And this isn't even one quarter about Star Trek.
I submit that “Star Trek” was the largest part of a “culture of the strange” that had taken over America’s television sets, or was about to. The Different was In, and television producers thought they had “The Next Big Thing, if it was even a little off center.
If I were still a student doing a Phd of Popular Culture I would put the mid Sixties as a time when it would be profoundly clear that not only was the television audience chemically altered...the producers had obviously indulged in *something* mood altering before making buying decisions.
First, there was the harbinger that this Wasn't Going To Be Your Father's Television Decade:...The Twilight Zone that debuted in 1959 driven by that chain smoking production line storyteller Rod Serling. He was a most bipolar sort of scribe.. either Really Awful or Amazing and guesting...Billy Mumy...Burgess Mereidith...William Shatner...
Then, The Outer Limits...John DF Black...and Harlan Ellison's "Demon with A Glass Hand."
"Do not adjust your set. We control the Horizontal. We control the Vertical. "
All that was missing was the BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA at the end. And the stepchildren of these shows...all already well documented by Stephen King in his book."Danse Macabre."
Then there was that little show on CBS Heh. Written by Shimon Wincellburg or S-Bar David.
The show that caused CBS to turn down Trek because: We already have a space show...
I won't name it, but the JiffyPop Space suits, the precursor to Wesley the Wonderkund,the way-cool Robot and Smith the champion Malingering Spy....Blech...and...I hate to admit it...but.
(a really nifty muscial score by that guy...John Williams)
and no I am not even going to speak it’s *name here on this blog* That would be sacreligious.
Then there was that other show...a 1965 import that I *hate* and only saw for the first time last month....dull enough to make my teeth fall out.
Running hurriedly away from that,
Ahem… speaking of nifty musical scores...
The web niche for "Dark Shadows" can be found here: It's my third pop culture obsession, and it is celebrathing its 40th this year as well: Paradoxically I love "Trek" for when it hit its highest notes. I love DS because it is so unashamedly cobbled together, cheap, weird and low-budget. Except. The score by Bob Corbert *kicks **s.* It scared the **** out of me when I was a kid, and I still love it today.
But it doesn't fake out the viewer. It never tries to sell itself as something it isn't. Unlike a couple of big screen horror failures I could name. ("The Bride," *cough* *cough* Kenneth Brannagh's "Frankenstein" *choke* *cough*)
Dan Curtis stole horror classics and shoved them into a "five cliff hanger a week" soap weeper format with no apologies. It had strong women -- I defy anyone not to believe in Grayson Hall's Julia as the Compleat Cold Scientist, or that Lara Parker's Angelique (The actress has aged um, almost supernaturally well...age had barely touched her in an award show filmed in 1996) is the Mother of All Witches that will Truly Make You Regret Being Born if you **** with her. (while laughing hysterically as gravestones fall down, flies fly into the mouths of vampires [Hey, *that's* not in the script!] and bats fly on very visible wires.) Curtis seriously stumbled only with a story arc I'll call "The Thing In The Box..." No actual monster and it brainwashed everyone at Collinwood. HP Lovecraft meets the Stepford Wives...big misfire there.
It had unapoligetically promiscuous characters (and yet found itself in a quandry when one of its' main female players violated the "virginity clause" in her contract.)
It flips it's way merrily between eras and universes. ("The Parallel Time" story arc)
Another standout for it's musical score is the 1967 series of "Spider-Man" cartoons. (No valid linkage, but they are available at Amazon.)
Spidey’s an obvious cynic…in the first episodes he swerves dangerously close to delinquent and is never a winner, no matter how ably he dispatches a villain…all set to a nutty, jazzy, score that could only be about a hero in the Naked City. How can a colorful cartoon be a homage to comics and film noir at the same time??? This Spiderman did it well…and the kids got the usual jolt out of any costumed figure corralling the bad guys while the adolescents and some adults got a charge out of the sharper than a nail dialogue and the up to the minute music.
Spidey was also better than the TV ‘Batman’ of the time, because while the villains on that show were quite Clued in: Best example: Julie Newmar’s Emma Peel on catnip…or the completely crazed Frank Gorshin, the "heroes" were fence posts in costume.
We were supposed to buy that the leaden Bat and his perpetually shocked sidekick could *handle* these people?
I think NOT.
When one looks at TOS, I think it's important to know that it was simply the biggest best known, and best written of the wierd crop of stuff that hit the airwaves from 1959-1967
And for those of you upset that I haven't delved into Bond-mania and it's offspring (the coolest of which are the original "Johnny Quest" cartoons) its because *that* came from the politics of the day, not directly from the Weird side of the tracks.
And not *one* of the show's listed above would get past today's censors.
that makes me sad.
Sunday, August 20, 2006
Prelude
Before we touch on the 40 years,
Before we do honor to what we’ve loved…I have to go back a bit further.
To 1964.
Forty *two* years ago. When I was two going on three and couldn't have told a phaser from a popsicle and four years away from peering up at "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," from beneath my mother's ironing board. [Yes, the hamhanded anti-bigotry piece of wet towel was my very first exposure to Star Trek. And Frank Gorshin Wasn't even FUNNY, ***it!]
Roddenberry taking a meeting and promising those with the cash “of *course* you’ll get something familiar. Recognizable even. A space “Western.” High Noon with ray guns.
And then he went home and wrote, and…as happens often…when you are finished writing, it doesn’t come out as anything like what you started off to write.
Looking back and watching “The Cage,” well, of *course* it was Trek!
That amazing matte shot of Pike’s memory of Rigel 7, one of the best TOS ever created.
“A man’ll tell his bartender things he’ll never tell his doctor.”
“Rig to transmit ships power.”
“Is this a deception? Do you actually intend to destroy yourselves?”
“If we go buzzing about down there…”
And equally…what the hell is this? Certainly not the “Star Trek” we know.
“I’m *tired* of being responsible for 203 lives; who goes on the away team and who doesn’t; and who lives and who dies….to the point of considering resigning.” What a whiner!
If Kirk didn’t resign after losing Edith Keeler, then well *Mister Pike*
Suck it up and deal.
“…”I’m just not used to having a woman on the bridge.” (green and sensual in my fantasies hell yes! But NEVER on the bridge!)
[followed by an annoyed, pained look of Number One, his female First Officer, played by a gorgeous Majel Barret!]
An unfettered sweet Spock smile, pure Joy in the Unknown as he takes in some new flora.
But I’m just playin.’
I don’t really dismiss “The Cage.” As a matter of fact, it used one particular shot, that I believe had it been kept in, would have made the rest of TOS a bit more reverent and beautiful….Roddenberry did in 1964 what Robert Wise would overdo and fumble *badly* in Star Trek: The Motion(less) Picture.
There’s a “beauty pass” up over the ship’s bow in the opening credits, after the hinky music has subsided to a few constant belltones…you are given a sweep over the saucer section’s expanse, a sense of how big, and awesome the Enterprise is….and then the camera swings to the small bubble of the bridge atop the ship, and slowly hones in on the minuscule beings that move her…and we slip past the shields and through the hull….to a view of a starker bridge…but just as active…the hub of activity that we know well, just minus most of her happy coloring (in more than one way, since the crew is pretty Caucasian except for Spock)….and the story begins.
I love Pike. All the bravado…and all the pain, right out front, dragged there kicking and screaming by the Talosian’s powers of illusion. He’s terrified when he awakens that this will end up Just Like Rigel, and more of those he’s responsible for will lose their lives.
His soul is begging for that “rest at home,” while his mind realizes he’s got to work his way out of this box soon.
A snark about the “Orion Slave Girl” sequence: Vina has the tumbling dark curls, but she’s a deep forest/hunter green, the rich color of her skin being one more ‘attribute’ meant to titillate the senses, no doubt…She’s hot!
But then we get to “Enterprise” forty years later, and the Orion chicks have the lithe movement and the tumbling dark hair…but they’re painted with pea soup…that dark chartreuse that says nothing but “YUCK!” to me.
“There’s a way out of any cage and I’ll find it.” It’s Pike’s resolve speaking, but the line is pure James Tiberius Kirk.
TOS is branded as too sexist all the time, but I find the forced “catfight” between Vina, Colt and Number One stayed remarkably civilized, even with the Talosians vocalizing the hidden thoughts of Colt and Number One. For discussion of this pilot, and the TOS that comes after, people aren’t allowing it to spring up out of the ground as the product of its era.
Any First Contact team would know that the way to best understand a new planet’s culture is to record and report with as little bias as possible, and yet fans of the series (particularly those that never took to the original show, it seems) will not allow the pieces of this puzzle, conceived and built in different decades by differing creative teams, the influences it cannot avoid.)
And, the end of the Cage is now profoundly uncomfortable, if you really watch it.
Pike, Colt, Number One with the agreement of Vina, decide they will not live as amusing pets/ terraforming drones for the much more powerful Talosians and rig one of the away team’s phasers to explode. They’ll use the IED rather than submit.
“Your race has a unique hatred of captivity, even when it’s pleasant and benevolent… This makes you too violent and dangerous a species for our needs.”
…but that’s what Trek, real Trek is supposed to do….make you *think!*
And of course the suits said to Roddenberry….This isn’t our space opera! Come on now….Action/adventure!
And “Where No Man…” was the answer to that.
In early September we’ll talk about TOS….But since the Cage is unique….we give it it’s due separately.
Before we do honor to what we’ve loved…I have to go back a bit further.
To 1964.
Forty *two* years ago. When I was two going on three and couldn't have told a phaser from a popsicle and four years away from peering up at "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," from beneath my mother's ironing board. [Yes, the hamhanded anti-bigotry piece of wet towel was my very first exposure to Star Trek. And Frank Gorshin Wasn't even FUNNY, ***it!]
Roddenberry taking a meeting and promising those with the cash “of *course* you’ll get something familiar. Recognizable even. A space “Western.” High Noon with ray guns.
And then he went home and wrote, and…as happens often…when you are finished writing, it doesn’t come out as anything like what you started off to write.
Looking back and watching “The Cage,” well, of *course* it was Trek!
That amazing matte shot of Pike’s memory of Rigel 7, one of the best TOS ever created.
“A man’ll tell his bartender things he’ll never tell his doctor.”
“Rig to transmit ships power.”
“Is this a deception? Do you actually intend to destroy yourselves?”
“If we go buzzing about down there…”
And equally…what the hell is this? Certainly not the “Star Trek” we know.
“I’m *tired* of being responsible for 203 lives; who goes on the away team and who doesn’t; and who lives and who dies….to the point of considering resigning.” What a whiner!
If Kirk didn’t resign after losing Edith Keeler, then well *Mister Pike*
Suck it up and deal.
“…”I’m just not used to having a woman on the bridge.” (green and sensual in my fantasies hell yes! But NEVER on the bridge!)
[followed by an annoyed, pained look of Number One, his female First Officer, played by a gorgeous Majel Barret!]
An unfettered sweet Spock smile, pure Joy in the Unknown as he takes in some new flora.
But I’m just playin.’
I don’t really dismiss “The Cage.” As a matter of fact, it used one particular shot, that I believe had it been kept in, would have made the rest of TOS a bit more reverent and beautiful….Roddenberry did in 1964 what Robert Wise would overdo and fumble *badly* in Star Trek: The Motion(less) Picture.
There’s a “beauty pass” up over the ship’s bow in the opening credits, after the hinky music has subsided to a few constant belltones…you are given a sweep over the saucer section’s expanse, a sense of how big, and awesome the Enterprise is….and then the camera swings to the small bubble of the bridge atop the ship, and slowly hones in on the minuscule beings that move her…and we slip past the shields and through the hull….to a view of a starker bridge…but just as active…the hub of activity that we know well, just minus most of her happy coloring (in more than one way, since the crew is pretty Caucasian except for Spock)….and the story begins.
I love Pike. All the bravado…and all the pain, right out front, dragged there kicking and screaming by the Talosian’s powers of illusion. He’s terrified when he awakens that this will end up Just Like Rigel, and more of those he’s responsible for will lose their lives.
His soul is begging for that “rest at home,” while his mind realizes he’s got to work his way out of this box soon.
A snark about the “Orion Slave Girl” sequence: Vina has the tumbling dark curls, but she’s a deep forest/hunter green, the rich color of her skin being one more ‘attribute’ meant to titillate the senses, no doubt…She’s hot!
But then we get to “Enterprise” forty years later, and the Orion chicks have the lithe movement and the tumbling dark hair…but they’re painted with pea soup…that dark chartreuse that says nothing but “YUCK!” to me.
“There’s a way out of any cage and I’ll find it.” It’s Pike’s resolve speaking, but the line is pure James Tiberius Kirk.
TOS is branded as too sexist all the time, but I find the forced “catfight” between Vina, Colt and Number One stayed remarkably civilized, even with the Talosians vocalizing the hidden thoughts of Colt and Number One. For discussion of this pilot, and the TOS that comes after, people aren’t allowing it to spring up out of the ground as the product of its era.
Any First Contact team would know that the way to best understand a new planet’s culture is to record and report with as little bias as possible, and yet fans of the series (particularly those that never took to the original show, it seems) will not allow the pieces of this puzzle, conceived and built in different decades by differing creative teams, the influences it cannot avoid.)
And, the end of the Cage is now profoundly uncomfortable, if you really watch it.
Pike, Colt, Number One with the agreement of Vina, decide they will not live as amusing pets/ terraforming drones for the much more powerful Talosians and rig one of the away team’s phasers to explode. They’ll use the IED rather than submit.
“Your race has a unique hatred of captivity, even when it’s pleasant and benevolent… This makes you too violent and dangerous a species for our needs.”
…but that’s what Trek, real Trek is supposed to do….make you *think!*
And of course the suits said to Roddenberry….This isn’t our space opera! Come on now….Action/adventure!
And “Where No Man…” was the answer to that.
In early September we’ll talk about TOS….But since the Cage is unique….we give it it’s due separately.
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