Well, I thought I heard that call sheets indicated it was him--and that he confirmed it. But I might be wrong in my memory--or maybe I was relying on an unreliable source. I no longer remember why I was thinking it was confirmed.
Hey, I never noticed that before....
- Thread starter Warped9
- Start date
What really sticks out for me is Marc Daniels' direction, particularly in "The Doomsday Machine."
Daniels routinely put recurring extras or other characters in the background of his shots. He'd frame the shot such that they'd be visible, and their reactions add subtext. We know something about how all these Big Decisions impact the average redshirt.
Many times, that redshirt was Eddie Paskey (Mr. Leslie). I believe in one of the behind-the-scenes shorts they did for Remastered, Paskey talks about Daniels going to some length to get somebody in the background for reactions.
(If I recall, Paskey also mentions he started making a point of hanging around in case Daniels wanted somebody for background.)
Daniels wanted those reactions. Knowing what I now know of filmmaking, it's no accident that you see Mr. Leslie in the background in the middle of the shot. You have to focus the shot on your leads, but frame it so you can have somebody at a station, in the background, sneaking glances at what the leads were doing.
Just watch Mr. Leslie, sometimes. Kirk and Spock may have thought nobody was listening to them gab, but Mr. Leslie hangs on their every word.
If the USS Enterprise had a rumor mill, it's primary source could only be Mr. Leslie.
When you can see Leslie turning his head, reacting to what he's hearing, it adds more depth and humanity to the scene. Marc Daniels gorramed-well knew it.
In low-def broadcast TV, these details of this aren't always apparent. It's just a body, and you can sort of make out the face but that's about all.
Not with Remastered.
There's one moment in particular in "The Doomsday Machine" that really shows what Daniels was doing.
Kirk has ordered Spock to take command. Spock and Decker argue. Spock definitively takes command, overriding a clearly senior officer.
Daniels placed Lt. Palmer dead center of the shot, in the background, closer to Spock than to Decker.
Boom. Subtext: Palmer is on Spock's side. It was really subtle and you might not've noticed -- but your brain did.
Palmer watches the entire exchange, getting more tense as she realizes she may be forced to take a side.
When Spock orders Decker out of the center seat, Palmer literally gasps and does a double-take. Her facial expression tells volumes without saying a word.
It's wonderful. Palmer (and by extension the audience) knows that Spock has technically committed Mutiny.
Mutiny is possibly the worst of sea-going crimes. Traditionally, it has meant a death sentence. In Spock's case, if everyone had made it out alive, there would have been a court-martial in his immediate future.
Same with Kirk. If Decker had lived, they'd've both been up for Mutiny -- and found guilty.
Consequently, Palmer is shocked.
Unfortunately, it's not really visible in low-def broadcast TV. To be honest, I mostly took away from it that Elizabeth Rogers had really great legs.
But boy, is her reaction visible in HD. All these years I'd been seeing those legs -- and now I can't help but watch her face and how she reacts.
That's the kind of thing I pick up on in HD. Sometimes the tiniest detail can be subtext. Until HD, almost no one had seen them before. They reveal Daniels to have been a certifiable genius.
I can only imagine being GR watching the dailies -- and I can't emphasize this enough:
Nobody working on the show thought the audience would ever see those details.
Before syndication (something else no one expected), the show would be broadcast twice, maybe three times -- and all on lo-def broadcast TV. Those details were lost to static and an utterly imperfect image.
Know how I used to tune the color on my TV? I'd fiddle with it until the Starfleet uniform colors were what I assumed them to be.
And yes, you actually had to manually fine-tune the RGB. With tiny knobs on the back of the set. Sometimes you had to use a small screwdriver.
We're talking tech that is just absurd in 2016.
In any case, after that one scene with Palmer in the dailies, I can only imagine GR's desire to sign Daniels again, ASAP.
So what if they never expected anyone to see it? That Daniels would go such lengths on a TV shooting schedule was some mighty fine film-making.
Maybe only the cast and crew would ever know, but Daniels was a genius.
I'm thrilled that fifty years later, I can now see the genius. In some cases -- like "The Doomsday Machine" -- it completely alters a scene.
For decades -- decades -- I thought Palmer was just a hot babe with great legs they hired one week when Nichelle Nichols wasn't available. I always assumed it was mostly about the legs. You had to have great gams to pull off those costumes.
I'm not naive, I know that it was partly her legs. As more of the backstage stuff has come out over the years, it's clear that they were intentionally pushing the envelope in female costumes on TV. The out-take from "A Private Little War" that was intentionally sent to the censors is proof enough of that.
But when you can see Elizabeth Rogers acting, it totally changes everything. It's not just the legs any more. It's a human being having a natural reaction to an incredible situation.
HD FTW. I can't wait until the future 256K version.
Dakota Smith
Daniels routinely put recurring extras or other characters in the background of his shots. He'd frame the shot such that they'd be visible, and their reactions add subtext. We know something about how all these Big Decisions impact the average redshirt.
Many times, that redshirt was Eddie Paskey (Mr. Leslie). I believe in one of the behind-the-scenes shorts they did for Remastered, Paskey talks about Daniels going to some length to get somebody in the background for reactions.
(If I recall, Paskey also mentions he started making a point of hanging around in case Daniels wanted somebody for background.)
Daniels wanted those reactions. Knowing what I now know of filmmaking, it's no accident that you see Mr. Leslie in the background in the middle of the shot. You have to focus the shot on your leads, but frame it so you can have somebody at a station, in the background, sneaking glances at what the leads were doing.
Just watch Mr. Leslie, sometimes. Kirk and Spock may have thought nobody was listening to them gab, but Mr. Leslie hangs on their every word.
If the USS Enterprise had a rumor mill, it's primary source could only be Mr. Leslie.
When you can see Leslie turning his head, reacting to what he's hearing, it adds more depth and humanity to the scene. Marc Daniels gorramed-well knew it.
In low-def broadcast TV, these details of this aren't always apparent. It's just a body, and you can sort of make out the face but that's about all.
Not with Remastered.
There's one moment in particular in "The Doomsday Machine" that really shows what Daniels was doing.
Kirk has ordered Spock to take command. Spock and Decker argue. Spock definitively takes command, overriding a clearly senior officer.
Daniels placed Lt. Palmer dead center of the shot, in the background, closer to Spock than to Decker.
Boom. Subtext: Palmer is on Spock's side. It was really subtle and you might not've noticed -- but your brain did.
Palmer watches the entire exchange, getting more tense as she realizes she may be forced to take a side.
When Spock orders Decker out of the center seat, Palmer literally gasps and does a double-take. Her facial expression tells volumes without saying a word.
It's wonderful. Palmer (and by extension the audience) knows that Spock has technically committed Mutiny.
Mutiny is possibly the worst of sea-going crimes. Traditionally, it has meant a death sentence. In Spock's case, if everyone had made it out alive, there would have been a court-martial in his immediate future.
Same with Kirk. If Decker had lived, they'd've both been up for Mutiny -- and found guilty.
Consequently, Palmer is shocked.
Unfortunately, it's not really visible in low-def broadcast TV. To be honest, I mostly took away from it that Elizabeth Rogers had really great legs.
But boy, is her reaction visible in HD. All these years I'd been seeing those legs -- and now I can't help but watch her face and how she reacts.
That's the kind of thing I pick up on in HD. Sometimes the tiniest detail can be subtext. Until HD, almost no one had seen them before. They reveal Daniels to have been a certifiable genius.
I can only imagine being GR watching the dailies -- and I can't emphasize this enough:
Nobody working on the show thought the audience would ever see those details.
Before syndication (something else no one expected), the show would be broadcast twice, maybe three times -- and all on lo-def broadcast TV. Those details were lost to static and an utterly imperfect image.
Know how I used to tune the color on my TV? I'd fiddle with it until the Starfleet uniform colors were what I assumed them to be.
And yes, you actually had to manually fine-tune the RGB. With tiny knobs on the back of the set. Sometimes you had to use a small screwdriver.
We're talking tech that is just absurd in 2016.
In any case, after that one scene with Palmer in the dailies, I can only imagine GR's desire to sign Daniels again, ASAP.
So what if they never expected anyone to see it? That Daniels would go such lengths on a TV shooting schedule was some mighty fine film-making.
Maybe only the cast and crew would ever know, but Daniels was a genius.
I'm thrilled that fifty years later, I can now see the genius. In some cases -- like "The Doomsday Machine" -- it completely alters a scene.
For decades -- decades -- I thought Palmer was just a hot babe with great legs they hired one week when Nichelle Nichols wasn't available. I always assumed it was mostly about the legs. You had to have great gams to pull off those costumes.
I'm not naive, I know that it was partly her legs. As more of the backstage stuff has come out over the years, it's clear that they were intentionally pushing the envelope in female costumes on TV. The out-take from "A Private Little War" that was intentionally sent to the censors is proof enough of that.
But when you can see Elizabeth Rogers acting, it totally changes everything. It's not just the legs any more. It's a human being having a natural reaction to an incredible situation.
In fact, after seeing that moment, I've looked up and watched Rogers in other film and TV of the era. For example, she has a great moment in the 1966 Dragnet TV movie playing a woman at a Lonely Hearts Club.
Go to YouTube and search for "dragnet 1966". There are at least two different copies of the film at any given time. Watch it before the DMCA drags one or more down.
(Oh, and for those of you too young to know: Lonely Hearts Clubs were how singles met before the Internet. There were thousands of these clubs, designed to put single men and women into a social setting where everyone knew they were looking for a spouse. They had events: outings, dances, coffee hours, and evening cocktails. It was a socially acceptable way to meet someone.)
Rogers plays a woman who actually hits on Joe Friday while he's investigating a kidnapping. She's incredibly forward about it: in 1966, men approached women, not the other way around.
She naturally mistakes Friday for one of the many singles at a club event.
Friday's busy: you almost never saw any indication of his personal life. He's there to investigate a kidnapping and begs off with, "Some other time."
Rogers is crestfallen. She says, "Oh ... I think I understand," and starts to slink away, humiliated.
Elizabeth Rogers is a beautiful woman. Any heterosexual male in 1966 would want to spend time with her -- Friday included.
So, in one of the very few moments in which Friday's humanity beyond the Department is revealed, Friday subtly murmurs to Rogers:
"No, ma'am, I don't think you do. Some other time."
Go to YouTube and search for "dragnet 1966". There are at least two different copies of the film at any given time. Watch it before the DMCA drags one or more down.
(Oh, and for those of you too young to know: Lonely Hearts Clubs were how singles met before the Internet. There were thousands of these clubs, designed to put single men and women into a social setting where everyone knew they were looking for a spouse. They had events: outings, dances, coffee hours, and evening cocktails. It was a socially acceptable way to meet someone.)
Rogers plays a woman who actually hits on Joe Friday while he's investigating a kidnapping. She's incredibly forward about it: in 1966, men approached women, not the other way around.
And for those of you who think of Jack Webb as incredibly conservative and attempting to portray Rogers as a slut, no he wasn't. Webb was pushing the envelope on 1966 TV, showing a perfectly normal woman approaching a man -- and Friday doesn't think twice about it.
Webb's views on race come up later, during an interrogation scene. The detective investigating the case is black. That alone was unheard-of in 1966. A black detective, and Friday never blinks an eye.
Then the suspect refers to the black detective as, "that nigger cop."
Friday explodes. He rants to the suspect about the suspect's past, and that he's reached a new low: child molestation. He ends with:
"Now one last thing, you smart-mouthed punk. If the Department doesn't question the color of his skin, you damned well see that you don't."
All this in a 90-minute TV movie of a series that set the standard for all police procedurals to follow.
Jack Webb made the mold. They've just been using it to make copies -- since 1948.
Webb's views on race come up later, during an interrogation scene. The detective investigating the case is black. That alone was unheard-of in 1966. A black detective, and Friday never blinks an eye.
Then the suspect refers to the black detective as, "that nigger cop."
Friday explodes. He rants to the suspect about the suspect's past, and that he's reached a new low: child molestation. He ends with:
"Now one last thing, you smart-mouthed punk. If the Department doesn't question the color of his skin, you damned well see that you don't."
All this in a 90-minute TV movie of a series that set the standard for all police procedurals to follow.
Jack Webb made the mold. They've just been using it to make copies -- since 1948.
Go listen to any episode of the Dragnet radio series. That's right: radio series. Jack Webb started playing Friday in 1948. He loved the medium so much that for years he co-produced the 1950s weekly TV series and radio series.
Jack Webb hung on to radio as long as he possibly could. He was brilliant in that medium. Where other stories might narrate a fight scene, Webb's five foley artists (an unheard-of number for any radio program) would act it out.
You'd hear the suspect make a break for it. Webb might shout, "That way, Ben!" and you'd hear running footsteps -- both those of Friday and his partner, but also the fainter ones of the suspect ahead.
If there was a fistfight, you'd hear the punches, hear the men moving around the room, occasionally hitting furniture. There'd finally be one last punch. Friday would be panting, you'd hear his partner snapping on the cuffs, and Friday would usually make some remark.
Gunfights are even more fascinating because they never told you who was firing. All the same, you knew it, from subtle cues in the dialog:
You'd hear a shot, followed by a ricochet. "You ok, Ben?" Friday might call out. "Yeah," Ben would reply, "that was a close one. Keep your head down!" And then another shot.
Webb was a brilliant radio artist -- far beyond what anyone else ever produced. There should be a special Emmy named after him.
As a perfect example of all of the above, I suggest the two-parter, "The Big Man", episodes 46 and 47. Friday goes undercover for more than six months to break up a state-wide narcotics distribution with ties to the rest of the nation.
Now tell me you're not watching any episode of Law and Order or CSI.
Jack Webb hung on to radio as long as he possibly could. He was brilliant in that medium. Where other stories might narrate a fight scene, Webb's five foley artists (an unheard-of number for any radio program) would act it out.
You'd hear the suspect make a break for it. Webb might shout, "That way, Ben!" and you'd hear running footsteps -- both those of Friday and his partner, but also the fainter ones of the suspect ahead.
If there was a fistfight, you'd hear the punches, hear the men moving around the room, occasionally hitting furniture. There'd finally be one last punch. Friday would be panting, you'd hear his partner snapping on the cuffs, and Friday would usually make some remark.
Gunfights are even more fascinating because they never told you who was firing. All the same, you knew it, from subtle cues in the dialog:
You'd hear a shot, followed by a ricochet. "You ok, Ben?" Friday might call out. "Yeah," Ben would reply, "that was a close one. Keep your head down!" And then another shot.
Webb was a brilliant radio artist -- far beyond what anyone else ever produced. There should be a special Emmy named after him.
As a perfect example of all of the above, I suggest the two-parter, "The Big Man", episodes 46 and 47. Friday goes undercover for more than six months to break up a state-wide narcotics distribution with ties to the rest of the nation.
Now tell me you're not watching any episode of Law and Order or CSI.
She naturally mistakes Friday for one of the many singles at a club event.
Friday's busy: you almost never saw any indication of his personal life. He's there to investigate a kidnapping and begs off with, "Some other time."
Rogers is crestfallen. She says, "Oh ... I think I understand," and starts to slink away, humiliated.
Elizabeth Rogers is a beautiful woman. Any heterosexual male in 1966 would want to spend time with her -- Friday included.
So, in one of the very few moments in which Friday's humanity beyond the Department is revealed, Friday subtly murmurs to Rogers:
"No, ma'am, I don't think you do. Some other time."
HD FTW. I can't wait until the future 256K version.
Dakota Smith
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Shhhh....Mr Leslie was probably Section 31.
One thing I noticed last week when "Mirror, Mirror" aired on MeTV. I'm sure I noticed it before.
But the Captain's cabin in the MU had that extra room where his woman could hang her naughty things. And it's obviously a big room. But in the regular universe it's either the closet or the bathroom.
Maybe MU Kirk has a big hot tub in there to "evaluate" female crew members.
One thing I noticed last week when "Mirror, Mirror" aired on MeTV. I'm sure I noticed it before.
But the Captain's cabin in the MU had that extra room where his woman could hang her naughty things. And it's obviously a big room. But in the regular universe it's either the closet or the bathroom.
Maybe MU Kirk has a big hot tub in there to "evaluate" female crew members.
Mirror Kirk also had the Tantalus field weapon hidden behind the wall too!
JB
JB
I noticed for the first time today that on Space Seed, Khan and his followers have some sort of rank designation on their red "Botany Bay" uniforms. It's a series of rockers above and below the button/emblem near the throat of the uniform.
Maybe it's an obvious one, and I'm a dunce, but I'll submit it anyway.
M.
Maybe it's an obvious one, and I'm a dunce, but I'll submit it anyway.
M.
Just remember that Daniels had been around Trek since the very beginning of the 1st season. Bob Justman always claimed he saved the show, as the first two or three episodes had come in way over schedule/budget, so when he brought in The Man Trap in on or close to schedule, then turned around and did the same with The Naked Time the very next week, it took a lot of pressure off of Roddenberry and Justman to bring the show in on budget. The fact both shows are very good and very well directed is almost a bonus.
When you are talking about Daniels and extras, Mirror Mirror needs special attention. He had to have, in preparation, made a distinct point of placing some different background players on the I.S.S Enterprise - you don't see Blackburn, Paskey or the usual background people - adding to the sense of difference. (As has been noted, he also had the idea for Mirror Spock to have Vulcans as his personal guards.)
Why that crewman is obviously winding the backup life support generator for that deck.
Spockboy
Watched several episodes for the first time in years recently, and in one episode, Uhura is in a yellow uniform, rather than her customary red. Did they think no one would notice or didn't realize the significance of the uniform colors ?
So, they changed communications from command track to operations track. That does make better sense. The esthetic consideration just happened to agree with a practical reason for the color change.
Nichelle Nichols wore a gold/green Command uniform (with a "sciences" patch) in the first two regular production episodes, "The Corbomite Maneuver" and "Mudd's Women." They probably changed to red simply because she looked better in red.
The patches were sometimes inconsistent. Here's Uhura in red--again with a "sciences" patch:
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The thing that always bugs me about transmission order is in season three and Scotty's DA often changing from flat grey top to black greasy hair without a qualm! Either they should have left his hair black greasy all the way through or grey not mix 'em and upset us with da OCD!
JB
JB
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