Return To Tomorrow

FILMED November 1967

September 7, 2012

Eighteen months ago today I posted the PROLOG, my first entry, on this website. In the following weeks, for reasons I explained in that PROLOG, I started this cinema journey by writing of my adventures on STAR TREK, but I only covered six of the seven treks I had made. I omitted RETURN TO TOMORROW with the lame excuse, “RETURN TO TOMORROW, about which the less said the better.” There have been some impassioned Comments regarding this exclusion:

I admit that when I first saw Return, I was in the full, ecstatic glow of having discovered Star Trek, and EVERY new episode was a gigantic adventure and true revelation. While you view the show from the perspective of an established Hollywood veteran professional with high standards for quality storytelling and drama, I see that episode as an essential moment in my adolescent growth!

and

Are you ever going to do a write-up of “Return to Tomorrow?” From what you say about it here it appears you didn’t enjoy filming it, but I’ve always liked that episode and would love to know more about it.

and

Return to Tomorrow isn’t represented here and if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. BUT I think there’s a lot to recommend it. … This was my family growing up and I know I’m not alone there.

So I have been left with a burning question: If RETURN TO TOMORROW has left such a very deep impression on many young fans, what is my problem regarding it? That is a mystery, a mystery that intrigues me. So why not hop aboard and come with me as this part of the journey sets out to solve that mystery, as we return to RETURN TO TOMORROW.

Before I continue, I want to make clear that I am not out to bash the show to vindicate my negative feelings. I am not trying to convince admirers of this episode that their affection for it is misplaced. I truly want to discover the reasons for my feelings, and the first one came with the opening of the wall into the large inner chamber.

On paper the receptacle for Sargon was described as being a large translucent globe, glowing with an inner light. To me it looked overwhelmingly like a very large Ping Pong ball. I guess I made my reaction public. Some time ago I saw an interview of James Doohan (Scotty) on the internet, and he laughingly recalled that I had referred to the receptacles as large Ping Pong balls.

When we filmed the scene where Sargon inhabits Kirk’s body, I recognized Bill’s performance had taken it to the limits, but I still found it acceptable. When viewing the scene in the completed film, I have always been uncomfortable with it. Bill seemed to be doing a vocal imitation of the stentorian performance of James Doohan, who had acted Sargon’s voice-over in the show’s opening scene and the scene in the chamber when the group first encountered Sargon in the receptacle. Which is ironic, because Bill wasn’t copying Doohan’s performance; Bill’s performance came first. When James recorded his performance in postproduction, he was modeling his interpretation on what Bill had done. I now recognize there is a distinct difference in the timbre of the voices of the two men (Bill’s voice is a baritone while Doohan’s voice is a bass) and once the transference has taken place and it is Bill’s voice representing Sargon, I still hear Captain Kirk speaking, not Sargon. Doohan, when he did his original recording of his scenes (the opening scene in the Bridge and the later scenes when he was in the receptacle) had used the speech pattern and rhythm that Shatner used in the scene when Sargon occupied Kirk’s body. During Doohan’s early acting career he had appeared on some 4,000 radio programs, a medium where the voice was the only means an actor had to express his performance, and Doohan became a master. What ideally could have been done in post production was to have taken Doohan onto the looping stage and recorded him doing Sargon’s speeches in the scenes when Sargon occupied Kirk’s body and replaced Shatner’s voice with HIS voice. But the added time plus the added expense it would have taken to complete the film (Doohan’s voice should have been overlaid on ALL of the scenes in the film when Kirk’s body was the receptacle for Sargon) would have been prohibitive.

RETURN TO TOMORROW was the fourth film I directed in the second season of STAR TREK, and it was the third film under the new Paramount regime with its imposed restrictive shooting schedule demanding films be completed in six days with the added restriction that each day would end at 6:12 pm. Leonard Nimoy in his Archives of American Television interview discusses the stress and tension this earlier quitting time brought to the set (although he states incorrectly that the quitting time was 6:18 pm).

By the latter sixties television’s voice delivering any sort of message had pretty much been muted. Action had replaced the thoughtful dramas of TV’s Golden Age. That was why STAR TREK was so unique. It could comment on current issues using them as adventures of the future. But STAR TREK many times went a step further, becoming prescient in presenting our dreams for the future. Kirk’s speech about space is an example. It was written and filmed two years before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.

In spite of Paramount studio’s cutting almost a half-day from the shooting schedule, Jerry Finnerman’s photography remained exemplary. His lighting as always continued not only to light the bodies, but it illuminated the inner drama.

Unlike the problem I described above with Bill’s portrayal of Sargon having to be compared to James Doohan’s voice-over performance of the same character, the character of Henoch only appeared as Leonard presented him. What I appreciated so much in Leonard’s performance of this totally evil man was the way he charmingly played against the evil. That is something in which I so strongly believe. Charming evil is so much more effective.

Just like with William Windom, the first time I became aware of Diana Muldaur was when I saw her in a John Houseman stage production when his theatre company was based at UCLA, and I cast her in an episode of I SPY. A few months later I cast her in RETURN TO TOMORROW. Diana was a strong actress, a beautiful woman with that cool quality that Hitchcock used so effectively in the women in his films. She would return in a different (and better) role the following season of STAR TREK and later would become a regular on the next STAR TREK regeneration.

Note the author credit on the title page of the script:

The author screen credit on the final film was:

Gene Roddenberry had rewritten John T. Dugan’s script to the extent that he felt he had earned full teleplay credit, with Dugan retaining credit for story. Obviously when it was submitted to the Writers’ Guild for arbitration, they found in favor of Dugan and awarded him full author’s credit. But Dugan was unhappy with the final script as rewritten by Roddenberry and according to the procedures of the Writers’ Guild replaced his name with the alter ego name, John Kingsbridge.

I was not aware until I started my website of the writer conflict on this episode, but even as we filmed, I was aware of my conflicted feelings on the resolution of the drama. I never saw John T. Dugan’s original script. I do not know how his version ended, but his renouncement of credit for the film indicates his very strong objection to Roddenberry’s version.

I think this is the final piece of the puzzle of my problem with the film. There was something profound in Sargon’s desire to return after centuries to help humanity. Question: But with his overwhelming intelligence, his enormous power, why did Sargon so readily turn his back on his mission to help mankind and consign himself and Thalassa to an eternity that only provided for their being together forever. There is no conclusion to the original situation of the world encountering fascinatingly unbelievable intelligence from eons ago. The lack of that closure is what I miss.

I think I have resolved my feelings about RETURN TO TOMORROW. I realize that even flawed, the fascination and power of Dugan’s original concept has managed to survive. I will no longer assign the film to my spam box, and it and THE THOLIAN WEB will have to compete forever to avoid being at the bottom of my favorite STAR TREK list.

The Journey Continues