STAR TREK II: Shatner, Nimoy & Kelley on 1982 Merv Griffin Show

This one will take you back, even if you only have a minute or two to peek at the video below. Slog past the poky couple of jokes in the monologue (one of which Nimoy complains about to Merv), and then you'll be reminded that this was waaaay back when there were only the original 79 episodes and that one movie.

The big question about the TWOK in 1982 was, Does Spock die??? The rumor began before filming, and that may be one of the reasons Spock is "killed" in the first five minutes during the bridge battle simulation.









Related: STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN TV spots.

I don't remember seeing these spots since 1982! Watching them again, I'm reminded how exciting the movie was. In a series of interviews at Trekmovie.com, Ronald D. Moore, who wrote and produced several later incarnations of TREK, as well as the first 2 NEXT GEN movies (and of course the new BSG), said that when they were writing the movies, the template was always WRATH OF KHAN.

" ... [A]t that point in time the gold standard was Wrath of Khan and everyone wanted to do Wrath of Khan by some other name. Even in Generations we were talking about Wrath of Khan. Wrath of Khan says ‘here is how you do a Star Trek movie.’ It’s action-adventure. You’ve got a big villain. You’ve got themes of aging and great little character moments, small moments of humor interspersed throughout. It embraces all the characters. You laugh with them, you cry with them. It ends on a bittersweet but hopeful note. It is just a great movie and it really stands up."

Ronald D. Moore interview (in both podcast & transcript formats): part one, part two and part three.


And, if you made it this far down in this entry, here's a special 1982 interview with Gene Roddenberry from Nickelodeon.