For the relatively low budget that TOS had to work with for special effects and costumes, I think that Wah Chang worked a minor miracle with the Gorn.
TOS Aliens = The Best??!
- Thread starter VulcanMindBlown
- Start date
IIRC, the voice of the Gorn was Ted Cassidy.
Yup, and while some may argue the voice was stereotypical with a lot of snake-like hissing, I loved the passion Cassidy put into the Gorn's rebuttal, "You were INVADERS!!!" which suddenly made the bridge crew wonder, "Were we in the wrong?" Suddenly, the Gorn was no longer a "monster", but a "person" fearing for his (her?) territory.
Sincerely,
Bill
I like The Classic Series because it reminds me so much of a live, Theatre experience. How it calls upon audience participation to bring their own imaginations to help endow the show's creatures & monsters and kind of buy into it, despite what we're actually looking at. But I've always appreciated it when STAR TREK got away from aliens who were merely actors with carnival makeup on their face. The obvious examples of the Korob & Sylvia's true forms are a good Case in Point. The marionette strings are right there, nowhere to hide. Again, it's harkening to that live, Theatre experience, for me and I love that.
Even an Artist can't know the unknown - in this case, what an alien looks like. But attempts the show made to veer wildly away from the Human form showed a lot of imagination and sense of wonder. Even a wink at the audience, at times, as with the Mugato. It's quite wonderful in its audacity to expect the audience to accept this guy in a gorilla suit as a threat. But it appeals to the Inner Child in us all, doesn't it? Being able to "play" with this 50 year old show, in its original form. It makes STAR TREK quite unique.
Even an Artist can't know the unknown - in this case, what an alien looks like. But attempts the show made to veer wildly away from the Human form showed a lot of imagination and sense of wonder. Even a wink at the audience, at times, as with the Mugato. It's quite wonderful in its audacity to expect the audience to accept this guy in a gorilla suit as a threat. But it appeals to the Inner Child in us all, doesn't it? Being able to "play" with this 50 year old show, in its original form. It makes STAR TREK quite unique.
I much prefer the TOS Klingons to the turtle heads of the later eras! Their costumes for one were very good and they seemed more scary and sinister without having to scream and cry about honour and all that cobblers! They were also very sneaky and apart from Kang and Kor I wouldn't say honour meant anything to them at all!
JB
JB
Same here! The Gorn was a major part of my childhood! I loved that character and wished it had come back but nowadays I realise that you can't improve on perfection!
JB
He was Lurch, right?
The TOS Klingons made good villains. An asset that was diluted in later Trek.
Yup. And Ruk.
Oh the Gorn suit was well designed for 60s TV, it had some interesting musculature, and it was a good idea for the producers to take into account the suit limitations and make it super slow. It's just a little unfortunate the episode became a "chase scene" with Kirk evading the slow Gorn, because it becomes a little silly after time.
The Gorn is just living up to the old adage "Slow and steady wins the race".
I found the scene very tense and suspenseful. Kirk hits him in the chest with the biggest rock he can throw and it bounces off and he hurls a boulder up at him! He also seems to have the endurance to go with the strength, can Kirk keep running forever? He does need to eat, drink, and sleep, does the Gorn? I found no silliness whatsoever.
Obviously there has been a change in perspective (concerning aliens and large reptiles) over fifty years. Back in the day the idea of a large reptile or dinosaur like creature was something somewhat slow and lumbering--hence that's how the Gorn was depicted. Since the advent of Jurassic Park the perception of large reptile like creatures has changed drastically. Now we expect them to be quick and agile.
The original Gorn is a conceptually interesting design. What looks so obviously reptillian to us is, of course, not because it's meant to be an alien spawned from a different environment. That idea is cemented by the fact it has insect like compound eyes. Or are they? Is it possible the Gorn was wearing some kind of lens to protect its eyesight on the planetoid the Metrons set them down on?
Another question (in universe) is why does the Gorn move rather slowly compared to Kirk and yet it obviously has superior physical strength? Kirk had the advantage of speed and agility while the Gorn had the advantage of physical strength and (possibly) stamina as well. Intellectually they appeared to be even. Is it possible the Gorn was disadvantaged given the environment the Metrons provided? Maybe it was too cool (or too warm) for the Gorn and thus it couldn't move as it normally could in its natural environment? Maybe the gravity wasn't optimum for it?
The Metrons claimed to have established a level playing field for the combatants. If the Gorn could function in the way we presently expect large reptile like creatures to function--like the velociraptors seen in Jurassic Park--then Kirk would likely have stood no chance whatsoever. So perhaps the only way to level the playing field was for the Metrons to hamper the Gorn in some manner and just enough for Kirk to have an even chance.
The original Gorn is a conceptually interesting design. What looks so obviously reptillian to us is, of course, not because it's meant to be an alien spawned from a different environment. That idea is cemented by the fact it has insect like compound eyes. Or are they? Is it possible the Gorn was wearing some kind of lens to protect its eyesight on the planetoid the Metrons set them down on?
Another question (in universe) is why does the Gorn move rather slowly compared to Kirk and yet it obviously has superior physical strength? Kirk had the advantage of speed and agility while the Gorn had the advantage of physical strength and (possibly) stamina as well. Intellectually they appeared to be even. Is it possible the Gorn was disadvantaged given the environment the Metrons provided? Maybe it was too cool (or too warm) for the Gorn and thus it couldn't move as it normally could in its natural environment? Maybe the gravity wasn't optimum for it?
The Metrons claimed to have established a level playing field for the combatants. If the Gorn could function in the way we presently expect large reptile like creatures to function--like the velociraptors seen in Jurassic Park--then Kirk would likely have stood no chance whatsoever. So perhaps the only way to level the playing field was for the Metrons to hamper the Gorn in some manner and just enough for Kirk to have an even chance.
Agreed; one of the most glaring deficiencies of modern FX "artists" is the habit of thinking the CG can do anything, that it makes people with already questionable artistic sensibilities rather lazy. The CG Gorn is a great example of that, along with tired, all too overused designs seen in other modern era productions. It was as unoriginal as the Westmore bumpy appliance hack work seen on TNG/DS9/VOY.
I like the explanation in your first paragraph on how we would have expected a slow Gorn in the 60's, but would have expected a fast Gorn in the 00's. But I disagree that the Metrons would have done anything to hamper the Gorn.
I do believe that there's a "close enough is good enough" attitude amongst producers, especially, when it comes to CGI output. Because, what's the worst that's going to happen? Are they going to get sued? Is half-assing it going to $ave, or lose money? And audiences are no help to the Artists involved; they just don't care. They're never going to boycott anything because the CGI wasn't quite up to snuff. They reward the stupidest stuff and they don't really offer any incentive for Hollywood to work harder than it wants to. So, I'm not so inclined to blame the Artists, myself - they, generally, are always looking to improve upon themselves.
I may be revealing my Trek inexperience here, but I wonder if Cassidy is the only actor in the Trek canon that appeared in a suit and shown au naturel as well?
I so enjoyed both Loskene's weird geometric.vector-like face and the pulsing, jewel-like Tholian ships. If you've seen both the original and CBS remastered The Tholian Web then you've seen a big difference in the ships--the originals are weird and interesting and truly alien feeling, as if they were not quite of the same universe as the Enterprise but engineered in some far stranger place, small but somehow large also with their gem light pulses, while the new remastered ships are blah physical-ships-as-usual.
(CBS did that to The Doomsday Machine as well, turning a cascading kaleidoscope of multicolored exotic energies into a ho-hum red furnace.)
(CBS did that to The Doomsday Machine as well, turning a cascading kaleidoscope of multicolored exotic energies into a ho-hum red furnace.)
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