Tribbles episode always come to mind when i think of my Star Trek years, loved it. Another episode that always seems to stick in my memory is what I named the butthead men, oh they just spooked me when I was a wee one. View attachment 7052
From The Menagerie , the only two part TOS episode. Made from re-purposed footage from the original pilot The Cage[/i], along with new footage, it was basically a time and cost saving idea. By using the already filmed footage, they basically could get 2 weeks of show for the cost and time of one.
Yes. I called them 'the buttheads' too, and they were, not just because of their heads, oh so like a butt, but because of their behavior -locking up sentient beings who they considered inferior in order to conduct experiments on them... oh, will you look at that! It seems I got Gene Roddenberry's whole point! :idea:
I never saw it. I was in college with a part-time job that paid $1.25 an hour, and a wife in the same straits except she was getting only 80 cents an hour. There wasn't anything on TV that we really cared about so we saved the money and didn't buy one. Still, there was no way to be unaware of Star Trek if you were part of the college crowd, but frankly as a reader of print-sci-fi since I was about 11, I just wasn't impressed. It seemed too corny, 30 years behind the books and magazines I was reading. But I was impressed by the first movie (still the best of the lot, if you ask me), and when TNG came along my (different) wife and I were instant fans. Considerably less corny. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Loved DS9, liked Voyager almost as well (especially Seven of Nine Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!) but REALLY not impressed by Enterprise. Anyway, fifty years later I accept the original series as the beginning of a major cultural phenomenon, cleverly crafted to appeal to the audience of its day. Kinda like "Hee-Haw" helping to bring country music into the mainstream or "Bonanza" presenting a slightly different side of the Wild West. Interesting. I had no trouble distinguishing the "Z" phoneme in "captainZ log" from an S. Maybe that's how I got to be the Linguistics Moderator. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! We all run it together. There are arcane rules (secret, unwritten ones that we are taught as babies) for when a pause is required between two words, and it's not required in this case. Nonetheless, we are required to pronounce that S as a Z, and Shatner did so. Just try saying "Captain's Log" with an actual S instead of a Z and the difference will smack you in the face. (Native speakers only, of course. People who speak English as a second language always carry over at least a few remnants of the phonetics of their first language, unless they learned English when they were very young.)
???? I watched both and loved both but no difference? I mean they were both in black and white, yeah..... sure, but how in the hell else are they the same?
Because they're both about any world, other than ours. About humans given the ability to operate outside authority. don't you understand what the zombie fetish is all about?
Hmm, okay... makes sense. I suppose I was much to young when i watched both of these to make that abstract connection then, so probably why I did not make it now.
Sure, it came out when I was 8, and I loved it at the time. However, with later viewings as I got older, it just didn't hold up. It starts out strong, but then, quite frankly, got sillier and sillier. The Dr. Smith character changed from a crafty villain who had more skill with the robot than anyone else to a bumbling buffoon who couldn't tell one end of wrench from the other. I can understand the reasoning for softening the character some (As the actor who played him explained, they couldn't keep him the way he was because he would have been just too dangerous to have around, most likely leading to having to kill the character off), I just think they took it too far. There were also some obvious continuity errors. For example, their weapons changed drastically in appearance between season 1 and 2. (most likely because this is when they went from B&W to color, and the new weapons looked better in color). I mean, it's not like they could have gone out and gotten new weapons someplace. As far as old SF goes, I do you one better, does anyone else here remember Fireball XL5?
The cult TV shows these days are all about the conflict between authority and freedom. Breaking Bad, Firefly, The Walking Dead, Sons of Anarchy... they're all the same thing, in a different setting. They'll throw in the "conflicted hero" to highlight it. The man's man who loves his freedom but acknowledges the need for order. In our world, that's Jesse Pinkman, and Jax Teller. But when you take the setting out of our world, and put it into another... you give that man the chance to become more himself and give him the chance to address his internal war directly. Enter Malcolm Reynolds, or Rick Grimes. You get any of that right, and find an actor who can portray it - and you have a hit TV show on your hands. I was going to fit Hank Moody from "Californication" in there somewhere.
