 Leonard Nimoy (qv) was originally asked to act in and direct this  film, but he declined after reading the script and being told there  was not time to fix the parts with which he had problems. According  to Nimoy, there was a character named Spock in the script, but the  lines were so bland they could have been spoken by anyone (those  lines were given to Doohan, James (qv) as Scotty; Nimoy later  pointed to this as proof he was right).