• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

The STV:TFF appreciation thread

Yes, the fact is that she is a crewmember who likes to sing and they neded a distraction--Uhura is not a professional singer so to say "we need to replaceher with a pro"--makes zero sense.

The strange thing is that Nicholls is (or was) a professional singer, which is why they utilised her ability in TOS to begin with, so it's understandable that she was annoyed.
 
I'd be curious to know if she sang it and they didn't think it was good enough or they simply hired someone and didn't let her try.
 
I'd be curious to know if she sang it and they didn't think it was good enough or they simply hired someone and didn't let her try.

I'm not sure, but I have a feeling it was the former; something tells me it was a post-production job that she didn't know about until after the fact.

The whole story about her wanting to leave TOS after the first season (until being persuaded not to by Martin Luther King) involves her desire to return to her first love; musical theatre.
 
The strange thing is that Nicholls is (or was) a professional singer, which is why they utilised her ability in TOS to begin with, so it's understandable that she was annoyed.

That's what bothers me about this. You can tell she's been trained in singing. It's not like she has an awful voice and they just indulged her by letting her sing in TOS. After I watched the episodes with her singing in them, I actually went to YouTube and started listening to her music. She has a beautiful voice.
 
Amen to that. A friend of mine made the comment that "that scene was done 20 years too late." What he didn't seem to remember is that there's no way in hell they could've gotten away with it 20 years earlier. I don't really see what his problem is though - I thought she looked great.
 
They wouldn't have allowed it in the 60s or the 70s... except in a... ahem... gentlemen's flick...

I dunno, compared to a lot of scenes in Easy Rider or Bonnie & Clyde, the fan dance is rather tame. Hell, Cecil B DeMille did scenes more risque than the fan dance.
 
Or "The Graduate" from 1967. Or the opening credits to almost all of the James Bond movies.

Kor
 
One thing nice...one thing nice...I'm trying...

The Goldsmith music. Laurence Luckinbill is a good actor.
 
I dug up my old account on this bbs after 10+ years for this post, so excuse the slight OT :)

BUT

I re-watched TFF yesterday and started thinking about the plot. I know there are some fan theories about "god" being an exiled Q and other such stuff, but here's another take I haven't seen anywhere: Is the whole meeting-god-part just a hallucination induced by Sybok?

Okay, think about it: He's a telepath, like all Vulcans, obviously a strong one. And he's a little crazy (maybe not just a little, he says god himself ordered him to find him, which he tells Kirk while they are in the holding cell). He uses his Vulcan telepathic ability as a means to trick people into following him. We don't really know how it works, but he seems to be getting better at it. At one point he can "convince" the entire crew to follow him via intercom (even though I wonder why he didn't switch over Chekov when he was talking to him on the screen, during Kirk's raid), in the observation deck scene he is even able to let Kirk, Spock and Bones share Bones' and Spock's visions in some sort of group hallucination. In summary: the dude, besides being delusional, has some serious mental powers, including the ability to share hallucinations, which is the important part.

So, what if Sybok himself has these hallucinations, and everyone else kind of get under his spell, they join into *his own* hallucination that they actually found the planet of god. So when they reach the barrier, Chekov says the instruments don't read anything. Yet, everyone "sees" the barrier. Later, Sybok joins Kirk, Spock and McCoy to the surface. Again, even if the people on Enterprise are not longer directly affected, the three are definitely still under the influence of his mind-meddling powers. And the gunner who shoots the god-energy-being is Spock. There is no indication that Klaa and his crew ever "saw" anything. There is no evidence that anyone on the bridge was able to witness the god-encounter, and Chekov is baffled when Kirk orders him to target a torpedo on his location; again, there's probably only the four of them and lots of sand. Sybok isn't killed by some weird god-vision, but instead by the torpedo impact. Hell (excuse the pun), even the part with god wanting a starship could be explained away if that's just a manifestation of Sybok's subconsciousness; he was looking for a starship in the beginning, and the whole plot, from his perspective, was to get a starship that's capable of bringing him to the center of the galaxy. And the energy being chasing Kirk? Maybe that's partly Kirks greatest fear? Dying alone? Chased by an alien creature on a planet, all alone?
Even if it wasn't the intention of the authors, it does look like a possible explanation. What do you guys think?
 
I dug up my old account on this bbs after 10+ years for this post, so excuse the slight OT :)

BUT

I re-watched TFF yesterday and started thinking about the plot. I know there are some fan theories about "god" being an exiled Q and other such stuff, but here's another take I haven't seen anywhere: Is the whole meeting-god-part just a hallucination induced by Sybok?

Okay, think about it: He's a telepath, like all Vulcans, obviously a strong one. And he's a little crazy (maybe not just a little, he says god himself ordered him to find him, which he tells Kirk while they are in the holding cell). He uses his Vulcan telepathic ability as a means to trick people into following him. We don't really know how it works, but he seems to be getting better at it. At one point he can "convince" the entire crew to follow him via intercom (even though I wonder why he didn't switch over Chekov when he was talking to him on the screen, during Kirk's raid), in the observation deck scene he is even able to let Kirk, Spock and Bones share Bones' and Spock's visions in some sort of group hallucination. In summary: the dude, besides being delusional, has some serious mental powers, including the ability to share hallucinations, which is the important part.

So, what if Sybok himself has these hallucinations, and everyone else kind of get under his spell, they join into *his own* hallucination that they actually found the planet of god. So when they reach the barrier, Chekov says the instruments don't read anything. Yet, everyone "sees" the barrier. Later, Sybok joins Kirk, Spock and McCoy to the surface. Again, even if the people on Enterprise are not longer directly affected, the three are definitely still under the influence of his mind-meddling powers. And the gunner who shoots the god-energy-being is Spock. There is no indication that Klaa and his crew ever "saw" anything. There is no evidence that anyone on the bridge was able to witness the god-encounter, and Chekov is baffled when Kirk orders him to target a torpedo on his location; again, there's probably only the four of them and lots of sand. Sybok isn't killed by some weird god-vision, but instead by the torpedo impact. Hell (excuse the pun), even the part with god wanting a starship could be explained away if that's just a manifestation of Sybok's subconsciousness; he was looking for a starship in the beginning, and the whole plot, from his perspective, was to get a starship that's capable of bringing him to the center of the galaxy. And the energy being chasing Kirk? Maybe that's partly Kirks greatest fear? Dying alone? Chased by an alien creature on a planet, all alone?
Even if it wasn't the intention of the authors, it does look like a possible explanation. What do you guys think?


I think that's not bad. It would never fly in a motion picture, as it's basically 'it was all a dream'. But I had never really thought about the conversion by intercom scene in that light before, and I like the film. It would make it even more true to TOS as well. Charlie x....day of the dove....All sorts of mind control stuff there, and we already know kirk has a strong resistance to that.
 
I dug up my old account on this bbs after 10+ years for this post, so excuse the slight OT :)

I remember you! It's good to see you here.

BUT

I re-watched TFF yesterday and started thinking about the plot. I know there are some fan theories about "god" being an exiled Q and other such stuff, but here's another take I haven't seen anywhere: Is the whole meeting-god-part just a hallucination induced by Sybok?
Hmm... we've never seen Vulcans with telepathic abilities that powerful. Usually they have to be in physical contact. Or there could be a device like the Stone of Gol that focuses psionic powers. :vulcan:

Also, the photon torpedo would certainly kill Sybok. But the entity re-appeared shortly thereafter, and Spock shot it from the Klingon ship.

While not "cannnon," Greg Cox's "Q Continuum" novels present some interesting background info on the "God" entity.

Kor
 
I haven't read "Q Continuum" so I have no idea Greg Cox's premise there, but I would theorize that the 'God' being is some kind of enemy of either the Q or perhaps Trelane's parents/people (if they aren't Q), and was exiled beyond the barrier and quarantined on the little planet there by them as punishment for something.
 
Hmm... we've never seen Vulcans with telepathic abilities that powerful. Usually they have to be in physical contact. Or there could be a device like the Stone of Gol that focuses psionic powers. :vulcan:

Also, the photon torpedo would certainly kill Sybok. But the entity re-appeared shortly thereafter, and Spock shot it from the Klingon ship.

While not "cannnon," Greg Cox's "Q Continuum" novels present some interesting background info on the "God" entity.

Kor

We don't know what happened during Sybok's early years, after being expelled from Vulcan. Spock himself said Sybok thought that emotions were the key to it all, not logic. WHat if emotions can leverage their telepahic abilities? Besides, was I the only one who thought that Sybok didn't come across as particularely un-Vulcan? I mean he wasn't really expressive when it came to emotions.

Maybe after Syboks death their "telepathic intoxication" took some time to wear off.

Why does a disruptor blast kill god if a photon torpedo does not? Never understood that one.

The Q-Continuum books are good, but as with most other trek lit, I hate the excessive name-dropping they do. As if the universe only consists of the stuff we'Ve seen on TV and all things magically connect behind the scenes. I recently read the first DTI-novel. While it was nicely written, it tried to cram every single time-travel-incident into the narrative, no page without some obscure reference. The one big reason I was never really turned on by trek lit in the first place. Off-topic, again. Must be the age. My grandpa did that all the time. :)
 
"Kill" is the wrong word. I think it was more to drive it off long enough for the Klingons to beam Kirk aboard and get away. Once clear of the surface, the entitiy would seem to not be able to really effect them.

Also the torpedo was likely low yield as not to kill Kirk.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top