TOS myths and misconceptions...

[Captain Robert April]

My suspicion is that it was in an early draft, and got picked up by Blish in one of his adaptations.

I know I've never heard it, and I just rewatched "Day of the Dove" and "Errand of Mercy" on DVD not too long ago.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I know the "50 years" line is in there, because I know I've heard it.

Nope.
http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Talk:Klingon_history#Date_Reference_from_.22Day_of_the_Dove.22

 

[SpyOne]

Off topic, but I just realized that Deforest Kelley was born in 1920. Nine-teen-friggin-twenty. Great depression, prohibition, flapper girls, etc. Starships, phasers, silicon-based life-forms. He lived to see the birth of the Internet... what an era to live in. 1920-1999. Almost inconceivable.

I know. My Mother's father lived 1902-1994, and it boggles the mind how much the world changed in his lifetime.
He used to say that you could tell his home town was in important town, because two of the people who lived there owned cars. And one of them had a telephone.
His childhood was before radio was commonplace (or electricity, really). He was an adult before any State Capitols had paved all their roads. He had children before there was television.
And yet, we put a man on the moon before he retired. He watched to Personal Computer move from fantasy to expensive toy to common household appliance. He saw cars go from luxury item for the rich to ubiquitous, and then watched them get safer and more fuel efficient than he could have ever imagined (his last car was a 1990 Honda Civic, replacing a 1970 Chevy Impala).
He was 18 when women got the right to vote, and blacks were an oppressed underclass for most of his life, as were jews and gypsies and a dozen other groups. Robert Goddard was mocked by the New York Times in his youth for suggesting that a rocket could work in vacuum. He lived to see women and blacks and Israelis go to space.

The 20th century was certainly a wild ride. I hold similar hopes for the 21st.

 

[Hofner]

Off topic but...

SpyOne and Anticitizen, y'all may not believe this but I swear it's true. My paternal grandfather was born in 1872. He was 55 when my father was born and my dad was 33 when I was born. I'm 50 so that's 138 years for three generations. My grandfather died five years before I was born so I never met him.

It boggles my mind. He was 4 when Custer was killed AND when the telephone was invented in that same year, 1876. He actually saw in person one of the famous native Americans of the time, but unfortunately I forget which one; I'd have to ask my dad. I concede this may be an untrue story but I believe it's true. It doesn't change the fact that people like Sitting Bull and Geronimo were still alive when my grandfather was growing up.

I could go on and on but I guess y'all get it.

Robert

 

[A beaker full of death]

Off topic, but I just realized that Deforest Kelley was born in 1920. Nine-teen-friggin-twenty. Great depression, prohibition, flapper girls, etc. Starships, phasers, silicon-based life-forms. He lived to see the birth of the Internet... what an era to live in. 1920-1999. Almost inconceivable.

I know. My Mother's father lived 1902-1994

Yung'uns. My dad was born in 1919.

Hell, the interwebs still blow me away.

 

[scotpens]

. . . He was 18 when women got the right to vote, and blacks were an oppressed underclass for most of his life, as were jews and gypsies and a dozen other groups.

Gypsies???

Do we even have Gypsies in America?

And now we return you to our regularly scheduled topic . . .

 

[Brutal Strudel]

You bet your ass we do. And they are rather maligned.

 

[Maurice]

Yung'uns. My dad was born in 1919.

Hell, the interwebs still blow me away.

My father also was born in 1919. My mother was born in 1924 and raised in fascist Italy under Mussolini!

 

[GSchnitzer]

My suspicion is that it was in an early draft, and got picked up by Blish in one of his adaptations.

I know I've never heard it, and I just rewatched "Day of the Dove" and "Errand of Mercy" on DVD not too long ago.

The First Draft script for "Day of the Dove" by Jerome Bixby (dated August 9, 1968) has the relevant dialogue from Dr. McCoy.

After Kang and Mara and the rest of the Klingons are taken from the transporter room, Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Chekov also leave the transporter room, chatting while walking down the corridor and then continuing their conversation in the turbo-lift.

SCENE 26 INT. LIFT - FOUR

Doors close -- lift starts motion.

McCOY
(sour)
Fifty years -- eyeball to eyeball
with the Klingon Empire. They've
spied -- raided our outposts --
pirated merchant lanes. A thousand
provocations, and the Federation
has always managed to avoid war.
Now, this crazy business could
pull the trigger!

SPOCK
Our log-tapes will indicate our
innocence in the matter.
Unfortunately, there is no
guarantee they will be believed.

KIRK

One party -- with violent ideas
-- and the willingness to defend
them to someone else's death.
(pointed)
The essence of war, Mister Chekov
...and of prejudice.

Chekov's expression is stubbornly unrelenting.

**********

The line doesn't survive in the final episode--and McCoy's dialogue in Scene 26 in the turbo-lift as ultimately shot doesn't have any cutaways. So it's not like the line was filmed but then trimmed out somehow at some point.

I think it's this line that survives in James Blish's adaptation of the episode in the Star Trek 11 book that people "heard" in their imaginations while reading.

I don't know how canon to consider early drafts of scripts. But it's not like the "50 years of conflict with the Klingons" notion is purely mythical.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Always nice to be confirmed.

 

[A beaker full of death]

Yung'uns. My dad was born in 1919.

Hell, the interwebs still blow me away.

My father also was born in 1919. My mother was born in 1924 and raised in fascist Italy under Mussolini!

Interesting times. My dad had to flee the nazis.

A mere generation ago.

I don't know where someone got the idea that there's a new generation every 20 years. Our dads and we alone span 91 years, and I have yet to produce the next generation!

 

[plynch]

IIRC correctly, "generation" is usually considered 30 years. Yup, just Googled it.

And as to Gypsies (Roma), someone not knowing they've been here for ages says something about their status, eh? But they like to fly under the radar, so no sin in not knowing them. The lying low is probably due to persecution, and never having a homeland. Universal outsiders. There have probably been Trek eps about this general concept actually.

My only claims to cool, old relatives are being Teddy Roosevelt's 7th cousin thrice removed, and that my kids are fifth generation Detroit Tigers fans.

 

[WendellM]

My suspicion is that it was in an early draft, and got picked up by Blish in one of his adaptations.

SCENE 26 INT. LIFT - FOUR

Doors close -- lift starts motion.

McCOY
(sour)
Fifty years -- eyeball to eyeball
with the Klingon Empire.

Thank you for that! The source of that "quote" has been MIA for far too long.

I think it's this line that survives in James Blish's adaptation of the episode in the Star Trek 11 book that people "heard" in their imaginations while reading.

That's the weird thing - it's not in the Blish book either! That reads:

"Lies!" Chekov cried, "They want to start a war by pretending we attacked it!"

Entering an elevator, Kirk glanced at his overwrought face. But McCoy was saying, "Chekov may be right. The Klingons claim to have honored the truce - but there have been incidents! . . . raids on our outposts . . ."

"We've never proved the Klingons committed them, Bones."

McCoy was flushed with unusual vehemence. "What proof do we need? We know what a Klingon is!"

He stormed out of the elevator. Kirk frowned, puzzled by his belligerence; and Spock, noting his uneasiness, said, "Our Log-tapes will indicate our innocence in the present situation Captain."
​

So it's only in the draft script: not in the filmed episode, not in the Blish adaptation. Yet we've somehow been eyeball to eyeball with that number for close to fifty years ourselves.

 

[GSchnitzer]

So it's only in the draft script: not in the filmed episode, not in the Blish adaptation. Yet we've somehow been eyeball to eyeball with that number for close to fifty years ourselves.

Interesting. I didn't actually pull my old Blish books off my shelves to check. Thanks for looking.

How odd that a line that would appear to exist only in a First Draft script would get so much traction. I understand that Mike's Chronology book promulgated the information even further. But so many people ""remember hearing" the line. How odd.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Kinda like so many people "remembering" the opening crawl to Star Wars carrying the "Episode IV: A NEW HOPE" moniker when the movie first opened in '77 (Hint: it didn't). I've gone round and round on that one before (thank the gods that George Lucas kept the original version and released it).

 

[TOS Purist]

How odd that a line that would appear to exist only in a First Draft script would get so much traction. I understand that Mike's Chronology book promulgated the information even further. But so many people ""remember hearing" the line. How odd.

I didn't remember it from the Chronology, I distinctly remember hearing it in an episode. I'm going to watch them again and check.

thank the gods that George Lucas kept the original version and released it

Yeah, barely, and against his wishes. He even said himself that he would rather the original versions be "lost to time and forgotten" while his "Special Editions" would be considered the definitive versions.

 

[GSchnitzer]

Kinda like so many people "remembering" the opening crawl to Star Wars carrying the "Episode IV: A NEW HOPE" moniker when the movie first opened in '77 (Hint: it didn't). I've gone round and round on that one before (thank the gods that George Lucas kept the original version and released it).

I just had a thought: "Day of the Dove" was one of the books in Bantam Books' short-lived "Foto-Novel" series. Perhaps this "...50 years of conflict with the Klingons" line appears in the Foto-Novel version. (That might explain why "a lot" of people remember it--since more people would have had one of those books than would have had a First Draft script lying around.)

Does anyone have a copy of the old Star Trek Foto-Novel #10 "Day of the Dove" that we can check?

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I just had a thought: "Day of the Dove" was one of the books in Bantam Books' short-lived "Foto-Novel" series. Perhaps this "...50 years of conflict with the Klingons" line appears in the Foto-Novel version. (That might explain why "a lot" of people remember it--since more people would have had one of those books than would have had a First Draft script lying around.)

Does anyone have a copy of the old Star Trek Foto-Novel #10 "Day of the Dove" that we can check?

Just checked my copy, and the page with the turbolift scene has McCoy saying, "The Klingons claim to have honored the truce, but there have been incidents... raids on our outposts..." with no mention of a timeframe.

I think this myth comes almost entirely from the Okuda Chronology. He states in his intro to the book that they also checked scripts for timeline info, IIRC.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Hey guys I was watching my TOS season 1 and 2 Blu Rays and I found a big Myth that you will probably not believe and will cause the forum to shake with terror.

The Enterprise DID NOT have a crew of 430. I repeat The Enterprise DID NOT have a crew of 430.

It seems that the number of crew has been 400 (Tommorow is Yesterday), close to 400 (Friday's Child), 428 (I think Space Seed or The Alternative Factor), 430 (I think The Mark of Gideon), and 500 (A Taste of Armageddon) in different episodes.

 

[T'Girl]

Gypsies

They exist is small "clumps" in America, just like several thousand other small distinct groups. You can go your whole life, even if you travel widely, and never meet one. Or not be aware if you did.

The early novel "Spock Messiah" had Kirk and team masquerading as gypsies in their search for Spock on a low technology world.