One of Star Trek’s most recognizable features almost disappeared before the show ever reached television.
William Shatner, who played Captain James T. Kirk in the original series, revealed that NBC initially objected to the pointed ears worn by Leonard Nimoy as Spock.
“Get rid of the ears,” Shatner, 95, recalled the network saying during a conversation with Paul Wesley for Interview Magazine released on September 8.
Leonard Nimoy as Spock.Photo by CBS via Getty Images
The show’s management refused.
“No, we’re not getting rid of the ears,” Shatner recalled them responding.
That wasn’t the only way Spock nearly looked different. Shatner said the character smiled frequently in the original pilot, which starred Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike.
“They had all these characters, including Spock who smiled a lot,” he said. “Nobody quite grasped the character they were going to play.”
NBC rejected that pilot but made an unusual decision: The network funded another attempt with a rewritten script and an almost entirely new cast.
Sunset Boulevard / Getty Images
“They recast everybody except Leonard, who grasped the role, made it his own,” Shatner said.
Shatner didn’t audition for Kirk. He was working in New York when he was invited to Los Angeles to watch the pilot and consider becoming the Enterprise’s new captain.
“Would you like to play it?” he recalled being asked. “And I said, ‘Yeah, maybe.’”
The pilot’s strange characters, imaginative makeup and unfamiliar worlds ultimately won him over.
“There was a magic about the pilot,” Shatner said, “and that became the magic of Star Trek that caught the imagination of the audience.”
The second pilot sold, launching Star Trek: The Original Series in 1966. Sixty years later, Spock’s ears remain exactly where NBC once didn’t want them.
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