Up Till Now: The Autobiography

should have been worried, but I wasn’t. I wanted the credit for creating this character.” Well, as it turned out neither Leonard nor I were typecast, it was much deeper than that. We were branded forever as Kirk and Spock and certainly for me that turned out to be wonderful. But after making the original series, the animated series, and the first motion picture, and after all the different kind of work I’d done, I wondered if I would ever escape that association. I’d made several failed attempts, including Barbary Coast, but in the collective mind of the audience I was the captain of the Enterprise. Finally, though, it was time to turn the page on Captain James T. Kirk.

EIGHT

    “T.J. Hooker is the name, but you don’t have to lose any sleep wondering what the T.J. is for. As far as you’re concerned my name is . . . Sergeant . . .” That was my opening line in the pilot movie we shot for the police series T.J. Hooker. In this establishing scene Hooker is addressing a squad of future police officers about to get onthe-street training. “There’s a war going on out there on our streets,” he continued. “People are scared and they have a right to be. The body count is high . . . Street-savvy hoods have no fear. Not of the courts, not of prison.
    “When a bust does stick, we house them, give them color TVs, and their wives visit on weekends. If that makes sense to you, then you and I are about to have a problem ‘cause I’m your instructor here and I lovvvvve to weed out airheads and marshmallows.”
    Later in that show Hooker tells his recruits, “I’ve seen the past. And it works,” which pretty much describes the character I played for five years—which was actually much longer than I played James
    T. Kirk on television. Hooker was a veteran cop who’d quit the detective squad to get back on the streets after his partner was killed. He was a Vietnam vet, a former Green Beret, a divorced father whose wife had left him—even though she still loves him—because she couldn’t accept his dedication to the badge, explaining, “When I divorced you I should have named the department as co-respondent.”
    In response he began drinking. “There I was with no wife, no kids, I needed a friend and I found one.”
    When I brought T.J. Hooker to life I focused on the one word that I thought best described him: angry. Angry about the laws that made his job tougher. Angry about the Miranda rights for suspects. Angry about all the rules instituted by do-gooders who didn’t understand life on the streets. He had to comply, but he was angry about it. Hooker was a conservative cop placed in a liberal setting, and at its best we were able to successfully represent that conflict. Had I met Hooker I would have liked him; he had a good heart, strong ethics, and even when he disagreed with the law he always upheld it.
    The way Hooker came about was unusual. Most series are in development for several years before they get rejected. Even if a pilot gets made, only a few of them ever get on the air. But in the early 1980s legendary producers Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg were ending their partnership and still had a guaranteed commitment for one more show from ABC. They hired a top TV writer-director, Rick Husky, to create the show and write the pilot. It took him only a few weeks, he remembers. The biggest problem he had was coming up with a name for the character. He was a Civil War buff so he called him Hooker after General Hooker. He couldn’t come up with a first name that felt right, so he called him T.J. because“It was better than no first name.” Only much later did I become Thomas Jefferson Hooker.
    Within a couple of months we were making the pilot. That’s how fast it happened. Initially the show wasn’t supposed to be T.J. Hooker. It was an ensemble show called The Protectors, featuring a grizzled police sergeant and the group of eight young cops he’s training. According to Rick Husky, it was supposed to be Dallas, with cops. Each week another one of those cops would be featured. One of the reasons I took the part, in fact, was because I wouldn’t have all the pressure of starring in a series. Most weeks I’d just be a supporting player. But the response to my character was so strong they dropped that premise and focused on Hooker. They did not, however, raise my salary.
    The show was an immediate hit. The New York Times called Hooker “the kind of character who would have been