Watching YouTube: Original Star Trek Bloopers, Season 3!

Before searching for the Season 1 and 2 bloopers on YouTube, I didn't even know for sure that these existed.  I recall some source saying as a fact that there was no third season blooper reel, because, since they knew the series would almost certainly not be picked up for a fourth season, there was nothing to celebrate.  (Which sort of misses the point of a "wrap party," but never mind.)

I once had a record album of third season Star Trek bloopers, salvaged from the original studio tapes.  I don't remember them being that funny, but I wish now I hadn't given it away... if for no other reason than people are selling them for $20 on eBay.

As I recall, Allan Asherman mentions a couple of third season bloopers in The Star Trek Compendium.  But since I never heard about them anywhere else, I thought maybe these were bloopers that someone remembered, but that never made it into an end-of-season reel, per se.

But here it is... I guess.  I can't say for sure that the cast and crew saw these, in this form, when the series wrapped up production at the end of 1968, but they're more than I ever expected to see.

As to the end... I don't know if this was part of the same reel, but it's footage from the pilot version of "Where No Man Has Gone Before."  It looks like it's here just to set up a pretty lame voiceover gag (which may be a new addition, seeing as it's pretty clearly a video pause, not a film one.)

My theory is that someone noticed it in the editing room (it is, after all, exactly the footage that they cut out in 1966 to make the broadcast series version), and added it for nostalgic reasons.  As the series was coming to an end, cast and crew could look back on where it all began (not counting the rejected first pilot, of course).



0:14 This is what you call "gallows humor."  To be greeted with a hollow laugh.

0:28 Beats me what this text says, at this resolution.  Get used to seeing it several times a minute, though.

1:26 This and the next one (in the transporter room) are the ones I remember Asherman mentioning.

4:55 I've had this cue (and the end theme, which we'll hear in a minute) for 20 years on CD, and cassette tape before that.  I once used both of them (and other pilot music) in a not at all Trek-related student film.  It's nice finally to hear them in context.

Watching YouTube: Original Star Trek Bloopers, Season 2

As I probably should also have said last week, sorry about the low video quality.  I would have thought there were more posts of the Star Trek bloopers out there to choose from.  But this is as good as I've been able to find.

Second Season "Wrap Party" Reel:


0:00 I've never seen this joke station I.D. before.  It wasn't on either of the tapes I once had.  Makes me laugh, though.

1:41 I'd just like to tell all you young whippersnappers that, until I was a teenager, this is what this shot looked like most of the time on television: the 16mm prints were so bad, you couldn't see the planet at all.  Plus, we had to beam uphill to school.  Both ways.

2:07 They're missing a shot here.  As I recall, it was an outtake from "Bread and Circuses."  Leonard Nimoy turns to the handheld camera and breaks out in a huge, un-Spock-like grin, and the camera suddenly tilts.  The operator was probably breaking up.

2:28 Actor Ed Reimers was also the TV pitchman for Allstate insurance, delivering the slogan, "You're in good hands with Allstate."  I think my favorite bit of this, though, is Reimers' moment of tongue-protruding concentration as he reaches to catch the Tribble.

2:31 I think this may be my favorite outtake, just for the randomness of it.  Some people on YouTube were confused about what Shatner says here, so here it is: "Listen, that bacon is really bad.  No, no kidding, it just stays with you the whole night."  (I may have it wrong at the very end.  It's tough to make out there.)  He has more to say about the bacon a little later.

3:11 This is frequent extra Billy Blackburn removing his "android body" makeup on the set of "Return to Tomorrow."  By the way, if I remember correctly you get paid time and a half for aftertime, and twice time for yet-later "golden time."

3:54 Shatner is addressing associate producer Robert H. Justman.  One of Justman's jobs was to shut filming down promptly every night, so the production wouldn't have to pay out a bunch of that aforementioned aftertime and golden time pay.  However, due to that frugality, it seems Shatner couldn't get all his old-age makeup scenes done in one day.  And he wants Justman to know in the rushes tomorrow.  (See below about "the rushes.")

4:07 This is Gene Roddenberry on the set of "Operation-- Annihilate!" backed with audio from "Patterns of Force."

5:01 I wish I could tell you who these people are.  It would probably make it funnier.

5:50 I don't know who the guy here is, either.  But the real mystery to me is who authorized spending the production's film to document women working out.  And what they were planning to use it for afterwards.  Okay, maybe that last part isn't such a mystery.

6:15 "The rushes" are the quickly-produced print of the negative shot the previous day... and also (as Shatner is using it here) the term for the screening of that print.  In other words, he's talking to the production staff.

6:35 Carrying Shatner away is Ted Cassidy, who played the android Ruk (and the voices of the Puppet Balok and the Gorn) the previous season.  Before that, he was Lurch on The Addams Family.  Here, he's visiting from the set of The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, where he played Injun Joe.

Watching YouTube: Original Star Trek Bloopers, Season 1

I first saw these bloopers when my father bought it on a grey market tape from "Video Yesteryear."  They filled the tape out with Laugh-In bloopers, which just kind of confused me, because I was three years old when it went off the air, so what did I know from Laugh-In?  Er, as opposed to Star Trek, which went off the air before I was born.  But you know what I mean.

The tape self-destructed in my family's Betamax, so that was the end of that.  In the early '90s, I was able to get another grey-market tape (this time on VHS) at a convention.  Eventually, that went missing somehow. Now there's YouTube, and until and unless what Craig Ferguson calls the Mighty CBS Corporation decides to suppress them, I need never be without the Star Trek blooper reels again.

Mid-season blooper reel:


2:31 Why the Mission Impossible clip?  Besides that it was also produced by Desilu, I dunno.

2:55 Why Lucy?  She still owned Desilu at the time (and starred in the company's The Lucy Show).  She sold out to Gulf+Western late in Star Trek's second season, and Desilu was merged with Paramount (the studio next door, also acquired by Gulf+Western).


End-of-the-season "wrap party" reel.  Some from the previous one recur here:


3:33 This one confuses some people.  I've even heard people claim this was Nichelle Nichols' first day on the set.  (It's not; it's from "A Taste of Armageddon," late in the season.)  The thing is, when actors aren't in a shot, sometimes they don't stick around to feed lines to the actor on screen.  Someone in the crew stands in to give the actor someone to react to.  Here, Nichols is unsure who is standing in for Shatner.  (As I recall from actors' memoirs, Shatner's frequent refusal to feed lines got on the other regulars' nerves.  Most of them usually stayed out of courtesy to the onscreen actor.)

If Your Cats Are Science Fiction Nerds, Too...

...here's how to thrill them beyond measure.  If they're not, however, they will disdain you and puke in your shoes.  But you're probably safe.  It's a well-known fact that cats made up 28% of the audience of Enterprise by the fourth season.

Still, considering how obsessed most cats are with appearing dignified (in between bouts of cleaning their butts with their tongues), they will probably just claim to like these "ironically."  They will also insist you use the term "speculative fiction" in referring to their interest.

Get back, Trekkie cat

(Imgur via Blastr via Nerd Approved)

Now, this wouldn't interest my cats.  Not even the Reliant one that I'm tempted to buy and lie on myself.  You see, Charlotte and Emily are Doctor Who fans.  They watch K-9 blowing up at the beginning of "The Leisure Hive," and they just laugh and laugh.

Kaylee the cat showed a decided interest in the 1/6 scale TARDIS her owner domestic help was building.

The original version of "The Mind Robber, Episode 1" was much more horrifying.

Accordingly, he next made a step up to 1/2 scale to give her the cat fort of her dreams.

She's not blurry here, she's in a state of quantum indeterminacy.

Not actually bigger on the inside.  But it is more furnished than most versions of the TARDIS.

(via TARDIS Builders)

Charlotte and Emily want me to build them one, but not one like this.  They're original series fans.  Right now, they're rolling on the floor, biting each other's neck over the issue of whether I ought to build them a Brachacki box, or a Tom Yardley Jones.

Watching You Tube: Surplus WEAT

(originally posted, with an additional video that's no longer online, December 23, 2008)

For Google's, and possibly your, benefit: Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2 focuses on the writers of Star Trek. All fiction, old and new, is from contributors from the original series to Voyager. Plus, there's a major article on the making of the Hugo and Nebula-nominated "World Enough and Time" episode of the fan-run Star Trek New Voyages Internet series.

Dragon*Con program directors visit the set of New Voyages during the making of WEAT. Funny thing is, although my station as Digital Media Wrangler was right out in the open, between sickbay and the bridge, I don't remember this visit at all. But then, I was probably tunnel-visioned on grinding out the DVDs of dailies, as usual.

An upstate New York ABC affiliate talks to a couple of fans who recently (i.e., circa "Blood and Fire") became involved with New Voyages:



And finally, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett (Servo and Crow during the Sci-Fi Channel years of Mystery Science Theater 3000) riff on WEAT for RiffTrax Presents. Although the percentage of jokes that boil down to, "This sucks. That sucks. Look over there, that sucks, too" is a lot higher than in the old MST3K days, I enjoyed it a lot. However, I can see how the actors might not feel the same way. With a couple of them, I think the joking approached the cruel.

My favorite line: "I has a lot of LOLcats on there."

Watching You Tube: Separate the WEAT from the Chaff

I've posted quite a few YouTube videos here, regarding the Star Trek New Voyages/Star Trek Phase II episode "World Enough and Time."  It's sort of a Thrilling Wonder family thing.  We had a 21-page feature article in Volume 2 about it, written by its script coordinator and documentarian Crystal Ann Taylor.  Co-writer Michael Reaves was also co-writer of "Manifest Destiny" in Volume 2.  Co-writer/director Marc Scott Zicree was Contributing Editor on both volumes, and wrote the article "Where No Writer Had Gone Before" for Volume 2.  Costume designer Iain McCaig created the Chesley-nominated cover for Volume 1/Summer 2007.  Assistant costume designer Mischi McCaig illustrated two stories in Volume 2.  And me, I was co-producer/digital media wrangler.  (I still have several hard drives I bought to hold footage for that project.)

[UPDATE 8/13/11: I really should have checked the credits before posting this, because I knew I'd forget someone.  In fact, I forgot several someones.  Kevin King, who wrote "Dark Side" for Volume 1, was the Producer's Assistant.  Steve Perry, the other co-writer of "Manifest Destiny," was the voice of the pilot of shuttlecraft Sturgeon.  Elisabeth Fies, who videotaped my interview with Forrest J Ackerman (which appeared in print in Volume 1, and as several videos on this blog) and asked additional questions, was a Production Assistant.  Pamela Davis, Editorial Assistant on both volumes, was Script Supervisor.  And receiving Special Thanks were Harlan Ellison ("Life Hutch," Volume 2), George Clayton Johnson ("Rock-a-Bye-Baby--Or Die!" Volume 2), Ray Bradbury ("The Irritated People," Volume 1), Mike Okuda (two illustrations in Volume 2), and finally, thanked beyond the grave, Theodore Sturgeon ("The Golden Helix," Volume 2).  In addition, many fine people on both sides of the camera were interviewed for the feature article, "No Studio, No Network, No Problem," but you'll have to ask the author who all of them were, because I'm sure there are many I never even knew about.]

I don't know why I mention this, especially, except to explain why we should have so many videos about WEAT that this post should be necessary.  You see, some of the videos have gone offline over the years.  So I figured I would gather together the ones that are still on YouTube, so I can delete the old posts with dead links.

Rehearsal of George Takei's big fight scene in the transporter room. I don't know who shot this, but it's interesting. Myself, I was parked downstairs at my Macintosh G5 as usual, so all I saw of the making of this scene as it was happening was a few seconds as a time as I picked up P2 cards full of footage, and dropped off empty ones.  (I made the window this size, because that's all the resolution it has.)


Eugene "Rod" Roddenberry, son of the Great Bird of the Galaxy himself, on WEAT, shortly after the premiere in August 2007.

Speaking of the premiere, here's George Takei talking about it just days before. The live streaming of the event, unfortunately, didn't go so well.  As I understand it, although fans were encouraged to register ahead of time, many did not, and the unexpected traffic crashed the server.
Incidentally, although this may seem all Hollywood gushy of me, George Takei is a cool guy, a real trouper, and a great dinner raconteur.

Watch for a special Easter egg at 3:18. Yes, it's the back of your humble editor/WEAT "Digital Media Wrangler."

Well, that's taken out two old posts with three dead links.  And I'm sure you won't have a long wait for more WEAT.  (You could look them up in the old posts, of course, but that would be cheating.)

Radio: The Veldt (Dimension X)

Our celebration of what's left of the sixtieth anniversary of the classic NBC radio series Dimension X continues with Ray Bradbury's "The Veldt."

I once posted on this blog the version produced nearly four years later for X Minus One, but don't bother to find it, because both the file and the player went offline long ago, and I haven't gotten around to fixing that yet.  And all I said there that's worth repeating now is:

Yes, it's virtual reality, imagined about forty years before "virtual reality." (I just checked Wikipedia to make sure I had the time right, and found this: "An early short science fiction story--'The Veldt'--about an all too real 'virtual reality' was included in the 1951 book The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury and may be the first fictional work to fully describe the concept.")

(Although, checking the link now, I see that that quote is no longer part of their article on virtual reality.  Oh, well.)


Star Trek: The Next Generation's holodeck is also somewhat reminiscent of this story's nursery.  In theory, the reason in Trek why the user can seem to be in a large environment in a not-too-large room is that there are holographic images on the walls, floor, and ceiling, as in the nursery here.  Where TNG did "The Veldt" one better, of course, was in creating closer objects with force fields, so the user can interact with them.  In "The Veldt"... well, I'm not sure what happens, but it's not part of the factory specs.

I suppose this makes "The Veldt" the first "holodeck accident" story, 37 years before TNG (or even 24 years before a startlingly forward-looking animated Trek episode called "The Practical Joker").  But don't hold that against it.

I wish I could say more about the original story, but, er, I haven't read it.  I ordered a collection including it, but it didn't make it here for the anniversary.  Imagine how I feldt.  (Sorry, I had to get a "dt" joke in here somewhere.  If I do any more, you may want to get out the beldt, and raise some weldts on my peldt.)

As last week, this recording has some apparent crosstalk from another station, but it's not as bad.



A line about the futuristic house that's become pretty funny in the interim: "The soundproofed Happy Life home had cost $30,000, installed."

I'm guessing children Peter and Wendy were named after the characters in J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan.  (Incidentally, I find, Googling the issue, that Barrie did not, as many people claim, invent the name "Wendy."  Isn't the Internet wonderful?)

I can't help imagining this house as the same one in "There Will Come Soft Rains," earlier in its life.  (Although as I recall, that one was custom-designed, whereas this one seems to be off the shelf.)

Note that the producers seem to have accidentally left the nursery "echo" filter on for the announcer's throw to the title.

This adaptation is far superior to the later X Minus One version.  That one had a narrative envelope which allowed Ernest Kinoy (who scripted both versions) to use Ray Bradbury's descriptions in dialogue as the characters recount the events, rather than via a narrator, as here.  Unfortunately, it seriously blunted the impact of the story, literalizing and softening Bradbury's unexplained ending into some psychological episode and promising that the characters will eventually be all better.

YouTube Tuesday: Apple Juice: The Final Frontier

As usual with anything popular, I'm probably the last person on Earth to post these.

These just crack me up like nobody's business. There's really no explaining, except that these are redubbed by some people having nothing to do with what Craig Ferguson calls "the Mighty CBS Corporation."

Contains language not safe for (as they used to say on WTTW Chicago before Monty Python) younger or more sensitive viewers. (Seriously, it's not.)

A friend of mine sent a couple of these links to a foreign email acquaintance, who was appalled by them. My friend realized in retrospect that probably at least half the joke lies in familiarity with the stiff, stylized way the TNG crew normally talks. Or maybe it was the language? Who can say?

But I think some of the lines that crack me up most are the ones that take advantage of the actors' characteristic delivery. These aren't that funny written down...

"...and eat cheddar cheese."

"I used to run a soup kitchen... in my pants."

"My dad stabbed me with a hen... for free."

...but dubbed to match Stewart's characteristic delivery, they're hilarious to me. (I also like the one with Data saying, "I'm not a racist, but I don't like Alaskans.")

It's not quite as funny with a cooler crew.

...although "He who smelt it, dealt it," delivered in Jimmy Doohan's Scotty rhythm, is still pretty funny.

YouTube Tuesday: Take TWOK on the Wild Side

Like everyone else, I heard pretty much from the time that Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan came out that Saavik is half Romulan. The movie itself, of course, doesn't actually say so. Until now, I didn't know this bit of information even got as far as being filmed.

Also in this video: a bit deleted from the final scene on the bridge, hinting at future Saavik/David romance.



This is the link I was going to use, until I found the one above with much, much better sound. But this one puts the clips in context.

An alternate version of the Kirk/Saavik turbolift scene. Same dialogue, but shot as intercut closeups, rather than a single long take with both on the screen. It appeared in the slightly longer cut shown on ABC. Someone on the YouTube page for this video suggested it was specially shot for use on TV, since it works much better on the 4:3 screen than the widescreen composition for the released film does. I think it's equally possible that director Nicholas Meyer shot coverage, as usual, but decided in editing that the scene played better in the unbroken master shot.

Speaking of the YouTube page, it's one of those things that makes me think the human race is far too stupid to survive. One person comments that it's exactly the same as the theatrical version. Another explains in detail how it isn't. A third comments that it's exactly the same as the theatrical version. A fourth explains in detail how it isn't. A fifth comments that it's exactly the same as the theatrical version...

Two vintage TV spots for the theatrical release.

A little mashup I found via io9. People have called Kirk a tinpot dictator before. They just haven't said until now which tinpot dictator.

Star Trek II performed by cartoon bunnies in 30 seconds (give or take 18)!

And, as we roll to a stop, we bring you the unreleased, unrated, far more vicious version of Khan's attack on the Enterprise.

YouTube Tuesday: re: "Generations"

The thought occurred to me recently that it's been 15 years since Star Trek: Generations was released. That's the same amount of time as between Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Generations itself. Makes me feel reeeeally old, as though I need any help in that department.

It's also the same amount of time between "Space Seed" and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. I wasn't around for "Space Seed." In fact, I was conceived at about the time Star Trek ended its network run, and generally, anything that happened before one can remember ends up getting lumped together as The Historical Past. But thinking about these 15-year stretches, at a time when I'm watching the episodes of the original V on the 25th anniversaries of my seeing them the first time, gives me more of a feeling of scale, timewise.

But that's not what I called you all here for. Here's the original opening scene from Generations. (Note that it's intercut with the floating champagne bottle which ended up opening the film.) I remember reading somewhere that a stuntman was killed shooting Kirk's landing, but that may not be true, since I can't find anything about it via Google. If it is, the fact that the stunt ultimately needn't have been performed makes it even more sad.

Generations was originally written with Spock and McCoy accompanying Kirk, but Leonard Nimoy felt the script needed a rewrite, and DeForest Kelley thought he'd had a good send-off in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and a return would just undermine that. So the producers went with Scotty and Chekov instead. Unfortunately, as you can tell in the clip above, the writers made only minimal changes to accommodate the different characters. (Hence, also, Chekov oddly taking charge of Sickbay on the Enterprise-B.) In the clip below, after Kirk is thought killed by the Nexus, Scotty gets Spock's philosophical observation.

Generations was originally supposed to introduce a new Starfleet uniform. It was pretty much the Next Generation version, but cut more like the original-cast movie jackets, with sleeve rank stripes reminiscent of the original series. A set of action figures came out with this uniform, but the movie ended up just using the Next Generation and Deep Space Nine uniforms (which the characters alternate with puzzling frequency, as though they were constantly stopping in mid-action to change).

Until I saw this clip, I didn't know that any footage was shot before the producers made their decision. But here, you can (sorta kinda) see it at about 0:11.

And here's the original fight scene. More about that in a moment. But it is every bit as lame a death for Kirk as you've been led to believe.

Here's a clip from the Rifftrax of Generations, featuring Michael J. Nelson and Kevin Murphy from Mystery Science Theater 3000. I haven't seen the rest of it, but this doesn't seem to be one of their best. (I did mostly enjoy Murphy and Bill Corbett's Rifftrax of the Star Trek New Voyages episode I co-produced, "World Enough and Time," although it was needlessly cruel to a couple of the fan actors.)

Okay, now about Kirk's death. I thought Generations was all right, but even at the time, I noted that the story was less like a plot than a to-do list: kill Kirk, destroy the Enterprise-D, give Data his emotion chip... The elements just seemed shoehorned together, without much logic or sense of occasion. Especially the use of Kirk. I mean, this is it, right? The big meeting between Kirk and Picard? The death of a hero some people had been following for 28 years? And it is such a damp damn squib, even in the reshot version that made it to the screen. Captain James T. Friggin' Kirk goes to the 24th century and lays down his life... as muscle to keep Soran busy for a moment while Picard presses a couple of buttons? Never mind that, had Picard (or the writers) applied a moment's thought to the situation, he could have found a better time to come out of the Nexus, and defeated Soran much more easily.

Which brings me to the next three clips, which are much more entertaining than you'd think a thirty-minute evisceration of Generations could be. That's because it's not a shrill rant, but more a sardonic, logical point-by-point takedown which notices the things I mentioned above, and many more. (For instance, I'd never noticed that Generations reused a couple of effects shots from the previous film. Granted, Khan reused numerous shots from The Motion Picture, but at least that one had economy as an excuse. Generations cost about three times as much as Khan.)

YouTube Tuesday: Ring Around the Globey

What if the Earth had rings like Saturn's? This video starts out a little dull, but it gets down to business at around the one-minute mark, showing how the rings would appear from various cities around the globe.

And here's something I'm really looking forward to, from Star Trek: Phase II's senior executive producer James Cawley: Buck Rogers. Judging from this little effects trailer, it's going to have that same mix of modern effects and retro style that makes Phase II so entertaining.

I think Buck Rogers will be an interesting test for the independent online production model. Unlike Phase II, this is a fully-licensed production, and therefore can be done as a for-profit venture. Can it make a profit? Can it have the same value-for-budget as Phase II without the power of those magic words, Star Trek, to get dozens of people, fans and professionals, to work for free? I'm hoping the answers are yes and yes, because a production and distribution model that could support professional-quality work for an audience of real SF enthusiasts-- that is, without needing to water it down for a mass audience --would be about the best thing ever to happen to the genre in the audiovisual realm.

YouTube Tuesday: Bits and Pieces

Yet another video I wouldn't have known about if not for i09, here's an amusing CGI collision between two science fiction epics of 1968, 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Doctor Who Cybermen story "The Wheel in Space." (I hadn't thought of this when I decided to post the video, but the series turned 46 years young yesterday.) I particularly enjoyed the "recasting" of the Pan-Am shuttle scene. Even if you don't know Doctor Who from a hole in the ground, the re-creation of iconic 2001 sets is still pretty incredible. And if you don't know 2001 from a hole in the ground, either... well, there's not much I can do to help you.

If you're anything like me (and if you are, I'm so, so sorry), you've been waiting almost a year for this: Part II of the Star Trek: Phase II adventure "Blood and Fire," co-written and directed by Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2 alum David Gerrold. This is the recap and Part II teaser.

They're still working on a final sound mix, but you can download the current working version here. Since I'm choosy, in addition to being a big, big nerd, I'm going to wait until it's all done, and then let the full experience wash over me in the fullness of its coolness.

And while I'm pimping the work of people I know... I finally watched Humanity's End, the new film by Neil Johnson, the other day, and it's a knockout!  It keeps the action coming and delivers some unexpected emotional punch at the same time. And some of the effects are pretty damn impressive, too—the envy of science fiction films hundreds of times its budget of $140,000.

Don Baldaramos has a great supporting role in it as General Freitag. And he was in the Star Trek: Phase II episode "World Enough and Time," which we covered in the aforementioned TWS Volume 2, as well as being indispensable behind the scenes. So it all fits together, you see. (Kari Nissena, who has nothing to do with Thrilling Wonder Stories, but who I also know, appears in the film as a Nephilim officer, Gorlock.)

Speaking of things fitting together, it's nice to see the spaceship sets at Laurel Canyon Stages again. We shot most of A Can of Paint there in 2002, and I was just wondering the other day if it was still around.

Thursday Preview: I Canna Change the Laws of Physics!

(Click on thumbnail for full-size image. Right-click [or control-click if you have a one-button mouse] and select "Download Linked File" to save jpg file to your computer. Feel free to distribute the unaltered file.)

You ever wanted a phaser? Sure, we all have. But if it came down to a gunfight, you'd be better off with a good old bullet-slinging pistol.

This is one of the surprising conclusions physics teacher Adam Weiner reaches in "I Canna Change the Laws of Physics!" Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2, continues its Star Trek theme with this article, pitting the Franchise against its most implacable foes: the laws of physics. Yes, they may have given Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein guest spots on The Next Generation, but they just can't be bought.

Sir Isaac could tell you that, given artificial gravity that always points toward the floor, a photon torpedo hit should not fling you out of your seat. And Einstein would question the notion of bringing the Enterprise to a "full stop" in empty space, in the absence of an absolute frame of reference.

Adam Weiner also wrote the book Don't Try This at Home! The Physics of Hollywood Movies, and articles for Popular Science about Hollywood physics. But don't get the idea that Adam Weiner turns his nose up at Star Trek. He loves the Franchise—especially the original series—and confronts it, he says, "in the spirit of a good natured ribbing."

Illustrator Winston Engle is his own artist of last resort. He can turn out a tolerable image, provided he has lots and lots of photographic reference.

Thursday Preview: Columbus of the Stars

(Click on thumbnail for full-size image. Right-click [or control-click if you have a one-button mouse] and select "Download Linked File" to save jpg file to your computer. Feel free to distribute the unaltered file.)

Since I wrote the introduction to this in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2, I suppose the sensible thing is just to give myself permission to post it here. Me, you may proceed.

Thank you, me.

***

Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

In 1964, a successful writer begins shopping around Hollywod a pitch for a science fiction series of a new kind.

Unlike previous such series, which have tended to be either anthologies, or else cheap daytime fare for children, this is a series for prime time with continuing characters, aimed at an adult audience.

It’s the story of a starship and her crew. Their assignment is to survey for undiscovered planets, to contact alien beings and cultures, to probe into reaches never visited by mankind.

I’m sure you’re ahead of me. The writer is, of course, Ib Melchior, and the series is Columbus of the Stars.

No? Well, that other series pitch did have the advantage of selling. Although its synchronicitous sibling never left the launch pad, it’s interesting to consider that sometimes, an idea may only seem unique in retrospect because it succeeded, while other iterations of the notion did not.
If things had gone a little differently, might this be an issue on Columbus of the Stars, with an article about a forgotten and somewhat similar pitch with the unlikely name Star Trek?

At the time, the safer bet might have been Columbus of the Stars. Ib Melchior had worked in television since 1948, and wrote for the series Men into Space. He was a published science fiction author. He had moved to the big screen, writing and directing The Angry Red Planet. In 1964, he had two films in the pipeline: Robinson Crusoe on Mars, which he wrote, and The Time Travelers, again as writer-director. (Crusoe’s Friday, Vic Lundin, developed Columbus of the Stars with Melchior.)

Gene Roddenberry had impressive television credits, with scores of produced scripts and a Writers Guild award, but his only science fiction was an anthology episode, “The Secret Weapon of 117,” in which a covert alien invasion falls to that little human thing called love. He had recently become a showrunner with The Lieutenant, but did better provoking conflict with the Marine Corps, which withdrew its production support in mid-season, than in drumming up ratings. The network had not picked the show up for a second season.

Imagine yourself a network executive in 1964, and this crosses your desk. Might you have given it a shot?

***

Me, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, me, that was beautiful.

No, really, me, my modesty! I couldn't have done it without you.

But there's more to "Columbus of the Stars: A Trek Not Taken?" than the introduction and the never-before-published series pitch bible. There's also the story of how it came to the desk of that other guy with that other pitch about a starship crew. Did he go where two men had gone before?

Whoops, look at the time! Guess you'll just have to buy Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2, and read all about it.

That was a dirty trick, me.

Hey, me, lay off, I gotta make a living, here.

YouTube Tuesday: The Federation's Model Citizens

I have this model kit. I bought it at the Star Trek Experience in Las Vegas. And although I've opened the box and looked at the pieces, it remains completely unassembled. Eventually, I'll lose some pieces, and throw the kit away. That's what happens to 75% of the model kits I buy.

I once had an AMT model kit of the original series bridge. That one got as far as my painting some of the pieces before I lost some and... well, see text above.

I actually did put together and paint an NCC-1701-A model once. Over time, the glue degraded the plastic, and the engine pylons broke off. Then I had the kit with the little LED lights, seen below. See text above as to what became of that.

I loves me some Wrath of Khan, and I loves me some Reliant. I bought an unlicensed Reliant model kit, and actually put it together, but I've never painted it. I'm sure I still have the decals, but Lord only knows where.

You know, I had an AMT original series Enterprise kit once, but etc.

Okay, now I'm just depressed.

Sunday Scientifiction: The Transformation of Professor Schmitz

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You may have noticed that I've been presenting a lot of material here on the blog with connections to Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2. The Star Trek New Voyages episode "World Enough and Time" (subject of a 21-page feature article) for YouTube Tuesday. Stories by authors in the volume for Friday Radio. And, of course, previews for Thursday Preview. If I could find games with a connection for Monday Game, or a serial with a connection for Saturday Matinee, you know I'd be right on it.

But I really didn't expect to find a connection for Sunday Scientifiction. I found it pretty much by accident; I simply found the earliest story by an author we haven't seen before in my (small) pre-Amazing Stories Gernsback magazine collection, and gave it a read. And hey presto.

This may be the earliest story to deal scientifically with the idea of teleportation—the notion that entered the public mind most indelibly with Star Trek's transporter. And did I mention that all the fiction in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2, is by writers from the various Star Trek television series? I did? Oh.

Anyway, its primacy forgives it some sins. Like many of the stories in the early Gernsback magazines, it mostly exists to present a scientific idea. And once it's done that—in this case, just when it feels like a plot is about to break out, it kind of slams to a close.

By the way, as a cat owner, I don't think I'd put mine to the use that Prof. Schmitz does his. I find it difficult enough to keep track of them without beaming them all over the place.

Thursday Preview: Where No Scribe Had Gone Before

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As you know, and I keep reminding Google's spiders, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2, is a special Star Trek volume. All seven new, and all six classic, stories are by writers from the various TV series. Plus, it features more than 40 pages of articles about various aspects of the Star Trek phenomenon.

(It's also available for pre-order for the low, low price of $10, and ships March 12! Click on the banner to go to the Thrilling Wonder Store and reserve a copy!! Hurry, before I have to drag out more exclamation points!!!)

The subject of this week's Thursday Preview is where everything comes together. It's one of the aforementioned articles, it's about the literary writers of Star Trek on the big and small screens, and it's written by one of those very writers.

Marc Scott Zicree originated and co-wrote the Magic Time trilogy of novels. He also had story credit on the Next Generation episode "First Contact" and the much-loved Deep Space Nine episode "Far Beyond the Stars." Tying TWS2 into even more of a nice thematic bow, he directed and co-wrote the Hugo and Nebula-nominated "World Enough and Time," the episode of Internet production Star Trek New Voyages about which we have a 21-page feature article.

Zicree also practically invented the genre of in-depth, episode-by-episode examinations of the writing and production of television series with The Twilight Zone Companion. And he had the persistence to do it even after twenty-some publishers had told him no one could possibly be interested about a guide to some twenty-year-old science fiction show. To cut a long story short, it found a publisher, and has been continuously in print ever since, more than 25 years now.

The Twilight Zone and the original Star Trek are probably the two most literate science fiction series in television history. They employed numerous published writers, some practically institutions in the science fiction and fantasy genres. Although this hasn't been as true of the subsequent Star Trek series, all of them, from the animated series to Enterprise, had novelists amongst their writers, as did the movies.

So if you just know, say, Theodore Sturgeon as the guy who wrote "Shore Leave" and "Amok Time," here's your chance to learn more about him and many other writers from Star Trek. And even if you're familiar with their work both in print and on the screen, you'll probably find some surprises.

Thursday Preview: A Gift Though Small

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'Twas twenty years ago next Wednesday. I'd been watching Star Trek: The Next Generation since it premiered, more than fifteen months before. Like, I think, many Star Trek fans, I was so glad to have new episodes on television, I wouldn't miss an episode, even though many of them weren't particularly... well, good.

But that evening in February 1989, I almost held by breath through the episode, because it went from strength to strength. Could it keep this up, or would it stumble short of the finish line (as I've always felt my previous TNG favorite, "Conspiracy," did)? It could! TNG had finally had an episode that earned a place in my personal Trek Top ten. "Now we're getting somewhere!" I said.

Unfortunately, the rest of Season Two turned out to be pretty hit-or-miss, but "The Measure of a Man," written by Melinda M. Snodgrass, became the episode I'd weigh Next Generation's drama against for the rest of the run.

(All of this isn't to diss the other writers who worked on the show at that time—such as Diane Duane and Michael Reaves. I've been told the creative process, especially during the first season, could be chaotic and unrewarding, with notes and rewrites from on high sometimes bordering on the inexplicable.)

So what I'm saying is, I'm pleased as punch to have a story by Melinda Snodgrass in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2. Like her classic Next Gen script, "A Gift Though Small" uses science fiction not to tell a slam-bang, broad-canvas sort of story, but to provide a setting for a story of dramatic and emotional depth.

An interesting thing to me is the different ways in which the settings bring focus to the two tales. "The Measure of a Man" tackled some of the Big Questions science fiction is so good for: what is sentience? What does it mean to be human? The basic themes in "A Gift Though Small"—of trying to maintain dignity and hope for advancement in a patently unfair society, of a parent's delicate balance between guiding and letting go—certainly don't need a science fiction backdrop. But in this case, I think setting the story in the far future—removing it from the identifiably "real" world—helps isolate and strengthen the very recognizable, universal human issues it's really about.

Yikes, this is sounding like a college Lit essay. "A Gift Though Small" is groovy, and you'll love it. Okay?

The illustration is by Don Anderson, whose work we recently saw gracing Diane Duane's "Palladium." I love that it looks like it could have come out of an issue of Galaxy Science Fiction in 1952, without seeming at all an exercise in retro. Like "Gift" itself, it achieves a certain timelessness in its use of SF motifs. Which is one of the things I revived Thrilling Wonder Stories for in the first place.

YouTube Tuesday: Star Trek: Phase II "Blood and Fire, Part One"

WARNING: The following videos contain adult situations, and (as WTTW Chicago used to say before its broadcasts of Monty Python) may not be suitable for younger or more sensitive viewers.

Okay, I promised it a while back, and here it is: Part One of the first-ever two-part episode of Star Trek New Voyages Phase II: "Blood and Fire." Part Two is still in post-production.  Check with the Phase II website for updates. (We're not associated with STP2, but we're mighty impressed with what they do.)

Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2 has a 21-page feature article on the production of the previous New Voyages episode, the Hugo and Nebula-nominated "World Enough and Time," starring George Takei as Sulu.

This episode was directed and co-written by David Gerrold, based on his unproduced script for the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Gerrold also wrote the original series episode "The Trouble with Tribbles," which usually comes in #2 in polls of favorite episodes (and occasionally beats out "The City on the Edge of Forever" for #1).

A preview of an upcoming volume in his War Against the Chtorr series of novels, the story "Enterprise Fish" (no relation!), also appears in TWS2.

YouTube Tuesday: About the Authors

Here are some YouTube videos related to contributors to Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2.

Michael Reaves (co-writer of "Manifest Destiny") gives some interesting insights into what it's like working with "real heavy-hitters" like Steven Spielberg and Gene Roddenberry.

The trailer for the recent documentary Dreams with Sharp Teeth, all about your friend and mine, Harlan Ellison. His first published story, "Life Hutch" from 1956, appears in TWS2.

And finally, the trailer for "Blood and Fire," the two-part Star Trek: Phase II episode directed by David Gerrold and adapted from his unused script for The Next Generation. Gerrold's "Enterprise Fish," an excerpt from the sixth volume of his War Against the Chtorr series, appears you-know-where.

Part I of "Blood and Fire" is now available for watching on YouTube. No doubt we'll have it embedded here next Tuesday, once I've had the chance to watch it myself (this week, I'm busy making the honest-to-gosh last push to get TWS2 out the digital door). You can go watch it on YouTube now, if you really don't care about boosting my time-spent-on-site-by-user average (*snif*).