Suppose Gene Roddenberry and Herb Solow had been at 20th Century Fox instead of Desilu. And for the sake of argument, suppose Fox had green lighted Star Trek. How would bad would it be?
The cinematography would be different. Lost in Space looked highly dramatic and artistic in its first season (by Gene Polito), but the switch to color brought generic, plain-and-simple lighting by somebody else. So I think an in-house Fox Television guy, instead of Jerry Finnerman, would light Star Trek "perfectly," very bright with no shadows or shading, no cucoloris, no diffusion filters. The resulting manufactured uniformity would be a big step down. There's nothing seductive about it that draws you in.
You'd have some of the same composers (Courage, Steiner, Fried, Mullendore), but it's been said that music at Fox was more supervised and structured than Desilu. And of course Fox drew freely on its movie library to supplement their TV scores. It would be a different sound, with some cues coming from the Forties and Fifties. On the plus side, we might have a John Williams score.
It's unclear whether Roddenberry would be able to sneak Wah Chang's props past the union if he were at Fox. That might leave Star Trek with Fox's comparatively silly-looking sci-fi pistols and pedestrian transistor radios instead of our uber-cool and serious looking props.
Would Star Trek's fx have been done in-house at Fox? Would that mean the Enterprise model, plus a stars-and-planet painting, all being shot at once ("in-camera") like the Jupiter 2? It would be a sharper, cleaner view of the 11-footer than we got from blue screen process shots, and a whole different look.
Perhaps the biggest question is whether Star Trek would be thrown in with the Irwin Allen shows, to share alien costumes (re-spray painted of course), set dressings, "guest" miniatures and fx footage, and whatever else wasn't nailed down. Or would it be kept to the side as its own thing, at greater production cost?
The cinematography would be different. Lost in Space looked highly dramatic and artistic in its first season (by Gene Polito), but the switch to color brought generic, plain-and-simple lighting by somebody else. So I think an in-house Fox Television guy, instead of Jerry Finnerman, would light Star Trek "perfectly," very bright with no shadows or shading, no cucoloris, no diffusion filters. The resulting manufactured uniformity would be a big step down. There's nothing seductive about it that draws you in.
You'd have some of the same composers (Courage, Steiner, Fried, Mullendore), but it's been said that music at Fox was more supervised and structured than Desilu. And of course Fox drew freely on its movie library to supplement their TV scores. It would be a different sound, with some cues coming from the Forties and Fifties. On the plus side, we might have a John Williams score.
It's unclear whether Roddenberry would be able to sneak Wah Chang's props past the union if he were at Fox. That might leave Star Trek with Fox's comparatively silly-looking sci-fi pistols and pedestrian transistor radios instead of our uber-cool and serious looking props.
Would Star Trek's fx have been done in-house at Fox? Would that mean the Enterprise model, plus a stars-and-planet painting, all being shot at once ("in-camera") like the Jupiter 2? It would be a sharper, cleaner view of the 11-footer than we got from blue screen process shots, and a whole different look.
Perhaps the biggest question is whether Star Trek would be thrown in with the Irwin Allen shows, to share alien costumes (re-spray painted of course), set dressings, "guest" miniatures and fx footage, and whatever else wasn't nailed down. Or would it be kept to the side as its own thing, at greater production cost?
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