Star Trek: The Motion Picture screenwriter Harold Livingston dies at 97

Harold Livingston, the American novelist best known for writing the screenplay for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, has died at the age of 97.

Prior to becoming a writer, Harold Livingston was one of the founding members of the Israeli Air Force and served during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Upon making the move to Hollywood, Livingston penned episodes of TV shows such as Run for Your Life, Mission: Impossible, The Magician, The Six Million Dollar Man, Mannix, Future Cop, Fantasy Island, and more. When the Star Trek franchise continued to get more and more popular following the cancellation of The Original Series, Paramount began developing a new Star Trek series known as Star Trek: Phase II. Harold Livingston was originally hired as a producer of that series and wrote the pilot script, In Thy Image. Scripts had been written and sets were under construction when Paramount made the choice to scrap the project in favour of transforming it into the first Star Trek feature film.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture brought back the original TV series cast members, including William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, George Takei, James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols, Walter Koenig, and Majel Barrett, along with new addition Persis Khambatta and Stephen Collins. The script was based on the Star Trek: Phase II pilot with both Gene Roddenberry and Alan Dean Foster contributing, but Livingston famously butted heads with Roddenberry, even saying that they were “at each other’s throats” throughout the process. In addition to his work on Star Trek, Harold Livingston also published many novels, including The Coasts of the Earth, The Detroiters, Rise a Tiger: A Novel, Touch the Sky, To Die in Babylon, The Climacticon, and No Trophy, No Sword. The Director’s Edition of Star Trek: The Motion Picture was recently remastered in 4K and was released on Paramount+ earlier this month.