Why didn't anyone smoke on "TOS?"

They only smoked when they were drinking.

 

But Desilu/Paramount more than made up for it in Mission: Impossible, Trek's sister show. When I binge-watched that a few years ago, I was struck by how ubiquitous the smoking was, and how much it was taken for granted as a basic element of personal interaction. For instance, if a woman in a bar or party wanted to invite a man to talk to her, she just had to hold an unlit cigarette in her hand and look at him, and he was expected to come over and light it for her. And there were the times that people passed secret notes to each other in matchbooks.

 

I remember the surprise my kids expressed when they saw pregnant women smoking and drinking on those old tv shows.

 

Except you couldn't use the word "pregnant" on TV back then -- it's "expecting" or "in a family way," please.

 

Wasn't "with child" also used. Which sounds even funnier when Lursa and Betour use that phrase years later in "Firstborn" which was in 1994. I don't think people in 1994 would really be upset with the word, pregnant.

Jason

 

It wasn't a joint, it was a cigar.

 

Oh, there were a ton of euphemisms. Having a bun in the oven, in a delicate condition, etc.

 

Martia tells Kirk that the smoke "will keep him warm." This seems (to me) to imply some sort of stimulant, perhaps not ganja, but something.

However, I agree that nixing the smoking was a good thing in TOS; just another example of its awesomeness.

 

I think you're reading too much into it. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

 

^^ yeah... could be.

 

Did anyone of the Land of the Giants regular cast smoke? Or The Time Tunnel? It migh've just been a "in the future people don't smoke" thing.

 

Those were also children's shows. Remember, Star Trek was unprecedented for the day in being a non-anthology science fiction show aimed at adult viewers. Every Irwin Allen show was made with younger viewers in mind.

That said, I think we did see some giants smoking in LOTG; at least, I recall seeing scenes of the castaways walking among giant-sized litter including cigarette butts. I think there was at least some occasional pipe-smoking among historical figures in The Time Tunnel.

 

Interesting

 

On what are you basing the assertion that every show Irwin allen did was a "children's show"?

 

Huh? It's common knowledge. Like I said, part of the reason Star Trek was so exceptional was that it was the first non-anthology SF show aimed specifically at adults instead of at children or a family audience. That's long been known as one of Roddenberry's primary motives for making the show -- to do science fiction seriously on TV for a change, to bring TV the kind of intelligent SF that he read in magazines but that had never really been seen onscreen outside of The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. Yet many critics still misunderstood ST and dismissed it as a kids' show, because the conventional wisdom in that era was that all science fiction was for kids. It wasn't like today when SF/fantasy is seen as mainstream and respectable. Good grief, when I was growing up, that would've seemed like an impossible dream. Back then, the genre wasn't taken seriously because it was almost always aimed at young viewers. The earliest SFTV shows in the '50s had been things like Captain Video, Adventures of Superman, Rocky Jones: Space Ranger, and Tom Corbett: Space Cadet, all blatantly made for children. So that perception of the genre dominated TV culture for decades, including the decades in which I grew up, the '70s and '80s. Even after Star Trek, the majority of SFTV was lowbrow schlock aimed mainly at younger viewers. It wasn't until the mid- to late '80s that that started to change, with shows like the Twilight Zone revival, Max Headroom, Starman, and eventually ST:TNG and Quantum Leap. I mean, heck, that belief was so pervasive that some people still cling to it today. A couple of years ago, I was at an authors' reception, and when an older gentleman learned that I wrote Star Trek tie-ins, he assumed I meant that I wrote children's books.

Besides, have you seen Irwin Allen's shows? Two of the four shows had children as regular characters. As a rule, they tended toward action, spectacle, simplistic plotting, and way-out, fanciful concepts rather than deep, thoughtful drama, although there were occasional episodes that tended somewhat toward the latter. Compare them to the adult dramas of the era and it's clear they're not written on the same level.

 

I completely agree that smoking has a way of aging film and tv productions at this point. Especially smoking indoors. Anytime I'm watching something and I see someone smoking indoors, I immediately know this story does not take place in the modern day.

 

The most cringey aspect of smoking in old movies is doctors smoking like the scene in The Day the Earth Stood Still where they are mystified by Klaatu's long lifespan while smoking cigs. That's probably the most dated aspect of an otherwise timeless film.



The other is Taylor smoking a cigar in the volatile capsule-like environment of the Icarus in Planet of the Apes. POTA is in so many ways sitting right on the line between a pulpy approach and something more plausible and grounded ala 2001.

 

There was a trailer for a Doctor Who episode in the sixties where Patrick Troughton spoke to us the viewers (kids too) of the dangers of smoking. Strange considering that his earlier self played by William Hartnell was seen to be smoking a pipe in the very second episode of the series!
JB

 

Kind of fitting, really, since it was Hartnell's heavy smoking and drinking that made him such a frail, decrepit wreck in his mid-50s, the same age at which Peter Capaldi is running and jumping around like a teenager these days.

 

True, but I think he suffered from multiple sclerosis as well!
JB