January 1972 saw the first large Star Trek convention, Star Trek Lives!, held at the Statler-Hilton Hotel in New York City. It was the first Trek-focused con to have people from the show actually in attendance, and on Saturday the 22nd these special guests did three panels. The first we mentioned in our post "Oscar Where Are you?" Oscar Katz & Early Star Trek (link). The 2nd panel was a talk by Guest of Honor Gene Roddenberry which we transcribed and posted as 1972 Gives Us The Bird (link).
The 3rd panel was audience Q&A featuring Dorothy Fontana and Majel Barrett. This is notable because it's probably the first large Trek fan Q&A ever done.
As we did with the first two panels, we've transcribed the third, which we put on our blog, titled, Fontana & Barrett Face the Fans, 1972 (link).
What we find interesting is how little these things have changed, and how even less than three years after Star Trek vanished from NBC, fans were already questioning the shows sexism ("chauvinism") and so on.
Here's a few fun quotes:
Transcribing this was a bear (or a Tellarite). @Harvey suffered the brunt of it. The mic in the audience constantly picked up crowd and background noise, making it difficult to hear audience questions and occasionally answers. If you read the transcript you'll see a number of [unintelligible]s. We have a link the the audio in the blog post.
A fellow named Bill Kobylak was given tape recordings of all three panels, and he generously gave us his blessing to transcribe them. So with this most recent one we complete our (painful) transcription process.
Enjoy.
The 3rd panel was audience Q&A featuring Dorothy Fontana and Majel Barrett. This is notable because it's probably the first large Trek fan Q&A ever done.
As we did with the first two panels, we've transcribed the third, which we put on our blog, titled, Fontana & Barrett Face the Fans, 1972 (link).
What we find interesting is how little these things have changed, and how even less than three years after Star Trek vanished from NBC, fans were already questioning the shows sexism ("chauvinism") and so on.
Here's a few fun quotes:
Dorothy Fontana: Sounds like Harlan.
Majel Barrett: (Whispering) What’s a photon torpedo?
Dorothy Fontana: [...]At one point, [the] research department discovered that Captain Kirk’s old girlfriends were all blonde, about the same age, built the same, and had the same way of speaking, and that was because of Gene Coon, who happened to like that type of gal.
Dorothy Fontana: Well, let me tell you this, this is what I saw in Amanda. And by Amanda, I mean Jane Wyatt. Ms. Wyatt is the only actor, who ever— [...] In ten years of writing, who ever walked up to me on the script, introduced herself to me and said, “I wanted to tell you how much I liked your script. I really enjoyed doing this part.”
Majel Barrett: (Whispering) What’s a photon torpedo?
Dorothy Fontana: [...]At one point, [the] research department discovered that Captain Kirk’s old girlfriends were all blonde, about the same age, built the same, and had the same way of speaking, and that was because of Gene Coon, who happened to like that type of gal.
Dorothy Fontana: Well, let me tell you this, this is what I saw in Amanda. And by Amanda, I mean Jane Wyatt. Ms. Wyatt is the only actor, who ever— [...] In ten years of writing, who ever walked up to me on the script, introduced herself to me and said, “I wanted to tell you how much I liked your script. I really enjoyed doing this part.”
Transcribing this was a bear (or a Tellarite). @Harvey suffered the brunt of it. The mic in the audience constantly picked up crowd and background noise, making it difficult to hear audience questions and occasionally answers. If you read the transcript you'll see a number of [unintelligible]s. We have a link the the audio in the blog post.
A fellow named Bill Kobylak was given tape recordings of all three panels, and he generously gave us his blessing to transcribe them. So with this most recent one we complete our (painful) transcription process.
Enjoy.
