MovieChat Forums > Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) Discussion > How was DeForest Kelley's health in this...

How was DeForest Kelley's health in this?

posted 7 years ago by TMC-4 (20284)
8 replies | jump to latest

I know that they wanted the "Big 3" of the original series (Kirk, Spock and Bones) to appear in "Generations" but Kelley couldn't do it because he couldn't get insured (it's a union requirement for anyone on a film set) due to his declining health at the time (he would pass away from stomach cancer five years after "Generations" was released). So they had Scotty and Chekov fill-in for Spock (Leonard Nimoy didn't want to do it because he wanted a more sizable role and the dialogue was made up of stuff that Spock wouldn't naturally say) and Bones respectively.

[–] [deleted] 6 years ago

That's a good question.

[–] PaladinNJ (21594) 5 years ago

He didn't die until 9 years after this movie was filmed. Probably wasn't an issue in this film. How long did he have the cancer?

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

I heard George Takei say once that Kelley's health actually started to go bad when they were filming Star Trek IV in 1986. He probably had a lot of problems that just got worse every year.

[–] ebhaynz (3724) 5 years ago

I also think Nimoy had health issues way before Star Trek IV..I believe I read an article where Nimoy's daughter said he had trouble breathing whenever he took her on a walk outside because of his smoking addiction..heck, this might have been in the 70's!

[–] TMC-4 (20284) 4 years ago

I read that one reason why DeForrest Kelley jumped at the chance to appear as Leonard McCoy in the Star Trek: TNG pilot (besides obviously, symbolic "passing the torch") was because he needed the money. At the time, he made much of his income from doing a lot of Star Trek conventions.

He didn't necessarily do them because he liked them, it was really because he and his wife were ill. Unfortunately, he was still two years away from being allowed to move into the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital.

So any night he got to sleep in a hotel and have a free meal, he was going take it. And any job he could get to pay his bills, he was going to take. If you look for example, at the Star Trek audio books of the '80s and '90s, he was a contributor to a lot of them.

https://www.quora.com/Why-didnt-William-Shatner-ever-appear-in-Star-Trek-TNG-like-DeForest-and-Nimoy-did-Kirk-wasn-t-noted-as-dead-until-Generations/answer/Jess-Willey-1

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

"Aside from a touch of arthritis, I'd say pretty good!"

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

[deleted]

[–] CrabgrassWilly (1616) 3 years ago

You beat me to the punch! (I'm a really slow typer).