‘Star Trek’ Alum Directs Updated ‘War of the Worlds’ : Radio: John de Lancie’s production of the original script will be broadcast the night before Halloween. The cast includes other ‘Star Trek’ cast members.

In 1938, more families had radios than telephones, automobiles, plumbing, newspapers and magazines. Radio was the medium that informed, entertained and united people in an era of uncertainty over threats of war, fascism, communism and prolonged unemployment. It was a time when people strongly believed anything could happen--and on the night before Halloween, anything did.

Orson Welles and a group of actors from the Mercury Theatre, armed with a script by Howard Koch, presented an adaptation of H. G. Wells’ novel, “War of the Worlds.” The radio play, presented in the form of a live newscast, became known as the panic broadcast. It caused mass hysteria around the country because many listeners who tuned in late thought they were hearing actual news reports about aliens landing in New Jersey.

“It’s as large as a bear and glistens like wet leather,” said Welles as the announcer. “But that face. It . . . it’s indescribable. I can hardly force myself to look at it. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. The mouth is V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to quiver and pulsate.”

Fifty-six years later, radio is hardly the dominant medium anymore, but John de Lancie, who played Q on “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” believes there’s still a message to be found in “War of the Worlds.” He has directed a new production of Koch’s script that, like the original, will air the night before Halloween.

It will be followed by a short sequel, “When Worlds Collide,” written by De Lancie and Nat Segaloff, that comments on the current media environment.

“We invite you to listen again to an old chestnut and see if you can glimpse the significance, and then let us take you one step further,” offered De Lancie, who cast the play with fellow “Star Trek” alumni. Among the actors joining him will be Leonard Nimoy from the original series and, from the “Next Generation” spinoff, Gates McFadden (Dr. Beverly Crusher), Wil Wheaton (Wesley Crusher) and Brent Spiner (Data).

“I wanted to put together a group of actors like this to do sci-fi, and there’s something about the ‘Star Trek’ actors that has a crowd-pleasing quality to it,” he said. “This group has the birthright to do sci-fi; they are the bearers of sci-fi.”

The production, part of L.A. Theatre Works’ “The Play’s the Thing” series, was taped during a live performance at the Guest Quarters Suite Hotel in Santa Monica earlier this month.

“ ‘War of the Worlds” was a goof delivered as news bulletins,” De Lancie said. “It was the beginning of an erosion that now has us in trouble. We just don’t know where to get the truth. It was a piece made 56 years ago with all good intentions that still abused the public’s trust. It was that little marble, that little push, and now no one trusts the media.”

The “War of the Worlds” project has been a refreshing change for Nimoy, who has spent the past nine years directing.

“It’s really like settling into a nice, warm, comfortable bath,” Nimoy said. “I find myself really enjoying hanging around with the actors telling actors’ stories--you know, like actors do before a performance. It’s something that I haven’t been able to do for a while. It’s been a lot of fun.”

Nimoy believes the possibility of extraterrestrial life is very real, and that it is just a matter of time before we might be contacted, or we contact them .

“I think it’s very likely,” he said. “I happen to be a believer. You know, I’m one of those that quotes from the numerical odds: There are so many thousands of suns like ours and so many thousands of planets orbiting around those suns, as we do around our sun, that I think it’s highly unlikely that there is not life out there that has evolved into a technological society. I believe that it has happened.”

In the play, Nimoy portrays a scientist named Pierson who expresses that view: “Dim and wonderful is the vision I have conjured up in my mind of life spreading slowly from this little seed-bed of the solar system throughout the inanimate vastness of sidereal space. . . .”

It is an idea De Lancie relishes. “Our world has us always here,” he said. “We will be here from now ‘til the end of time . . . maybe not! And that’s the scary part!”

* “War of the Worlds” will be broadcast on KRCW-FM (89.9) at 6 p.m. Sunday. It also will be available on cassette for $19.95 from L.A. Theatre Works at (310) 827-0808.