Would Russia have even be aware of Star Trek at that time? I can't imagine they were getting American TV series in hose days, and having Star Trek stand out so much where it was in issue seems a bit grandiose.
Fact-Checking Inside Star Trek: The Real Story
- Thread starter Harvey
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Would Russia have even be aware of Star Trek at that time? I can't imagine they were getting American TV series in hose days, and having Star Trek stand out so much where it was in issue seems a bit grandiose.
http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/tv/chekov.asp
I think Pravda had bigger things to pontificate about than some TV show that wouldn't even be aired in Europe until after it was already cancelled in the US.
Kor
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Shatner spent much of the 70's as a struggling actor, getting jobs with touring stage companies, occasional pilots, some more Roger Corman movies. To say he was at the "forefront" is overestimating more than a tad.
That's right. I think he was living out of a trailer for a while there. He and the other Trek actors had a big problem with typecasting after TOS; Nimoy was the only one who really managed to avoid it. Shatner's career didn't recover until the Trek movies came along, followed by T.J. Hooker. Airplane II probably helped, because it got him started on the path of lampooning his own image, which has become the foundation of his modern career.
....All of that is true. But Bill was also on TV non-stop in the 70's. "The Barbary Coast" for a season on ABC. Guest shots on many of the shows of that era "Six Million Dollar Man", "Hawaii 5-0", "Ironside", to name a few and in the daytime "Match Game" and the various talk shows. "Star Trek" reruns aired daily often multiple times and "Star Trek-the Animated Series" aired on Saturday mornings. Bill even did those Margarine commercials for "Promise"
Take away the Trek reruns, and it's a lot less than nonstop. And the reason he did so many one-shot guest shots is because he couldn't get a series gig. That is not a sign of success, it's a sign of the need to take every job he could get to keep afloat. Trust me, Shatner was absolutely not considered a big, famous star in the '70s. He was considered a has-been, a walking joke because of his association with a sci-fi show in an era when sci-fi had no respect and was dismissed as kid stuff. I mean, come on -- game shows? Margarine commercials? Those are the stuff of D-list actors.
And again, you're confusing two unrelated issues. The professional lives of people in the industry do not map one-on-one to their personal lives. Even if Shatner had been professionally prominent at the time, that has nothing whatsoever to do with whether he and Herb Solow would've been personally well-acquainted. Their jobs are not their entire lives. And again, it's a very large industry. There's no reason to expect two people in the business to be in regular contact unless they're working together directly.
I went back and rewatched the Herb Solow interview on www.emmytvlegends.org just to listen to his comments on William Shatner, and you are correct, he didn't really say anything bad about Bill and he said they lost touch but he was a fine actor before "Star Trek" and after and that was about it.
It just goes to show sometimes you remember something differently than how it actually occurred.
It just goes to show sometimes you remember something differently than how it actually occurred.
A new fact check is out today - one that lives up to this thread's name.
http://startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com/2017/03/did-dc-fontana-get-her-first.html
http://startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com/2017/03/did-dc-fontana-get-her-first.html
That was an amazing read. I'm really happy that Ms. Fontana took the time out to clarify. Nice to see one source from the original series being pretty reliable. At least in regards to her own work.
Well done.
New fact check!
I haven't abandoned my long article on "The Alternative Factor" -- it's just taken a lot longer to finish than I had anticipated.
(Part 3, yet to come, should be the final installment).
http://startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-alternative-factor-what-hell.html
I haven't abandoned my long article on "The Alternative Factor" -- it's just taken a lot longer to finish than I had anticipated.
(Part 3, yet to come, should be the final installment).
http://startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-alternative-factor-what-hell.html
"The consistency of good style that lent dignity to Harold Robbins' novel...."
Words I never expected to read anywhere in any context. #TheGiants
Nice, and interesting to see myths surrounding the making of the episode debunked.
I see that the indented quote from Robert J. Sawyer's blog is italicized. Perhaps you didn't intend that?
Damn sir - you really should be compensated for this stuff - certainly more then the person who supposedly 'researched stuff for "These Are The Voyages". Another great and well researched/resourced write up.
Another great piece. Thanks for the writing and the research!
That's actually not a quote from Sawyer -- it's from Cushman/Osborn.
I did actually quote Sawyer in an earlier draft, but ultimately decided to just link away to his material, to keep the length down a little bit.
Speaking of which, part 3 is going to be a monster unless I do quite a bit of judicious editing. There's so much material to cover and correct when it comes to the filming of the show.
Oh, OK, thanks. I got confused, because you said "this blog post," and then immediately followed that sentence by a quote. Granted, you ended the sentence with a period, and not a colon, so I should have gotten it.
Never mind!
No, it's a fair point! You'd be surprised how much a good image dropped between two paragraphs like that can increase its readability. I spend far too long tweaking that sort of stuff, but there is always more to do.
The next version can have a CGI Jabba The Hutt, just like I originally intended.
Hey, Harvey, I thought you might like to know (if you don't already) that Star Trek Fact Check was just cited on the Centauri Dreams space-science blog, in a very lengthy guest essay about Forbidden Planet and its influence on SF:
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=38363
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=38363
I hadn't seen that -- thanks for pointing this out!
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