How would the look of TOS have adapted to the 1970s?

[JonnyQuest037]

The version I've heard is that GR threatened to walk as executive producer if Star Trek was given the Friday time slot. The network called his bluff and he felt he had to walk to retain any credibility. I guess you could see that as either GR being stubborn or the network forcing his hand.

 

[Redfern]

You think it might be another one of those "tall tales" Roddenberry told at conventions to make himself look "noble"?

Sincerely,

Bill

 

[Vance]

Gene had a habit of spinning yarns to make himself look good, take credit for everything Star Trek did right, and blame 'the higher ups' for everything that went wrong. Nice guy, great showman, serious charmer, regularly lied through his teeth on the convention circuit...

I don't want to demonize him too much, but suffice to say, if it was a story he told whilst doing the convention circuit, it was ... exaggerated, at best, and always done to make Gene appear in the best possible light. (Re: The truth about why Majel Barret didn't get to stay as Number One.)

(Also, Warped, several of the new Trek books address this directly, and Rod has explicitly stated this more than once. I admit it's a painful truth, particularly if Gene had become your idol, but it's one of those dark pieces of Trek's behind-the-scenes lore...and, think about it, it explains so much, doesn't it?)

 

[Kor]

I've often wondered how Season 3 would have differed with Gene R in the active role he previously had... In particular, "The Enterprise Incident."

Kor

 

[Vance]

I've often wondered how Season 3 would have differed with Gene R in the active role he previously had... In particular, "The Enterprise Incident."

If you're thinking more 1st season? By second season Gene had been much less hands on and was slowing becoming more of a "marketing man" as time went on. I don't know how much the stories would have changed, but I'm am curious what Gene's rewrites along with Shatner and Doohan's reworking dialog would have changed things.

 

[Maurice]

Okay, sorry, but theres a lot of misinformation here about Star Trek II (nee Phase II).

The show only almost happened because Paramount decided to start a 4th network and this in the aftermath of the aborted Philip Kaufman Star Trek—The Motion Picture (which started as Planet of the Titans). There were a number of attempts to bring the show back before that, mostly as a movie, not much as a TV series.

The new series sets were not copies of the TOS ones. I've got photos of them under construction. The bridge is very much the TMP bridge, the engine room is nothing like the TOS one, etc. They got revamped and revised for TMP, but a lot of the particulars were already there. The uniforms were another matter. Many were TOS copies, slightly re-engineered (which would allow the existing costumes to be used for background, much as the 1st and 2nd season TNG uniforms use used as background in later seasons).

The Don Loos/Brick Price Enterprise model wasn't substandard for TV use albeit it was deemed so for movie use and thus abandoned along with all the other STII models under that were under construction, including the drydock and V'ger. Some of this appears to have been politics, whereby someone wanted to give work to Magicam to build new models.

As to Roddenberry being "fired" from the 3rd season of TOS, he sure wasn't loved by some people at NBC and Desliu/Paramount, but he was hardly the absentee landlord some people have made him out to be as production memos from that year make clear, but I'll leave it to Harvey to address that if he chooses. Besides, it's common practice for TV producers to walk away from active participation on a series after a season or two, because they are always trying to start up a new show or movie. Maybe Gene was "Hollywood fired" as in "be more hands off, develop other stuff" but no one cut him off from the show.

 

[Vance]

I think Gene may have taken more than his share of blame at the time , but I do know that certain 'powers that be' referred to Star Trek as 'that damn show' by the time 3rd season was rolling around. Maybe they thought losing Gene would right the ship? (And remember, Fred's career was very successful at this point, so he wasn't a bad choice).

We all do know that Gene did himself no favors by constantly badmouthing Desilu and NBC in the years that followed.

As for the Phase II model, I was a little surprised to learn more of it. Apparently it was damn heavy and there was something very OFF about how it was being supported. The VFX people were more than a little harsh about it. It was never finished, sadly, so it's impossible to know if the problems would have been worked out or if they really would have scrapped the model for a new show. :S

 

[Maurice]

Where are these claims about the Loos model coming from?

Looks like it's on a simple basic bottom mount, as was used on the TOS ship.

 

[Vance]

Where are these claims about the Loos model coming from?

I read over this recently but now I can't remember the site it was on.. CineMagix? If I remember right I was linked over from memory alpha's studio model page... I was actually surprised by how harsh it was both on the Phase II model and on the 'Refit' model. A little painful to read, actually.

 

[Maurice]

Oh, everyone criticizes everyone else's work. Ken Ralston at ILM hated the refit. Opinions are mostly just that.

 

[Vance]

The difference here is that it was the guys making the decisions when the time came, which was my point all along. How things could have turned out would very wildly just with a different costume designer. There's absolutely no guarantee that if had gotten a couple of more seasons in the toxic climate of TOS, or if Gene had backed off and let Phase II happen as intended, that they would have been things any of us would want to see...

 

[Maurice]

...or if Gene had backed off and let Phase II happen as intended,...

Star Trek II was never going to happen, and not because of Gene. It was killed because Charlie Bluhdorn nixed the Paramount Television service as a whole as too risky, so they grabbed the pilot and made it into TMP since they'd already spent a ton of money and saw $$$ in a theatrical release once Close Encounters proved that Star Wars wasn't a fluke.

 

[Vance]

Yes and no. Phase II had two to three years of delays (depending on whom you ask) so it's hard to say if would-have-been-UPN could have launched in 1976 as intended with Phase II launching with it. Of course, by 1977 something ELSE had happened in science-fiction, as you said, that was far less risky (at least seemingly so...)

Again, this whole thread is 'what if's'... which is why I approached it with definite 'why didn't its'. Those were the obstacles that had to be overcome, and just weren't. But they're also why we got TMP and its sequels, and eventually TNG.

 

[Maurice]

Kaufman's film was killed on May 8, 1977 when Jeff Katzenberg called Kaufman to give him the bad news, and Paramount's press conference announcing TMP was March 28th 1978 just shy of 11 months later. Star Trek II was born and died in less than that span (it was announced to the press June 18, 1977), and it was already apparent that the proposed TV series was DOA even before the TMP announcement when they started shooting widescreen tests on the unfinished sets before the TMP decision was made official. I've researched this subject fairly extensively over the past 8 years.

 

[FormerLurker]

So which one of those happened in 1977?

 

[Vance]

Was Phase II started before Kaufman's movie was officially cancelled? I do have a few Phase II materials from the old Lincoln Enterprises, and they were dated 1976... of course, this is keeping in mind how Lincoln would operate with their reproductions...

 

[Joe_Atari]

So which one of those happened in 1977?

Just a typo; the TMP presser was March 28, 1978.

I've researched this subject fairly extensively over the past 8 years.

What do you think of the Reeves-Stevens' Star Trek Phase II: The Lost Series book? I devoured the book when it first came out almost 20 years ago (!!!) and pretty much accepted it as gospel since relatively little about Phase II had been published previously. Since then I've become aware of a few errors (in the photos mainly) but I've always felt it held up pretty well without any Cushman-esque conjecture.

Has it ever been subjected to a Harvey-style fact check like Inside Star Trek: The Real Story? What major errors (if any) have you encountered?

 

[johnnybear]

Why oh why did they get rid of the women's short skirts in TMP?
JB

 

[Maurice]

I fixed the typo of the TMP presser date.

It's been a long time since I read it, but I do recall the Phase II book had a few notable errors (besides its numerous caption illustration errors). Most of the accounts of the history of the Kaufman film have been somewhat erroneous, and I think the book's account might be one of those. It seems like most of those accounts are riffing from the same one or two sources, which means they're all duplicating the same mistakes about why the film was killed, etc., and why the Star Trek II series almost happened. I don't recall if the book repeats the story about PTS being cancelled because of not enough affiliates, but other sources indicate Barry Diller was the driving force behind it but Gulf & Western's Chairmain Buhdorn killed it because he didn't think the numbers justified the risk. There are many contradictory stories about what happened, and I'll have to check my research on the subject to see what sources there are for the Bluhdorn thing.

 

[pfontaine2]

Hey Maurice. Are you planning to do anything with your Phase II research? You also mentioned in an earlier post that you have photos of the Phase II sets under construction. Are these the same photos that can be found online and in the Phase II book or are these something different. This subject is endlessly fascinating and would love to see anything new that hasn't come to light yet, especially the sets before they made the change-over to TMP.
Thanks!
Pierre