Script blunders!

..Has anyone made a list of the obvious script blunders for The Original Series? Such as Kirk remaining in the transporter room (without a visor) while the Medusan Ambassador transported, or the particularly idiotic example from "Assignment : Earth" having to do with the tractor beam?

 

The thing in "Is There in Truth No Beauty" wasn't technically a script blunder. It was a post-production editing choice that greatly displeased the director when he saw it on TV.

I don't recall the tractor beam being used in "Assignment: Earth."

 

Great point on post-editing choice and it is a production blunder. I still like the thread's notion of citing mistakes, either plot narrative or continuity. Every show in the franchise has them and TOS was no exception.

But wasn't Gary Seven transporting to Earth from some super distance across the galaxy, which Enterprise's transporters intercepted. It wasn't seen in f/x but the camera was on Scotty narrating what felt like a whole book about it.

 

A classic is when Kirk changes tunics going from the transporter room and the bridge in “Charlie X.”

In “The Enemy Within” when the duplicate Kirk materializes in the vacated transporter room I believe he had no insignia on his tunic.

In “The Cloud Minders” as well as “The Savage Curtain” we get shots of Kirk in reverse where his insignia is on the wrong side and his hair is parted the wrong way.

Two post production goofs I never minded. In “The Naked Time” no visible beam was added to Scotty’s phaser as he cut through the engineering bulkhead. Loved it! I was actually disappointed when decades later a beam was added during remastering the episode. Another was in “Balance Of Terror” where there was no sound added when we see the Enterprise firing phaser bursts and the subsequent explosions. The music underscored what we saw happening. Given there is not supposed to be any sound in space I thought that was awesome. Again disappointed when they added photon torpedo sound f/x decades later. It was much cooler before.

 

IDK - given the protective trunk that the ambassador was carried in: I found the final scene where Spock and Miranda speak and Spock isn't wearing a visor; and then he puts the visor on before he energizes and beams them out a bit ridiculous. I realize it's because they went through the process of doing a VFX shot of the ambassador beaming in from the perspective of someone wearing a visor, and they wanted to reuse it for the end scene of the episode, but yeah if it's the case that being without it in the presence of a Medusan is so dangerous; Spock should have been wearing it as they transported the ambassador back to the transporter room, and as he was speaking with Miranda. (She of course didn't need one because at that point she was no longer hiding the fact she was blind.)

 

Flopped shots are generally editorial fixes to correct eyeline issues. When TOS-R undid some of them they created a different mistake by fixing the fix.

 

The title of the thread is script blunders but virtually everything being mentioned is a production or continuity blunder having nothing to do with the script.

I would consider a script blunder something more in the lines of Kirk's brother having three sons mentioned in an earlier episode and then in operation annihilate he only has one. You can make up a reason why we didn't see the other two sons but for all intents and purposes it was probably just a mistake in the script

 

I think you're missing the intent. The idea was that, while beaming, the box might de-materialize before Kollos did, that you'd have that moment when you can see through the box. And so the visor had to be worn while operating the Transporter. [And that's why the film editor should not have put Kirk in at the very end, watching the beam-out. But Shatner was the star, and the show wanted to feature him closing out the episode.]

At the top of Act 1 when they cleared the corridors, Spock and Miranda wore visors to carry Kollos to his room. The fear was that they could theoretically drop the box and Kollos would spill out. Technically, they should have repeated the precaution at the end of the episode.

 

That's the way I always took it. That during the materialization and dematerialization that he might be momentarily visible and why take the chance of that happening so go ahead and wear the glasses during the transporter procedures.

 

How about "Shore Leave" when Sulu says that "Someone's beaming down from the bridge?" Was that a script goof from Roddenberry rewriting the script on location or just Takei forgetting his line?

 

Not showing the other two sons, and any possible daughters, is not exactly a script blunder in 'Operation, Annihilate!" Sam Kirk's age isn't established. But if he is James's full brother, and if he is only a few years older than James, then his children are likely to be rather young. It is quite possible that the other boys would have been younger than Peter and thus require younger actors. And having child actors on set sometimes means scheduling problems to shoot their scenes without exceeding their legal working hours. So not showing the other two sons could be a sound production decision.

What seems like a blunder is:

McCoy talks like he knows that Peter is the last survivor of Sam Kirk's family. Since Peter is McCoy's patient and his mother died in sickbay, and McCoy pronounced Sam dead, McCoy has every right to have at least glanced at the Federation database files on the family and thus know there are two sons unaccounted for on screen during the episode.

I discussed this in my answer to this question:

 

Or James T. Kirk.

 

..Yeah, OK, I should of figured that some Geek would of written a book...

 

oh, what a smartass. ..Or "James R. Kirk" ?

 

OK, Fair enough, I was using the term "blunder" as an all encompassing term to cover a range of errors.

 

SORRY! WRONG EPISODE! I guess that I was tired, and was not paying attention. I meant "Tomorrow is Yesterday".

 

OK. Nitpicker. hehahah

 

oh, I forgot about that one. How would he know that? Of he flubbed the line, and they left it in.