William Shatner Presents: Chaos on the Bridge Page #5

---

- I was bluffing, he blinked. - You play poker?

- Occasionally. I was asked to come in,

by Gene, and he said, "Would you write the pilot?" And I brought

in Encounter at Farpoint. So I was writing introduction

of the new Enterprise, the new crew,

the new captain, obviously. David Gerrold:

Then he says, "I have to add

thirty minutes to the script because the studio

wants my name on the pilot." which was a lie. Gene wanted Dorothy

to write the two-hour script. She said she couldn't do it, she said I can't in less

than two weeks. Gene on the other hand,

could write very well

under pressure and he came back the next week

with Encounter at Farpoint,

the two-hour story, which introduced

the Q character who was not in the original

story that Dorothy wrote. Fontana:

Q was so totally different.

It was like he was thrust into that story and

I like John De Lancie, I thought he did

a wonderful job. And Q came back

in other stories. Right, it has nothing

to do with John. Nothing to do with that but,

it was like this is not what the story

was supposed to be about. It was supposed to be about

the mystery of Farpoint and putting this

new crew together. - He wrote the Q character.

- Yes. And fleshed it out

another half hour. Right. And then said it was a script

by Gene Roddenberry. Well, that went to

arbitration, of course, it was a split credit. Gerrold:

What he had done was he had

jumped her credit. He was now getting

half the residuals

for that episode, and that's in perpetuity. Gene did this brilliant job

of turning this one-hour story into a two-hour story

he wrote half of it, she wrote half of it. He came back with a script

and, to this day, I have no idea what

that episode was about. But there was no way

in the world I was going to give any notes

whatsoever to Mr. Roddenberry. Berman:

One story that is one of my

favorites about Gene had to do with the casting

of Captain Picard. We looked at a whole bunch

of people and Bob Justman had seen Patrick Stewart

give a class or a lecture. Bob Justman went by a hallway

where he was teaching at UCLA and heard this voice

reverberating down the hallway. It was Patrick Stewart. Arnold:

Patrick Stewart who was not

Gene's first choice. In fact, he kind of fought

even reading him first, but Bob Justman insisted,

so Gene did. Bob Justman said,

"You got to meet this guy, this is the captain." And Gene met me and

I understood some time, some time later, that Gene

said, "Absolutely not. This guy couldn't be

more wrong." Gene said I'm not going to have

a bald English man playing the new Captain Kirk. And I don't think

he quite understands the nature of my background

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes