Eric Ostensen, an unassuming Yellowstone shirt-wearing 20-year-old stationed behind the desk of the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, got the job of chauffeuring Mr. Spock himself to the surface of his home planet.

When the “Star Trek” television series got the green light for a full-length motion picture, creator Gene Roddenberry and the production team wanted to make a big impression with an on-location shoot.

 

 

No place on Earth seems like it should be on another planet than Yellowstone.

They flew a production crew, a partial set, and Leonard Nimoy to Yellowstone for a scene set on Vulcan, Mr. Spock’s home planet.

Ostensen didn’t have a major role in the short shoot at Mammoth Hot Springs, but he remembers it vividly. It was one of the most memorable experiences of his short time in Yellowstone.

“They had one day to do it, so everything was ready for a surgical strike,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “Paramount Pictures paid us $50 a day to lug equipment and shuttle people back and forth.

“It was weird but a lot of fun and I got to drive Mr. Spock to work on Vulcan!”“Star Trek” remains one of the most popular and influential science fiction franchises in history, but it wasn’t all that popular during its original run from 1966 to 1969.

“The original ‘Star Trek’ series had been considered a failure by some,” “Star Trek” expert Larry Nemecek told Cowboy State Daily in January 2024. “They were fighting budgets, fighting time, and fighting all the people that didn’t get sci-fi until NBC finally got rid of it.”

That all changed with the 1977 release of “Star Wars.” Seeing the astronomical success of space sagas at the box office, and the new information on audience demographics, Paramount immediately gave Roddenberry and director Robert Wise a $40 million budget to bring “Star Trek” to the silver screen.

Ostensen didn’t know about any of this Hollywood treatment when he started working at the front desk of the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel. A buddy working at Old Faithful hooked him up for the summer.

“I had just moved to Boise, Idaho, from the suburbs of Chicago,” he said. “As soon as we got out here, I was just looking for something to do, so I drove over to Mammoth Hot Springs, and they got me a job.”

It wasn’t glamorous work. Ostensen recalled lugging around a lot of baggage, greeting tour buses, and all the manual labor required to book and keep track of hotel and cabin reservations.

That’s how he noticed a reservation for 10 cabins, placed by Paramount Pictures, in August 1978. He remembered how much a significant reservation “snuck up” on him, especially since he had no information about it.

“Nobody knew anything,” he said. “We asked our location manager, and he either didn’t know or didn’t say anything. I think the whole production of the movie was very hush-hush at that point, and they never said what they were doing.”

It didn’t take much to find out what they were doing. Why else would Mr. Spock be on the boardwalk at Mammoth?

In his 1980 book “The Making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” Roddenberry said the Yellowstone shot was “one of the most complex shots of the movie.” An 11-person crew arrived at Mammoth on Aug. 8, 1978, the second day of production for the first “Star Trek” movie.

Mammoth Hot Springs, specifically Minerva Terrace, was selected to be the backdrop for a scene where Spock consults with the Vulcan Elders on his home planet, Vulcan. Nemecek said the production team wanted an environment with a personality, not just the aesthetic of an alien world.

“They always said Vulcan was ‘a hot planet,’” he said. “They wanted the alien aspects of Minerva Terrace: the liquid, the bubbling, the steam, the rock formations, the geology.”

After securing permission from the National Park Service, which Roddenberry described as “no easy feat in a national park at the height of tourist season,” the crew arrived with a custom-built platform to be placed adjacent to the boardwalk.

Ostensen was one of the first people outside of Paramount to see Nimoy as Spock in nearly a decade. The Yellowstone shoot was the first scene he shot for the film, making it the first time he physically embodied the iconic role since “Star Trek” was canceled.

Not many people can say they shuttled Nimoy as Spock. Ostensen kept his enthrallment to himself, even as he noticed the evident “movie magic” used to transform Nimoy into Spock.

“You could see the little pieces of tape holding his hair in places, and stuff when you’re up close,” he said.

And what wisdom did Mr. Spock have for his young Yellowstone chauffeur? Did he quote the now iconic line, “Live long and prosper,” while giving the Vulcan salute?

“It was just, ‘Good morning,’ and small talk about what we were doing at Mammoth,” Ostensen said. “There was nothing very interesting or reportable that I remember, and I can see why. We were mostly college kids.”

One would think spotting Mr. Spock in Yellowstone would have been a huge local story, but the moment came and went without much fanfare. Neither Roddenberry nor Nemecek had any record of disturbances caused by fans or tourists, but Roddenberry did note an amusing moment of spontaneous solidarity.

“Even the kids working for the summer in the hotel cafeteria were enthralled with the idea of having a movie company staying at their hotel,” he wrote. “They raided the kitchen for aluminum foil, from which they manufactured their own version of pointed ears and wore them all day in Mr. Spock’s honor while serving curious, unaware vacationers.”

Ostensen could confirm or deny Roddenberry’s account. He didn’t see any pointed silver ears, but he believes the cafeteria staff that summer were ridiculous enough to do it.

The “Star Trek” shoot lasted three days. With that, the Paramount production unit returned to Los Angeles for the rest of the film.

Ostensen didn’t see Nimoy after dropping him off at “Vulcan,” but he remembered the production team having enough time to enjoy some of Yellowstone and go whitewater rafting before they left. There’s no record of Spock being first mate on the raft.

I don’t know how much of (that shoot) was hard work, but they had to get everything ready for the one day with Nimoy,” he said. “With the permission they got from the National Park Service, it had to be as a surgical strike.”

Ostensen didn’t get any autographs or a credit for his work. What he did get was enough money to buy a wedding ring for his girlfriend, whom he married later that summer in Scottsbluff, Nebraska.

Did they live long and prosper, as Spock would encourage them to do?

“It lasted about two and a half years,” he said. “We were young and dumb, and decided to get married young and foolishly. It was a practice marriage, and Paramount paid for her wedding band.”

“Star Trek: The Motion Picture” premiered on Dec. 7, 1979. It earned $139 million, but Paramount, critics, and Trekkies were expecting more from the franchise’s first movie, with some calling it “the Motion Sickness” and “the Motionless Picture.”

“A lot of people who love the original series love the original movie,” Nemecek said. “Of all the Star Trek movies after this, some have been better, some much better, some have been not good at all. A lot of people say that the original motion picture was the most ‘science fiction.’ It wasn’t just about the Star Trek characters, Klingons, spaceships, and Federation aliens. It really was out there.”

Ostensen didn’t share Nemecek’s generous appraisal.

“I don’t want to say how disappointed I was in the movie,” he said. “We drove 100 miles in the snow to Idaho Falls to see it, and remember thinking, ‘This is long and dull.’”