Originally, satyrs had the hindquarters of horses (but only two legs, as opposed to centaurs) and fauns had the hindquarters of goats, but that distinction has blurred over the years . . ..
Or so I believe.
Cleopatra 1963, Trek influences??
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Originally, satyrs had the hindquarters of horses (but only two legs, as opposed to centaurs) and fauns had the hindquarters of goats, but that distinction has blurred over the years . . ..
Or so I believe.
^Yup. It blurred once the Romans came along and conflated Greek mythology with their own.
Yeah, I opened this thread expecting to roll my eyes but the similarities in cinematography, costumes, and the green makeup is so striking. Seems way too similar to be a coincidence.
Unless, as Maurice says, they're both drawing on established tropes from earlier movies. I mean, naturally the costumes and set dressings from the scene in "The Cage" were repurposed from whatever generally "Oriental"/Middle Eastern stuff they had in the Desilu warehouses.
Here's the thing: Laypeople think that similarity requires intent, but the fact is, creators have the damnedest time avoiding coincidental similarities to earlier works. There are only so many tropes floating around in a culture, so many ways to put ideas together, so different creators end up doing unintentionally similar things all the time. It's a constant annoyance, because you so often get a story rejected because someone else already did something similar without your knowledge. So "way too similar to be a coincidence" is a myth. Yes, sometimes things are similar intentionally, but it constantly does happen by accident.
Exactly. Back when I was reading slush for Arbor House, I once got two historical novels about life in Appalachia on the same day--from two different authors working independently of each other. And when it comes to such well-worn tropes as "decadent slave market" and "exotic dancing girls" . . ..
^When I pitched Star Trek: Voyager ideas to Joe Menosky, he asked me where I got the idea for one of my pitches, because it was very similar to a movie script he'd written. It was actually reworked from my DS9 spec script. One of my DS9 pitches was very similar to "Empok Nor," which came along about a year later. And my TNG spec script had a number of similarities to "Quality of Life," which aired just ten days after I mailed my script in. So it happened three out of the four times I pitched to Trek. That's how routine it is for two creative works to resemble each other by accident.
When it is beyond coincidence, what is that called? "Crypto" something. It is what they attribute the "Arena" script to, that Coon had read Browne's story before and forgotten it.
As a songwriter I often realize I stole something without meaning too. Then it's back to the drawing board, though chord progressions aren't copyrightable.
Hey, in fact I got the Trek music book on interlibrary loan and there's an interview with Alexander Courage and he is surprised when told his theme uses the same chords as "Out of Nowhere." Says he was aiming for the feel of "Beyond the Blue Horizon," soaring melody with uptempo rhythm underneath. SO in attempting to emulate one he crypto-whatevered the other song too.
As to the banquet scene, sure, convergence makes sense. But when there is a hot look or sound in popular media there can certainly be deliberate imitation too. Dare I say "original Battlestar Galactica"? Or "Man from UNCLE"?
As a songwriter I often realize I stole something without meaning too. Then it's back to the drawing board, though chord progressions aren't copyrightable.
Hey, in fact I got the Trek music book on interlibrary loan and there's an interview with Alexander Courage and he is surprised when told his theme uses the same chords as "Out of Nowhere." Says he was aiming for the feel of "Beyond the Blue Horizon," soaring melody with uptempo rhythm underneath. SO in attempting to emulate one he crypto-whatevered the other song too.
As to the banquet scene, sure, convergence makes sense. But when there is a hot look or sound in popular media there can certainly be deliberate imitation too. Dare I say "original Battlestar Galactica"? Or "Man from UNCLE"?
Well, Glen Larson devised the original idea that became Galactica in the 1960s. And while the network certainly bought it in '78 as a result of Star Wars's success, its similarities to Star Wars are largely the result of using many of the same FX artists and designers -- it's the same people continuing to use their own style, rather than one group of people imitating another. Same with UNCLE, which was actually co-created by Ian Fleming.
And yes, imitation can be deliberate, of course. The point is that it doesn't have to be. I'm just refuting the notion of "too similar to be coincidence," because coincidences like that actually happen all the time. We'd need more evidence to be sure.
That makeup is way too similar to be a coincidence. And if they're repurposing sets then it's clearly being directly influenced by the set. The intended stylistic nod seems most likely in this case.
You may be thinking of Yvonne Craig in "Whom Gods Destroy" (yes, that other green woman). If memory serves correctly, she devised her own choreography for her dance scene in that episode.
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The use of a set wouldn't dictate the costume choice. The way the scene is written and the intent of the costume designer do. In fact, to an extreme extent, David Lean had an entire TRAIN repainted to a different color on the set of A Passage to India because its color was too similar to the costume worn by Peggy Ashcroft.
I've probably seen Cleopatra more times than the average person, as it's one of my favorite epic films, and while there are some similar touches in the sense of a decadent bacchanalia dance, it's different enough that I'm not buying into "well, it must be an intentional reference." As Christopher and Maurice have explained, it is a coincidence.
Additionally, putting it into historical context, by the point they were making The Cage in 1964, Cleopatra was already seen as a controversial (see: Burton/Taylor affair), barely-profitable box-office bomb. Doesn't seem like the kind of a movie that would be referenced in a work of science fiction.
This is what we call "not getting it."
If these were the only two screen productions in the history of the planet that had used similar set designs, then you might have a point. But plenty of movies before Cleopatra had already established certain conventions of set design and choreography when portraying "exotic cultures of the East." When two things resemble each other, it's generally the case that they're both referencing something even earlier.
All fiction within a culture draws on the same pool of cultural referents and tropes that the audience will find familiar. That's why similarities are so common. So no, in that sense, it's not a coincidence, because the linking element is the common cultural familiarity with those tropes. But that familiarity comes from the decades of earlier works of literature, art, and film that had established them. Even Cleopatra was not created in a conceptual vacuum.
Well, I found the word, cryptomnesia (forgetting that you know something that you really still do know) on Harvey's fine blog.
http://startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com/2014/12/fact-check-cbs-watch-magazine-star-trek.html
Ironically, I had read that before and forgotten I had seen it there.
http://startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com/2014/12/fact-check-cbs-watch-magazine-star-trek.html
Ironically, I had read that before and forgotten I had seen it there.
I suspect that often may be a case of the same people attending the same meetings and parties and throwing ideas around . . . .
Here's my theory: a producer, a director, and a big-name star are having drinks. Somehow the subject of the Loch Ness Monster comes up, everybody talks about how there hasn't been a good Loch Ness Monster movie in years, and, you know, maybe we should have a meeting about that or see if there are already any good Loch Ness Monster scripts floating around. Everybody goes home thinking about what kind of Loch Ness Monster movie they want to make.
Maybe there's some early talk about collaborating on the project, but, in the end, everybody has their own ideas and heads off to develop their own Loch Ness projects.
And, three years later, audiences are scratching their heads and wondering why there are suddenly two Loch Ness Monster movies coming out in the same year . . . .
(The third one got stuck in Development Hell, or lost Nessie in the fourth draft and is now about vampire mermaids.)
That's it, exactly. Susan Oliver had help, and dancer Yvonne Craig did her own choreography. Craig said it took something like two weeks to get the last bits of green makeup off her body, and she vowed to never do it again.
The music she danced to in "Whom Gods Destroy" is one of the less-famous little gems in LLL's box set, which is dripping with diamonds.