Production Diary
Filmed August 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 & 12, 1968.
(6 day production; total cost: $175, 924).
Filmed August 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 & 12, 1968.
(6 day production; total cost: $175, 924).
Production began on Monday, August 5, 1968. George Wallace had the cover of LIFE magazine with the headline, “The Spoiler from the South – Wallace: Coming on Fast.” He was hoping to be the Democratic candidate for the Presidential race. Meanwhile, the Republican Presidential Convention was going on this week, ending with the nomination of Richard M. Nixon. To mark the day, there were race riots in Miami, Florida, Little Rock, Arkansas, and Chicago, Illinois. “Hello, I Love You,” by The Doors, was getting more airplay than any other song on U.S. radio stations. “Classical Gas,” by Mason Williams, came in second. Cream had the top selling album in America’s record stores, with Wheels of Fire. Bonanza was the most-watched TV show from the night before. Ed Sullivan was in second place.
Day 1. Filming in Kirk’s quarters for the playing of the Captain’s final message (Courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
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Day 1. Judy Burns was on set to watch her first script sale be brought to life. She said, “The cast were all very kind. Here you’ve got these gawking college students, who are just staring all the time, going, ‘Wow, wow,’ and each person was extremely kind. Bill Shatner came over and shook hands and said he loved the script. And that was unexpected praise, considering he disappeared for over half of it. And I said to him ‘You know, before, it was Leonard who disappeared.’ He said, ‘Well, that’s okay. It works fine.’ He was just very kind and cordial. He was incredibly professional. I had a terrible crush on Leonard Nimoy. And he, too, was very kind, although very busy with his performance; very committed.” (25)
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Sequences filmed included Shatner recording Kirk’s farewell message in the Captain’s cabin, and then a later scene when Spock and McCoy listen to the taped message. This was easy. Not so easy were the scenes in the transporter room with the actors sewn into the cumbersome spacesuits. Senensky bemoaned, “I was prepared, as was the cast. But there were no silver spacesuits. I was told the four actors had come to the studio [on Sunday] for their first fitting. They were, even as we somewhat impatiently waited, having their final fittings. Nothing had been done by the production department to adjust the schedule for this predicament.… Finally one suit was complete, the one for Bill Shatner. So I found some isolated close-ups of Captain Kirk, and we filmed those. There weren’t many, and it meant filming the close-ups before we had staged and rehearsed the scene. Just before noon, the four suits were finally completed and we could begin.” (155-5)
Judy Burns said, “And so out come the spacesuits. And, when I was on set and saw them for the first time, I nearly died. I thought, ‘Oh my god, these are horrible.’ But, you know, people either loved them or hated them. You really had to take it with a grain of salt and realize that they became a sort of icon of the show -- those suits.” (25)
To Bill Theiss’ credit, the spacesuits created for this show were head and shoulders above the orange shower curtain outfits seen in “The Naked Time” two years earlier. Even with the costuming delay, Senensky filmed 8 pages from the script, which accounted for 17 scenes. The company was one and one-half hours behind when filming stopped at the end of the day. “If Jerry Finnerman had been there, it would have never happened,” Senensky said during an interview for this book. Finnerman, Senensky believed, would have lit the sets faster than Francis was able to, helping to offset the time lost due to the late arriving spacesuits. Chet Richards had the same opinion regarding the amount of time it took to light the sets. He said, “One of the things about Star Trek that was unusual, which I didn’t really understand until I was there, was that it had a unique form of lighting. I mean, most of the day was spent with the lighting technician fiddling with the lights. And what they got was the sense that the walls were self illuminated, but the actors stood out from the walls. Really extraordinary lighting. I’ve never really seen it in any other show. But it took a huge amount of work to get it just right.” (144c-1) |
Bill McGovern slates a shot in the transporter room while the company waits for the spacesuits to arrive (Courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
Day 1. Filming in the transporter room with the problematic spacesuits (Staged publicity shots courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
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Ralph Senensky, bothered about how slowly things were going, added, “And the other thing, too, was that the person who should have been fired was Gregg Peters. He was the production manager. Friday night, when they left, with that scene scheduled for Monday morning, we [knew we] needed those silver lamè suits. [Come Monday], they hadn’t even been made yet. I mean, give me a break. If the costumes aren’t ready, the production manager shouldn’t leave Friday night and take someone’s word that somehow they will be ready by Monday morning. That whole thing with the suits put me half a day behind -- for nothing. That was infuriating. When they’re asking for total competence from you and then to have that kind of incompetence on their part, that’s annoying.” (155-6)
Costumer Andrea Weaver said, “It was the most challenging episode we probably did because of the spacesuits. Leonard, Bill, DeForest, and Walter were in those, and they really didn’t work. First, they didn’t come on time. There was a gentleman named Mike Minor who made specialty costumes when we had that requirement, but he was making things very quickly; making things overnight. It was often like that. We had actresses that slept in the wardrobe department the night before their first day because they were making the clothes overnight to be ready for the next morning. We had challenges on more than one first day of shooting, but this may have been the worst. So we had to wait for the spacesuits to come. And then when they came, pieces kept falling off, so it was just a nightmare.” (180a)
Day 2. Senensky films in the engineering section (above); and Walter Koenig (below) posing in his late-arriving spacesuit (Courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
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Day 2, Tuesday, began in engineering, followed by sickbay and the medical lab, for both the Enterprise and the Defiant.
Chet Richards said, “The guy who played Scotty, Jimmy Doohan, had a finger that was missing on one of his hands. And it never shows on the screen. A lot of what took place during that time that I was up there -- and I was up there most of the day -- was Doohan rehearsing his hand. He knew where the cameras were going to be, and he was rehearsing his position and his posture and his hand movement so as to hide the missing finger. And I watched him go through this exercise, time after time after time, with subtle little changes to ensure that things would come out on the screen the way that he wanted them to. He was a very, very careful craftsman in that sense.” (144c-1) While Doohan rehearsed, the spacesuits were back and slowing things down. Senensky explained, “The normal method of filming is to schedule by the sets. When you went into a set, all the scenes in that set would be completed before moving to another set. Those moves took time. Every effort was made to keep such moves to a minimum. But in the case of these scenes on the Defiant, the spacesuits became the determining factor, which meant that we were filming in every one of the starship’s sets -- the Bridge, engineering, medical lab, and sick bay. But we had to film just those scenes in these various sets that involved our space-suited men. Later we would have to return to each set to film the other sequences in the script that occurred in them.” (155-5) More movement back and forth -- more time lost. As with Day 1, Senensky covered 8 pages from the script, amounting to 17 scenes. At wrap time, the company was now a full half-day behind. |
On Day 3, Wednesday, Senensky and company moved to the Bridge set for the Teaser, the Tag, and the scenes with Shatner on the bridge of the Defiant, again in his spacesuit. It was slow going. Senensky said, “There was an additional wrinkle in the plans. Well, actually, it was caused by not wanting any wrinkles. The costumes had no zippers; they had no buttons or snaps. The guys were sewn into the spacesuits. That meant when any of them needed to make a visit to the restroom, they had to be unsewn, and when they were ready to return to the set, they had to be re-sewn into the suit. Zippers are faster!” (155-5)
Day 3. Paul Baxley as the Defiant’s dead captain (Courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
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Andrea Weaver explained, “They had to be sewn on because Gene Roddenberry never wanted to see any zippers or hooks or any of that. So, whenever someone wanted to get out of the suit, they had to be pulled apart and then sewn back together. And Gene was very particular about matching. They had to look exactly the same. But these were six and seven day shows. There was no going over. Not like today where they can go to nine or ten days, with additional pickup shots after that. We finished in seven and then started a new show; no excuses.” (180a)
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Senensky hadn’t lost any additional time on Day 3, but he hadn’t made up for the previous lost time. He held fast at one-half day behind. Judy Burns said, “Senensky was doing, I think, as good a job as he could conceivably do on it. I don’t know if he really liked the show, or whether he thought it was going to turn out well, or what he thought, but he was working his little heart out before he got fired.” (25)
Senensky later said, “The studio and the production department, which I would say were bearing down, were determined that this show would be in under six days -- or else. At the end of the third day I was called into Mr. Freiberger’s office.... He asked me why I was half a day behind ... and I was fired.” (155-2)
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Day 3. Unaired film trim of footage shot by Senensky on the Defiant bridge (Courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
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Freiberger, defending his action, explained, “In a studio, the production department [backed by the workers’ unions] are really the power. If you’ve got a director who is not filming ten pages of the script a day, they are on your back. If it was the end of the day, they would pull the plug, just cut the electricity. They would do that.” (68-7)
Walter Koenig said, “They told us they would pull the plug at twelve minutes after six because they were paying the craftspeople in units of six minutes of overtime and they would only permit two six-minute units of overtime. So, certainly, that was one of the reasons the quality of the show suffered in the third season.” (102-7)
“Ralph Senensky got fired because of money,” said Judy Burns. “He was carefully framing all the shots. I was on the set every single day of my show, and I thought, ‘Wow, this is how they make a TV show.’ Senensky was great because he would do things two or three times. And I’m sure he just pissed them off because he was taking too much time with it. He was a quality human being, which you don’t meet in this town very often. There were the good ones and the not-so-good ones. And I was so lucky on that first script because I ran into people who were honorable. Again and again and again -- honor.” (25)
Shatner in limbo, filmed against a black backdrop on Senensky’s final day
(Unaired film trim courtesy of Gerald Gurian) |
Jerry Finnerman, no longer with Star Trek, had seen this coming when the series’ Production Manager (Douglas Cramer) had locked horns with Senensky during the filming of “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” (see the Story Behind the Story of that episode). Senensky even admitted to Finnerman at that time that he knew he was running a risk of being fired for taking care with his direction. It didn’t happen on that episode, with an actors’ rebellion taking much of the attention off Senensky. But, this time, with only zippers on spacesuits to blame, Senensky was unable to dodge the bullet.
Senensky said, “The only time I even remember meeting Fred was when they called me in to fire me. I don’t remember any contact with him before. I think I shocked Fred a little bit because I didn’t come in begging to keep the job. I got the impression that was kind of what he wanted from a director. I told him that the stuff we had done was all the big production stuff. The stuff that was left was what I called ‘bread and butter’ scenes.
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And I quite frankly felt that I would have been able to get them done on time. I told him that. And I didn’t tell him that to keep the job. I think I let him know that I was happy to be gone. My real disappointment was that while I was prepping that show, my agent called and told me that Gene Coon had asked for me to come over to It Takes a Thief. And I had to turn it down because I would have had to start that before ‘Tholian Web’ wrapped. It really hurt, because later on I got to work with Wagner in Hart to Hart and we got along great. And I’d gotten along with Gene [Coon]. So, I thought if I’d gone over and done It Takes a Thief, I would probably have gotten along well and I might have gotten to direct Fred Astaire [a regular in that series’ third season]. That hurts.” (155-6)
Regarding Ralph Senensky’s dismissal, Freiberger confidant Peter Greenwood said, “Fred hated doing that. He said that was one of moments where he had to bite his bottom lip and become the producer that he really didn’t like being. He did not like firing people. He was not that kind of person. You have to understand, at that point Star Trek was a liability as far as the studio was concerned. Paramount hated Star Trek. And Fred was in a horrible position and [Douglas] Cramer was a hard ass. On that particular instance, Fred thought what the front office was asking him to do was unjustified. He hated that idea of switching directors in the middle of a production. He thought it was a damn fool move. He was actually mortified by that. But he’d had the experience on The Wild, Wild West [of being fired after refusing to terminate a colleague at the insistence of the studio], and he knew that he couldn’t fight the system anymore like that. He just wasn’t prepared to put himself in that position again … unless it was somebody that he was very passionate about. If that had happened to his writing partner [Arthur Singer], it would have been a different story.” (75a)
Senensky recalled that Freiberger told him he was being replaced by a “fireman” -- “someone who could come in and just get it done.” (155-5)
Herb Wallerstein, a TV director who had never even set foot on a Star Trek stage, received a phone call that evening. He was told to be at the studio bright and early the following morning to take over for Senensky.
Wallerstein was 42, and had worked as an assistant director on series such as Father Knows Best and Hazel, and, in the same capacity, on films like The Tingler and The Three Stooges Meet Hercules. He became a full-fledged director with multiple assignments on TV’s The Farmer’s Daughter. He met Freiberger while directing for Iron Horse. But Star Trek was light-years away from anything Wallerstein had done before.
Al Francis remembered, “Herb Wallerstein came in and took Ralph’s place, and he was really uptight and he kind of let me lead him through the picture.... He had only been directing off and on.... When he came in... he said, ‘Give me all the help you can give me. I’ll watch the actors, you watch everything else.’” (66-1)
There was an element of irony in what Wallerstein was requesting. Francis had only worked as Star Trek’s cinematographer for three days, so the blind were now leading the blind.
“I liked Herb Wallerstein,” said Judy Burns. “It was just that he was put into a terrible position with that show. He had to come in and kind of make do -- get it done; get it out. And they were working really hard to get that show done; they had to get it done; they had so much invested in it.” (25)
Days 4 and 5, Thursday and Friday, were spent on the Bridge, filming all the scenes not requiring the spacesuits. Wallerstein and Francis covered page after page of scripted action and dialogue, getting just what they needed and very little else. The work was competent, but hardly inspired.
Herb Wallerstein, a TV director who had never even set foot on a Star Trek stage, received a phone call that evening. He was told to be at the studio bright and early the following morning to take over for Senensky.
Wallerstein was 42, and had worked as an assistant director on series such as Father Knows Best and Hazel, and, in the same capacity, on films like The Tingler and The Three Stooges Meet Hercules. He became a full-fledged director with multiple assignments on TV’s The Farmer’s Daughter. He met Freiberger while directing for Iron Horse. But Star Trek was light-years away from anything Wallerstein had done before.
Al Francis remembered, “Herb Wallerstein came in and took Ralph’s place, and he was really uptight and he kind of let me lead him through the picture.... He had only been directing off and on.... When he came in... he said, ‘Give me all the help you can give me. I’ll watch the actors, you watch everything else.’” (66-1)
There was an element of irony in what Wallerstein was requesting. Francis had only worked as Star Trek’s cinematographer for three days, so the blind were now leading the blind.
“I liked Herb Wallerstein,” said Judy Burns. “It was just that he was put into a terrible position with that show. He had to come in and kind of make do -- get it done; get it out. And they were working really hard to get that show done; they had to get it done; they had so much invested in it.” (25)
Days 4 and 5, Thursday and Friday, were spent on the Bridge, filming all the scenes not requiring the spacesuits. Wallerstein and Francis covered page after page of scripted action and dialogue, getting just what they needed and very little else. The work was competent, but hardly inspired.
Day 6. Tie down shot of the mirror in Uhura’s quarters with “OPT-FX” (optical effects) shot of Shatner laid in during post production (Courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
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Judy Burns, still watching from the sidelines, was very impressed with a line Leonard Nimoy added to the script this day. She said, “I owed him a great deal here, he coined the phrase, ‘Renowned Tholian punctuality.’ It was not in the script. He ad-libbed it. And, after he did it, I went, ‘Wow, I owe you one,’ because it was so perfect. It cut through and gave it a sense of humor and all kinds of things. And that was just Leonard being smart and ad-libbing on the set.” (25)
Continuing to prove an obstacle in keeping with the schedule were the camera tie-down shots. Burns said, “A lot of the stuff that was going to happen there was going to happen with lock downs. The first time that I was in a story conference, one of the things that Arthur said was, ‘Can we shoot this? Can we make the ghost story happen?’ And Bob said, ‘I don’t see a problem with that, but we just have to lock the cameras down, so we can do the registers, and Kirk floating through the ship.’ And that was part of the problem -- you had to constantly lock down the camera every time he showed up.
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And they had to do that over and over -- in the engineering area, and they had to do it in the corridors, and on the Bridge. So they had a lot of locking down to do. Those were tough things to shoot.” (25)
On Friday night, August 9, NBC repeated “Assignment: Earth.” Cast and crew then had the weekend to recover from the drama on set.
Day 6, Monday, August 12, was especially busy. The company worked at a feverish pitch, finishing on the Bridge, and then covering scenes in Uhura’s quarters, Spock’s quarters, the ship’s corridors, and the chapel. Also filmed on Monday, at the end of the frantic day, was the Tholian mask -- or space helmet -- which Mike Minor created. The mask was first shot against a curtain of black velvet. Unhappy with the results, Wallerstein filmed it again, this time against a background of crumpled tin foil. Assistant Director Charles Washburn said, “What was noteworthy about the changing of the guard was that this new director performed a most extraordinary feat -- with the crew’s help. He shot 17 pages of script his first day aboard -- thus enabling us to finish the episode in our usual six days.” (180-3)
Actually, according to the production records, Wallerstein shot 10 pages of script, not 17. Regardless, a clear message had been sent by the studio heads – “Finish in six or you will be finished.” |
Tholian mask by Mike Minor, as shot against a black background (above) and then again, against rumpled tin foil (below) (Courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
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Senensky recalled, “The following day, the Hollywood trade papers, Daily Variety and Hollywood Reporter, each carried a news story issued by Douglas Cramer’s office detailing my being removed as director of ‘The Tholian Web’ on Star Trek. The article pointed out the studio’s intent to curtail the problem of films not being completed as scheduled.” (155-5)
Daily Variety printed the story on Page 2 of its Friday, August 9 edition. The headline: “Trek Slow, So Par Changes Directors.” The trade reported:
Daily Variety printed the story on Page 2 of its Friday, August 9 edition. The headline: “Trek Slow, So Par Changes Directors.” The trade reported:
Paramount TV has changed directors on an NBC-TV Star Trek series episode midway in production, replacing Ralph Senensky with Herb Wallerstein. Senensky had been on “The Tholian Web” chapter for three days when the action was taken. According to a Par TV exec, move was made because Senensky was a full day behind the shooting “sked” at the time. Exec added action reflects continual battle to maintain TV budgets.
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The Paramount executive was incorrect. Senensky was not a full day behind, only a half day, which was commonplace in television. More often than not, segments fall to a quarter or half day behind and then catch up. Also more often than not a change in directors such as this, be it for illness or any other reason, would not be reported in the trades. Someone was clearly gunning for Ralph Senensky. Being reported on Page 2 of the top trade paper, it was a shot that was heard all around Hollywood.
Senensky said, “There was a battle going on between Cramer’s office and both Mission and Star Trek. And he was after both of them, because he couldn’t get either show to pay attention to him and do as he wanted. And he needed to make an example, and it wasn’t going to land on Fred or Gregg. They were protecting their jobs. So I was it.” (155-6)
Regardless of Cramer’s intentions, serious harm was done to Senensky. The director said, “It seemed in the aftermath of what had just occurred that a meeting must have been called of all the producers in Hollywood. ‘Don’t hire Senensky!’ I was suddenly, totally unemployable.” (155-5)
Senensky, who had been very much in demand, had no further offers for work during 1968, and even the first few months of 1969. Robert Justman helped get Senensky back to work, hiring him to direct an episode of Then Came Bronson in the summer of 1969. And then Senensky, who had always directed one-hour dramas, had to make the move to a pair of half-hour light comedies, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father and The Bill Cosby Show. Other than his one assignment on Then Came Bronson, it took two years before Senensky returned to directing one-hour dramatic TV.
Senensky said, “There was a battle going on between Cramer’s office and both Mission and Star Trek. And he was after both of them, because he couldn’t get either show to pay attention to him and do as he wanted. And he needed to make an example, and it wasn’t going to land on Fred or Gregg. They were protecting their jobs. So I was it.” (155-6)
Regardless of Cramer’s intentions, serious harm was done to Senensky. The director said, “It seemed in the aftermath of what had just occurred that a meeting must have been called of all the producers in Hollywood. ‘Don’t hire Senensky!’ I was suddenly, totally unemployable.” (155-5)
Senensky, who had been very much in demand, had no further offers for work during 1968, and even the first few months of 1969. Robert Justman helped get Senensky back to work, hiring him to direct an episode of Then Came Bronson in the summer of 1969. And then Senensky, who had always directed one-hour dramas, had to make the move to a pair of half-hour light comedies, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father and The Bill Cosby Show. Other than his one assignment on Then Came Bronson, it took two years before Senensky returned to directing one-hour dramatic TV.
A bitter Senensky added, “I think it was significant that ‘The Tholian Web’ won so many awards.... Quite frankly, the good stuff is what I shot. I think you could probably spot what I shot.... The nine millimeter [wide angle lens] footage with [crewmembers going mad] was part of it, and I did all the stuff with the lamé silver spacesuits.” (155-3)
But no one at the top at Paramount seemed to care about all the “good stuff.” The bottom line now was money, or the lack of it. Senensky said, “Paramount had a lot to do with the series’ demise. Gene Coon had told me that the episodes had been scheduled for six days of production and that they averaged six-and-a-half, although there were some that went seven -- pretty remarkable for the kind of quality they were delivering. When Paramount bought Desilu, a kind of corporate mentality took over. Suddenly, we had a six-day schedule -- period! They wouldn’t allow any overruns at all.... The other schedule hadn’t given you that much grace but, suddenly, you really felt that you were shooting schlock because of the production’s speed.” (155-2)
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Nimoy in NBC promotional photo (Courtesy of Bob Olsen)
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Senensky said, “Nobody ever talked to me about it after I left Freiberger’s office except for Gene Roddenberry. The only conversation ever: Gene called me right after it happened. He was apologetic, angry, and sympathetic; it was a lovely call. Roddenberry was a very sensitive man; a sweetheart. It wasn’t too much longer after that when he walked away from the show. But, when he hired Freiberger, that was the mistake of the ages.” (155-5)
Read about the making of all of the Season Three episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series in
These Are the Voyages: TOS, Season Three.
These Are the Voyages: TOS, Season Three.
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