Having spent the last four years of my life doing rewatches of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, I am now turning my attention back to the show that started it all back in 1966: Star Trek. The original, as it were.
“But wasn’t there already one of those?” I hear you cry. And yes, Eugene Myers and Torie Atkinson did an excellent rewatch of the first two seasons, followed by my good buddies Dayton Ward and David Mack doing the third season (as well as “The Cage”). But that was five years ago now (yes, really) and that’s an eternity in Internet time.
Plus I’ll be putting my own stamp on the rewatch, doing the same categorical rewatch that I did for TNG and DS9 (see below for specifics), including the in-depth “Trivial Matters” section, details on guest stars, character breakdowns, and all that fun stuff. In addition, I’ll be reviewing the episodes in production order, which I think is a better way to watch the series. Ninety percent of the time it doesn’t make a difference, but it’s worth it for that other 10% (particularly at the very beginning of the show; I mean c’mon, on what planet does it make sense to watch “Where No Man Has Gone Before” third?).
Best of all, though, is that I’ll be reviewing all the televised adventures of Kirk, Spock, and the gang: not just “The Cage” and the 79 live-action episodes that aired from 1966-1969, but also the 22 episodes of the animated Star Trek that aired from 1973-1974. This rewatch will run once a week every Tuesday, so like the others, this should take about two years.
Herewith, the categories (some of which will be familiar):
Captain’s log. The summary of the episode’s plot.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Any technobabble that shows up in the story.
Fascinating. Spock’s part in the story.
I’m a doctor, not an escalator. McCoy’s part in the story.
Ahead warp one, aye. Sulu’s part in the story.
It’s a Russian invention. Chekov’s part in the story.
Hailing frequencies open. Uhura’s part in the story.
I cannot change the laws of physics! Scotty’s part in the story.
Go put on a red shirt. Enumerating the poor unfortunates who are introduced just long enough to be horribly horribly killed off, most of whom are dudes wearing red shirts.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. As ever, the lusts and loves of the folks in Star Trek.
Channel open: An entertaining quote from the episode.
Welcome aboard. The episode’s guest stars.
Trivial matters. Stuff and nonsense relating to the episode. As you may have noticed in the other two rewatches, this section gets specatcularly geeky…
To boldly go. My review of the episode.
Warp factor rating: A 1-10 rating of the episode. It’s the least important part of the rewatch, but it doesn’t stop people from arguing about it. (And yes, I’m sticking with 1-10 because I want this to be compatible with my prior two rewatches.)
The Star Trek The Original Series Rewatch will boldly go with “The Cage” on Tuesday the 3rd of March 2015.
Keith R.A. DeCandido was born during the original series’ third season, but watched it religiously in reruns on Channel 11 in New York City as a child.
Hey – First Comment!
I’m looking forward to this Keith. You were halfway through S7 of DS9 when I found your reviews, so it will be nice to pick one up from Square one.
Quick question – Is The Cage available on streaming services (Netflix/Amazon)? I know some services leave it off since it was the unaired pilot.
Never mind, it looks like Amazon has it, so I’d assume Netflix does too.
I’m actually excited for this one because it’s the only series I haven’t watched through. I became a Trekkie around the time TNG ended/VOY premiered, and it was hard to keep up with them through high school and college. I mostly watched ENT on first run, and caught the ones I missed later. Over the last few years, independent of TOR, I’ve series watched DS9, VOY, and TNG, even though I’d seen large portions of those the first time through/in reruns. TOS has always beaten me down when I try to watch it, but I’ve started in the last couple weeks with intent of plowing through this time. I look forward to following along with you.
Whaaaaaaat!
Confession: I’ve only see like…five episodes of the original series. (Space Seed, City on the Edge of Forever, Trouble with Tribbles and…probably a few others that came on the Time Travel collective that I can’t remember by name. I know I did see the one with the man eating salt vampire…).
I’ve always felt that perhaps it was something to be rectified but figured I already missed the old re-watch. Maybe this one is short enough that I could swing it ;)
@jimp: Just checked–“The Cage” is definitely available on Netflix, along with the rest of the series :)
@BMcGovern
Thanks for clarifying! We actually got rid of Netflix when we invested in Amazon Prime, so it doesn’t directly affect me, but it’s good to know.
I may have to take the black before this rewatch starts!
My first Trek. I caught it in syndication on Channel 20 here in DC in the mid-70’s when I was a preteen. For a while it was the only SF of any reasonable quality on TV and I’ve seen each episode dozens of times. Even “Spocks Brain”. It was what got me into SF.
I suspect “City on the Edge of Forever” will be a Warp Factor 10, and “Spocks Brain” a 1.
Cool. I missed the TOS Rewatches the first time around. And yes, production order is absolutely the right way to go. I’ll never forgive whoever put those DVD box sets together and decided to go with airdate order, when production order had been the preferred standard for the syndication package, previous home video releases, and every reference source for decades beforehand. Suddenly going back to the arbitrary airdate order just created new confusion and provided absolutely zero benefits.
Also glad to see that TAS is being included. As far as I’m concerned, it’s basically the fourth and fifth seasons of the original show, a direct continuation rather than a sequel or spinoff. (But what order will you be using for TAS? There are at least three ways to order them: Production order, broadcast order, and Alan Dean Foster’s Star Trek Logs order, which actually adds some continuity ties between episodes.)
@6: There are much worse episodes than “Spock’s Brain,” like “The Alternative Factor” or “And the Children Shall Lead.” “Spock’s Brain” is silly, but it’s actually a lot of fun and has great production values. But we’ll get to that in due time.
Yay! Looking forward to it – I’ve only seen a couple of episodes on the OST so this will finally get me to see them.
I remember devouring Foster’s “Logs” . They were why I read his later work. Well, some of it. “Spellsinger” got old, fast.
And the Ballantine books. “Spock Must Die!”
I was born in ’66, so I missed the original series in first run but I was just in time for TAS–my parents wouldn’t let me watch it! Their justification was the production values were so low that it would damage my brain or something.
I read ADF’s Logs in cheap paperback right around the same era, though, and enjoyed the stories. (Then to find out later he recycled stuff from his Known Space series for some of them…hah)
Christopher: For consistency’s sake, I’ll probably go with production order for TAS, too.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I’m really looking forward to this. I’ve watched a couple of individual episodes here and there lately, but I haven’t done a rewatch since I got the DVD set some 10 years ago. I got the animated series on DVD a year or so ago and I haven’t even opened it (?!), so it’ll be good to sit down with that one as well. Woo hoo!
This is great news!
I hope you don’t forget to mention in one of the reviews the part about Uhura’s talk with the reverend Martin Luther King, when he convinced her to continue working on the show after her first season (she wanted to go back to Broadway or theater, if I recall correctly).
Late night repeats of TOS and TNG coincided with a period of insomnia about a decade ago for me, and led me to revise my opinion on what was the best ‘Trek; once you pass the pain barrier of the bad rubber suit effects TOS seemed fresher, braver and more colorful than TNG, which during it’s orignal run had seemed so modern, and now seemed if anything more dated than TOS. Maybe it was just the lack of sleep.
I’m really looking forward to this.
@14: When you consider the cultural context in which TOS aired vs the one in which TNG aired, TOS was absolutely leaps and bounds ahead of TNG in the “fresher, braver” sense. TNG may be less cheesy in the special effects department, but the storylines were never as bold as TOS’s.
@10, Known Space is Larry Niven, not Foster. But Niven did recycle “The Slaver Weapon” into a TAS script.
Cool!
Are you doing the Remastered versions, the originals or both? Perhaps a category to note the changes?
Really glad you’re doing this.
— Michael A. Burstein
I’m looking forward to this rewatch, too, Keith – and, like JimP above, am glad to be able to start with you from the beginning (which is, so I’m told, a very good place to start).
I was deprived when I was growing up — TOS wasn’t airing in syndication in Austin, MN, so I only got to see scattered episodes when I was visiting my grandparents in California.
The public library had a good selection of the Star Trek Log books, though, which I devoured repeatedly (and I still love the cover paintings). As I recall, James Blish did the original volumes based on the live-action series and Alan Dean Foster did the adaptations of the animated series? (Foster’s adaptation of BEM in particular was memorable — IIRC, the actual episode took up maybe a third of the book, and then he took the story off in an entirely different, fairly epic, direction.)
What about Voyager? Are we just skipping all of those?
Voyager may get the rewatch treatment at some point. It may not. It won’t be by me (neither will Enterprise) as I prefer to do rewatches of shows I actually, y’know, like. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I’d kind of like to see a BSG Rewatch, except that after “Exodus” it goes off the rails and I want to start smacking Moore.
@10: It’s odd that your parents would’ve had a problem with TAS’s production values in first run. Sure, they look crude by today’s standards, but for the time, they were about as good as you could get in Saturday-morning TV animation. TAS looked great compared to the sloppy animation Hanna-Barbera and DePatie-Freleng were putting out at the same time. And it was one of Filmation’s highest-budgeted shows, although a lot of that went to the actors.
So if they didn’t think TAS’s production values were worth watching, they must’ve barred you from watching any Saturday morning cartoons, except maybe the reruns of theatrical Warner Bros. or MGM cartoons.
@13: There are inconsistencies in Nichols’s account about Dr. King. She’s told the story in different ways over the years, and I don’t think she started telling it until a couple of decades after the fact.
@20: Foster’s first six volumes contained three episode adaptations each (with some expansion and linking material in each case), but in order to prolong the series, the remaining four episodes were adapted in one volume each, with Foster giving each story an original sequel adventure to pad it to novel length. This was done with “The Counter-Clock Incident” in Log Seven, “The Eye of the Beholder” in Eight, “BEM” in Nine, and “The Slaver Weapon” in Ten. “Slaver” was the most extreme case, since Foster adds three different original plots: one setting up the events of the episode, one taking place back on the ship during the events of the episode, and one taking place after the episode. Only 3 of the book’s 16 chapters adapt the episode itself.
@24 — So the adaptation of The Slaver Weapon was Foster creating an expanded version of an episode that Niven had written based on an original (non-Trek) story that he (Niven) had previously written for his Known Space series — that’s the sort of thing that can cause a reality dysfunction if you’re not careful …
And that’s good to know about the last few animated Log volumes — I don’t recall encountering any of the others; I think the public library had a pretty healthy selection of TOS Logs, but just a smattering of TAS Logs.
Awesome! I’m very excited to follow along. I’m fairly new to the website so ive been catching up on all the great re-reads and re-watches. All fantastic and fun to read but I’m excited to be able to start one from the beginning and join the ride as its happening! Looking forward to the insightful posts and opinions.
I started re-watching TOS myself recently after being so disappointed with the most recent Abrams reboot movie and I have been pleasantly (and occasionally unpleasantly) surprised at what I’ve re-discovered. Can’t wait to dive in again!
Oh no, not the Animated Series, all those years of therapy to forget it and suddenly it is all back….
In seriousness though, thank you for doing this. I share a pang that it isn’t ENT, VOY, or SG1, but TOS in a more uptodate rewatch style is brilliant. I look forward to having many more fun arguments over these and to reading your insights.
@3 – You’re going to try this, but you’re too busy to watch Voyager? I don’t blame you.
I showed up sometime in the middle of the previous TOS rewatch and do prefer Keith’s more structured analysis. I what I’m saying is that all is forgiven and I’m happy about this. Although, I’d be happier with a twice a week schedule. Keeping up would have meant less time to finish out VGR and watch ENT. Still, it will be nice to have my Friday afternoons back and a full week to discuss the episode before we move along.
@28: I love that you spend your Friday afternoons here. I do the same thing. Best way to finish out the work week! :D
This will be Awsome. I missed the re-watch of TOS the first time. It also gives me a reason to watch along because I havn’t seen the animated series in decades and only once. I also read the Foster’s logs but my omnibus editions are home with Mom so, I guess I’ll have something to read next xmas.
Whoa. Was not expecting a TOS rewatch, but am glad to see it. Especially if it includes the much-neglected animated series as well.
I am starting my Chemo on March 3rd so a rewatch of my favorite series is very welcome as a distraction. I’ve never been able to catch any of these rewatch events at the beginning before so. Timely!
Yay I’m actually here for the beginning of a rewatch! (I only found Tor.com because some Trek writer kept posting DS9 rewatches.)
I was born way to late for TOS, but saw Undiscovered Country in the theater and TOS was something to bond with my father over, but didn’t really get into it till the last few seasons of TNG.
Hm, Voyager isn’t really that bad, but if krad doefinitively doesn’t want to do it, maybe Chris Bennett could tackle it in near future. It’s about time he does a review column of its own.
@20,
So if they didn’t think TAS’s production values were worth watching, they must’ve barred you from watching any Saturday morning cartoons, except maybe the reruns of theatrical Warner Bros. or MGM cartoons.
That’s probably true, I have very little memory of any 70’s Saturday morning TV, except for classic Warner Bros and Pink Panther. I remember much better the ’80s (when I was too old to be told off) or the ’90s (when I had my own child).
Looking forward to your analysis on this Keith! I own the Blu ray collection so it will be easy to keep up and look great on my TV!
@34: Per Keith’s Twitter, Tor.com won’t be doing two Star Trek rewatches at the same time, so the “near future” wouldn’t be any sooner than 2017 for a Voyager reatch.
Our local station has just started airing TOS on Thursday nights… so I’ll actually be watching along with this one, but about 5 weeks ahead. Which will help adjust for the production order/air-date order discrepancy.
Interesting. I’ll be sure to check it out, every now and then. The Original Series never held my attention the same way the spinoffs have, though. I felt the movies were vastly superior, at least in this case. There are only a handful of TOS episodes I’d put in the same league alongside the best TNG, DS9 and Enterprise could offer. And I’ve seen quite a few original episodes recently (not to mention the hilarious Gorn fight), so it won’t feel like a trip back to the past.
Maybe it’s because it was still finding its own identity, but I never felt consistency when it came to the original show. At times, it seemed determined to do morality plays, others it veered too much into comic adventure territory. Sometimes it excelled on both fronts, but it didn’t feel cohesive at all.
And I always had a problem with half the regular cast being left in the field as the writers focused on the main trio. 79 episodes and not one of them had a strong focus on Uhura. Not ensemble enough, but I’ll grant you this: being too ensemble-oriented can sometimes reveal shortcomings on a cast, the way we saw on Voyager’s Harry Kim.
Still, I’m looking forward to rewatches of episodes like Balance of Terror and City on the Edge of Forever. I’ll be sure to follow the Spock’s Brain rewatch as well. I’m assuming this will be airdate-oriented, although there’s the matter of the two pilots, neither of which were the first aired episode…
…And I’ve just noticed you brought up The Cage as the first one to be analyzed. Never mind…
@28 – 3 seasons is a lot less of a commitment than 7 seasons (especially if he is only going one episode a week) ;) Plus, TOS is one of those things I’ve always wanted to fill the gap on, whereas I’ve heard enough mixed reactions about VOY that I don’t know if I’m willing to do the 7 season investment.
Yay! Looking forward to it…
@39: Ensemble writing is something that wasn’t really standard in the ’60s. TOS was meant to be a star vehicle for William Shatner, with everyone else just there to back him up. In the first season, only Shatner and Nimoy were regulars and everyone else was recurring (with Grace Lee Whitney expected to be the third lead, followed by DeForest Kelley, though it didn’t work out that way for long). Nimoy proved to be the breakout star, and Kelley proved popular enough to get added to the main cast in season 2, but they were the only three regulars, the only ones under contract to appear in every episode. All the others were semi-regulars, signed for only a certain percentage of episodes. The perception of a 7-member ensemble of regulars is an artifact of the movie era.
@41
Voyager’s a long haul. While I enjoyed the long arc storylines, the quality of the episodes was extremely inconsistent.
@39
TOS wasn’t so much finding its own identity, as it was written for a different audience. Continuity was less of a concern than it is now. In many ways, TOS feels like an anthology series set in a shared universe.
Looking forward to your comments and episode ratings. I did a rewatch a couple of years ago based on production dates – it was my first time watching the episodes in that order and it seemed to me there was a drop off in quality around the mid point of season one – perhaps Roddenberry had begun to step away at that point. With the second season, as the show became the adventures of Kirk, Spock and McCoy, I found the episodes much less interesting and never finished my re-watch.
@44: The anthology analogy is exactly right. At the time, in contrast to today, anthologies with zero continuity were seen as the classiest shows, while serialization was the stuff of soap operas and kids’ adventure serials. Also, without home video or much in the way of reruns, there was no guarantee you’d get to see every episode of a series, so each installment had to stand entirely on its own as a satisfying experience and have no effect on any other episode. So even shows with continuing casts and sets aspired to be as anthology-like as possible — sometimes by having the characters travel and get involved with different people’s stories every week, as in ST or The Fugitive, or sometimes by having the leads adopt new roles every week, as in Mission: Impossible.
@45: Roddenberry didn’t step away until the third season.
Yes, Roddenberry had stepped away completely by the third season but if I remember correctly he turned over the producers reigns during the first season and stepped up to executive producer leaving day to day production in other hands. Another reason for a drop off in quality may have been due to budget cuts by NBC. The earliest episodes were of a quality that was head and shoulders above other TV adventure series of the time but the longer it was on the more formulaic it became.
The early-70s animated series was my first Star Trek, and shaped my ideas of what the show was about for a long time.
In hindsight, it actually wasn’t a bad introduction. The animation was terrible, and the voice acting usually was too, because Filmation just had the actors read all their lines off a clipboard without any context or ability to play off each other. But the show’s artwork was often surprisingly imaginative, and the writing was real Star Trek, written by many of the same writers as the original live-action series, and limited only by the short running time of the episodes. I’d put Dorothy Fontana’s “Yesteryear” up against any of the original run; it’s one of the best Star Trek episodes, period.
@46 As I understand it, in the 1960s TV networks could and did decide what order to air prime time series episodes, so that made it difficult for show producers to develop seasonal story-arcs beyond the occasional, rare, two-parter. Also, most if not all prime-time series were only renewed one season at a time, so it was further difficult to develop a long-term arc for the series as a whole. Finally, syndication sales were even more important then, so it was necessary to make it easy for local stations to re-run the episodes in any order or to skip episodes if they so desired.
@48: The limitations on acting were partly a function of the absurdly tight production schedule that NBC demanded, forcing Filmation to mail scripts to the actors wherever they were, whereupon they’d go to the nearest recording studio to do them and then literally mail in their performances. So they were reading without direction to guide their performances. Also, the big three had little to no experience with voiceover acting. It’s a hard thing for an on-camera actor to adjust to acting with their voice alone. The actors with more voice-acting experience — Doohan, Nichols, and Takei — tended to do a better job.
@49: Yes, those were also factors. But an overlooked part of it is that the classiest, most respected shows of the early days of TV were anthologies. So the mentality was different. Today, we think of serial storytelling as more sophisticated and intelligent, an intrinsically superior form to episodic writing; but in the ’50s and ’60s, it was seen the other way around — serialization was the stuff of cheesy soap operas, and intelligent dramas were complete, satisfying mini-plays in their own right. It’s more a change in fashion than anything else.
I admit I totally don’t get the point about series continuity. Currently serialization is the rage as if it’s the newest and most brillant idea ever. It has its advantages, but you also import all the problems daily soaps have … or serialized novels of the 19th century … or in fact for that matter even ancient myths. Characters get burdened with absurdly elaborate backstories while the plots get overly complicated and usually there are some weaker elements in the fabric which threaten to bring down the whole.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with 45 minute short films with a recurrent frame. If an episode sucks, next week there’s a chance you get a masterpiece.
Which is why people should really forget what Voyager is not (a properly serialized tale in the currently popular style) but take it for what it is and that’s an anthology series like TOS and TNG.
As for sheer quality, I don’t think any Trek series has matched the first season of TOS. It’s amazing a) to which degree the episodes have a constant high quality level with very few dropouts and b) how effortlessly all the elements more or less imediately fell into place compared with the stuttering beginnings of TNG or DS9.
Yes! What’s funny is I was just trying to read through that original rewatch of TOS, but even going back to just 2009, its quite dated. And I always, always watch the episodes in production order. How NBC chose to air them in the 60s was insane to me; even if it doesnt affect the overall plot of the series, I never could watch them how NBC aired them. So thanks krad; that was actually one other reason I couldn’t finish reading that first rewatch.
I was hoping you’d get around to doing a TOS rewatch, to put your personal stamp on the series.
My introduction to TOS was a shock. At age 16, I came back to the US in the summer of 1968, after five years with no TV at all. As my family made its way across the country visiting relatives, I saw a few reruns of season 3.
I was galvanized. I was going to hitchhike to Hollywood and help them make that show. If I could find a way to sleep and eat, I wouldn’t need payment. I was in love.
Of course, these were the very last episodes aired. That fall I went to school in southern California, but was, tragically, too late to be a Star Trek roadie.
I’m so onboard for this. Something fun to read every Tuesday until spring of 2017? I want to boldly go to there!
Sweet. I have but one criticism:
Shouldn’t it be “Russian inWention”?
@55: Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. It’s Pocket Books’ policy these days not to use phonetic spelling to represent Chekov’s accent, but this isn’t a Pocket novel.
@39: Christopher, is the 7-member ensemble strictly an artifact of the movie era? I know there’s a third season promotional still of the Enterprise seven (well, plus Chapel, which maybe proves your point – perhaps I’m being selective in how I interpret it). Still, there’s no denying that the blonde communications officer and the helmsmen/navigators of the week never got the character beats Uhura, Sulu and Chekov did, even if such moments were few and far between. And Nicholls, Takei and Koenig all got credits at the end even if not in a given episode, right? You’re not the first fan I’ve heard say “you don’t need all seven to have a Star Trek [meaning TOS] story,” but I think there’s a good reason those minor characters became major in the movies.
@48: Maybe this will be addressed when we hit TAS, but why was Koenig axed from the animated lineup? Was it a question of budget, and so the “low man on the totem pole” got the axe? Or was it just he had no voice acting experience? (At least he still got to write a script, as I recall – “Infinite Vulcan,” right?)
@32: Sher, good luck with the chemo. To paraphrase Sulu’s “blessing” of Yeoman Rand (in “The Enemy Within,” production order #5!), may the Great Bird of the Galaxy roost on you! (In non-messy ways, of course.)
I think anyone who is to have anything to do with making Star Trek productions or books or whatever should watch Star Trek (1966). The series is the giant upon whose shoulders stand all subsequent Trek. Everything else is a (sometimes good) copy, or copy of a copy, or worse.
For instance- Next Generation’s Away Teams were the natural result of people saying “why do we keep putting the ship’s top officers at risk?”
Torie and E.C. did continue their rewatch through S3 and TNG, but they have slowed down greatly since starting TNG.
I seem to recall David Gerrold mentioning the Nichols- MLK story in The World of Star Trek, published 1973.
wiredog @9- “Spock Must Die”, that was the only decent non-TV Trek until the movie!
@57: As the credits make clear, the only lead actors in TOS and TAS were Shatner, Nimoy, and Kelley. The others were semi-regulars who were in a smaller number of episodes — in TOS, 60-odd for Nichols and Doohan, 50-odd for Takei, and 40-odd for Koenig. In the early first season, in fact, Grace Lee Whitney (Rand) was billed equally to Kelley and above the others. But even she was in only 7-8 of the first 13 episodes. And in TAS, no character except Spock was in all 22 episodes, and only Kirk was in 21. I think McCoy was in 20, Uhura in 16, etc.
And no, none of them got credited in episodes where they didn’t appear. I’ve heard that belief expressed twice in the past week or so, and I have no idea where it comes from.
So it was only in the movie era that all seven actors were a constant presence — and even there, the big three got all the focus and the other four were lucky to get one big scene apiece. It was never the same kind of equal-ensemble situation as in TNG, DS9, and VGR (and theoretically ENT, though it didn’t quite work out that way).
As for Koenig on TAS, the original plan was to leave out Nichols, Takei, and Koenig, and have Doohan and Barrett double up on their characters. Filmation shows at the time tended to have small casts, so doubling up was necessary. (Similarly, on Filmation’s The New Adventures of Gilligan, they only hired the four male leads and Natalie Schaefer, with voice artist Jane Webb playing both Ginger and Mary Ann.) But Leonard Nimoy insisted on including Nichols and Takei, pointing out that it would be inappropriate to exclude the only two nonwhite cast members. Filmation was always a progressive, inclusive company, so I’m sure they were mortified when they realized that’s what their financially-based decision would’ve led to. So they hastened to hire those two, but they just didn’t have the budget to bring in Koenig as well.
@59 While on the one hand it was unfortunate that they couldn’t bring Walter Koenig onto TAS, on the other (and other other) hands, at least we got M’Ress and Arex, neither of whom would’ve been possible in live-action. (Well, OK, M’Ress was probably feasible, but Arex not so much.)
@55/56: Over on Facebook, somebody said it should be a phonetic spelling for “I cannot change the laws of physics.” Keith politely declined, and I’m guessing the same applies to “inwention.” Personally, I’d only use it for “nuclear wessels,” because putting a “v” there just seems wrong. :)
I’m not sure 5 years is an enternity unless you simply have a poor grasp on things (which does appear to be an “internet thing”); it’s clear this sentiment would be in a great minority but I would really much prefer to see a rewatch of SG-1 or even something I’m far less familiar with (and for which there isn’t much analysis) – you can find reams (assuming it were put on paper) of analysis on all the Star Trek media, even on tie-in products from books to toys.
@9 and @58: There are also some quite good stories in the “New Voyages” anthologies edited by Marshak and Culbreath. I confess I haven’t read them in a while, but “Ni Var” (another duplicate Spock story) stands out in my memory; and, of course, the “New Voyages” webseries recently did a nice adaptation of “Mind-Sifter.”
@59: Christopher, thanks for setting me straight on the end credits situation. What is the TAS episode without Kirk? That surprises me (but I have never professed to be much of a student of TAS… truth be told, I’m not even sure I’ve seen all of them!)
I find phonetic spellings like “cannae” and “inwention” to be irritating and stupid. I don’t do them when I write fiction, and I’m not doing it here. You don’t like it, do your own rewatch. *pouts, sticks out tongue, takes toys, goes home*
In all seriousness, I really despise that sort of thing. The word is “invention,” dagnabbit.
And Bibliomike, Kirk didn’t appear in “The Slaver Weapon,” the Larry Niven-penned episode that he based on his Man-Kzin Wars stories, which only featured Spock, Sulu, and Uhura.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@64: Well, I’d quibble that Niven never really wrote “Man-Kzin Wars stories” himself; the Wars were something that happened between the stories he did write. That’s why, decades later, he agreed to do The Man-Kzin Wars as a shared-universe anthology series: since he never really wrote war stories himself, he let other writers depict the actual conflicts. (Although I think the MKW books have been declared non-canonical.)
“The Soft Weapon,” the basis for the TAS episode, was the second Kzinti story that Niven wrote, after “The Warriors” the previous year. “The Warriors” showed the first human-Kzinti contact, and “The Soft Weapon” jumped forward centuries to after the Kzinti had already been beaten in four wars and forced to abide by a disarmament treaty.
And the reason only three Trek characters on a shuttlecraft appeared in “The Slaver Weapon” is that it’s an incredibly faithful adaptation of the novella. Some portions are streamlined, and Spock, Sulu, and Uhura are substituted for Nessus the Puppeteer (later to star in the Ringworld series) and the married couple Jason and Anne Papandreou, but otherwise it’s exactly the same story, with the same Known Space backstory. The Trek elements are adjusted to fit the Known Space context, rather than the other way around — hence the absence of the Enterprise and the cherrypicked cast. I don’t even think of it as a Star Trek episode anymore; I think of it as a Known Space episode with three Trek characters acting out its lead roles.
Apropos for this rewatch – RIP Leonard Nimoy! You will be terribly missed.
@66: Yeah, I just found out. :(
@krad Glad you’re doing this rewatch. I knew about your rewatches of TNG and DS9, and had read some of the latter; but I’ve just started reading the TNG ones from the start, in order, and will continue onto DS9. TOS, however, I will read as you publish them, since they’re fresh rewatches.
On that topic, my son and I have been making our way through ST (as his first run, not mine) for the past years (he’s 10 now). We watched all of TOS, all the TOS movies; and we’re now halfway through TNG season 6; and just started DS9. TNG and DS9 we’re watching in air order (and will do the same for VOY when it starts while DS9 still runs); but TOS we watched in production order.
As for original TOS watching experiences, as others have shared here, mine has its own peculiarity. My older brother (he’s got over 15 years on me) made me a fan when I was like 9 or 10 with the TOS movies on VHS; but there was no cable in Uruguay, my country, at the moment (1989-1990), so I had no way to watch TOS episodes. And I had no idea that TNG existed at all, and wouldn’t until ’92…
What my brother did have, from the time we’d lived in the US, were almost all of the James Blish short story adaptation of the TOS episodes. Then I became a TNG fan when it started airing on TV down here; but I had “seen” almost all of TOS in the form of those Blish adaptations, which were actually slightly different from the actual produced episodes, sometimes because Blish worked from scripts before the actual episodes were filmed, sometimes because stuff just worked better a different way in prose; and because he had space to expand on certain story elements.
Cable had come to my country in the mid to late 90s; but it wasn’t until I got married in 2002 and had a different provider than my parents that I had a channel that had all Star Trek, and finally watched a lot of the TOS episodes for real (in the meantime, I had seen some of them on VHS).
So, it wasn’t until I watched TOS from start to finish with my son, that I actually watched all of it and in order… but I still had very vivid memories of the episodes I had only read stories of.
I love watching Trek with my son, because things like this happen:
http://nojetpack.thecomicstrip.org/comics/30
@66: Indeed. I want to watch some original cast in the wake of his passing, but I don’t want to get out of step with the upcoming rewatch. I think Star Trek IV and “Unification I & II” will be my weekend viewing…
@68: It wasn’t that long ago that my kid and I saw Unification (maybe a month and a half), and the look on his face when he saw Spock show up was beautiful. Spock is one of his favorite characters, and I dread having to tell him tonight (if he hasn’t already found out by himself on the internet) of Nimoy’s passing.
@69: Well, keep in mind: “He’s not really dead so long as we remember him.”
Although I do find myself wishing someone could scrounge up a working Genesis torpedo…
You are right, Christopher, he’s not really dead as long as we remember him. Un/fortunately (depending on how you look at it), my son, with his short 10 years of life, has had too many family losses in the past three years, so he’s a bit adept at “remembering”.
@70
You’re not the only one, CLB.
Such a loss.
Being able to view Nimoy’s loss from our place as fans, and not as a member of his family, I think we can all agree that while it was a big loss, he did live a long and prosperous life, and left a big legacy… both publicly and I assume privately (two children, a stepchild, six grandchildren), one great grandson).
Even from a family perspective, even if it hurts… my mother passed away two years ago and while she lived a few years less than Nimoy, she was a very intelligent woman, had a 50-year plus marriage, raised six children, who in turn had seven kids, and there’s one great grandchild (who she got to know)… yes, it hurts, but she lived a full life, and she left a legacy in her descendants, and she and and my father gave me a great example of a loving, lasting marriage.
Even one of my sisters, who passed away at only 48, three months ago, left a legacy in her two girls, her grandson, and in her work caring for stray animals.
Sorry, I kinda got carried away.
Well huh. Having tried twice to actually watch through TOS and burned out both times, this is probably the best thing that could happen for my overall knowledge of Trek.
@64: Especially since “inwention” is the exact opposite of a real Russian accent. Haha, those looney Cold War-era Americans and their cluelessness …
RIP, Nimoy.
No disrespect intended to 74, but I seriously can’t understand people being Star Trek fans, yet not being able to watch TOS without giving up. I can understand it not being their favorite show of all Trek, and I can understand people born after 198o or 1990 not being able to handle the cheese (not just the FX, but the acting and narrative styles)… but a self-profesed Star Trek fan? I can’t get it, sorry.
(And if you are not a self-professed fan of Trek, 74, sorry for assuming… but I have seen this behaviour from Trek fans.)
Imagine my pleasure when my son, born in 2004, and thoroughly used to watching modern TV when he started watching TNG at 6 or 7, never once complained about it being dated.
@75: Infinite diversity in infinite combinations, man. The great thing about Star Trek is that it comes in many different flavors, so people who don’t like one part of it can still enjoy another part. We can have common ground without having to think the same way or like all of the same things.
@67 Love that comic. I’m watching TNG with my 9 year old and got that exact reaction.
@64 and @65: Ah, thanks. Yep, one I’ve never seen. Glad there wasn’t some Trek trivia championship on the line…! It sent me to Memory Beta to see what any future Trek projects or products that wanted to use the Kzinti had done to get around what I’m sure would be copyright headaches.
Especially looking forward to the rewatch now in light of Mr. Nimoy’s death. The only TOS character present from the very beginning (excepting, of course, the Enterprise herself!)…
@78: No subsequent Trek project has ever used the Kzinti. Enterprise‘s producers were thinking about doing it if they’d gotten a fifth season, though ENT’s own continuity pretty much invalidated “The Slaver Weapon”‘s assertions about Earth-Kzinti history. Beyond that, there were one or two books that tried to use the Kzinti but were required to change them to original felinoid aliens.
Well, the 1980 Star Trek Maps did include the Kzinti Patriarchy on the maps (along with the Ringworld and other science-fiction Easter eggs); but its 2002 successor Star Trek Star Charts only references “the Patriarchy” and says nothing more about it.
@80 Weren’t the Kzinti also featured in Star Fleet Battles? Which is, admittedly, pretty far removed from canonicity …
@80: Oh, yeah, I gather that game did use them. Although they had to make some tweaks to skirt the copyright issues. As someone explained it to me on the TrekBBS once:
So not only did they change them a lot, they eventually dropped the name altogether.
Also, I forgot that there was a second use of the Kzinti in Trek by Niven himself: “The Wristwatch Plantation,” a 1982 story arc in the LA Times syndicated ST newspaper comic strip, written by Niven and Sharman DiVono and illustrated by Ron Harris. In addition to the Kzinti, it also featured a species from Niven’s Draco’s Tavern universe and mentioned a character from his novel The Mote in God’s Eye, set in yet another universe.
@75: Sorry, I can’t help it. I was born after 1980, if that makes you feel better.
But because I am a Trek fan, I want to like TOS, and hopefully with the help of the Rewatch I can cherry-pick the best parts to see and learn about effectively.
I always thought the cat-like species in Star Trek IV was a Kzinti – does anyone know what it was, then?
Edit: Did the legwork myself. Darned if it wasn’t a Caitian, another TAS cat species. According to Larry Niven, Caitians and Kzintis are related, too.
@83: I never thought the ST IV felinoids were Kzinti, since they don’t have “batwing” ears and aren’t as big and tigerlike as Kzinti. But I never assumed they were Caitians either, not until I read that they were intended to be, since they don’t have manes. I tend to assume these days that Caitians are the inverse of lions, in that only the females have manes. I think there may have been some novel reference to a male Caitian with a mane, though.
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@84: There have been so many cat-like races, it could have been anything, really – there’s the Eeiauoans and Sivaoans from Uhura’s Song, and others. Perhaps they just made the guy cat-like and then retroactively decided he was Caitian. As for them not being Kzintis, I took that as an animation-to-live translation, but I see your point.
@87: You never know, they could decide to have Enterprise after TOS… :D
BTW,
wouldn’t it be a nice idea to review Raumpatrouille Orion at the same time as TOS? It’s the German Star Trek counterpart and was broadcast the same year, but consists only of seven episodes which are on Youtube with English subtitles. Here’s a short introductory esssay http://www.televisionheaven.co.uk/raumpatrouille.htm
@84: I’m pretty sure I’ve read that the makeup artists intended them to be Caitians.
@76: Christopher, I’m the most IDIC loving guy you’ll find. :)
@77: Thanks! You’ll welcome to share it and like the FB page. :)
@81: Thanks for the data, I just had to hunt down Wristwatch Plantation, I’m a big Niven fan.
@82: Sure man, I’m not dissing you or anything.
@90: I’m 88, Christopher, you’re 84! ;) (I’ve always thought the numbers were a bit hard to follow, but other people seem to use them.)
@92: Yeah, I saw that you were responding to post 84, and that confused me. That happens to me a lot, but I usually remember to double-check before posting.
I think we have to start using the names and not the numbers…
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@85: “a ‘I’m the best actor in the world!’ section for the (numerous) times William Shatner overacts” — as I suspect this rewatch will make clear, these are not nearly so numerous as almost everyone supposes. ;) Especially in the first two seasons, Shatner shows he is quite capable of some very subtle, understated stuff.
@96: And of course Shatner was trained for the theater, where you have to play it big to reach the back rows. It was a common acting style in the time of TOS. It just looks hammy to us today because the relative intimacy of television has promoted a more subdued, understated acting style.
And yes, Shatner was very naturalistic in his younger days. I’ve long suspected that the change to a broader style had something to do with the tinnitus he developed after being too close to an on-set explosion in “The Apple” (I think it was). I imagine it’s hard to dial down your performance if you’re constantly competing with the ringing in your ears.
@Christopher: But Nimoy (may he RIP) also got tinnitus in the same accident (“Arena”, actually, I had to look it up), and he didn’t develop that kind of style after it. Of course, he wasn’t as intense on screen as Shatner before that, so it stands to reason that different actors deal with things differently.
Unless you’re watching Turnabout Intruder, an episode whose story is deliberately designed to ignite Shatner’s overacting skills, the notion that he indulges in dramatic pauses is really misplaced, especially in the first two seasons.
@99: Shatner’s dramatic pauses are nothing next to Scott Bakula’s.
And honestly, I never understood why people talk about Shatner’s pauses as if they were a bad thing. I always thought of them as naturalistic acting, making it seem like he was making up his lines as he went along, stopping to think before speaking and stumbling over words like real people do, rather than just spouting off memorized lines from a script. That gave it verisimilitude.
By the way, I’m convinced that Dwight Schultz (TNG’s Lt. Barclay) has based his acting style on Shatner’s, because they have just about exactly the same cadence, delivery, and performance quirks — though Schultz’s tends to be more exaggerated, along the lines of Shatner’s later work.
Shatner’s pauses are definitely over-made fun of in popular culture, it’s not that bad.
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@95 Yes, it’s not ST, but it’s interesting that literally within days in September 1966 in Germany und USA two spaceship centered SF series premiered which featured a united earth and a correspondingly international cast. I wonder to which degree this is due to the influence of Stanislaw Lem’s novel The Astronauts and the following GDR film adaptation Der schweigende Stern.
As for Shatner, the jokes about his acting are abominably stupid and I assume made by people who are either not familiar with the series and just saw some clips on Youtube or which blindly subscribe to the “less is more” acting school.
It’s exactly the same as the anthology versus soap opera plotting where people seem to think that it’s some kind of amazing progress to favor the latter. There’s no reason to prefer either and the same goes for acting. In fact I’d argue most people want to see actors act and not just be there. Just compare Jeffrey Hunter’s more monochrome approach to Shatner’s.
Anyway mostly Shatner’s achievement is very memorable considering he has essentially a conventionl hero’s role. He managed to bring a lot of different aspects to it which we have some time to discuss here.
@103: The jokes about Shatner’s acting are largely the creation of stand-up comics like Kevin Pollak and Rick Overton, who did exaggerated impressions of Shatner as part of their acts. As with Rich Little’s earlier impressions of people like Howard Cosell and Richard Nixon, they became so well-known that people started judging the genuine article based on the comedy caricatures. Other comics’ impressions of Shatner, like Maurice LaMarche’s version, for instance, are more impressions of Pollak than of Shatner himself.
Still, Shatner has made a career out of mocking himself these past few decades, so arguably he’s become the main promoter of his own caricature. It’s interesting to me how at least four actors from the Airplane! films — Leslie Nielsen, Peter Graves, Lloyd Bridges, and Shatner — were cast in those movies to lampoon their reputations as serious actors, but subsequently all but abandoned being serious actors and based the bulk of their careers on self-parody. Granted, Shatner did a number of serious roles after Airplane II, but aside from Kirk, the most prominent roles of his modern career have probably been the Big Giant Head, Denny Crane, and the Priceline Negotiator. (And T.J. Hooker, which was a self-parody even if it wasn’t trying to be.)
Will you likely be capping this rewatch off with the 6 original movies too?
Kylea1979: Ask me again in 80 weeks. :)
Folks: I’m writing this from inside a metal tube hurtling through the sky at great speeds. I promised to have “The Cage” on Tuesday having totally forgotten that my plane wouldn’t be touching down in NYC from my gig in Colorado Springs for GalaxyFest until 9pm Monday night. So consider it extremely likely that you won’t see the kickoff of the TOS Rewatch until Wednesday the 4th. My apologies.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Shatner overacting is almost as overstated as Kirk’s conquests. You’ll see.
@102: Now, now… I’m all for defending Shatner’s acting, but I am not going to stand for doing so at the expense of Jeffrey Hunter’s! For starters, the guy just had one outing as captain, compared to Shatner’s 79 (let alone TAS and the movies), so it’s not a fair comparison. Second, I think Hunter’s Pike would have ended up much like Jean-Luc Picard given time: beloved, iconic, acknowledged as a deep and thoughtful character.
I guess I should say no more until we get to “The Cage.” Luckily, that is only a few days’ wait.
(And, as much as I’ll defend a lot of Shatner’s acting, I have to admit I enjoy the mimics and impersonations as much as anyone else. One of the few times I can remember reading something so funny I laughed until I cried was Shatner’s chapter on “learning how to do Shatner” in Get a Life!)
I think watching TOS today feels a bit like theater, with the never-changing planetary setting, the characters’ makeup, etc. Theater-style acting fits quite nicely in there.
I’ve added a category, prompted by pen_pals’s post:
Go put on a red shirt. Enumerating the poor unfortunates who are introduced just long enough to be horribly horribly killed off, most of whom are dudes wearing red shirts.
I’ve always felt sorry for those poor security folk…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
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@112: People today tend to forget that when Shatner was first cast in TOS in 1965, he was seen as a respected, up-and-coming star of stage and screen, a Shakespeare-trained leading man that some were predicting would become the next Laurence Olivier. It was seen as a major coup for this odd little space-opera series to get an actor of Shatner’s reputation, giving it unexpected legitimacy in a time when science fiction was disdained as kid stuff. And yet it pretty much went on to destroy Shatner’s reputation for decades to come, because he became indelibly associated with the disreputable sci-fi genre and its connotations of cheesiness. After TOS, this formerly in-demand actor had trouble finding work. I think he was living out of his trailer for a while.
@106: so a typical krad rewatch then, huh? :) LOL. Since it appears I’m going to be frozen in tomorrow, it’ll give me something to look forward to :)
@62 I’m not sure whether Kieth was entirely serious, when he said ‘5 years is an eternity on the internet’. Doesn’t really matter, either.
The value of a Krad Rewatch is in it being a Krad Rewatch. It’s a unique in-depth experience which we’ve never had with TOS. So I’m definitely looking forward to it (even though I would have prefered to have a Voyager Rewatch, written by a Voyager-loving Krad Clone ;-))
Oh, and I forgot to add one more thing:
Having any kind of TOS Rewatch right after the passing away of Mr. Nimoy, feels like a unique and lovely tribute.
I know that nobody at TOR planned it that way, but it does feel very appropriate.
Having rewatched “The Cage,” I now wonder how the hell Keith is going to shoehorn Pike, Number One, and Boyce into the given structure of the rewatch…I guess we’ll find out soon!
@112: No doubt he does sometime overact! It’s just a broad brush to paint his whole tenure as Kirk that way — which I realize is not what you were doing, but it is what many people do… mostly non-Trek fans, those poor benighted souls who know no better. :) Thanks for sharing your opinions!
Having any kind of TOS Rewatch right after the passing away of Mr. Nimoy, feels like a unique and lovely tribute.
Totally agree with this. I’m sure I would have watched some TOS at this time anyway, but having the rewatch now seems like a great way to be remined of Nimoy’s role in Trek’s foundations.
Where do I find the re-watch? Is there no landing page with links to the individual reviews?
SteveCon: Here.
Thanks, KRAD!
By the way, huge fan of your re-watches. Been following for sometime. Thanks a bunch for the work you put into them!
@16 Here is another fun fact, Niven, rewrote ‘Slaver Weapon’ for TAS after DC Fontana, rejected his original submission, which became the Known Space short story “Borderland of Sol”, I would have love to seen that orignal script! The reason it was rejected, was I think it was believed to be “too smart” for the kids! Maybe either Star Trek Continues or Star Trek New Voyages/Phase II can talk to Niven about adapting it.
@123: I have a hard time believing Fontana would’ve rejected a story for being “too smart for the kids,” given that TAS was not approached as a children’s show. The sex and violence were toned down for the time slot, but TAS was conceived and explicitly promoted as the first Saturday morning animated show targeted at adults.
Here’s what I could find about it, from Curt Danhauser’s animated ST page:
I also found the actual page from Playgrounds on Google Books. Niven does say that he “was aiming over the audience’s heads,” but given the complexity of the quantum black hole idea, he may have meant TV audiences in general, not kids specifically.
Yeah, I remember that bit from Playgrounds, I love those “bits and pieces” books Niven puts out (Playgrounds, N-Space, etc).
double post
I’m disappointed you won’t be reviewing VOY, krad.
I’ve greatly enjoyed reading these rewatches since 2011 and you’re one of the most knowledgeable Trekkies I’ve ever seen. I think I’d learn a lot from a VOY rewatch written by you.
What in particular do you not like about the series? It was mainly on during my high school and early university days, so I was too busy to watch it religiously then, but from what I did see I often did like it. Out of all of the Star Trek series, “Voyager” is by far the least predictable because the crew is in an area where humans have never been, so everything is new.
@103
Christopher, I think a lot of the mocking of Shatner is not simply due to his acting, but also due to his personality.
From many of his fellow actors/actresses and also staff who worked under him, I’ve heard that he is a JERK. They say he is self-absorbed, demanding, and egomaniacal at a level that far surpasses most celebrities.
I won’t watch TOS because I just cannot stand him. Sorry. Sometimes the cast ruins the experience of an otherwise good program.
Mel Gibson is another actor whose presence in anything is makes me change the channel, no matter what the show or movie is.
@128/RMS81: I don’t see what Shatner’s personality has to do with the comedic exaggerations of his acting style. IIRC, comedians like Pollak and Overton, when they did their Shatner impression, were doing it in the persona of Jim Kirk rather than the persona of William Shatner. After all, I’m pretty sure they developed their routines before the tell-all books from the TOS cast came out and popularized those allegations about Shatner’s personality. They weren’t making fun of an actor’s offscreen behavior, just of the way he delivered his lines and emoted onscreen.
RMS81: I have many many many issues with Voyager, the primary one being that they never really embraced the premise. The entire show was sold on a ship being lost in space without any of the usual amenities or crutches that Starfleet ships have, and on tension between the Starfleet and Maquis crews. That was abandoned pretty much instantaneously, and it turned into a standalone adventure-of-the-week show where actions almost never had consequences — pretty much the opposite of what it should have been. Why were they always in uniform? Why were they insisting on airtight discipline? Why were they acting like they would be getting back to the Alpha Quadrant any day now instead of embracing their lives as castaways? Why did they never have supply problems unless they were specifically called for by the plot? And why the hell did the holodecks still work?
Honestly, the show lost me the minute they gave us that holodeck cheat, that the power needs were incompatible so they couldn’t use the holodeck for any purpose other than as a holodeck, thus allowing them to fall on the crutch of telling stupid holodeck stories…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@131: I agree with you on several points about “Voyager” having many arbitrary changes and plot-convenient problems and solutions, but I think that’s a fairly common occurence in science fiction. So I can see why you find that annoying and frustrating.
But I also like to watch shows for the characters just as much for the plots. And in that aspect, I think “Voyager” is a success. The characters on “Voyager” are by far the most morally ambiguous of all of the series, and I think that makes them interesting.
Gah, I did not remember the “holodeck power incompatibility” thing; when was that addressed?
I did enjoy VOY, but I can’t bring myself to care for any other character than the Doctor.
I’ve often thought the Ron Moore BSG reboot was what Voyager would have been had it taken its own premise seriously enough. (And it wasn’t long after his brief stint on Voyager that RDM got going on BSG, was it?)
The most egregious internal logic flaw I remember from Voyager was that the Delta Flyer got destroyed one week (when Janeway, Tuvok, and Torres intentionally got assimilated, IIRC), but was then back two weeks later (granted, after a season break, but not much in-universe time had passed), with little to no fanfare beyond, “Oh, we built another one.” Really?
I don’t recall the characters being especially morally ambiguous — even Seven adopted standard Starfleet ethos pretty quickly once she got individuated from the Borg hive — but I do remember frequently finding them enjoyable, despite my lack of enthusiasm for the show overall. Seven’s interactions with Naomi Wildman were always some of my favorite moments. And Picardo always brought his A-game to the Doctor, no matter how ludicrous the situations they put him in.
I don’t mind them wearing uniforms and the command officers insisting on Starfleet discipline; but there should have been more resource shortage.
@133/Mike: Given that “Extreme Risk” showed us how the Delta Flyer (and presumably other replacement shuttles) got built in the first place, I don’t think they needed to explain how they built its replacement. As I’ve said many times, replicator technology makes it easy to replace any lost component, as long as you have enough energy and raw materials, both of which can be easily obtained by a warp-capable starship. And they stopped talking about energy shortages and replicator rationing after season 2, so they must’ve solved their energy problems.
@128/RMS81 – Is it really Shatner’s personality that keeps you from watching TOS, rather than his acting? I feel a bit sad, if that’s the case.
If I didn’t watch things with actors whose personal lives I didn’t like, I couldn’t watch Firefly (Adam Baldwin), Top Gun (Tom Cruise), Mad Max (Mel Gibson)…all of which I enjoy. (Cut me some slack on Top Gun, it was the ’80s.) Actors are not their characters, and as long as the acting is passable, I can get into the story and forget that Tom Cruise is insane, Adam Baldwin is an asshole, and Mel Gibson is…well, Mel Gibson.
@136/Meredith: Right. Acting is their job. It’s not about their personal lives. The person who made your morning coffee or the cab driver who took you to work or the architect who designed your office building could’ve been a total bastard for all you know, but that has no effect on your use of the products of their work. There’s no reason an actor’s personal life should be any more relevant. Sure, what they do onscreen seems personal, but that’s because it’s their job to make it seem that way. It isn’t really. Captain Kirk isn’t William Shatner any more than my laptop’s operating system is Bill Gates.
I think the characters in “Voyager” are morally ambiguous. Early in the series, they seemed to make it a point on how important it was not to interfere with the political situations in the Delta Quadrant, as the Prime Directive asks.
Later, they are willing to bargain with the Borg, who is considered Starfleet’s number one enemy. They are actually prepared to help the Borg in a conflict with a more powerful alien race in exchange for passage through their space.
@135/Christopher: “so they must’ve solved their energy problems.” Ok. It just would’ve been more interesting if they’d showed us how they solved those problems, and acknowledged it was a real effort and cost them something. Or maybe it didn’t, since life for Voyager seemed pretty easy, even in the Delta Quadrant. And maybe they didn’t need to show us how another Delta Flyer got built, but given how we were led to believe Tom had put so much heart and soul and blood and tears into building the first one (as I recall – I could be wrong, I’ve only watched the series once), it seemed really casual for no one to acknowledge the loss of the first one at all. Kind of like “oh, let’s get ourselves assimilated by the Borg” seemed far too casual a plan, given all that Picard went through when he was assimilated. This was my constant problem with Voyager: it all just seemed too easy. But, I grant I should rewatch it sometime and see if that’s a fair assessment.
@138/RMS81: Yes, I remember some of that hand-wringing about dealing with the Borg now. Fair point. I guess the phrase “morally ambiguous” connotes more to me than basically moral characters making some tough calls now and then. To me, it connotes characters who are such mixed bags of good and bad you don’t know whether to root for or against them, you just know you can’t stop watching them. I never felt real moral dilemmas on that show, but that’s just my mileage.
@139: Oh, I think their decision to help the Borg paints them as very morally ambiguous people. Remember, the duty of Starfleet officers is not self-preservation, as Wil Riker taught Deanna Troi when she realized she needed to sacrifice a friend to save everyone else.
The Borg were rightfully recognized as a genocidal race who had the potential to destroy the human race and many other people as well.
The Voyager crew helped the Borg become more of a threat to other people in the interests of self-preservation.
@137: Christopher, while I agree with you to a certain degree, I also think it’s possible to be so disgusted with an artist it makes you want to disassociate totally with his/her art.
Say, for example, your favorite musician that you’ve listened to regularly for the past decade is convicted for being a sadistic pedophile. Even though you like his music, would you still want to buy it and knowingly enrich someone who does things like that? I wouldn’t.
You could make an argument that you are unknowingly enriching bad people on a regular basis, but I try to avoid doing when it’s possible to do so.
@141/RMS81: Well, theoretically. I don’t buy any Orson Scott Card novels anymore, for instance. But it’s rather massive hyperbole to use that as an analogy for not liking Shatner just because you’ve heard that he’s egotistical. Being an alleged jerk isn’t a crime or a violation. And really, all you have is gossip. You’ve never met the man. People have been misjudged before. I’ve seen the countervailing view presented that Shatner is simply a very focused, perfectionistic performer who gets so caught up in his work that he doesn’t pay attention to the people around him — not out of any kind of malice, but simply due to being focused elsewhere. That’s often happened to me — people think I’m being rude when I’m just being introverted or tightly focused on what I’m doing.
@140/RMS81: You make an interesting argument. Clearly, I have not thought a lot about Voyager since it first aired. I suppose Janeway plead extraordinary circumstances at the time… but, if our ordinary standards can’t serve us in extraordinary circumstances, are they really good standards to begin with?
Hm. So quickly thou would persuade me to rewatch the series? ;)
@142/Christopher – I’m with you in not buying Orson Scott Card novels in the store. If I’m going to buy anything by him, I’ll buy it on the secondary market, which changes the impact. There’s an article of some usefulness about this: “An Ethical Guide To Consuming Content Created By Awful People Like Orson Scott Card”
And I’ve actually heard that you’re perfectly lovely in person, which is why I intend to get over my own introversion and say hi to you Friday night in Hunt Valley this August.
I have long wondered why the quality of TOS episodes ranges so dramatically from excellent to terrible, even from one episode to the next. I think the reason is because Star Trek had “too many” different writers, directors, story editors, etc., in a relatively short period of time. This high turnover meant the show lacked consistency and led many episodes to go astray. Some of the best-written TV shows (the early years of ‘All in the Family, ‘Barney Miller,’ etc.) had a small and stable core of writers, directors. On Star Trek, however, while Joe Pevney and Marc Daniels directed many episodes, there were still about 15 or 20 directors working on the show. Some of them understood the show, some did not. Thus, there were too many “different visions” and I think the show lacked some coherence because of all this chaos. Of course, the producer should have overseen all of the scripts and episodes, but even here there was too much turnover (except when Gene Coon was the showrunner). If TOS had a smaller staff working on it, it might not have saved it from cancellation, but it might have led to 79 excellent episodes, instead of, say, 25 great episodes.
@145/Palash: I think you mean if TOS had a larger staff. Its staff was basically just an executive producer, producer, and story editor, which is why so many of its scripts were by freelance writers. What you’re suggesting would entail a regular writing staff of more than three people, enough to do most of the scripts so there’d be less need for freelancers.
However, that approach was not common in the 1960s. The TV industry was much more freelancer-driven than staff-driven back then. Trek was no different in that regard from its contemporaries.