• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

How different would things have been if TOS had been made in the 70s?

Re: How different would things have been if TOS had been made in the 7

^Yes, but that didn't precede TOS so it isn't relevant here. We're responding to the apparent assertion that 2-parters didn't become common until after TOS.

It preceded TOS in the alternate universe.
 
Re: How different would things have been if TOS had been made in the 7

I didn't deny the existence of two- (or more) part stories on TV series, but I do believe that extending an evening's show to two hours was a later idea.

Yes, "The Menagerie" was a genuine two-part story, but they didn't run it in one evening. Furthermore, it wasn't exactly planned that way from the start.
 
Re: How different would things have been if TOS had been made in the 7

True -- I believe it was in the '70s and '80s that 2-hour "movie" timeslots for pilots and special episodes began to catch on. And we also had the mystery movie wheels, series whose installments were routinely 90 minutes to 2 hours long.
 
Re: How different would things have been if TOS had been made in the 7

Even the famous 1967 finale to The Fugitive was run over two nights a week apart.

The Virginian, the first 90-minute weekly series debuted in 1962. It was such a novel concept that it confused the network's announcer. There's a fmaous clip wherein the voice intones: "And now . . . the third half of The Virginian."
 
Re: How different would things have been if TOS had been made in the 7

^Weren't the '50s anthology series 90 minutes long? Surely that's why Playhouse 90 was called that. You must mean that The Virginian was the first serial program of that length, the first one with the same premise and characters every week.

If anything, program lengths were much more flexible in the '50s and early '60s than they later became. There were shows that ran for 15 minutes and shows that ran for 45 minutes. There were even 5-minute shows here and there.
 
Re: How different would things have been if TOS had been made in the 7

Spock? Screw that, Eric Braeden as KIRK (and Bond for that matter.)

No way, pally. Braeden (aka Hans Gudegast) was entirely too cold and reptillian to play a passionate, warm-blooded man like James T. Kirk.:)

However, Bond I could see.
 
Re: How different would things have been if TOS had been made in the 7

^Weren't the '50s anthology series 90 minutes long? Surely that's why Playhouse 90 was called that. You must mean that The Virginian was the first serial program of that length, the first one with the same premise and characters every week.

If anything, program lengths were much more flexible in the '50s and early '60s than they later became. There were shows that ran for 15 minutes and shows that ran for 45 minutes. There were even 5-minute shows here and there.

True on both counts.
 
Re: How different would things have been if TOS had been made in the 7

Less sexism, 70's style music and better sfx. But who would have been the captain and crew?
 
Re: How different would things have been if TOS had been made in the 7

In the '70s? I don't think there would've been much less sexism. There was plenty of sexism in Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers. Even their attempts to be progressive, like the BSG episode where the (all-male) pilots were all sick so the women had to learn to fill in, were profoundly condescending by today's standards. And then you have things like the Buck Rogers episode where the band of alien dwarfs basically attempted a telekinetic sexual assault on Wilma Deering and it was played for laughs. So not only was the sexism barely any less in the '70s, but the sexualization of women was even more overt.
 
Re: How different would things have been if TOS had been made in the 7

The sexualization of everyone was a big 70s theme.
 
Re: How different would things have been if TOS had been made in the 7

As far as my research was able to determine, the first multi-part episode in prime-time dramatic television series history was Cameo Theatre's three-part adaptation of Henrik Isben's "Peer Gent" in 1952.
 
Re: How different would things have been if TOS had been made in the 7

As far as my research was able to determine, the first multi-part episode in prime-time dramatic television series history was Cameo Theatre's three-part adaptation of Henrik Isben's "Peer Gent" in 1952.

Well, I think I recall Fred Flintstone watching sitcoms and serialized drama circa 1,000,000 B.C.
 
Re: How different would things have been if TOS had been made in the 7

As far as my research was able to determine, the first multi-part episode in prime-time dramatic television series history was Cameo Theatre's three-part adaptation of Henrik Isben's “Peer Gent” in 1952.
It's Peer Gynt, actually. Although I'm sure he was a gent among his peers.
 
Re: How different would things have been if TOS had been made in the 7

As far as my research was able to determine, the first multi-part episode in prime-time dramatic television series history was Cameo Theatre's three-part adaptation of Henrik Isben's “Peer Gent” in 1952.
It's Peer Gynt, actually. Although I'm sure he was a gent among his peers.

As long as we're being nitpicky, it's "Ibsen."

Doug
 
Re: How different would things have been if TOS had been made in the 7

Star Trek in the 1960s tried to calm down the social unrest that was going on in the US at the time by proving that irregardless of our differences we can work together.

There was no social unrest in the late 70s. We were trying to forget what we had been through in the 60s. TOS would have been marked as old school and been rejected.

Seems to me that in the 21st Century we forgot everything we ever learned in the 60s and could use a little refresher course.
 
Re: How different would things have been if TOS had been made in the 7

There was no social unrest in the late 70s.

Of course there was social unrest then. There's always social unrest. There were anti-nuclear protestors, against both weapons and power plants. There were serious racial tensions. There were feminist campaigns against discrimination, domestic violence, and the like; that was when the push was on to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. And so on.
 
Re: How different would things have been if TOS had been made in the 7

There was no social unrest in the late 70s.

Of course there was social unrest then. There's always social unrest.
Except in a utopia -- and there are no utopias. But today, a lot of people have the impression the late 1970s were one big party, when everybody was disco dancing, wearing silly clothes, doing tons of cocaine and having lots of quick, hedonistic sex.

God, I miss those days! :)
 
Re: How different would things have been if TOS had been made in the 7

There was no social unrest in the late 70s.

Perhaps in U.S.A, but in in Italy the '70 was a quite chaotic period...

Terrorism, bombing, rallies against the Vietnam War, continuos union strikes, assasinations by various terrorist organizations and attempted coups...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Italy_(1970s-1980s)

And I know that for the rest of Europe was a very turbulent time, too...
 
Re: How different would things have been if TOS had been made in the 7

I guess it depends on the meaining of "social unrest". There were Anti-Nuclear power protests, marchs for Gay Rights and for Womens Rights and ERA.
 
Re: How different would things have been if TOS had been made in the 7

ok back on track..

Uniforms probably would have looked like the following from "The Martian Chronicles"

http://www.maverick-media.co.uk/tv/martian_chronicles_the_1980/image_001.html

A Buck Roger's vibe would have been hard to ignore either..

http://davidstipes.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/matte-buck_rogers.jpg

http://www.neonbubble.com/neonimg/1/scifi2.jpg

Hard to say..the popularity of Star Wars gave Buck Rodgers (and TMP) the green light..as well as the late lamented original BSG...

or maybe the following..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3821qMSJVjw&feature=related
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top