By GustavoLeao / 10:33, 28 February 2006 / General Star Trek

Trek Nation posted an exclusive interview with former Star Trek movie producer Harve Bennett (Star Trek II-V). Here are a few excerpts.



Trek Nation: Did you follow the decline and cancellation of Enterprise?

Harve Bennett: No. I am very uninvolved in the subsequent series for one reason, and that is that Next Generation came on when we were still doing the films. I saw the pilot, but it was hard to be writing Star Trek V and see what would be happening beyond. So I never got into it. People ask me questions about everything from episodes to whether I knew Michael Piller, and I didn't. [Rick] Berman was an executive at the studio, and I knew him well, but that was my only contact with The Next Generation.

Trek Nation: You were involved with the Starfleet Academy proposal.

Harve Bennett: I was very involved with that. We had a green light to picture which was cancelled only when there was a regime change at the studio and a concern that we should do something more conventional for the then-25th anniversary. We had 19 months to do it in. 19 months? There's no way to do a special effects picture in 19 months. The best time we had was Star Trek III, which was two years from concept to release date. And the reason for that is, we would write the script normally and that was an easy script, that was six weeks and we were ready to go. But the special effects planning takes the better part of the year. I said, 'It can't be done.' And then my time was up, so I left.

Trek Nation: Is that back in play now? There are rumors about it, it seems, every six months.

Harve Bennett: I'll tell you how recently it was. Before Sherry Lansing left [Paramount Pictures] last year, we had a meeting, about two years ago, in which I proposed that now was the time to do Starfleet Academy. And she loved it. We would have made it. But then she said the television department had asked her not to do it, because Enterprise was being produced and they thought that should be the prequel. Therefore, we did not do that. Could we make it now? If somebody wants to, I'm there. Technically, I'm retired, and non-technically but actually, I'm writing my own book. I'm considerably happy not to go into downtown Los Angeles every day.

Trek Nation: I'm not even sure, with the Viacom-CBS split, exactly who would make the decision to go ahead with the next movie or TV show.

Harve Bennett: I can't answer that question. I'm just as confused as you are. The whole conglomeration...I thought I understood it when Gulf & Western took over Paramount in my day. But I've lost track of it since. I still have a couple of connections there when I want to get legal things cleared up, though they may be gone now that Dreamworks is coming into the picture. If that deal goes through, I know at least three good friends who aren't going to be there. They'll put in their people.

Trek Nation: So you aren't actively pursuing the Starfleet Academy idea right now.

Harve Bennett: No, but I love it. Some of the steam went out of it when my dear DeForest Kelley died. He was going to be in it along with Bill [Shatner] and Leonard [Nimoy], those were the only two regulars, and they were involved in a flashback. That's how we incorporated the three main characters into the prequel: it was a memory. Kirk comes to the Academy to address the classmates and remembers his time, when they were 17.

Trek Nation: I had heard that Shatner was going to write a pilot, or was pitching something, along those lines...maybe it was to Pocket Books, not for television.

Harve Bennett: We always said that the benefit of doing this as a film was number one, you have nothing but good comes out of this because the original cast continues, the original Enterprise is there waiting to beam up our guys. Two, you have a potential television series called Starfleet Academy. I saw Bill a few weeks ago on the set of Boston Legal and Leonard I talk to occasionally from time to time. We remain friends. We're all about the same age. Critical this is a gentleman named Ralph Winter who was my associate producer on Star Trek II, and gradually became the man we all turned to for everything.

The full interview can be found here