somehow and I couldn't put my finger on it, and it was the exact scene you have related.
Thank you. I always remembered that little event and always wondered if the drink affected me more than usual.
YARN
Fleet Captain
This was addressed in Doohan's autobiography: "That was stupid. But that was Bill again. He railed over having to come down to engineering. He said this to Nick Meyer in front of me: 'Doohan's going to come to ME!' Now you can see why I just plain don't like the man. See, he didn't like Scotty and if you don't like Scotty, you don't like me. I don't know if I ever said this, but Scotty is 99% James Doohan and 1% accent. "
Nah, kidding.
You forget how hot she was then. That was so seductive.
Good Times was a spin off of Maude (so it was a spin-off of a spin-off too)
So he would have a crippled (by Scotty) ship in III, not be in IV or V at all and have the same scenes in VI, maybe. By then, people would have thought "Sulu? Sulu Who?" and a different captain would have been helming the Excelsior. If Shatner did this on purpose, he did Takei the actor a big favor.
Wasn't it Nimoy who wanted Spock dead in Trek II, or Harrison Ford wanting Han Solo to die in ROTJ? It's not like the idea of actors wanting their characters to arc, even if it means the end of paying work, is that unheard of. And look at Checkov. He got to "leave home" all the way back in Trek II, even though he wound up back on the bridge of the Enterprise again. The Captain Sulu TV series idea popped up very late, around the time he guested on Voyager, but I don't recall him saying that him getting the captain's chair was going to give him job security, just that it suited the development of the character. The lengths they went through to keep the senior officers from graduating to their own command or a desk job were getting kind of silly. Kirk had to find excuses to escape the Admiral's post twice and Spock was already captain's rank but not allowed to command the Enterprise, even after Kirk got demoted in Trek IV. It just didn't make sense unless you accept that the crew was indeed an ensemble/family and they all passed on promotions out of their social bond, which destroys the premise by haters here that it was never an ensemble and shouldn't be seen as one. So some people really want to argue both sides of this just to be contrarian. Like I said before, by the time of Trek IV, the cast was indeed handled as if it were an ensemble/family. That's how the fans saw it (the same fans who went to conventions in the early 80s and who grilled the cast endlessly about Shatner) and that's how people see it today in retrospect. So however TOS was conceived, that is what it evolved into, sometimes with good (Nuclear Wessels) and bad results (like Nichelle Nichols' striptease in The Voyage Home).
trevanian
Rear Admiral
Did he ever manage to NOT say this?
Oh now....they managed to work Worf into all the TNG films. And in an escalating order of continuity nods!
FC: "Mr. Worf! The Defiant will be fine, we could sure use your help."
INS: 'Oh. Mr. Worf what are you doing here?"
NEM: ....**** it...
This is why Shatner told Takei "but all the action takes place on the Enterprise." At the same time, being Captain of the Excelsior in Trek 6 gave Takei his best material in the films. Actually, having a second regular ship in the films earlier on might have opened things up a bit. Or maybe there would have been no USS Grissom and Sulu would have been obliterated in TSFS. Or, more likely, on the planet with David and Saavik. Then Sulu would have had a larger revenge arc then Kirk. "Kruge killed your son? Boo hoo, he wiped out my entire crew!"
Takei did not care. From the moment he thought Sulu was going to get his own ship during the TWOK production, he's felt the need to harp on the idea....even though next to no one ever expresssed widespread interest in a solo Sulu anything.
As noted days ago, the spin-off notion was dicey at best, and there were a wealth of failures giving enough reasons why a Sulu series and/or movie would not work. TOS works best when the character triangle/chain of command is the driving force of the Enterprise adventures, not splintered supporting characters lacking the "it" factor (and deliberate character development) of the stars.
I'd have watched a Captain Sulu series. But that would have been simply in support of Star Trek, not because Takei has the strength as an actor to carry it. And they'd have needed to surround him with a strong cast.
It seems that Takei and Shatner were opposites during their ST film era.
Takei had an inflated opinion of his stardom, but treated the fans like gold.
Shatner knew just where he stood in the industry, but...
Takei had an inflated opinion of his stardom, but treated the fans like gold.
Shatner knew just where he stood in the industry, but...
It would be a disaster for a few reasons:
1. Everyone would expect cameos from Shatner and Nimoy, but if Nimoy was the only one to show up, it would only serve to take viewers out of the plot to think about the Takei-hates-Shatner nonsense. That an absent Shatner would be a distraction on any level would piss Takei off to no end.
2. If the series launched around the time between TWOK - TVH, I doubt Paramount would feel such a strong need to insert him into the films' action (and cut him an additional check), as it would lead to the kind of unnecessary plot / "er--why is he there?" questions asked several years later when Worf was shoehorned into First Contact. In this case, the film would be The Voyage Home, where Sulu finds himself beamed aboard the Bird of Prey (why?) just in time to travel to 20th century earth. Nevermind his Excelsior crew suffering from a total power loss...
3. Knowing Takei's inflated ego, he would request revisiting TOS plots, like the mirror universe, and suggest mirror Sulu is now the Enterprise captain, and the normal Sulu "must" have a face off, thus giving him every chance to chew scenery--with himself--for 50 minutes. Or, I can imagine Takei demanding that plots from the movies (ex. Genesis conflict, or the aforementioned ST IV) find their way on the Sulu show.
^
4. Takei can't carry a series. The Voyager episode showed just how dreadful he'd be. I was, frankly, surprised at how poor his performance was.
4. Takei can't carry a series. The Voyager episode showed just how dreadful he'd be. I was, frankly, surprised at how poor his performance was.
Actually, both he and Grace Whitney were pretty awful in "Flashback." They weren't nearly as bad in TUC, and Takei was actually really good in the movie. Could have been some crappy direction, as Takei isn't really a bad actor. So I don't know what was going on there.
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