Trek trivia detail items -- do you know these?

[JoeD80]

I thought it was David Gerrold who came up with Tiberius as Kirk's middle name?

He was the first to have it stated onscreen (in TAS: "Bem"), but I believe Roddenberry had already established it in response to fan questions at conventions.

It was Gerrold who came up with it at conventions, at least according to him in an interview here: http://www.startrekanimated.com/tas_david_gerrold.html

I think it happened at a Star Trek convention, where we all started speculating about what the T stood for. I, Claudius had just aired on PBS, so I said "Tiberius" as a joke. Later on, others picked up on it. So when TAS started, I wrote it in as a line of dialog. DC Fontana passed it by Gene at some point, and it stuck.

 

[Christopher]

^That sounds a bit questionable, given what a huge coincidence it would be that the main character of Roddenberry's The Lieutenant also had Tiberius as his middle name. And it would hardly be the first time that someone's taken credit for inventing something that was really someone else's idea. (I've heard several people, including Doctor Who's co-creator Sydney Newman and its original star William Hartnell, take credit for the idea that the Doctor could regenerate and thus be recast with a different actor.) Heck, Gerrold himself starts that reminiscence with "I think," so he's acknowledging that he's not entirely sure it happened that way.

 

[Tiberius]

And this isn't TOS, but the name William Riker probably comes from William Rice, the lead character of Roddenberry's first series The Lieutenant.

I've heard this as well. And the James R Kirk tombstone would have been James Rice Kirk. And then there's Paul Rice, who we saw as a simulation in Arsenal of Freedom.

 

[Tiberius]

More trivia:

If i'm not mistaken, Sulu, Uhura, Chekov & Chapel never used a shuttlecraft.

Sulu crashed one in the Enterprise's shuttlebay in ST5.

 

[Silvercrest]

As it happens, back in my teens in the early '80s, I independently created my own character named Bill Rice -- the captain of the first FTL ship in my SF universe as it existed at the time. When I discovered that Roddenberry had created a character by that name, I was kind of freaked.

In the 1980s I created a story concept for a dreadnought-style starship that was frozen in time for centuries, and finally emerged to be the light of freedom to an oppressed galaxy.

In 2000 I turned on my TV and did a major double-take.

I had never gotten around to writing the story, though.

 

[Stompy]

Watch the bum's fingers in City on The Edge of Forever (actor John Harmon). He's missing the fourth finger on his right hand. But when we go in for the close up as he's playing with the phaser (just before he zaps himself out of existence), his hands magically show a full 10 digits.

Was it Bill Blackburn who did the close up?

 

[TorontoTrekker]

Hey Mars Weeps, I heard once that writers have to base their character names on something they know -- a derivatiive of a friend, relative, or something with which they are familiar, otherwise they risk being SUED by someone with that actual name (who the writer has no knowledge of) for defamation of character. Is that right?

I've been a professional writer for 15 years and nobody's ever told me I had to do that.

As a rule, in TV and movies, a character name is only off-limits if only one real person in the country has that name, or if someone very similar to the character (same profession or same city of residence, say) has that name. For instance, Scott Bakula's Enterprise character was changed from Jackson Archer to Jonathan Archer because there was only one Jackson Archer in the country. And the TV series of The Dresden Files had to change Chicago Detective Karrin Murphy's name to Connie Murphy because there was a real Chicago detective named Karen Murphy (although that wasn't a problem for the books, probably because there's a lot less money and awareness involved and thus less risk of costly lawsuits). But TNG and DS9 were able to have a character named Miles O'Brien even though there was a CNN reporter named Miles O'Brien, because it was a common enough name and they were in different enough professions that it wouldn't be taken as a reference to that specific person.

Though wasn't Miles O'Brien the science reporter on CNN? Not an engineer, certainly, but it was pretty close.

It does happen that authors use the names of people they know from time to time, however. For instance, several people I know have characters named for them in Robert J. Sawyer's novels - one that comes immediately to mind is the character of Dr. Lloyd Penney, the forensic scientist in Illegal Alien. The character is named and modelled after a Toronto fan and convention runner. The alien Hollus in Calculating God is named for Peter Halasz, another Toronto-area fan and the driving force behind the Sunburst Awards for Canadian science fiction literature. I think there's also a Raymond Alexander in one of Rob's books - Ray is another long-time Toronto fan and convention runner. And I'm a character in the Tanya Huff novel The Better Part of Valor (the fighter pilot, Lieutenant Commander Sibley - though why Tanya made me a fighter pilot, I'm not sure, because I don't even have a driver's license). Tanya even gave me the choice of whether or not my character would survive the book. (You'll have to read it to find out. )

Usually, it's done because the author wants to honour a friend. In my case, I actually won the character in a charity auction at a convention - I got into a bidding war with Peter Halasz, in fact. And just last weekend, Julie Czerneda donated naming rights to a character in an upcoming novel for the charity auction at the Constellation Awards ceremony.

 

[Christopher]

Whatever topic he reported on, a reporter is still not an engineer.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Bookend trivia: Kirk's physical In the 1st regular episode ("The Corbomite Maneuver") gets a near identical replay in the last regualar episode ("Turnabout Intruder").

Note: this is mentioned in Memory Alpha's entry on "Turnabout Intruder."

 

[plynch]

Sickbay was remodeled a bit, eh?

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Sickbay was remodeled a bit, eh?

Yes--cabinet replaced by a doorway. I'm not sure if the change occured in S2, or 3.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Amok Time: Among the most severe glitches in this episode occurs in Spocks quarters as Kirk says "I haven't heard a word you've said" as the statue in Spock's bedroom in the background flames out -- the gel in the light has melted and there's a huge plume of smoke coming out of it.

I always thought that was deliberate: a Vulcan incense dispenser meant to enliven the background of the set. And I was impressed that such an extra effort would be put into set decoration. Now I suppose I was wrong.