I love Trek II. It's my favorite of the movies. But to pretend that Harve Bennett wasn't at least as big an asshole as Roddenberry had been at times is naive at best, and he had some shit ideas too. He wanted to do a Starfleet Academy movie. Seriously?
There's something I remember very well from Shatner's book "Up till now". On one occasion during the run of TOS, Leonard Nimoy wanted to get out of work early(an hour and 18 minutes early) to make a public appearance so he had to talk to Roddenberry. Roddenberry was starting something called Lincoln Enterprises(to hock Star Trek merchandise, like the Idic medallion) and told Leonard that he'd have to pay a fee(for representation) in exchange for getting out of work early. In order for this to work, Leonard would have to pay 20% and ultimately Roddenberry told him "Well, you're just going to have to learn how to bow down, and say 'Master'.". Gene Roddenberry also refused to help Leonard with an ongoing lawsuit he had against Paramount over the use of his likeness
Roddenberry and Harold Livingston were constantly battling over re-writes for Star Trek TMP. Roddenberry would just keep re-writing everything Livingston did. Roddenberry had balls, that's for certain. He had to in order for his stunt with agent Irving "Swifty" Lazar to work. He and Harve had different experiences though. Roddenberry's war experiences were in great big bombers, and there was a certain attachment to the ship, hence phrases like "She's hit!" "She's wounded!". With Harve, his war time experience was all with helicopters. If you crashed your copter, you just went out and got another, sound familiar? *cough* Excelsior?
Now, maybe Harve Bennett was an asshole, but it seems to me between all the stories I've heard from reliable first hand sources, Roddenberry seems like he was a pretty damn big asshole himself, a lot of times he seemed overly concerned with merchandising. I would even go so far as to personally call leaving Star Trek in season 3 a real dick move. Yes, I know, he said return Star Trek to its original time slot, or I walk and they called his bluff. In the end, Roddenberry is a lot like George Lucas. He might have great ideas, but he's no writer. From my point of view, a Starfleet Academy movie done right could be very successful, and it in my opinion, it was with the 2009 movie... but let's get away from that. I have no desire to argue about that again, and I'd appreciate if you wouldn't subtly take pot shots at me Imrahil.
Topic: Star Trek 3 with (without Spoooock) The Shat?? (Read 18869 times)
