The Making Of Star Trek....

[Warped9]

^Err, it was Stephen E. Whitfield (actually Stephen Edward Poe). The other guy was named Gene.

Oops. Morning brain cramp. Fixed.


When I first read the book I was a bit confused as to why the third season episodes were not listed. It wasn't until later that I clued into realizing the book had been published prior to the third season being aired.

 

[Warped9]

Thinking on the material in this section I wonder if any other shows as well as TOS ever bothered with this much fleshing out of a show's background. In particular I'm thinking of Lost In Space and Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea--I really wonder how much thought was put into the science and technology of those shows and whether detailed noted were kept.

I also wonder about the thinking behind such classic films as The Day The Earth Stood Still and particularly Forbidden Planet.



Another interesting item of note. It's widely believed that the period setting for Star Trek wasn't more firmly established until TMP. And yet sprinkled throughout TMoST are repeated references to the 23rd century by both Whitfield and Roddenberry. After the divergent refrences in the first season they later seem to have settled more firmly on the 23rd century.

 

[Christopher]

Thinking on the material in this section I wonder if any other shows as well as TOS ever bothered with this much fleshing out of a show's background. In particular I'm thinking of Lost In Space and Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea--I really wonder how much thought was put into the science and technology of those shows and whether detailed noted were kept.

Nope. ST was pretty rare in that regard. Irwin Allen shows were put together in a much more slapdash manner. Heck, after the pilot of Lost in Space, they added a lower deck to the Jupiter 2 even though it couldn't possibly fit within the proportions of the ship model. And then two years later, they added a third deck below it! As for science, get outta town. It was completely random and nonsensical. The pilot of LiS was apparently based on the idea that the crew would travel in hibernation for years at sublight speeds, but when Dr. Smith was added in the reshoots, they tossed in a hyperdrive to justify his ability to stow away without a cryogenic chamber of his own.

Another interesting item of note. It's widely believed that the period setting for Star Trek wasn't more firmly established until TMP. And yet sprinkled throughout TMoST are repeated references to the 23rd century bu both Whitfield and Roddenberry. After the divergent refrences in the first season they later seem to have settled more firmly on the 23rd century.

That seems to have been roughly in place by "Metamorphosis," given that Cochrane had vanished at age 85 a century and a half before the episode. If the series had been only 200 years in the future, that would've made Cochrane a contemporary of the TV audience, which seems most unlikely. So the timing does suggest a 23rd-century setting, although it's never explicitly stated onscreen until the movies.

The earliest explicit mention of a 23rd-century setting in any Star Trek text, as far as I know, is in James Blish's "Space Seed" adaptation in Star Trek 2, published in February 1968, seven months before TMoST.

 

[Warped9]

The idea of using suspended animation in conjunction with a hyperdrive isn't that wacky if one assumes the FTL capability isn't that much faster than light. If you can travel only two or three times the speed of light it could still take you an extended period of time to cover any significant distance.



There is also mention in TMoST to the issue of aging when traveling FTL speeds. They acknowledge the likelihood of aging more slowly when traveling near the speed of light and obviously have no idea as to effects when traveling faster than light, so they consciously chose to ignore the issue altogether and acknowledge that it's probably completely inaccurate.

 

[Christopher]

The idea of using suspended animation in conjunction with a hyperdrive isn't that wacky if one assumes the FTL capability isn't that much faster than light. If you can travel only two or three times the speed of light it could still take you an extended period of time to cover any significant distance.

Not the point. The point is that LiS made up its tech and (to use the term laughingly) "science" as it went along, and had nothing like the systematic worldbuilding of ST.

There is also mention in TMoST to the issue of aging when traveling FTL speeds. They acknowledge the likelihood of aging more slowly when traveling near the speed of light and obviously have no idea as to effects when traveling faster than light, so they consciously chose to ignore the issue altogether and acknowledge that it's probably completely inaccurate.

A lot of people assume it's "obvious" that we can't predict things we haven't observed, but that's wrong, because that kind of prediction is the whole thing that scientific theory is for. Physics theories like relativity are in the form of mathematical formulae, and since we've verified that those formulae have correctly predicted the results of the experiments we've been able to make, we can use them to make predictions about situations we haven't yet observed and have a reasonable degree of confidence in their results. All you have to do is plug in the numbers, and the formulae give you the results. So relativistic equations do indeed let us predict the effects of traveling faster than light -- or of using a space warp to achieve the equivalent result. In fact, Miguel Alcubierre's "warp drive" metric formulated in 1994 experiences no time dilation, just as shown in Star Trek.

 

[Warped9]

^^ Ah, I hadn't known about those equations in regard to FTL speeds. But it doesn't invalidate what the creators of TOS were thinking in terms of this issue given they might not have known about any equations in relation to FTL speeds back in the day.

 

[Christopher]

^Well, the Special Relativity equations have been around since Einstein first published them in 1905. They would tell you, in theory, how time dilation would behave if an object could travel faster than light (specifically, time would take on an imaginary-number value, though what that means in practice is open to debate). This is where the idea of tachyons came from -- plugging values greater than the speed of light into the equations and seeing what kind of physical properties would result. And General Relativity has been around since 1915; all the various kinds of space warp that have been theorized since are just new solutions to its equations. Again, it was by plugging extreme numbers into those equations that physicists were first able to predict things like black holes, wormholes, time warps, and the like. While the specific equation to produce something like a warp bubble wasn't found until '94 (because nobody really took it seriously before then), the basic idea could've been easily extrapolated from the General Relativity equations -- and indeed it was, because they're the original source of the concept of warping spacetime in the first place. In fact, Jesco von Puttkamer's 1978 technical notes for Star Trek: The Motion Picture spell out a theory of warp drive that's basically the same one Alcubierre worked out 16 years later, just without the detailed math. (Which is the second time Trek anticipated reality; Frank Tipler's 1974 paper about time warps generated by massive rotating objects was basically the same principle as the "black star" time warp from "Tomorrow is Yesterday" in 1967.)

 

[Warped9]

It's entirely possible Whitfield got a look at a script draft or story outline (or something) for "The Enterprise Incident" or maybe even spoke to Dorothy Fontana (or someone else) in the months leading up to him submitting his final manuscript for TMoST. It would have been close, but maybe there was just enough time for Whitfield to learn of some details from "The Enterprise Incident" and include it in his description for the Romulans.

I just found it unusual that the third season episodes are not listed (and realistically they couldn't be since the season hadn't aired yet) but details from a third season episode end up being mentioned nonetheless. For those lucky few who might have just read TMoST prioe to seeing "The Enterprise Incident" for the first time those details could be seen as spoilers of a sort.

I also recall reading in TMoST where there is reference to a botanical rec area they hoped to show in a future episode. That phrasing suggests they're referencing something other than what we saw in Sulu's quarters way back in "The Man Trap." They could be referring to the botanical area we later see in "Is There In Truth No Beauty?"

Going forward I'll watch for any other references to stories or episodes from the third season. That would pretty well cement that Whitfield was privy to information that wouldn't become known until after TMoST was published.

 

[Christopher]

I also recall reading in TMoST where there is reference to a botanical rec area they hoped to show in a future episode. That phrasing suggests they're referencing something other than what we saw in Sulu's quarters way back in "The Man Trap."

That wasn't Sulu's quarters. That was a redress of sickbay (it had that distinctive set of glass-doored shelves inset in the wall), so it was probably meant to be a botany lab.

They could be referring to the botanical area we later see in "Is There In Truth No Beauty?"

That was probably a scaled-down version of the idea.

 

[Albertese]

I also recall reading in TMoST where there is reference to a botanical rec area they hoped to show in a future episode. That phrasing suggests they're referencing something other than what we saw in Sulu's quarters way back in "The Man Trap."

That wasn't Sulu's quarters. That was a redress of sickbay (it had that distinctive set of glass-doored shelves inset in the wall), so it was probably meant to be a botany lab.

I agree.

They could be referring to the botanical area we later see in "Is There In Truth No Beauty?"

That was probably a scaled-down version of the idea.

Also seen with different paint and floorplan in "And the Children Shall Lead."

In fact, in my own assumptions about the internal layout of the ship, I like to put the Botany Lab from "The Mantrap" adjacent to the facility visited in "Is There In Truth No Beauty" seeing as how they both seem to be devoted to the study of plant life. I place the set from ATCSL directly below the ITiTNB herbarium. Your mileage may vary, of course.

--Alex

 

[CorporalCaptain]

In fact, Jesco von Puttkamer's 1978 technical notes for Star Trek: The Motion Picture spell out a theory of warp drive that's basically the same one Alcubierre worked out 16 years later, just without the detailed math.

By "just without the detailed math," you mean, of course, "without the actual science." Technobabble for a science fiction project ≠ a scientific theory. Alcubierre's work was published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal (the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity); Puttkamer's wasn't. Although Puttkamer was a scientist, his work on this doesn't constitute a "theory" in any sense of the word applicable to Alcubierre's.

 

[Christopher]

They could be referring to the botanical area we later see in "Is There In Truth No Beauty?"

That was probably a scaled-down version of the idea.

Also seen with different paint and floorplan in "And the Children Shall Lead."

Yes, but in that case it was intended to be the recreation room, not the arboretum. It was built for a deleted scene from "Elaan of Troyius," then reused in "Children" and redressed for "Truth."

http://www.startrekhistory.com/DS1.html

 

[Ssosmcin]

As for science, get outta town. It was completely random and nonsensical. The pilot of LiS was apparently based on the idea that the crew would travel in hibernation for years at sublight speeds, but when Dr. Smith was added in the reshoots, they tossed in a hyperdrive to justify his ability to stow away without a cryogenic chamber of his own.

I have to give them just a little more credit than that. The hyperdrive was, apparently, added to explain how the Robinson's could find an uncharted planet within a day or so of leaving Earth after it was established that it would normally take 5½ years to reach the nearest system (the original pilot episode had the trip to Alpha Centauri take an estimated 98 years and they landed on their new planet just a few years later without the benefit of hyperdrive). I'm guessing someone realized between the original pilot and the premiere episode that there would be no closer planets between our solar system and AC.

In the following episode, John Robinson states in his diary:

"We've come to the end of the first 24 hours of the voyage and all are in good health ... As yet, we have no inkling of our true position. The period during which we traveled in hyperdrive beyond the speed of light could have carried us through space and time to almost any part of the galaxy."

In the premiere, Maureen Robinson has a nearly fatal reaction to being in suspended animation, so that was probably the excuse they created to keep from using the freezing tubes (except for Don and Smith two episodes later to justify the use of original pilot footage).

 

[Christopher]

^You're saying the same thing I did -- you're just including a step I left implicit. What I meant was that, since Dr. Smith didn't have a cryo chamber to sustain him, the interstellar journey had to be retconned to take hours instead of years or decades, hence the hyperdrive. Okay, granted, they had enough sense to know that a fast interstellar journey would need to be faster than light and that this couldn't be achieved through normal propulsion, which is more than a lot of sci-fi shows and movies at the time would've realized. But they were still making it up as they went, and they didn't seem to bother to reference the hyperdrive in later episodes that involved travel from planet to planet.

Really, the question is, if they had a hyperdrive installed anyway, why was the initial plan to do a sublight flight to Alpha Centauri? That's always seemed strange to me.

 

[Warped9]

There was no consistency to flight times or how fast the hyperdrive supposedly was.

If it was originally supposed to take 98 years to get to Alpha Centauri then they would have been doing about 4 percent of light. That's fast in terrestrial terms but really slow in interstellar terms.

And later in the series when they go from planet to planet without using the cryo tubes then they definitely need some form of pretty fast hyperdrive or they're not going anywhere.

Yeah, it's pretty sloppy.

 

[Christopher]

If it was originally supposed to take 98 years to get to Alpha Centauri then they would have been doing about 4 percent of light. That's fast in terrestrial terms but really slow in interstellar terms.

Although actually quite plausible in terms of realistic propulsion methods. Most of the serious scientific proposals out there for "fast" interstellar drives would achieve single-digit percentages of lightspeed (for example). After all, the speed of light is staggeringly fast.

 

[Ssosmcin]

Really, the question is, if they had a hyperdrive installed anyway, why was the initial plan to do a sublight flight to Alpha Centauri? That's always seemed strange to me.

That's been an ongoing debate in fan forums for a little while now. From the way it plays out on screen, it looks like it was an accident, that "something" malfunctioned during the rampage of the robot that sent the ship into hyperdrive. The gauge was there in the event it happened, but they didn't have a dedicated hyperdrive engine. Or something. Irwin Allen science. That series wrote its own rules weekly. Like hot comets, mobile novae and literal launch "windows."

 

[Christopher]

That's been an ongoing debate in fan forums for a little while now. From the way it plays out on screen, it looks like it was an accident, that "something" malfunctioned during the rampage of the robot that sent the ship into hyperdrive. The gauge was there in the event it happened, but they didn't have a dedicated hyperdrive engine. Or something.

That's like saying that if somebody breaks the right part in your car, it'll turn it into a rocketship. FTL travel isn't something that happens by accident. Plus it's right there in the name -- hyperdrive. A drive is a propulsion mechanism. There must've been an engine onboard the ship capable of making it go faster than light, but for some reason they didn't use it.

The '90s Innovation comic book sequel to LiS addressed this in its own way. Its retcon was that the Jupiter 2 was reverse-engineered from a crashed alien spaceship, and that the "foreign goverment" Smith was working for was actually the aliens trying to stop humanity from discovering them. I don't recall the exact details, but I think there was something about the hyperdrive being installed secretly as some kind of backup plan.

Irwin Allen science. That series wrote its own rules weekly. Like hot comets, mobile novae and literal launch "windows."

One bit that stands out for me is an early episode where John is talking about some kind of plasma fuel for the ship and Maureen asks "Is that like the plasma in our blood?" and John says "Yes," even though it's actually a completely different thing. Our blood is not made up of superhot ionized gas.

 

[Ssosmcin]

That's like saying that if somebody breaks the right part in your car, it'll turn it into a rocketship. FTL travel isn't something that happens by accident. Plus it's right there in the name -- hyperdrive. A drive is a propulsion mechanism.

Oh, I hear ya. The writer apparently got it confused with hyperspace, since the actual line is "we're going into a hyperdrive." Since they weren't cruising into a giant engine out in space, the implication is they went into "hyper-speed." In the third season, kind of the same thing happened when they went into runaway thrust and went back in time 50 years.

One bit that stands out for me is an early episode where John is talking about some kind of plasma fuel for the ship and Maureen asks "Is that like the plasma in our blood?" and John says "Yes," even though it's actually a completely different thing. Our blood is not made up of superhot ionized gas.

Yeah, they gave Maureen a serious case of the stupids for that and John said, kind of "not exactly," and then launched into an explanation that show it was nothing like blood plasma. Then, like a simpleton, Maureen smiled and said, "I see." Prompting John to say, "no you don't." It's really a hilarious scene. Unintentionally, no doubt.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Yeah, they gave Maureen a serious case of the stupids for that and John said, kind of "not exactly," and then launched into an explanation that show it was nothing like blood plasma. Then, like a simpleton, Maureen smiled and said, "I see." Prompting John to say, "no you don't." It's really a hilarious scene. Unintentionally, no doubt.

It looks bad now, but women of the period, the majority, were not that into mechanics and science. Rosie the Riveter was sent home after the war. For every Amelia Earhart or Hedy Lamarr, there were a million and a half homemakers whose big brush with technology was the electric mixing bowl.

Lost in Space gave us America's first female astronauts, but Uhura and her soldering gun ("Who Mourns...") was a lot more advanced. At least until the next aired episode, when her memory was wiped. "Bluuuey?"

Win some, lose some.