Was spaceship cloaking lifted from a 1962 ep. of 'Space Angel'

[jefferiestubes8]

Was TOS episode #109 Balance of Terror's cloaking plot device lifted from the 20 minute story of a 1962 animated scifi TV series?

Space Angel was an animated science fiction television series produced in the United States from early 1962 through 1964.

The series chronicled the adventures of three astronauts who worked for the Earth Bureau of Investigation's Interplanetary Space Force on board the spaceship Starduster.

the Evil Queen of Space [Zora], who resembled Nefertiti, and her Henchman "The General", who spoke with a Central European accent.

Queen Zora

Episodes #46-50 "The Exiles"
Queen Zora and others escape from prison planet, build an invisible pirate ship.

Predating the Star Trek episode "Balance of Terror", their claim to fame is an invisible spaceship they use to disrupt interstellar trade.

http://midimagic.sgc-hosting.com/spaceang.htm
http://www.tv.com/space-angel/show/30209/episode.html
http://www.toontracker.com/spaceangel/spaceang.htm



Sure wikipedia mentions:
Balance of Terror:

The episode is a science-fiction version of a submarine film; writer Paul Schneider drew on the films Run Silent, Run Deep and The Enemy Below, casting the Enterprise as a surface vessel and the Romulan vessel as a submarine.

Fictional cloaking devices have been used as plot devices in various media for many years

Cloaking devices have also been used in many other science-fiction settings and games, including Doctor Who, Star Wars, Stargate, Predator, Halo: Combat Evolved, Metal Gear Solid, and StarCraft.

Where did Balance of Terror's screenplay writer Paul Schneider use it from? Was Space Angel first? Did Gene Roddenberry come up with cloaking as a plot device for the Romulans that would fit well with making the Romulan vessel the submarine vessel in the movie adaptation?

related episode threads:
Balance of Terror Questions
Balance Of Terror was a WW2 Sub and Destroyer film in space
Balance Of Terror
Balance of Terror..
Balance of Terror


related 2008 thread:
Anyone remember Space Angel?

 

[Christopher]

See my comments in the "Space Patrol Orion" thread elsewhere in this forum. There are essentially no SF concepts that originated in film or TV. They all came from prose SF first. The SF film and TV of the '50s and '60s borrowed heavily from the pulp SF of the '30s and '40s, and that's the source of most of the familiar concepts like teleporters, warp drives, forcefields, antimatter weapons, and, yes, invisibility. The concept of an invisibility field for a ship or object dates back at least as far as E. E. "Doc" Smith's 1934 tale Triplanetary, where it was known as the "Ether-Wall." Note in the link that the text of Triplanetary does specifically call it an "invisibility cloak," no doubt inspiring the ST usage, although ST's use of the gerund form "cloaking device" appears to be original.

 

[Potemkin_Prod]

Triplanetary is readily available on-line for free reading:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20782

 

[jefferiestubes8]

cloaking 1934

The concept of an invisibility field for a ship or object dates back at least as far as E. E. "Doc" Smith's 1934 tale Triplanetary, where it was known as the "Ether-Wall." Note in the link that the text of Triplanetary does specifically call it an "invisibility cloak,"

Man Christopher you rock! You surely know your SF stuff. thanks!

 

[Green Shirt]

The weirdest source of cloaking technology was "Cold Light", invented by Prof. Newton in Rocky Jones, Space Ranger. I would have to dig up the ep. since I forgot how it was explained.

 

[jefferiestubes8]

The weirdest source of cloaking technology was "Cold Light", invented by Prof. Newton in Rocky Jones, Space Ranger. I would have to dig up the ep. since I forgot how it was explained.

Possibly this episode:
Story name Chapters First chapter air date Alternate title

"The Pirates Of Prah" 3 May 4, 1954 "Manhunt In Space"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Jones,_Space_Ranger

 

[Maurice]

I think it's simpler than all that. "Balance of Terror" is a thinly revised play on "The Enemy Below", in which a destroyer is pitted against a sub. Is space, you can't submerge to disappear, so you have to go "Invisible Man" to do the equivalent.

 

[Christopher]

^Exactly. They wanted to do a submarine movie in space, so they adopted the established SF trope of an invisibility field as their equivalent of "submergence."

Just imagine if, instead, they'd chosen to adopt the established pulp-SF trope of "subspace" to refer to another spatial dimension that the Romulan ship passed through. Remember, this was early in TOS, before they'd locked down the concepts and terminology -- and strictly speaking, when TOS did adopt the term "subspace," it used it only for radio. It wasn't until later (first in the technical notes for TMP, then for TNG) that subspace was linked directly to warp propulsion -- because no prior Trek episode had postulated anything different. If BoT had used subspace as an exotic realm independent of how warp drive operates, later Trek would've had to develop some different technobabble. (Of course, the first use of "subspace radio" was in "Mudd's Women," predating BoT, but it could've still been established as a separate domain from what ships normally travelled through.)

 

[Captain Robert April]

Well, H.G. Wells wrote "The Invisible Man" in 1897, so the concept can be traced back at least that far...

 

[jefferiestubes8]

Well, H.G. Wells wrote "The Invisible Man" in 1897, so the concept can be traced back at least that far...

My initial inquiry for this thread was for spaceships. Christopher I believe nailed it.

The concept of an invisibility field for a ship or object dates back at least as far as E. E. "Doc" Smith's 1934 tale Triplanetary, where it was known as the "Ether-Wall." Note in the link that the text of Triplanetary does specifically call it an "invisibility cloak,"

 

[Christopher]

Well, H.G. Wells wrote "The Invisible Man" in 1897, so the concept can be traced back at least that far...

Actually that's preceded by Edward Page Mitchell's "The Crystal Man" in 1881, which described a process with some similarities to what Wells used.

http://www.unwinnable.com/2010/10/08/tracking-the-invisible-man

Though that's just for invisibility attained through scientific means. The concept of magical invisibility goes back to ancient myth and folklore, such as the Cap of Invisibility in Greek mythology or the very similar Tarnhelm from Norse/Germanic myth (or at least from Wagner's Ring cycle).

 

[pymfan2000]

very interesting thread folks!

 

[ToddPence]

In Edgar Rice Burroughs' "A Fighting Man of Mars", published in 1931, the hero makes his spaceship invisible by coating it with a special paint that does not reflect light rays.

 

[Christopher]

^That would just make it black.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Well, at least Burroughs tried...

 

[jefferiestubes8]

cloaking & conventional radar

In Edgar Rice Burroughs' "A Fighting Man of Mars", published in 1931, the hero makes his spaceship invisible by coating it with a special paint that does not reflect light rays.

Cool. Great find ToddSuspense...
And our military airplanes have done the same:

the United States' F-117 Nighthawk (1981–2008), the B-2 Spirit "Stealth Bomber", the F-22 Raptor,[4] and the F-35 Lightning II[5]

Reflected Waves

conventional monostatic radars, since first-generation stealth technology (such as the F117) reflects energy away from the transmitter's line of sight, effectively increasing the radar cross section (RCS) in other directions, which the passive radars monitor. Such a system typically uses either low frequency broadcast TV and FM radio signals (at which frequencies controlling the aircraft's signature is more difficult).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealth_fighter

paint is one of the items as all planes are painted black.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I think it's simpler than all that. "Balance of Terror" is a thinly revised play on "The Enemy Below", in which a destroyer is pitted against a sub. Is space, you can't submerge to disappear, so you have to go "Invisible Man" to do the equivalent.

Yeah, I think that's pretty much it. The show's clearly inspired by that movie rather than by a bit of technological extrapolation that the writer thought would be cool. Even the characters themselves aboard the warbird (or whatever you want to call it; the Romulans didn't call it a "bird of prey") are based in "The Enemy Below."