Given a TV budget, why "crabs"?

In the old "Making of Star Trek" by Stephen Whitfield, we are treated to some evolving outlines for the original pilot. At this stage, the ship is called the Yorktown and the captain is named April. Among these differences, I found it particularly intriguing that Roddenberry described the telepathic beings as being "crab-like". Distinctive to be sure, as it breaks from the cliche (trope, whatever) of fat headed humanoids to imply superior mental abilities. (Since 1982 when I think of this treatment, I imagine something akin to the Garthim costumes from "The Dark Crystal".)

But given this was something intended for television instead of a theatrical release, why would GR even bother describing the Talosians as crustaceans knowing it would be flat out impossible to achieve on a TV budget and time restraint? Was he that clueless as to what was practical for TV, or did he describe them as such as some kind of mental exercise, a "placeholder" technique so that he could focus more upon the story structure?

Hopefully, Harvey can chime in with some concrete facts.

 

Well, it worked for Roger Corman in 1957, and Attack of the Crab Monsters certainly wasn't big budget...

Honestly, this is not the only thing in earlier pilot drafts that was impractical. They definitely had too many opticals. Roddenberry really wasn't that experienced as a producer in 1964, having done the job for just one season of The Lieutenant, which didn't have close to the same budget considerations of science fiction. He may also have wanted to get all of his grandiose ideas down on paper - knowing that this wasn't a final draft - and work his way down to a script that was affordable.

 

Doctor Who was able to do giant crab monsters just a couple of months after Star Trek premiered, and on a per-episode budget that would probably have been on par with that of a single effects shot of the Enterprise. It probably wouldn't have been possible for The Cage to do convincing crab monsters, but I doubt it would have been technically or financially infeasible, either.

 

This is how TV/movie writing generally works. You don't know for sure which ideas might be affordable until you talk to the producers and FX artists and such. So in your first draft, you throw in everything you'd want to do in an ideal world; and then you dial it back, trimming the parts you can't pull off and keeping the parts you can. Otherwise, you might leave out something that could have been done after all.

Plus, you don't want to inhibit your imagination when you're coming up with the initial story. The writer's job is to come up with the best possible ideas. It's other people's job to tell them what parts they can do and what parts they have to change. And if you're starting with the biggest, coolest ideas you can think of and trimming back from there, then hopefully you'll at least retain some remnant of the coolness. Imagination comes first, practicality later.

 

"Crab-like" is rather vague. They could have just worn big papier-mache masks that were shaped like crustaceans. That would have been well within budget, and looked like something from The Outer Limits.

Kor

 

No, the description in the outline was quite clear that the crab-creatures were "in no way human," that they had "six multiclawed arms and legs," and that they had low doorways meant for their different body shape (a description that's always reminded me of the Krell architecture of Forbidden Planet, probably Roddenberry's direct inspiration).

 

Ah, I forgot about those details. I misplaced my copy of TMOST some time ago.

Kor

 

Because spiders were passé, and octopi have too many union rules.

 

One way to achieve it would be to have the Talosians played by puppets. The puppets would be performed in miniature "verisimilitude" sets built to match the full-scale sets. Some fx work could put the puppets and the actors together in one shot, via rear screen projection.

King Kong (1933) used a big rear-screen with Kong on it, behind the actors. And they also use a miniature rear screen with the actors on it, behind the Kong puppet. It worked pretty well. The trick with the miniature rear screen was that the actor footage had to be advanced frame by frame to match the stop-motion puppet work. It took a lot of extra time to create those scenes, but they were magical.

Making it easier: if the Talosian puppets could be moved in real time by some hidden means, then the time-consuming stop-motion procedure would be eliminated.

 

There are dozens of ways it could have been done, from marionettes to people in suits (mimes could have done it), but I don't think they would have utilized any technique wherein the actors could not physically interact with them. "Get it in camera" was generally the favored approach where possible in the pre-digital era.

 

I Googled this to see what they looked like. A Hora with eyes and the legs and claws.

Definitely doable within budget.

 

It’s actually not a bad movie. Not great, mind you, but worth seeing if 50s sci-fi appeals to you.

 

How about the scene where Captain April gets a look at some of the other creatures in the alien zoo? One cell is described as containing "a huge six-legged spider-anthropoid with saber tooth fangs," another has "a writhing mass of intertwined, hissing, snakelike bodies with vague humanoid faces and atrophied arms," and a third houses "mongoose-like rodents, but clothed and weaponed like a feudal civilization, complete with a tiny castle, moat, ramparts, etc." which April recognizes as "the intelligent Lemur-life of a Class M planet in the Arcturus system."

What was G.R. smoking when he wrote that? Even if those furry little medieval critters could have been done believably, they'd have been laughed off the screen.

(And Gene's zoology was wonky. Were those supposed to be mongooses, rodents, or lemurs? They're three completely different orders of mammals.)

 

It wasn't the final-draft script, it was the initial outline. It was the stage where you try out ideas, knowing that they will be refined later in the process. Roddenberry's goal was to suggest possibilities, to indicate the general type of things he had in mind, knowing that when he talked about it with the effects people and the money people, they'd figure out what actually could be done and the scene would be reworked accordingly. Like I said, this is normal creative practice in TV and movies -- you start out with unfettered imagination, then trim it back to what's practically attainable. Nobody involved had any expectation that this document would be identical to the final episode.

 

The thread title gave me completely the wrong idea...

"Well the crabs are all over the landing party today, Jim."

 

Because this:

 

Roddenberry wasn’t a scientist. The various technical notes in his papers at UCLA make that clear. To his credit, he did do a lot of research (or at least consulted a lot of material others were feeding him) while he was preparing the pilot.

 

Plus, like I said, an outline like this is just to suggest ideas and possibilities -- in this case, to convey an impression of the general sort of creature design he was imagining. They'd be aliens, after all, so they wouldn't belong to any specific Earthly taxonomic family.

 

"mongoose-like rodents, but clothed and weaponed like a feudal civilization, complete with a tiny castle, moat, ramparts, etc." which April recognizes as "the intelligent Lemur-life of a Class M planet in the Arcturus system."

What was G.R. smoking when he wrote that? Even if those furry little medieval critters could have been done believably, they'd have been laughed off the screen.

https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1480094435l/281954.jpg

 

Oh, you could have done that fairly easily (but not cheaply) if anyone had a few rodent type masks. You get some medieval outfits from Western Costume, shoot the "rodents" against the same set as Rigel VI and do a matte painting of the "cage" with their castle. Probably not worth the effort though.