Watching Star Trek for the first time (again)

Why did you choose 55 years ago? I am missing something.

 

1963? One of the best years ever probably!!!
JB

 

I'm guessing johnnybear premiered that year?

 

He sure did!
JB

 

I get that question a lot. The answer I give the masses is it is the furthest back you can go and still dimly recognize our world. There are eerie synchronicities: last night President Trump addressed the nation from the Oval Office, threatening to declare war on illegal immigration, and on my television, President Johnson was giving his first State of the Union announcing a war on poverty.

The real reason, of course, is my father left me a big collection of SF magazines, and I started reading them month by month in real-time to ensure they got read. I began my project in 2009, and my magazine collection was mostly complete from 1954...

 

And to the task at hand:

I just caught sight of Brad Weston (Appel from Devil in the Dark) on The Great Adventure (the January 10th episode -- I guess technically it airs tomorrow. Whoops!). This was a series of educational shows on American history commissioned in response to FCC Commissioner Minow's lambasting of television as "The Vast Wasteland."



And if that's not cool enough for you, the October 8th episode from last year featured Walter Koenig as the son of Lee Marvin. Given that there's only seven years between them, that's a neat trick.

 

The picture looks like Ken Lynch.

 

That is Ken Lynch. Chief Vanderburg himself maybe in the early days of colonizing Janus VI!
JB

 

Whoops! Sorry about the misname!

As a mea culpa, here's Michael Ansara (Kang from "Day of the Dove") in Kraft Suspense Theater. Aired last night:



What a great voice on that guy.

 

"A Klingon would never have surrendered!" Obviously Kras and Arne Darvin were never under his command then!
JB

 

And to be fair, Kang's got a lot more juice than those other fellows...

 

Lee Marvin. He would have made a great flag officer in TOS.

Kor

 

He was born under a wandrin' star, after all. Has Paint Your Wagon come out yet, in 1964?

 

You'll have to wait a bit. The movie had its U.S. release on October 15, 1969.

 

You only have three years to wait for Lee Marvin and Michael Strong in Point Blank (1967) at this rate!
JB

 

What I find interesting is that some of the characterisation of the women in these older shows gives them more agency and stronger minds than in TOS. Admittedly, it varies, but I was watching the original Thing from Another World the other week and I was surprised to that the female lead, while 'only' being a scientist's secretary, gets some razor sharp dialogue, holds her own in her romance with the hero (even engaging in some playful bondage with him tied to a chair), and is the character who initially suggests how the military men could take down the alien. She delivers coffee a few times, like Rand, but clearly does so because she wants to be on the inside, discussing solutions with the military. Compare that to the eighties remake where they forgot to include any women at all. If Trek had made its women more up front and less enslaved to their emotional fascination with men, TOS would stand up a lot better today.

 

Despite barely being older than Shatner!

 

I was similarly impressed when I watched Corman's Wasp Woman -- it stars a strong woman running a company. It depends on the show. East Side/West Side, with George C. Scott has good woman characters -- one even gets her own episode. Also, lots of Black actors/actresses, which is pretty uncommon.

There was a particularly progressive episode of The Andy Griffith Show that impressed me a couple of years back (starring Commissioner Hedford from Metamorphosis!):

http://galacticjourney.org/august-1...ex-women-politics-and-the-andy-griffith-show/

 

Ooo! Here's a Two-fer: Mariette Hartley (Zarabeth from All Our Yesterdays) and Robert Lansing (Gary Seven from Assignment: Earth) in the January 10th (1964) episode of Twilight Zone, "The Long Morrow:"

 

This one made me laugh aloud. This is from tonight's episode of The Patty Duke Show. A fellow who needs no introduction...