Star Trek Gets A Few Things Right
I realize that this is a bit off the beaten path for me. Of course, I could try to write about the political implications and overtones of the new Star Trek film, but that would be even more boring than the column I'm about to write. So, other than quickly pointing out the remarkable similarity between Barack Obama and the Vulcan character Tuvok (from the Star Trek: Voyager television series), we will move right along.
Almost two years ago I wrote a column titled "A Frivolous Summer Column On Science Fiction" where I listed the four top things most science fiction movies (and television shows) get laughably wrong. I return to the subject today to honor a movie that got at least two of these things right. If the entire subject bores you, then I suggest you check back here tomorrow, where we'll be back to politics, as usual (but definitely not "politics as usual"). I provide this warning in advance so the sheer geekiness of this column will not waste anyone's precious time.
Still with me? Then let's start with a bit of review. From my previous column on the subject, I identified four of the commonest (and most annoying, to me personally) errors when adapting space travel to the screen.
First was: "In space, no one can hear." There is no sound in space. It is a vacuum, and sound simply does not travel through a vacuum. The sound of ships passing, weapons firing, explosions exploding, and even planets disintegrating would be absolute silence. But Hollywood loves sound effects, and so it sticks them in there anyway, just for fun. The only sci-fi I credited with getting it right was the short-lived television series Firefly and the related movie Serenity.
The second annoying thing I summed up as: "Can you see a bullet fly?" Since the obvious answer is "no," the corollary question becomes: "Then why can you see laser 'bolts' move across the screen?" Once again, the answer is: because the moviemakers think it looks "cool." Light beam weapons (not just "light" but anything in the electromagnetic spectrum) would, of course, travel at the speed of light -- far faster than how fast a bullet flies. And the speed of light is simply too fast for the human eye to follow.
My third complaint was about "U-turns" in space, which are utterly ridiculous. Anyone who knows anything about Newtonian laws of motion understands this, but that leaves out all of Hollywood, apparently.
And finally, my fourth bugaboo was time dilation. Even if you could travel at warp speeds (faster than light), time will go at a different pace for you than for your twin brother who stayed home on Earth. Go zipping around the galaxy for a few years, and when you return your brother will be an old, old man, while you will only have aged those few years (see Robert A. Heinlein's Time For The Stars, whose basic plot I just described). Einstein showed us this a hundred years ago, but the news has yet to reach Hollywood.
But today I come in praise of a movie that does a lot better than most at portraying things closer to how they should be. The new Star Trek movie gets much of these things right, so I must give credit where credit is due. If you haven't seen the movie, I don't think I'm going to give away much "spoiler" information here, so you needn't worry. And I am not getting into how good (or bad) the movie, actors, plot, or continuity were, so while you are certainly free to do so in the comments, don't look for that sort of thing here.
Because I am concerned here only with the technological and scientific aspects of the movie. And, I have to say, they certainly did a better job than Hollywood's normal ignorance of basic physics.
Space, for the most part, is shown in silence. They cheat a little bit, but they mostly hide it in the music and soundtrack. When a planet explodes or a ship blows up, they sometimes put a crescendo in the music that is indistinguishable from an explosion sound, but which they can say "was only part of the music." To accurately say the ratio of how often they got it right and cheated in this fashion, I'd have to see the movie again. But in several notable places, space is silent as the grave. At one particular point, heavily borrowing from Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers (the book, not the movie), spacesuited men are launched from orbit to fall down towards a planet. What you hear when this happens is pretty close to what you should: you hear someone breathing in a space suit. That's it. No "woosh" sounds or other idiocies, you are put in the position of one of the men making the jump, who would only hear the internal sounds within their own suit. The movie of Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey did this best, which all sci-fi since should then have copied (but, mysteriously, didn't). But, in Star Trek, as the men fall into the atmosphere, sound starts, low at first, and then growing in intensity. This is exactly right, as the upper atmosphere is so thin sound would barely register, but as you fell closer to the planet the air around you would thicken and the sound would increase in volume.
But at several other notable places in the movie, from an "omnipotent" camera angle, space is silent, even when a starship blasts its engines. Which is as it should be.
As for weapons, there are a few battles in space where the ship's phasers were used, but they were so fast and action-packed I'm going to have to wait for a second viewing to notice details. But there is one notable battle with hand phasers in which the weapons (almost) work the way they physically should. An entire beam of light appears from the weapon, then flicks off. There is no visible "bolt" of light (as compared to the original Star Wars movie, for instance), merely a solid pencil-thin beam of light. Now, I said "almost" because even this wouldn't be visible. Use a simple flashlight or a laser pointer some time to see what I mean. You cannot see the beam unless you're in a foggy or dusty atmosphere. You see only a point of light where you are aiming. But this would change the movie enough to actually affect the art form (audiences would complain loudly, in other words), so I will begrudgingly give Star Trek credit for getting it half right, at least.
As for U-turns in space, what can I say? Sigh. Star Trek blows this one in a big way, as most movies do. Shuttlecraft, in particular (it's always the smaller ships which seem to perform this maneuver for some reason) zip along making U-turns whenever they feel like it. Oh, well, you can't have everything, I guess.
And the fourth item, time differences when traveling at (or near) relativistic speeds, Star Trek alludes to them tangentially, but throws in some time travel and alternate-universe-hopping, so it kind of gets muddled. The Star Trek franchise has always pretty much ignored time dilation entirely (as does almost all science fiction) so I can't really fault them too much for continuing their error for the sake of consistency. Anyone who has seen the movie is going to have other things to say on the subject of "consistency" anyway, so I guess there was no need to change this particular one and get even more people annoyed.
So, as far as my four pet peeves with Hollywoodization of innocent science fiction writing, Star Trek ignores two (for the most part) and gets them as wrong as everyone else, but does justice to two of them (even if they do cheat a bit in the musical soundtrack). That doesn't sound very good when added up, but it is actually very impressive in making the attempts that they did to clean up their technical special-effect act. Which is what led me to write this sequel to my original curmudgeonly article. Because I do believe that credit should be given where credit is due, and Star Trek does indeed deserve some credit for pushing the boundaries of Hollywood closer and closer to adapting some actual scientific realities in making sci-fi movies.
Now I know that sci-fi means "science" and "fiction," and many dismiss my thoughts as being too picky, being too geeky, and throwing up obstacles to making fun movies. They may be right.
In a notable comment to my previous article on a site that linked to it for more discussion, a commenter who went by the name "Michale" (ahem) wrote the following:
I don't recall where I read it (think it was David Gerrold's "The Making Of TROUBLE WITH TROUBLES") but TOS [The Original Series] Star Trek producers received a 15-page paper from a science major who outlined the necessary requirements and orders for the Enterprise to "reverse course." The director thought it would be too time-consuming so they just went with Kirk ordering, "REVERSE COURSE!!"
I have to admit, he's got a point. Call it "the trouble with quibbles."
OK, I have to apologize for that, but I simply could not resist. Resistance, after all, is futile, right?
And while I could go on about other techie nits which beg to be picked (such as whatever the heck they were building where Kirk gives away his motorcycle... which looked suspiciously like a starship... and the absolute lunacy of building a starship on Earth instead of assembling it in space), I realize that for most people this sort of thing doesn't detract from their viewing enjoyment at all. I'm a hard-nose when it comes to physics, as I think people ought to have to pass a basic test on Newtonian motion laws before they are issued a driver's license, personally.
But most people simply aren't that picky. So, again, without giving any plotlines away, Star Trek has lots of action, lots of extremely cool special effects, and a few flaws -- just like most science fiction movies. However, since they did make an attempt at moving Hollywood in the direction of realism in science fiction (if that's not an oxymoron to begin with), I thought they deserved public acclaim for doing so. If they use this cast and this storyline for future installments, I hope they continue these laudable efforts.
My only other suggestion for their next movie would have to be: bring back Yeoman Janice Rand! Hopefully, that is something on which we all can agree.
-- Chris Weigant
Aaaagh! Chris, you have forced me to reveal my geekdom...
First, I have to comment on your complaints. The answer to the first two is that audiences expect noise and light shows -- without them, the audience can't follow the cause and effect. "This ship fired a laser at that ship and something blew up" makes a lot more sense than "this ship is here, and this other ship is here, and something is blowing up."
While I concede the science of most lasers that are within our own experience, I'd offer this "no-prize" explanation* of visible laser bolts: a laser pointer has much less power than a weapon requires. Even the vacuum of space contains some matter, so you are just seeing that matter affected by an extremely powerful beam of laser energy. And in fact, the most powerful lasers ever built had very high visibility in clear conditions.
Now, as to your third complaint: I have to agree that almost all sci-fi gets this one wrong. I find myself actually cringing now when I watch X-wings and TIE fighters "banking" in the vacuum. But interestingly enough, that is very much the fault of the movie I'm talking about: Star Wars, which set so many (bad) standards in the genre for so long. And this kind of "atmospheric" movement is actually the result of Lucas's production process, which was based on cinematic plagiarism. A digression is in order.
When Lucas was making Star Wars, he had to show investors a rough cut of the movie. Since the final fight over the Death Star was still in pre-production while the principal shooting was largely finished, he substituted scenes from a World War II-movie called The Dambusters. It worked so well that Lucas not only arranged his shots just like the ones in that movie, he actually kept much of the dialogue! Such lines as "say, twenty guns...some on the surface, some on the towers" and "negative, negative, it just impacted on the surface. Get set up on your attack run..." are outright theft.
To your collection of TV shows that have made some effort to get these things right, I would add Babylon 5, for which Harlan Ellison was a technical adviser. The fighters use gyroscopic thrusters and don't "bank" in vacuum; their weapons are cannon with tracer rounds instead of lasers. (And any politics junkie who likes sci-fi and hasn't watched seasons 2 through 4 of that show has really missed something. Made a decade ago, Michael J. Straczynski was eerily prescient about the events of the last eight years in the real world.)
As to your fourth quibble: the whole idea of faster-than-light travel, like so much else in sci-fi, requires imagining that there is a whole new physics as yet undiscovered. "Hyperspace" and "warp drive" are what sci-fi writers call "magic boxes" -- like teleporters and artificial gravity. We have to give the creators of these shows and movies some license as a result. But there are some creators who abuse that license beyond all reason -- again, I would nail Lucas as the worst offender because of the galaxy-hopping his characters do so freely in Part III. Even with a magic box, you can have too many coincidences.
Even few sci-fi writers get this completely right. Most choose to use a magic box rather than obey the laws of relativity. If you want a title, I recommend the Ender's Game series by Orson Scott Card. He manages to build a really great universe in full compliance with all known laws of physics. (The first book has been in production hell ever since it came out, so don't expect a movie anytime soon, or ever.)
I have two significant quibbles of my own with sci-fi movies that were addressed by the new Star Trek. One is that computer control takes much of the "battle" out of human hands -- in fact, you could argue that any "real" space battle would go so fast that no human could keep up. The dizzying action of the phasers (and I liked seeing the projectors, for once), handled by automated systems, was much more realistic than what I'm used to. My other complaint -- addressed in that same scene -- is that punching holes in a spaceship guarantees that the soft, squishy humans inside will get sucked out into space and die a gruesome death. As awful as it sounds, this has been a pet peeve of mine since my earliest days of sci-fi geekdom. There are only a few writers who get it right: Steve Galacci, creator of Albedo comics, and David Weber, in his Honor Harrington universe. The lesson: if you're going to red alert, you better damn well put on a space suit.
Whew! Sorry for the long comment, but you really struck a good nerve!
*If you know what a "no-prize" is, then you are TRULY a geek.
Osborne Ink -
It's late and I will answer your comment in full tomorrow, promise!
But I did have to say one thing. In the link above Michale's comment quoted in the piece, check out the comments. There's a lively debate about a few things, one of them being the three-dimensionality of space which few people get right on film. As one of my responses, I wrote:
"The enemy's gate is down."
Which you should recognize...
:-)
-CW
Everything was great, CW! :D
But I found one glaring error..
(such as whatever the heck they were building where Kirk gives away his motorcycle… which looked suspiciously like a starship… and the absolute lunacy of building a starship on Earth instead of assembling it in space),
When Kirk rode up on his motorcycle and faced a behemoth construction project, it WAS a Starship that they were building. You can make out the vague outline that (As Captain John Christopher said in the TOS episode, Tomorrow Is Yesterday) ".... IS saucer-shaped but with one large cylindrical shape on bottom and two on top."
Anyways, that wasn't the error part. I just wanted to use that cool line from that TOS episode.. :D The error part is that this isn't the spot where Kirk gives away his motorcycle. That comes later when Kirk boards the shuttle on his way to the Academy (or the Enterprise, I can't recall which). One very cool part about the motorcycle is that the wheels had no spokes. There appeared to be completely empty space where the spokes of a wheel should be. I thought that was extremely cool..
But getting back to the starship building, you are dead on right. How the hell can you build a starship on a planet surface. That's like building an aircraft carrier in full in Topeka, Kansas.. Completely illogical.. There IS precedence for building the saucer section on the surface. (Star Trek novel The Lost Years II:Flag Full Of Stars) I know that novels aren't really Canon, yet much accepted Canon of Star Trek lore have come from novels. Sulu's and Uhura's first names, for example.
On another note, there was a SciFi book series called THE STAINLESS STEEL RAT that also addressed the concept of "intergalactic battles" and how it was impossible due to the time differential issues. I don't recall how they addressed it as it has been...er.. ahem quite a few years since I read the series.
I will also note that the new Battlestar Galactica was done VERY well with regards to turning in space. Actually, the best I have ever seen. You would see the Vipers moving in one direction, then flip over, travel backwards for a few and then, after thrust is applied, head off in the new direction. BSG also used the "silence in space" very effectively, EERILY effectively.. At least in the early episodes. They seemed to have gotten away from it in the later episodes...
My biggest beef with the new movie is what it did to the phenomenon of Star Trek. I don't want to get into any details, just in case there are some readers who haven't seen it. But, suffice it to say that, IMNSHO, this can never be Star Trek. To quote Picard from TNG, "History has been irrevocably changed. This timeline will cease to exist."
Of course, as the prevailing theory goes, a timeline never actually ceases to exist. If anyone is interested in a real zinger of a take on this, read the TNG book, IMZADI.
But I digest...
The only thing that makes this movie (barely) palatable to me is that fact that it is acknowledged by all (and even in the movie) that this is an alternate reality Star Trek.
For those true Trekkers out there, this movie is like a stake thru the heart. Think of what Paramount and Tom Cruise did to the Mission Impossible (TV show) fans, multiply that by a million and you'll get how Star Trek fans feel..
Finally, for those interested in the "back story" of Star Trek:90210, there is a comic book series that gives the back story of Nero and ties the 90210 movie in with Star Trek:The Next Generation. I haven't read it as of yet, but some excerpts I have caught seem pretty fascinating. It's called Star Trek:Countdown.
Michale.....
Speaking of David Gerrold, here's a little bit of trivia for ya'all...
One of THE most fascinating episodes of ANY Star Trek was the Deep Space 9 Episode, "Trials and Tribble-ulations"..
For those who haven't seen it, it's a great episode that intersperses DS9 characters with scenes and actors from the TOS episode THE TROUBLE WITH TRIBBLES. The merging of the two episodes is done nearly flawlessly. The only time it was obvious was when O'Brien dodged a thrown chair in the K-7 Bar fight scene. Other than that, the merging was un-noticable.. I especially liked when Kirk chewed out O'Brien after the afore mentioned fight scene.
Anyways, the interesting trivia is that, when O'Brien and Bashir exited the transporter room after the afore mentioned chewing out, they look up the corridor and see a mass of tribbles all over the place. They also see a crewman holding and petting a tribble and that crewman is none other than David Gerrold, author of the original TROUBLE WITH TRIBBLES episode.
If anyone has not seen that DS9 episode, it is awesome and really shouldn't be missed...
Michale
While I enjoyed the movie as entertainment I was disappointed that they went the alternate universe/reality route. I wanted it to be about the crew of the enterprise I grew up watching. I wanted to see them when they were young and at the academy so I was disappointed that we got the "3 years later" punt. It seemed to me that the script was lazy and used tricks to get everyone on to the enterprise and into action. I did enjoy the dialogue though.
...Stan
I agree with you Chris. Although I've got to say my own pet peeves with movies and Star Trek in particular are the way they portray time and distance rather than movement and momentum.
The original Enterprise tooled around mostly at warp 1, wouldn't have accomplished much on "a five year mission" even at "warp 2." Space is BIG!
Forget the sights and sounds, as you said beam and particle weapons are light speed. For all intents and purposes you hit or miss simultaneously with firing, not seconds later. If you fired for three or four seconds the way they do you'd hole your target and everything within line of sight behind your target for hundreds, if not thousands, of miles! (I'm thinking hand phasers in particular here.)
And the way they ignore any paradox in time travel...?! They have a rigid cultural "prime directive" but their temporal prime directive was nonexistent and introduced only to show it wasn't being followed!
Like high-school kids playing unsupervised with black-holes. Its a wonder anything in their universe survived.
The alternate timelines only bothered me a bit and it seems like it was necessary to bring the original Spock into the movie. Could have done without this, but at least they didn't bring the original Kirk back as at one point they apparently intended.
http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1611116/story.jhtml
That would have totally killed the movie for me.
What brought me a smile was how well some of the new actors mimicked the original characters. Bones talking about how his wife got Earth in the divorce. Spock saying "fascinating" upon entering his own future ship. Kirk getting into it with Spock trying to get his goat. Or, Scotty talking technology.
The little character parts made the movie for me.
- David
Casual Fan (the series lost me after Next Generation)
OK, this is going to be a long one, I can tell before I even type it.
Osborne Ink -
I don't know, when an audience sees a field artillery piece go off in a WWII flick, and then see something a mile away explode, they don't need a line drawn between the two. But I get your point -- a lot of people have experience with wars as they happened in the past (and today) but nobody has that experience to draw on for the future, so you have to lead them by the hand.
I will accept your no-prize answer for visible lasers, but I don't have to like it.
I will have to check out the Dambusters, as I've never heard that story about Lucas before, but it sounds eminently plausible. I've seen a "making of Star Wars" thing where the Death Star fight scene was filmed, and they were using "special effects" of chucking firecrackers at the model while rolling film, so it certainly sounds believable.
The wife was a Babylon 5 fan, me not so much, but to be honest I never really gave it a chance. I'll go back and check it out, from what you say it sounds interesting for technical reasons alone. I wasn't aware Ellison was involved, that's reason enough to check it out.
As for your "magic boxes" my response is: THBBPPPTTT!! (insert sound of Bronx cheer) I gotcher "magic boxes" raht cheer....
I loved Ender's Game, especially the plot device of sending Mazer Whatsisname out and back at relativistic speeds to jump him into the "future".
Your quibbles are very interesting. The bit about computer weapons control is an excellent one. You are right -- I hadn't really noticed it until you pointed it out, but the phaser scenes were indeed much like computer weapons control would make it -- too fast for the human eye to comprehend the complexity. That is an excellent point, and something else this Star Trek got right.
And your last point was a good one, too, which I never really thought about. There are two problems with space suits in movies, as I see it. (1) they either have to "work" or else the actors are going to fog up the glass while slowly suffocating. And (2) whenever they're "out in space" what you would actually see is a reflection, not their face. Not a good thing for actors and movies. Look at some Apollo photos to see this -- they're like mirrors. Of course, the movies "cheat" by putting light inside the helmet pointing back at the face, but still, faces are hard to see at best.
There's an interesting story here about an underwater flick (the Abyss? I forget, it was at least 10, maybe 20 years ago, I know that). They redesigned the scuba helmets so that the actors faces could actually be seen very well on film (while underwater), and their "props" worked so well they influenced actual scuba gear design (they had a HUGE field of vision as a result of a FULL face plate, instead of a more limited one, and divers loved it because they had a MUCH bigger field of vision as a result). Not really "life imitating art" but close.
OK, I gotta admit, I'm not a big enough geek to know what "no prize" means. Do tell!
Michale -
Wasn't the "something damn big being constructed" scene the same as the "tosses keys to the motorcycle" scene actually the same scene? Hmmm... I gotta see it again... I didn't notice the spokeless wheels on the bike, either, but I did like the cop's hoverbike...
As for Capt. Christopher, wasn't his son supposed to have been on the first manned mission to Saturn? Wouldn't he be getting a bit old waiting for that to happen by now? I mean, Clarke put it at eight years ago, and I know I'm still waiting for Discovery to launch.
Ahem.
I also have to say, one of my big beefs with post-TOS Star Treks is when they "land" a starship on a planet. Hogwash! Those ships are TOO BIG TO LAND on anything with a heavier gravity field than a small asteroid. That's why they carry shuttlecraft and transporters in the first place...
"The Stainless Steel Rat" is one of the most hilarious sci-fi series of books ever written, and I highly recommend it to all and sundry. Slippery Jim DiGriz is one of the best characters ever created. The author's name you're trying to remember is Harry Harrison.
As for silence in space, I've always felt that it is even more stunning and audience-gripping than all the "whoosh" and "blam blam" nonsense. 2001: A Space Odyssey truly showed how silence (with some classical music, if need be) can be used effectively by a filmmaker. Although, if memory serves, the last time I saw it I could have sworn I heard engine noises in one of the longshots showing Discovery heading out. I could be mistaken, though, I should see it again. As you say, done right, it is "eerily effective" and I wish more directors would realize that.
Personally, I would like the same actors to go back and do a movie about "our" timeline (TOS timeline) and do it right this time, I have to agree.
OK, I am going to end this because it's impossibly long, and I want to say something about tribbles that is going to take even more room...
-CW
Michale -
I grew up with science fiction. I knew science fiction. You, sir, are no science fiction.
Um, wait, that didn't come out right. Let me try again. I grew up reading Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke (with Bradbury thrown in for light reading). And Ursula K. LeGuin, who contributed the term "ansible" (faster-than-light radio) to the canon. OK, the closest I ever got to fantasy was Anne McCaffrey, but most of what I read was pretty "hard science" sci-fi. I mean, these authors would take three pages to describe the difficulties of figuring an orbit, and hold your attention while doing so. So my bar for technical accuracy starts out pretty high.
And, with apologies to David Gerrold, I have to say: tribbles are Martian flat cats. Period. End of story.
Now, I still love "The Trouble With Tribbles" as much as the next guy (I am old-school and still prefer "Trekkie" rather than the revisionist "Trekker" even). It's one of the best TOS episodes. The only one that really tops it is "A Piece Of The Action" in my opinion, for sheer delightfulness. Some of the TTWT dialog is absolutely classic, and even now I don't have to look up "quadrotriticale" to type it correctly.
But tribbles are a ripoff of flat cats. They just are.
Over a decade before Star Trek was even a gleam in Roddenberry's eye, Robert A. Heinlein wrote one of his "boy scout" books (novellas, really) called (something else that was ripped off in the 1960s): The Rolling Stones.
In it, Martian flat cats are an intergral part of a story thread. Without typing the whole thing out, here is a rundown of flat cat characteristics:
* Small (about the size of a toupee)
* Furry
* Purr when picked up or petted (hence the "cats" in their name)
* Lovable
* Don't eat much
* Sold by a shifty trader on a "shore leave" type of situation for the main characters (Mars, in this instance).
* Trader conveniently "forgets" to mention one key fact about flat cats, much to the consternation of all aboard the space ship later
* Hibernates when cold, making them easy to store in a cold storage hold (also a plot device later)
All of this sounding familiar? Well, admittedly, all of that could be coincidental, although it strains the imagination to think so. But, I will allow all of those as "maybe somebody thought up similar critters." Although, up until this point the only real difference between flat cats and tribbles is that tribbles are pudgier.
But what simply cannot be believed as "mere coincidence" are the other features of the flat cats, which are the meat of the plot device they introduce:
* Start using air ducts to roam the ship at will
* Born pregnant
* When overfed, reproduce like crazy, up to the limits of the available food supply
This is just a bridge too far to be believed. The chapter in the book where Heinlein talks about this is called: "Flat Cats Factorial," which is self-explanatory to anyone familiary with the term "factorial."
Here's one sentence from it:
"Sixty-four days after that, the one hundred and forty-sixth day after Phobos departure, the kittens' kittens had kittens; that made five hundred and thirteen."
513 flat cats from one flat cat, in other words, in a short period of time. Born pregnant. Breed faster when fed more than what would seem to be a starvation diet for any other critter. Does any of this sound familiar at all?
Further proof, although at this point it really shouldn't be necessary, comes from a book written by the Executive in Charge of Production (Herbert F. Solow) and Co-Producer (Robert H. Justman) from the original Star Trek series.
Speaking about TTWT, they relate (pp. 333-334 of "Inside Star Trek: The Real Story"):
"Star Trek became inundated with pets of a different order when Dorothy Fontana found an untried young writer: David Gerrold. Gerrold had written an unsolicited script, which he called 'A Fuzzy Thing Happened.'"
After detailing how the script had to be rewritten (the original was deemed "too cute"), they write (the editor's note is my own):
"The actual source of the idea for 'Tribbles' has been laid at the feet of famed science-fiction writer Robert Heinlein. Belatedly recognizing the similarity between it and the 'Martian Flat Cats' story in Heinlein's The Rolling Stones, Roddenberry had a problem: A lot of money had been invested in an episode with a clouded provenance; broadcasting it could result in a lawsuit. On the other hand, not broadcasting it would result in Desilu 'eating' $187,000 [Ed. Note: this was the late 1960s, and that was a lot of money for a TV show back then.] A phone call to a very understanding Robert Heinlein cleared up the problem. Heinlein reasoned that, since the episode had not yet been broadcast, a simple 'mea culpa' from Roddenberry was sufficient to remedy the problem."
I rest my case.
-CW
Stan -
See my comments above about going back and filming another movie.
I, too, was disappointed at the lack of Starfleet scenes, as it has been rumored since "Enterprise" went off the air that another TV series was planned which centered on the Academy itself. This always seemed to me to be a rich vein of unexplored storylines which would have been interesting to watch. Maybe they're still thinking of this series, which is why they held back in the movie, that's all I can think of.
LewDan -
Space is, indeed, big. From Heinlein's The Rolling Stones, which for some reason (ahem) I was just flipping through, Heinlein describes the asteroid belt as: "13,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubic miles of space."
Most of space travel is (much to sci-fi moviemakers' distress) mind-crushingly boring. It takes forever to get from one place to another, even if you posit "warp 9."
To say nothing of the liberties they take with "impulse drive." The worst of these was in the "ribbon in the sky" Star Trek movie, where a rocket was fired at a planet's sun, and Kirk had something like "9 seconds" to blow it up. Nine seconds?!? You gotta be kidding me. It takes LIGHT something like eight minutes to reach Earth from our own sun. Sheesh!
You bring up an interesting thing (much like the space suits drill for red alert mentioned earlier) -- you see plenty of hand-weapon battles on spaceships, but nobody ever "holes" the side of the ship (which would also result in a drop in pressure). Seems like somebody should have worked this into a plot by now.
TOS had an interesting "temporal prime directive" show (Um... "Gary 7"? I forget) where they were actually attempting to spin off a new series (intergalactic space spy and temporal agent... this was in the midst of a boom in spy shows... guest starred Terri Garr if you want to look it up). But the eerie thing for me (after the Challenger disaster) was that he came back in time to sabotage a rocket. Not much in the way of "prime directive" in that...
Without giving too much away, I left the new ST movie thinking "we've now got a black hole out by Saturn? Wow, that's really going to screw up the Solar System in a serious way, and maybe even kill off all life on Earth..."
Heh.
akadjian -
I have just been watching (for the first time) Shatner in "Boston Legal" and at one point walking down the corridor with lots of background noise, "Denny Crane" says something like: "I used to fly a starship!"
Heh heh. Shatner is a force of nature, both in a good sense and a bad sense.
I personally liked the new Kirk in bed with the green woman. Continuity must be preserved! Heh.
You should check out Voyager. I could never deal with TNG or even DS9, but I really enjoyed Voyager, as it was a lot closer to the "mission" feel of the original. Plus, Kes was cute as a button, and "7 of 9" (or as I heard one fan put it, "36 of D") was hot, you've got to admit. The actress went on (in real life) to help take down her ex-husband's Senate bid (see: Jeri Ryan, Jack Ryan), so she is a good way to segue this back into political commentary.
Because when Jack Ryan pulled out of the Illinois race for the US Senate in 2004, due to his divorce with Jeri and the tawdry details made public as a result (which included Eyes Wide Shut style sex clubs, the field was left open. Alan Keyes tried to jump in as a Republican, but was soundly defeated by none other than... Barack Obama.
To everyone -
Live long, and prosper.
-CW
Chris,
A no-prize was something Stan Lee of Marvel Comics came up with in the mid-1960s. I never tried to "win" one, but I gathered that it was just a joke certificate stating the recipient was the proud winner of an "official" Marvel no-prize. Much as I loved Marvel comics, even as a kid I thought Lee's sense of humour was pretty juvenile. I did like Stan's humour in the Marvel titles he created and wrote though.....Matt (Osborne Ink)....whose line was "It's clobberin time"? (I know, that's too easy).
Kevinem2 is indeed correct, Chris. And I did at one time have a no-prize. It was one of my proudest possessions, now long-gone...*sniff*... And you really ought to check out at least seasons 3 and 4 of BAB5. Some incredibly strong writing in the fourth season...
Kevin: IMHO, Michael Chiklis was completely wasted in that role. Though that's better than the way Joe Dredd was wasted on Sylvester Stallone. I will NEVER forgive Hollywood for that one.
Osborne Ink -
Drokk! Another Dredd fan?
Boy, you're right about the movie. Even if he had kept the helmet on (as he should have), Stallone just wasn't the right guy for Dredd.
Dredd was originally meant to be a caricature of American cowboyism institutionalized... "I AM the law!" But they could have cast just about anyone to do a better job at it than Sly...
-CW
Couple additions here..
I was going to get David Gerrold himself to come in and explain the origins of THE TROUBLE WITH TRIBBLES story he authored. But I got side-tracked and then it seemed moot... So I didn't.. I'll just relay what Mr Gerrold wrote in his book, THE MAKING OF THE TROUBLE WITH TRIBBLES. He explained that any relationship between his story and Heinlein's was purely coincidental and, if there was any influence, it was subconscious.. Take that for what it is worth..
Wasn't the "something damn big being constructed" scene the same as the "tosses keys to the motorcycle" scene actually the same scene?
I watched it again and, while they weren't the same scene, the scene where Kirk gives away his bike is right after the scene where he sees the starship being built. So, it's close enough that I withdraw my claim of error.
As for Capt. Christopher, wasn't his son supposed to have been on the first manned mission to Saturn?
Yes, Capt Sean Christoper was to lead (will lead??) the first manned mission to Saturn..
Wouldn't he be getting a bit old waiting for that to happen by now? I
I am still waiting for my flying DeLauren.... :D
Personally, I would like the same actors to go back and do a movie about "our" timeline (TOS timeline) and do it right this time, I have to agree.
My secret, yet fervent hope, is that the next Star Trek movie will deal with going back in time and "fixing" the timeline... Yea, I know, it's probably a pipe dream..
If you want a really kewl twist on temporal mechanics and want to get "sneak peek" into the future of the TNG characters, read the novel IMZADI.. It's an awesome book...
Now, for a little future history lesson..
I may have mentioned his before because I think it is SOOO kewl that no one has picked up on it.
If you accept that Star Trek novels are Canon, then the universe depicted in Star Trek:Enterprise is actually the mirror universe and not the "real" universe at all...
How kewl is THAT!!?? :D
Michale.......