Robert Butler, Reluctant Star Trek Director, Dies at 95
Classic Hollywood hand helmed first pilot, "The Cage"
Robert Butler — the classic Hollywood director who only brought his talents to Gene Roddenberry's first attempt at a science fiction series called Star Trek at the suggestion of his wife — has died.
Butler passed away November 3 at the age of 95. The death was only reported Saturday.
Butler was a prolific television director known for work on series as diverse as The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Untouchables, Dr. Kildare, The Fugitive, and Columbo.
And he had a legacy of directing a number of TV pilots during a long career, in addition to that of original Star Trek, including those for Hogan’s Heroes, Moonlighting and Remington Steele.
Butler had directed episodes of Roddenberry’s earlier, military series, The Lieutenant, as well as an episode of Have Gun – Will Travel which Roddenberry had written when he was approached with taking on the pilot episode of Roddenberry’s next series, Star Trek — titled “The Cage,” and starring Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike — in 1964.
Years later, Butler would admit that he wasn't totally thrilled about the pilot Roddenberry had written — and only agreed to direct it at the urging of his wife.
“I read the script, and I was doubtful,” Butler said during an interview for the Television Academy Foundation. “A little disdain is great. To fall blindly in love with material is not as great as having a holdout corner of disdain. Objectivity is the result.
“I read the script, and I thought, ‘This is just a pallette of science fiction,’” he recalled. “Everything in science fiction that I know of was dragged into this pilot: the beautiful, young woman who was really an old hag, etc. All the old chestnuts were in the pilot.”
Butler remembered talking over the job with his wife, saying “This thing is too nuts.”
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“And she said, ‘Do it,’ so I did and really got behind it and did all the stuff that was in the script,” he said.
Butler remembered shooting the scene with a “killer chicken” in the alien Talosian zoo, with Hungarian actor and stunt performer Janos Prohaska who would go on to further work on Star Trek.
“This killer chicken, or some equivalent. It was just nuts,” Butler said.
NBC, of course, would famously reject that first pilot and order a second one, in which most of the players were recast including the replacement of William Shatner as Captain Kirk instead of Pike.
Roddenberry, not wanting to waste that original work, however, rewrote it with new wraparound material as the original series’ only two-part story, “The Menagerie.”
He asked Butler to return to direct the new story material, but Butler declined. Marc Daniels would come in and he would get credit for the first half of “The Menagerie,” while Butler would receive sole credit for directing Part II.
Butler would never return to work on Star Trek again, but not before he tried to convince Roddenberry to change the name of the series.
“I didn't like ‘Star Trek.’ It seemed pretentious to me, and though it wasn't my place to do that, I just knew him and I thought I would do him a favor by giving him a better title,” he said. “But, you know, he proved to be certainly righter than I was.”
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