Holy cow. You can really tell that Nimoy really has very strong feelings about that first movie even 32 years later!

Roddenberry was a pilot in WW2, after the war he was a commercial pilot and performed heroically after a crash landing in the Syrian desert. Star Trek benefited from Roddenberry's real world experiences. And the people who wrote for Star Trek were outstanding writers who used science fiction as a sounding board for social challenges, there was no challenge mankind couldn't overcome. Nimoy is right in that he understood so well why young people like myself watched Star Trek, we didn't give a sh!t about laser gun shootouts in space. I have always thought you could have a great Star Trek where the ship lost navigational capabilities and the crew would have to resort to basic math and star positions to return to a base for repairs, but I'm a geek at heart.

I agree with him about the third season as well as the first film. I've always wondered if the show would have gotten better or worse if they had made a fourth season. If the second film had been like TMP, that would have been the end of "Star Trek".

Brain and brain! What is brain?

this is why the writing is THE most important thing. In film. The MOST important thing. Its why the new Conana sucks its why Alien 3 and 4 sucked. Its why Predator vs Alien sucked. its why Superman 3 and 4 sucked (reeves's last 2 superman movies). Bad premises and SHT scripts. you NEED good writing or fantasy is just a pile of sht.