TOS myths and misconceptions...

[Captain Robert April]

Solow's and Justman's book makes it pretty clear that the new owners didn't have a clue about television production, and were only interested in getting back their investment in buying these two studios. The movie guys on the old Paramount side talked a better game, probably because they were more used to dealing with clueless investor types, and so got left alone a bit more, but the Desilu bunch got blindsided to a certain extent and found themselves at the mercy of goons who thought a dolly shot had something to do with Dolly Parton.

I suppose they stumbled into a good thing by signing that syndication deal with Kaiser Broadcasting just before the third season, but again, at that point, it wasn't about quality anymore, it was about getting enough episodes in the can to satisfy the terms of the deal. And then getting these overbudget sci-fi weirdos out of those soundstages and moving in a couple of sitcoms, so they could make some real money.

 

[Captain Robert April]

That's the story GR told. In The Making of Star Trek-The Motion Picture he states one guy went to an NBC exec and said he'd found the show with the perfect demographics. The exec says, "Great! Which one?" "The one you just canceled."

If I'm not mistaken there were talks about bringing it back, either with everyone or just a Spock-only show, but NBC wanted another pilot. GR balked at that ("I've got 79 pilots") and nothing came of it. Well, TAS, but for the live show, it was the well-known start-stop, back-and-forth, up-and-down round robin of TV movie, Phase II, and theatrical film options for a decade.

CBS was looking to pick up the show for a fourth season (they have a long history of snatching NBC rejects and making bigger hits out of them, going all the way back to "The Guiding Light"), but one of the conditions was that Leonard Nimoy had to be available, and unfortunately, he'd already moved next door to "Mission: Impossible" and the talks died right there.

 

[plynch]

BStrudel's tag line: "When nothing's funny it gets easy to laugh at the drop of a hat or a bomb..."

Ironically, I just read of Mr. Obama joking at the press corp dinner about predator drones, which have, sadly, killed many civilians afar to protect civilians here. It is coming out that the citizen who is accused of setting the car bomb in NYC was motivated by civilian deaths in the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

 

[scotpens]

^Off-topic much?

 

[plynch]

^Off-topic much?

Certainly. Obviously. But there are worse things.

 

[Maurice]

CBS was looking to pick up the show for a fourth season (they have a long history of snatching NBC rejects and making bigger hits out of them, going all the way back to "The Guiding Light"), but one of the conditions was that Leonard Nimoy had to be available, and unfortunately, he'd already moved next door to "Mission: Impossible" and the talks died right there.

I keep hearing this about CBS, but where does this story originate?

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Changing styles of acting. Shatner was trained in a theatrical style which had to be big and broad to reach the back rows -- and by the standards of that style, his work was pretty naturalistic. But then a new generation of actors came along, actors whose training was in television rather than the stage, and their acting style was smaller and more intimate since the camera could get up close. The more theatrical style thus fell out of fashion.

Yeah, because there weren't generations of film actors who'd already developed camera acting technique, and Shatner wasn't surrounded at the time by other actors who used such technique and didn't chew the scenery with quite his gusto.

Just because Shatner may have fallen back on stage technique is not an excuse to pretend that there was not already a body of acting practice for the camera that he could have embraced. Others did.

Apologetics aside, he was frequently hammy...more so on Star Trek than on many earlier TV appearances, so it's likely that his style as Kirk was more an expression of his concern that the material was eccentric enough to really need "selling."

 

[Brutal Strudel]

BStrudel's tag line: "When nothing's funny it gets easy to laugh at the drop of a hat or a bomb..."

Ironically, I just read of Mr. Obama joking at the press corp dinner about predator drones, which have, sadly, killed many civilians afar to protect civilians here. It is coming out that the citizen who is accused of setting the car bomb in NYC was motivated by civilian deaths in the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

That's just as bad as the slide show of W looking all over the White House for the missing WMDs. Callousness is apparently a job requirement for the presidency, whicvhever party he's from.

The line is from a Devo song, btw, called "Let's Run," off of Shout.

 

[3D Master]

Phasers are strictly for sublight combat. I think this one got cemented by TNG. Because in TOS we saw instances of phasers being used at warp speeds, notably in "The Ultimate Computer" and "Journey To Babel."

I don't know who came up with that concept, it isn't in TNG either, and we see a Nebula-class Starship fire phasers at warp in a Voyager episode.

Strange to mine Voyager for an example on something 'good' (in TOS).

This is indeed a very common misconception among non-fans. Another one was exemplified by an ignorant Australian interviewer who started his spoilery report on the world premiere of Star Trek 09 exclaiming that Spock "got the girl" and that this was so unexpected, and then stated that "This is the first time that Spock has had a love interest" You can see that he's not the only one if you look through the comments on Youtube to any video that contains any of Spock's love scenes from TOS, quite a few people are surprised.

It may not have been his first love interest, but it was most definitely the first time Spock started a relationship without having his brain either addled by some space drug, or the pon farr.

 

[Captain Robert April]

CBS was looking to pick up the show for a fourth season (they have a long history of snatching NBC rejects and making bigger hits out of them, going all the way back to "The Guiding Light"), but one of the conditions was that Leonard Nimoy had to be available, and unfortunately, he'd already moved next door to "Mission: Impossible" and the talks died right there.

I keep hearing this about CBS, but where does this story originate?

Joan Winston, who worked for CBS at the time, mentioned it in an interview with the Communicator.

 

[jwb]

How about: Uhura was a prop who merely said "Hailing frequencies open" from time to time.

While the character could have been featured more, it's evident in many episodes that Uhura is a highly professional, intelligent, and well trained officer, and throughout the series she performs many different tasks. (And while she never takes command of the Enterprise in the original series, this left an interesting idea to be explored in the animated series, where she does!)

Offhand, I think Sulu was used as more of a prop than Uhura... maybe I'm wrong. I'd have to watch the series again. But I know a lot of Sulu was stock footage used over and over again.

-jwb-
jwbraun.com

 

[Anticitizen]

Yes, Sulu was pretty much a prop character. Count the number of episodes he's in, then count the number of lines he had. Then determine how many of those spoken lines that he had could've been spoken by any other character without changing the plot one iota...

Fortunately he's spared with a few memorable scenes in Amok Time and Mirror, Mirror, cementing his continuation in the films. Were it not for those sequences (and his rather memorable voice), I think, he wouldn't have made it into the pantheon of characters that moved into the films. Honestly.

You know, now that I think of it, we were severely shortchanged by not seeing more of Lt. Riley. His scenes in Amok Time and The Conscience of the King were at least as memorable, IMHO. If I could go back in time, I'd needle Roddenberry with suggestions that we get more of that venerable descendant of Irish kings

 

[Mytran]

I think you mean Naked Time, right?

It seems to have been the intention in the early episodes to have more recurring characters like this; Sulu with his "different hobby every week" obsession, Riley and other "background" crew turning up on a semi-regular basis etc.

However, on-screen chemistry and dropping budgets soon turned TOS into the Kirk-Spock-McCoy show. Which is one of the reasons why I have a special fondness for the first half of Season 1. Ah, what might have been!

 

[Anticitizen]

I think you mean Naked Time, right?

Yes, yes... naked, amok, whatever :-D

However, on-screen chemistry and dropping budgets soon turned TOS into the Kirk-Spock-McCoy show.

Actually, it always was. In the opening credits, Shatner and Nimoy were given top billing, followed shortly thereafter by Kelley. By 'top billing', i mean 'names featured prominently in the opening credits' and 'paid more than the other actors'.

Off topic, but I just realized that Deforest Kelley was born in 1920. Nine-teen-friggin-twenty. Great depression, prohibition, flapper girls, etc. Starships, phasers, silicon-based life-forms. He lived to see the birth of the Internet... what an era to live in. 1920-1999. Almost inconceivable.

 

[Pauln6]

I think you mean Naked Time, right?

It seems to have been the intention in the early episodes to have more recurring characters like this; Sulu with his "different hobby every week" obsession, Riley and other "background" crew turning up on a semi-regular basis etc.

However, on-screen chemistry and dropping budgets soon turned TOS into the Kirk-Spock-McCoy show. Which is one of the reasons why I have a special fondness for the first half of Season 1. Ah, what might have been!

I'll second this! There are quite a lot of recurring crewin the early season one episodes.

Uhura benefitted from the loss of Rand. Some of the episodes where she gets a larger role would probably have featured Rand originally. Conversely, Sulu features more prominently prior to Chekov's appearance. In fairness, some of that was due to Takei being unavailable but it would have been nice to see more characterful appearances in the latter episodes.

 

[DevilEyes]

Uhura benefitted from the loss of Rand. Some of the episodes where she gets a larger role would probably have featured Rand originally. Conversely, Sulu features more prominently prior to Chekov's appearance. In fairness, some of that was due to Takei being unavailable but it would have been nice to see more characterful appearances in the latter episodes.

I think the opposite. In the early season 1, Uhura was tougher, mouthier, sassier and a lot more interesting (Man Trap, The Naked Time - 'Sorry, neither', Charlie X), in contrast to Rand and Chapel, who acted more like stereotypical females of 1960s TV. After Rand's departure, Uhura was left as 'the girl' of the crew and given more stereotypical "girly" roles - screaming, "Captain, I'm scared" etc. (except for Mirror, Mirror, but I can't imagine Rand in that role, and Sulu was established as having a crush on Uhura, not Rand, early in season 1).

 

[Pauln6]

Uhura did get a couple of larger scenes in the early episodes but that was more as a result of the ensemble feel to the cast in those early episodes. Rand was already in many of those episodes so the lines she got were definitely written for her.

She was the best female officer in the whole series because she wasn't all girly and hopeless, although Ann Mulhall and Charlene Masterson handled themselves well and a couple of yeomen were shown to have some martial arts training too. In fact Uhura's line in City on the Edge of Forever where she goes a bit girly would originally have been Rand's. Still it was quite subversive that they put the black woman in charge of the white male security officers.

 

[Captain Robert April]

I wish they'd release the middle drafts of "City On the Edge of Forever" so we can see the progression from Rand holding off the space pirates to Uhura saying, "Captain, I'm frightened."

I'm sure Harlan has them, if only to fully document the reason for his rage...

 

[T'Girl]

^^^ I wasn't aware that Ellison required a reason for his rage.

 

[Noname Given]

Yes, Sulu was pretty much a prop character. Count the number of episodes he's in, then count the number of lines he had. Then determine how many of those spoken lines that he had could've been spoken by any other character without changing the plot one iota...

Fortunately he's spared with a few memorable scenes in Amok Time and Mirror, Mirror, cementing his continuation in the films. Were it not for those sequences (and his rather memorable voice), I think, he wouldn't have made it into the pantheon of characters that moved into the films. Honestly.

You know, now that I think of it, we were severely shortchanged by not seeing more of Lt. Riley. His scenes in Amok Time and The Conscience of the King were at least as memorable, IMHO. If I could go back in time, I'd needle Roddenberry with suggestions that we get more of that venerable descendant of Irish kings

Well, to be fair to the TOS producers, Sulu WOULD have gotten a lot more airtime in season 2 had he not flown off to play the role of a South Vietnamise Colonel in the John Wayne film The Green Berets - which ran way over schedule and delayed George Takei's return to the Star Trek set.