Did you ever notice Sulu....

[treknician1701]

During the final moments of "The Doomsday Machine" have you noticed that Sulu starts counting at "16" and goes down, but if you count along with the actual realtime timing, the ship blows up about 6 or 7 seconds LATER? If you start at 22 or 23, when Sulu is a 16, then everything works out perfectly. They should have filmed George counting down from like "30" all the way down, and the did the editing on it, in realtime so it would match up!

Don't know if that's been discussed here, but I just watched the episode the other day and wanted to mention it here.

Greg

 

[Christopher]

That's just one of hundreds if not thousands of examples of this throughout film and television. Screen countdowns almost never correspond to real time. This is partly because the scenes are edited after they're shot, and the timing is often adjusted for drama. But for some reason, actors almost always count seconds down slower than real time -- perhaps to build suspense, or perhaps to allow more room for dialogue, tense stares, etc.

In my novel Only Superhuman, I wrote a scene with a countdown in it, and I timed the dialogue to get the numbers right. But when it was recorded as an audiobook, they used the same numbers but the scene took about 25% longer to play out, because the lead actress had a slower delivery than I'd imagined for the character. The performance and pacing come first; getting the numbers right is expendable, since few would bother to check.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Yeah, I noticed it too, first time I saw it, even though I was a little kid.

About the only thing that makes the telescoping countdown forgivable is that the location shifts around between the Enterprise bridge, the Constellation heading into the planet killer, the transporter room, the Jefferies tube, and the Constellation auxiliary control.

I calm myself by assuming that some of the shots are actually happening simultaneously instead of one after another.

If the footage were entirely on the Enterprise bridge, or we could always hear Sulu counting down, it'd be harder to deal with.

 

[Wingsley]

Lt. Sulu's countdown is not in time units, but in distance between the alien machine and the approaching Starship Constellation. The only thing strange about it is that Sulu starts the countdown in miles, not kilometers. Other than that, it all makes sense.

Here's the transcript, modified from the Chakoteya.net:

[Bridge]

SULU: He's two thousand miles from the planet killer and closing fast.

[Jefferies tube]

(The sparks stop flying. Scott jumps out of the Jefferies Tube, lands on his feet in the ship's corridor, and activates the ship's intercom.)

SCOTT: Bridge, transporter operational, but this jerry-rigging won't last for long! He's got to come off now!

[Bridge]

SCOTT [OC]: I'll stand by here.
SULU: Fifteen hundred miles and closing.
SPOCK: Captain, transporter operational, but just barely.

[Starship Constellation Auxiliary Control]

KIRK: Prepare to beam me aboard on my signal.

[Bridge]

SULU: One thousand miles and closing.
SPOCK: Transporter, stand by.
KYLE [OC]: Standing by, sir.
SULU: Five hundred miles and closing.

[Starship Constellation Auxiliary Control]

(The throat of the machine fills the screen when Kirk flips the final red switch and then grabs his communicator.)

KIRK: Beam me aboard!

[Bridge]

SPOCK: Energize.

[Transporter room]

KYLE: Energizing!

(Kyle actuates the transport mechanism levers, but the transport pads in the mechanism's chamber explode in a POOF!)

KYLE: Bridge, it's shorted out again!

[Jefferies tube]

(Sparks start flying in the Jefferies tube.)

SCOTT: Och, what's wrong with it?

[Starship Constellation Auxiliary Control]

KIRK: Gentlemen, beam me aboard.
SPOCK [OC]: We can't, Captain. Transporter is out again.

[Bridge]

SPOCK: Mister Scott, twenty seconds to detonation.

[Jefferies tube]

SPOCK [OC]: Mister Scott?

[Bridge]

SPOCK: Mister Scott

[Jefferies tube]

SPOCK [OC]: Try inverse phasing.

[Bridge]

SULU: Sixty, fifty, forty

[Constellation Auxiliary Control]

SULU [OC]: Thirty.
KIRK: Gentlemen, I suggest you beam me aboard.

[Bridge]

SULU: Ten

[Starship Constellation Auxiliary Control]

SULU [OC]: Nine, eight

[Jefferies tube]

SULU [OC]: Seven.
SPOCK [OC]: Mister Scott?

(Scott jumps out of the Jefferies Tube, landing in the corridor again and activating the intercom.)

SCOTT: Try her now, Mister Kyle!
SULU [OC]: Six.

[Constellation Auxiliary Control]

SULU [OC]: Five, four
(We see the Starship Constellation enter the alien machine. We see Kyle frantically to beam something in. We see a cloud coming out of the planet-killer before there's a bang.)

[Transporter room]

(Kirk finally materializes in the transport chamber.)

KYLE: Bridge, we got him through!

 

[treknician1701]

Doug Grindstaff told me that he was constantly pulling his hair out, trying to get things like the red alert lined up with the video, and he would get it perfect, then a week later, after some film editor got done, the studio would send it back to him, with the sound effect all out of whack! I would have thought that the studio would do the film editing first, before any sound production was even considered, but what do I know?




Well, I'll be! I never knew that he wasn't counting down the seconds! I looked at this scene three times, and it's still confusing. I can hear him say "Fifty" and then "Forty", but then, it sounds like he says "Thirteen", but if you listen carefully, you can hear him say the "Teen" part, and then later he says "Ten", etc. Like I say, I heard the "FifTEE" and then the "ForTEE" as clear as day, but I cannot hear the "ThirtEE" at all, it really sounds like "Thir TEEN"! I listened with the volume up 200%, and I cannot hear anything but that, but then, maybe it's just my meds, hehehehehe

Greg

 

[ToddPence]

Balok's "minutes" in "The Corbomite Manuever" are really about ninety seconds each.

 

[diankra]

One of the best is the nuke countdown in Goldfinger, where they made a point of shooting it so it would match whatever happened in editing, but then ditched that when someone pointed out that it'd be a nice touch if the countdown was stopped at 007.

 

[Delta Vega]

Sulu had a penchant for countdowns, especially countdowns leading to almost certain death.................that never happened.

 

[Christopher]

"You have an annoying fascination for timepieces, Mister Sulu."

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Lt. Sulu's countdown is not in time units, but in distance between the alien machine and the approaching Starship Constellation. The only thing strange about it is that Sulu starts the countdown in miles, not kilometers. Other than that, it all makes sense.

Makes sense? Not really.

It doesn't really matter what Sulu is counting down, because Spock said, "Mister Scott, twenty seconds to detonation." Plus, we already knew that Scotty had set the engines to overload in thirty seconds. There's just no way to square the elapsed screen time with how much time must be ticking off in-universe, unless at least some of the different shots are somehow happening simultaneously.

 

[Ssosmcin]

The actual real time it took for 30 seconds to go by was 1:26. Always made me chuckle as a kid, especially the length of time it take for Sulu to go from 6 to 5, stopping at 4. I'd love to see a real time edit of this sequence. Just for laffs.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Sometimes something exciting will be going on...they'll cut to a commercial break...and when the break is over--although several minutes have actually passed--no time will have elapsed on the show!

 

[Cyke101]

That's just one of hundreds if not thousands of examples of this throughout film and television. Screen countdowns almost never correspond to real time.

To add: if a production *does* stick to real time, they're applauded for it (since it can't be easy from a production standpoint, and it is indeed a rarity).

Does this fit for 11001001, specifically the final countdown to auto-destruct?

 

[treknician1701]

someone on Youtube had a poorly created CGI of the Doomsday machine, with a fantastic shot of the Constellation going into the doomsday machine, which looked like it was carved out of solid rock, with rough edges and such. Really a great shot, wish they had done something like that for the enhanced TOS release.

Here is the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgPK1ZFnLig

Now, I say that it was poorly done, which is a hell of a lot better than any CGI action that I could create, just to be clear about that!

Greg Stone