Up Till Now: The Autobiography

divorce.
    Divorce is simply modern society’s version of medieval torture. Except it lasts longer and leaves deeper scars. A divorce releases the most primitive emotions; the ugliest, raw feelings. Emotionally wounded people do their best to inflict pain upon the other party, but rather than using claws they use divorce lawyers. My marriage to Gloria didn’t simply end, it was ripped apart. It left only sharp edges. And poverty.
    When the show was canceled the three anchors that had bound me to responsibility had been cut loose. My job was done. My marriage was done. And my father had died. I was floating free. I had no firm direction, no emotional compass. I was just drifting with the currents. I took affection anywhere I could find it. It seemed like there was always someone around who had her own needs to be fulfilled, so lust and romance and passion all began playing a more important role in my life.
    I had assumed that the day we finished shooting Star Trek was the end of my association with Captain Kirk and the Enterprise —and its crew—forever. When a Broadway show ends its run it’s done forever; the producers burn the scenery and there is no recorded copy of the show. It exists only in memories. But television shows are different; television shows are syndicated, sold to local TV stations, which broadcast them over and over.
    Paramount had no concept of Star Trek ’s true value. It was just another failed series. To try to recoup some of its cost they sold it very inexpensively to local stations, who bought it because it was inexpensive and had a proven, loyal audience. The syndication market was just beginning to expand and Star Trek was the perfect product. In cities all around the country stations began showing it when the core audience was home. Old fans didn’t want to miss an episode and they brought new fans with them to the living room. The ratings were terrific, especially for the price Paramount was asking, so more local stations bought it. And then television stations in other countries began buying it. In our second season we did a wonderfulepisode entitled “The Trouble with Tribbles.” Tribbles are adorable balls of fur that rapidly reproduce reproduce reproduce reproduce. They reproduce faster than a renegade copy machine; and once they start there is no stopping them them them them.
    That’s what happened to Star Trek . No program in television history had ever tribbled like this. It just kept tribbling and tribbling and tribbling. Leonard realized it long before I did. He was touring the country starring in the one-man show he’d written, Vincent , the life of Vincent van Gogh as seen through the five hundred letters he’d written to his brother. And he found that no matter where he went—Billings, Montana; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Rapid City, South Dakota—wherever he went the only thing the local media wanted to talk about was Star Trek . “It was just all over the place,” he remembers. “I was becoming very aware that it was invasive—and pervasive—in the culture. The media started writing about the success of the show in syndication, which encouraged even more local stations to buy it. In some cities it was running six nights a week. Stations were running marathon Star Trek weekends. We were hearing stories about colleges changing course schedules in the afternoon to eliminate a conflict with Star Trek reruns.”
    It was impossible to truly grasp what was happening, because nothing like it had ever happened before. A failed television show was becoming a cultural phenomenon. While we were making the series I had often been recognized, but suddenly it started happening all the time and in strange places. People would come up to me in airports and recite ten pages of dialogue word-for-word from a specific episode they loved—and I would have absolutely no concept of what they were doing. I remember in the early 1970s I was working on a television show and got hurt. They rushed me to the hospital to take X-rays. Fortunately, my most serious injuries were some very bad bruises. But just to be certain the doctor asked for a urine specimen. He wanted to make sure there was no blood in my urine, no internal bleeding. I was lying in bed and he handed me a bottle and asked me to fill it. I was too sore to move, so he pulled the oval curtain around the bed to give me some privacy. And just as I startedpeeing into the bottle a nurse opened the curtain to see what was going on. She