Phoenix from the Ashes: The Story of Star Trek's Fourth Season

[Methuslah]

Star Trek: The Original Series (Season Four, Episodes 7 - 13) - Broadcast Order (Starlog, June 1986)

Godhead
Directed by: David Alexander
Written by: John Meredith Lucas
Guest Star: Jack Palance

This script had been sitting around for more than a year before it was pulled out during the funding crisis of the fourth season, and it shows - another weak effort, which is strongly reminiscent of ‘Empath’ in many ways. A mis-cast guest lead does his best, and the action rises nicely, but it feels too much like a repeat of what has already been seen, and poor direction doesn’t help. The fourth in a poor run of episodes from the season’s strong opening, with Kirk once again teaching an alien the ‘meaning of love’...literally, this time.

Mission to Cygnus
Directed by: Marc Daniels
Written by: Terry Nation
Guest Star: Bruce Dern

The show the British fans always talk about, and the one with the persistent (and unfounded) Dalek rumors. Instead, this is essentially an action/adventure story, a group of Starfleet officers stranded on a hostile planet, fighting primitive natives from a once-great civilization, and an Enterprise landing party stranded with them, led by Kirk and Stonn. Bruce Dern puts up a manic performance as the insane ‘Tarrant’, and has an excellent opening speech - though sometimes, this rather looks like the ‘stock Terry Nation Doctor Who script’ of the late 1960s.

The Joy Machine
Directed by: Herb Wallenstein
Written by: Theodore Sturgeon
Guest Star: Jack Nicholson

Remembered forever as the ‘Star Trek With Jack Nicholson’ - though at the time, he was a struggling actor in Roger Corman’s circle - his presence ramps a script up into overdrive, and this works well with the Stonn character as well. A strong set-up, but a weak ending, and one suspects that had more time - or a more experienced hand on the wheel - been present, this could have been a true classic, but again, a build-up to what is to come.

Dilithium Rush
Directed by: Marc Daniels
Written by: Lee Cronin
Guest Star: John Colicos

Gene Coon’s second contribution to the season, and a better effort than his first, involving rival claims to a recently discovered dilithium mine in an asteroid field, Kirk and Kor once again facing off in what was becoming a familiar pattern, but both of them foxed by the avaricious dilithium miners. While a fairly obvious take on the California Gold Rush, it is at least a strong action set-up, and a solid addition to the series.

Joanna
Directed by: William Shatner
Written by: D. C. Fontana
Guest Star: Dawn Wells

Unusually for television, this script was bought twice - though the first time around, it was twisted into near non-existence. This time, the writer concentrated on the ‘McCoy’s daughter’ plot, and having her get involved with the younger Stonn instead of Kirk made the episode sing. The direction is simple, but effective; one suspects that the only reason Shatner tolerated a Kirk-light episode was that he would be busy behind the camera, but it works surprisingly well. That the ending is not tied off is a good twist, suggesting more could be made of this relationship in the future. Let down slightly by a ‘B-Plot’ that only serves to provide some danger involving pirates on a missing starship, but that isn’t why the fans rate this one highly.

Things of the Past
Directed by: Ralph Serensky
Written by: David Gerrold
Guest Stars: Mark Lenard and John Colicos

If Joanna is remembered today, Things of the Past made the greatest hit at the time. The changing of the guard at Star Trek meant that Bob Justman could bring back Ralph Serensky, who had been infamously ‘fired’ from Tholian Web by Fred Freiberger, and a combination of one of Gerrold’s best scripts, Serensky’s direction, and the performances of Lenard and Montaigne make it an excellent and interesting show, if occasionally reminiscent of ‘Private Little War’. The ‘rogue Vulcans’ concept made this an expensive shoot, the most expensive of the season, but all the money went ‘on screen’.

Mudd In Your Eye
Directed by: Herb Wallenstein
Written by: David Gerrold
Guest Star: Roger C. Carmel

Notable as the first ‘Harry Mudd’ script written by someone other than Stephen Kandel, this returns to basics as Harry Mudd manages to have fun with Tribbles, accidentally infesting a Federation outpost - with every hundredth of them apparently now carnivorous. This script was originally written for Stanley Adams, to reprise his role as Cyrano Jones, but the success of ‘Mudd’s Enterprise’ caused Fred Freiberger to switch the popular character back in, over the objections of David Gerrold. As a result, this is a somewhat unsteady script, but Carmel is always fun to watch.

 

[Methuslah]

Top Ten Star Trek Episodes - Editor’s Choice (Starlog, June 1986)

1: City on the Edge of Forever
2: Balance of Terror
3: Space Seed
4: Mirror, Mirror
5: Joanna
6: The Trouble With Tribbles
7: The Enemy Within
8: Amok Time
9: Mudd’s Enterprise
10: Arena

 

[Methuslah]

“They came begging, grovelling really, and I was only too happy to agree, and besides, I had an interesting idea in any case.”

Stardate, August 1984, Harlan Ellison Speaks

“I wanted to do something special, something that returned us a bit to the first season, and I was willing to take a bit of a risk to pull that off - and for once, we had some money in the bank.”

Starlog, June 1986, Interview with Bob Justman

“Demon in the Dust was my favorite episode of the season. No question. I’d had shows with a lot more for me, but the writing of this one was superb.”

Vulcan Odyssey, Lawrence Montaigne

When he had returned to Star Trek, Bob Justman’s first order of business was to rush scripts into production, turning to experienced hands in an attempt to pull that off. One of the people he called - an old friend with whom he was hoping to repair some bridges, was Harlan Ellison, who had written the episode still classed as one of the best - City on the Edge of Forever. He was somewhat surprised when Harlan indicated that he had an idea, and would be interested - with most of the people who had caused him grief before now off the show, the way was clear for a return.

The show would air as the second to last in the production order, a sequel to an Outer Limits episode that he had felt more could be done with, and David Gerrold started to work with him to get the script to the air. A pattern was beginning to emerge now with the scripts; Justman was turning to people he knew could produce quality material with little supervision other than the norm, while Gerrold acted as troubleshooter for any problems that emerged. The whole business was being phenomenally rushed in a bid to hasten to production, but by a miracle and some pre-empts, Star Trek managed to make all of its air dates for the 1969-70 season, a feat they had not accomplished in the first season.

As they rolled into the second half of the season, new contracts began to come into force. There was no question, no problem with the ‘Big Four’, though William Shatner pushed to direct a second episode - Joanna had been smooth enough that Justman agreed. As to the others, each received an undertaking for seven out of thirteen, though all of them would do more than that, and John Colicos was retained for an additional four out of thirteen, including the planned two-parter. Marc Daniels and Ralph Serensky agreed to direct ten of the remaining episodes, with the former slated for the two-parter; Justman wanted to return to the people he had used before, those he trusted to work well, and quickly. While keeping the budgets down was important, so was quality.

One of the key cost-saving measures had been the ‘base under siege’ concept, something which NBC was beginning to complain about. They wanted action-adventure on strange new worlds, but on the budget Star Trek had, this just wasn’t practical - this would continue to be a running source of tension throughout the remainder of the year. The new crop of scripts coming in didn’t help with that, at least, not at first. Fontana and Coon had been commissioned to write bottle shows, and while they did their best, there was no disguising it. At least Gerrold’s latest script - an impressive fourth for the season - was adaptable enough to be interesting, Kirk and Stonn infiltrating a Klingon ship in disguise.

The rest of the season was finally beginning to drop into place. D. C. Fontana was writing the final two episodes, with Norman Spinrad, John Meredith Lucas, Gene Coon and Jean Lisette Aroeste - and of course, Harlan Ellison - working on scripts; Gerrold was polishing ‘The Protracted Man’ as a back-up, in the event one of the others failed to come through, but Justman had been careful to select safe hands. Mostly. In the event, all the desired scripts materialized, and filming began on Lee Cronin’s ‘Catastrophe’ on schedule.

This at last brought back the Romulans - again, the costumes and props were all in place, and they had plenty of good ‘Romulan ship’ footage to use - this time returning to the material filmed for Balance of Terror. Unusually, the script didn’t focus entirely on the ‘big three’, Kirk, Spock and Stonn, but this required some hasty re-writes - William Shatner came down with the flu on the day before filming was to begin, and his material had to be truncated, with Walter Koenig ending up with much of his dialogue.

It was around this time that the ‘Spock Show’ began to come into consideration. Neither NBC or Paramount were looking to keep Star Trek on the air, but Gene Roddenberry pitched a Nimoy-focused show looking at Vulcan, or putting him on Earth as a time traveller. At no point did this progress beyond a few notes, but it did manage to burn Roddenberry’s last remaining bridges at Paramount, as well as straining his relationships with many of the cast. Nimoy claimed later that as soon as he heard about it, he made it quite clear that he had ‘taken off the ears for good’, and executives paid attention.

Astoundingly, there were some discussions about what to do next. Kaiser was extremely happy that its syndication package was to pass the ‘hundred episode’ mark, and Paramount, in retrospect, considered it the correct decision. A few ‘what if’ memos were circulated, and it was indicated that Gene Roddenberry would be dropped to ‘Executive Consultant’, leaving room for another Producer; there was talk of John Meredith Lucas coming back in to work jointly with Justman, and potentially the return of D. C. Fontana as Script Editor, but the ratings simply were not there, though the combination of Star Trek and Hawaii Five-O had killed ABC’s ‘Englebert Humperdink Special’ stone dead on arrival. NBC made it clear that Star Trek’s miraculous third reprieve would be its last, and it was with this somber mood that the cast started work on ‘The First Step’, a clever story involving the Enterprise becoming involved in an alien race’s first landing on its satellite.