PLUME: Is it difficult, from a political stand point, to do the Trek films?

SPINER: Yeah, it is, only in that - gosh, I’ve got to be careful, because I tend to say what I’m thinking… and that’s always a mistake.

PLUME: Too few people do. Unfortunately it perpetuates a lot of the problems.

SPINER: Really, it’s like, you do interviews, and the deal is you’re supposed to take the company line - which makes for a really boring interview. But that’s the deal. We’re getting ready to do a junket for this movie, and I know - I already know what the answers are, and I don’t even know the questions yet.

PLUME: Well, I wish I had a lot of faith in the upcoming film. I’m hoping it’s better than my initial impressions of the script.

SPINER: Oh, really? I think the script is great.

PLUME: There were certain aspects to it… it just played - soap operatic, melodramatic. A lot of stuff between Shinzon and Picard, it just played a little over the top - like there should have been some revisions done down the line.

SPINER: Well, you know, first of all, the script you saw was a really early draft.

PLUME: That was hope number one.

SPINER: Right, because people still ask me, “What is like to play B9?” Well, it’s not B9, it’s B4 - B9 was many drafts ago.

PLUME: Which is another interesting aspect of the script, too. Do you feel it’s somehow sort of cheat to kill the character off, but the character’s not really killed off?

SPINER: Well, the character’s really killed off. I mean, he’s as dead as he can get - at this point. We don’t know… there’s only hope at the end. There’s not a transition into a new character. There’s only hope that maybe one day he’ll evolve. It is a glimmer of it where there was none before, you know?

SPINER: I think so, too. It’s about as ambiguous as you can get, isn’t it?

PLUME: That’s got to be encouraging.

SPINER: Yeah, it is. But let me just say this, just for your sake - when you go to see this movie, you’re going to see the best Star Trek movie you’ve ever seen. I’ve seen it.

PLUME: I’m hoping. It’s got to better than Insurrection.

SPINER: Oh, it is. It’s better than any you’ve seen. It’s the first Star Trek movie that I’ve seen that I turned to Rick Berman afterwards and said, “I want to see this again.”

PLUME: How much of that was an influence of having Stuart Baird on board?

SPINER: None.

PLUME: Because I’ve heard a lot of stories about Stuart’s …

SPINER: No, Stuart did a fine job, and he’s a really conscientious guy who was really, really intent on making a good movie, and he drew his sword … he wouldn’t budge until he could get what he wanted.

PLUME: Causing some conflict with some of the cast members?

SPINER: Not necessarily cast members… maybe with everyone. But conflict is always a good thing when you’re trying to make a piece of art.

PLUME: There was a wonderful quote from Patrick a few months back, asking if he was able to make a connection with Stuart Baird, and Patrick’s reply was, “I try, but he keeps ducking.”

SPINER: Patrick and Stuart got on very well, as did me and Stuart. We had no problems making this movie.

PLUME: Well, what are the rumors that keep popping up all the time - and I guess you’re the perfect person to ask, to either put them down or explain why these keep popping up - of you and Patrick coming in and taking over the Star Trek franchise?

SPINER: Yeah, that didn’t happen at all - in the least.

PLUME: Where do the rumors like that keep coming from? Because they continuously resurface.

SPINER: Yeah, but they come from people making them up. Almost anything you read on the Internet about what’s going on on the set or what we’re doing or anything, is untrue. We didn’t take over in any respect. Rick Berman produced this movie, as he always does.

PLUME: I think the recent rumor was along the lines that, since the new TV series Enterprise is flagging at this point, Paramount was interested in a pitch from you and Patrick for revitalizing the franchise.

SPINER: Yeah, not true at all. Basically what happened - and this was like a year before Enterprise went on the air, so that’s how I know it’s not true - Paramount, through Rick, called us and said if we could come up with a good story, they might be interested in doing another feature. It had nothing to do with Enterprise. Enterprise was like a glimmer in Rick’s eye, at that point.

PLUME: Well, I know - of all of the Next Generation actors - it seems like you’re one of the only ones who hasn’t had the inclination towards directing.

SPINER: Right.

PLUME: Was it just a personal choice that you kept turning down the offer?

SPINER: No, it was never offered, but if it was - you know, I’m not really… the one thing that’s required for directing, and Stuart had this in spades, is boundless energy. It’s everything I can do just to show up, much less direct. Really, just in addressing some of the rumors - so little of it is fact. Really. So much of it is just nonsense. One thing that really continually bugs me that I hear about is the sort of negativity towards Rick. It’s such an irony, because if it wasn’t for Rick, Star Trek would have ended with our series. That would have been it - no more movies, no more TV, no more nothing. Rick is single-handedly the guy who kept Star Trek going - for the fans. He’s probably the one person they’re most negative about, without knowing that they owe him the fact that they have Star Trek to watch.

PLUME: Do you think a lot of the perpetual nature of that comes from how low-key Rick is?

SPINER: I think that’s part of it, and how much he likes to be in the background, and not be a personality. I think a lot of it has to do with the reverence for Gene - a well-deserved reverence for Gene. Anybody who sort of filled those shoes would have been shot down. It is absolutely crazy, because like it or not, the fans watch the show. Deep Space and Voyager and all of our movies have had really considerable audiences - maybe not as big as Next Generation had, but that was another time, too. Truly, Gene’s participation on Next Generation pretty much came to an end by the third season.

PLUME: That’s about the time his health really started to fail, wasn’t it?

SPINER: Yeah, and by the second season, really his participation was - and he was a wonderful man, and we loved him - but he watched the final cuts of the shows and gave notes on them. He didn’t write them, or re-write them, or anything. Rick produced the show.

PLUME: So it was a consultation type aspect.

SPINER: Yeah.

Continued below…