Classic episodes now considered "lame" - ?!

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

Plato I agree wholeheartedly with. Mudd's Women is the better of the two, Turnabout is okay and Miri is great as it's not one I had the ability to see for myself until 1983.
JB

PLATO'S STEPCHILDREN is the CITIZEN KANE of TOS episodes.....often passed over, yet never surpassed.

 

[johnnybear]

PLATO'S STEPCHILDREN is the CITIZEN KANE of TOS episodes.....often passed over, yet never surpassed.

JB

 

[scotpens]

Personally, I like "Miri" (I just ignore the stupid "exact duplicate of Earth" gimmick). And I've never understood the hate for "Mudd's Women." The episode gets ragged on for being "sexist," but is it really? In fact, it makes a point about men who just want a wife who's physically attractive and maybe good in bed, rather than a real life partner and helpmate. (The part of this episode I ignore is when they give Eve a placebo instead of the real Venus drug, yet somehow she magically becomes gorgeous again.)

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Personally, I like "Miri" (I just ignore the stupid "exact duplicate of Earth" gimmick). And I've never understood the hate for "Mudd's Women." The episode gets ragged on for being "sexist," but is it really? In fact, it makes a point about men who just want a wife who's physically attractive and maybe good in bed, rather than a real life partner and helpmate. (The part of this episode I ignore is when they give Eve a placebo instead of the real Venus drug, yet somehow she magically becomes gorgeous again.)

I like Miri and Mudd's Women a lot, I tolerate Turnabout very well, and I cringe at the worst parts of Plato's, but it also has some good scenes.

The thing with Eve getting a placebo is, Mudd stacked the deck. He chose women who were already good looking but didn't know it. And I think the narrative is compressed for time: they don't show the women excusing themselves to do their hair and makeup after taking the Venus drug. We just cut to the finished results, the way you can see the Enterprise go to warp, and in the next shot it arrives at its destination. We are not meant to believe that interstellar travel takes no time at all. They just omit the boring parts.

 

[scotpens]

The thing with Eve getting a placebo is, Mudd stacked the deck. He chose women who were already good looking but didn't know it.

Then why is it that when the drug wears off, the women start looking like old hags? Except for Eve, who only looks ten years older and like she just got out of bed in the morning.

 

[The Salt Umpire]

I like Miri and Mudd's Women a lot, I tolerate Turnabout very well, and I cringe at the worst parts of Plato's, but it also has some good scenes.

The thing with Eve getting a placebo is, Mudd stacked the deck. He chose women who were already good looking but didn't know it. And I think the narrative is compressed for time: they don't show the women excusing themselves to do their hair and makeup after taking the Venus drug. We just cut to the finished results, the way you can see the Enterprise go to warp, and in the next shot it arrives at its destination. We are not meant to believe that interstellar travel takes no time at all. They just omit the boring parts.

That's why Kubrick cut out the Jupiter to Saturn portion of Clarke's 2001 story. Dave Bowman found the Space Hershey Bar orbiting Saturn, not Jupiter.

 

[comsol]

That's why Kubrick cut out the Jupiter to Saturn portion of Clarke's 2001 story. Dave Bowman found the Space Hershey Bar orbiting Saturn, not Jupiter.

I thought that was because they couldn't convincingly create Saturn's rings for 2001, although Douglas Trumbull was finally able to do them in Silent Running.

 

[The Salt Umpire]

I remember reading in one of the sf mags that the studio said seeing both Jupiter and then Saturn might confuse moviegoers.

 

[scotpens]

I thought that was because they couldn't convincingly create Saturn's rings for 2001, although Douglas Trumbull was finally able to do them in Silent Running.

That's correct.

"Jupiter was selected over Saturn, because to do Saturn meant, in effect, getting a convincing Jupiter first -- they are fairly similar -- and then finding a way to put rings around it. Best way to do the planet was not the best way to do the rings; they could not be made at the same time, as photographic records, like our other planetary images. Putting two separate techniques together into one image would have been quite difficult, though not impossible."

-- Special photographic effects supervisor Con Pederson quoted in The Making of Kubrick's 2001, edited by Jerome Agel

 

[comsol]

That's correct.

"Jupiter was selected over Saturn, because to do Saturn meant, in effect, getting a convincing Jupiter first -- they are fairly similar -- and then finding a way to put rings around it. Best way to do the planet was not the best way to do the rings; they could not be made at the same time, as photographic records, like our other planetary images. Putting two separate techniques together into one image would have been quite difficult, though not impossible."

-- Special photographic effects supervisor Con Pederson quoted in The Making of Kubrick's 2001, edited by Jerome Agel

That's the book I remember it from - thanks.

 

[The Salt Umpire]

That's correct.

"Jupiter was selected over Saturn, because to do Saturn meant, in effect, getting a convincing Jupiter first -- they are fairly similar -- and then finding a way to put rings around it. Best way to do the planet was not the best way to do the rings; they could not be made at the same time, as photographic records, like our other planetary images. Putting two separate techniques together into one image would have been quite difficult, though not impossible."

-- Special photographic effects supervisor Con Pederson quoted in The Making of Kubrick's 2001, edited by Jerome Agel

Thanks for posting that. We are spoiled by sfx now.

 

[Shawnster]

Thanks for posting that. We are spoiled by sfx now.

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