Fact-Checking Inside Star Trek: The Real Story

Speaking of Mr. Cushman missing it by that much, here's a short fact-check on some claims he makes about D.C. Fontana's early story outlines for "The Enterprise Incident."

http://startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com/2016/05/dc-fontanas-story-outlines-for.html

 

Thanks -- informative as usual. However, I have a question about the part where you say the Romulan Commander was male in the final draft outline. You include a photo excerpt of part of the outline, but the only instance of "he" in that quoted passage ("to whom he has given excellent help") is apparently referring to Spock, not the Commander. So that passage doesn't specify the Commander's gender. Is there another passage that does?

 

Whoops -- you're quite right! I have updated the post to include the proper photograph.

 

More great work Harvey. And once again, an example of thorough research standards as compared to... something else.

 

Terrific job as always.

Question, though: "The April 22nd "draft" did not establish "that the Romulans now use Klingon-made ships," either:" Judging by the scan you show then it was established earlier?

 

This detail shows up in Fontana's second draft story-outline (whether you call it April 19 or April 22). It is not found in her first draft story outline.

Cushman suggests this only shows up in the draft dated April 22, which is of course nonsense, since that outline is identical to the one dated April 19.

 

I think the producers were pretty proud of the new Klingon design and got it in the show as much as possible! Strange that the footage here of it is more extreme than what was used in Elaan too!
JB

 

Is it "proud of" or "paid a lot of money for"?

 

Well could be that, Tallguy but I thought it looked magnificent myself!
JB

 

Well, that design was well known enough and well thought of enough that it introduces Star Trek: The Motion Picture. So I won't argue with the magnificent part.

 

Apparently the model was actually commissioned and paid for by AMT, the model kit company, so that they'd have another Star Trek kit to market. It was a lucky break for the show, which was operating under tight budget restrictions at that point. They used it so heavily as a way of repaying AMT for their generosity, because promoting the model on the show helped sell model kits.

 

Well, and, apparently, the Romulan ship model was gone gone gone, so they didn't have a lot of choice.

 

What they'd lost it or it had become damaged?
JB

 

Nobody knows exactly what happened to it, but Memory Alpha discusses the two leading theories here.

 

Maybe this belongs elsewhere, but on the subjects of why and how the Romulans had Klingon ships in universe, is there any basis for this?

 

The only explanation in canon is the single line from Spock, "Intelligence reports Romulans now using Klingon design." The idea of this being the result of a Romulan-Klingon alliance comes from The Making of Star Trek, which says on p. 256 that "Due to a recent alliance, the Romulans are primarily armed and equipped with Klingon weapons, ships, materiel, etc." Which seems to prove that the book was written with knowledge of the plans for early season 3 episodes like "The Enterprise Incident." (TMoST was also the debut of the Klingon ship design, since the book was published shortly before "Incident" aired.)

This is another illustration of how important TMoST was to establishing Trek lore. The idea of the Romulan-Klingon alliance has been accepted lore among Trek fans and tie-in/fanfic authors from the beginning, and it turns out that it came from TMoST rather than canon. I hadn't realized that. I figured it was just something the fans extrapolated based on "Incident."

 

Thank you. I don't know why I thought of it after reading Harvey's blog, but there's no mention of an alliance at all.
A dropped premise from Balance of Terror, that the Romulan ship was partially or full based on stolen Federation technology that the Romulans may have just stolen the designs from the Klingons. No cooperation is necessary. But the "alliance" has been around a long time, like you said, even though in today's terms, it wasn't canon.

 

So was the alliance in an early draft of Incident as Cushman claims?

 

Hard to say. We'd have to have some idea of when the text of TMoST was finalized and how that related to the writing schedule for the early 3rd-season episodes. Might be something for Harvey to look into, perhaps...?

 

Didn't TMoST also establish such widely-accepted bits of backstory as McCoy going through a bad divorce, Spock being the first Vulcan in Starfleet, and Kirk joining Starfleet at a young age?

How could "Balance of Terror" have established that the Romulans had stolen tech from the Klingons, when the Klingons themselves didn't even exist until "Errand of Mercy," much later in the first season?