No other television show has boldly gone quite so many places as Star Trek.
The series may have only been on the air for three seasons, but there's some really entertaining
stories about the shenanigans that happened on set.
Here are some bizarre things that happened on the set of Star Trek.
Tinnitus plagues 50 million Americans, and it's one of those things that's a lot worse
than it sounds.
Tinnitus is the medical term for a ringing in the ears that never goes away, and some
special effects caused two key Star Trek cast members to experience it.
William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy were both standing too close to a special effects explosion
during the filming of the first season Star Trek episode "Arena."
For years, both men suffered from tinnitus, but it was especially debilitating for Shatner.
The actor wrote:
"There were days when I didn't know how I would survive the agony.
I was so tormented by the screeching in my head I really thought I would not be able
to go on."
He eventually found relief with what's known as "tinnitus retraining therapy," which requires
patients to wear a noise-generating device that teaches the brain to ignore the ringing
sound.
The therapy worked, and Shatner says he no longer suffers from the disorder.
Today, William Shatner has a reputation as being a pretty mellow guy who isn't afraid
to make fun of himself.
But during the early years of Star Trek, he was kind of a diva.
When the producers told the cast the show would feature the world's first televised
interracial kiss, they'd already decided it would be between Spock and Uhura, which would
have made it the world's first human and alien kiss as well.
Shatner was not having it.
In his mind, if there was going to be a first anything on Star Trek, he needed to be a part
of that.
Evidently, the show's producers felt bullied by their spoiled star, so they re-wrote the
scene to make that first interracial kiss between Kirk and Uhura instead.
Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura, later told the Vancouver Sun:
"Bill wanted to rehearse all the time.
He said he wanted to get this right!
I said to him, 'It's right, it's right.
I promise you, it's right.'
And the camera was shaking and the director was laughing his head off.
We really had a good time."
"And we're laughing, you know in between every cut, he's doing things like, 'I told you I
would get you one day.'
No you didn't."
Star Trek was one of the most progressive television shows of its time.
It had a black actress in a starring role, and her character was fourth in command of
a 23rd century starship.
But just because Nichelle Nichols played a character who existed in a world without racism
doesn't mean that she was treated that way off-camera.
The actress was sometimes told she couldn't go through the same studio gate as the other
actors.
She told The Huffington Post:
"There were instances where I was turned away from entering the studio at the walk-on gate,
and I had to go all the way around to the front gate, sign-in and come back.
A guard on the set told me I had no right being there — that they had replaced a blue-eyed
blonde with me."
Nichols stuck with it, though.
In fact, an encounter with Martin Luther King, Jr. convinced her to remain on the show right
when she was on the brink of leaving.
He reminded her that her role on Star Trek went beyond being black or a woman.
King told the actress that she had broken ground playing Uhura.
Nichols continued to play the character for 25 years.
The Enterprise was no stranger to infestations.
There were those adorable, if totally featureless and personality-free, tribbles.
Then there was that weird infestation of short-lived humans known as red shirts.
There were a couple of non-fiction infestations, too.
"I want these things off the ship, I don't care if it takes every man that we've got,
I want them off the ship."
Pigeons infiltrated the set during the filming of the first pilot.
The birds were nesting in the rafters, and they had an annoying habit of cooing whenever
then-lead Jeffrey Hunter had a line.
The crew tried to shoo them away, but they kept flying into the equipment.
They were finally able to lure the pigeons off set with breadcrumbs.
That wouldn't be the last time the set was infiltrated by pests, though.
A colony of bees swarmed the set during the filming of the second pilot, "Where No Man
has Gone Before."
"Not the bees!
My eyes!
My eyes!"
The bees, or wasps, depending on the story, descended during the fifth day of production,
terrorizing the cast and crew.
William Shatner was stung on the eyelid, which you can spot if you watch the episode closely.
There was no such thing as CGI in the 1960s, so if you were going to have a scene with
a tiger, you had to have a scene with a tiger.
That was the plan for the 1966 episode "Shore Leave," but not everyone thought it was a
great idea.
Shatner, though, wasn't just cool with the idea, he thought Captain Kirk should possibly
wrestle the tiger, until the beast got loose and, quote, "went berserk."
But once he actually saw it, Shatner changed his mind about the whole wrestling thing.
The actor later recalled:
"Instantly my testicles rose up into my Adam's apple and the ignorant machismo that had be
pulsing so heartily through my veins was replaced by sheer abject terror.
I stood there trying not to look too horrified as I gracefully backed down [from wrestling
the tiger] 'for the good of the show.'"
Imagine you wheel your grocery cart up to the automatic doors at the store, and said
doors just fail to open.
That, minus the grocery cart, was pretty much a reality for the actors on the original Star
Trek.
The reason the doors failed so spectacularly is because they weren't really automatic.
They were just operated by a pair of stagehands.
They usually failed because one or both stagehands missed their cue and didn't open them in time.
It happened so frequently there is actually an entire blooper reel containing nothing
but William Shatner walking into the automatic doors.
The sliding door problem was never really overcome, either.
It continued to plague Star Trek productions through subsequent incarnations of the franchise.
Star Trek has come a long way in terms of its portrayal of women.
But in the early days, female characters weren't exactly known to have much depth.
Actress Teri Garr played a ditzy secretary in the second season finale "Assignment: Earth,"
and it's a role that she has since come to despise.
The reason, though, is still something of a mystery.
Garr evidently disliked being on Star Trek so much that more than 20 years after her
appearance, she still didn't want to talk about it.
When Starlog magazine tried to ask her questions about that long-ago role, she became annoyed
and told the interviewer:
"I have nothing to say about it [...] I did that years ago and I mostly deny I ever did
it."
"Assignment: Earth" was initially meant to be the pilot for a spinoff series, but it
didn't get picked up, much to Garr's unabashed pleasure.
She told Starlog:
"Thank God [...] Otherwise, all I would get would be Star Trek questions for the rest
of my natural life — and probably my unnatural life.
You ever see those people who are Star Trek fans?
The same people who go to swap meets."
Low blow, Garr.
Low blow.
William Shatner may have acted like a brat throughout the '60s, but he wasn't the only
one.
In fact, Shatner and Leonard Nimoy at one time had a huge, mutually bratty rivalry that
escalated to the point where they once both locked themselves in their dressing rooms
and refused to come out.
George Takei told the story to Howard Stern in 2010 and explained how the whole row was
over a photographer.
When Shatner found out a photographer had shown up on set to photograph Nimoy, he decided
it was within his authority to kick the photographer out.
Takei explained:
"Then a group of suits came in and go to Bill's dressing room and spend about 15 minutes there
and then go to Leonard's dressing room [...] We'd see the suits going back and forth from one
dressing room to another."
As for Shatner kicking the photographer off set?
Takei said his contract actually gave him free rein to do it.
"It turns out that Bill had, in his contract, an approval of a photographer on the set and
he exercised that."
Leonard Nimoy got more fan mail than any other Star Trek cast member.
And because he was a pretty decent guy, he actually made an effort to respond to his
fans.
In fact, Nimoy had so much mail to respond to that he once asked the studio for pens
and pencils so he could spend his off time answering fan mail.
You'd think the studio would have been happy to comply.
But it was just the opposite -- they refused to pay for the actor's office supplies.
The whole affair eventually turned into a series of memos in which associate producer
Robert Justman said he'd been knocked unconscious by what he described as:
"...a fiercely vise-like grip upon me somewhere between my neck and shoulders."
Shortly thereafter, Justman discovered that the supplies cabinet had been robbed.
But no one seems to remember if the studio ever went on to get Nimoy some pens.
It's time to face the sticky truth.
Spock liked lollipops.
But don't worry, it was all perfectly logical.
Yes, Leonard Nimoy was fond of sucking on lollipops between takes.
Depending on who you ask, it was either because a combination of nerves and dialogue-heavy
scenes gave him dry mouth, or it was because he was a smoker and he needed something to
do with his hands.
Regardless of which theory you subscribe to, the reason behind Nimoy's lollipop habit isn't
actually as much fun as the details about where he'd stash them during takes.
Evidently, when the cameras were rolling he liked to put his half-sucked lollipop inside
the lower panel of his tricorder.
While Star Trek's most infamous antics happened during the first series, later series weren't
exactly immune from unprofessional behavior.
When Jeri Ryan joined the cast of Voyager, ratings skyrocketed.
It's hard to say if it was Ryan's acting or her skin-tight uniform that gave the show
a boost.
But Kate Mulgrew, who played Captain Janeway, was not impressed by the decision to take
the show in a new, more provocative direction.
She was even more annoyed by the fact that it appeared to be working.
Mulgrew didn't just keep her budding hatred for Ryan to herself, either.
She it laid out for everyone to see.
First, she insisted Ryan be banned from the restroom, because it took too long for her
to get in and out of her outfit, and she was wasting everybody's time.
"You have to realize there are rules.
You'll be expected to follow our protocols."
Happily, the studio realized that it would probably be in violation of some employment
law if it refused to allow its employees to use the bathroom, so they didn't grant Mulgrew's
weirdly vindictive request.
Mulgrew then showed her displeasure in other ways, like walking out of scenes with Ryan
if she knew she'd be off-camera, thus forcing the younger actress to deliver her lines to
no one.
And you thought Shatner was a prima donna.
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