Here's another view of Nichols' double:
Hey, I never noticed that before....
- Thread starter Warped9
- Start date
Ahh heck! You never knew until you could freeze the picture! I never noticed it even if we knew that the actors didn't do their own stunts! Dave Perna as Spock was very much obvious even on VHS and TV but Uhura..? Nah the double was good enough for me and in that frozen frame she's got the same type of stomach as Nichelle! Maybe it was the way she was crouching?
JB
JB
Maybe it was two different doubles. Depending on the shot angle and the stunt required.
But she's doing a potentially dangerous stunt, and I don't quite see it as Nichols' face. I still think it's the Double Nichol.
Court Martial episode.. Towards the end, where the Court Martial relocates to the Enterprise bridge, Captain Krasnovsky (Space Command Representative), is sitting on Commodore Stone's left (immediately to Stone's right, in the photo)
http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x20hd/courtmartialhd538.jpg
It's not noticeable, too much, in that photo, but on Blu-Ray w/ HD TV, if you look closely, his pants are not Standard Starfleet Issue. It looks like he is either wearing leather pants, with English riding boots, or Standard Issue Pants with Klingon over the knee boots.
http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x20hd/courtmartialhd538.jpg
It's not noticeable, too much, in that photo, but on Blu-Ray w/ HD TV, if you look closely, his pants are not Standard Starfleet Issue. It looks like he is either wearing leather pants, with English riding boots, or Standard Issue Pants with Klingon over the knee boots.
That is absolutely, definitely 100% Nichelle. That's actually Nimoy in the shot and if you freeze frame as he pulls her back before he throws her, you can clearly see her face. They cut the shot long before she got anywhere near the wall and it wasn't anything more complex than the falls she took on the bridge. For the fight, they had main cast with main cast and doubles with doubles. They didn't mix them (with the possible exception of when Spock flipped Scotty - we didn't see Scotty's face, so it may not have been Doohan). Remember, Nichelle was also a dancer, and that's not really a dangerous stunt. The impact against the wall was seen from a distance and was the double. And really, why have two stunt doubles for one person? For that one shot? Naaaah, if they had a double that close to Nichelle's body type available, they'd just use the skinny double for the long shots, too.
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Yeah, his pants do look shiny. I nominate that henceforth, we refer to him as Captain Shiny-Pants.
Thank you for settling that. The argument that "her stomach tells the story" wasn't enough for me, but your fuller examination is.
Well, he's not wearing leather pants. I think they're Klingon boots from "Errand of Mercy."
In-universe: he wrote a technical study for Starfleet entitled Fifty Shades of Sensor Calibration, and the acclaim went to his head.
Thank you for settling that. The argument that "her stomach tells the story" wasn't enough for me, but your fuller examination is.
The stunt doubles were amazingly off base in this one. Spock with curly hair, Uhura with back fat....
Thank you for settling that. The argument that "her stomach tells the story" wasn't enough for me, but your fuller examination is.
The stunt doubles were amazingly off base in this one. Spock with curly hair, Uhura with back fat....
As far as anyone knew at the time, these episodes would be viewed over the air maybe twice, on 525-line NTSC televisions, probably in B&W, with a noisy analog signal that the majority of viewers were not able to copy and rewatch again later. A Curly-haired Spock? "eh, so what, nobody's ever gonna notice.."
They needed stunt doubles to hit the walls in order to avoid injuring the walls.
Thank you for settling that. The argument that "her stomach tells the story" wasn't enough for me, but your fuller examination is.
The stunt doubles were amazingly off base in this one. Spock with curly hair, Uhura with back fat....
As far as anyone knew at the time, these episodes would be viewed over the air maybe twice, on 525-line NTSC televisions, probably in B&W, with a noisy analog signal that the majority of viewers were not able to copy and rewatch again later. A Curly-haired Spock? "eh, so what, nobody's ever gonna notice.."
It's actually a little-known Vulcan feature, like their inner eyelid. When Vulcans get into a fight, their hair curls to prevent the enemy from grabbing on to it. Sometimes. Occasionally.
As great a director as he was, Marc Daniels seems to have had issues with stunt doubles being photographed too clearly on occasion. If you look at the fight scene with Decker and security officer Montgomery in TDM, it is painfully obvious that a stunt double is being used for William Windom for a number of shots.
Again, you have to remember that they knew what the final product would end up being shown on; and I doubt ANY of the production staff work on Star trek at the time thought:
"49 years later viewers will be watching these episodes of large monitors at near full film resolution; with the ability to clearly freeze frame..."
On the lower resolution TVs of the 1960ies,combined with the fact it was an over the air signal, the director knew that no one would really be able to tell.
I gotta tell ya, the stunt guys in Space Seed in the Engine Room...always totally obvious. Even on my crummy Zenith black and white.
As for Decker in TDDM...nah, he looked good back in the day. A decent match. All of Shatner's doubles, until the Kirk vs Garth fight in Whom Gods Destroy, were always painfully mismatched. Maybe not as noticeable back then, but once the 80's rolled around with better signals and stuff, the jig was up.
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