NEWS: Wil Wheaton's Geek in Review: The Big Goodbye, Part Two: Journey's End

GEEK: Wil Wheaton's Geek in Review: The Big Goodbye, Part Two: Journey's End

Last time . . .

We headed out of the stage and back past the Hart building.

"See that window?" I said. "That used to be Gene's office."

"Mmmm," came the reply.

"Nobody is going to care about these things like you do," I thought. "Just keep it to yourself."

I looked at the window just a little bit longer. I recalled watching Shatner's infamous "Get a Life" sketch on 3/4-inch video tape in Gene's office with some of my friends who worked there during the second season.

A few Trekkie VIPs were there on a tour, and they watched it with us. (In the pre-Internet days, it was not very easy to watch that sketch on demand – come to think of it, thanks to NBC's armada of lawyers and the DMCA, it's just as hard today.) At one point in the sketch, Shatner says, "That was the evil Captain Kirk from episode 37, The Enemy Within . . ." and all of the Trekkies derisively snorted in unison, "YOU MEAN EPISODE FOUR!" I looked at my friend, who very subtly shook his head. These were Big Deal Trekkies; pointing out that they'd just brought the sketch into the real world would have created some problems.

Back in the present, I laughed out loud, and a couple of the crew looked at me. "Memories," I said.

I led them across the lot, on a route that would appear circuitous to anyone who didn't work there for the better part of four years. On the way to the stage, I passed the same familiar and significant landmarks from my youth that I wrote about in Just A Geek: That's where I met Eddie Murphy when I was sixteen . . . Hey! I crashed a golf cart there when I was fifteen . . . There's the mail room . . . There's stage six, where the bridge set started out . . . I almost got up the courage to kiss that girl at the Christmas party on that stage in . . . there's the stage where Shatner told me, "I'd never let a kid come onto my bridge."

The next line in Just A Geek is ". . . this street feels exactly the way it did when I worked here . . . here's where my trailer used to be . . .” Though I stood in that same place, it didn't feel the same, at all. Different trailers were there, filled with different actors working on different shows, but that wasn't why I just couldn't deny that twenty years had passed since I started working here. Maybe it was the knowledge that Star Trek is really gone for good, at least the way I knew it. Maybe it was the pain in my hip . . . or the responsibility on my shoulders. Maybe it was the fact that I have two sons who are older than I was when I started working on the series. Most likely, it was a combination of all those things.

I walked a bit farther, to the entrance to stages 8 and 9. In the hallway between them, where our security guard stopped tourists and Trekkies from coming onto the sets, where our bulletin board for callsheets, shooting schedules, and my brief foray into editorial cartoons used to be, there was now some sort of big, loud . . . something, with a fan and a bunch of pipes running out of it. As much as it should have prepared me, I was just gutted when I opened the stage nine door. Instead of seeing the back of a turbolift and a corridor leading to the transporter room and engineering, I saw a bunch of sets under construction. Sets that were quite clearly houses and other rooms set squarely in the 21st – not the 24th – century.

"Wow," I thought. "It's all . . . gone."

I stood in that open doorway for a long time and just stared, working hard to replace the reality inside the stage with the memories inside my head.

". . . ready?"

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Are you ready?" The producer asked.

"Uh, yeah." I reluctantly let the door close.

"It's too loud here to shoot, so we're set up behind the stage." He said.

I followed him down the street, past where my school room – what was effectively all of high school for me – used to be. There was a production golf cart for Everyone Hates Chris there now. I lingered briefly.

Moments later, we were set up in the alley behind the stage, just outside a giant open door. I looked inside. Where Sickbay once was, there was a set that looked like a child's room. Where the Holodeck once stood (and all the shuttlecraft interiors were shot) there was a large drop cloth and a several cans of paint. Where Picard used to command the battle bridge – one of my all-time favorite sets – there was a tropical backdrop.

I sighed and blinked back some tears.

"Everything okay?" The producer asked.

"Yeah," I said. "I'm just overwhelmed by a sadness right now that I can't really explain."

"I understand," he said. "This happens whenever we work with someone from Next Generation. I don't know what it was about you guys, but every single one of you loved each other and remembers working on the show very fondly."

"I didn't know that," I said, around a lump in my throat. "But I'm not surprised. I . . . I really miss those guys."

For the next few hours, we filmed host wraps. I told stories about my time on Star Trek to anyone who would listen, and a few who wouldn't.

In front of stage 16, where this photo was taken, I recalled an encounter with Lawrence Tierney (best known as Joe in Reservoir Dogs), who played Holodeck tough guy Cyrus Redblock.

"Hey," he said to me one afternoon between scenes, "do you play football?"

I was 15 at the time, and weighed 95 pounds . . . if I was soaking wet and carrying a ten-pound weight.

"Uh, no," I said.

He leaned into me, menacingly.

"Why the hell not? What are you, some kind of sissy faggot?"

I panicked, certain that he was going to beat the shit out of me because I was more comfortable throwing 3d6 than a pigskin.

"I'm not strong enough to play football!" I said.

"Well, maybe you wouldn't be so weak if you played football!" he growled.

An assistant director arrived just in time to call us to the set and save me from certain death.

"Everyone has their own story about Planet Hell," the producer said, pulling me back to 2007, "but yours is the first one that includes a fear of death unrelated to atmospheric smoke."

"Boy, we sure like to complain about that smoke. Did you know it was mineral oil-based?" I said.

"After all the cast interviews I've done over the years, I know everything in the world there is to know about that smoke." He said, dryly.

Now it was my turn to laugh.

When the day was over, we headed back to stage 24, where they were set up to interview Ron Moore.

"How's it going?" I said to him when he walked into the stage.

"It's weird," he said. "This is the first time I've been here in years."

He looked around and his voice softened. "Did you know there aren't any writers left in the Hart building? Brannon is moving out, and he was the last one. It's just a bunch of accountants right now."

"That's poetic," I said.

He looked away for a moment and furrowed his brow.

"It's just . . . I look around here and –"

"I know." I said. "I totally grok."

We talked for a few more minutes, until they were ready for his interview.

"I will kick myself later if if I don't tell you how much I continue to love Battlestar," I said before I left. I didn't get up the nerve to add, "and I'd really love to work on it if you have anything for me, because it's just about the best sci-fi on television, ever." Later on, I kicked myself, and delivered one more to Jenny and the wimp.

"It's always good to see you," he said.

"Thanks, man. You too."

I shook hands with everyone and said goodbye. When I got out of the stage, and walked past the Hart building I stopped and looked at Gene's old office window one last time. Though I'd said goodbye to Gene at his funeral in 1991, I said goodbye to him again – and to so many other things.

On my way back to the valet, I walked past the commissary, where I ate grilled mustard chicken with curly fries a few times a week during much of the series. I remembered a day, during the third season, when I didn't have a lot of cash on hand and no credit card, so my server got severely under-tipped. I planned to make it up to him the next day, but when I walked in, he silenced the entire commissary by running toward me from the back, screaming at me for stiffing him the day before. It was the first and last time in my life I wanted someone to be fired for the way they treated me. Strangely, I still feel bad that I unintentionally stiffed the guy. Funny how those things stay with you and come back when you least expect them to.

Just past the commissary, where there used to be a company store that sold T-shirts and satin jackets celebrating the wearer's affinity for Cheers, there was now a smaller company store that included a Coffee Bean. I stepped into the same room where I once bought really cheesy TNG T-shirts and insanely cool tiny communicator pins for my friends and family, and bought myself an iced green tea.

I made my way back to the valet, where I traded my orange ticket with numbers on it for my car. While I waited for it to arrive, I struggled to put the nostalgia and associated sadness of the day into perspective. I didn't mourn the loss of my sets, as much as I mourned the time in my life those sets represented: a time when my biggest responsibility was knowing my lines and getting to the set on time, not coming up with college tuition for the next four years. A time when KROQ played music that was relevant to me, and I knew all the DJs. A time when my biggest problem in the world was getting out of costume and makeup early enough to make it to the Forum for a Kings game. A time when my life was simpler and easier, when I had the luxury of taking for granted that I would always have everything I wanted and my opportunities were as numerous as the little mirrored stars on the black velvet starfield that hung behind Ten Forward on stage 9 . . . stars that are, most likely, cut up into hundreds of little bits to be doled out at auction for the next decade.

But, complicated as it is, I really like my life. I have a beautiful wife and two children who, though they don't carry my DNA, are clearly mine in every way that matters. I'm not going to be buying a boat any time soon, but I have been able to touch lives as a writer in ways that I never could have when I wore a spacesuit, just reading the words that other people thought I should say.

The valet brought my car around, and I gave him a couple bucks from my front pocket.

"Thank you, sir," he said.

Goddamn, it's weird to be “sir."

"No problem."

I got in my car and headed toward a red light on Van Ness, where a big decision loomed: turn left and drive back over Los Feliz, the way I always used to drive? Or make a right and head down across Beverly?

Luckily, this was an easy one. I hit my blinker and began my voyage home.

Wil Wheaton doesn't need to walk around in circles.

*sniffles*
Dude, you're killing me with these stories.

That stage 16 photo is great! So touching... thanks for sharing!

Once again thank you for sharing this with us

To add: I second Solaris's TNG Party thought

thirded

That actually made me tear up a little.

Will, I think we are equally as happy that you became a writer, as you are that you spent time on the lot. Thanks.

Thanks, guys.

There are some photos in my flickr stream that go with this story, if you want to see if they match the pictures in your head.

And fourthed.

Thanks for these blogs, Wil - I miss TNG, and it's great to see insider stuff.

Awesome work, Wil.

Mr. Wheaton,

Your perspective will be unique to your children as they get older.

Of course, I and others of my generation will only be able to tell children what it was like to watch TNG during our college/retail/pizza delivery years, and they would say, "Uncle John/Mr. Shelkop/Dad (but not as far as I know)... YOU ARE SUCH A GEEK!"

Your children get to hear about how you were Wes Crusher. Then of course, as you go into details of your experiences, they too will likely say, "you are such a geek!"

Peace, Sir.

Eloquent, moving, and entertaining, as always.

It's a pleasure to have you writing in the blogosophere, Wil. Please keep it up.

Aw, dude... *sniff*

Candid photos are always best. Posed photos are for yearbooks.

Unlike all the various pictures of the cast that turn up in "Making Of" books and their like, it's those unzipped-at-the-neck, coffee-cup-in-hand shots that remind us out here in the audience that the 45 minutes we saw on television every week was just 45 minutes of your week. We don't know what it was like to step from the battle bridge into the LA sunshine.

A picture like that really brings a lot of the stories in Just a Geek home. These aren't just behind-the-scenes anecdotes. These are those weird almost-feel-it memories that we all have, except America was watching yours.

I look at you as an awkward teenager and think of me as an awkward teenager. I can't imagine what it must've been like to feel that age... and stand up in front of TV cameras every day.

i'm so there.

Seriously what kind of "sissy faggot" rolls 3d6. Whats wrong, couldn't you lift the d8 s.

It was more like 12 hour days, five days a week, seven days per episode, but I get what you're saying.

I felt like it was risky to say in one of my books that, at the end of the day, Star Trek was our job, and like any job there were days when it was awesome and days when it sucked. You'd be surprised (or maybe not) at how many people can't grok that.

My greatest regret, which I voiced in Just a Geek, is that I didn't fully appreciate every single one of those hours when I was a teenager. I know it was just me acting my age, but that doesn't make me any less sad that I missed out on them, when they were right there in front of me for the taking.

That is really, really awesome, and it makes me so happy that I've been able to connect with you and others through these stories I tell.

Standing in front of cameras was easy. It was standing in front of my peers -- and in front of Trekkies -- that was so hard.

I echo what pretty much everyone else said before me.

This is really great -- it brings forth a wave of nostalgia for things I never really experienced except in the most vicarious way, like reading one of Will Durant's histories. I hope Ron Moore keeps you in mind, Wil. Battlestar really is the best science fiction going right now (love for Heroes, too), and it'd be great to see you solve a few of their multitude of problems -- or, for a change, add to them.

Best,

-TTm

Will, as much as I loved you in TNG (at least, I was extremely jealous of you) _ and as talented an actor as you are _ I honestly believe that you are an even better writer.

So thanks for sharing.

Great story again. My favorite part was :

LOL..so reminded me of Jesse Ventura in the beginning of Predator. I myself played some sports AND threw that 3d6...the 3d6 was usually more fun.

I always wondered how interesting it would have been to be an actor in a series like TNG. As much as I love ST in all its forms, and I love Battlestar tons...I would have slain people to be on Babylon 5..and after I met Mira Furlan it made me appreciate how awesome people from all walks of life are, some anyways. I'm just glad to get those glimpses of what you have done and seen, you're an excellent individual. Thanks again.

Right! What I mean is we only saw 45 minutes, which means there's all this other time that we don't see and... aw, screw it. You know what I meant.