Star Trek: The Motion Picture turned out to be a hugely deflating experience for critics and audiences, save the most hard-core Trekkies who would go down with the starship. Still, Paramount ended up recouping the film’s massive $45 million budget—and then some—thanks to its barrage of tie-in toys and knickknacks. The studio’s hard-nosed boss, Barry Diller, wanted a sequel right away. His conditions that the second Trek installment be not only better but also a lot cheaper weren’t open to debate. Neither was the participation of the show’s creator and one-man brain trust, Gene Roddenberry: He wasn’t going to be invited along for the ride, having ruffled more than his share of feathers during the making of the movie. But there was enough bad blood to go around. When asked if he would be interested in directing another Star Trek film, Robert Wise, the director of the first chapter, replied, “I don’t believe so. I think having done it once was quite enough.” Even Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner, was privately calling The Motion Picture “a disaster.”
If Roddenberry was indeed going to be shut out of Star Trek II, no one had told him. The show’s creator immediately began tapping out a script for the sequel that had the Enterprise going back in time to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The Paramount brass thought it was a hacky idea—one of those knotting-the-ribbon-of-history tropes that Trek had already trotted out in episodes like the Harlan Ellison–penned “City on the Edge of Forever” back in the show’s first season in 1967. As Roddenberry continued to write away, Diller was already instituting a changing of the guard. To ensure that the Trek sequel’s budget was kept at a responsible number, he assigned it to the studio’s TV division. Finally, Roddenberry was informed that he would now be given the title of “executive consultant” on the picture, which was essentially a fancy way of saying that he had been kicked upstairs. Any clout that he once had was now gone. His new ceremonial title gave him an office on the Paramount lot and, nominally, the right to approve the sequel’s script. But the message was clear: he was now the keeper of the Trek flame in name only.
Taking Roddenberry’s place on the bridge was a battle-tested television veteran named Harve Bennett. Born Harve Fischman, Bennett had been a radio “quiz kid” as a child growing up in Chi-cago in the ’40s. From that early age, broadcasting had worked its way into his blood. Bennett would log successful tenures at both CBS and ABC, where he produced the hit miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man and oversaw such Nielsen juggernauts as The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman. And while few would have described his taste as “sophisticated,” Bennett’s reputation for fiscal responsibility bordering on parsimony was well known through- out the industry.
Bennett had only been working on the Paramount lot for two weeks when he was summoned to Diller’s office in 1980. There, he was surprised to find not just Diller but also studio president Michael Eisner and its terrifying capo di tutti capi, Gulf + Western chairman Charles Bluhdorn. Through a Viennese accent every bit as thick as his horn-rimmed glasses, Bluhdorn asked his newest underling point-blank what he had thought of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Bennett wondered if this was a trick. He’d hated the movie, but he also knew that the powerful men he was now standing before had given it their blessing. Bennett decided that if he was going to go down, he was going to go down telling the truth. “I said, ‘I thought it was boring,’” Bennett later recalled. Bluhdorn smiled, revealing a mouth full of teeth as big as piano keys, and began to laugh. He asked Bennett if he could make a better picture. To which Bennett replied, “Well, you know, yeah, I could make it less boring—yes, I could.” Finally, Bluhdorn asked if Bennett could produce a Star Trek movie for less than $45 million. Feeling emboldened, Bennett replied, “Oh boy, where I come from, I could make five movies for that.” Again, the piano keys flashed. Bluhdorn’s next words weren’t a question but rather an order: “Do it!”
Stephen Collins, William Shatner, and Leonard Nimoy in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, 1979.© Paramount/Everett Collection.
The budget for Star Trek II was pegged at $12 million, nearly a quarter of the original’s price tag. Diller was even flirting with the idea of making it as a TV movie. Not that Bennett cared. There were more immediate hurdles to negotiate. For starters, Leonard Nimoy had already made it crystal clear that he wanted nothing to do with another Trek movie. Meanwhile, potential directors, scared off after the butt-numbing first film, were turning down the studio left and right. As for Bennett, well, if anyone had bothered to ask, he would have had to tell them that he knew next to nothing about the show or its history. He knew that he would have to get up to speed, fast.