Hence my use of the phrase "a lot of people," implicitly including DS9's writing staff.
Rewatching TOS After SNW
- Thread starter Odo
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Hence my use of the phrase "a lot of people," implicitly including DS9's writing staff.
You could say the same about anything made 60 years ago. By the standards of its day, TOS was a visual-effects spectacular beyond anything ever seen on television.
I wish someone would try to take the TOS sets and build them like they would build them today and then SHOOT them like they would today. I think the effect could be remarkable.
But there would obviously be changes and wherever you came down on that line would bother somebody. (Myself, I might manage to be bothered on BOTH sides of the line. It's a gift. And a curse.)
Obviously the caves in What Are Little Girls Made Of (etc.) don't stand up to today's state of the art. But neither do the ones in DS9.
But there would obviously be changes and wherever you came down on that line would bother somebody. (Myself, I might manage to be bothered on BOTH sides of the line. It's a gift. And a curse.)
Obviously the caves in What Are Little Girls Made Of (etc.) don't stand up to today's state of the art. But neither do the ones in DS9.
TOS was a ridiculously EXPENSIVE show.
That's more or less what Strange New Worlds does -- taking the general aesthetic and design concepts of TOS and filtering them through modern design language and technology. It's just not literal about it.
I don't know about that, but it was good at getting maximum value for its money, e.g. by getting Wah Chang to list the props as "prototypes" so they didn't count against the budget, or making a deal with AMT to let them bankroll the cost of building the Klingon ship miniature in exchange for the model kit rights. So it looked more expensive than it was. It was also something of a loss leader for NBC, something they were willing to keep making despite losing money on it, because it was one of the main reasons that '60s audiences were buying color television sets, the patent for which was owned by NBC's parent company RCA. (Sort of analogous with Farscape, which Jim Henson Studios was willing to make for a loss because it promoted their capabilities as an FX studio to people who might hire them for industrial films, commercials, and the like, so they came out ahead overall and were able to produce the show more elaborately than they otherwise could have.)
Doesn't change anything on a practical level though. TOS was already outclassed by Space 1999 and Battlestar since then.
Not really, there were 2 or three shows around the same time with a similar budget.
By inflation, TOS would be about $1.65 million in today's money, a far cry from a $10 million episode today.
Yes, progress tends to progress. That's a given. But we can choose to appreciate the creations of the past by how they hold up compared to the standards of their own time, or by how their innovations laid the groundwork for the advances that came later. It just seems petty to dismiss something as inferior simply because it's older.
But...but...the shoestring budget!!!
But...but...the shoestring budget!!!
The truth, as is often the case, is somewhere in the middle.
My research has shown it was more or less on par with shows like Bonanza at the start.
So where does that fall on the budgetary spectrum of '60s TV? That was a popular show, so I'm guessing it had a fairly high budget.
But of course, TOS's budget got cut with each successive season, since it wasn't raking in the dough.
Rewatching the opening of “Where No Man Has Gone Before” after several seasons of DSC/SNW Spock makes an interesting nuance change to the opening chessgame scene.
From TOS-only, Spock’s “‘Irritating?’ Ah, one of your human emotions” comment feels a little forced, but is presumably genuine (and also, Kirk & Spock know each other but aren’t friends just yet).
But taking Ethan Peck’s Spock into account changes the feel. While Spock’s obviously retreated into faux-unemotional stoicism by the time of WNMHGB, anybody who knows him — including Kirk, who’s known him since SNW — knows perfectly well that that’s at least partially a facade, and Spock knows they know that. So the slightly exaggerated “Irritating, what’s that?” reaction and Kirk’s good-humor response isn’t a serious exchange at all. They’re friends already, and this is what Kirk/Spock playful banter looks like. They’re playing a friendly game of “human & Vulcan”, just like they’re playing a friendly game of tridimensional chess. In a way, it’s the same game.
Another interesting parallel: Kirk’s best human friend Gary Mitchell letting his inner self out because of the episode’s events is destructive and ultimately self-destructive; whereas Spock letting some of his inner self back out again over the course of TOS (both series and films) proves positive and redemptive. Huh — SNW just retroactively made “Where No Man Has Gone Before” a thematically better pilot episode!
From TOS-only, Spock’s “‘Irritating?’ Ah, one of your human emotions” comment feels a little forced, but is presumably genuine (and also, Kirk & Spock know each other but aren’t friends just yet).
But taking Ethan Peck’s Spock into account changes the feel. While Spock’s obviously retreated into faux-unemotional stoicism by the time of WNMHGB, anybody who knows him — including Kirk, who’s known him since SNW — knows perfectly well that that’s at least partially a facade, and Spock knows they know that. So the slightly exaggerated “Irritating, what’s that?” reaction and Kirk’s good-humor response isn’t a serious exchange at all. They’re friends already, and this is what Kirk/Spock playful banter looks like. They’re playing a friendly game of “human & Vulcan”, just like they’re playing a friendly game of tridimensional chess. In a way, it’s the same game.
Another interesting parallel: Kirk’s best human friend Gary Mitchell letting his inner self out because of the episode’s events is destructive and ultimately self-destructive; whereas Spock letting some of his inner self back out again over the course of TOS (both series and films) proves positive and redemptive. Huh — SNW just retroactively made “Where No Man Has Gone Before” a thematically better pilot episode!
Is it? I think it's evident even from that scene alone, just from the actors' performance, that Spock is teasing Kirk. I mean, he's got a smug little smile when he says "one of your Earth emotions." And he clearly understands teasing, since he doesn't correct Kirk's "Terrible, having bad blood like that." It seems clear from the start that they're already friends; that's really the whole point of the opening chess scene, to establish that relationship so there are emotional stakes when Kirk and Spock come into conflict later.
Could be; that certainly works too. To my eyes, Nimoy plays it juuuust neutral enough you could read it either way. As a younger viewer, I assumed it was in earnest, and that the end of the Gary friendship is balanced by the end by the beginning of the Spock one.
Anyway, it’s certainly teasing now.
I realize that this post was made over a year ago, but it would be unlikely that Kirk and McCoy met on a shuttle departing from the Riverside Shipyards in the Prime Universe's Timeline, as the Prime Timeline most likely didn't have a shipyard in Riverside, Iowa. From Memory Alpha:
According to co-writer Roberto Orci: "Shortly after the heroic death of George Kirk, the Iowa shipyards were erected by Starfleet to honor and commemorate the sacrifice. Hence, the Kelvin salt shaker in the diner, etc...."
Yes, in my mind Prime Kirk took the Kobayashi Maru test in Command School, around the same time he was teaching classes at Starfleet Academy after the Farragut disaster. McCoy's divorce likely took place at around the same time in both timelines, but I think Prime McCoy likely didn't go to the Academy, but was instead granted a commission when he entered the service.
My theory is that the divergences in the Kelvin Timeline started out small, with the destruction of the USS Kelvin and the sacrifice of George Kirk, but those divergences became more pronounced over time, so that by the time of ST09, it was a pretty different universe. Maybe George Kirk or one of the people who got blown out into space from the Kelvin was the person who designed the Starfleet aesthetic we saw on TOS. Without that person there, the look and abilities of Starfleet tech evolved in a different direction.
If both the Kelvin Memorial Archive in London, the Yorktown Space Station and the Iowa Shipyards in Riverside are facilities unique to the Kelvin Timeline, then that increases the differences even more. Hundreds or thousands of personnel would have to be assigned to those locations, personnel that would be posted elsewhere in the Prime Timeline. Perhaps those postings encouraged certain officers to resign from Starfleet, or others to join up when they didn't before. A few people likely died in one timeline that lived in another. Couples who got together in one timeline might never have even met in the other. (Heck, we already have examples of two Kelvin Timeline couples that didn't happen in the Prime Timeline: Spock and Uhura, and Kirk and Chapel.) Imagine two and half decades of differences like that, building up over time.
So yeah, I think that while the Prime and Kelvin Timeline were fairly close together at first (For instance, I think Spock's decision to join Starfleet instead of enrolling in the Vulcan Science Academy happened the same way in both timelines, at least before DSC rewrote the continuity), they became only more divergent with time. So I think however they introduce McCoy in SNW will be very different from what we saw in the recent movies, for variety's sake if nothing else.
In the Kelvin timeline they had a relationship, if brief, as referenced by Carol Marcus:
CAROL: Yes, you do. I'm a friend of Christine Chapel's.
KIRK: Christine, yes. How is she?
CAROL: She transferred to the outer frontier to be a nurse. She's much happier now.
KIRK: That's good.
CAROL: You have no idea who I'm talking about, do you?
KIRK: What are we doing in here?
CAROL: ls this shuttle prepped to fly?
Even more so with Spock referring to his father as "one of my ancestors".
The later reveal makes it almost as though Spock is amusing himself here.
When Kirk meets Carol Marcus in Star Trek Into Darkness, she's not inclined to like him because she was a friend of Christine Chapel's. Kirk replies, "Christine, yes. How is she?", but it quickly becomes clear that he doesn't even remember her. So presumably things didn't end well between them (especially if Chapel was Kirk's subordinate).
Chapel didn't appear in the movie or anything. It was just a throwaway mention. (She was also mentioned by name in ST09, IIRC.)
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