Fact-Checking Inside Star Trek: The Real Story

Discussion in 'Star Trek - The Original & Animated Series' started by Harvey, Jun 7, 2013.

  1. erastus25

    erastus25 Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Sep 27, 2006
  2. EnriqueH

    EnriqueH Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Jul 2, 2014
    Location:
    Miami
    Yeah, he had a quality above the usual "bridge officer of the week". Lt. D'Amato in "That Which Survives" had that same quality. You kinda wish they'd been in a few more episodes, or at least had a meatier role.
     
  3. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

    Joined:
    Nov 22, 2012
    Location:
    Melakon's grave
    Paul Carr always did good work in stuff I saw him in. He would have been a good choice as a recurring crewmember on the scale of Nichols, Doohan, Whitney, and Takei.
     
  4. Botany Bay

    Botany Bay Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Aug 23, 2004
    Location:
    shores of Australia
    Unbelievable. Great find!

    Suspect you're on the right track theorising it was just Roddenberry just telling people what he thinks they want to hear. Again.

    Will have a look through my library this weekend.
     
  5. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

    Joined:
    Nov 22, 2012
    Location:
    Melakon's grave
    Last edited: Oct 1, 2014
  6. Marsden

    Marsden Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Feb 23, 2013
    Location:
    Marsden is very sad.
    He was a bridge officer in Buck Rodgers Star Treky second season. Lt. Devlin He wasn't listed in the begining as a star but he was recurring in half of the 2nd season and was somewhat important to at least 1 episode.
     
  7. erastus25

    erastus25 Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Sep 27, 2006
    TOS had some really good "bridge officers of the week." Kinda makes me sad the other series did away with the convention.
     
  8. bbailey861

    bbailey861 Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Oct 14, 2009
    Location:
    Kingston, ON Canada
    It also added to the feel that the crew compliment of the ship was a lot larger. They didn't need to be starring roles, but they were certainly valuable roles that were also cost manageable for the studio.
     
  9. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

    Joined:
    Nov 22, 2012
    Location:
    Melakon's grave
    Paul Carr had a pretty steady gig in a recurring role on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea as I recall. Del Monroe as Kowalski was another one I liked.
     
  10. Ssosmcin

    Ssosmcin Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Sep 2, 2002
    Location:
    ssosmcin
    He did most of his work in the first season; five episodes as Seaman Clark (promoted in his last episode) and once in the second season as Benson, where he got killed at the end. One final appearance as Clark in the third season via stock footage in an episode primarily made up of stock. Irwin Allen never made a clip show, be he did make a few episodes out of like 60% new footage and 40% stock from other episodes and movies.
     
  11. ZapBrannigan

    ZapBrannigan Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Jan 7, 2013
    Location:
    New York State
    Lost in Space had a clip-augmented show where the cast was put on trial for Space Crimes. I looked it up: "The Prisoners of Space." But it wasn't a full-blown "Remember when... and how about the time..." thing. It had its own substantial content.
     
  12. erastus25

    erastus25 Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Sep 27, 2006
    That still qualifies as a clip show to me. I mean...60/40 is pretty substantially clips as well.
     
  13. Ssosmcin

    Ssosmcin Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Sep 2, 2002
    Location:
    ssosmcin
    A "clip show" is traditionally a flashback episode. Characters sit around and talk about the past and only think about things we've already seen. Or, worse, they get Lucille Ball to come on and talk about the show for an hour, illustrating it with clips.

    What Voyage and LiS did was to take those clips and form a story around them. Yes, Zap, Prisoners of Space was a clip show, but - again agreed - they made those clips integral to the plot and they didn't take up the majority of the episode. Voyage did it differently, presenting the stock footage as if it were new and building a story around it. The actual new footage surrounding the old stuff was usually painstakingly matched to make the transition pretty seamless. I don't agree that these are "clip" shows. They are cheap, yes. Even lazy. But I enjoy them and prefer the attempty to make a new story out of the clips than the usual contrived reasons for characters to remember the past.
     
  14. ZapBrannigan

    ZapBrannigan Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Jan 7, 2013
    Location:
    New York State
    Another deja vu inducing budget-saver was when shows would re-film an old script. The series to do this the most had to be Bewitched. There were some scripts they shot three times during their eight-year run. The Bionic Woman shot at least one Six Million Dollar Man script: "Survival of the Fittest" became "Fly Jaime."

    When "And the Children Shall Lead" was in production, Fred Freiberger supposedly said "This show is going to be what 'Miri' should have been!" But it wasn't the same story at all. The quote is shocking because "Miri" was pretty good and "Children" was pretty appalling.

    At worst, Star Trek can be cited for re-visiting some basic ideas without saving a dime:

    - "Where No Man has Gone Before" and "Charlie X."

    - "The Squire of Gothos" and "Who Mourns for Adonais?"

    - "The Return of the Archons" and "The Apple."

    - "Patterns of Force" and "Bread and Circuses."
     
  15. erastus25

    erastus25 Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Sep 27, 2006
    It's weird to think about what you could get away with before home video...

    And we'll agree to disagree on Miri as "pretty good"... ;)
     
  16. johnnybear

    johnnybear Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Sep 7, 2014
    Clip shows are a waste of time and TNG did one at the end of it's second season! Lost in Space's clip show was very clever and was integral to the plot and those of us that hadn't seen the earlier episodes in question! These days they just employ the actors for like seven minutes of new material and then bulk up the rest with flashbacks! Terrible television!
    JB
     
  17. Alidar Jarok

    Alidar Jarok Everything in moderation but moderation Moderator

    Joined:
    Apr 14, 2003
    Location:
    Norfolk, VA
    That might be the laziest way to do it, but other ways of doing it are still clip shows. After all, Shades of Gray didn't have the plot you describe and that was clearly a clip show.
     
  18. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

    Joined:
    Jan 30, 2001
    Location:
    America, Fuck Yeah!!!
    Relatively speaking, "Miri" is "Balance of Terror" good when compared to "And the Children Shall Lead". :techman:
     
  19. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

    Joined:
    Mar 15, 2001
    As Alidar said, that's still a clip show, just not the most formulaic type. The term refers to the fact that the episode is built around stock footage, regardless of how that footage is integrated. It's a production term more than a story term. There are many different ways of doing clip shows; the "sitting around and reminiscing" approach you describe is only the most cliched.

    One of the most imaginative clip shows ever was Andromeda's "The Unconquerable Man." It was set in an alternate timeline where the events of the pilot episode had gone differently -- the series lead Dylan Hunt died and his betrayer Rhade succeeded in taking his place -- and followed Rhade through the events of the early episodes of the series, showing how history unfolded differently as a result. So it incorporated stock footage showing the same events happening to other characters, but the context and impact of those events became totally different.

    And there are many clip shows that find ways to tell interesting and important stories driven by the reminiscences. One of my favorites was an episode of the '88 syndicated Superboy series which involved a machine that reconstructed holographic simulations of past events from eyewitness accounts. Lana Lang used the machine to reconstruct Superboy sightings in order to determine who was always present for the danger but then disappeared just before Superboy showed up, and the machine showed that it was Clark Kent. So Lana was convinced Clark was Superboy. But Clark countered that the simulations were based on her accounts of the events, and "For you, when Superboy shows up, I'm not around." It was a pretty effective relationship moment.


    I think they're both pretty appalling.


    Ideas get reused all the time. There's no such thing as a completely original concept, just an original way of putting pre-existing concepts together.

    Also, a lot of those idea categories were about saving money. TOS did a lot of stories about telekinetic characters because it's an inexpensive, "invisible" special effect -- it doesn't require any extra expense to have one actor wave his hand and another actor pantomime being affected by it. And it did stories about aliens fascinated by Earth culture or parallel worlds that duplicated Earth culture because it was cheaper to reuse existing props, costumes, and set pieces from historical shows and films than it was to design and build alien stuff.
     
  20. Push The Button

    Push The Button Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Feb 21, 2013
    Location:
    Putnam, Connecticut USA
    By Any Other Name and Wink of an Eye, I'm always getting those two mixed up.