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Does the red "EXIT" sign and the department store-looking "NO SMOKING" sign in....

Like the "Enterprise class" text at the simulator door, this signage was just a temporary print-out, reflecting the current needs rather than being carved in stone, brass, steel, what-have-you. That week, the sovereign of the Smo was blacklisted for his antics at Seven-Forward at the reception held the preceding Thursday.

I don't see a problem with the uniforms being "elaborate". They are not supposed to be duty fatigues: there's an Admiral aboard, and it's his bleeding birthday. The first guy or gal to open his or her collar flap probably gets to scrub the plasma manifolds from the outside without a spacesuit. While the mains are online.

Timo Saloniemi
 
Y'all assuming the No Smoking was about cigarettes, but it was actually due to the ban on Belladonnans being in the simulator. The smoke they excrete when stressed can be quite toxic to other lifeforms and notoriously hard to filter effectively.
Reminds me of the old "Mind if I smoke?" gag from The Addams Family.

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The OP suggests Meyer was anti-smoking and that's why the signs are there, but my recollection of various cast interviews was that (in 1982 at least) he used to smoke cigars on set while directing. Ironically given the no smoking signs. :guffaw: So, I think the signs really were put there for aesthetic reasons. Unless Meyer was keen on kicking the habit (but he hadn't done as late as 1991 for TUC ;))

meyr-with-kirkjpg.jpg


sharingasmoke.png
 
...I also based that on the fact that he kept the production designer in both cases from the previous film, Jennings and Zimmerman. He probably could have picked a totally different designer but decided to retain them. That sort of told me that we wasn't interested in a more radical change.
Joe Jennings wasn't the production designer on TMP, he worked on the pre-TMP TV reboot and Harold Michelson was the art director on the film. Jennings was credited under Michelson because a lot of his work on the aborted TV show was the basis for many of the Enterprise sets in the film.
 
Because Meyer doesn't like futurism. He's cynical about the idea that the future will be any better than the present, and his stylistic choice in both Trek movies he directed was to evoke the past and present more than the future -- Hornblower-cosplay uniforms, military-style barracks, manual torpedo loading, a manual kitchen rather than food synthesizers, space battles staged like archaic age-of-sail ship battles, everything looking backward instead of forward. Roddenberry believed smoking would cease to exist by the 23rd century; Meyer was more cynical and believed our bad habits of today would persist unchanged in the future, so that "No Smoking" signs would still be needed.

I don't see a problem with a lighted exit sign, though. Marking the exits is a safety feature. Why stop doing it?

But since he sat down and watched all 79 TOS episodes before he made WoK, didn't he realize that the Star Trek future was a good one?
 
He knew that's what TOS purported; he just didn't believe it was plausible. As the director, he got to put his own stamp on the story, and so he took a revisionist approach.

What did Gene Roddenberry think of WoK and Meyer as a director?
 
I don't see a problem with the uniforms being "elaborate". They are not supposed to be duty fatigues: there's an Admiral aboard, and it's his bleeding birthday. The first guy or gal to open his or her collar flap probably gets to scrub the plasma manifolds from the outside without a spacesuit. While the mains are online.

Timo Saloniemi


That makes sense - everything seen in the Trilogy of movies (and VI) is basically official, ceremonial, diplomatic, political, legal and/or flag officer type stuff in nature. Final Frontier would have been a good opportunity to show them in different standard ship uniforms since Kirk was demoted and was just a Captain embarking on another voyage at that point. TNG could have retconned that slightly but instead doubled down on the TWOK uniforms. I like the idea of the department/color coded uniforms being the tunic under the ceremonial monster maroons. I believe this is basically the approach Project Potemkin took on the movie era?
 
A double-breasted jacket like that seems a bit heavy for everyday duty wear, especially with another layer or two underneath it. And it's just too dressy-looking to be plausible as fatigues. It was designed to look impressive onscreen rather than to be practical, functional clothing. TNG got its modification backward -- they should've kept the turtleneck and ditched the jacket, not the other way around.

There's no reason to think fabrics 300 years from now would be anything like most we are used to now. They might well be smart fabrics, nano weaves, various materials designed to provide the species wearing them with maximum comfort. The maroons looked infinitely better than TMP moose knuckle pajamas, in my opinion, but not as practical as TOS uniforms, especially the gi type of coveralls seen at times. Starfleet stopped believing in pockets centuries ago, for inexplicable reasons.
 
Well, they seem to believe in insta-pockets: the uniforms sprout phaser holsters on demand, say. Might be just a matter of pushing in with your hand sufficiently hard.

But yeah, having the thick jackets be optional-ceremonial extra over the turtlenecks, much like in "The Cage" already, would be cool even if the jackets weren't.

Timo Saloniemi
 
He wasn't crazy about them, but then, he wasn't that fond of any Trek productions that he wasn't in charge of.

I was amused when I found out that Roddenberry was pretty adamant when Meyer wanted to make Saavik the one to betray Starfleet in TUC that Saavik wouldn't do that. Esp. since, as Meyer pointed out he created Saavik. So I guess Rodenberry liked something Meyer did at least.

Ultimately Meyer relented, though I think other issues were involved. But hey, whatever the reason a dying man got his way one last time (I also remember hearing Meyer regretted being so hard on him about some things after he died).

I will say, I actually agree with Roddenberry on that point. For whatever reason I have a real hard time envisioning Saavik betraying Starfleet, the Enterprise and it's crew, esp. Captain Kirk and Spock. It just doesn't feel right to me (perhaps that would have been the shock of it all, but sometimes something seems so out of character that it really does seem 'wrong').
 
Kirk might have been tempted to plot against the Klingons had he been given the opportunity to get in on the conspiracy. We can imagine he might well have realized how wrong it was and changed his mind.

But something else to consider is that canonically there was zip established about Saavik's backstory. What if, say, her parents had been killed by Klingons? What if Saavik had reasoned like Burnham that the Klingons need to be dealt with with an iron hand? To Saavik, it might have been no less understandable as it would have been for Kirk to go along, yet also Saavik might have had less reason to change her mind and more of a rationale to stick with it. I can see it not as a betrayal of Saavik's character, but rather a tragic elaboration of it.
 
....In the tradition of stories of betrayal, it would seem to make dramatic and logical sense for the traitor to be a young and impressionable protege, with strong convictions and a father figure he or she wants to please. With Saavik, there would have been the additional benefit of her being "cold" or at least aspiring to be, of logic justifying things that might not feel right (to her, either).

Chekov would be a good candidate as well, though. Perhaps not as young in absolute terms any longer, but still very much the bumbling kid in this adventure. "I did it all for you, Sir!" would sound equally convincing and tragic coming from either character.

Timo Saloniemi
 
I don't know. I've tried thinking of Saavik only in terms of the TWOK and TSFS (and not the backstory provided in the subsequent novels) and it's just hard to believe she'd go behind Spock's back. She might question him about it, she wasn't afraid of debating and asking questions. But I have a hard time buying that she would betray Spock like Valeris did. This was something Spock had worked on personally to establish and seeing Saavik sabotage that just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Don't forget, she had a more intimate relationship with Spock, and I think she felt a certain loyalty to Captain Kirk too. I can't see her doing anything that would put them in harm's way. In a sense I think her personal loyalty particularly to Spock, and in light of what they shared in TSFS, would actually do the opposite. But that's just my take.
 
There's no reason to think fabrics 300 years from now would be anything like most we are used to now. They might well be smart fabrics, nano weaves, various materials designed to provide the species wearing them with maximum comfort.

Yeah, but once again we run into Meyer's anti-futurist sensibilities. In "Spock's Brain," we're explicitly shown that the standard uniforms have built-in temperature controls that can keep the wearers warm even in Arctic conditions. Yet in TWOK, suddenly the crew are wearing heavy parkas on landing parties.

So if the fabrics are able to keep the wearers comfortable like you say, why would they need to pile on extra layers?
 
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