Day of the Dove: Discuss
- Thread starter Methuselah Flint
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It's actually one of TOS' goofier endings but it works if only because of Shatner's reaction to Kang's overly-hard backslap, which I doubt was scripted, and the fun shot of the unnamed entity leaving the ship (adding fuel to debates about where engineering is). I don't like the cut scene either.
It wasn't goofy. It was human.
YMMV of course. The episode is probably in my top 20 but I think the forced laughter is indeed goofy, particularly after the cringeworthy forced-laughter (this time by the actors, not the characters) ending to The Galileo Seven.
The difference is the forced laughter of The Galileo Seven was presented as the characters genuinely laughing. Even though it was way over the top (Scotty can't stand up without help, his sides are splitting so hard, and Sulu is bouncing like a Caddy with bad springs), it's shows them all having a lovely time.
Day of the Dove actually is showing them FORCING LAUGHTER. Making themselves laugh in order to bolster good feelings and camaraderie in order to drive the entity. Once Kirk's back is slapped, I'm sore a few Klingons (and some stage crew) were actually laughing pretty hard, but I never felt this was anything other that what it looks like.
Day of the Dove actually is showing them FORCING LAUGHTER. Making themselves laugh in order to bolster good feelings and camaraderie in order to drive the entity. Once Kirk's back is slapped, I'm sore a few Klingons (and some stage crew) were actually laughing pretty hard, but I never felt this was anything other that what it looks like.
Agreed. That's why I mentioned the distinction between character-forced and actor-forced in my post.
Fair enough, it's been about a year or so since I last saw it, so I'll check it out soon and see if the ho-ho-hoing at the end still grates. I will never change my mind about G7, though, particularly since what Spock says isn't remotely funny, let alone enough to reduce the entire bridge to paralysis.
Well that makes a big difference. I think this (G7) is one the very, very few moments of last scene humor that actually does work, very well. It's clever and well written, and grows out of issues in the story, and was not just tacked on.
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Day of the Dove-- It's not last scene humor at ALL. It's the resolution. It's not there primarily to be funny. But when it is funny, it's funny because they're improvising and faking it.
Agree. The laughter looked over the top and forced.The end of "The Galileo Seven" always bothered me. We just had several crewmen brutally murdered, but everything's jovial because the stars survived!
Disturbing final scene.
Okay, mea culpa; it's actually not as bad as I remembered from my last rewatch a couple of years ago. It's mostly Shatner's utterly fake belly laugh as he heads back to his chair, Scotty changing directions because he's just so helplessly amused, and Uhura, Mears, and some random goldshirt gal draping themselves over the communications station while pointing and giggling at Spock. Oof. Hopefully no one reprised this hilarious line of cross-examination at Latimer and Gaetano's funerals.
I would expect a bit of histrionics at the death of somebody who mattered, and at the unexpected survival of such a person, too. It might not happen every time, but we could easily declare "The Galileo Seven" as "not every time" - indeed, it's the first such instance we see, even if that's no guarantee the characters aren't veterans of this sort.
It's just that it shouldn't matter to everybody we see laughing. Half could well succumb to embarrassing hysterics, with one character starting it and it then spreading - but the other half still should simply look embarrassed instead.
In any case, the laughter we do see can quite easily be classified as hysterical rather than indicating amusement...
Timo Saloniemi
It's just that it shouldn't matter to everybody we see laughing. Half could well succumb to embarrassing hysterics, with one character starting it and it then spreading - but the other half still should simply look embarrassed instead.
In any case, the laughter we do see can quite easily be classified as hysterical rather than indicating amusement...
Timo Saloniemi
In G7, this is not their immediate response to the deaths. The landing party has had awhile to wash up, get examined and treated, sleep a long time, and they're going back to their duties all freshened up. And people can and do laugh at a thing occasionally, even after people have died. I think you just about jave to. Kirk's laugh may have sounded fake because he was doing it on his own, without cutesy comedy music. I though that seemed drier and more real.
...I wonder how many died. I mean, besides the two from the hero shuttle, the transporter rescue team led by Kelowitz explicitly lost a man (or an Ensign, at any rate). But the Columbus was also out there, as were two further surface teams. And the death of Kelowitz' Ensign didn't make Kirk pull out those other teams yet, so there may well have been deaths on previous sorties, too.
As for "Day of the Dove", casualty figures are a bit vague there, too. Kang says he lost four hundred initially, and Kirk's crew believe they are destroying an empty vessel after beaming out the three dozen or so to give the eventual 38 survivors. But both assessments could be untrue, as the monster thing is at work with their minds already.
Timo Saloniemi
As for "Day of the Dove", casualty figures are a bit vague there, too. Kang says he lost four hundred initially, and Kirk's crew believe they are destroying an empty vessel after beaming out the three dozen or so to give the eventual 38 survivors. But both assessments could be untrue, as the monster thing is at work with their minds already.
Timo Saloniemi
Maybe Kang never really had four hundred crewmen like Chekov never really had a brother?
JB
JB
Oh, no. I really hope that Pavel Chekov didn't have a brother. One bad Russian accent in the quadrant is enough.
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