a cut price Season 4

Discussion in 'Star Trek - The Original & Animated Series' started by Khan 2.0, Sep 18, 2014.

  1. Nebusj

    Nebusj Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    On the idea of replacing the leads with presumably cheaper cast members … I note that David Gerrold wrote an amusing short story for the anthology Alternate Kennedys --- a collection of alternate histories based around the Kennedy family. In this story, Joe Kennedy stays in Hollywood rather than getting into politics. The result is that when Star Trek is squeezed between budget pressures and production pressures, particularly Shatner and Nimoy feuding to the point they can't reliably produce a show at all, the brothers John and Robert Kennedy are well-positioned to replace them for the last season of the show. It does offer the chance to tweak the format of the show to smooth out some unrealistic touches and maybe open some new storytelling avenues, but, well, you think we have fanboy nightmare outcomes in our timeline …
     
  2. plynch

    plynch Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    To get a brain into a cranium, I'd say yes.
     
  3. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    No, because they have transporters. If you can beam people into or out of an enclosed ship, you can beam a brain into or out of an enclosed skull.

    Really, it's absurd that Trek doesn't show transporters being routinely used for surgery.
     
  4. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

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    Fair enough. I hadn't really given thought to the transporters.
     
  5. LMFAOschwarz

    LMFAOschwarz Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I was trying to think of how many supposedly different rooms we saw on the ship during the series, but all I could think of (outside of overt ones like the theater) were crew quarters, labs,...and more labs. There was that brief scene in the armory, but it was all full of swords at the time. :)

    So, beam the brain in, then send in the nanites? I'll buy that.

    It's just as well Spock's brain was never actually seen in the episode. Think of the added mirth (on top of everything else mentioned about the episode) of quatloo jokes! :lol:
     
  6. gottacook

    gottacook Captain Captain

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    A question related to the "Teller"/"Angela" business in season 1: What was in Shatner's script for the season 2 episode "The Immunity Syndrome" that caused him to pronounce "Kyle" as "Cowell" throughout? Was it Cowell in the script, and no one saw the error? And if it was Kyle in the script, why would Shatner pronounce it "Cowell" in that episode only?
     
  7. Destructor

    Destructor Commodore Commodore

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    Bashir does use the transporter for brain surgery in S1/2 I think, and of course for the great 'babyswap' nightmare of S5. But yes generally they're both seen as pretty radical procedures rather than common usages. I personally believe that people on DS9 go to the toilet by walking up to the replicator and saying: "Extract waste." at which point the replicator beams out everything. No wiping required.
     
  8. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

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    Wouldn't the muscles at the end of the "tunnel" atrophy and create problems when you aren't near a transporter? :lol:
     
  9. eyeresist

    eyeresist Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    What if they produced new animation (and sound) for the old dialog recordings? That might be awesome.


    I can't agree with you on the cast - Maya was somewhat pretty, but not as interesting as the lost characters. And they turned Carter into a weenie. In light of what happened to that show, we should be glad TOS S3 wasn't worse.
     
  10. Maurice

    Maurice Snagglepussed Admiral

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    Maybe, but the production memos I've seen courtesy of Harvey do not support this, even though some of the production people cited that as one of the reasons post facto. On paper, at least, it was all about money. They were paying Grace the 4th highest rate on the show and not using her that much, whereas they were wanting to use De more. Out goes Janice and in comes more of Bones.

    I think Harvey's going to do a Star Trek Fact Check on this subject at some point.


    Producers/writing staff would be to blame. TV Directors come on for a week of prep, then shoot the show the following week. They're not responsible for continuity between episodes.
     
  11. Alidar Jarok

    Alidar Jarok Everything in moderation but moderation Moderator

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    Well, continuity in the same issue is more my concern. I realize one was a first name one was a last name, but no one spoke to each other to get it straight.

    It's fine, it's a symptom of how production worked back then (which is what I was commenting on) compounded by the random chance that the two episodes would be aired back to back, but there's no question something like that wouldn't happen today.
     
  12. plynch

    plynch Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    No offense to Rand, Ms. Whitney, but that's a good trade. Although a strong woman as she was in several eps would have been a welcome person on that show.
     
  13. Maurice

    Maurice Snagglepussed Admiral

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    I suspect it's a case of the Yeoman being a role that was ill-defined and they didn't know what to do with her most of the time. There was a memo about bringing her back in the latter half of the 1st season, but it never happened.
     
  14. Harvey

    Harvey Admiral Admiral

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    I was recently surprised to learn that this isn't actually true. Nichols, Koenig, Doohan, and Takei were all signed to exclusive contracts at one time (though not at the same time). As Maurice suggests, I will be writing about this soon.
     
  15. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

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    Directors in television are hired guns. Their only responsibility is to shoot that week's script they're hired for on time and within budget. They mostly concentrate on the technical aspects. Some are good dealing with actors, others aren't. They don't have time to go back and read through every script before their show to make sure everything's consistent. That's somebody else's job with the regular production team.
     
  16. Alidar Jarok

    Alidar Jarok Everything in moderation but moderation Moderator

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    Do you agree that it's not likely something like that would occur today?
     
  17. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    It's certainly not impossible that a character's name could be changed in the course of last-minute rewrites and the error could go uncorrected. TV production is such a hectic and difficult process that it's just unrealistic to expect a total absence of mistakes. The Internet Movie Database has a whole category for "Goofs," because there are errors in every production, despite the best efforts of everyone concerned. And that is every bit as true in 2014 as it was in 1966. Human creations are imperfect -- that is simply the way of the world. It's just petty armchair quarterbacking to harp on a minor glitch that was nobody's fault.
     
  18. erastus25

    erastus25 Commodore Commodore

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    Wow. I can't wait to read this. The Kirk love thing has been drilled into our heads for so long it will be interesting to get some primary documents to confirm/reject the idea.


    This has been talked about before. Personally, I think the far bigger issue is the recycling of Doohan, Nichols and Barrett as voices for multiple characters. It kills my suspension of disbelief to have every single alien sound the same every week.

    Could have also been Shatner just pronouncing it wrong. See also: His insistence on pronouncing "sabotage" wrong in multiple episodes over multiple years.
     
  19. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

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    I've not seen regular television since before ENT went off the air, so I can't tell you what is or isn't possible today.
     
  20. CaptainMurdock

    CaptainMurdock Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Indeed. In TAS he kept calling Kukulkan, "Kubla Khan."