Studio Eps that Needed Outdoor Shoot

Thanks to NavDude for posting this bts photo in a soon to be locked thread.

Seeing Peter Marko in natural light makes me wonder how much better "The Galileo Seven" might be if it were filmed at Vasquez Rocks. It would really open up and breath; you could get wide shots of the shuttlecraft sitting in a real place with some distance and depth. It would just be more cool.

Sometimes the studio was fine for planet sets, or nearly so. Barren worlds like Talos IV and Delta Vega are okay. Trelane's front yard in "Gothos" was supposed to be a small, artificially enclosed area. The planet scenes in "By Any Other Name" are not very important. "Amok Time" benefitted from the alien sky color.

On the other hand, it's hard to imagine "The Return of the Archons" being anywhere near as good without big, open street scenes to stage the action. "Shore Leave", "This Side of Paradise", and "The Paradise Syndrome" are vastly better for going out on location.

It makes you wonder if "Metamorphosis" would be that much better too, or would the intimate little story be somehow lessened by the distraction of scenic beauty. Would the almost fairy-tale-like atmosphere have its spell broken by the visual reality of the outdoors, so sharp and bright? This is just the opposite of "The Galileo Seven", despite both being landed shuttlecraft episodes.

 

I watched "By Any Other Name" the other day (I hadn't seen it for a couple of years). I'd forgotten about a third of that episode was planetside. As you say the scenes there aren't that important but perhaps if they had been shot outdoors it might have made them more memorable.

 

I kind of touched on this subject here, more or less....

https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/shore-leave-indoors.288556/

 

According to the script for "The Galileo Seven"; the Galileo landed in the bottom of a crater with the creatures around the top perimeter. The creatures basically had the crew surrounded from above and trapped. It also mentions that the bottom of the crater was soft and spongy which prevented the destruction of the Galileo when it crash landed. It would have beneficial to actually have this information in the episode but knowing that the Galileo and crew were in a confined space makes the studio planet set for this episode ok with me.

 

I don't think I ever heard that before. An Irwin Allen show would have taken the crater idea and run with it, in the set and the dialogue. But I can picture Robert Justman saying, "We can't do that. Forget it."

 

Bob was famous for writing interoffice memos that said, "It can't be done. No way, no how, no sir."

 

Much as I loved the outdoor location scenes, you have to remember that the series was built on a premise of seeking out strange new worlds. All of those episodes you listed as being great for having been filmed outdoors are all "Earth style" planet episodes. Vasquez rocks and Africa, USA can only do so much. In order to think you're not really on Earth, you need those strangely colored skies, the weird clouds, the alien flora. The series wasn't always successful, but mosrt often than not, they did convey "alien world" petty well.

 

What about shooting outdoors and using some filters to make the sky look pink, or something?

Kor

 

Could they do that then without changing the look of everything in the frame?

 

I agree but it all looked so fake. The Apple comes foremost to my mind but there are many others. I mean, TNG wasn't any better in season one. Arsenal of Freedom anyone?

 

"Spectre of the Gun" would have been great to shoot at one of the Wild West style backlots or towns that were in California.

 

No, Spectre was perfect as is. It was a fake representation pulled from Kirk's mind IMO.
I agree with Apple. It wasn't worth it to have the fake planet just for the red sky.
In Shore Leave they threw in some weird plants to make the world look more exotic -- that could have been done in Apple.
"IT Works" list.....
Cage -- just a bleak barren landscape
WNMHGB -- ditto
Mudd's -- ditto
Enemy -- freezing made it kind of necessary
Man Trap -- barren Egyptian looking again
Dagger -- one quick establishing shot
Conscience -- brief single scene
Menagerie -- one quick scene
Squire -- atmosphere works for Trelayne's castle
Taste of -- one quick scene
Catspaw -- it works because of the theme (the entire planet is a haunted house inside and out.)
Amok Time -- dry desert planet with red shy works.
Wolf in the Fold -- is the exterior on the backlot? I forget! It's works for that one shot
Spock's Brain -- again frigid conditions might have been an issue.
Wink -- one scene in a plaza
Whom Gods -- It's supposed to be covered with toxic gas
All Our -- frozen scenes again.

Outdoor would have been better......
Galileo -- 2/3 are on the planet and the set looks cramped and awful. Too bad.
Metamorphosis -- doesn't work for me. Goes from the usual rocky landscape to a poor greenery set.
Apple -- it's supposed to be "paradise" -- it looks terrible
Mirror -- I know it's only one scene, but I wish it was location
Deadly -- another barren landscape. It was overload by then. I would have liked an outdoor location
Gamesters -- really wish the Kirk/Shanna run was outdoors.
Obsession -- a forest would have been a good change of pace. Again too much desert overload.
By Any -- An actual idyllic setting would have been better.
Children -- Ugly set. A location would have made it better.
For the World -- Too many dirt planets. Any outdoor location would have helped. (I know they were living underground by habit but the surface didn't need to be the usual dirt/rocks
Day of the -- dirt/rocks overload -- any actual exterior would have been better.
That Which -- most of the episode is supposed to be outdoors and it really needed an outdoor change of pace/style.
Way To Eden -- hated that set -- boy could they have used the Shore Leave location
Requiem -- It was only one scene, but the entire season looks exactly the same with those dirt sets.
Savage -- half the episode is outdoors and the fake plants aren't passing the test for me.

So yeah, the stage outdoor sets were fine for some but IMO didn't work for many of the episodes.

 

Back then, no studio shot "outdoor" scenes looked real. The lighting was always off. Every time Bonanza or The Time Tunnel filmed forest scenes in the studio, they looked terrible. I don't know if it looked as obvious on the crummier TVs and lower res broadcasts.

 

I don't know the technicalities, but sunlight contains the whole spectrum of wavelengths, while artificial lights will be missing some. Sunlight comes from a single overhead source rather than having 20 "fill lights" going everywhere. And the sun is vastly brighter than any studio light, which means camera settings are going to be different. It just looks different on film.

Nowadays, they have electric lights that mimic the sun's broad spectrum better. And today's digital movie cameras have a much wider latitude of what they can capture, meaning they can see into the shadows on a bright set, so you don't need so many fill lights. And then comes digital post production, which on today's computers can fix anything, create any lighting look, and add in CGI scene extension to give distance to the horizon.

So now STD will surely have great "outdoor" scenes shot on an indoor budget. I just won't be seeing it.

 

The Planet of The Apes TV series had it's fair share of studio sets at campfires too but it also had outside location shots in each episode that looked very hot indeed! It's a miracle the mask glue survived at that temperature!
JB

 

I like that list of ones that do and don't work. For me it's really only That Which Survives that could have used a different set. Oh, and Obsession would have been good in a forest, yes.

 

The earthquake scene from That Which Survives was pretty cool, considering how low the 3rd season set construction budget was.

 

By the way....does anybody know if the "exterior" shot in "Wolf" was backlot or indoor set?

 

Not sure, but with the fog and close in shots I'm guessing it's a indoor studio set.

 

It definitely was cool. I was just thinking about someone firing a phaser into dirt and rocks - maybe it was when Sulu was confronted by Losira? - and some flames sparking up. Ummm . . . . Anyway, maybe they could have done the earthquake outdoors with some clever camera work and a moving platform or two for the actors, as long we're assuming an increased budget. BTW, that episode is probably in my top 25. Even though Spock is a tool for most of it. Only ep in the series IIRC with sustained (more than 1-2 scenes that is) interaction between Spock and Scotty without McCoy on hand.