Hey, I never noticed that before....

Plus the recent dropping of IQs because very few milkmen are prospective Nobel Prize winners.

 

Oh yes, hor example, I think I 'may' have heard a story a long time ago where in one particular neighborhood there was a high incident of children with large, stuck out ears. A scientific study was conducted to determine why but they never could come to any conclusion. Nobody ever quite noticed the quiet milkman with the large, stuck out ears as he made his rounds in the neighborhood delivering the milk. Apparently, those large ears of his weren't the only assets he possessed.

Robert

 

https://www.core77.com/posts/103681/When-Houses-Had-Built-In-Milk-Doors

 

People not having refrigerators is why the dairy truck came through your neighborhood so frequently. But food trucks in general had routes everywhere because fewer people had their own cars before the 1950s. And almost no family had a second car just for the housewife. So every week you'd see the bread truck, the meat truck, the grocery (produce) truck come down your street on its expected day. It's how most housewives would do their shopping in "The City on the Edge of Forever" and surely "A Piece of the Action," although that was a different planet.

 

Why would you assume that the episode capturing one vagrant stealing one bottle of milk would mean it was a very common occurrence?

 

Hence why Quark was able to score on Risa... Horgon my foot!!!

 

Because of the casual way he did it. He didn't even wait to be away from the place to drink it.

 

I think this was an attempt to reduce any sympathy or injustice you would later feel for the guy (a thief) once he gets disintegrated by McCoy's phaser.

 

This and what he said about Edith Keeler.

 

Execution is quite extreme for stealing a bottle of milk and making a negative remark about Edith Keeler. But I know you don't actually mean he should be executed.

I think, in my opinion, we're supposed to feel a little sympathy for him. Like millions of others, he's the victim of a really bad depression, can't find work and he's just trying to survive. And then his life is suddenly cut off.

My guess is that the purpose of the scene was to show the deadly, and yes, even tragic consequences of McCoy interfering in the past.

Robert

 

Drinking the milk quite brazenly after stealing it might have been a tactic to securing “three hots and a cot”.It was the Great Depression you know.

 

On the positive side, it happened so fast that he probably didn't feel anything. There far worse ways to die.

 

I lived in a 20s built building which had a milk door and an icebox. There was even a 2nd stairwell for deliveries.

As to the vagrant, he's identified in the script as "Rodent". He's no Trooper, that's for sure...

 

To be fair, it's a quick scene meant to show the danger 23rd century tech poses in the 20th century. The point wasn't the act of theift; it was the vagrant disintegrating himself by toying with an advanced device he didn't understand. To spend time on composing and excuting a shot/scene where he walks to a more secluded spot would add unneeded time to the scene, as well as take more time and cost to shoot for an aspect that's not the focus or point of the scene itself.

 

Or maybe he didn't need to steal anything.

 

Just ask Chill Wills and Burgess Meredith.

 

Ahh, a Rod Serling's Night Gallery reference! Good stuff!

 

Something about Night Gallery being in color that robs it of coolness. (to me) Weird, hey?

 

Some readers will know more about this, but there is something about the "hardness" of the film or the lighting employed by all Universal productions of that era that just seems cheap. Nothing beats the cinematography under the direction of George T. Clemens on Twilight Zone, though.

 

There was a glaring drop-off in artistic photography when Lost in Space went to color, pretty much an end to it. It's like the b&w cinematographers on The Twilight Zone and Lost in Space were carrying on the tradition of great films, while the color operators on LIS and countless other shows thought that color is its own reward, so they didn't need to be artistic.

We should be thankful the first season of Star Trek was shot with so much care. It didn't have to be.