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Soundstage "planets" that worked & those that didn't.

G

Grant

Commodore
Commodore
We know that time & budget affected location shooting on TOS but sometimes they made the soundstage work. Other times not so much. So what were the successes and what were the failures?

"Specter" works IMO opinion because the surreal atmosphere added to the show and made it seem less like a cheap shoot with barely a sci-fi concept. It was just another money saver. But the floating pictures and missing walls added a little ambiance.
The "rocky barren" planet worked for Cage and WNMHGB but was wearing thin already by Enemy within. Is every planet a dusty rocky wasteland -- even the ones that are freezing? Works for Man Trap because at lease they threw in the interesting ruins.
"Conscience.." again the tired dust and rocks. Maybe the Gothos set works because it is after all just Trelane's imaginary playground.
Maybe season 1 wasn't so bad.
Metamorphosis - blah. Catspaw they dressed it up nice with fog at least. Amok was well done.
Apple, well I guess lush greens are not easy to make pleasing to look at as a planet on a set.
The Mirror, Mirror set I don't like but how much were they going to spend for just a teaser?

Any thoughts?
 
I always thought "Remastered" dropped the ball on the stage set episodes with a lighted screen standing in for the sky.

I wish they had used those blank skies as a green, blue, whatever color "greenscreen" to fill in those blank areas with scenery reaching to the horizon. Maybe next time.
 
Christopher said:
Wow, that's the one I was going to cite as the best soundstage planet. They did a great job with lighting and fog effects to create the illusion of a real sky with clouds.
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Did Metamorphosis have fog? I mean I did like it when they colored the sky exotic hues. I guess by season 2 (I watch them generally in order) I get tired of every planet being dusty and rocky. And I realize bringing in plants was not easy. Like what they did in "Cage" with the "singing" plants. Wish they had tried that more. Not a soundstage but they added some "exotic" plants in shore leave.
Funny that so Cal. is dry and rocky and desert and then for the soundstages they mostly went with that same look anyway.
Hated the caves in "Devil in.." with the smooth as glass tunnel floors. You couldn't throw some dirt on the floor?
By the time we get "And The Children.." they didn't even seem to be trying.
But big props for the gimbal they used for the earthquake in "That Which Survives"
Once again "Catspaw" had the rocks darkly colored instead of so Cal beige at least.
In "Way to Eden" they actually had to try having grass! How often did they try grass on the soundstages? But, even so, it wasn't a very good effort in the end.
 
Grant said:
Did Metamorphosis have fog?
Click to expand...

I don't know what the right word for it is; maybe it was a smoke effect. (I almost said dry ice, but that hugs the ground.) The point is, they actually made it look like there were clouds in the "sky," which I don't think I saw them do in any other TOS episodes.


Hated the caves in "Devil in.." with the smooth as glass tunnel floors. You couldn't throw some dirt on the floor?
Click to expand...

Not if they wanted to be able to move the cameras around. Although I guess they could've blocked it to put dirt only on the parts the camera didn't need to move over, but that would've taken more time, and time is always finite in series TV.
 
Christopher said:
(I almost said dry ice, but that hugs the ground.) The point is, they actually made it look like there were clouds in the "sky," which I don't think I saw them do in any other TOS episodes.
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Dry ice is what they used in Catspaw and The Galileo Seven, I'm sure. It looked good.

They put clouds in the sky on Ardana. Hell, they put a city up there to boot!

Not if they wanted to be able to move the cameras around. Although I guess they could've blocked it to put dirt only on the parts the camera didn't need to move over, but that would've taken more time, and time is always finite in series TV.
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I know people always love to cite this as some nitpick, but it's not really that hard to believe that either Starfleet or civilian engineers or the Horta created tunnels with smooth floors.
 
Christopher said:
I don't know what the right word for it is; maybe it was a smoke effect. (I almost said dry ice, but that hugs the ground.) The point is, they actually made it look like there were clouds in the "sky," which I don't think I saw them do in any other TOS episodes.
I just checked and you are right. Metamorphosis is nicely done. I was thinking of only the landing site but the area around the dwelling is very well done. The plants and smoke and sky are top notch. Way more effort than they usually took!



Not if they wanted to be able to move the cameras around. Although I guess they could've blocked it to put dirt only on the parts the camera didn't need to move over, but that would've taken more time, and time is always finite in series TV.
Click to expand...

Yes, they really needed to put at least some dirt on the floor. Especially since almost the entire episode took place in the tunnels. All that work with the tunnel walls and linoleum floors just doesn't look right.
 
Christopher said:
I don't know what the right word for it is; maybe it was a smoke effect. (I almost said dry ice, but that hugs the ground.) The point is, they actually made it look like there were clouds in the "sky," which I don't think I saw them do in any other TOS episodes.
Click to expand...

I was wrong about Metamorphosis. I was thinking only about the shuttle landing site. But the area around the dwelling is beautiful. The plants, the fog/clouds, the colors are great. One of the better efforts.

But damn, I get sick of seeing all the boulders on almost every planet. Home many landscapes on Earth are just boulders and dirt? In TOS it's almost every world.
 
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Yeah, I guess it was a Catch 22 because if you go "full monty" with grass and ponds and flowers and trees you run the risk of it looking really fake. But if you go with "more realistic" rocks/boulders and dirt and scrub brush you end up getting repetitive real fast.
Savage Curtain, Requiem, Deadly Years, Cloud Minders, That Which.., Dove, For the World.., Empath, Children... -- they all seem to blend together and look boring. Maybe they should have gone with more night time soundstage attempts as in Squire and Catspaw? Or maybe gone crazy with some real weird looking stuff that while maybe not looking "real" may have at least looked "alien"

Kind of sad that one of their biggest (& probably most expensive) efforts, the Apple, was such a lame episode.
 
I always appreciated the soundstage planets in TOS. It gave everything a weird "otherworldly" quality that was cool.

I do think the planet background used in "The Cage" and "WNMHGB" could have been modified and re-used. Those were pretty good. Some of the later ones with no features and nothing but a purple sky and low-level rocks all the way to the horizon were kind of bad.

Squire of Gothos does a nice job, as does The Apple.
 
Grant said:
Maybe they should have gone with more night time soundstage attempts as in Squire and Catspaw? Or maybe gone crazy with some real weird looking stuff that while maybe not looking "real" may have at least looked "alien"
Click to expand...

That's a great idea. In "By Any Other Name" they should have beamed down to the night side of the planet. Why shouldn't Kirk arrive at night, from Rojan's point of view? Artful darkness would hide a LOT of the fake-scenery problems.
 
I'm trying to think how many times they did beam down to a nighttime soundstage. I guess Squier of Gothos was meant to be at night or possibly that's just how the planet was even in so-called daylight because it was a rogue planet with no nearby Sun? In private little war when they escape from the building where they're making the guns that seemed to be a soundstage at night time. And in alternative Factor the last scene seems to be at dusk where they recreated the location shoot on a soundstage. And cat'spaw was obviously night time when they beam down. And in wolf in the fold the street was filled with fog and was at night which was a great change of pace.
But all in all it seemed wherever they were going they almost always beaming down in daylight.
 
Grant said:
But all in all it seemed wherever they were going they almost always beaming down in daylight.
Click to expand...

Which makes sense -- who wants to go to an unfamiliar location in the dark if you can avoid it? If it doesn't matter where you beam down, you'd naturally pick an area that's going to be in daylight for a while, and if it matters where but not when, then you'd schedule beamdown for morning or afternoon.
 
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