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Speculative: TOS Era Actors who would have worked well on Star Trek

I gather Matt Jeffries original design philosophy was something along the lines that space walking would be extremely difficult and dangerous. So, there just wouldn't be pieces on the external hull for you to access. So, smooth exteriors.
 
I gather Matt Jeffries original design philosophy was something along the lines that space walking would be extremely difficult and dangerous. So, there just wouldn't be pieces on the external hull for you to access. So, smooth exteriors.

The idea behind kitbashing is to give a miniature a sense of scale, to use fine detail to make it look less like a toy-sized model. I can see the logic of that, especially when you scale up to a feature film screen. Although ST:TMP went with "Aztec" hull plating and windows to achieve that instead, staying true to the Jefferies design philosophy (though with some outboard details like phaser emitters and reaction control thrusters).
 
I gather Matt Jeffries original design philosophy was something along the lines that space walking would be extremely difficult and dangerous. So, there just wouldn't be pieces on the external hull for you to access. So, smooth exteriors.


Oh I entirely agree the TOS Enterprise is beautiful. For me, whether kitbashing is involved or not isn't as important as the execution.
I wasn't so keen on the TMP enterprise, i thought it just didn't look as good as the original. Especially those puny, skinny nacelles, give me big round ones any day.

TMP era Starfleet engineer: Do you have any nacelles with funny shapes?

TOS era Clerk: Well no, unless round nacelles are funny.


I have to give @JTB partial blame, excuse me, credit, for this stupid joke.

Robert
 
How about Darren McGavin as a bureaucrat, perhaps a younger version of Ambassador Fox?

McGavin certainly had the ability to play someone as distasteful and controlling as Fox, sort of like his portrayal of the Oliver Spencer character in the Six Million Dollar Man pilot movie.
 
Or he'd be a militaristic captain type who loves the smell of napalm in the morning.
On The Wild Wild West, Duvall appeared as a scientist who had developed a super-weapon capable of destroying an entire city, and he was offering it for sale to the highest bidder among international criminal syndicates.

On Trek? I think he would have been able to play just about any role anyone could think to throw at him.
 
On Trek? I think he would have been able to play just about any role anyone could think to throw at him.

Oh, yes. When I think of Duvall in the '60s, I think of the gentle, sensitive character he played in The Twilight Zone: "Miniature," but looking over his filmography from that time, I'm reminded that he played some nasty villains too. It would be a grave mistake to typecast him, even his 1960s self.
 
He played an alien on Voyage and a jittery traitor in The Time Tunnel. He would have been great in anything.

He'd have been a great Vian or Mr Atoz...
 
I don't think this actor has been mentioned, Robert Duvall. I'm not sure what kind of character he would play though.

Robert

He’d be one of the guys on the mobster planet.

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Or he'd be a militaristic captain type who loves the smell of napalm in the morning.

I can't see the picture but I assume it's of Duvall, possibly from "The Godfather"

Robert

On The Wild Wild West, Duvall appeared as a scientist who had developed a super-weapon capable of destroying an entire city, and he was offering it for sale to the highest bidder among international criminal syndicates.

On Trek? I think he would have been able to play just about any role anyone could think to throw at him.

Oh, yes. When I think of Duvall in the '60s, I think of the gentle, sensitive character he played in The Twilight Zone: "Miniature," but looking over his filmography from that time, I'm reminded that he played some nasty villains too. It would be a grave mistake to typecast him, even his 1960s self.

He played an alien on Voyage and a jittery traitor in The Time Tunnel. He would have been great in anything.



He'd have been a great Vian or Mr Atoz...

All this talk about Robert Duvall lead to my accidentially discovering that I had been believing something inaccurate about The Outer Limits (1963-65) for decades.

And I created a post on a board about that show:

https://moviechat.org/tt0056777/The-Outer-Limits/60a875a1b926ff2f5c08ef7d/I-learned-something-new

So think you.
 
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Not to drag this back around to the Robby topic again, but what some are arguing ignores the business practicalities that impacted the "aesthetic" you see all over certain shows. The Twilight Zone was filmed at MGM so hence lots of Forbidden Planet assets got reused on it. Where there were props and set pieces owned by the studio they got re-used in other productions at that studio; you see the same stuff in Lost in Space and Batman etc. because they were all shot at Fox. Fox had all those Burroughs computer panels, the big computer from The Desk Set (1957) (which ended up on the Seaview) and equipment built for Fantastic Voyage and those were of course going to get re-used. But Desilu hadn't really done sci-fi before so there was little on their lots they could repurpose except as more primitive planets, so, the odd rental aside, Jefferies had to have stuff built, so some of it was availability not some conscious design decision. The Jupiter 8 car is an foreign to the perceived Trek aesthetic as Robby would have been.

Back to the OT...
 
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IDK if he's been mentioned but Charles Lane would have been great as a cankerous character (may be the bartender in Tribbles?)
 
Speaking of Irwin Allen, David Hedison from 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea' would have made a good Starfleet captain.
 
Has nobody mentioned Robert Conrad yet? My #1 alternate reality Kirk.

Peter Whitney, who did lots of Westerns, would've been a natural as a Klingon.

As ubiquitous as he was in Westerns of the day, it's surprising that John Anderson didn't make it to Trek until TNG. Guess he didn't need the work.

Frank Marth should've been on Trek, because whenever I see him in something, I think he was anyway.
 
But Desilu hadn't really done sci-fi before so there was little on their lots they could repurpose except as more primitive planets, so, the odd rental aside, Jefferies had to have stuff built, so some of it was availability not some conscious design decision. The Jupiter 8 car is an foreign to the perceived Trek aesthetic as Robby would have been.

Oh, that's a good point. Maybe that explains why Roddenberry felt he had to build the parallel-Earths conceit into the show to make it affordable -- because Desilu's warehouses had more leftover historical props and costumes than the kind of sci-fi stuff they had at Fox and MGM.

Still, I've sometimes wondered why the latter couple of seasons didn't draw on stock footage or props from Paramount SF movies like The War of the Worlds or Robinson Crusoe on Mars or Crack in the World. Lots of shows, notably The Time Tunnel and the first seasons of The Incredible Hulk and MacGyver, built episodes around stock movie footage to save money, so given how budget-conscious Trek was, I'm surprised they never tried to do the same. Paramount didn't have a large library of color sci-fi films, but it had a few.


Frank Marth should've been on Trek, because whenever I see him in something, I think he was anyway.

As I've mentioned before, I have the exact same impression about him. Who are we confusing him with?
 
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