TO BE SURE, THE BRIT WASN'T THE first VIP to beam aboard the star-ship Enterprise set. President Ronald Reagan once inspected the bridge, as did Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell. But no visitor has ever stirred the cast and crew of TV's syndicated Star Trek: The Next Generation more than Stephen Hawking, 51, the world-renowned Cambridge University physicist and, it turns out, world-class Trekker, who turned up at Paramount Studios in L.A. last spring and allowed himself to be lifted out of his wheelchair and placed, briefly, in Jean-Luc Picard's captain's chair. Says Brent Spiner (who plays Lieutenant Commander Data): "This may be the high point of my days on Star Trek."
Hawking, the author of the 1988 international best-seller A Brief History of Time, wasn't just touring the premises either. The man whose pioneering research advanced our know ledge of those mysterious phenomena known as black holes—collapsed stars so dense that their gravity can suck in planets, suns, nebulae, even light itself—was making his acting debut on a sci-fi series in which black holes coexist with warp-speed travel and dilithium crystals, and humans interact with Klingons, Romulans and, occasionally, those pointy-eared Vulcans.
It was, in fact, Spock himself, in the person of actor Leonard Nimoy, who was the catalyst for Hawking's impromptu guest turn on the TNG episode, which airs this week on most stations around the known universe. At the Brief History cocktail party, Nimoy presented Hawking, who, stricken with the incurable motor-neuron illness known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), can communicate only via a computerized voice synthesizer. Despite the difficulty, Vulcan's most famous son and Earth's most celebrated cosmologist instant!) melded minds. "The science fiction of today," Nimoy remembers Hawking telling him, "is the science fact of tomorrow."
After that party, producer Freed-man confided to Nimoy that Hawking, a longtime Trek fan, yearned to appear on the show. Faster than he once said "One to beam up, Mr. Scott," Nimoy was on the phone to TNG's executive producer Rick Berman, who hastily commissioned a three-minute scene in which brainy android Data programs the ship's holodeck (a sort of 3-D dream machine) to conjure up replicas of three of history's greatest intellects: Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and (portraying himself) Stephen Hawking. And what would they all be doing? Why, playing poker with Data—and talking shop, of course.
Hawking was delighted with the concept. But executing it in front of a camera would be one giant leap for a man whose physical universe began shrinking 30 years ago, when as a Cambridge graduate student he first learned he had the incurable and ultimately fatal ALS. And while he has amazed everyone by surviving far longer than most sufferers of the disease, Hawking is now virtually immobile in his wheelchair, able to breathe only through an air tube. On the set, shooting came to a periodic halt as a nurse wiped saliva from Hawking's mouth (he has no control of his swallowing) and drained his tracheotomy lube to clear his throat. "It takes a lot of guts, astonishing courage," says TNG episode director Alex Singer of Hawking's willingness to expose the intimate details of his illness to a studio full of strangers.
Indeed, as much as his body may have wasted away, Hawking's spirit remains undiminished and, in some small part, the master of his motions. "Everyone was quite astonished at how much mobility his face has," says Singer, who asked his guest star to use an assortment of facial expressions during the shoot. "The vitality behind it is very evident." Says actor John Neville (who plays Newton) of Hawking's extraordinary effort: "When you get that smile in response to something you've said, it's worth the whole day's pay, really."
Hawking did more than react. This was, after all, a speaking part; he and Newton and Einstein swap in-jokes about physics. As soon as he received the script, the fledgling thespian programmed his dialogue—including pauses and intonation—into his voice synthesizer. It was his costar Spiner who was left virtually speechless. "What do you ask the smartest man in the universe?" he says.
Data needn't have fretted. As makeup artist June Haymore recalls, Hawking was "humble and unpretentious and just a sweet little man." And having one hell of a good time. Reported Gordon Freedman later: "He was just beaming for days afterward."
Hawking wasn't alone. "When Rick [Berman] and I are in the old-folks home sitting in rocking chairs," predicts the starstruck Spiner, "we're going to be talking about the Hawk."
MICHAEL A. LIPTON
STANLEY YOUNG in Hollywood
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