"Planet of the Titans" Revisited

[F. King Daniel]

I just rediscovered this thread after reading Trekweb.com's article. It's a fascinating read.

I'm forced to wonder if Gene might not have used this as a sort of "work from this direction" sort of thing when they were developing the Galaxy-class for TNG cause there's several things on this proto-design that I can see probably getting incorporated later into the Galaxy-class.

I love this asteroid docking bay and hope it gets used someday in Star Trek.

And now it has been! Take a look at this Phase II vignette to see the Phase II Enterprise launch from the Planet of the Titans spacedock:
[YT]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xim_PuEgRRc[/YT]

 

[Maurice]

I'd seen that.

You dusted off thread that's been gathering dust for almost 3 years for that?

 

[F. King Daniel]

I didn't realize it was THAT old! Blame Trekweb.com linking to it yesterday.

 

[Christopher]

There was also the Tholian spacedock in ENT: "In a Mirror, Darkly." It looked a lot like that PotT concept art.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

I just thought I would add this.

OH GOD WHAT A FUGLY SHIP! my eyes IT BURNS! IT BURNS!

 

[Maurice]

Much zoomier.

 

[xortex]

I just thought I would add this.

OH GOD WHAT A FUGLY SHIP! my eyes IT BURNS! IT BURNS!

I disagree. Since this was only a preliminary sketch, it would have gotten much better as someone on the ship art board has already made it for 'The Planet of Titans'. I like it the way it is and the last thumb nail sketch of it entering that ignormous space station, which is much better than the TMP station, is wickedly cool and wouldn't have minded that either as much as the '57 chevy Buick tail fins that we got with TMP and the next Phase if there was going to be a next phase which was a stupid idea for the name of a new Trek series. It was another Bob Justman idea that ranked up there with picking Patrick Stewart as the captain of the new series TNG.

 

[trevanian]

Oh, the McQuarriePrise IS hideous, even moreso considering that the Ken Adam version it is built on (and built badly) at the very least looks cool & sleek.

The earlier poster asking about GR using this stuff as inspiration is looking in the right place but at the wrong person. Probert has admitted this was influential in his thinking (more the long-distance profile view where it at least looks vaguely treklike, not the painfully awkward full reveal.)

With Ken Adam as production designer at that point in his career (between THE SPY WHO LOVED ME and MOONRAKER, two high-water marks even if they aren't quite STRANGELOVE-level), you'd'v'e gotten a lot of really nice curves and molded stuff on the TITANS E. I think the exterior would have made its way back to looking less like the McQ, just in order to tie in with Adam's interiors (somebody here probably has a link to the 'giant hamster tube / French 70s era airport scenario' interior saucer he had in mind, which was a nightmare in terms of credibility but would have looked kewl anyway. The idea that you'd be able to see down into the whole of the saucer interior in one shot - which is what director Kaufman asked for specifically - is still pretty mindblowing to me.)

 

[Maurice]

...(somebody here probably has a link to the 'giant hamster tube / French 70s era airport scenario' interior saucer he had in mind, which was a nightmare in terms of credibility but would have looked kewl anyway. The idea that you'd be able to see down into the whole of the saucer interior in one shot - which is what director Kaufman asked for specifically - is still pretty mindblowing to me.)

It's earlier in this thread <link>, in posts from years back when you and I were discussing the Adam book.

 

[publiusr]

Oh, the McQuarriePrise IS hideous, even moreso considering that the Ken Adam version it is built on (and built badly) at the very least looks cool & sleek.

Now to me the saucer was too fat in the study models.
One had a more narrow secondary hull, the other wider. Even the wider one can come in two flavors. One with the flat saucer edge and Ralph's with a flatter saucer rounded off at the edges, which I actually like better. His forward view seems to have the deflector strap narrow up front, widening towards the back to the shuttlebay, though the aft view keeps that box of the same width.

Now Drax's station is very like what his space office complex could have been, and the hamster tubes were seen in Moonraker. I wonder if that is what Enterprise was going to look like.

I actually love McQuarries take, and it might actually look better as a large uber-detailed model if someone would give it a chance.

 

[trevanian]

Yeah, I think it would have been tube-happy. But if you look at the ATLANTIS structure (not the supertanker) in SPY WHO LOVED ME, it has some nice curvy stuff in the interiors that would have worked for TREK. Also ... whenever I see the Atlantis exteriors, the big vertical pontoon things look just like warp nacelles to me. Makes me wonder if Adam had some alternate versions we don't know of.

Seeing those other pics (esp the space brain thing that looks like a rock candy mountain) gets me heartsick about us not getting this movie. Then again, if we had, there wouldn't have been Kaufman's BODY SNATCHERS remake, which is one of my alltime best political paranoia films and probably my favorite love story (really!) of all time.I guess its a push.

 

[Maurice]

I tried to contact Kaufman about the film, but never got a reply. I should have just hand-delivered my letter to his office in North Beach here in SF.

 

[trevanian]

I tried to contact Kaufman about the film, but never got a reply. I should have just hand-delivered my letter to his office in North Beach here in SF.

Yeah, the personal touch would be best, unless it was mistaken for stalking.

He is still repped by ICM, and is listed as a producer, not a director, on a pic about Richard Feynman's investigation of the CHALLENGER disaster.

Maybe they should call it THE WRONG STUFF.

I'll see if I can come up with an excuse through one of the magazines to try interviewing him.

 

[publiusr]

I wonder if there might be more artwork floating around out there...

 

[Khan 2.0]

i kind if wish POTT had been the first movie in 1975 or 76 beating SW to cinemas.

sounds it wouldve been like Star Treks Prometheus...with a more TOS flavour than TMP (ST Phase 2: The Movie) i imagine the opening 10-15 mins of Kirk being lost wouldve been similar in look and tone to TOS (end of the 5 year mission) and when they all come back 3 years later everything wouldve looked more Phase 2/TMP

 

[Shazam!]

That Phase II Enterprise is awesome.

 

[Christopher]

i imagine the opening 10-15 mins of Kirk being lost wouldve been similar in look and tone to TOS (end of the 5 year mission) and when they all come back 3 years later everything wouldve looked more Phase 2/TMP

Probably not much more so than the Kelvin scenes in ST '09 looked similar to TOS. If they had the budget for a feature film, they wouldn't have felt much obligation to conform to the look of a TV series where they had to make do with what they could. They might have opted for a similar aesthetic, but they certainly would've added greater detail and sophistication. The idea being that it had really looked like that all along but the budget hadn't been there to show it clearly before.

 

[Khan 2.0]

i imagine the opening 10-15 mins of Kirk being lost wouldve been similar in look and tone to TOS (end of the 5 year mission) and when they all come back 3 years later everything wouldve looked more Phase 2/TMP

Probably not much more so than the Kelvin scenes in ST '09 looked similar to TOS. If they had the budget for a feature film, they wouldn't have felt much obligation to conform to the look of a TV series where they had to make do with what they could. They might have opted for a similar aesthetic, but they certainly would've added greater detail and sophistication. The idea being that it had really looked like that all along but the budget hadn't been there to show it clearly before.

yes like the klingons in TMP (Im sure the general opinion from everyone was they were supposed to have looked that way all along.... until Enterprise)

i imagine theyd have retained the colour coded uniforms but jazzed them up abit (like JJ trek) and the bridge etc wouldve been similar to TOS but sleeker more realistic (any explanation couldve been the Ent had a refit or two post Turnaround Intruder) enough to make fans go 'oh THATs what it was supposed to look like!' ...but not too different from TOS as itd all need to look noticably different Phase2/TMP for when it got refitted 3 years later..


damn i really wish wed got POTT in 76...maybe itd have done more BO than TMP and even swiped some of SWs..leading to a Trek II in 78 or 79 (God Thing? JFK?) and Trek III in 80 or 81 (Wrath of Khan)...so maybe theyd have been 7 original crew movies

 

[Christopher]

...The idea being that it had really looked like that all along but the budget hadn't been there to show it clearly before.

yes like the klingons in TMP (Im sure the general opinion from everyone was they were supposed to have looked that way all along.... until Enterprise)

Or rather, until DS9: "Trials and Tribble-ations" showed the 24th-century characters in the same room with TOS-style Klingons and asking Worf about the change. ENT just picked up on that in-joke and built a story out of it.

And it wasn't everyone's opinion before then, not by a long shot. It was what Roddenberry suggested was the case about the TMP Klingons, and the shows were agnostic on the issue until the reuse of TOS footage in "Trials" forced them to acknowledge it. But in fandom and tie-ins, there were a ton of theories about the different types of Klingons. John M. Ford's novel The Final Reflection posited that Klingons often created genetic fusions with other species, and that TOS Klingons were actually Klingon-human fusions. DC's graphic novel Debt of Honor acknowledged the existence of two races of Klingon without explaining why they were different. Michael Jan Friedman's My Brother's Keeper novel trilogy showed Klingons in the early 2260s genetically engineering a new, fiercer variant of themselves which was implicitly the TMP-onward style of Klingon (though I don't think Paramount allowed him to make it explicit). A Howard Weinstein storyline in DC's ST comics had the crew going back in time into Klingon history, and showed smooth and ridged Klingons coexisting even centuries in the past.

 

[Pauln6]

Khaless in Savage Curtain looked very different, albeit he was plucked from Enterprise crew mental images rather than the real thing.