Neither do I. His acting always seemed appropriate to the situation.
TOS myths and misconceptions...
- Thread starter Warped9
- Start date
Neither do I. His acting always seemed appropriate to the situation.
Name a more elaborate and coherent future society in TV science fiction.
I don't know of anybody that says or believes that TOS never contradicted itself.
I do know that everything holds together suprisingly well, with a lot fewer contradictions than one finds in other shows of the era.
I do know that everything holds together suprisingly well, with a lot fewer contradictions than one finds in other shows of the era.
Maybe, but I don't have the continuity of those other shows as ingrained into my memory like TOS. Though I recall that "Bonanza" and "the Dick Van Dyke Show" were pretty consistsant with their backstories.
Not every show had writing staffs of that caliber.
Like I said, I dont recall enough of other shows from the era to really compare. Seems like a rather broad statement to make. There were a few quality shows with quality staffs being made in the 60s.
Shows in the '60s didn't really have "writing staffs" in the modern sense. Generally they had a writer-producer, a story editor, and a bunch of freelancers. Even on The Twilight Zone, which was mostly the work of only three writers (Rod Serling, Charles Beaumont, and Richard Matheson), only Serling was actually on staff.
You also have to take into account that most TV dramas -- cop shows, doctor shows, lawyer shows, Westerns -- were, and still are, set in established reality, past or present. Even a series like The Man from UNCLE, with its fictional global organization and high-tech gadgets, was grounded in the present-day real world. With Star Trek, an entire fictional universe had to be created from scratch. It's not at all surprising that continuity errors crept in as new episodes were written and filmed, especially considering the episodic nature of series television at the time.
Seems to me on both shows ( and all shows) its just a matter of keeping the details straight. Checking whats been done against what's being done. Many of Trek's "errors" revolve around changes in nomenclature. And they're more about people changing their minds than making an error. I'm sure alot of shows had those kinds of errors.
But those more grounded shows often had far greater continuity issues, at least by modern standards. Look at Mission: Impossible. On several occasions, the team members showed their faces on national or global television in one episode, and yet were able to resume going undercover and being unrecognized in subsequent episodes.
Not to mention the shifting presentation of disguise technology. In the pilot, the use of full-face latex masks was very limited; Rollin Hand could make himself pass briefly as Dan Briggs so long as he wore sunglasses, but he couldn't imitate Briggs' voice, and the only reason he was able to impersonate a foreign leader is because he was specifically chosen for his resemblance to the man. In a later episode, though, he was able to pass as Dan right down to the voice for an extended period, but couldn't eat or drink without damaging the makeup; however, in the same episode, a much older, paunchier man was able to disguise himself as Rollin and magically lost his paunch while wearing the mask. But then, toward the end of the first season, the masks became so perfect that a foreign agent wearing a latex disguise could keep it on for days, eat, drink, sweat through it, even get electroshock therapy through it, and have it completely undamaged.
Not to mention that Dan was severely wounded with a gunshot to the abdomen at the climax of one episode but was totally fine in the next episode. And when he was replaced by Jim Phelps at the start of the next season, there was never any mention of the change or explanation for it.
Basically, the ideal for '60s dramas was to emulate anthologies. Today, we revere "arc" and continuity so much that we fail to realize how different the standards were back then. In the early days of TV, the classy shows were the anthologies, while continuity and ongoing storylines were the stuff of cheesy daytime soaps. If you wanted your show to be respected as a drama, then you needed to focus on making each episode function as a self-contained playlet, and not sink to lowbrow gimmicks like ongoing story arcs or references to past episodes. The reason for doing an ongoing series at all was that it was cheaper to reuse standing sets, costumes, vehicles, etc. than to start from scratch every week, and because a continuing cast could help create audience loyalty. But the storytelling was kept as anthology-like as possible, which was why you had so many shows designed to put the continuing characters in a different situation every week: a fugitive roaming the country, a team going on spy missions around the world, a starship visiting strange new worlds.
^Not just syndication, but first-run, too. Networks liked having the freedom to schedule episodes based on what they thought would play best at a given time. That's why they opened TOS's first season with a scary monster episode, and the latter two seasons with episodes focusing on the show's breakout character, Spock.
Not just the early days. It was that way up until Hill Street Blues and, notably, WiseGuy.
It was better when episodes were self-contained stories - they had plot, dramatic structure, purpose. Curiously, without these things, tv shows now are more "episodic" than ever - that is, they seem to present fairly random occurrences that serve no overarching dramatic purpose.
"We" do not, I assure you. (I know, I know.)
Christopher, you made a very interesting point about 1960's shows being anthologies, but I have to disagree with you about TOS being an anthology show like Mission: Impossible (kind of) was. The book "The Making of Star Trek" from 1968 mentioned on many occasions how the TOS production team went to great lengths to maintain internal consistency. They presented it as if it was something done on a level not done before on a television show, but TOS was definately not meant to be an anthology.
Even the episodes were meant to follow after each other; in the second season episode "By Any Other Name," Kirk suggests that Spock use the same telepathic technique on Kelinda that he used on Eminiar VII, referring to the events from the first season episode "A Taste of Armageddon." Also, in the third season episode "That Which Survives," Sulu refers to the silicon-based life form (the Horta) which was featured in the first season episode "Devil in the Dark." A lot of people don't know that TOS referred to previous episodes, but it DID happen, so it wasn't meant to be an anthology.
Even the episodes were meant to follow after each other; in the second season episode "By Any Other Name," Kirk suggests that Spock use the same telepathic technique on Kelinda that he used on Eminiar VII, referring to the events from the first season episode "A Taste of Armageddon." Also, in the third season episode "That Which Survives," Sulu refers to the silicon-based life form (the Horta) which was featured in the first season episode "Devil in the Dark." A lot of people don't know that TOS referred to previous episodes, but it DID happen, so it wasn't meant to be an anthology.
^^^That's just basic continuity. I think what Christopher is talking about is the "done in one nature" of the show. Plotlines did not extened past the one episode. Each episode was a self contained story like an anthology, but used the same cast, characters and setting for each episode. There were no arcs. And an arc is something different than mentioning some thing from episode 12 in episode 33.
I'm still waiting for examples of TOS having a different approach to internal consistancy than its contemporaries.
I'm still waiting for examples of TOS having a different approach to internal consistancy than its contemporaries.
The notable thing about TOS paying attention to continuity is that other sci-fi shows of the era didn't pay nearly as much attention it, but it's not like Star Trek was the only show that made an extra effort to keep things straight. Plenty of shows had recurring guest stars (like Hawaii Five-O and the ongoing conflict between McGarrett and Wo Fat).
I'm mot a big fan of Lost in Space (or most irwin Allen shows of that time); but the first seasons of:
Lost In Space and the only season of The Time Tunnel were actually serialized in that, at the end of each episode, you had the opening scene of next weeks episode at the end - and previous events were tracked and mentioned; so no, it's not as if Star Trek was the only science fiction series of the 1960ies to maintain a fairly consistent continuity.
The same could be said of QM's The Invaders.
A friend of mine who's a massive "Bonanza" fan told me once they did so many episodes over the years that they used one episode title three times!
Also, from IMDB: "The story of Bonanza starts in 1859 Nevada but the clothing worn by the cast is invariably 20th century . For example belt loops did not appear on men's trousers and jeans until many decades later."
Actually you're not disagreeing with me. My point was that most '60s shows had less internal continuity than TOS did. While it followed the conventional '60s pattern of adopting a format that allowed for an anthology-esque style of storytelling -- a different world and situation every week, a wide range of different science fiction stories -- it nonetheless maintained a level of inter-episode continuity that was unusual for its era. The example you cite of "By Any Other Name" referring back to "A Taste of Armageddon" was indeed an unusual level of continuity for its day, and has often been cited as such over the decades. There's also "I, Mudd" referring back specifically to "Mudd's Women," although TOS was not the only show to have recurring antagonists, and had fewer recurring guests than some contemporary shows did (although not for want of trying; "Day of the Dove" was originally meant to be a Kor episode, but Colicos wasn't available).
Of course, it's all relative; although there were such occasional callbacks, there were still no continuing story or character threads from one episode to the next. Any tragedy or injury a character suffered in one episode would be forgotten by the next and never referenced again.
Then there's the famous story of how "The Naked Time" was meant to lead directly into "Tomorrow is Yesterday," but the idea was scuttled because it would deprive the network of their freedom to schedule the episodes in any order. Which is why "Naked Time" ends with a totally pointless 3-day time warp.
Ah, but remember what I said: The anthology approach was considered classier, while a more serialized approach was considered more lowbrow and gimmicky. It's not that shows back then were devoid of serialization; daytime soaps had it, and some sitcoms did too. (The Beverly Hillbillies had a strong degree of serialization, with storylines routinely spanning two or more consecutive episodes. And then there's Batman with its routine 2-parters and cliffhanger structure.) It's just that the attitude about the relative quality of serialized shows vs. episodic shows was pretty much the reverse of what it is today. And Lost in Space and The Time Tunnel were not aspiring to the same level of adult, sophisticated programming as TOS. They were unabashedly aimed at kids. Like Batman, they emulated the cliffhanger format of movie adventure serials. (Although it was artificial, since usually there was no story connection between one LiS or TTT episode and the next; it's just that the teaser for the next episode was appended as the tag to the current episode.)
To an extent, yes. There was a gradual progression in David Vincent's knowledge of the aliens' plans, although at least one early episode was clearly aired out of order, because "Vikor" shows Vincent first observing how the aliens heal themselves whereas in the previously aired episode he described the process as though he'd already seen it.
But there's a lot about the show that's typically continuity-lite for the era. No matter how many people see the aliens, Vincent is always back to square one with no one believing him by the next episode. No matter how many times they try to kill him, he's apparently still living in the open and somehow making a living between episodes, yet this is never explained (at least in the first dozen or so episodes, which are all I've seen.) So by today's standards, the storyline progression is rather superficial.
Still, QM did seem to be more continuity-oriented than a lot of contemporary shows. In The Fugitive, Lt. Gerard did seem to gradually develop more doubt about Kimble's guilt as he continued to follow him and witness his good deeds, and of course that was one of the few '60s TV series to have an actual series finale that resolved its storyline.
Similar threads
- Poll
