The Tholian Web Spacesuits

[Spock's Barber]

Director Ralph Senensky was unhappy with the spacesuits, primarily because they arrived late, delayed shooting and were difficult for the cast to get into/out of. I thought they were cool looking, considering the low budget restraints of season 3. Your thoughts?

 

[1001001]

My thoughts?

Not every little solitary thought needs its own thread.



And if you post that "Making a leetle joke sir" thing...you're banned for a week.

 

[Spock's Barber]

Only a week....or two weeks?

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Ralph Senensky got blamed for a shooting delay that was beyond his control, and they fired him for it: http://senensky.com/the-tholian-web/

And what's even worse, it apparently hurt his ability to get hired for any other show as well. And he was a great director. He's 94 now and still kicking.

The suits were poorly designed in at least two ways:

1) The helmet affords a very narrow field of view. You have to turn your whole body to see anything that is not directly in front of you. The sides needed to be transparent, and if anything, the back's useless window could be opaque.

2) The need to sew actors into the suit added to the delays, which hurt Senensky, and it was totally unnecessary. On Lost in Space, their suit's zipper was covered by a simple flap, and the flap was fastened down with a strip of Velcro or possibly double-sided tape. It's also possible that there was no zipper under the flap, and Velcro did all the work.

William Ware Theiss did some things right, but he dropped the ball on spacesuits. Having said that, I'll admit I like the way they look, in a unpractical, purely looks-based way.

Regarding the skintight aspect of the suits, Star Trek and Lost in Space might have been ahead of their time:
https://www.space.com/27214-skintight-spacesuit-biosuit-photos.html

 

[johnnybear]

The Tholian spacesuits reappeared in Whom Gods Destroy as well! But they were a vast improvement on the Naked Time orange jobs that Spock and Tormolen wore on Psi 2000!
JB

 

[Redfern]

I've read the concerns about "limited field of vision" requiring the performers (or, in universe, the crew) to twist their torsos to see around. Seems to me the Apollo lunar suits had the same issues. The Apollo helmets may have afforded a few more degrees side to side, but not much more. I suspect it's more a condition of "perception". The "visor" of the TW helmets wrap over the crown of the hed and down the back, inadvertently drawing attention to the width. For a humanoid with forward binocular vision, such a feature is useless. My "in universe" rationale, the suits and helmets were "contracted" and the they were originally made by and for a Federation species with eyes possibly in front, on top and on the back of their skulls. But other than having a feature useless for humans, Vulcans, Ciatians, etc., they proved perfectly serviceable.

In the real world, the design is quite clever. An ongoing issue with TV and movie space helmets has been adequate ventilation and/or "fogging". Give the helmet a solid visor and the actor is going to become short of breath and what little he has will obscure his features. Some early productions literally drilled a matrix of small holes in the visor. Others would provide a gaping aperture positioned in line with the performer's mouth. Some movies flat out omitted a visor, hoping the audience would just assume one was there, perfectly clear.

But what was done for "The Tholian Web" was just dang ingenious. Rather than "fight" with a plastic or glass faceplate, a fine wire mesh, similar to "screen door" material was stretched across the helmet. Air flow was all but unobstructed. The mesh could not "fog" and the mesh would not "catch" the stage lights in the same manner and glare it into the camera. Finally, upon 1960s televisions, the mesh looked more like some exotic material, having some irredecent qualities.

Now, they could have constructed the helmets to be "solid" across the back, but I think they were "open" for a couple of reasons. One, even more ventilation for the performers. I'm sure they appreciated that. two, a detail just to be different from the props used in other shows and what was being developed by the real space program. Let's face it, see the TW helmet and no one would mistake it for something used on another TV show or movie.

Again, I think the restricted field of view (well, no worse than other helmet designs, except totally clear "fishbowls") is an illusion caused by the "wrapped over" nature of the visor.

 

[Phaser Two]

I thought the designs were great. I liked how one of the connecting pieces (not sure how to describe) stayed in an upright position when the helmets came off. The nameplates were cool too, as were the built-in communicators and the velcro for the phasers and Bones' medkit. As a big rank insignia guy I would have loved to have seen stripes on the sleeves, but oh, well. (Cue someone telling me they are there and I've been missing them for 40 years.)

It was nice to see a concession to atmospheric constraints and hazards, unlike the visits to the Constellation and the Exeter. I do wish Spock had looked through the library computer viewer to scan, but maybe they couldn't make that look good with the suits' design.

 

[Timo]

There is something to be said for fixed helmets with limited field of vision. But this something probably shouldn't be printed...

ENT shows how good classic spacesuits with moving helmets can be in terms of coolness and dramatic possibilities, not to mention in-universe practicability. Would those have been bad for photography? Only in the visor-fogging sense, and the wire mesh solution could have been applied on moving helmets just as well.

There's lip service to the tin foil looks of the TOS suits there in the ENT suits, too, and it ain't halfway bad - but the bigger nod is of course to the 2001: Space Odyssey school of spacesuit design. Had Theiss been aware of what Kubrick was doing with that movie, would he have tried to, ahem, follow suit - or distance himself from the look?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mojochi]

I like imagining that the front side is a forcefield

 

[Lieut. Arex]

the helmet shape has made me wonder if they were built by an Andorian subcontractor

 

[Redfern]

the helmet shape has made me wonder if they were built by an Andorian subcontractor

That works, too!

 

[Commishsleer]

I thought all the space suits in TOS and the TOS movies were rubbish aesthetically and practically except for the force field belts in TAS. And even those force field belts in TAS had no oxygen supply.

I love TOS but this was one of the few areas where the other series were better.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

I thought the designs were great. I liked how one of the connecting pieces (not sure how to describe) stayed in an upright position when the helmets came off. The nameplates were cool too, as were the built-in communicators and the velcro for the phasers and Bones' medkit.

That was a smart touch. The first touch communicator which pointed the direction for TNG-VOY com badges.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I thought of a real-world reason for the back of the helmet to be clear: it might facilitate backlighting during an actor's close-up. Whether or not it worked out that way on the set, that could have been part of Theiss's thinking when he conceived the helmet.

An obvious illustration of backlighting a close-up:
http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x07hd/whatarelittlegirlsmadeofhd024.jpg

 

[Timo]

...The right way to proceed would have been to surround the whole head in the wire mesh from all directions, with only a couple of supporting arches and possible adjoining antennas or other doodads.

The fancy shadows would just have added to the aesthetics IMHO.

Why "no oxygen supply" on the TAS belts? The belts are very, very bulky - bulkier than the belt that provided the masks of "Squire of Gothos" with breathing air... (For all we know, that TOS belt was the very same as the TAS one, complete with invisible forcefields and all, only the heroes there opted for the belt-and-suspenders approach and also donned face masks!)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Maurice]

That's commonly referred to as a rim light.

 

[scotpens]

The Tholian spacesuits reappeared in Whom Gods Destroy as well! But they were a vast improvement on the Naked Time orange jobs that Spock and Tormolen wore on Psi 2000!

The shower-curtain suits from "The Naked Time" were conceptually different -- they weren't designed for life support in a hard vacuum. They just provided heat and possibly protection against environmental hazards (although the latter is unlikely, considering that the headgear was completely open at the bottom).

. . . But what was done for "The Tholian Web" was just dang ingenious. Rather than "fight" with a plastic or glass faceplate, a fine wire mesh, similar to "screen door" material was stretched across the helmet. Air flow was all but unobstructed. The mesh could not "fog" and the mesh would not "catch" the stage lights in the same manner and glare it into the camera. Finally, upon 1960s televisions, the mesh looked more like some exotic material, having some iridescent qualities.

It also allowed for clear and unmuffled recording of the actors' live dialog.

It's certainly a unique design. The irregular shapes of the doodads on the front and the red and blue hoses suggest the human heart and blood vessels, giving the suit an almost organic quality. And on a budget!

 

[pfontaine2]

I'm rather a fan of the design. I like that they don't look conventional or like something that space program was using at the time. Sure, the screen mesh looked a bit silly but it was a nice solution to a difficult problem of condensation on the inside faceplate when an actor wears a sealed helmet with clear visor (unless ventilation is provided).

As mentioned above, I liked the organic look of the latches, buttons and control panels. I very much liked that the vertical piece that runs up the side of the helmet stays in place. I don't know why but it looks functional and futuristic.

Granted, in retrospect the design does look a bit silly but I think it was a very successful design despite the fact that it caused delays while shooting.

 

[alensatemybuick1]

I think the consensus here is, as usual, that just about any of us could have done better.

 

[ItIsGreen]

The shower-curtain suits from "The Naked Time" were conceptually different -- they weren't designed for life support in a hard vacuum. They just provided heat and possibly protection against environmental hazards (although the latter is unlikely, considering that the headgear was completely open at the bottom).


It also allowed for clear and unmuffled recording of the actors' live dialog.

It's certainly a unique design. The irregular shapes of the doodads on the front and the red and blue hoses suggest the human heart and blood vessels, giving the suit an almost organic quality. And on a budget!

Seeing their heads like that with the nameplates underneath makes me wonder if that's where Matt Groening got the idea for the celebrity heads-in-jars in Futurama: