Appreciating the uniquely 1960s genres/tropes in TOS

[Kor]

I believe that forgotten movie and TV genres of the 1950s and 1960s live on in their own way, through the continued presence of Star Trek in popular culture. This was thanks largely in part to the behind-the-scenes idea of "Parallel Worlds."

Per the 1964 pitch entitled Star Trek is...:

The "Parallel Worlds" concept makes production practical by permitting action-adventure science fiction at a practical budget figure via the use of available "earth" casting, sets, locations, costuming, and so on.

Here are a few examples.

Catspaw. This often gets referred to (perhaps dismissively) as "the Halloween episode." However, as pointed out by (I believe) Greg Cox, this was most certainly an homage to an entire genre of colorful horror movies of the time, particularly those produced by Hammer Film Productions, based in London.

Who Mourns for Adonais and Bread and Circuses. These reflect the extravagant historical epics of the era, as well as sword and sandal B-movies.

Assignment: Earth. This is pure 1960s spy/spy-fi material along the lines of early James Bond, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Eurospy movies, etc.

Of course, movies today still treat subject matter such as horror, espionage, and ancient history. But I think they tend to follow the contemporary joyless, depressing, "grimdark" approach, taking themselves too seriously and losing the sense of pure fun and escapism that those genres used to have in the 1960s, and which is reflected in the TOS episodes that tapped into them.

What are some other examples you can think of?

Kor

 

[Neopeius]

Balance of Terror is The Enemy Below, WW2 classic of the kind which became big with The Longest Day and Combat. All of Trek has a stagey feel that betrays TV's still-recent divergence from theater. Conscience of the King, of course, hews closely to the works of the Bard.

 

[Push The Button]

Spectre of the Gun is obviously a Twilight Zone episode, and a great one at that. COTEOF also has a nice Twilight Zone moment, as Kirk looks up at the night sky full of stars on the Guardian's planet, just before the break.

 

[Brennyren]

Spectre of the Gun also employed the look, and some of the tropes, of the then-popular Western genre -- heck, De Kelley had actually appeared in the film Gunfight at the OK Corral earlier in his career! Return of the Archons also borrowed the Western "look," though the plot was more in the style of The Twilight Zone.

 

[johnnybear]

I would have said that Catspaw was more a homage to the Vincent Price sorcery movies produced by Roger Corman of the early sixties than the gory Hammer movies to be honest!

JB

 

[Commander Luskeen]

The big hair of some of the women

 

[Maurice]

The big hair was just the current fashion, not a topos or a trend.

 

[J.T.B.]

Spectre of the Gun also employed the look, and some of the tropes, of the then-popular Western genre -- heck, De Kelley had actually appeared in the film Gunfight at the OK Corral earlier in his career!

Not just a Western, but something like a revisionist Western, questioning or challenging the conventions and assumptions of the genre, which really took off in the '60s. Less than a decade before, Hugh O'Brian had portrayed Wyatt Earp as unfailingly honest, upright and lawful over six TV seasons. Presenting the Earp brothers as menacing heavies was definitely a fresh angle.

I would have said that Catspaw was more a homage to the Vincent Price sorcery movies produced by Roger Corman of the early sixties than the gory Hammer movies to be honest!

Agreed, those are what I think of first with "Catspaw."

 

[ChasFink]

"The Way to Eden" evokes the many hippie-themed films of the era, and echoes some of the anti-hippie sentiment present in many of them.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

How about the character names reflecting what was popular for babies in the 20th century year the characters would have been born? Or am I imagining that as a thing? When I think of made up Trek character first names, I imagine things like Audrey, Evelyn, Howard, etc...

 

[ZapBrannigan]

"This Side of Paradise" was about the hippie drug culture. "Tune in, turn on, and drop out" became "Get hit with spores, change your whole outlook, and leave the working world behind." Same thing.

 

[Marsden]

A Piece of the Action and Untouchables, at least that's what I always thought. But isn't that more 50s?

The Devil in the Dark is also a "horror" episode until they turn that on it's head. Horror is not unique to the 60s either.

The Doomsday Machine is really explicit about the Cold War turning into a nuclear war, even though none is shown, it certainly brought up about devastating weapons that destroy all.

Spock's Brain and The Empath also have a lot of horror elements.

 

[Maurice]

"The Doomsday Machine" pays a tiny bit of lip service to the idea of such a MAD scenario, but doesn't explore it. It's a throwaway.

 

[johnnybear]

The inference is that some alien conflict of long, long ago spawned a weapon so powerful that it destroyed both sides, the creators of the device no longer exist but their powerful Berserker weapon still does and is still doing what it was programmed to do even after many, many centuries! The only point in the episode that didn't make sense was that the Berserker came from outside the Milky Way and yet needed planets for fuel, now if it came from the Andromeda galaxy it would take millennia for it to reach us, so how did it survive that long journey without a source of energy?
JB

 

[C57D]

Let's just think.. .. ...
Paramillitary crew of space explorers checking on a lost human colony and encountering what remains from an ancient alien civillisation.
"Forbidden Star Planet Trek" , anyone?

 

[johnnybear]

A lot of people have said that Forbidden Planet had influenced Roddenberry back in the day and it's quite plausible!
JB

 

[SpyOne]

How about the character names reflecting what was popular for babies in the 20th century year the characters would have been born in..

For what it's worth, the popularity of names seems to cycle on four generations. That is, the people having kids today name them things that were popular when their great-grandparents were born.
My source is the Baby Name Wizard Blog. (The Baby Name Wizard is a web tool to graph the popularity of names in the US since about 1900.)
So there's a certain logic to the idea that the names that will be popular in the 2220 are the same ones that were popular in the last 10 years.

 

[johnnybear]

There are some good traditional names that have lasted since the early days of civilization and I'm guessing that they will continue to be used for the foreseeable future while a couple of out of date ones might eventually be phased out! But names like Ethan, Joshua and Levi are still in use today even if not used in every civilized country!
JB

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

I guess it depends on the source of those names and that source's own longevity. @johnnybear the three you named are all Bible names, even Ethan, though that is of a less-well known person(s).

 

[Maurice]

There are some good traditional names that have lasted since the early days of civilization and I'm guessing that they will continue to be used for the foreseeable future while a couple of out of date ones might eventually be phased out! But names like Ethan, Joshua and Levi are still in use today even if not used in every civilized country!
JB

Why did you feel the need to add "civilized countries"?