Star Trek Memories
Star Trek Memories
I bought the DVD sets of ST: TOS last year and finished watching all of them a few months ago. Paramount has since re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-released at least some of the TOS episodes on home video, this time on HD-DVD (just in time for HD to lose the format wars to Blu-Ray). Because I have only an ordinary DVD player ( Read more... )
Welcome! :-)
I have purchased the HD version and actually found the digital touch-ups and "set improvements" to be a distraction, ... [SNIP]Too pristine and plastic.
My information on the HD version comes from two sources: one, from viewing several of the HD episodes on local TV; two, from attending a screening of "The Menagerie" in a movie theater in (probably) late 2007. I'm fairly enthusiastic about the digital retouching, but it really does make the show look pristine and plastic, as you wrote. Even though they've de-noised the original 16MM images, the "grain" in the new CGI exteriors still isn't severe enough. That's right: I essentially wish for lower-resolution CGI, just to keep things consistent--to make the transitions between new and old material less jarring. And I wish something could be done about some of the more primitive 1960s "spark" or "zap!" visuals that were mingled with the live action.
I actually wanted to chime in and defend certain episodes ... [SNIP] ... OF THAT TIME, there is nothing better.
You're at liberty to defend these episodes. My humor may be sardonic, but my affection for Trek as a phenomenon is evident. There's plenty of latitude for differences of opinion. One of the hundreds of great things about Trek is that--although opinions differ--Trek is not especially divisive, as the phenomenon of Star Trek conventions demonstrates. And you're right: even mediocre Trek episodes are better than other SF offerings of that era. My article was about memory, and how my grownup opinions may or may not tally with my earlier impressions (note how much I enjoyed "Spectre Of The Gun").
Lost In Space? [SNIP]"Demon With a Glass Hand"....
Yes--right on--you're correct--no argument here. As for Terminator: the first time I saw the original Terminator was on HBO in about 1985 or 1986. I remember that there was a credit at the end that wasn't quite properly matched to the other credits (it scrolled at a slightly different rate, and it appeared to have been dropped into a convenient gap in the text). It said: ACKNOWLEDGMENT TO THE WORKS OF HARLAN ELLISON. As a kid, I certainly knew who had written the Trek episode "City," so the name was familiar to me, but I hadn't yet seen "Demon With A Glass Hand" (nor had I read any of Ellison's R-rated stories). Years later, I found out what Mr. Ellison's credit in Terminator was all about! Although I think that Cameron and Hurd told a better story, Terminator was certainly influenced by the Outer Limits episodes Ellison wrote.
...analytical quality[SNIP]
Yes... no... and maybe, all at once. I turned the cold dispassionate eye of analysis on Trek in my blog posting, sure, but I'm perfectly willing to let entertainment be entertainment. Although I have some "hard SF" stories in the pipeline, my own SF writing mainly uses science as a point of departure. I haven't found a single bit of obvious real science in the Star Wars films, for instance, but I enjoy the good ones all the same. Douglas Adams is a favorite of mine; he read about real science voraciously, but tended to use science as a springboard. Sure, I enjoy stuff like the original Ringworld, but I'd say I really gravitate toward works like 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is purely speculative when it has to be (e.g. Dave's stargate sequence), yet is rooted in extrapolations from what was known in the 1960s. Sure, many predictions in the film and book were incorrect... but they were extrapolations rather than outright making-stuff-up. So I'll restate my thesis: yes, no, and maybe, all at once.
TV demographic doesn't allow for that much thinking [SNIP]
Again, no argument from me! You're quite right. My sarcasm aside, I'm very glad that Trek prospered. :-)
[SNIP]..full-fledged religion..
Heh--best episode of Futurama ever! Thanks for your post!
Science_Officer
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Science_Officer
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I'd not managed to finish Ringworld, but have read, heard, and watched versions of HHGGttG - heck, even played the InfoCom game! I miss Douggy a lot. Thank goodness I'm hoopy enough to know where my crying towel is.
I also can really "get" the emotional state Doug must have been in at times - able to come up with such witty prose, yet have the depressive, detached feelings he did. His height probably was part of the problem. And here we all are wishing we could be taller.
The episode that I had the biggest disagreements about was "Is There In Truth No Beauty?" - First, I will grant that the plot complication of getting lost in the strawberry jam at the edge of the galaxy is rather lame, and why not the glowy-eyed demi-god problem like we had last time we were there? Sheesh. The idea something makes you insane because of its ugliness is a bit ludicrous, too. (Insanity is a hereditary condition - you get it from your children.)
I'd rather have put it that the Medusans were an energy being that emit light patterns that induce in the optic nerves of many humanoid species certain harmful stimuli that trigger paranoid delusions. It fits the basically non-corporeal existence of the Medusan - how it is basically something glowy in a box that you carry around and how it seemed to have connections to other things, creatures - by its comments on how isolated and alone we are in our existence.
The Medusan therefore represented an evolved being, something maybe between Human and Organian, that sounded like something that would be worth evolving into. Also in this episode, we had a conflict in which a beautiful woman ended up being the heavy, something unusual - especially since she was a pitiable character because of her blindness. (I realize the Salt Vampire was a beautiful woman, but that was just a facade, so she didn't count.)
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Kollos, and the madness induced by his fearsome appearance, weren't my complaints about the episode. I think that if the producers discarded the IDIC scene, got rid of the "strawberry jam" detour (heh--I like that description), and dumped most of the dialog, a good story basically about Kollos could have been written. "Is There In Truth No Beauty?"--as it exists--is disorganized, and contains at least one weird edit (toward the end, if memory serves). If there were a few funny parts (whether intentionally funny or unintentionally), like the giant house-cat in "Catspaw," maybe I wouldn't have such a low opinion of it.
"Where No Man Has Gone Before" is a great episode, even though, much like, say, "The Enemy Within," it has essentially zero science content. "Where No Man Has Gone Before" is a rip-roaring action-adventure, written by Samuel Peeples as a second pilot episode to avoid being "too cerebral" as "The Cage" was initially labeled. I still crack up over the bizarre work-arounds, some of them quite inventive, for the reason Gary Mitchell had for putting "JAMES R. KIRK" on the grave-stone rather than "T".
But, yes, there is no reason to suspect that the edge of the galaxy is in any way unusual in the manner portrayed on Trek.
Science_Officer
P.S.: Did you ever notice what I wrote about with relation to "Squire Of Gothos"? Since basically 98%+ of the on-screen events of the episode are commented upon by the characters (right down to Enterprise crew members reading Trelane's screen-message aloud), "Gothos" would work basically the same way as a radio play as it does as a TV segment. Dunno if anyone else has ever remarked on this.
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I need to have "Is There In Truth No Beauty" clearer in mind to recognize the gaffes and bad edits; the fog of my fading memory does give it that romantic soft focus that they gave most of the women when they had them in close-up on camera in TOS. I didn't really realize just how often soft focus or star filters were used until the HD version, then it became crystal clear when you had the men in close-up versus the women. She's filtered; he's not.
Even the re-edited Star Wars IV has that scene on the Death Star between Vader and Tarkin where Vader is commenting about Leia never willingly giving up the location of the Rebel Base and THEN gestures with his hand well after the statement, whereas it's pretty obviously meant to emphasize it. But I digress.
I believe Nimoy may have objected to the IDIC scene as an obvious merchandising ploy for Lincoln Enterprises, a trek souvenir shop for want of a better name. I remember ordering one of those things. What I didn't know was that plans for merchandising were in the works that early in the game, but I'm pretty sure Susan Sackett (Roddenberry's Secretary) did handle that business to some degree, whether it was more than just fan mail routing I can't say for sure - it's been too long and I didn't keep the correspondence.
Squire of Gothos meets Q actually is novelized in a TNG book somewhere; I forget where I read it. It wasn't all that hilarious, honestly. The fog of memory clouds my recollection of how that show was delivered also - I definitely recall the message being read despite it being in such large, friendly letters you'd swear they'd run into an early copy of the HHGttG. They honestly could have used a good ol' DON'T PANIC! As a solution for the whole show, but more so for Specter of the Gun, I guess...
If you remove the gratuitous dialogue from Squire, I guess you'd have half a show's worth of content to write, and the onus of doling out the requisite number of lines to the regular cast. I bet it represents quite a bit of ingenious decisions on how to make sure the right person notices and says the right things at the right time so everybody gets their scale dialog in before they're frozen, vanished, what have you.
I'd managed to accidentally sit next to Mr. Campbell (Trelane) during one of the Equicon/Filmcons in the mid 70s. He looked much the same, without the period clothing of course. The other brush with fame has been David Gerrold (writer, Trouble With Tribbles) who did give me permission to use "Tribble" and "Glommer" as a copyright release in a computer game I was writing (which I never got working right). He also checked my calculations on a Tribble population projection, proving Mr. Spock was exactly correct in his stated estimate of the number of Tribbles that fell on Kirk's head. (I took a Polaroid of him holding up the lengthy printout, poring over it.)
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Now, that takes dedication!
... InfoCom hint book...
Never sent away for the Infocom hint book, but there was a "compendium" of game solutions available back when I was a kid. This particular one covered most Infocom games, but not Hitchhiker's. I didn't actually have most of those games, but I remember consulting the hint book primarily when I couldn't figure out what to type into various non-Infocom two-word parsers (e.g. "put red" to use a red key in a crystalline matrix, or something like that). Infocom parsers were definitely the best in the business, and almost spooky in their capacity for interpreting written English.
... soft focus or star filters were used until the HD version, then it became crystal clear when you had the men in close-up versus the women. She's filtered; he's not.
! ! ! Biggest offenders: "Mudd's Women"; Lenore from "Conscience Of The King"; maybe a few others, but those two instantly pop into my mind.
... Lincoln Enterprises... [and IDIC as a possible marketing ploy]
Heh--I've heard from several sources that the "IDIC scene" was dropped into that script as an attempt to advertise those things. Dunno if the rumors are true, but--whatever the motivation for the inclusion of the scene--I think it's a boring scene. Never bought an IDIC, but I do remember receiving more than one Lincoln Enterprises catalog in the mail: riddled with spelling errors, as were the Creation Con mailers. Funniest examples of each: Lincoln Enterprises listed the TNG episode "Hero Worship" as "Hero Warship"; Creation sent out a letter advertising the television series "
Yoyager." This was in maybe 24-point type, not fine-print.
...If you remove the gratuitous dialogue from Squire... [sat next to Wm. Campbell]... The other brush with fame has been David Gerrold... who did give me permission to use "Tribble" and "Glommer"...
I remember the Glommer! It's in the Animated Series episode! That's a good episode--and somewhat edgy, since someone actually shoots a mega-tribble, IIRC.
One thing I don't want to do is to cultivate any false hope that I'll be consistently able to reply to messages in real-time. On the weekends, it sometimes happens; during the week, not usually. Even so, it's fun reminiscing about Trek and Infocom. (And the Apple II, which was the computer my family had all those years ago.)
Live Long & Prosper!
Science_Officer
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It confuses me because the 10 million other people in WoW don't have as much time to play the game as I do, yet have achieved more despite this. But I digress.
The Animated Series actually can be considered as much a part of the canon as what came before, if not moreso because the 30-minute scripts weren't padded as much with useless dialog, had some quality scripts, did earn an Emmy (IIRC), and brought intelligent programming to Saturday morning animated entertainment for a brief shining moment. Despite Filmation's cheap production values and chintzing on effects and cast voices, and despite they had a color-blind art director (or someone responsible for color assignments - this is why Tribbles and Kzinti warships were pink), it is a show I enjoy having in my collection.
They did indeed fire upon a giant Tribble in "More Tribbles, More Troubles" which was written by David Gerrold (whose likeness appeared as the transporter Ensign in one scene). This simply broke up the colony creature, so it didn't kill anything other than the sac the umpteen thousand internal creatures were cohabiting inside.
Speaking of Gerrold, I must give credit where IIRC credit is due - "The World of Star Trek" book I think he coined the phrase "the raspberry jam at the edge of the galaxy" first, but it may be some other commentary I heard Harlan Ellison speak at a panel somewhere too. I don't have Gerrold's book to look it up in atm.
The one phrase I can claim originality for I coined during a discussion with Rex Alan Smith, a historian who wrote about the (American) Indian Wars, Rushmore Monument, etc., and my favorite, The Moon of Popping Trees, which is about the former topic, specifically leading up to the original massacre at Wounded Knee. In my discussions with him, I came to see a pattern in history, both in the US dealings with Native Americans as well as Nazis with Jews and many groups making decisions about other groups (often without involving the objective group in the decision process). These decisions often take the form of a simple solution that sells itself on its thoroughness and simplicity but also has devastating consequences and effects. The phrase I coined to summarize this phenomenon is "The Siren Song of a Simple Solution." The meaning I hope is clear - all who follow a simple solution are doomed to dismal, devastating failure. Human issues will always require complex solutions - whenever I hear the term "case by case basis" I know someone has a handle on the answer.
Creation cons seem so slipshod that I sometimes believe it's an experiment in total outsourced conventioning. I don't know how you can outsource having Shatner et al. appear at a con, but maybe there's a Chinese duplicate - maybe we have some Manchurian Candidate for the next Star Trek movie. That might explain why they're remaking Star Trek I again...!
The Zork language parser is something I intended to study, but its complexity was beyond my ken, and when they started to develop point-and-click interfaces, I was fascinated for a long time. Until at least they decayed into these frustrating "hunt the pixel" exercizes.
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