Watching Star Trek for the first time (again)

Fair enough. I was trying for brevity.

In any event, some fen recognized "The Cage" inside "The Menagerie."

 

Also, they didn't eat any cheesecake.

 

"Fen". Been I while since I've heard that one.

 

"Would you say this bagel is worth a man's SOUL?"

11-24-66 That Girl



"How about this donut? WORTH A MAN'S SOUL?!"

11-28-26 The Monkees

 

I don't get on here often enough to make this a timely response, but I wanted to weigh in here.

I have never heard that Montalban had to be toned down from being too big. I spoke with Nick Meyer at length, many years ago when we brought him to Indianapolis for a Sherlockian conference, and he told me that Montalban was completely prepared for every scene and gave a very consistent performance. He said Shatner started out as larger than he wanted in his scenes with Khan. Meyer says he took several takes with Shatner and, as he tired, he got more and more subtle in his delivery. He told me it was a great advantage that the two actors never actually appeared together. It allowed him to balance the performances perfectly against each other in the editing room. Meyer said, in most cases, he used a later take of Shatner's; but that it was almost always Montalban's first take.

I had the above, first hand, from "the horse's mouth"....

And there's no question that Nick Meyer captured what is probably William Shatner's most subtle and nuanced performance, ever.

M.

 

Hey, apparently we got very differing information from Meyer. I was remembering this video...

...in which he does say that Montalban was screaming his dialogue in the first scene they shot, and his performance had to be toned done. I wouldn't make that up.

 

IIRC the first sequence Montalban filmed was his introduction, where Khan is laying into Chekov and Terrell. It’s his most theatrical scene so it’s not surprising he might have played it too big. If that were the case and Meyer told him “never show them your top” and he found the level Meyer wanted, both versions of the story can be lower-case true.

 

It should be noted that going big and playing a scene furiously doesn't mean bad acting. Sometimes they give an Oscar for that. Montalban knew his business. And Meyer said he doesn't like to rehearse a movie cast much because it kills spontaneity. So how would Montalban know where to start?

I recall Francis Ford Coppola talking about Dracula. He requires actors to show up for readings with a pen and notebook, to ensure the best decisions get saved. And he implied that he does like to get things down in rehearsal, get the performances to where he wants them before the actual shoot, when a lot of money is being burned per minute. That sounds like a better plan to me. And I think William Shatner would agree, because in some director's Starlog interview, Shatner was said to be very big on rehearsing the TOS cast at a table between takes, which the director found annoying.

 

Some actors are great on camera but burn out quickly. Others build a performance layer by layer, rehearsal after rehearsal, take after take. If you want the Coppola approach you don't necessarily want the first type of actor.

 

The review for "The Menagerie" is up. An interesting cross-section of reactions, mostly positive.

@Warped9 @Captain Tracy

 

Many thanks!

I understand some preferring “The Cage” on its own, but without this two-parter audiences might likely never have seen anything of “The Cage” except maybe decades later as some curiosity. I agree in one swoop TOS was given more in-universe history and texture with “The Menagerie” as a two-part episode.

 

I thought it was an interesting perspective, and while not a common one, at least several dozen people saw the pilot before the two-parter, so I'm glad it was captured. And it does appear that it was reasonably commonly apprehended that "The Menagerie" was a fix-up of sorts.

Of course, I enjoyed it all a great deal! For me, "The Menagerie" is when Star Trek ceases to be a space anthology show and becomes it's own thing. It also marks the first appearance of the entity "Starfleet".

 

We are now 13 episodes through the 1st season (counting The Cage, and also both eps of The Menagerie) and, on the eve of Balance of Terror, here are the episode scores (1 is lowest, 5 is highest):


The Cage 4.833333333
The Naked Time 4.5
The Menagerie 4.5
The Man Trap 4.333333333
Dagger of the Mind 4.285714286
The Enemy Within 4.25
Conscience of the King 3.642857143
Miri 3.25
Charlie X 3
What are Little Girls Made of? 3
Mudd's Women 2.4
Where No Man Has Gone Before 2.333333333


Before people gnash their teeth and throw things at their screen and only see the low ranking of the second pilot, that one suffers from 1) a low number of polled persons, and 2) having watched it back to back with The Cage at Tricon.

The others represent samplings of 4-8 persons, and seem pretty reliable. I think it can be concluded that, mid-first season, Trek is a pretty great show.

 

I have watched WNMHGB and “The Cage” back-to-back and I still think WNMHGB is a better effort. I find “The Cage” for all its positives can still feel less refined and somewhat stilted. I certainly don’t find it more “cerebral” than WNMHGB.

Hunter is fine as Pike, but Shatner as Kirk is magnetic and comes across as a more fleshed out character.

 

Your opinion is valid! IDIC and all that.

The 12-10-66 Mission Impossible featured familiar names and faces:



and Barbara Luna (who hasn't shown up yet in Trek):



and Abraham Sofaer, this time as a Peruvian (rather than what he is -- a Jew born in Burma):

 

Hey wheres Corbomite?
When you're rating are you rating according to 21st century sensibilities or 1960s?

 

Good call!

Here's the updated list:

The Cage 4.833333333
The Naked Time 4.5
The Menagerie 4.5
The Man Trap 4.333333333
Dagger of the Mind 4.285714286
The Enemy Within 4.25
Conscience of the King 3.642857143
Miri 3.25
Charlie X 3
What are Little Girls Made of? 3
Corbomite Manuever 3
Mudd's Women 2.4
Where No Man Has Gone Before 2.333333333

Insofar as it's possible, the whole point of the Journey is to appreciate (and occasionally dislike) things in context. These ratings are from the point of view of someone who's been reading science fiction since ~1950 and watching SF on TV since Man in Space in the late 50s. We've watched and reviewed all of Twilight Zone (that got us the Rod Serling Award!), The Outer Limits, and we are currently onto the second doctor in Doctor Who. We've also reviewed Space Patrol Orion, A for Andromeda, and Out of the Unknown.

From my 1966-living perspective, I am thrilled with Star Trek. Thursday night is my favorite of the week. There have been some missteps in the show, but it ranks up with the 1st season of TZ for quality, and it's better because it's actually science fiction.