Show Business: New Treat for Trekkies

Starship Enterprise and crew are coming out of drydock

An elevator opens into deep space. A familiar trio steps onto a starship wing. One actor has pointed ears. Another, raised to admiral's rank since his last mission, walks with familiar jut-jawed rectitude. A third shuffles toward the wing's edge with the rumpled calm of a country doctor. A beautiful woman, all the more striking because she has no hair, and a young flight officer stare straight ahead. When the cameras stop rolling, a makeup aide moves in to slap some goo on the woman's head—she shaves twice a day to avoid 5 o'clock shadow—while the men lean over the platform's railing to talk to onlookers below. "Does anyone have a prayer?" quips William Shatner, a.k.a. Captain James T. Kirk of the starship Enterprise. "We certainly have . . . the wing."

In real life that wing and prayer belong to Paramount studios, which has budgeted $20 million for a flashy film revival of Star Trek, the unkillable TV series. Its hope is that the show's fans, known for their legendary loyalty, will flock to the theaters next Christmas in Trekkie-breaking numbers.

Since the series ended, Captain (now Admiral) Kirk has been kicked upstairs to dull desk duty, Mr. Spock has settled on his native Vulcan, and "Bones" McCoy has become a bearded country doctor. The Enterprise itself is in drydock. Suddenly a Starfleet monitoring station spots an immense alien "force" speeding toward earth at "warp seven" speed, making nasty noises and devouring spaceships like popcorn. Out of drydock comes the Enterprise, and Kirk is returned to its command.

Enter the familiar multiethnic crew, some with new assignments: Chief Engineer Scott, Helmsman Sulu, Communications Officer Uhura, Security Chief Chekov, Doctor Chapel and Transporter Chief Janice Rand. They will be joined by the Enterprise's new captain, Willard Decker (Stephen Collins), who is naturally annoyed at being bumped to No. 2, and Navigator Ilia (Persis Khambatta), the bald beauty from the planet Delta.

The most important character to watch, in true Star Trek tradition, is the villain. Star Trek Creator Eugene Roddenberry, 57, is famous for introducing horrible monsters who are searching for a little understanding to make them un-horrible. While the film's script is under tight lock and key, it is safe to speculate, as does Actor Leonard Nimoy, the pointy-eared Mr. Spock, "that we eventually find our antagonist is searching as well." At first the Enterprise will be fighting what looks like a cloud of electrically charged whipped cream, but the monster is hiding its true nature. "It is the same as any mystery story," Director Robert Wise told TIME Correspondent James Willwerth. "Something's out there in the dark prowling around. You can't see it, but you keep getting horrible reports."

For years, of course, Paramount has been getting just the opposite news about Star Trek's box-office potential. The show was dreamed up by Roddenberry in 1966, because he thought that science fiction might provide a persuasive way of telling a hopeful, and presumably profitable, vision of history. Says he: "It seemed to me that if I had a ship, a home base, I could take it out and make any kind of comment I wanted to."