• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Desilu's Oscar Katz on film — Fact Trek

Maurice

Snagglepussed
Admiral
On this date in 1973 the 2nd STAR TREK LIVES! convention kicked off, running Feb. 16–19 at the Commodore Hotel in NYC.

Here's film from the event, complete with almost never-seen Desilu former exec Oscar Katz, + Dorothy Fontana + Leonard Nimoy. It's a nice glimpse into early Trek fandom.

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
 
Last edited:
I always find it interesting that you still see the fans there claiming that Star Trek was the first "adult" science fiction show on television when that honestly just wasn't the case.

Both the "Twilight Zone", and the 1960s version of "The Outer Limits" did plenty of adults science fiction during their runs.

Make no mistake I love Star Trek and I'm an older fan of the original series (Saw my first Star Trek episode on NBC first run in 1969 at the age of 6 and was hooked); but I've always thought the claim that Star Trek was the first and only adult science fiction series ridiculous from the first time I heard the claim because it's just not the case
 
I always find it interesting that you still see the fans there claiming that Star Trek was the first "adult" science fiction show on television when that honestly just wasn't the case.

Both the "Twilight Zone", and the 1960s version of "The Outer Limits" did plenty of adults science fiction during their runs.

The way I've always heard (and said) it is that it was the first adult non-anthology SF show. But specifics tend to get eroded away with repetition.
 
The way I've always heard (and said) it is that it was the first adult non-anthology SF show. But specifics tend to get eroded away with repetition.
I was referring to the sound bite that's in the YouTube video. The fan making the comment draws no such distinction in the video.
 
I was referring to the sound bite that's in the YouTube video. The fan making the comment draws no such distinction in the video.

Yes, people get it wrong sometimes. My point is that it's more an incomplete statement than an entirely false one. There is an underlying truth there, but there's a key detail missing.
 
The Twilight Zone is arguably not a science-fiction show, as it is more a general fantasy and the fantastic show. The Outer Limits was SF and not aimed down at kiddies.

Men Into Space was adult scifi and aired in the 1959–60 broadcast season.

At best Star Trek is the first hour long science-fiction show with continuing characters aimed at an adult audience. You have to qualify all of those things or it’s not any sort of first at all.
 
The Twilight Zone is arguably not a science-fiction show, as it is more a general fantasy and the fantastic show.

It was a mix of both fantasy and science fiction. It was largely fantasy, and many of its SF episodes had fantasy elements in them (e.g. "Death Ship" or "And When the Sky Was Opened"), but there were plenty of straight-up SF stories without anything supernatural or surreal about them -- "The Lonely," "Time Enough at Last," "I Shot an Arrow Into the Air," "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street," "Eye of the Beholder," "The Invaders," "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?," "The Obsolete Man," etc. I'd even call something like "Back There" or "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" science fiction; the mechanism of time travel in those cases is never explained, but it isn't overtly supernatural either.

For that matter, there were a couple of TZ episodes with no SF/F elements at all, "The Silence" and "The Jeopardy Room." Those were thrillers more in the vein of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, with twist endings but no unrealistic elements. And the pilot, "Where Is Everybody?", barely counts as SF, because there was a rational explanation for the weirdness (a result of the network being cautious about the fantasy aspects).
 
It was a mix of both fantasy and science fiction. It was largely fantasy, and many of its SF episodes had fantasy elements in them (e.g. "Death Ship" or "And When the Sky Was Opened"), but there were plenty of straight-up SF stories without anything supernatural or surreal about them -- "The Lonely," "Time Enough at Last," "I Shot an Arrow Into the Air," "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street," "Eye of the Beholder," "The Invaders," "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?," "The Obsolete Man," etc. I'd even call something like "Back There" or "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" science fiction; the mechanism of time travel in those cases is never explained, but it isn't overtly supernatural either.

For that matter, there were a couple of TZ episodes with no SF/F elements at all, "The Silence" and "The Jeopardy Room." Those were thrillers more in the vein of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, with twist endings but no unrealistic elements. And the pilot, "Where Is Everybody?", barely counts as SF, because there was a rational explanation for the weirdness (a result of the network being cautious about the fantasy aspects).
In short: it’s not a scifi show.
 
In short: it’s not a scifi show.

Not exclusively, no. It was an anthology that included both fantasy and science fiction, and Rod Serling said so himself:

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Also:
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/pioneers-of-television/video/rod-serling-on-science-fiction/

It had horror episodes as well, and as I said, a couple of non-genre thrillers. It even had some very bad sitcom-pilot episodes with fantasy or sci-fi elements. It was an eclectic anthology, but SF was a major part of the mix. TZ has always been perceived and talked about as a science fiction show. A cursory glance through my copy of The Twilight Zone Companion by Marc Scott Zicree turned up several such references in interviews with its creators.

Genre categories are not walls with "Keep Out" signs posted on them. They're ingredients that can be mixed together in countless ways. And television genre series have frequently mixed SF and fantasy together or treated them interchangeably.
 
If we narrow it down to "space opera" with ray guns and alien soldiers and swashbuckling adventurers and the like, then Trek did take a more grown-up approach with those tropes than what had usually been seen on American television before that.

Kor
 
Last edited:
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top