Watching Star Trek for the first time (again)

I'm trying to imagine how DeForest Kelly would play Spock.

 

At first, Spock was to be very emotional. "Damn it, Chris, I'm a science officer, not a country doctor!"

 

Michael Dunn would certainly have made for a much different Spock.

 

Camera angles and scene set-ups would be interesting and creative over the three years. Check out the wild screencaps from Plato's Stepchildren; there's a lot of chair sitting, bench lounging and kneeing...

 

Would Michael Dunn's height be characteristic of Vulcans? They would have been a short people? They could still have been intellectual and logical and had wacky mind powers, but I'm guessing there wouldn't have been any neck pinches.

So would we have had Romulans? Probably no Amok Time at least not involving a big fight scene. Star Trek would be so radically different.

 

This is utterly, well, fascinating considering how outstanding an actor Dunn was. Was this really a thing? Has it ever been discussed here before? Why the hell aren't I notified about these things??

 

I just saw it for the first time in this thread.

 

Dorothy Fontana made it very clear that Nimoy was IT as far as GR was concerned. But they always consider other actors just is case they can't get their first choice,.

 

Or the actor of their choice isn't interested or starts moaning about payments that he's owed?
JB

 

Notice, that with the exception of Nimoy, none of the listed actors ended up in those roles in "The Cage", although eventually some did portray other characters in the series itself.

EDIT: Oops, I left out Magel (sic) Barrett. But she was a 'special' case.

 

And what does that have to do with casting a pilot that said actor's not yet appeared in?

 

Michael Dunn was just on Wild Wild West (October 1, 1965).

Also, it looks like only the first episode of Get Smart was in black and white...

 

Been hard getting time to watch TV last week, but here are a couple of sightings:

Michael Dunn again on Amos Burke: Secret Agent (a travesty of a show, worse in every way than the excellent Burke's Law) doing some pretty unfortunate brownface:



Michael Ansara on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (10-29-65):

 

Jill Ireland in this week's U.N.C.L.E.

 

Yesterday's episode of Twelve O' Clock High featured William Shatner as a B-17 pilot. Interestingly, they did not play the "General Savage theme", which sounds just like the Captain Kirk theme (Ba ba BAAA ba ba ba ba BAAAA)

 

Huh! Thank you for that.

He really is quite compelling and he's got range. If you see him in For the People, for instance, he plays a completely different (and less likable) character than Kirk or Major Brown.

Also, seeing him opposite Paul Burke (Colonel Gallagher) just makes you miss Robert Lansing all the more. I saw a recent (1965) interview with Bob, and of course they asked him if there was a lot of drama regarding his firing. He played it down, said the papers had made too much of nothing.

But the show definitely suffered for his absence, though it certainly was a realistic ending for his character. B-17ing is a bloody business.

 

I felt that was how the part was written, though. It's not like Bill added words.

Anyway, Burke never compelled in a single scene he was in.