"In Thy Image" at "Unseen Elements"

[Sir Rhosis]

It's oh-dark-thirty here in the 'Nati, and new synopses are up at my "Unseen Elements" page at Randy Landers' Orion Press.

I look at "In Thy Image," the first draft of what would become "Star Trek: The Motion Picture." Some of it I liked better than TMP, some less. Your mileage may vary. I was surprised to learn, as I carefully reread the Reeves-Stevenses' "Phase II" book, that Harold Livingston (and a few others) secretly knew that his script was going to be a feature even before he wrote it ostensibly for the proposed series.

Next month I hope to have a sysnopsis up of Alan Dean Foster's original story outline for this script. Meant to do it this month but got too busy. That's why I didn't put a brief bio of Foster under Livingston's.

I also give you a breakdown of "Perchance to Dream," J. M. Winston's outline which she submitted for a possible fourth season episode. Though I honestly have my doubts if it would have been purchased, even had there been a fourth season, it is a silly, fun little thing.

alchemist submits a synopsis and more great behind the scenes photos for ''The Last Gunfight" final draft script. As you know, it became "Spectre of the Gun" before it aired. Do you think the bartender's POV shot would have been funny? Read the review and you'll know what I'm talking about.

Go to the first link in my sig, scroll down until you see titles with *NEW* by them.

Thanks,

Sir Rhosis

 

[Christopher]

You're from Cincinnati too? Oh, yeah, it's right there in your Location line. I never notice those...

 

[trevanian]

Have you taken a look at GR's IN THY? Very fannish stuff, but a lot of interesting San Francisco 23rd century stuff as well.

The one I want to find is the Bob Collins draft, that is the one that has the ending I like (where you get the vger plaque lightshow, according to Joe Jennings.)

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Have you taken a look at GR's IN THY? Very fannish stuff, but a lot of interesting San Francisco 23rd century stuff as well.

The one I want to find is the Bob Collins draft, that is the one that has the ending I like (where you get the vger plaque lightshow, according to Joe Jennings.)

I've never read the GR draft, but do recall the Bob Collins ending being mention in the Phase II book (or maybe it was in an article on TMP). Could you please elaborate on the differences, especially the "fannish stuff?"

 

[trevanian]

Have you taken a look at GR's IN THY? Very fannish stuff, but a lot of interesting San Francisco 23rd century stuff as well.

The one I want to find is the Bob Collins draft, that is the one that has the ending I like (where you get the vger plaque lightshow, according to Joe Jennings.)

I've never read the GR draft, but do recall the Bob Collins ending being mention in the Phase II book (or maybe it was in an article on TMP). Could you please elaborate on the differences, especially the "fannish stuff?"

I haven't had a copy in a number of years (might have sent it to JKTIM, not sure, you may want to check w/ him), but from memory ...

During the real slow part (second half of act 2, the death of most movies in my opinion), there's a scene on the rec deck where a couple of young crewwomen wonder aloud if Xon is anywhere near his pon farr mode, and even hit on him.

The San Francisco stuff emphasizes the future that GR and Jessco VP envisioned, where there is a lot of greenery and the city is partly underground, though starfleet hq is a big tower (possibly the Fluor building, which in reality is in socal ... there's an issue of filmfax I helped Ross Plesset with that talks about the plan to shoot at Fluor, which was a far out looking place, kinda Buck Rogers.) Kirk and his girlfriend/wife play a kind of tag as they sprint from the beach to SFHQ in very little clothing.

The thing I really liked about the GR version was the way they portrayed objects in space, where the biggest item is still just a pinpoint up until the final approach, so vger debuts for the refit much like the Fesarius did in CORBOMITE. Again, that is probably the tech advisor guiding him.

I read the GR version long before I read the HL draft, and while fun, it is a step back from HL in terms of storytelling. But neither version has a decent ending. Does Decker beam his consciousness into vgr at the end of the HL? In the GR, I think he does.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

^Thanks!

Sounds like pure Roddenberry in places.

 

[trevanian]

One more tidbit about things much later in TMP production: Katzenberg had his own idea about how vger should see the light, and it involved the idea of Christianity, as in, go off to find OUR God (as if the Christian God was a GR God!) Jon Povill gave Ross Plesset an incredible memo from Katz and his own tempered response, but FILMFAX had space issues and idiotically left all that out of the article. It was probably the most significant piece of info about the forces at work against TMP succeeding that I'd come across in the last decade ... right up there with soliciting story ideas from highschool kids for a tv series (which is one of those 'could it be true' tales about THE STARLOST.)

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

One more tidbit about things much later in TMP production: Katzenberg had his own idea about how vger should see the light, and it involved the idea of Christianity, as in, go off to find OUR God (as if the Christian God was a GR God!) Jon Povill gave Ross Plesset an incredible memo from Katz and his own tempered response, but FILMFAX had space issues and idiotically left all that out of the article. It was probably the most significant piece of info about the forces at work against TMP succeeding that I'd come across in the last decade ... right up there with soliciting story ideas from highschool kids for a tv series (which is one of those 'could it be true' tales about THE STARLOST.)

Sounds like another case of too many hands in the cookie jar. While my favorite TOS movie for its ambition, TMP suffered from a lack of unified vision of what the film should be and should do.

 

[Sir Rhosis]

I've not read any more drafts of TMP -- would enjoy seeing GR's take on it myself, though I do recall the infamous meeting (not sure where I read of it) in which a studio exec (Eisner or someone, I can't remember) called Roddenberry and Livingston into his office and held GR's draft in one hand and Livingston's in the other, then declared GR's "television" and HL's "a movie." That musta stung like the proverbial mother______.

And to answer trevanian's question: No, there is no joining with Ve-jur (by Decker or anyone else) at the end of HL's first rough draft. The Ilia-probe sends a message (a lie) to Ve-jur informing it it has seen proof that humans created it. Ve-jur then leaves in a huff, sending the real Ilia back just before it disappears into deep space.

Christopher -- lived in Deer Park for three years now, originally from a town so small in KY we didn't rate even a dot from Rand and NcNally.

Sir Rhosis

 

[alchemist]

Although I like the movie, I've always thought that it is too sterile and vague, especially the ending. It's played way too safe. I personally think Katzenberg was on the right track by trying to tie religion more strongly into it (not necessarily with the Christian views, however).

I have a script from ST:TMP that is in between the outline and final version that I like because I think it is less sterile and more specific. For example, Decker's pre-V'ger-fusion dialogue goes something like: "We need to give V'ger all of the bad traits of humanity because it's those things which make us do our best."

And this script also more clearly focuses on the "dimensional" nature of V'ger's transition by describing the "mobius light effect" after fusion rather than the "flower" light effect ()in the final draft.

 

[FredCFO]

Too many cooks spoiled the broth with STTMP.

The story may have made an interesting book where you could tell what people are thinking (well a different book than the Alan Dean Foster ghostwritten novelization), but movies and TV are about action.

Too bad the movie series did not lead off with TWOK.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Too many cooks spoiled the broth with STTMP.

Well, the head chef, Roddenberry, didn't really getting along with the sous chefs either, Livingston in particular. They could've used Gordon Ramsey's help.

The story may have made an interesting book where you could tell what people are thinking (well a different book than the Alan Dean Foster ghostwritten novelization), but movies and TV are about action.

This keeps cropping up, but it wasn't Foster who wrote the novelization. It was all Roddenberry himself. The prose is so bare bones that it's almost like a screenplay with a lot of juvenile sexual overtones (e.g. Kirk getting a boner the moment he mets Illa). See this TrekLit thread for more on the subject:

http://trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=59223

Also, Science-Fiction author Robert J. Sawyer dissects the last scene of the book as an example of "poor" prose. See:

http://www.sfwriter.com/ow12.htm

Too bad the movie series did not lead off with TWOK.

I love TWOK as much as the next guy, but that wouldn't have made a great first motion picture. TMP had a look that said, to me at least, that this was a MOTION PICTURE. TWOK looked like a television movie-of-the-week, which is what it originally going to be in its initial conception. Now, if they combined the character involvement of TWOK with the grandness and thoughtfulness of TMP, then that would've made for one helluv a movie.

 

[Christopher]

I figure the only people who believe this "Foster ghostwrote the TMP novel" myth are people who've either never read the novelization or never read anything by Foster, or both. The clunky prose style of the novelization is nothing at all like Foster's writing style.

It was the Star Wars novelization that Foster ghostwrote.

 

[FredCFO]

Did Roddenberry have time to write the novelization while producing TMP? It seems unlikely.

I read the book back in 1979, days before the movie premiered. It helped in understanding what was going on in the movie. A cardinal sin. I never picked it up again, a statement in itself.

 

[Christopher]

Did Roddenberry have time to write the novelization while producing TMP? It seems unlikely.

Why? Jeri Taylor wrote Unification, Mosaic, and perhaps Pathways while producing TNG and VGR. Besides, production wrapped on TMP in January 1979 and the book came out in December 1979, giving him time to write it during post-production.

And it's clearly the work of a scriptwriter who's never written prose before. The minimal description, the overuse of italics (resembling how scripts use caps or underlining to highlight important actions, objects, or events that the director and production crew need to plan for), it's all very scriptlike. If Roddenberry had used a ghostwriter, why would he hire someone with no more prose experience than he did? And as stated, the preoccupations of the novelization (futurism and sex) leave little doubt that Roddenberry himself is the writer.

This is a pervasive rumor, but it's a totally false and ignorant one. Don't buy it. GR wrote the novel -- there's no reasonable doubt of that.

 

[trevanian]

Did Roddenberry have time to write the novelization while producing TMP? It seems unlikely.

Susan Sackett's STARLOG columns from 79 also mention GR spending time writing the novel. It is easy to believe, because I don't see that he did very much of anything producer-wise after shooting wrapped. Wise, who was used to being his own producer, worked directly with Apogee, the second vfx house, and the primary worked on its own, though Katzenberg and other Paramount folks would come hound them. GR sent some memos about the rough cut that have been reproduced in books, but hey, it wouldn't take long to knock that out.

And I guess writing the novel DID keep him busy some of the time, because he gave up on the screenwriting credit instead of going to arbitration (probably just an idle threat on his part.)

 

[FredCFO]

"Unseen Elements" of STTMP

The prose is so bare bones that it's almost like a screenplay with a lot of juvenile sexual overtones (e.g. Kirk getting a boner the moment he mets Illa).

Here's a perfect example of the concepts not translating to the screen very well with STTMP. In the book, Roddenberry spent some time describing how Deltan women were overpowerlying sexual to human men. On the screen, we see a bald woman exuding no sexuality. She states her "oath of celebacy is on record" with a bit of a thick accent that was hard to hear in the theater. It had no meaning. We see all the male crew members on the bridge snap their heads around to look at her and the we can't figure out why. If I hadn't read the book, this whole scene would have been a mystery.

There are other things as well:

• McCoy entering and leaving the bridge without motivation or reason. My 10th English class taught that you just don't bring people on and off the stage with no reason
• The endless trip around the Enterprise in spacedock
• The endless trip through Vejur (and some really bad special effects)
• In the original cut, you could not tell what Vejur was (in the director's cut, they finally show Vejur for about 10 seconds)
• The forced competition between Kirk and Decker (they don't even bother to say that he is Matt Decker's son in the movie, GR does reference this in the book)

 

[Sir Rhosis]

Re: "Unseen Elements" of STTMP

^^^Your criticisms are valid and well-put save for the final one. The film more than spells out the rivalry between Decker and Kirk. The old man bumps the young man out of his first command -- it's an Alpha male thing. Will being Matt Decker's son, while interesting to us fans, has no impact with the average audience member who only sees the competition as between two men. So, I disagree that it is "forced."

Sir Rhosis

 

[Therin of Andor]

Did Roddenberry have time to write the novelization while producing TMP? It seems unlikely.

If you check out Susan Sackett's "The Making of ST:TMP", there are numerous mentions, towards the end of principal photography and through post-production, of GR being "at home" working on the novelization.

IIRC, Walter Koenig also mentions this in "Chekov's Enterprise", the actor's diary on the making of TMP.

Alan Dean Foster has publicly, reluctantly, admitted that he ghosted "Star Wars" after someone outed him. It was meant to remain a secret. He has denied, though, that has had anything to do with the TMP novelization. His ST connections ended with the adapting of "Robot's Return" as the story for "In Thy Image", which morphed into TMP.

The rumour that he ghosted the TMP novelization started because the French translation of the first edition had a typographical error on the title page, which left out a chunk of the correct screenwriters' and novelist credits.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Re: "Unseen Elements" of STTMP

McCoy entering and leaving the bridge without motivation or reason.

He was checking on Kirk's command fitness. As stated in the movie.

The endless trip around the Enterprise in spacedock

This was done as a showcase for fans and, by many reviews of the day, the diehard tech fans absolutely loved this scene on opening night. If you're not a starship fan, then the scene loses impact, especially on repeat viewings.

In the original cut, you could not tell what Vejur was

Same cinematic trick as the shark in "Jaws", the adult alien in "Alien" and the truck driver in "Duel".

The forced competition between Kirk and Decker (they don't even bother to say that he is Matt Decker's son in the movie, GR does reference this in the book)

But Admiral Kirk would have been competitive with any other captain. We didn't need a line about Will's deceased Dad to understand why Kirk resented a new captain in his old chair, even when it was a new chair! The irony, as stated in the film, is that Kirk recommended Will for the position, and is now taking it back. Already.