An Interview With Susan Sackett (1978)

Interviews by Fans
Title:	An Interview With Susan Sackett
Interviewer:	Joei Vandenberg
Interviewee:	Susan Sackett
Date(s):	between December 29-31, 1978
Medium:	print
Fandom(s):	Star Trek TOS
External Links:
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

An Interview With Susan Sackett was conducted at a late December Star Trek convention in Columbus, Ohio called Shuttlecon Columbus.

first page of the interview as it was printed in Academy Chronicles #6

The interviewer was Joei Vanderberg, the editor of Academy Chronicles.

The interview was taped and excerpted in Academy Chronicles #6.

Some Topics Discussed

• Susan Sackett's job as assistant to Gene Roddenberry (professional and personal duties)
• the upcoming movie, Star Trek: The Motion Picture (still a year from being released)
• regarding fans' expectations: there's "always someone"
• Sackett's upcoming books
• Sackett's opinions on Star Trek tie-in books
• comparing Star Wars and Star Trek, especially regarding special effects
• Sackett's once-desire to write her own tie-in novel (aka fanfiction...)
• most television reports are fans (and male)
• you can thank Sackett for getting the Klingons "right"

Excerpts

Joei Vanderberg: I've been curious, in your opinion, do you think that the STAR TREK universe that Gene Roddenberry created for the television series is going to be adversely changed? I'm sure we'll be able to recognize it, but will it be different?

Susan Sackett: Not really that much, the characters are the same, Star Fleet is the same, we get to see some of Earth which we never did (see in the T.V. show). It's STAR TREK throughout. It's two hours of STAR TREK. We've have already seen 79 hours of STAR TREK. We're not going to be able to touch everything those 79 hours covered, and we have people writing in, "Are we going to see Romulans? Are we going to see Klingons? Are we going to see tribbles? Are we going to see Spock's wife? Are we going to see Mudd's wife? Are we going to see Spock's mother and father?". In two hours we don't have time to go back and see all of the STAR TREK universe that we saw in 79 episodes, so you're not going to see everything.

There is Star Fleet, the Enterprise and the crew-people. You'll see alot more crew-people because we have this big scene with all of the extras rather than trying to pass off 10 or 15 people to look like 400 people. Some of the things have changed, superficial things like props, but Gene Roddenberry's in on it all the way so you know it will fill. It will not be perfection, I mean there will not be something that somebody can't say, "Oh, that's not right!" There's always something that somebody can find fault with.

JV: Right, uh huh. Somebody's bound to say...

SS: Always someone.

JV: "Well, the special effects look so much like STAR WARS," or something like this, that or the other...

SS: I don't know, I haven't seen them yet, but I doubt they'll be like STAR WARS because of the fact that STAR WARS' special effects were mainly two things. One was the jump the hyperspace which was on the screen for about 30 seconds at the most. The other was the battle scenes. Most of it is mat [sic] artwork.

JV: What exactly is Assistant to the Producer?

SS: Good question. It's whatever I make of it really, whatever has to be done that day. Alot of the secretarial stuff I do because I have that personal feeling for Gene that I want to take care of some of his business things and straighten certain things out in his personal work. I had done it for 4 ½ years and I'm not about to trade that in, so I still do that. I manage the office, and I have two secretaries there that I'll assign certain things to each day. Also, I do research. For example, we get a letter from Jesco Von Puttkamer, a NASA advisor, saying that there is some music we ought to listen to. So I talk to research and to the music department and get ahold of the record. If there are some books that we need to look at for some information, I can arrange to have transportation to pick those up at the bookstore or whatever. It's all kinds of little things from day to day.

You never know what you're going to do until the day happens. I may end up shepherding V.I.P. visitors around the set because there's nobody else available to do it, and we've had a number of those. Somebody from out of town, Clint Eastwood, was on our set. It turns out he's a big STAR TREK fan. In fact, he was at the big Christmas party last Friday. I was really surprised to see him there. Tony Curtis was on our stage. Alot of people are STAR TREK fans and when they're working near they come. Mork, Robin Williams, was dying to go and visit the stage. His office called me and said, "Can we get him on the stage?" I said, "Sure." However I didn't tour him, someone else got to do that. So part of it might be taking somebody around the stage, handling the day to day things that crop up, making sure the scripts are properly collated and that we have so many pages back from mimeo, that Gene's script is up to date. I know that doesn't sound very complicated. I'm trying to think of everything I do. It's just a catchall kind of job, whatever comes up.

JV: I think you put it nicely yesterday - sometimes you feel like you should have a gopher's badge.

SS: Yeah, it's a gopher job in alot of respects. Sometimes Gene says, "Here take my car, go to get it washed, I don't have time, but make sure I've got gas in my car." It's just taking care, making sure he doesn't have these things to worry about. If he says, "What's the name of our set director?", I have to be able to tell him right away. Or if he's standing on the set, and he sees someone over there, and he knows he should know that person, but he's got more important things on his mind than remembering alot of names, he'll say, "Who's that?" I have to be sure to let him know who that person is because he can't remember all those little trivial things. I set up meetings with the art director when Gene wants to see him. That's still sort of secretarial but Freddy Phillips will call up and say, "Listen, I've got the Klingon make up all worked out pretty well. I think Gene should see it. Can he get by?" I try to put a little pressure on Gene to get him over there.

[snipped]

Something that I really felt very strongly about was when they were first going to do Klingons, for some reason somebody had suggested it to Fred, I don't know if it was the director or who, but they came up with this very strange creature that did not look like a Klingon. It had gills. It had layers to it's face. It was almost like a mask that this person was going to have, and it was very alien looking. I went to Gene and I begged. I said, "I don't care what else you do, and I'm going to fight you on this," because I really kind of keep my place and I don't want to get in there and argue because I don't really have very much authority. I said, "I don't care what else you do in this film, but there are fans out there who are going to croak when they see a Klingon that doesn't look like a Klingon!" He said, "Get me some pictures of Klingons." So I went through my files. I went through slides. I had alot of stuff, and I pulled out all the pictures of Klingons and said, "This is a Klingon. This is what a Klingon looks like. This is what a Klingon wears." So they're going with the basic Klingon. I just would have quit over that. I said, "There is NO way you are going to pass this off as a Klingon!" It was a good creative job, but what somebody had asked Fred to come up with wasn't a Klingon.

JV: Speaking of Klingons, in the movie, are there going to be any recognizable Klingons, like, say, Klingons that were in the series at one time?

SS. No, they'll be just Klingons.

JV: All new Klingons.

SS: All new Klingons, and they're going to speak Klingonese. We are trying to have the Klingons speak Klingonese instead of English because they are aliens, and it just seemed like it would be better. I think there will be an English printout or something below.

JV: Subtitles?

SS: They're not in the whole picture, only in a few opening scenes, and they're not subtitles either. Because we won't know what they're saying we're just going to have to get it from the sound of the language, which is why it's very important that we get a good sounding Klingon language.

JV: You are working on a book about the making of the STAR TREK movie, and you have had books in print, so I was wondering if you've read any of the new STAR TREK novels.

SS: I have to read alot of them before they're published to make sure they don't contain gross errors or are too heavy on the violence and that sort of thing. Books that are published by Bantam, I've been reading pre-publication for about the last year or so, I guess. Some things you can't catch when reading over 200 pages a day from manuscripts they're giving you, so some errors go by unnoticed. Also, for every book that came out, they sent me about 10 that didn't make it that I also had to read. So basically I looked for the gist of the story to make sure that it wasn't boring or overly violent. They send alot of things and what I usually look for is an interesting storyline. Does it move the reader along fast? Can you get involved with the story? Is it good writing, or is it bogged down and too wordy and lengthy, or is it too far-fetched? We had one story submitted to us that dealt with guerrilla warfare. We just absolutely turned it down. It was very well written. It was just the wrong sort of thing that we wanted to do a whole novel about, because they ended up on this planet where these people were fighting a guerrilla war, and it was too much like Arabs and Israelis or Cambodians and Chinese.

JV: Are you ever interviewed by reporters who know nothing about STAR TREK?

SS: No, most of the people, even the guys at the T.V. stations, know a little bit. They may slip and say STAR WARS, one of them kept doing that and he had to cut tape and start again because he kept saying, "Now, when STAR WARS comes out...," and I'm going (whispers), "STAR TREK...STAR TREK." Then he'd say, "Oh, yeah, right," and, "Will Dr. Spock be...," and I'm going (whispers), Mr. Spock...Mr. Spock." They usually know something about it, and they're interested in it. I don't think there's anybody who is not interested in it who'd be doing an interview. Even if they didn't know that much about it, they would say, "Tell us about it." I'd take it from there. That's all they'd really have to say, but there has been so much coverage on it that I don't really run into any problems. I'm always happy to do an interview. I was on Channel 6 down in the dealer's room [at Shuttlecon Columbus]] the other day. They asked one question. I can talk for 5 minutes on one question.

JV: Have you ever considered writing a novel of your own?

SS: Yeah, I've considered it. I don't have the time though, and I don't have an agent so it's easier just to do STAR TREK books because anyone else would have to have an agent to help them to be "seen." I don't have that problem because I'm right there. In fact, I have an idea for a STAR TREK novel based on a script idea that I worked out with the associate producer Jon Povill once when we were really desperate for new stuff. Of course the script never made it very far, but I thought it might be fun to make a novel out of it. But I don't know if I really could. I've never written fiction before. There's a little barrier there, and I'm sort of a little bit afraid of it, but I think I really would like to try it anyway. Once, I was going to write the "great-american novel". It was going to be semi-autobiographical, about a young lady who comes to Los Angeles, but I gave up on it.

AT THIS POINT WE WERE HEARING THE END OF OUR INTERVIEW, AND SUSAN DECIDED TO TURN THINGS AROUND A BIT.

SS: , So, how many people are in your club?

JV: I don't know the exact number as of this moment. It changes everyday. The last I heard there were about thirty-some people.

SS: Oh, that sounds good. Are you going to play this tape for them?

JV: No, we're going to transcribe it and slightly edit it and then use it as an interview for our fanzine.

SS: Oh, I see. . ..