Mission to Mission

The work on Star Trek lasted for three seasons: 1966, 1967 and 1968. I felt that the best work had been done during the first two seasons and that the scripts and production during the third year did not at all reflect the highest quality of the show to say the least.

I had very mixed emotions about the possibility of continuing to play Mr. Spock. My feelings were that there would have to be some very drastic changes in order to bring the series back up to its original quality.

There were two major problem areas. One was story, the other was character. In the area of story, I felt that our scripts had drifted to the point where they no longer represented the excellent science fiction that we had achieved when we were at our best. For the most part I felt the stories were excuses to get us into and out of danger within the given one hour period. When we were really cooking we had dealt with some very exciting and some very profound and even important ideas, relative to the human condition. For the most part, our third year stories were devoid of ideas.

In the area of character, a gradual blurring had taken place. Where there had originally been an opportunity for very distinct characterizations and the character interplay, there was now an erosion which destroyed the clearly defined characters, particularly among the three central figures, Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy. The simple, bottom-line truth was the show was no longer fun to play.

My contract with Paramount required two more years of service. However I felt strongly enough about these problems at that time that I would have resisted coming back to work under the conditions which existed. This would have meant suspension from my contract at Paramount and possibly even an injunction against my working elsewhere in films or television until the matter had been legally settled. None of that was very important to me at the time, nor is it now. If I had simply chosen in my life "to work for a living" I could have found very secure work in other areas much earlier in life. Right or wrong, drama for me is a kind of spiritual crusade. When all the elements are in place and functioning properly I get a sense of well-being which makes me feel that all is right with the world. To watch the gradual erosion of the quality of the Star Trek show was just too painful for me to bear, regardless of the cost.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, whichever the case may be, the confrontation with the studio became unnecessary when NBC cancelled the show at the end of the third season. I received the news with very mixed feelings. Of course, it would have been very exciting to go into a fourth season with some fresh ideas and the possibility of recapturing the best of what we had had. On the other hand, since that seemed extremely difficult because of various circumstances, I felt that perhaps it was best that we leave the show behind and move on to other things.

An actor working in a series is equivalent to a cog in the studio machinery. The relationship may be full of extreme emotion ranging from love to hate, but the actor is considered vital to the smooth functioning of the studio's daily activity. A studio is loathe to remove an actor from an ongoing series. There have been rare and special cases where this has been done because the relationship became completely untenable. Much effort will be made to keep the relationship intact, rather than take a chance on the potential negative public effect of removing or replacing a series actor.

When a series is finished the actor is about as necessary to the studio as a third hump on a camel. He is simply taking up space. In early April of 1969 it became obvious that Star Trek was not going to be picked up for the following season. I was still occupying office space with my girl Friday, Teresa Victor. I received the inevitable call from Ed Milkis at Paramount who informed that since Star Trek would not be continuing they would be needing my space and would like to have some indication of when I could vacate. I told Ed that I had a couple of short trips out of town coming up and that as soon as I came back I would be looking for new quarters. He was very congenial and agreed that if it were a matter of two or three weeks there would be no problem. Within a few days I got another call from Ed. This time the situation was much more urgent.

It seemed a new writer had been hired to work on the Mission: Impossible series and would be needing office space immediately. How quickly could I get off the lot? I pointed out to Ed that I hadn't yet had time to decide where I would locate and that if we could stick to our original agreement I could still be out in the appointed period of time. As tactfully as he could, Ed made it obvious that they wanted my space immediately. The next day, in order to facilitate my removal from the lot the transportation department sent over a small van and two workmen. They loaded all of my personal belongings into the van and we precipitiously moved all of my equipment and supplies to Teresa's home where they would be stored until we found a new office space from which to function. It was obvious that I was now a third hump.

Star Trek was finished and I had absolutely no plans for the future. I was very interested in the possibility of broaden­ing my base as an actor by doing a variety of roles which would move me into new areas of exploration and public recognition.

Trouble was brewing in the Mission: Impossible company. Mission and Star Trek were sister shows. They had both been sold by Paramount at exactly the same time and had started on the air side-by-side, and were actually produced on adjoining sound stages during the three years that had just passed. While Star Trek had started off with a somewhat respectable rating picture, it had gradually been moved into weaker and weaker time slots until finally in the third season it was put on the air on Friday night at 10:00 P.M. which was the worst of all possible time periods for the show. Our potential mass audience of young people were out doing their weekend things. Wherever possible, people who were dating arranged either to meet early and watch the show together or to meet after the show was over. However, this wasn't enough. Many Friday night activities made it physically impossible for people to be at home when Star Trek was on the air.

Mission: Impossible, on the other hand, started out very poorly in the ratings and I would have thought had a very dismal chance of survival. The difference was that someone at CBS had high hopes for the show and had faith in its future. They moved it into better and better time slots until somewhere in the second or third season it began to catch hold and find its audience. Once that happened it was obvious that the show was in for a good long run.

At the end of the third season, Martin Landau and Barbara Bain were involved in some very difficult negotiations with Paramount. Landau had been working on a season-to-season contract, and was free to negotiate for whatever he thought were his best interests for the season to come. By the time it became clear that Star Trek was to be cancelled, it was also evident that Landau and his wife, Barbara Bain, were not going to successfully complete their negotiations for a fourth season on Mission: Impossible. Having reached an impasse, and having decided to move off in another direction, the studio contacted my agent about the possibility of my moving into the Mission: Impossible show.

There were several aspects of the deal which were especially attractive. In the first place it meant that I would be back on the air immediately in the new fall season playing a wide variety of characters as Landau had been doing for the previous three years. This meant that at least for myself I would be able to reexplore and reexamine my range as a character actor. In a sense it was like going back to the beginnings when I found acting to be such a delightful adventure. The opportunity to play all kinds of people had always intrigued me. In addition, there was the fact that Mission: Impossible was already a successfully established show. While this removed some of the challenge of being involved in the creation of a new series, there was compensation in the fact that the format of the show was secure and I would be free to work comfortably within that successful format. The offer from Paramount was quite generous in comparison to what I had been earning on the Star Trek show. Having worked on adjoining stages for three years I felt quite comfortable with the Mission company and looked forward to working with them.

I approached the situation very carefully. There had been many lessons to be learned about working in a series which had been made very clear to me during the making of Star Trek. Between my agent and Paramount and myself, we worked out a formula whereby I could "test the waters" so to speak, in the Mission: Impossible situation before plunging in. Paramount was to give me a commitment to do eight episodes on M:I. The scripts were to be submitted to me for my approval and based on my availability. This is what I would consider an ideal situation for an actor. It simply means that Paramount had to offer me the opportunity to play eight of their scripts at a predetermined and generous price. I, in turn, could do the scripts if I liked them and if they did not conflict with other commitments. On that basis I went to work.

I called Ed Milkis, who had been so helpful in facilitating my movement off the lot after the cancellation of Star Trek. Ed was now aware that we had just made a deal for Mission: Impossible and immediately sent the truck and two drivers to move me back onto the lot. I laughingly commented to him that we might have saved a couple of moves if they had let me stay on the lot just a bit longer. It was now only about three weeks since they had moved me out. Ed put it very simply, "We didn't love you then, but we love you now."

The first scripts offered were two scripts to be done in a two-parter. While the scripts were not the best I had ever read, they did give me an opportunity to play three or four different characters and to get my feet wet in the immediate challenge of playing various roles, disguises, dialects and so forth. While we were still at work shooting the two-parter, Paramount submitted the next script to me, and it was a beauty. I was to play a character rather loosely based on the character of Che Guevera—the revolutionary leader. The script was well constructed, and the character, being fairly well-developed, was very enticing. I accepted the job and started doing as much research as time would allow in order to get some feeling for an indepth approach to the character. For wardrobe and make-up we gathered photographs of Che and of course, there was the inevitable Cuban cigar. I had a great time with it. During the shooting of the show the footage must have reflected the fun that I was having. At this point Paramount and CBS evidently agreed that they wanted me to make a fuller commitment to the series, and asked me again to sign a long-term contract. We agreed and made a four-year deal.

For the next year and a half I settled into the business of being a man of a thousand faces. It was fun for a while. I was back into researching the characters, studying dialects, experimenting with make-ups and so forth. In some cases we were so successful in the disguise that the audience didn't realize that it was me playing the role. The atmosphere on the set was excellent. The company was extremely congenial, and the security of being involved in a successful series created an easygoing chemistry in the work. My character was called "Paris." I often wondered if perhaps that name was chosen for me because of my success in a one-name character called Spock. But there was a difference—Paris was a non-character. Where there had been a great deal of thought given to the internal life of Mr. Spock, Paris had none at all. This was the design of all the characters on Mission: Impossible. There was no investigation of who the characters were or their personal interaction with each other. The emphasis was on what they did, what part they played in fulfilling the complex activities of the Mission team.

For me the workload was much lighter than it had been on Star Trek. In the adventures of the Enterprise and its crew, Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock were involved in almost every piece of action that took place. This meant that at least Bill Shatner and I, and quite frequently DeForest Kelley, were required to be on the set and at work most of the twelve-hour shooting day—five days a week. In the case of M:I the nature of the script construction gave everybody an occasional work break. We were all gathered for the beginning of the new show when "Phelps" would hand out and explain the assignment, and usually for the last scene of the show when the IMF would gather to drive off, having accomplished the mission. In between, each of the characters would go their own separate ways, most of the time. That being the case, it meant that I wouldn't be required to be on hand when Greg Morris was tunneling through the walls of a building to implant his electronic devices. This kind of dispersion of the workload meant that each of us could have some time, a free day, or certainly in many cases, several free hours of time to relax, study and, in general, conserve some energies.

One thing was very seriously lacking for me. In the time that I spent on M:I I never was emotionally or spiritually involved with the scripts, as I had been on Star Trek. Frankly, in many cases I didn't even understand them. But this was a successful show and I thought that perhaps the complications of the script were part of the success of the series. Somehow the audience was tantalized by bits of information, believing that if they watched the set intensely and carefully they would eventually understand everything that was going on. In retrospect I realized that this was not necessarily the case. In some instances, the complications of the story were complications for their own sake and really didn't add up in a way that a perfect jigsaw puzzle would after all the pieces were in place. In any case I did my work more or less in isolation. I tried to at least have an understanding of what my scenes were about and to play them as cameo pieces. All of this was fun for awhile but eventually I realized that I had done it. I had played the South American dictator, I had played the Greek shipping magnate, I had played the European revolutionaries. Having done that, and without the sustenance of personal involvement in the material, the fun began to wear thin. In the middle of the second season I told my agent that I would like to ask for a release from the series.

If there is one thing that agents dream about in my business it would be to set each of their actors in a television series. This would mean that there would be the greatest potential of possible income and the least amount of effort on the agent's part. A series means steady work in a business that offers very little of that phenomenon. And here was the bizarre and shocking phenomenon of an actor asking to be unemployed!

It took several weeks before my agent took me seriously. He assumed that I had had some bad experience on the set or with the front office at Paramount and in a fit of pique was asking to get off the series. He did a very good job of waiting me out before he would take any specific action. I assured him week after week that there was nothing of the sort in my motivation. I really meant it when I said that I was getting bored and that I felt that I was back to simply "working for a living." As a matter of fact it was a very nice living. The next two years of my contract, if I were to fulfill them, would mean a gross of close to three-quarters of a million dollars including residuals. An agent gets ten percent of that. That meant I was asking my agent to give up close to seventy-five thousand dollars in potential income over the next two years. That's a very painful thing for an agent to do.

I had great peace of mind in the decision. I had done extremely well financially in three years of Star Trek and two years of M:I. I was very anxious to get out and explore other possibilities. Eventually, my agent realized that I was quite serious about my intentions. He went to the studio and after several discussions, a couple of which I joined, we agreed to part amicably and I said goodbye at the end of my second season on the show. I have never regretted that decision.

M:I moved along very nicely without me for another three years until it eventually had run its course and was cancelled. Had I stayed on the show for at least the two additional years of my contract, and possibly the third year to the end of the series, I would have repeated myself professionally and made an awful lot of money. The difference would be that instead of being a rich man today I guess I would have been a very rich man today.

Date: 2015-02-28; view: 869