Currently watching 'Too Short A Season' again and forgot how cringeworthy 'old' Jameson was, the acting I mean... Surely it would have been better to have an older actor play old Jameson, his voice makes me cringe at his attempt to sound 'old'. Overly husky and every word overly emphasised. IMO It would also been more dramatic to see a drastically younger Jameson (different actors) throughout the episode rather than just remove a bit of make-up here and there. I realise it was it was to do with budgets etc. but to me it's quite hard to watch the whole thing play out.
At first I thought he was trying too hard to sound like an old man, but the funny thing is he sounds the same way as a kid too. I think he just tried to be overly expressive in the old-man makeup with his gestures. I actually liked his acting as the younger version when he's ordering Picard around. I don't know which old man voice is worse, Jameson or Mark Twain...
That episode would have been so much better in its original form - where the old admiral was Kirk, come to see the effects of what he did from "A Private Little War." Shatner would have been just the right age.
I'd be interested in that too. It certainly would've changed a lot. If nothing else it would have saved us from Generations.
^ That's an interesting question. Today, they could potentially de-age him using CGI technologies, a la Tron Legacy. But in 1987? That wouldn't have been an option. Not sure how they would have managed that. As interesting as it might have been to see Kirk, this was way too early in the run of TNG to go there. The brief cameo by McCoy in Farpoint was touching and well-done, but anything more than that would have been a distraction. The TNG crew needed time to stand on their own two feet first. Additionally, the story as written would have outraged many fans of Kirk and TOS.
They probably wouldn't have bothered with the whole deaging think, especially if they're tying back to a private little war.
Would it have been smart to let such an iconic figure like Captain Kirk die in season 1 though? Although it would have cemented the fact it was a brand new show and wanted to set itself aside from TOS.
Again, who said anything about him dying? If the original script was calling for Kirk and the muzzle loader planet, it obviously was envisioning something very different than the whole aging thing we got.
Supposedly that was the original pitch for the episode, but the writing team didn't want to go there. I started a thread about this not that long ago.
Yeah. But I've been going through some of my TNG books (including the Compendium) and can't find it mentioned anywhere.