{"id":354591,"date":"2026-06-10T12:26:34","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T12:26:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/354591\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T12:26:34","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T12:26:34","slug":"how-a-filmmakers-san-francisco-obsession-helped-shape-star-trek-iv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/354591\/","title":{"rendered":"How a filmmaker\u2019s San Francisco obsession helped shape \u2018Star Trek IV\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"William<\/p>\n

William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy stand in front of the\u00a0Golden Gate Bridge in \u201cStar Trek IV: The Voyage Home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paramount 1986<\/p>\n

Nicholas Meyer was on his way to Hollywood in 1971 when an unexpected stop in San Francisco changed everything.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI had an aunt who lived there, so I stayed with her for a month,\u201d the Oscar-nominated filmmaker told the Chronicle during a recent video interview. \u201cI\u2019d never been to California and I had heard that San Francisco was a special place. I had no idea what that really meant until I crossed the Bay Bridge and was completely clobbered by the place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nicholas Meyer in person: Saturday, June 13. \u201cTime After Time,\u201d 2:30 p.m., followed by Q&A with Meyer and producer Steven-Charles Jaffe. \u201cStar Trek IV: The Voyage Home,\u201d 6:30 p.m., followed by Q&A with Meyer and Chronicle culture critic Peter Hartlaub. $25 per movie, $40 for both. Vogue Theatre, 3290 Sacramento St., S.F. voguemovies.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Indeed, that first visit left a lasting impression\u00a0\u2014 one that eventually played a major role in two of his beloved movies.<\/p>\n

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In \u201cTime After Time\u201d (1979) his directorial debut, H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell) uses his time machine to follow Jack the Ripper (David Warner) from Victorian London to the modern-day City by the Bay.<\/p>\n

Meyer then co-wrote the screenplay for \u201cStar Trek IV: The Voyage Home<\/a>\u201d (1986), specifically the San Francisco section, in which Capt. Kirk (William Shatner), Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy, who directs) and the Enterprise crew travel back in time to save a pair of humpback whales.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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He will present both films at the Vogue Theatre in San Francisco on Saturday, June 13, followed by a Q&A after each screening.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meyer, who also directed \u201cStar Trek II: The Wrath of Khan<\/a>\u201d (1982) and \u201cStar Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country\u201d (1991), has had a long and varied career. He directed \u201cThe Day After\u201d (1983), a hard-hitting ABC TV movie that imagined a nuclear attack on America and starred Jason Robards, John Lithgow and Amy Madigan<\/a>; and \u201cVolunteers\u201d (1985), a comedy starring East Bay native Tom Hanks<\/a> and John Candy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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He has also written six novels starring Arthur Conan Doyle\u2019s iconic sleuth, Sherlock Holmes. The first, \u201cThe Seven-Per-Cent Solution,\u201d was made into a 1976 movie starring Nicol Williamson, Robert Duvall<\/a> and Alan Arkin; his screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award. The sixth, \u201cSherlock Holmes and the Real Thing,\u201d was published last year by the Mysterious Press.<\/p>\n

In an interview with the Chronicle before his San Francisco appearance, he reflected on his love of the city, his \u201cStar Trek\u201d years and the unexpected turns of his career.<\/p>\n

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n

\"Producer<\/p>\n

Producer Steven-Charles Jaffe, left, and writer-director Nicholas Meyer on the set of \u201cTime After Time\u201d (1979).<\/p>\n

Courtesy Nicholas Meyer<\/p>\n

Q: \u201cTime After Time\u201d feels like it was made by someone who knows the city, which not every movie filmed here does.<\/p>\n

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A: Well, I stayed with (my aunt) a month at 116 Cherry St., and I went exploring every day. I made a mental list about all these cool places.<\/p>\n

Then, a couple of years later, when I found myself writing the screenplay, I was really determined to work in all the places that I loved, or as many of them as I could.<\/p>\n

It was definitely a love note to the city.<\/p>\n

Q: I heard you agreed to co-write \u201cStar Trek IV: The Voyage Home\u201d if they set it in San Francisco because you wanted to use some of the ideas you had for \u201cTime After Time\u201d but didn\u2019t get to incorporate into the film.<\/p>\n

A: That\u2019s entirely true. One scene which leaps to mind: H.G. Wells, having already caused one traffic accident because he didn\u2019t pay attention to the \u201cWalk, Don\u2019t walk\u201d sign, is standing on a street corner next to a kid holding a boombox, blasting something terrible. He\u2019d like to cross the street, but the sign says, \u201cDon\u2019t walk.\u201d So he\u2019s obliged to suffer.<\/p>\n

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I didn\u2019t shoot the scene very clearly, and it all bit the dust. But when we were doing \u201cStar Trek IV,\u201d which I think of as my comedy, I put (actor) Kirk Thatcher (dressed in punk style) on the bus with his ghetto blaster<\/a> and Spock replies with the Vulcan nerve pinch.<\/p>\n

\"H.G.<\/p>\n

H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell) is arrested by San Francisco Police Department officers in a scene from Nicholas Meyer’s “Time After Time” (1979).<\/p>\n

Warner Bros.<\/p>\n

Q: Was it because of \u201cTime After Time\u201d that you got \u201cStar Trek II\u201d?<\/p>\n

A: Not exactly. There was a movie I wanted to make a lot, a novel by a Canadian named Robertson Davies called \u201cFifth Business.\u201d I had written a terrific screenplay for it, and I spent about 16 years of my life trying to get it made, and broke my heart repeatedly. So I just sort of stopped looking at things.<\/p>\n

I had a childhood friend, Karen Moore, who was then an executive at Paramount. We were barbecuing hamburgers in my backyard, and she said, \u201cNicky, if you want to learn how to direct, you should direct and not sit up here holding your breath like an infant. Why don\u2019t you come down to Paramount and meet (producer) Harve Bennett? He\u2019s in charge of doing the second \u2018Star Trek\u2019 movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

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I said, \u201cIs that the one with the man with pointy ears?\u201d and she said, \u201cDon\u2019t be such a snob. You might like him.\u201d<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know anything about \u201cStar Trek.\u201d I\u2019d see it on TV, and just kept clicking by it because it looked ridiculous to me.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s safe to say that I was too stupid to notice all the things that made it special. I didn\u2019t notice the interracial cast, I didn\u2019t notice that women were in positions of power. All of this just blew right by me.<\/p>\n

Q: By the time you got on set, this cast had been playing these characters for the better part of two decades. Did they give you any blowback?<\/p>\n

A: They were great. They were used to different directors coming on to direct different episodes, and they could not have been more welcoming.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The other thing was that they really liked the script. Nichelle (Nichols, who played Lt. Uhura) would say, \u201cShe doesn\u2019t talk like this. She would never say that.\u201d And I would say, \u201cHow would she say it?\u201d And then we would change it.<\/p>\n

After we had shot the death of Spock, we were shooting the last scene of the movie, where they\u2019re all together on the bridge, looking at this new planet. I was reading the newspaper while (the crew) was setting up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There was an article that questioned whether Raoul Wallenberg (the Swedish businessman who saved thousands of Jews during World War II and disappeared in 1947) was alive or not. They asked the famed Nazi hunter, Simon Wiesenthal, \u201cYou think he\u2019s alive? You think he is dead?\u201d And Wiesenthal said, \u201cHe\u2019s not dead. As long as we remember him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll right,\u201d I thought. \u201cPut that in the movie.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy stand in front of the\u00a0Golden Gate Bridge in \u201cStar Trek IV: The Voyage…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[329,838,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-354591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-arts-and-entertainment","tag-movies-and-tv","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}