Alter the credits?

I know the director has a vision, and we don't want to change it..blah blah blah...but what about changing the first season credits of these -remastered- TOS DVDS, and put Dee's name in those first season credits. Does the actors union have some say so in this, so it cant happen?

Rob

 

^That's right. Credits don't reflect people's importance to the story, they reflect how much people get paid. You can't change how much DeForest Kelley was paid for his TOS appearances in the first season, so you can't change his credit placement in those episodes. Or if you did, it would be misrepresenting the facts.

 

A better argument is: why change it? Just because?

People for years complained that they couldn't see the original credits of shows like I Love Lucy (the animated ones). Frankly, the shows are what they are, so stop fucking with them.

 

The aim of TOSR was not to make changes to the episodes to satisfy someone's latter day whims.

The aim was to make the original episodes presentable when shown in high def, which the older copies were not.

Yes, they dared to make a Gorn blink and altered the view we had of the Enterprise in some scenes, but they also made sure the STARS were in the same place as before in others.

To actually change the opening credits...

I'd say this changes the presentation. The lack of Dee's credit says "first season". You know, if you wanted they could have recolored Spock's shirt to blue in WNMHGB, but then that'd be chopping out a chunk of "what was" too, wouldn't it?

There's no need to change the credits, but if you really feel the need, you could always take the openings from later episodes, and with some good DVD software, plug them into the first season episodes. Make your own discs!

 

I really don't see why this is a serious contention: McCoy wasn't originally envisiged as any more a major character than, say, Scotty or Uhura during the first season, was he? Wasn't the "big three" a later development...?

 

The directors had nothing to do with the opening credits of the show.

The "actors union" doesn't have a "say" in this as such, not after forty years (the conditions under which actors were employed, and what they were entitled to under the terms of various contracts, were things that the actors unions were and are engaged in, yes). Why is it that the first dumb idea people always come up with when they think that someone is underpaid or undercredited that it's the result of union interference? Only in under-educated over-propagandized America do many people believe that worker representation is designed to prevent workers from succeeding.

As Therin said, these things are established by contract. So leave the damned credits alone.

 

Came out of Coon seeing how Nimoy & Kelley sparked one another, and then writing the hell out of it, so that is mainly a mid-to-late first season thing, 'rewarded' in second season's credit promotion. Though to be fair, I've read that Shatner lobbied for Kelley's credit as well (maybe to make Nimoy's placement less special?)

 

Oh but thats all in the past..I bet Nimoy would favor such a revision 40 years later...

Rob

 

Maybe he'd prefer to have the actors 'sign' their names onscreen, a la TUC.

 

Or given Nimoy's preferences in photographic subjects, how about artsy-fartsy photos of their asses -- with the signatures?

 

On a different but related note, I was surprised that the end credits were not remastered for TOSR. It is strange to watch a remastered episode, with wonderful new effects and visuals, and then be jarred by seeing the original visuals in the final credits.

 

My guess is to match the original pictures would have been impossible as they remastered the episodes out of sequence.

 

To be fair, I think the McCoy character took off from the get go. Obviously, as Coon had so much original or doctoring credit on the second half of the first season, he ran with it, but I think McCoy and De's portrayal would have been realized by anyone by episode 10.

 

Was De signed as a regular during the first season? There were a couple of first season episodes that he wasn't in, so McCoy may have just been a recurring part that recurred far more often than was initially planned, resulting in De getting signed as a regular the following season. And that would have a big influence on his screen credit, or lack thereof.

 

That sounds pretty sound to me...

 

^Well, yeah; by definition, if he'd been contracted as a regular cast member, he would've been listed in the opening titles.

 

Also, many of the scenes in the end credits are rarely from the actual ep just viewed. They were often from other eps, with a few rare exceptions, which I always found odd.

There is a pattern to the very last end credit, though. The last credit in the first season was usually accompanied by a shot of Vina from The Cage; the last credit in the second season was of Balok from The Corbomite Maneuver; and the last end credit scene from the third season was just a starfield.

Leaving the open and end credits as they are is the right decision. There's no compelling reason to change them.

Red Ranger

 

I'm not talking about changing the end credits in such a way as the OP suggested (adding an element, by adding Kelley to the opening), I'm talking about going back and copying the current credits picture by picture, just using the remastered versions. This is more akin in my mind to the re-recording of the TOS theme that was done.

as it stands, it is quite jarring to see the original sfx shots and scratchy unrestored pictures after viewing the restored print with new sfx. it's an easy fix that should have been made previous to release.

 

Well, they tended to favor visually impressive images, right? Matte paintings, FX shots, weird aliens, sexy women, etc. And there only would've been so many of those in a given episode.