ALL SCI-FI

[Pow]

The aliens from ST:TMP.

Betelgeusians: Inhabitants of the star Betelgeuse who are seven-foot-tall humanoids who are descended from a race of leopard-like eagles. They have a claw & bone structure similar to a condor.

Arcturians: A race of clones from the densely populated Arcturus. They provide the backbone of the Federation Infantry. If required, they are able to create billions of new soldiers overnight.

Saurians: A race of lizard-like people who are very intelligent and make excellent officers. They are very strong physically and possess four hearts. They are able to breathe several different types of gasses, which makes them useful members of landing parties.

Kazarites: These are the Dr. Doolittles of the Federation of Planets who are able to communicate with animals telepathically. The Kazarites also have limited telekinetic powers and can teleport themselves mentally. They are ecologists who devote much of their time to the care of animals.

Zaranites: They cannot breathe oxygen and must use breathing masks & backpacks that supply them with the essential fluorine gas they breathe.

Aaamazzarites: They generate their clothing from their own mouths. In fact, everything on Aaamazzara, including furniture, is the produced bio-chemically, similar to the way bees make hives.

Rigellians: Descended from a race of saber-toothed turtles. They only have one gender and reproduce by laying eggs.

K'normians: A humanoid race with large foreheads. Their large brains gives them a superior appreciation of time and space.

Rhaandarites: A simple, gregarious people much better at taking orders than giving them. They are long-lived and reach maturity at around 150 or so.

Megarites: They live underwater, but the FOP developed a system of injections that allow them to survive on land for about a week. Their planet is made from jade.

[Pow]

Things I learned from the History Channel's series The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek.

Paramount Studio initially planned to launch a fourth TV network and wanted a brand new ST show as their flagship series.

Star Wars debuted in the summer of 1977 and was an enormous hit. ST people tried to convince Paramount that this indicated that there was a huge market for science fiction, and a ST film would be perfect.

Paramount felt that Star Wars was a one hit wonder and there would not be an audience for more science fiction movies. It wasn't until the premiere & success of Close Encounters of the Third Kind that Paramount thought, okay, maybe there is a market for a ST movie after all.

Harold Livingston wrote the script for a ST feature film titled IN Thy Image. Gene Roddenberry rewrote it. HL felt that Gene's rewrite was terrible and that Roddenberry could not write well at all. They would remain at each other's throats throughout the production of ST:TMP.

HL received a frantic phone call from producer Michael Eisner from Paris telling him that the script sent by HL was (bleep)!
Harold discovered it was not his original script but one that Gene had rewritten that was sent to Eisner.

Robert Wise was selected as the film director but found Gene's micromanaging & interference intolerable.

During the production of the movie Gene was abusing drugs. He was a prodigious drinker, and was smoking marijuana, using cocaine.

Robert Abel & his company was hired to create the special/visual effects. The optical house had done some marvelous visual TV commercials, but had never done a feature film before.

Abel & his team were way in over their head. After many weeks of working they only created a few minutes of visuals.
Director Wise was incensed and fired them immediately.

Famed FX artists Douglas Trumbull & John Dykstra took over under enormous pressure to meet the film's deadline.
They had crews working around the clock 24/7.

Leonard Nimoy thought that Wise was being poorly advised by people who knew nothing about Star Trek.

The script was constantly undergoing rewrites even as they were shooting the movie.

The film was a financial success for the studio, but not the mega-hit Paramount was looking for.

When they decided to produce a second ST movie there wasn't exactly a long list of directors jumping at the chance to do it.

Some did not want to do a ST film, some did not want to do a sequel, and some had no interest in doing a science fiction film. And other directors were simply unavailable.

[Bud Brewster]

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A fine post, Mike.

It's really sad that politics and personal egos often derail the efforts of true cinematic artists who struggle to create fine science fiction.

I'm just an aging sci-fi fan with a modest message board, but the concepts that our members and I have proposed are often far better than what we get out of Tinsel Town.

Sir, your contributions to All Sci-Fi are greatly appreciated.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

Douglas Trumbull developed ulcers while working on ST:TMP and trying to meet its release date.

Doug and his team were brought in after the first special effects company proved incompetent months into the production.

Doug and his people worked nearly around the clock for six months to finish the FX for the demanding schedule.

Doug had to be hospitalized after completing the production.

[Bud Brewster]

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What this tells me is that the producers were trying to get the FX done "on the cheap" — so they started out with an unreliable company who blew the assignment, and then they went with Trumbull's team, who accepted because he and his people wanted the job so badly.

Unfortunately, they lacked the experience to know what they were getting into.

Obviously the fault lies entirely with the producers for not properly investigating the qualifications of the FX teams they hired, just to ensure they were up to the job.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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Here's another look at the NX-01 refit. Beautiful.



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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

[Pow]

Many have pointed out that this motion picture's plot is a mash-up of "The Doomsday Machine" & "The Changeling" from the 1966~1969 ST television series. This is true.

I'd also submit that the episode "Once Upon a Planet" from Star Trek: The Animated Series plays a role in the feature film.

"Once Upon a Planet," November 3, 1973 is an entertaining sequel to the live action TV series episode "Shore Leave." In SL we see the Enterprise crew encounter a previously unknown world which has an astonishing subterranean machine complex that can make dreams come true for living species by creating anything their heart & mind desires.

In OUAP the Enterprise returns to the planet for rest and recreation. However, they discover that the alien caretaker they met on their first visit is now deceased, and the computer is now large & in charge.

Furthermore, the immensely sophisticated computer that is able to make anyone's fantasy come true has evolved. It now perceives the organic crew inside the "Skymachine," a.k.a. the Enterprise, as unnecessary. "I abhor waste. But they [the crew] serve the Skymachine without being essential to its function. Therefore it is only logical to eliminate that which is not needed. Components of my own design will serve as adequate replacements. In the end, following a period of integration with the Skymachine's own self, they will prove even better."

So the Enterprise crew is toast.

In ST: TMP we have this dialogue taking place between V'Ger - - - in the form of former crewwoman Ilia - - - make this statement, "Enterprise should not require the presence of carbon- based units. When my examination is complete, the carbon-based units will be reduced to data patterns."

Toast again.

ST: TMP came out in 1979, OUAP debuted on TV six years earlier. So it seems to me that the movie owes acknowledgement to not only the original live action show, it also owes a debt to the concept we saw that was part of the animated series episode.

It all comes together well in the feature film, but as others have noted, the feature film really cannot lay claim to originality with its morphing of three TV episodes into its storyline.

[Bud Brewster]

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Mike, as Mr. Spock would say, "Fascinating."

A.I. systems which make judgements like that are assuming a specific function for the Enterprise that could somehow be performed without the "infestation" of the crew (as V'ger called it).

Clearly this is a mistake on the part of the A.I. It's like saying a jetliner could save fuel if it reduced its weight . . . by leaving off the flight crew, the passengers, and all their luggage.

It's easy to image Kirk doing one of his "verbal smack-downs" on the A.I. by explaining what the primary purpose of the starship is. In fact, all he'd have to do is the recite the opening of TOS!

__________ Star Trek Original Series Intro (HQ)


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The computer would listen to this explanation, pause a few seconds, and then say, "Ummm . . . okay, now I get it."
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[scotpens]

[Bud Brewster]

[Pow]

Watching ST: TMP today on Youtube, I caught a scene that I hadn't really taken note of before that doesn't make any sense.

When Admiral Kirk gives the order to Commander Scott to engage the warp engines of the Enterprise for the first time, it inadvertently creates a wormhole that the starship is now caught up in. An asteroid also is drawn into it.

Kirk orders Chekov, who's is manning the ship's weapons station, to fire the ship's phasers at the humongous asteroid coming directly at the Enterprise.

Captain Decker yells for Chekov to belay that order as he runs to the weapons station. He then has Chekov fire the
six photon torpedoes at the asteroid, which then obliterates it to smithereens.

The Enterprise is then able to shut down engines in warp and escape the wormhole.

Kirk tells Decker to come to his quarters, where he then sternly rebukes Decker for countermanding his orders. Decker explains to Kirk that the newly redesigned Enterprise has its phaser tied into the engines for more power. When the ship tried to use the warp engines and the wormhole was accidentally created, the engines automatically shut down, thus rendering the phaser offline.

So the photon torpedoes had to be used to destroy the asteroid. The scene reveals that Kirk barely knows this version of the Enterprise and that this can present a danger to the mission, according to Decker.

Obviously the scene is intended to show that Kirk didn't realize what he was doing, and that Decker saved the vessel. Also, to show the dramatic tension between the two men.

The problem is this: Chekov, as the trained weapons officer, would have known that during the emergency the phasers were unavailable. He would have informed Kirk of that fact. There was no need for Decker to melodramatically holler and run over to the weapons station.

That would also have eliminated the need for Kirk to reprimand Decker, and for Decker to tell Kirk why he did what he did.

So the logic of the scene was sacrificed for a frightening moment on the bridge, and the Kirk/Decker confrontation later. Hollywood mantra: You always sacrifice logic and reason for a dramatic scene.

[Bud Brewster]

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A flawless analysis, Mister P!

That scene has always bothered me, but I didn't really now why.

The only thing I can add is that the idea of "tying the phasers in with the engines to give them more power" seems dopey. The engines don't create power, the use it — and it comes from the warp core!

It's like saying, "we tied the headlights on the car into the engine to make them brighter."

The engine gets electrical power from the alternator, which it uses to ignite the spark plugs, thus creating mechanical energy the propel the car forward.

Any good grease monkey knows more about science than studio morons who wrote that scene.

Oh, by the way . . . why did the asteroid that got "pulled into" the wormhole travel along ahead of the ship until they shot it!

Hell's Bells, the Enterprise was traveling at warp 1.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

Yes, tying the Enterprise's phaser weapons directly into the ship's engines seems like a unwise concept. If anything goes wrong with the engines it could also cause the phasers to be rendered inactive. If an enemy starship fires on the engines this could also deactivate the ship's phasers.

I suppose you could have the system designed so that the phasers are not permanently locked into the engines. The crew could turn it off and on. There could arise a situation where they could tie into the phasers just for that specific objective, then turn them off.

In the episode "The Paradise Syndrome," the Enterprise attempts to use their phasers to change the course of an asteroid that is on a collision with an inhabited world. They give it all they got, but it isn't enough. They burn out their phasers in the process. If they could have significantly increased their phaser power by tying into the engines, perhaps they could have achieved their goal. Once they did so, they then disconnect their phaser system from the engines.

[Gord Green]

Hmmm...Interesting discussion guys ! May I add my two cents?

First of all the warp nacceles are not "engines". They are actually a sort of wave guide generating a warp bubble around a starship.

BUT the Enterprise DOES have Impulse engines for use, I would think, when close to a planet.

Since they would not be active while in warp, the energy that runs them (which would not be chemical, but run by electric power or something similar.) The energy from the impulse engine could be channeled to the phasers .

OR...The real answer is that it's just a McGuffin the writer (Probebly Roddenburys contribution) put in ,so illogical that he figured the viewers would miss it!
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There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.