10 Notorious Star Trek Urban Legends

4. Spock Was Written Out Of Star Trek: Generations

Eddie Murphy Star Trek
Paramount

The opening scene of Star Trek: Generations is easily one of the best in the entire movie. It sees Kirk, Checkov, and Scotty arriving as honoured guests on the bridge of the USS Enterprise-B as it prepares for its maiden voyage, only for a perilous rescue operation to break out instead.

Originally, this was supposed to be the holy trinity of Kirk, Spock and McCoy, but the latter two had to be replaced. For McCoy, it was simply that DeForest Kelly's health was such that he wasn't able to get on-set insurance but, for Spock, it came down to several irresolvable creative differences. According to him, while there was a character named Spock in the script, his lines were so bland they could be spoken by anyone.

After being told that there simply wasn't time for a rewrite Spock declined the offer and the part went to James Doohan instead. Given that virtually no changes were made to the lines for them to fit Scotty, Leonard Nimoy has since pointed out that this proves he was right.

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