Time After Time: Nicholas Meyer on His First Film, His Star Trek Future, and Sherlock Holmes

Nicholas Meyer is perhaps one of the most influential living American writers. To prove it all you have to do is say two things: He saved Star Trek and he made Sherlock Holmes popular again. With his incisive work as the director of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in 1982, and his break-out Holmes novel hit The Seven-Per-Cent in 1974, Meyer made a name for himself as the kind of writer who geeks out with characters and historical situations that interest him, and weaves his deep knowledge of adjacent interests to make something entirely new. “These things sort of occur to me,” Meyer tells Den of Geek. “I bump into them. I’m a rather intuitive and non-analytic thinker. I’ll stumble across something that either relates to the books I’ve already written, or something I read that sort of fits or could fit into the chronology, and I go from there.” 

In trying to meld together disparate screenplays for Star Trek II, Meyer realized his boyhood love for Horatio Hornblower could help guide the tone and structure of the film. For his latest Sherlock Holmes novel—Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell—Meyer combines his passion for WWI history and spy fiction with a deep understanding of the Holmesian canon. And 45 years ago, on Sept. 28, 1979, his very first film Time After Time hit theaters, in which Meyer weaved his mash-up magic onscreen for the first time: the author H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell) isn’t an author, but an actual time traveler, and he’s hot on the trail of Jack the Ripper (David Warner) who has stolen his time machine.

While on book tour for The Telegram from Hell, Meyer took a moment to reflect on his very first film, his creative process, and what we might expect from his next Star Trek project, plus a few surprises. 

“I’m really proud of Time After Time, and I think it holds up exceptionally well,” Meyer says. “I have to add in the same breath that artists are not the best judges of their own work”

Released six years before Back to the Future, Meyer’s Time After Time takes Victorian gentleman H.G. Wells and makes him into the ultimate fish-out-of-water. Early in the film, a colleague which Wells knows only as John Leslie Stevenson is revealed to be the notorious murderer Jack the Ripper, who steals a time machine, causing Wells to pursue him into the future, which was, in 1974, our present. Like Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (also co-written by Meyer), much of the action takes place in San Francisco, which, in his memoir, The View From the Bridge, Meyer described as part of the basic pitch: “…our production would be cheap. I would need only two Victorian costumes, and most of the special effects would be in the minds of the viewers.” 

Although the story for Time After Time was inspired by a then-in-progress novel by Meyer’s friend Steve Hayes, the film itself has all the hallmarks of what makes Meyer’s work great; the film takes itself seriously but is having a great deal of fun at the same time. Those who watch Time After Time back-to-back with The Voyage Home will find a few repeated gags, though. Perhaps the best joke in the film is that H.G. Wells thinks of McDonald’s as a Scottish restaurant. Meyer is also responsible for the casting of Mary Steenburgen in this film as Amy, who becomes the contemporary girlfriend of H.G. Wells, setting her up to become another time traveler’s girlfriend in Back to the Future III in 1990. He also fought against the producers who didn’t believe McDowell could play the hero, because they insisted, at that time, McDowell was always cast as the villain. “Yes, but this time he’ll be the hero,” Meyer insisted. “That’s acting!”

Warner Bros. also wanted Meyer to cast Mick Jagger as Jack the Ripper, which, although Meyer considered it, and even had a few beers with the famous Rolling Stone frontman, stuck with his gut and cast Warner instead, a decision he doesn’t regret. And for those who love the work of Warner, Time After Time is patient zero for when some of the best stuff begins. 

“I look at a movie of mine for the first 10 years after I’ve made it, all I can see are the things I did wrong, and it’s a source of dissatisfaction, frustration, and embarrassment,” Meyer says now. “But, when I look at it after 20 years or more, I find I’m able to judge it less super-critically, I’m able to enjoy it more. And I think Time After Time is a perfect example of that. For a long time, it being the first movie I ever directed, all I could see were my mistakes, and when I watch now, all I can see is how good it is. How well it holds up! But that’s one man’s non-objective opinion.” 

Meyer has yet to form an opinion of his latest Holmes novel, the Telegram from Hell, but that’s probably because the book has only been out since late August. This novel is one of the rare Holmes adventures that take place in the later years of the detective’s career, after the events of the short story “His Law Bow,” in which Arthur Conan Doyle revealed that in his sixties, Holmes became a spy working for the UK government leading up to and during, WWI. Meyer takes that idea and runs with it, putting Holmes and Watson into the thick of the events around the war, sending the pair on a vintage spy mission. Their handler is the historically accurate William Melville, who many believe was the inspiration for “M” in Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. That said, Meyer insists that he’s not turning Holmes into Bond, but instead simply using real history to craft his own tale.

“When I picked M and Sir William Melville, I was going back to the reality that Ian Fleming was using when he created [his] M,” Meyer says. “But I wasn’t going back to Ian Fleming, I was going back to Sir William Melville and to another extent, Mycroft [Holmes], whose name fortunately begins with M.” 

Since 1974, when he teamed up Sherlock Holmes and Sigmund Freud for The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Meyer has written six Holmes pastiches. He says that perhaps his next Holmes book is his last. “I’ve written one more which is called Sherlock Holmes and the Real Thing,” he reveals. “It’s an earlier adventure, it’s not WWI or post-WWI, it’s back in an earlier time. I haven’t turned it in to my publishers yet, but this week or next, I will and I suspect that’s the last one. But never say never, as somebody said—maybe it was Ian Fleming.”

Outside of his next book, Star Trek fans have probably heard that Meyer’s long-awaited Khan series—Ceti Alpha V—is still moving forward. Back in 2022, Meyer revealed on “Star Trek Day” that this series would release as a scripted podcast. Though, in our conversation, we both agree that “radio show” sounds cooler. “It is a radio show! Thank you,” Meyer says laughing. “You know, we live in this world of euphemisms. But yes, the show is still happening. We’re casting.”

Taking place between the events of The Original Series episode “Space Seed” and the event of The Wrath of Khan, Meyer hopes the scope of Ceti Alpha V will do what, well, Shakespeare did for Richard III. “When you listen to Richard at the beginning of the play, he gives you his rationale, his justification for who he is and what he’s doing. Basically, because I am unfit to be a lover, I’ll be a villain,” Meyer explains. “I find that interesting. And I like the idea that I could make anyone weep for Khan when you uncover his full story.”

Meyer also adds: “The finished result is not [entirely] mine. I supplied the basic idea and they kind of ran with it. So, we’ll have to make up our own minds when we hear it; what we think about Khan as depicted in the radio play.” 

Beyond the Ceti Alpha V, it’s not clear what Meyer’s next contribution to the Trek mythos might be. But there is one lingering mystery, set up by a line of dialogue in The Undiscovered Country. In that film—directed and co-written by Meyer—Spock refers to “an ancestor of mine,” and then utters one of Holmes’ most famous maxims, “When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” For years, fans (myself included) have asked Meyer if this means that Spock is literally related to Holmes on his mother’s side, and the answer has always been yes.

But could we ever see more of that story? Could Ethan Peck’s Spock in Strange New Worlds travel back and time and visit his ancestor Sherlock Holmes? Has Meyer ever pitched that idea to the Star Trek powers-that-be? When this idea is suggested to Meyer, he’s briefly silent. “Well, I hadn’t thought about it. But I sure am thinking about it now,” he says. “It could certainly be made literal. I don’t know what was the matter with me. Yeah, that’s interesting. I have to go now! And write some things down…”

Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell is out now from Mysterious Press. The Ceti Alpha V podcast series (radio show!) is expected sometime in 2025.