Journey to Babel Deforest Kelley Smoking

[Maurice]

I decided to pull up Fontana's June 23, 1967 original story outline to give y'all some more "original intent":

• Sarek’s name is Karek here.

• “Gav is a Tellarite, thick creatures of general humanoid structure, but with heavy fur matting on their bodies. Their atmosphere is one of intense cold; their clothes carry cold circuits to insure their comfort.” So you can see why Theiss designed their suits the way he did.

• Andorians are described thusly: “The Andorians are slim, humanoids with delicate antennas and large eyes. They have no ears, and their hearing sense is in the antennas.”

• The attacking ship’s weapons are described as more powerful than the Enterprise’s.

• During the battle, Kirk is woozy and suffers double vision, which gives him an idea. He has Scotty activate “projector units” to be bounced off the alien and create life-size 3D images of starships around it. Confused, the alien crew is hesitant and the Enterprise is able to blast it. (?!?!)

• When the attacking ship is crippled they surrender and are beamed over. Their description: “The aliens…are revealed as the small, slim, catlike people of Orion!”

• The Enterprise crew learn “that the five others starships on the Babel run" were similarly attacked ending with “Several other alien ships have been defeated… either destroyed or captured… with the loss of two starships.” Ouch!

• The Orion plan is explained in more detail here: throw suspicion on the Andorians, which would lead to interplanetary war the Orions would avoid involvement in but could clean up from it. Roddenberry wrote "Not logical" in the margin next to this.

The August 8, 1967 first draft included a Makeup-Costume Note which goes into more detail about the three main aliens here, the Vulcans, Tellarites and Andorians, with the latter's description ending "Andorians are pale blue. Because."

 

[Christopher]

You would be incorrect. It's a blip in the first draft, too.

Not surprising, since Fontana was a member of the staff and would've known about the show's budget limitations going in. I considered that, but I thought she might have employed the practice I mentioned before of starting with what you want before dialing back to what you can achieve.

If someone wanted to show what the original intent was, there it is.

Yes, and the intent was to save money. Don't mythologize it. This ain't holy scripture. I'm sure D.C. Fontana would've loved to write the script in a way that included a visible ship if the money had been there. The producers of Star Trek wanted their show to look cool. Its visual spectacle, unmatched on television at the time, was one of its primary draws. But their ability to create impressive images was limited by their budget, so they had to parcel it out.

As far as the story goes, I think the new FX are perfectly consistent with the dialogue. In the early shots, while we can make out slightly more detail than in the original, it's still a tiny, blurry image on the viewscreen, consistent with Spock's lines about the sensors being unable to discern specifics. We didn't get anything close to a good look at it until the end when it came in close to attack the Enterprise. So I see no violation of "intent."

 

[GNDN18]

During the battle, Kirk is woozy and suffers double vision, which gives him an idea. He has Scotty activate “projector units” to be bounced off the alien and create life-size 3D images of starships around it. Confused, the alien crew is hesitant and the Enterprise is able to blast it. (?!?!)

This is similar to E.E. Smith’s phantom fleets made of foil or some such thing as seen in his Lensmen series. I think Piper might have used an analogous subterfuge in Space Viking, but I could be mistaken.

 

[Phaser Two]

For a semi-pacifist he sure has a lot of weapons in his room.

Isn't that funny? I also liked how - not sure if it was in AT or other episodes showing Spock's quarters - he had his own favorite tricorder on one of the desks or tables. I thought that was a nice touch.

 

[Timo]

Where does this semi-pacifism thing come from? Out of the main heroes, Spock is typically the one advocating the violent option. Probably because it's the neatest one - as we learn in this very episode, his dad would have taught him that murder is logical in its efficiency, while mere threats are illogical.

It's just that if McCoy makes the "Think of the poor people!" speech first, Spock has no logical alternative but to disagree. And Spock saying "Kill them all and don't worry about the sorting out bit" is the cue for Kirk to go contrarian and do something less drastic, which for all we know is not merely the dramatic raison for Spock's statements, but also the in-universe one.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nyotarules]

Where does this semi-pacifism thing come from?

The episode where Spock meets fake Surak

 

[Mudd]

Yes, and the intent was to save money. Don't mythologize it. This ain't holy scripture. I'm sure D.C. Fontana would've loved to write the script in a way that included a visible ship if the money had been there. The producers of Star Trek wanted their show to look cool. Its visual spectacle, unmatched on television at the time, was one of its primary draws. But their ability to create impressive images was limited by their budget, so they had to parcel it out.

Yeah, you know that Maurice and others have done the research here and know a tremendous amount more about this than you do...right?

 

[valkyrie013]

Teacher once said in my art class.. Art isn't finished.. Its abandoned.. Most things can always be fixed, redone, etc. for the rest of eternity.. you have to abandon it as "Good enough" or "Close Enough" to your original intent based off of what you could actually do, time constraints, budget.. etc. One can always come back to it ( like George Lucas futzing up the original trilogy time an again)

 

[Christopher]

Teacher once said in my art class.. Art isn't finished.. Its abandoned.. Most things can always be fixed, redone, etc. for the rest of eternity.. you have to abandon it as "Good enough" or "Close Enough" to your original intent based off of what you could actually do, time constraints, budget.. etc. One can always come back to it ( like George Lucas futzing up the original trilogy time an again)

Exactly. Lucas just did what most artists would do given the chance to revisit their former works. Lots of filmmakers do director's cuts for DVD releases. Prose authors often rewrite their novels or short stories when they're republished, or at least do new edits to fix overlooked mistakes. Audiences are far more protective of the "pure" form of works of fiction than their creators are, because their creators know all the false starts and compromises and regrets that went into them and thus know there's nothing pure or perfect about them. Nobody's happier to change a work than its creator.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

It is an important plot point that the identity of the ship is unknown. Conceiving of the ship as a blip is consistent with that. On the other hand, the ability to see its finer details would have raised (and in TOS-R now does raise) the question of why Spock can't deduce more about it.

Perhaps the phasers are known to be standard based on the damage they're doing to the Enterprise, not from direct scans of their emplacements. Maybe their emissions when firing are revealing information. Or, even if the emplacements are directly scanned, that's fine too.

Short version = There are good story-centric reasons as to why the ship should be rendered as a blip, and there is no reason to assume that it was done only to save money on VFX.

 

[Kor]

"Serogenic" sounds like there could have been a transposed letter typo of "cyrogenic" instead of "cryogenic."

Kor

 

[Christopher]

"Serogenic" sounds like there could have been a transposed letter typo of "cyrogenic" instead of "cryogenic."

That's what I've always assumed. Either that, or Nimoy transposed the letters in his head when he read the script.

 

[Maurice]

"Serogenic" sounds like there could have been a transposed letter typo of "cyrogenic" instead of "cryogenic."

Kor

Or, ya know, you could just ask the guy who has access to the actual scripts and said as much a few posts back.




It's cryogenic in the script.

 

[Spock's Barber]

Isn't that funny? I also liked how - not sure if it was in AT or other episodes showing Spock's quarters - he had his own favorite tricorder on one of the desks or tables. I thought that was a nice touch.

I guess Spock-O decided to redecorate his quarters before he invited his buddies over for some Theragan shots.

 

[Phaser Two]

Out of the main heroes, Spock is typically the one advocating the violent option.

Huh?

 

[Kor]

Huh?

A couple examples come to mind:
"Then you have one other choice. Kill Mitchell while you still can." - WNMHGB
"And if Romulans are an offshoot of my Vulcan blood, and I think this likely, then attack becomes even more imperative." - BoT

(as transcribed over at chakoteya.net)

Kor

 

[Timo]

...Heck, even "I was waiting for a victor in the hand to hand struggle, which I assumed would be Captain Garth" would qualify, when the nonviolent option was to simply flip the shield switch and let Scotty's little people handle the problem. Spock is a professional bystander in great duels, such as the two in "Omega Glory", but not out of a desire to avoid conflict. Rather, he makes use of such conflict to get his own sort of punch in!

That Surak would be a pacifist is also an interpretation open to debate. This fictional projection is merely shown carefully picking his fights and choosing his tactics, which involve not clobbering potential allies...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Phaser Two]

Those are balanced against about 100 other examples of Spock not doing that.

 

[Christopher]

A couple examples come to mind:
"Then you have one other choice. Kill Mitchell while you still can." - WNMHGB

People always misinterpret that line. Spock wasn't arguing in favor of killing Mitchell. He was arguing in favor of stranding Mitchell on Delta Vega, which he did by pointing out that killing him was the only other option.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Generally in TV, you do your first draft by putting in everything you want to do, and then you trim it back in later drafts to fit the budget.

That's probably still true in television, but the limiting factor might be time more than money, now that photo-real CGI has gotten so affordable.

And today's big-budget genre films seem to be written according to the old theory, of throwing in the kitchen sink on paper-- but now there's no limiting factor on what can be done, so they do it all. Look at the first half-hour or so of Man of Steel. They spend so much time on Krypton immersed in this animated, sicko wonderland doing stupid stuff, I couldn't believe it. And the film ends with ten times more metropolitan destruction than it needed. If the production had been on a leash (of time or money) it would have resulted in a much better film, because they would have needed to trim the crappy excesses while writing the story.