Up Till Now: The Autobiography

who can quote entire shows, entire seasons, people who know these characters better than their own families. University courses have been taught about the show. Books have been written about the philosophy and ethics of our plots. But when we were making the show all we were concerned about was being renewed for the next season. Another season meant twenty-six weeks of regular paychecks. Ourratings were never tremendous, but our audience was extremely loyal. I think we realized the show was successful when key phrases we used began seeping into the general culture. I’d walk through an airport and people would recognize me and say, “Beam me up, Scotty,” or “Live long and prosper.” On other shows comedians were promising to “Boldly go where no man has gone before,” and traveling at “warp speed,” and issuing their own “prime directives,” while kids were talking about our futuristic props; our gunlike phasers— which could be put on stun rather than simply killing our enemies, and flip-up communicators which looked precisely like the flip-phones that would be invented almost four decades later, as if they were real.
    The general consensus among respected philosophers is that Star Trek was successful and has endured because our stories focused on universal themes—which of necessity took place elsewhere in the universe because they were about subjects that couldn’t easily be tackled by traditional programming. Gene Roddenberry once said that the real mission of the Enterprise was to search for intelligent life on the other side of the television set. While the grand theme of our five-year mission was always good versus evil, we also did stories about racism, sexism, authoritarianism, class warfare, imperialism, human and parahuman and alien rights, and the insanity of war. Nichelle Nichols and I shared the first interracial kiss on American television—which several Southern stations refused to broadcast— although we were compelled to kiss by space aliens controlling our minds. Which was certainly one of the most creative excuses to kiss a beautiful woman I’d ever heard.
    Before our first show was broadcast the cast met with the media. When Leonard was asked about the character of Spock, he responded that we were doing something very different than the typical science-fiction story. “This is an intelligent character, a scientist, a being with great dignity.” As the same reporters watched the next day, we filmed a scene in which Spock was lying in a bed in sick bay, green blood dripping from his head. I rushed in and asked urgently,“What happened, Spock?” to which he replied, “Captain, the monster attacked me!”
    Gene Roddenberry never referred to himself as Star Trek ’s producer, rather he was...the creator. And ironically it was Gene who brought Leonard and me closer together. Roddenberry was a quirky guy whose greatest invention was the character of Spock. After the first thirteen episodes writer/producer Gene Coon was brought in and Roddenberry became the executive producer, meaning he was more of a supervisor than working on the show day-to-day. After that his primary job seemed to be exploiting Star Trek in every possible way.
    After we had been on the air for a couple of months an agent called Leonard and offered him two thousand dollars to make a personal appearance somewhere in Massachusetts on a Saturday afternoon. From that amount the agent would take his ten percent fee. At that time Leonard was earning $1,250 a week so this was very exciting. His problem was that in order to get there in time for the lecture on Saturday he had to be on the 6 P.M. flight Friday afternoon out of Los Angeles. That meant leaving the set an hour and eighteen minutes before we finished. Technically that wasn’t a problem. With enough notice we could easily film around him. So he asked the producers for permission to leave early that Friday. “Two or three days went by,” he remembers, “and I hadn’t heard anything. The agent wanted me to make a commitment. Finally I was told that Gene Roddenberry wanted to see me. I went up to his office. ‘I understand you want to get out early?’ he said.
    “I told him that was true, ‘I’ve got a job offer on Saturday for two thousand dollars.’
    “Then he said to me, ‘I’ve just started a company called Lincoln Enterprises. We’re going to do some merchandising of Star Trek memorabilia, but we also want to represent actors for personal