Good Behind the Scenes Books

[Just a Bill]

Yeah, I'm not really sure who all the actual people are who kept George from doing dumb stuff in the beginning, other than that Marcia worked some real magic in the editing bay and got George to add some stuff to the film's climax to make it work. I just had the impression that Coppola was one of them, but I could easily be wrong.

Oh, and regarding that romance I mentioned: I used to work for a Star Wars licensee, and our CEO sometimes got stories from Lucasfilm VP of Licensing Howard Roffman. The boss shared this one with some of us:

Reportedly, while Lucas was writing Episode I, he came into the office one morning and as he walked past Roffman's desk he said something to the effect of "I figured it out, this movie's going to be a love story." Then he went into his office, closed the door, and wrote all day.

The next morning, as he walked past Roffman's desk, it was "I don't know how to write a love story. I'm just gonna put in more spaceships and explosions."

 

[Set Harth]

Reportedly, while Lucas was writing Episode I, he came into the office one morning and as he walked past Roffman's desk he said something to the effect of "I figured it out, this movie's going to be a love story."

 

[Ceridwen]

I don't mean to devalue Marcia Lucas' contribution to the film, but to be clear, she was very much part of a team of award-winning editors that included Paul Hirsch, Richard Chew, and George himself (who went uncredited in the role).

 

[Maurice]

When the ship went to red alert, headrests would emerge from the back of the chairs, a system that required a dozen pieces of sophisticated hydraulics and a computer-controlled system to synchronize them. How many viewers even noticed?

Yeah, but is that true? Did he cite a source?

I know some of the armrests were motorized so they could open up after being clamped down in an emergency.

 

[mb22]

Yeah, but is that true? Did he cite a source?

I know some of the armrests were motorized so they could open up after being clamped down in an emergency.

There is no source provided in the endnotes for this, although it might be from the book Return to Tomorrow which he does quote elsewhere.

 

[David cgc]

Yeah, but is that true? Did he cite a source?

I know some of the armrests were motorized so they could open up after being clamped down in an emergency.

The headrests do move (apparently) autonomously. IIRC, you can see Kirk’s extending at the beginning of the wormhole sequence, and right before the ship enters the cloud, at the end of the “How do you define ‘unwarranted?’” scene.

It could be fancy hydraulics, or it could be somebody laying on the ground under the chair pushing it up with a stick. I’d lean towards the former, but I’m not sure it was being entirely frivolous with the budget. The sets were initially built for a TV show, not a movie, so not only were they intended to last for years structurally (and it was twenty years before they finally had to be torn down), but also to be interesting to shoot in for twenty-plus episodes a year, so they built in plenty of special features (not unlike Sulu’s pop-up scope in the series) without a specific story-need for TMP.

 

[Just a Bill]

I’m not sure it was being entirely frivolous with the budget. The sets were initially built for a TV show ... intended to last for years ... to be interesting to shoot in for twenty-plus episodes a year, so they built in plenty of special features

Hmm, yeah, fair point. Thanks for pointing that out.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

The sets were initially built for a TV show, not a movie, so not only were they intended to last for years structurally (and it was twenty years before they finally had to be torn down), but also to be interesting to shoot in for twenty-plus episodes a year, so they built in plenty of special features (not unlike Sulu’s pop-up scope in the series) without a specific story-need for TMP.

Maurice might correct me here, but I’m sure that much of the set work was scrapped when the idea shifted from TV show to movie because it was realized that what they had so far wouldn’t hold up on the big screen.

If we’d got ‘Phase I’ instead of TMP, the bridge would not have been the TMP version. The TMP version was much larger than originally intended I believe.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I seem to remember tons of hydraulics and so on were built into the bridge stations which finally were never even used on screen?

A number of the panels were wired so that they had a few practical switches the actors could hit to turn on various lights and so forth. I don’t know what hydraulics would be used for other than the sliding consoles that emerged from under Spock’s station, if even that.

Richard, are you perhaps thinking of the (IIRC) film projectors that ran much of the footage seen on the bridge stations throughout the film, which made so much noise it resulted in most of the bridge scenes in TMP needed to be looped?

 

[Richard S. Ta]

Richard, are you perhaps thinking of the (IIRC) film projectors that ran much of the footage seen on the bridge stations throughout the film, which made so much noise it resulted in most of the bridge scenes in TMP needed to be looped?

No, just remembering what I quoted in the short passage above.

That’s interesting though. :-)

 

[Maurice]

The chairs were made for the movie.

The bridge set was reworked from Star Trek Phase II TV, but it's the same set and the same size.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

The chairs were made for the movie.

The bridge set was reworked from Star Trek Phase II TV, but it's the same set and the same size.

That throws instant shade on the book I read then which said otherwise. Might be a bit of the sadly all too common creative liberties going on.

As always, you’re the Guv’nor when it comes to this and I fully defer to your knowledge.

 

[Maurice]

I've the benefit of having access to a lot of actual production documents and have befriended a number of people who worked on the shows and in film and TV outside of Trek. Most fans don't have that sort of access. A lot of these Trek books and articles just do a game of telephone, repeating what they've seen elsewhere, and in all the paraphrasing, the facts get mushy.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

I've the benefit of having access to a lot of actual production documents and have befriended a number of people who worked on the shows and in film and TV outside of Trek. Most fans don't have that sort of access. A lot of these Trek books and articles just do a game of telephone, repeating what they've seen elsewhere, and in all the paraphrasing, the facts get mushy.

That’s why I love what you do, Maurice.

It still kind of stuns me how much disinformation exists about Star Trek. Trek is my second TV love, the first being Doctor Who, and that’s a show that’s in the totally opposite position. Countless books have been written over the past 40 years with extensive access to BBC records and so on.

Star Trek history is, as you say, a lot more muddled. To say the very least.