50th anniversary of the original Star Trek

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The original Star Trek series premiered on September 8, 1966, marking a significant cultural milestone. The show's influence on science, technology, and societal values, particularly regarding equality and diversity, has been profound and continues to be discussed decades later. Key episodes like "City on the Edge of Forever" and "The Trouble with Tribbles" remain fan favorites, showcasing the show's storytelling prowess. The series has undergone digital remastering, enhancing its visual quality for modern audiences. Discussions also touch on the evolution of character portrayals, particularly Spock, and the show's handling of political correctness and gender roles, reflecting the societal norms of its time. Star Trek's legacy is compared to that of Shakespeare, with debates on its lasting impact and cultural significance. The series is celebrated not only for its entertainment value but also for its philosophical underpinnings and its role in shaping modern science fiction.
  • #51
Wow. I had no idea.

Sometimes I really wish there was a real-life "Bob-the-Dinosaur" (of Dilbert fame). (Bob's main purpose in life is to give atomic wedgies to dickheads...)
 
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  • #52
strangerep said:
Booo. Is that all? Such a fuss... over that ??
Remember, this was a time when a certain network forbade Barbara Eden from exposing her Belly button on "I Dream of Genie".
 
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  • #53
I just found out that my local classical radio station is honoring the 50th anniversary by devoting their weekly segment of "The score" (which highlights movie and TV scores) to Star Trek. It will be broadcast on Sat. Oct 7 from 2-3 pm Pacific time. Anyone who is interested can listen to it on the web here: http://www.allclassical.org/
 
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  • #54
davenn said:
I recognise that that image too, from the episode, Arena
You're right... :thumbup:

What episode was this one from ? .. :oldwink:

latest?cb=20081219230653&path-prefix=en.jpg
 
  • #55
OCR said:
You're right... :thumbup:

What episode was this one from ? .. :oldwink:

latest?cb=20081219230653&path-prefix=en.jpg

that one has me thinking ... initially I considered "the devil in the dark" but it isn't

will keep thinking a while ... don't give it away yet :wink:

Dave
 
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  • #56
OCR said:
You're right... :thumbup:

What episode was this one from ? .. :oldwink:

ahhhh you were trying to trick me hahaha, I was thinking of much later episodes... was giggling to myself, I could think of all the episodes it wasn't, it was a process of elimination ...
finally came up with the second pilot ... "Where No Man Has Gone Before"Dave
 
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  • #57
davenn said:
"Where No Man Has Gone Before"
Yup, not bad.... :thumbup:...:oldwink:

That's the unmanned lithium-cracking facility on Delta Vega, where they were going to maroon Starfleet
lieutenant commander Gary Mitchell... really one of the better episodes, one of my favorites, anyway.... :cool:
 
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  • #58
That print was also used in Dagger of the Mind:

deltavega-tantalus-daggerofthemind.jpg


Note that the refinery towers have been removed.

Also, it was mentioned Mark Lenard played two roles, Sarek and Romulan-Dude. So did Diana Muldaur (and a third in TNG).
 
  • #59
Vanadium 50 said:
That print was also used in Dagger of the Mind:
deltavega-tantalus-daggerofthemind.jpg


Note that the refinery towers have been removed.

Also, it was mentioned Mark Lenard played two roles, Sarek and Romulan-Dude. So did Diana Muldaur (and a third in TNG).

Other actors that played multiple role
Morgan Woodward- Simon Van Gelder(Dagger of the Mind) and Captain Tracy(The Omega Glory)
Ian Wolfe - Septimas(Bread and Circuses) and Mr. Atoz(All Our Yesterdays)
William Campbell - Trelane(The Squire of Gothos) and Captain Koloth(The Trouble with Tribbles)
And we mustn't forget Majel Barret-Rodenberry, who played Number One in the First Pilot and "The Menagerie", and Christine Chapel from TOS, Luxana Troi from TNG, as well as providing the voice for the ship computer for both TOS, TNG and several movies (including the 2009 reboot). She also voiced M'ress, a character in the animated series

James Doohan(Scotty) also provided the off-screen voice in some TOS episodes as well as the voices for many characters for the animated series.
 
  • #60
You're right. Doohan did a lot of voices: M-5, Sargon and maybe one or two others. I think he was the Fabrini computer as well.
 
  • #61
Oh, and in case anyone interested may have missed it, the radio show that I mentioned in Post #53 is archived at
www.thescore.org
 
  • #62
Vanadium 50 said:
That print was also used in Dagger of the Mind:
Note that the refinery towers have been removed.


Also, it was mentioned Mark Lenard played two roles, Sarek and Romulan-Dude. So did Diana Muldaur (and a third in TNG).
nice spotting

didn't realize that was her in the original series episodesDave
 
  • #63
Diana Muldaur (sister in law of Maria Muldaur, who sang Midnight At The Oasis) was in Return to Tomorrow (with James Doohan as Sargon) and Is There In Truth No Beauty? Neither are my favorite episodes.
 
  • #64
Hmm. They just stopped broadcasting the Original Series here, and resumed Voyager where they left off. I guess they just broadcast some of the more memorable episodes of the OS (though not the infamous Kirk-Uhura kissing episode).

It's been interesting re-watching the OS for the first time as an adult instead of as a young kid. I now perceive the Captain Kirk character to be a bit of a dick. o_O (And yes, I mean that in at least 2 ways.)
 
  • #65
Vanadium 50 said:
City on the Edge of Forever should win. (With a young Joan Collins no less!) No contest.
Just watching. You are right. You have to, since I first took Joan Collins for Diana Rigg :biggrin:
 
  • #66
No, Diana Rigg is much, much hotter.
 
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  • #67
Obama_V.jpg
 
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  • #68
Where are his pointy ears? :cool:
 
  • #69
I remember the first episode like it was yesterday. Of course, I made comparisons to the other science fiction space series on TV, Lost in Space. I was pre-teen and I remember saying to my classmates, I didn't like it. On the first show at least one or two crewman died and I thought, how long could the series last with such an attrition rate. If two characters died from "Lost in Space" every week, the show wouldn't last 4 shows.

I saw the second episode the next week. The third episode had different characters from the first two, and I did not even connect the fact that the captain, spock, and the doctor (and others) were recurrent characters. I thought the episodes were like the Twilight zone, until the later episodes. I remember I missed the fourth and maybe the fifth broadcast, but I saw the sixth (I believe).
 
  • #70
Marj Dusay just passed. She uttered the immortal line "Brain and brain...what is brain?"
 
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  • #71
Vanadium 50 said:
Marj Dusay just passed. She uttered the immortal line "Brain and brain...what is brain?"
I googled her, but failed to recognize her (young or old). Was she really only in 1 episode?
 
  • #72
strangerep said:
I googled her, but failed to recognize her (young or old). Was she really only in 1 episode?
Funny. I just watched that episode a few days ago, Spock's Brain, on TV.

image from above link
Spock's_Brain_Star_Trek_1968.JPG
 
  • #73
strangerep said:
Was she really only in 1 episode?

That's what IMDB says. But it was a real humdinger, that one was.
 
  • #74

And you know that Harlan Ellison wrote "City on the edge of Forever" I presume.
 
  • #75
hutchphd said:
And you know that Harlan Ellison wrote "City on the edge of Forever" I presume.

Well, sort of. Gene Coon reworked it extensively. I got a chance to talk to Ellison about the original story. He was quite bitter about it. He may be right that his version was the better story, but I would argue the version that aired was better Star Trek.
 
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  • #76
jtbell said:
On September 8, 1966 the first episode of the original Star Trek series was broadcast. I saw it when I was in junior high school (middle school).

Me too. But I’ve watched every episode so many times I can’t watch it anymore or at least it’ll be a while. When I was in the Air Force at technical school in 71 we were in a 1000 man dorm in Denver. We had a huge rec room with the TV. Every time a Star Trek rerun came on the room was filled.
 
  • #77
Whipley Snidelash said:
Me too. But I’ve watched every episode so many times I can’t watch it anymore or at least it’ll be a while. When I was in the Air Force at technical school in 71 we were in a 1000 man dorm in Denver. We had a huge rec room with the TV. Every time a Star Trek rerun came on the room was filled.
That reminds me of a story. In college, our dorm also had a TV down in the main lobby. A couple of friends and I would always watch the Star Trek reruns they aired. We generally would show up early, just because we liked to sit up front.
One time, Just a bit after we had settled in, a few guys showed up. When they saw us, one of them asked "So, you're here to see the fight too? ( apparently some boxing match was being aired also that evening).
We told, them that we were there to watch Star Trek. We finally agreed to wait until the time came and then put it up to a vote for everyone that showed up.
As the time neared, we began looking around behind us to see how many people were there, and it was quite a full house. We got this sinking feeling that we were not going to come out on top with the vote.
The time came, and one of the guys stood up, faced the group, and confidently asked, " How many of you are here to watch the fight?"
He was greeted with resounding cries of "No, we want to watch Star Trek!" The look on his face was priceless.
 
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  • #78
Janus said:
That reminds me of a story.

Which episode? I hope not Spock's Brain!
 
  • #79
Nice story Janus. It’s funny because I remember that day in 66, the next day in school most of us weren’t very impressed with that first episode. It obviously grew on us all. It was the Mantrap. The one with the salt eating creature that sucked people dry.
 
  • #80
Whipley Snidelash said:
Nice story Janus. It’s funny because I remember that day in 66, the next day in school most of us weren’t very impressed with that first episode. It obviously grew on us all. It was the Mantrap. The one with the salt eating creature that sucked people dry.
I read that Roddenberry was not happy that the network chose to air that episode first. If you don't count the original Pilot ( The Cage), "The Man Trap" was the 5th episode produced. They could have used either the second pilot, "The Enemy Within", or "The Corbomite Maneuver" ( "Mud's Women" would have been an option also, but probably not the best choice).
But leave it to the suits to go with the one that had the "Classic science fiction monster".

I was 8 when it first aired, and it wasn't a show watched much in our home. Most of the time I saw it was when it was on at someone else's house while we were visiting.
By the time the show was in reruns, we had moved out to the boonies, and got just a couple of TV stations, neither of which carried the reruns. My first real introduction to it was when I found the James Blish adaptations in paperback. I had read almost all the episode as short stories before I ever saw the majority of them on TV.

Something similar happened with "2001: A space Odyssey"
I read the book, a good number of A.C. Clarke's work, including "The Sentinel", "The Lost worlds of 2001" (chronicling the writing of the book, including alternate beginnings and endings), and "The Making of Kubrick's 2001", all before I ever saw the movie itself.
 
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  • #81
jtbell said:
On September 8, 1966 the first episode of the original Star Trek series was broadcast. I saw it when I was in junior high school (middle school). Tonight I'll pull out my DVD set and watch it again. It's been several years since I last did it. Maybe I'll make it a regular Thursday thing and do the entire series.

A few years ago I was having lunch with a retiring engineer I had known for a number of years, named Bob. He started telling me about his father and his career as a cop. Then he mentioned that his dad had been friends with Gene Roddenberry. They became friend through the LAPD. Eventually he produced photographs of his father and a very young Gene Roddenberry goofing around on the beach.

Bob continued to tell me that when he was a boy, every Saturday morning his father would take him out for some kind of surprise adventure or experience. One Saturday his father took him to see Gene Roddenberry, who was working on a pilot for a show called Police Story . It gave Bob a chance to see a TV program being filmed. He said that was all very interesting. But in one of the editing rooms he noticed scraps of film lying all over the floor. He looked at some and asked Gene what they were for. Gene said that was for something else he was working on called The Cage...

Bob said he could have stuffed his pockets with all of the scraps on the floor. It was all being thrown away. Of course he had no idea of the significance of those scraps of film.
 
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  • #82
Janus said:
Something similar happened with "2001: A space Odyssey"
I read the book, a good number of A.C. Clarke's work, including "The Sentinel", "The Lost worlds of 2001" (chronicling the writing of the book, including alternate beginnings and endings), and "The Making of Kubrick's 2001", all before I ever saw the movie itself.
I saw 2001 when it came out (I was in high school), in 1968.
After after I got to university, I saw it many, many times, for cheap.
Campus film clubs seemed to show 2001 more than annually for a while.

I feel many viewings lead to better understanding.
A read a related Clarke book on it afterwards. It helped too.

The only things I have read before seeing them as movies are: The Ring Trilogy, Dune, The Thing (from Who Goes There?), The Foundation (if ever made), and any original Sherlock story.
 
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