|
Date: Sept 10, 2006
CNN and the news media having been having a field day. "In November, 2006, the original Star Trek with "enhanced" special effects and in HD format, will run on TVLand" in original airing order.
Couple this with the Animated Trek program FINALLY coming out on DVD.
For the uninitiated, the animated series was brought out a few years after the cancellation of the live series, stared the original cast as voices and was animated by Filmation, staffed by die-hard Trekkies who made it the most heavily cared about and drawn animation TV series of its time. Disney animation had stressed smooth movement (study Snow White), and had many, many frames per second. TV had reduced the frames to 12. These animators made the characters look and act like the humans they represented, to Spock's arched eyebrow and every glance Kirk made. Roddenberry insisted that they make the scripts they had that they could never, ever afford to make with live actors. Like the one with the mile-long spaceship.
And, of course, David (Gerald) wrote a sequel to "Trouble with Tribbles". The "glommer" became a staple character in my programming classes. (It ate tribbles.) My students loved my use of character names in functions and subroutines. Return (STARTREK) was a common programming statement. A student got me a pass to the opening of the Star Trek display at the Hollywood Wax Museum. I have photos.
They decorated my board one day - when I slid it out, it was covered with artwork. I was teaching the football team beginning programming in summer session (guess why). They passed. You did not sleep in my classes. You still don't!
Background detail for most "cartoons" on TV is simplistic (cost). Background art for the animated Trek was incredible.
I once asked Paramount if I could do a book on the animated Trek. (I was a published author of technical textbooks by then.) They brushed me off. It was not thought to be important. Right. Good going guys! They had not yet learned.
As everyone who doesn't live in a cave well knows, William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy first appeared as "Star Trek's" Capt. James T. Kirk and his first officer, Mr. Spock, on September 8, 1966 -- 40 years ago Friday. And they were type-cast ever since.
All the cast were and all of them fought it and finally gave up fighting. Conventions had by then progressed from fan-run groups to a commercial business and they were paid not to fight it.
Shatner, a good director when not directing himself, a trained stage actor, had done guest star appearances and finally did T. J. Hooker (which I and my children adored), 911 (which saved many, many lives, and a few movies (some exceptionally well-acted as we knew he could do and which surprised critics) before returning to Star Trek and making the first series on Trek Movies. He had a TV series he created and directed and wrote. He has a successful writing career, finally coming back to writing Star Trek novels. Who better? He then burst out with a series of movies which had him cutting up in some of the campiest roles that put us all on the floor, ending up with a very successful run playing a lawyer on Boston Legal. His Showtime movie appearance where he trains other cops in proper hood jumping (spoof on T. J. Hooker) was hilarious. At his age (in his 70s), he is having way too much fun out of life! Way to go Captain! Sets the bar for the rest of us!
Nimoy proved an exceptional director, and an outstanding photographer, after a run on Mission Impossible and some guest starring roles. His face was too well known to hide in another character but he did plays and TV movies that were quite good. I went to see him in Century City playing in a Sherlock Holmes drama (he was Sherlock), with a 6-week old baby in tow. He wrote books (other than photography, including I am Not Spock. Although, later, he admitted that he is.
Takei ran marathons, was in politics and appeared in ethnic productions. His acting choices were, because of discrimination, limited. He published at least one book whose book tour I attended, 5 year-old in tow.
Nichelle tried to launch a singing career, worked to promote women in Space. (I cannot find a website for her.) She also became a writer. Hunting her down on the web has been difficult. Koneig taught classes and wrote and is still acting. Doohan did an embarrassing stint in a children's program, I caught one episode. (Trekkies supported anything the cast did. I could not support that.) He also did other acting until his death in 2005. He had Parkinson's and a 4 year old. One would like to think he really enjoyed his life. One of his last appearances was as Scotty in the Next Generation, making sure Scotty, the character, died. After all, by then Kirk and Spock had died on film. He also wrote a book about Star Trek. DeForrest Kelly appeared on Next Generation's pilot as a very, very old "Bones". Before Trek, he had been in many old western movies, often playing the bad guy. (Audrey Murphy got to shoot him dead in one.) He died in 1999 of stomach cancer. And Majel? Actress, producer, writer and keeper of the flame.
They all had sporadic roles and struggled with the legacy. (Well, not Majel.) They all ended up on the convention tour.
We struggled with them, cheered them on, and supported everything they did. Well, almost.
The internet has pages of quotes from the films, the animations, the original series. Read me a quote, I can probably tell you the episode. I own hundreds of 35 mm film clips. The internet has fan sites. Show sites. Artwork. There are magazines (at least one magazine per show.) Novels fill the shelves in the bookstores. DVDs are all over Amazon. Who knew? We hoped.
They ran an all-day marathon the other day, but I wasn't in the mood. I taped them all on reel-to-reel. I taped them all on BetaMax. Now they are available on DVD. I am thinking about it. I own all the scripts - they are busy fading and the paper disintegrating. I have everyone's autograph on a cast photo. I have met them all. I used to help run the fan-based conventions (LA, San Diego) - early and mid 1970s. Equicon. Filmcon. I made a TV commercial with Greg Bear - we were both teaching (at different campuses) at the time - and I picked Tribbles off of him while he read his lines. I was 122 lbs in a trek costume and I beamed into the lobby of a San Diego hotel that no longer is in a dress up to there and tall black boots, slanted eyebrows. I appeared in the San Diego Union newspaper in another costume, holding a mutant head and faking fear, right next to an interview with Gene Roddenberry. (My son now tells me the photo actually scared him as a child. Who knew?)
 Equicon 1975
I conversed with David Gerrold. Harlan Ellison. I took a writing class with David Brin. I used photos lent by Forest J. Ackerman for a display on women in science fiction (1996 Equicon). I spent hours in his basement. Disney lent me cells from their animations for the same convention. Filmation lent me bloopers and cell art. I even got a tour of the studio and met some of the artists. At one convention, I and others gave D.C. Fontana a screaming Tribble. At another, I shook hands with Isaac Asimov and vowed to write a pile as deep as his was. (I eventually did.) The list was long. I started seriously writing fiction (Jettison) besides all the technical papers and manuals and textbooks and seminars. And my first son had arrived.
We would have died and gone to heaven to have uniforms off the rack (we made our own). To have the quotes recorded for us on-line. To have websites for each of the actors. To see the size and commerciality of the Star Trek franchise. We all bought the first few novels. I stopped because rearing children took all my time and money. I stopped at about number 42.
My children went to a few conventions. They modeled costumes I spent hours making. They won prizes. Eventually, I had no time to make three costumes to spend a day roaming a convention floor, hyper-active boys in tow. I had to be content without this. After all, by now, Star Trek was all over the tube. My sons were devoted fans. And I was a Boy Scout Leader.
"The 40th anniversary finds the sci-fi franchise at a crossroads. "Enterprise" was canceled after only four seasons and the last "Trek" film, "Nemesis," was a critical and box office disappointment. Not that Paramount is listening to the critics. Plans are under way for another "Trek" film in 2008, with J.J. Abrams, fresh off his success with "Alias," "Lost" and "Mission: Impossible 3" slated to take over the reins. Word is the film will be about a young Kirk and Spock. Abrams gets the endorsement of the original guys."
"Then there are the original episodes, the 79 shows fans got to know by heart through their endless airings in syndication. As part of the 40th anniversary celebration, TVLand will begin showing them in their original broadcast order in November. The show is also returning to broadcast syndication for the first time in 16 years. The episodes will begin airing on the more than 200 stations that own the rights starting September 16."
When the show was cancelled, and Paramount, in spite of letter-writing campaigns, and a bumper-sticker assault on studio limos by a local stripper, refused to budge, we all went about writing books. It's how my novel Jettison was born. We wanted it back.
"Perhaps the best news for fans -- though some purists may be upset -- is that the original episodes have been remastered in high definition and will include new special effects shots." Ouch!
We all knew about the cafeteria salt-shaker being McCoy's scanner. The hand-pulled open doors. The limits of the new concept - 1960s color television - that kept the uniforms restricted to the primary colors (red, blue and yellow. Did you know that?)
We original fans have seen the original blooper reel. More than once. (Now THAT should be on DVD!)
I have even seen the bloopers for the animated series. (A blond Uhura. The Enterprise with a thumb print on it. Kirk with no arms.) The "cells" were hand-painted. Automation was not yet there. This was, after all, the 1970s.
We fans met the actors, directors, writers, special effects, camera men, animators, science fiction authors, some big-names, some headed that way, and we dressed up in full gear with the help of these people and put on fashion shows. I had pointed ears and shaved eyebrows. The conventions were FANS. A few on the fringe, but FANS. It has gotten way over the top now. I may not attend, but I applaud.
1974 - Equicon I was wearing a costume that had won a fashion contest (designed by someone else). I could sew - ergo - I could model - in pointed ears and all - as a Vulcan Academy Scientist - with the Planet of the Apes fans. I was an Associate Professor (part time) at one Cal State Campus - Engineering - and an Associate-level Lecturer (full-time) at another. As a woman - I was denied tenure. And no, they never knew about this! I still have the costume. Can't get into it - still have it.
I was in this costume when Gene Roddenberry and Majel took me into a press room. Gene said - after turning my chin this way and that, that I should be in pictures. On my way to my PhD in Computer Science at UCLA (completed that December in Comp Sci), and 34 years of age, I laughed about it for 2 weeks. I was wearing green contact lenses. My eyebrows have never recovered. I went on to run the exhibit room at Equicon 1975.
I raised both my sons on Star Trek. Right along with Sesame Street.
I am also one of Gene Roddenberry's PhDs. The show inspired a nation while Nixon and his contemporaries were ripping up the space program, denigrating science, and telling everyone who had listened to John F. Kennedy that education was not important. Kennedy had sent myself and others off to study engineering, Roddenberry's Spock sent us back to school to finish our degrees. I could not be an astronaut since I was a "girl", but I was well-paid over the years to teach guys working for NASA, JPL, Cal Tech, and ASIC designers working on the shuttle. (The first shuttle was named Enterprise. Too bad it never flew.)
Ride on Star Trek!
My first son is now grown. He works. High-Tech like me. I suspect he knows what I want for Christmas.
First Encounter
The Saga of Jettison
Just before I had to run down and rescue director George Pal from the security team - he had come to view the dioramas of some of his movies I had on display (a special effects crew had made them). I was running the Exhibits room. I was clowning around. My second husband took the photo.
For the Star Trek fans:
A Star Trek episode was filmed at TRW, One Space Park because the buildings and esp. the cafeteria/library (E1) was very futuristic. I was working there in R3 if I remember right. 2000 engineers and space-nics (this was in the days of LEM - the lunar module - and Minuteman - I did simulation in those days - design review) . They had to use lots of shadow-panels to keep us from messing up the shot. Work was stopped for the day. The crew now - THEY deliberately blew one shot - on cue - they all turned their phasers into razors and mimed a shaving commercial - it is one of the scenes on the blooper reel.
In fact - this was the episode where Kirk's brother dies - Spock is "bitten" by a sort-of bat-ray which infects his spinal cord. We all watched the final episode when it aired - "I was standing ----" was heard up and down the hallways. Never say the space engineers were not fond of our "baby" - we were! I was a Master's Candidate in EE at UCLA, at the time. (Late 1960s.) TRW had sent me back to school.
I remember it well - I was too shy to go up and ask for an autograph - although others were not. I remember being amazed how short they were. Little really. (Nimoy is 6'1" - towers over the others.) The marvels of TV made them all seem larger than life. They were, if fact, very nice people when you met them. I remember that too.
|
www.Donnamaie.com my home page