The Downside of Talos IV

[baxart]

With the dreams the Talosians gave Captain Pike they also gave him nightmares.


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ What in the name of Sir George Steinbrenner was THAT?

[baxart]

Yes, that really is Jeffery Hunter and Phyllis Diller in The Private Navy of Sgt. O'Farrell
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063459/

[Green Shirt]

And his wife thought STAR TREK WAS BAD for his career???

[scotpens]

Boy, Hollywood is a tough town. You do one bad movie and they nail you to the cross.

[Maurice]

HI-larious!

[Gary7]

Wow... who'd have thought it? Shatner (singing) and Nimoy (Bilbo Baggins) both did something well worth regretting... didn't think Hunter had one of these skeletons in his closet, too.

[RandyS]

Green Shirt wrote:

---

And his wife thought STAR TREK WAS BAD for his career???

Indeed.

[A.V.I.A.F.]

I often wonder how Star Trek would have fared if Hunter had stayed on as Captain. Better, same, or worse?

[Saxman1]

Hard to say. Maybe Hunter wouldn't have killed his liver from alcoholism as quickly. He certainly seemed a more serious captain than Shatner, but that may have been the way he was directed or the requirements of "The Cage."

[RandyS]

A.V.I.A.F. wrote:

---

I often wonder how Star Trek would have fared if Hunter had stayed on as Captain. Better, same, or worse?

Season one of TNG shows us this.

[plynch]

RandyS wrote:

---

Season one of TNG shows us this.

A. That's funny.

B. I think there's a thread on that question, with a good case made that the character is especially pensive in that ep, and wouldn't be so, in usual ones.

[RandyS]

plynch wrote:

---

A. That's funny.

B. I think there's a thread on that question, with a good case made that the character is especially pensive in that ep, and wouldn't be so, in usual ones.

Well thanks, but I wasn't trying to be funny. I was, however, expressing what I saw in the early TNG episodes, in which, it seems to me that the writers (or maybe Roddenberry himself, I don't know) were taking the original idea for Star Trek, which was presented in "The Cage" and using it as the basis for TNG.

This comes out in the form of the "engage" command, the use of "Number One" as a form of address for the First Officer. The fact that the captain is unable to express any emotion unless it's a negative one, and how he seems to look down his nose at his crew. And finally, the purely superficial Captain "Pi", "Pike", "Picard".

I doubt these coincdendences were accidental.

[CoveTom]

^ While it's definitely true that early TNG bears some similarities to "The Cage," I think it's actually closer to Roddenberry's concepts for "Star Trek: Phase II" and to some degree TMP. The Picard/Riker dynamic is lifted almost exactly from what the Kirk/Decker dynamic was supposed to be. The Troi character is modeled on Ilia and the Riker/Troi romance comes from Decker/Ilia. And so forth. The list goes on greatly. Roddenberry, using much of the work of David Gerrold, hoped to correct many of the problems of TOS with Phase II, and he later incorporated much of that into TNG.

[Gary7]

RandyS wrote:

---

Well thanks, but I wasn't trying to be funny. I was, however, expressing what I saw in the early TNG episodes, in which, it seems to me that the writers (or maybe Roddenberry himself, I don't know) were taking the original idea for Star Trek, which was presented in "The Cage" and using it as the basis for TNG.

This comes out in the form of the "engage" command, the use of "Number One" as a form of address for the First Officer. The fact that the captain is unable to express any emotion unless it's a negative one, and how he seems to look down his nose at his crew. And finally, the purely superficial Captain "Pi", "Pike", "Picard".

I doubt these coincdendences were accidental.

Randy, this is a great observation. I'd never considered this... and it does indeed seem like the Cage influenced TNG quite a bit. Picard was a bit more stiff and authoritative in the first season. But I take it this was what Roddenberry was trying for... and so, Hunter's portrayal could very well have been due to the same reason, not his choice to make Pike appear as he did. That leads me to think that had Hunter stayed on, he may very well have lightened up and become more appealing to the audience, as Kirk was.