Whom Gods Destroy---It's a Bargain!

I only wrote down the final (or nearest to final available) budget figures, so I don't have that information. One day, I'd like to be able to order scans of all the call sheets and budgets in the collection, but I haven't been able to figure out a way to fund that aspiration yet. (UCLA charges per page scanned).

Kick starter doesn't seem like it would work to do that. What, after all, would be the incentives you'd offer people to donate?

 

Turn the pages into digital files and offer it to those who invest? Not sure about the legalities involved though...

 

Yeah, that wouldn't be at all legal.

 

I simply wasn't sure if they were owned by someone or if they were considered public domain.

 

Well, according to the finding aid:

Upon reflection, I'm actually not sure of the legalities involved. I'll have to email the library and ask.

 

Two words: Super Velcro!


Another money-saving measure -- they didn't spend a whole lot on fabric for Yvonne Craig's costume.

Yvonne tells the story that the makeup artists ended up using spray-on liquid bandage to keep the green makeup from rubbing off on everything she touched. When she sweated under the hot studio lights, the stuff melted and formed cobwebby strings. In the scene where she's dragged out into the planet's poisonous atmosphere and she's pleading for her life with arms outstretched, it looked like green moss was growing from her armpits! Fortunately it didn't show up on film.

He also wears his long coat with one arm in the sleeve and the other side draped over his shoulder, further reinforcing the impression of an unbalanced mind. Or maybe he's trying to start a new fashion.

 

I like the fact that at one point Garth refers to himself as "master of the universe," years before that phrase entered the popular culture. Thus Star Trek might have coined it.

The Mattel/Filmation MOTU franchise goes back to about 1983.

The phrase shows up prominently in Tom Wolfe's 1987 novel Bonfire of the Vanities, in which Wall Street bond traders consider themselves masters of the universe.

But it looks like Star Trek might have gotten there first.

 

If I was the guy that had to do Yvonne's body makeup. I'd forego my salary for that job. I'd probably pay them!

 

They say once you've had green, everything else is routine.

 

Hey, that's my line!

 

My problem with WGD is that it's concerned with psychiatry, without criticising it as DotM did. It appropriated the chair from DotM, then did a sort of comment-free story on a disturbed former commander, without questioning the advisability or feasability of trying to "cure" people with such a ham-fisted, simplistic sort of device. Still, even faulty season 3 Trek is well worth watching, and a special thing to be treasured.

 

Sorry, Scot. It's a great line.

To this day, psychiatry is still in its scientific infancy, unable to properly define diseases except as bundles of symptoms, unable to distinguish causes from effects with any certainty, and incapable of explaining the underlying mechanisms of the brain. So I'd say that anything TOS tried to say about psychiatry, however common-sensical it seemed at the time, would be dialog in grave danger of becoming outdated.

Depending on who else is in the living room, some S3 episodes can also be quite embarrassing. WGD is one I prefer to see alone. And it's not the worst by far.

 

The horsey scene in "Plato's Stepchildren". My first ever viewing of it, having only read the Blish novelization.
http://youtu.be/avTfiRccYIA

My Dad asked, "What is it you see in this show?"

 

The correct answer to that episode would have been "Barbara Babcock".

 

Actually there was some discussion of Barbara Babcock's closeups and the old Vaseline-on-the-lens trick - the women of TOS often were shot in very soft focus - but that sounded a bit... naughty.

 

To be more technically accurate, I learned once (from Metryq in fact) that women's close-ups on Star Trek were not really done in "soft focus." The camera was focused sharply but a diffusion filter was put in front of the lens:

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

Director of Photography Jerry Finnerman would go on to use exactly the same technique for Cybill Shepherd on Moonlighting in the 1980s.

 

I always liked that the chair from "Dagger of the Mind" reappears in "Whom Gods Destroy", given that there are certain similarities between both facilities. Judging by a certain logo reappearing they might even be being run by the same company. It's a nice little nod to the earlier episode... the fact that it saved money as well was of course a bonus.