Up Till Now: The Autobiography

life savings in uranium” Shatner. But don’t call collect!
    Actually, the stock did edge up and eventually I earned some money. But my association with Priceline.com has lasted more than a decade. All of this, of course, all of the wonderful opportunities I was being offered, was because of Star Trek. The continued identification with Star Trek was so strong, in fact, that when Priceline.com began offering customers the option of choosing a specific flight or hotel at a guaranteed price they did a series of commercials in which I was supposedly fired as their spokesperson. I was irate. “I’m the voice of Price-line.com,” I said incredulously. “Who could possibly replace me?”
    That’s when Leonard Nimoy stuck his head in the door. “Hi, Bill,” was all he had to say.
    I’ve been doing Priceline.com commercials for more than a decade; meaning, I’ve been a corporate spokesperson longer than such great advertising icons as the Geico gecko and the Aflac duck! Mr. Clean has me beat, though.
    The original Star Trek TV series, of course, turned out to be only the beginning. Just like me, for a long time Paramount didn’t realize the value of the franchise. They knew that the audience for the syndicated series had continued growing, but they had absolutely no understanding of the real passion people had for it. For a long time theywere very happy to continue exploiting what they already had, rather than spending any more money on it. Through the years there’d been all kinds of rumors that they were going to put the show back on the air or make a feature-length movie. I knew only what I read in the newspapers. Obviously I was hoping they went ahead with . . . with anything. They couldn’t make Star Trek without Captain Kirk. In 1975 Roddenberry was hired to write the script for a low-budget feature. Roddenberry came up with a very unusual plot—the bad guy turned out to be God.
    After that had been rejected the great science-fiction writer Harlan Ellison was asked to pitch his concept for the movie. Ellison’s story had the Enterprise time-traveling back to prehistoric times to fight a race of evil reptiles, giant snakes. At about this time Erich von Däniken’s book Chariot of the Gods, which claimed that alien visitors from outer space had visited the ancient Mayans—I’d narrated the movie version—was creating a sensation. Trying to exploit that, during a meeting at Paramount an executive asked Ellison if he could include some Mayans in his story.
    Ellison explained patiently that in prehistoric times there were no Mayans.
    Apparently that didn’t bother the studio executive, who insisted, “Nobody’ll know the difference.”
    While Paramount was slowly developing its low-budget Star Trek, Star Wars was released. It became an instant classic. But rather than taking advantage of this incredible new excitement about science fiction, the studio dropped the project. Instead, a year later, Paramount president Barry Diller and executives Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg announced that the studio was going to form a fourth television network and Star Trek: Phase II was going to be its first original series. They ordered a two-hour TV movie and thirteen episodes of the new series.
    Now, I want you to think about this: what could possibly be a worse idea than making a movie with God as the bad guy? Here it is: the studio was involved in a lawsuit with Leonard over the merchandising revenue. As a result they decided to basically eliminate Spockfrom the new series. They offered Leonard a contract that guaranteed he would appear in a minimum of two episodes out of every eleven. They offered him a part-time job. It was ridiculous. Star Trek without Spock was like... was like, Priceline.com without Shatner. America would never stand for that. The United Federation of Planets would never stand for that. Leonard was furious and turned them down.
    And then Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released. So much for Paramount’s fourth network. Now it was simply a matter of producing a feature film as quickly as possible. The studio budgeted the film at $15 million and hired the great director Robert Wise to direct it. Wise had never seen an episode of Star Trek , but his wife was a big fan and told him the film wouldn’t work without Spock. Eventually Paramount settled the lawsuit with Leonard and he signed to do the picture.
    For the animated series I’d been in great physical condition. I was drawn