So, I take it you read the old Files magazine trade paperback from the 80s?
These Are The Voyages - Season Three
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So, I take it you read the old Files magazine trade paperback from the 80s?
Yes, but there was only one slender volume for Voyage, written by John Peel, on the first few episode of the series. He was not what I would call the biggest fan of Irwin Allen and had zero behind the scenes info. His coverage of Lost in Space was particularly harsh and very sloppy.
Wow--I did not know the VTTBOTS volume was lacking so much, but it was on shelves of many Los Angeles genre and entertainment-centered bookstores, so was it popular--or just that it was the only book of its kind one would find at the time? On that note, I bought a few of the Lost in Space single episode issues, and the trade paperback on Land of the Giants--both revealing a few things, but sort of slapped together with the kind of cast interviews seen in many a Starlog or SFTV magazine of that period.
I'm enjoying reading the evolution of the episodes from concept to final filmed version. Interesting to read of potential scenes dropped and even scenes filmed yet cut in final edit.
It seems GR didn't wholly walk away at the beginning of the third season. Apparently he was still orchestrating things from afar wherein Frieberger seems little more than a puppet and "yes" man. On the plus side it looks like GR was still pushing for quality stories even though NBC was making it plain the show was done for no matter what was done in terms of quality.
The book affirms that GR mandated "no comedy" to Frieberger after the comedic episodes of Season 2. Frieberger is said to have been disappointed with this mandate and would have quite liked to do more comedic stories.
If true than I have to give GR his due in stressing taking the high road and pushing for something better than average in TOS' stories whereas Frieberger seems to have seen TOS as "just television" and something to just get in the can and out the door. Essentially Frieberger could feel something was "good enough" while GR (and others on staff) felt better was possible and it was worth going for.
It seems GR didn't wholly walk away at the beginning of the third season. Apparently he was still orchestrating things from afar wherein Frieberger seems little more than a puppet and "yes" man. On the plus side it looks like GR was still pushing for quality stories even though NBC was making it plain the show was done for no matter what was done in terms of quality.
The book affirms that GR mandated "no comedy" to Frieberger after the comedic episodes of Season 2. Frieberger is said to have been disappointed with this mandate and would have quite liked to do more comedic stories.
If true than I have to give GR his due in stressing taking the high road and pushing for something better than average in TOS' stories whereas Frieberger seems to have seen TOS as "just television" and something to just get in the can and out the door. Essentially Frieberger could feel something was "good enough" while GR (and others on staff) felt better was possible and it was worth going for.
Are you possibly thinking of the "Irwin Allen Scrapbook" volumes by Alpha Control Press? Those covered every Irwin Allen SF series and, yep, mostly were put together from articles and episode guides from Epi-Log. Also, two dedicated books on Voyage from them were published: "Seaview: The Making of Voyage to the Bottom of the sea" by Tim Colliver and the more recent "SEAVIEW: A 50th Anniversary Tribute to Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" by William Anchors, Frederick Barr and Lynne Holland. Neither of them had verifiable behind the scenes information, almost nothing (if anything) from the UCLA archives, but did have a lot of fan opinions. Both books drew pretty heavily on the Epi-Log plot synopses.
Memos from GR show him exerting influence on Frieberger and others. Letters between GR and Stan Robertson continued the ongoing "discussion" about what NBC wanted (more planet stories and more exotic stuff) and what they could reasonably expect given the slashed budget.
For one thing from the get-go the lack of extras depicting ship's crew in the background was noticeable, but the new budget didn't allow for it.
Reprinted letters and quoting articles from Starlog magazine show the disagreement between Frieberger and DC Fontana over the "love scenes" between Spock and the Romulan Commander in "The Enterprise Incident." Frieberger added the scenes which were initially much more conventional in human terms. Fontana balked (to Roddenberry) and so did Nimoy wherein things were scaled back and made more alien. Fontana's script also had moments explaining why the Romulans were using Klingon ships as well as a nice scene for Chapel, but both werre dropped. Frieberger also didn't care for "The Paradise Syndrome." He basically seemed to think it was too sedate and talky for a "tits in space" action/adventure show.
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I went through it in PDF format over the weekend. To avoid frustration I didn't bother to check the referencing this time, electing just to read the thing through quickly. Impressions based on the facts presented :
It seems Roddenberry was very involved in the first six episodes, but after the back to back disasters that were "Spock's Brain" and "And the Children...", he confined himself to giving feeback ex post on the rough cuts. Very frustrating -- he could have made changes and put his stamp on things before the damage was done, but he chose not to. This being the case, Roddenberry has no right to blame Freiberger for the third season's woes. How demoralising it must have been for the likes of Justman, Finnerman, Jefferies et al to see their boss just give up like this. Interestingly Roddenberry was not "off the lot" but moved offices to a smaller room, sulking about the Friday late night timeslot, asleep at the wheel as Star Trek unravelled creatively.
It seems the "no comedy" edict was from Roddenberry, not Freiberger.
The "less action" was not just attributable to the lower budget, but also a conscious effort from the major networks to show restraint after a year of bloodshed and assassinations in the USA.
It's hard to get an overall impression of Freiberger -- the quotes from his intented biographer and children paint a rosy picture of him, but David Gerrold and D.C. Fontana are scathing of his lack of judgment and talent. Roddenberry seemed to be frustrated with the cheapness of the production, yet failed to do anything about it.
Freiberger's biggest crime was attempting to serve two masters -- Roddenberry and Doug Cramer the head of Paramount, the latter being portrayed as a short sighted penny pincher who strove to rein in costs on Star Trek and Mission Impossible by encouraging Freiberger to fire anyone who couldn't deliver on budget. And that is exactly what happened -- former producer John Meredyth Lucas a notable victim.
What a guy Lucas must have been -- passed over for the producership, he just went about his business attempting to write and direct to the best of his ability till Freiberger canned him. Justman also showed great character to soldier on for a while after Roddenberry overlooked him for the producer's chair. I was a bit surprised at the comments of D.C. Fontana about Freiberger. There is no love lost between these two at all.
Arthur Singer seemed universally well liked, and encouraging of the procession of first time writers who sent in scripts for Season 3. Freiberger's writing seemed to be confined to making the last minute changes requested by NBC or the researchers. You have to hand it to Singer - writing all those scripts virtually single-handed is an impresive feat.
The ratings are consistently disappointing week after week. Star Trek never gets near the Friday night movie, and struggles along with "Judd For The Defence" for a distant second. Around halfway through the season they take a fatal leg-down. I think Marc Cushman was looking at different figures to me all the way through these books!
The way Cushman tells it, Star Trek nearly got a repreive from late nights on Friday. It seems late in the season Trek was to replace the tanking "Jerry Lewis show" on Tuesday nights till the NBC accountants discovered that paying out Lewis from his contract would be too expensive. Interesting.
What happened between Roddenberry and Solow that Roddenberry threatened not to turn up at a party in his honour if Solow was there? I thought they were good friends...
Just a word on the e-book as available at Cushman's site -- do yourself a favour and wait for it to appear on Amazon -- in order to read it I had to "pinch" every page manually to get the text to a readable size. Frustrating having to do this 700 times!
It seems Roddenberry was very involved in the first six episodes, but after the back to back disasters that were "Spock's Brain" and "And the Children...", he confined himself to giving feeback ex post on the rough cuts. Very frustrating -- he could have made changes and put his stamp on things before the damage was done, but he chose not to. This being the case, Roddenberry has no right to blame Freiberger for the third season's woes. How demoralising it must have been for the likes of Justman, Finnerman, Jefferies et al to see their boss just give up like this. Interestingly Roddenberry was not "off the lot" but moved offices to a smaller room, sulking about the Friday late night timeslot, asleep at the wheel as Star Trek unravelled creatively.
It seems the "no comedy" edict was from Roddenberry, not Freiberger.
The "less action" was not just attributable to the lower budget, but also a conscious effort from the major networks to show restraint after a year of bloodshed and assassinations in the USA.
It's hard to get an overall impression of Freiberger -- the quotes from his intented biographer and children paint a rosy picture of him, but David Gerrold and D.C. Fontana are scathing of his lack of judgment and talent. Roddenberry seemed to be frustrated with the cheapness of the production, yet failed to do anything about it.
Freiberger's biggest crime was attempting to serve two masters -- Roddenberry and Doug Cramer the head of Paramount, the latter being portrayed as a short sighted penny pincher who strove to rein in costs on Star Trek and Mission Impossible by encouraging Freiberger to fire anyone who couldn't deliver on budget. And that is exactly what happened -- former producer John Meredyth Lucas a notable victim.
What a guy Lucas must have been -- passed over for the producership, he just went about his business attempting to write and direct to the best of his ability till Freiberger canned him. Justman also showed great character to soldier on for a while after Roddenberry overlooked him for the producer's chair. I was a bit surprised at the comments of D.C. Fontana about Freiberger. There is no love lost between these two at all.
Arthur Singer seemed universally well liked, and encouraging of the procession of first time writers who sent in scripts for Season 3. Freiberger's writing seemed to be confined to making the last minute changes requested by NBC or the researchers. You have to hand it to Singer - writing all those scripts virtually single-handed is an impresive feat.
The ratings are consistently disappointing week after week. Star Trek never gets near the Friday night movie, and struggles along with "Judd For The Defence" for a distant second. Around halfway through the season they take a fatal leg-down. I think Marc Cushman was looking at different figures to me all the way through these books!
The way Cushman tells it, Star Trek nearly got a repreive from late nights on Friday. It seems late in the season Trek was to replace the tanking "Jerry Lewis show" on Tuesday nights till the NBC accountants discovered that paying out Lewis from his contract would be too expensive. Interesting.
What happened between Roddenberry and Solow that Roddenberry threatened not to turn up at a party in his honour if Solow was there? I thought they were good friends...
Just a word on the e-book as available at Cushman's site -- do yourself a favour and wait for it to appear on Amazon -- in order to read it I had to "pinch" every page manually to get the text to a readable size. Frustrating having to do this 700 times!
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It had to be demoralizing to know that no matter what the the TOS staff did the show was going to die. NBC no longer cared. In a way it would have been less cruel to have just ended the show after two seasons.
I say this from a working perspectice because it must have been hell for those working on the show during the third season. As a fan I'm glad we did get the third season because I still find a lot of worthy stuff in it. I don't think there are that many stinkers in it and there's more to like than not like.
But it looks like much of the blame can go to GR. He could have stayed more involved or at least he could have put better qualified people in place to manage the final season. I agree it's hard to get a read on Frieferger, but from the onset he certainly seems ill suited for his position. If not someone else than Justman certainly would have been the better choice.
I wonder if GR was of two minds: wanting the show to still be good and also wanting to let things get bad to prove a point.
I say this from a working perspectice because it must have been hell for those working on the show during the third season. As a fan I'm glad we did get the third season because I still find a lot of worthy stuff in it. I don't think there are that many stinkers in it and there's more to like than not like.
But it looks like much of the blame can go to GR. He could have stayed more involved or at least he could have put better qualified people in place to manage the final season. I agree it's hard to get a read on Frieferger, but from the onset he certainly seems ill suited for his position. If not someone else than Justman certainly would have been the better choice.
I wonder if GR was of two minds: wanting the show to still be good and also wanting to let things get bad to prove a point.
Freiberger was the ideal guy for the likes of Paramount. His approach was to get the show done within alotted time and budget. Any other considerations had little weight. Freiberger wanted to make as few waves as possible.
"And The Children Shall Lead" showcases when everything seemed to go wrong. GR bought a story that he felt was nicely dark and had all the elements to make a good episode. And as has been said by many over the years (myself included) one can see the fundamentals of a good scare story in ATCSL. But the guy who pitched this otherwise good idea was out of his depth in writing it. It would have been far better to have just bought the idea and let DC Fontana, or someone else already familiar with Star Trek, flesh it out. But GR stuck with Lakso (the writer) until even Freiberger knew it had to be redone. Unfortunately Freiberger and Singer weren't the ones to do it because they watered it down so as not to risk offending anyone at NBC or possibly in the audience.
The man hired to direct ATCSL was Marvin Chomsky, a perfect TV director who got things done as simply and as cheaply as possible. Again the perfect kind of guy for the Paramount penny pinchers. Unfortunately Chomsky got the episode done on time and just under budget which guaranteed he would be invited back.
And finally Freiberger is the one who thought the stunt casting of Marvin Belli was an inspired idea--an idea nobody else agreed with.
"And The Children Shall Lead" showcases when everything seemed to go wrong. GR bought a story that he felt was nicely dark and had all the elements to make a good episode. And as has been said by many over the years (myself included) one can see the fundamentals of a good scare story in ATCSL. But the guy who pitched this otherwise good idea was out of his depth in writing it. It would have been far better to have just bought the idea and let DC Fontana, or someone else already familiar with Star Trek, flesh it out. But GR stuck with Lakso (the writer) until even Freiberger knew it had to be redone. Unfortunately Freiberger and Singer weren't the ones to do it because they watered it down so as not to risk offending anyone at NBC or possibly in the audience.
The man hired to direct ATCSL was Marvin Chomsky, a perfect TV director who got things done as simply and as cheaply as possible. Again the perfect kind of guy for the Paramount penny pinchers. Unfortunately Chomsky got the episode done on time and just under budget which guaranteed he would be invited back.
And finally Freiberger is the one who thought the stunt casting of Marvin Belli was an inspired idea--an idea nobody else agreed with.
You're making Chomsky sound like a hack. For the record, he's earned multiple Emmy awards for Outstanding Director.
Unfortunately that he was invited back?
He directed "Day of the Dove," one of the best episodes of the third season, and one of the better ones of the whole series. It has some of the most powerful scenes in all of TOS.
He also directed "All Our Yesterdays." More of a mixed bag, but many fans appreciate it, and it's generally agreed to be better than the final episode following it.
Hardly unfortunate that he was invited back. For "Day of the Dove" alone, Star Trek is better for his having directed for it.
Or are you saying that he shouldn't have delivered the episode on time or that he should have gone over budget?!?
Chomsky let the actors (the main cast) do pretty much what they wanted. There seemed to be little to no effort to get them to rein it in and not over act, especially in Shatner's case. But he was also unimaginative when it came to Trek. He had no SF experience in his background and no familiarity with the show.
He was, though, only part of the problem with ATCSL. The original story idea was poorly fleshed out by people totally unfamaliar with the show. Justman, like GR and even NBC, liked the original idea, but then the whole thing was watered down and squeezed dry of any real effect.
He was, though, only part of the problem with ATCSL. The original story idea was poorly fleshed out by people totally unfamaliar with the show. Justman, like GR and even NBC, liked the original idea, but then the whole thing was watered down and squeezed dry of any real effect.
Meh.
Unimaginative when it came to Trek, generally? No. See "Day of the Dove." The scenes on the planet in the beginning are fabulous, as is Chekov's attempted rape of Mara, and the climax of Kirk arguing with Kang. There's visceral tension in all of those scenes. What's unimaginative about any of that?
So, you're saying that the episode would have been substantially less of a turkey, if Chomsky had only "reined in" the actors? That's really hard to believe. Seeing Shatner overact as you put it is at least seeing something. Was Chomsky supposed to insist on the top-to-bottom rewrite that was sorely needed? What would that have done for coming in on-time?
Unimaginative when it came to Trek, generally? No. See "Day of the Dove." The scenes on the planet in the beginning are fabulous, as is Chekov's attempted rape of Mara, and the climax of Kirk arguing with Kang. There's visceral tension in all of those scenes. What's unimaginative about any of that?
"Only part" of the problem?!? How about "hardly" the problem! Chomsky was handed a turkey his first time at bat in Trek, and he made the best of it. Plus, by the time of "Dove," he had certainly found his stride in Trek. Whatever he learned by doing "Children" was evidently put to good use.
Meh.
So, you're saying that the episode would have been substantially less of a turkey, if Chomsky had only "reined in" the actors? That's really hard to believe. Seeing Shatner overact as you put it is at least seeing something. Was Chomsky supposed to insist on the top-to-bottom rewrite that was sorely needed? What would that have done for coming in on-time?
Unimaginative when it came to Trek, generally? No. See "Day of the Dove." The scenes on the planet in the beginning are fabulous, as is Chekov's attempted rape of Mara, and the climax of Kirk arguing with Kang. There's visceral tension in all of those scenes. What's unimaginative about any of that?
"Only part" of the problem?!? How about "hardly" the problem! Chomsky was handed a turkey his first time at bat in Trek, and he made the best of it. Plus, by the time of "Dove," he had certainly found his stride in Trek. Whatever he learned by doing "Children" was evidently put to good use.
I agree pretty much with everything CorporalCaptain posted here.
Quit being so grumpy, Warped!
Besides "And the Children...", I thought Chomsky did a credible job directing.
By September, he was off the lot at least part time, working at Natonal General Pictures on his ill-fated Tarzan movie treatment.
http://startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com/2014/10/read-gene-roddenberrys-letter-to-gene.html
It's been ages since I've seen the episode, so I cannot speak to his ability to reign in Shatner's overacting, but would "SF experience" or "familiarity with the show" really matter? Season one had many directors with neither who did more than a credible job.
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