fred freiberger : hack or hapless?

[Christopher]

I got that book about ten years ago and strangely enough they wrote it without letting the show get finished first!

Why is that strange? If you want to market a book about a TV series, the best time to do it is while the series is still on the air, so that there will be enough audience interest to buy it. The Making of Star Trek was written between seasons 2 & 3. The Making of DS9 and A Vision of the Future: Star Trek: Voyager were written fairly early in those shows' runs. It's not unusual.

 

[johnnybear]

Yes but normally the series would have finished production whether it had been screened or not! There is very little info on the second series inside the book as only a handful of shows were in the can as they say!
JB

 

[UnknownSample]

Yes but normally the series would have finished production whether it had been screened or not! There is very little info on the second series inside the book as only a handful of shows were in the can as they say!
JB

The perfect time, as it turned out. They'd gotten that great first season done, possibly could relax and talk about a great project they'd just finished with a sense of optimism about the future, before the discouragement of s2 started... If that book was on audio, I'd love to hear it.

 

[Galileo7]

Space:1999 was renewed for a season three in 1978 of thirteen episodes with filming beginning in 1977. So, even after the second season with Fred Freiberger, Space:1999 got picked up. Unfortunately, ITC Lew Grade changed their mind to instead use the budget for the proposed third season for the film production of Raise The Titanic.

http://entertainment.wikia.com/wiki/Space:_1999
http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=96540&archive=0
http://catacombs.space1999.net/main/pguide/viu.html

 

[plynch]

I totally forgot about this channel on my Roku. Thanks for reminding me than I can watch Thunderbirds anytime I want...

THANKS for the tip! Just watched my first-ever ep! It was interesting. Why do ot with puppets instead of live? Voice actors that much cheaper? Little, tiny sets would be cheaper too, I guess. I love the model work and the intricacy of the "sets."

 

[johnnybear]

Space:1999 was renewed for a season three in 1978 of thirteen episodes with filming beginning in 1977. So, even after the second season with Fred Freiberger, Space:1999 got picked up. Unfortunately, ITC Lew Grade changed their mind to instead use the budget for the proposed third season for the film production of Raise The Titanic.

http://entertainment.wikia.com/wiki/Space:_1999
http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=96540&archive=0
http://catacombs.space1999.net/main/pguide/viu.html

Yes I was sure I'd read that 1999 was returning for a third series back in the day and my Mother kept going on and on that she'd heard that Tim Woodward (son of Edward) had been signed up for it as well! Whether that meant as a regular or just a guest we'll never ever know will we?
JB

 

[Christopher]

Why do ot with puppets instead of live? Voice actors that much cheaper? Little, tiny sets would be cheaper too, I guess. I love the model work and the intricacy of the "sets."

Gerry Anderson got his start doing marionette-based shows for kids. Puppet shows were a big deal in children's television in the '50s and '60s -- in America we had Howdy Doody, Beany and Cecil, and Kukla, Fran and Ollie, among others. After a few years, Anderson and his wife Sylvia started developing more ambitious adventure-based "Supermarionation" series starting with Supercar, then followed by Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, Joe 90, and The Secret Service, the last of which experimented with combining puppetry and live action. After that, the Andersons moved to full live-action with UFO and later Space: 1999.

 

[plynch]

I've been reading about the supermarionation process. And I'm LOVING the 70s beige, molded-plastic vibe of Space 1999 I've been getting reacquainted with. Very close to the TMP look, and the empire in SW.

Any idea how to check out UFO online?

 

[Galileo7]

I've been reading about the supermarionation process. And I'm LOVING the 70s beige, molded-plastic vibe of Space 1999 I've been getting reacquainted with. Very close to the TMP look, and the empire in SW.

Any idea how to check out UFO online?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge7wS-qpdVw&list=PLjrdBM3OjcIh0eUSbYziUj12mSwrLfSBM
All 26 episodes of UFO.

 

[Kevin Wolff]

I've been reading about the supermarionation process. And I'm LOVING the 70s beige, molded-plastic vibe of Space 1999 I've been getting reacquainted with. Very close to the TMP look, and the empire in SW.

Any idea how to check out UFO online?

Supermarionation is really something. Check out Captain Scarlet which was pinnacle of the puppet days and had the most realistic puppets compared to Thunderbirds, and was a darker show. The aliens were called Mysterons for any Portishead fans out there.
UFO was the first live series attempt. Space:1999 was the pinnacle of the live era, and had the incredible Brian Johnson (no, not that one) doing the VFX. Brian went on to do Empire Strikes back and is credited with start of "kit bashing". Using store bought models to provide details on the ships quick and cheap. This method carries on to this day where there are 3D kit bash parts one can buy or license to quickly build up details on a 3D model.

On a side note, I'm gonna check out your book on Pops. Whenever I hear the term musical genius or innovator applied to anyone in popular music, I shake my head and think of him. Truly one of the most important figures in all of American history. Long live Mr. Louis Armstrong!

 

[gottacook]

After that, the Andersons moved to full live-action with UFO and later Space: 1999.

Don't forget the 1969 feature film Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, which they produced and (co-)wrote. Strangely memorable, or perhaps memorably strange.

 

[PCz911]

Ok, we have gone slightly off topic... But ...

http://www.martinbowersmodelworld.co.uk

Is a site of the model builder who built ufo, thunderbirds, space 1999 etc models. It's way cool!

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Ok, we have gone slightly off topic... But ...

http://www.martinbowersmodelworld.co.uk

Is a site of the model builder who built ufo, thunderbirds, space 1999 etc models. It's way cool!

That's a seriously crappy website. But the span of his career, the accomplishments, the work, and the pictures: Squee!

 

[Spock's Barber]

Fred Freiberger....see what you've done. A whole thread used up and we still can't decide if you were a hack or just hapless.

 

[johnnybear]

Freiberger tried to totally ignore the first series of 1999 apart from the opening episode of course! If not then why have a line in his first show stating it's been 342 days since the moon left earth orbit when in the episode Dragon's Domain it was read out at the beginning that Breakaway had occurred 877 days earlier?
JB

 

[UnknownSample]

I doubt he cared about the number, or that he decided what it was.

 

[johnnybear]

Well considering that the only two actors he wanted to keep from the first series were Landau and Bain as well cements my point just a little!
JB

 

[BigDaveX]

On TOS, was the hiring of writers Freiberger's responsibility, or was it Arthur Singer who did that? If it was Freiberger, then at least one positive thing you could say about him was that he gave a lot of writers who were new to the industry a break on TOS.

Either way, I think Freiberger could have done a much worse job given that he had little-to-no support from the network or Roddenberry, and Singer was even more clueless about the series than he was... but Freiberger does seem to have made some decisions that really didn't help, such as casting Melvin Belli, and letting Herb Wallerstein direct so many episodes.

 

[Christopher]

On TOS, was the hiring of writers Freiberger's responsibility, or was it Arthur Singer who did that? If it was Freiberger, then at least one positive thing you could say about him was that he gave a lot of writers who were new to the industry a break on TOS.

Weren't a lot of the third-season scripts left over from season 2, though? I thought I read somewhere that they didn't really have the time or opportunity to develop many stories of their own, so they had to draw on what was already in inventory.

 

[Harvey]

Weren't a lot of the third-season scripts left over from season 2, though? I thought I read somewhere that they didn't really have the time or opportunity to develop many stories of their own, so they had to draw on what was already in inventory.

It's less material leftover from season two, and more material bought for season three before Freiberger was brought on board Star Trek. He was hired for the series on March 28, 1968 and reported for work on April 1, 1968. At that point, the following episodes had stories or scripts that were already in work:

"The Way to Eden" (at that point, "Joanna")
"That Which Survives (at that point, "Survival"
"The Enterprise Incident" (at that point, "Ears")
"Elaan of Troyius" (at that point, "Helen of Troyius"
“And The Children Shall Lead"
“Spock’s Brain”
“Wink Of An Eye”
"Spectre of the Gun" (at that point, “The Last Gunfight”)
"Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" (at that point, “Down From Heaven”)
"The Paradise Syndrome" (at that point, “The Paleface”)
“Day of the Dove”

So, that's 11 out of 24 produced episodes. Add to that the two episodes that Gene Roddenberry furnished the story for ("Turnabout Intruder" and "The Savage Curtain") and you have 13 out of 24 stories that were brought in without Freiberger's involvement. That's not quite as high as the number of episodes Freiberger claimed were brought in without his involvement in Starlog 39 (http://www.billcotter.com/projects/starlog-39.pdf), but it's more than half of the episodes produced in season three.