Related Links

0

MIND MELD: SECRETS BEHIND THE VOYAGE OF A LIFETIME

Shatner, who never runs out of new ideas for capitalizing on his historic role as the starship captain of all starship captains, put together this unassuming little documentary for distribution through his personal Web site, WilliamShatner.com. The format is refreshingly simple: Reposed on garden chairs outside Nimoy's Beverly Hills home, the two old shipmates steer each other through a rambling conversation about the original late-'60s STAR TREK and the far-reaching repercussions the seminal series had on their careers and personal lives.

While much of the ground they cover will be familiar to hard-core Trekkies from innumerable books, convention appearances and the like (it's an absurd but established fact that the most fervent fans know more about the show than its cast and creators), there's nothing quite like hearing it directly from Kirk and Spock themselves, in a setting chosen and controlled by them. Obviously at ease with each other and director Peter Jaysen's nonintrusive digital video camera, the two actors let their shields down, so to speak, and make what seems to be an earnest attempt to go beyond mere nostalgia and express what the Enterprise's continuing mission has meant to them.

Looking back at the original series from what is now a distance of more than three decades, both men are philosophical about the ways in which STAR TREK completely and irrevocably changed the course of their lives, from the fame and wealth they received to the harm the show's all-consuming schedule did to their relationships off the set. Each attributes a divorce to STAR TREK-related stresses, for example, and Nimoy is candid about the way work on the series distanced him from his young children, who saw little of him while Spock was off saving the universe each week. Both men had painful experiences with alcoholism during the period of the original series Nimoy with his own increasingly destructive habitual drinking (this eventually reached the point, he says, where an assistant would be waiting to hand a paper cup full of booze to him as each day of shooting wrapped), and Shatner as he dealt with his wife Noreen's alcohol addiction.

With Shatner's hammy presence and natural sense of pacing driving the show had his career worked out slightly differently, one can imagine him having made it equally as big as a talk show host the two actors run briskly through the history of their involvement in the TREK franchise, from their initial conceptions of their characters through the series' evolution and their ongoing interactions with fans on and off the convention trail. We get their version of why director Robert Wise's 1979 STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE turned out to be such a bore (they had ideas for pumping up the film's action quotient, they say, but were too intimidated by TREK creator Gene Roddenberry to raise them!) - though, in a curious omission, they don't cover the more successful films from STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN on.

While the doc mostly avoids airing dirty laundry of the most overt sort, the stars do have some harsh words for what they see as the shameless commercialization and merchandising of the franchise - sentiments that seem slightly disingenuous given their own willingness to cash in on their own part of the STAR TREK phenomenon over the years. One weirdly fascinating moment comes when Shatner turns the conversation toward his feelings about being "affronted, assailed" by certain resentful second-string members of the original cast. With Nimoy trying his best to frame things in the most diplomatic light possible, Shatner proceeds to outline his theory that over the years original TREK's supporting cast members "slowly, I think, began to consider themselves leads in the film." Ouch!

The Enterprise's top two officers have nothing but kind things to say about each other, however, and seeing evidence of the very real affection that has developed between the blustery, passionate Shatner and the more cerebral Nimoy over the decades is the production's most touching element. "I love you," the former blurts out in a purely Shatnerian moment, and we know there's nothing staged about this aspect of the doc.

MIND MELD's status as an independent production, made outside the domain of the Paramount franchise overlords, is evident from the lack of clips and TREK music a handful of still photos from the period are all the filmmakers have to place the stories in context. However, the lack of official material is more than balanced by the film's disarmingly open, freewheeling tone. The production feels more like a friendly personal visit with these two legends than anything fans are likely to see anywhere else, and for that reason alone a space must be reserved for it on each diehard Trekkie's video shelf.

The DVD version includes a number of extra features, including widescreen anamorphic format, a making-of featurette and Shatner and Nimoy bios. Both the VHS and DVD versions of the film are available exclusively at www.williamshatner.com.