The Trouble With Tribbles Part 13

32. When Baris and Darvin arrive, Cyrano is able to point out Darvin as a Klingon agent. In fact, Darvin is the one who pointed out the fuzzies to Cyrano in the .rst place.

(If so, then it was another Klingon agent, at the source, who poisoned the grain. Perhaps a subs.p.a.ce message could notify them of this.)14 Kirk orders the Klingon commander to get the h.e.l.l off Federation property. The Klingons leave.

And .nally, Kirk orders Cyrano to get every last fuzzy off the trading post. Cyrano objects at .rst, but Kirk threatens to have him charged with transporting an animal that has been proven harmful.

Cyrano protests that the job will take forever: Kirk says that he should think of it as job security.

Cyrano submits.

END ACT FOUR.

TAG.

33 BACK ON THE ENTERPRISE BRIDGE, now strangely free of fuzzies, Kirk wonders aloud how they managed to get rid of them all so quickly. McCoy says that it was all Scotty's doing. Kirk asks how.

Mr. Scott says he used the transporter.

KIRK.

But where did you transport them? You didn't just transport them into outer s.p.a.ce, did you?

SCOTT.

No, sir. That would be inhuman.

KIRK.

Then where, Mr. Scott?

SCOTT.

This is off the record, sir?

KIRK.

Off the record? Why?

SCOTT.

You wouldn't want to be a party to an act of war? Would you?

KIRK.

Mr. Scott, would you kindly tell me what you did with the fuzzies?

SCOTT.

I gave them to the Klingons, sir.

KIRK.

You gave them to the...

SCOTT.

Aye, sir. I transported them smack into the middle of their engine room.15 FADE OUT.

THE END.

89.

90 The Trouble With Tribbles

*For some reason, STAR TREK attracted an inordinate number of these types. Later on I ran into a few of them. A few hundred of them.

The Trouble With Tribbles 91

*D. C. Fontana suggests that this is overly pessimistic, but it has happened, especially with situation comedies.

1I felt I had the right to at least suggest a s.p.a.ce station. If it was too expensive to produce, let Gene c.o.o.n tell me.

2No, he isn't. The Enterprise doesn't have a ship's cook, only a mess of.cer to program the automatic machinery. (Source: Gene c.o.o.n.) (Well, I didn't know...)

3There really is such a grain. I had read about it in the Sat.u.r.day Evening Post. Gene c.o.o.n's reaction was: "Then let us invent a vastly superior improvement. This is obviously 300 years from today."

4Again, no large corporations. Instead: "Must be a force hostile to well being of Federation in this area." Having just seen a rerun of "Errand of Mercy," I suggested that the Klingons as used in that episode might be a particularly apt set of villains. c.o.o.n agreed.

5In "The Salt Vampire," Sulu was shown to be an amateur botanist. It seemed likely that he would know about triticale, and it was a convenient way to show that fuzzies like triticale too.

6This is a particularly bad joke, but it served to establish the relationship between Kirk and Baris.

7Once again, c.o.o.n reminded me in the margin that the threat must be from outside the Federation.

1Smith is a forerunner of Ensign Chekov. I felt the ship needed a younger crewman aboard, so I wrote one in. I didn't know it at the time, but I was paralleling Gene Roddenberry's thinking.

2Gene c.o.o.n liked the idea of the trading post being a s.p.a.ce station. So much for my agent...

3I realize that it is not standard technique to switch into script format in an outline, but I did so for two reasons. First of all, it was easier. Secondly, and much more important, I wanted the story to be as much mine as possible-if they bought my outline, that did not necessarily imply that they would hire me to write the script. There are a lot of other writers in Hollywood who could have done a competent job. Besides, I wanted to show them that I could handle the script format. If they did let me do my own script, much of my work would already be done. Or so I thought.

4I did not like this name at all when I wrote it, but I had not realized that the name Jones was once again available for this story.

5It is purely coincidence that I acquired a small s.h.a.ggy puppy about this time, and that the veterinarian where I took him for his shots had a sign on the wall, "A dog is the only love that money can buy." Purely coincidence.

6Oh, no, you don't! -I decided later that Cyrano was not the right person to say this line. I didn't want him to be an outright liar, just a charming con man. Inept, but charming.

7This was a little too obvious...

8This was a problem that had been puzzling me through every draft of the story-it just didn't seem logical that a starship captain or his crew would be naive about alien animals. Yet I had to get the fuzzies loose aboard the Enterprise somehow, and not locked up in McCoy's lab. Standard operating procedure should require that all unfamiliar animals be studied carefully. And it seems like a foolish idea to allow animals, even domestic ones, to have free run of a s.p.a.ceship or s.p.a.ce station. Finally, I had to realize that the story I was telling was basically a comedy-meaning I could stretch things a bit. In order to work, the story had to be presented in terms of its contemporary equivalents: fuzzies are just a different breed of cat. Besides, transporting harmful animals is against Federation law-ergo, fuzzies are not harmful.

9This would have been a lovely gag, but as the story turned out...

10Two of my favorite subjects are science .ction and s.e.x...I dig Lieutenant Uhura.

11This is where McCoy proves Cyrano a liar. But having Cyrano turn out to be a fraud was too much of a plot complication. So I just cut Cyrano's earlier reference to feeding fuzzies and sidestepped the whole issue. Actually, the gag grew out of a reference to the Walt Disney movie, Mary Poppins. "Do you know what you get if you feed the birds?" "No, what?" "Fat birds."

12I like this line. I'm sorry it wasn't in the .nal script.

13When you think about it, there really is nothing else you can do. Sorry about that, nature lovers.

14I was still fumbling around for an appropriate punch line. Hence the clumsiness of this denouement. We were still thinking of Darvin as a renegade Earthman. It wasn't until later that we thought he might be a disguised Klingon.

15Haven't you ever wondered what the Klingons did with all those fuzzies? I'll bet that they didn't let any thoughts of inhumanity trouble them...

CHAPTER SIX.

Aboard the Good Ship Enterprise I .nally worked up my courage and asked if I could visit the set. Gene was almost surprised that I had bothered to ask.

Ande, Gene's secretary, told me how to .nd soundstage 9. It was very close by. She told me if I had any questions to ask Charlie Washburn, the second a.s.sistant director. (I do not know what a second a.s.sistant director does, but Charlie always seemed very busy. A lot of paper pa.s.sed through his hands; obviously, he was responsible for seeing that a lot of production information was in the right place at the right time.) On this particular day, they were shooting an episode called "The Doomsday Machine," written by a fellow named Norman Spinrad. I'd been introduced to him earlier, so I was glad to recognize at least one person on the set who I could pretend I knew.

Norman is a quietly brilliant human being who has done much to overcome the handicap of a New York accent. He has a head of hair like an explosion of schizophrenic Brillo, his taste in clothing is somewhere between Little Richard and Wally c.o.x, and his language suggests that he was one of the people who taught Norman Mailer how to cuss; but all of these things are virtues in Hollywood. The important thing is that Norman Spinrad is a good writer. 'The Doomsday Machine," a modern-dress retelling of Ahab and the whale, was one of STAR TREK's best episodes. (In my humble opinion, of course.) Norman would disagree with me. He felt his story had been ruined by interminable rewrites. Not having followed the progress of his script and not being experienced in the ways of television, I could only listen and nod and wonder what would happen to me and my story. Aside from a couple of feeble protestations that so far all of Gene c.o.o.n's suggestions to me had seemed correct, I kept my mouth shut and my eyes open.

William Shatner and William Windom were rehearsing a scene from the show. Windom, playing Commodore Decker, was trying to describe the giant planet-killing doomsday machine to Captain Kirk. Or rather, to William Shatner-who had this incredible grin across his face that suggested he was waiting for a straight line. Sure enough: Windom: "Jim, it was huge! It had a maw-"

Shatner: "A maw? Did you see its paw?"

Groans from the crew. They were looking for things to throw.

And it got worse. Let it be know that William Shatner, when presented with the opportunity, will rattle off an unbelievable number of really putrid jokes, each worse than the last. And he will do this until forcibly stopped.

Later though, he did something that has stuck in my mind ever since, something that suggests just how experienced an actor he actually is.

They were about to shoot the scene where Kirk witnesses Decker's death. Marc Daniels, the director for this episode, suggested that Kirk show his grief and pain by lowering his face. At the same time, Jerry Finnerman, the director of photography, was making adjustments on a key light-much of STAR TREK's mood was set by his creative use of colors and shadows.

Shatner was sitting behind a control console while Daniels and Finnerman discussed the best way to throw a shadow across him. Abruptly Shatner suggested that the light be only across his eyes, so that when he lowered his head, his face would go into shadow, thus heightening the effect of his grief. Daniels and Finnerman exchanged a glance. "Well," said Daniels, "it seemed like a good idea at the time."

They tried it and it worked.

A little thing? Perhaps. But it proved to me that William Shatner was a professional's professional. His .rst concern was the story and the show.

I didn't meet William Shatner that day. He seemed awfully busy-and besides, what would I have said to him? Captain Kirk still inspired awe in me. It would have been too precocious for me to say, "Hi there, I'm going to put words in your mouth." Furthermore, I .gured that these people were probably hounded by fans all day long, probably the politest thing I could do was leave them alone. Unless properly introduced, of course.

And in due time, I was introduced to DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, Nich.e.l.le Nichols, and most of the stand-ins and extras who populated the Enterprise.

Without exception, the cast members of STAR TREK were all good people and incredibly gracious. I saw this time and time again, whenever visitors came onto the set, the cast would invariably go out of their way to say h.e.l.lo and .nd out who they were. Which is how I .nally met Leonard Nimoy.

We were on soundstage 10, which had magically become Gamma Trianguli VI. The episode was "The Apple," by Max Ehrlich, and it concerned a tribe of white-haired natives who served the great G.o.d Vaal. The set for this episode was an orange sky and a green jungle-not just a little jungle either. This jungle .lled the soundstage, more than .lled it-over.owed in every direction. Far off on the horizon, tall palms were waving in the wind, dark clouds scudded the sky. As far as the eye could see, green, green and more green. As far as the second season was concerned, the budget for greenery had been blown. After "The Apple" Kirk couldn't have afforded a daisy for his lapel-if he'd had a lapel.