News Introducing Fact Trek
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It's not somewhere public. Sorry.
A few updates.
In the wake of the George Floyd incident and protests and national upset we decided to press PAUSE on our detailed set of tweets titled "What the Flying A?" (link to thread start) about the history of Star Trek's Starfleet-related insignia. We have several weeks of content in the hopper for that so it'll resume sometime soon. But in the meantime...
In the wake of the George Floyd incident and protests and national upset we decided to press PAUSE on our detailed set of tweets titled "What the Flying A?" (link to thread start) about the history of Star Trek's Starfleet-related insignia. We have several weeks of content in the hopper for that so it'll resume sometime soon. But in the meantime...
- Our recent tweets focus on blacks who appeared on or worked behind the scenes on TOS:
- And today we put up a blog post titled "NBC & Black America, 1966" (link) featuring the August 1966 letter from NBC's Mort Werner sent to Gene Roddenberry about casting minorities. It's worth a read IMHO.
Yup, I definitely remember it from there.
As a few people are discussing the fact that the Mort Werner letter was delivered (as we stated) months after production started, we've added an Addendum to the blog post to discuss what we do know about minority/black casting in that era and Star Trek in particular.
What I believe the Addendum demonstrates is that a broader historical context lets you weed out falsehoods. Looking at more than one source gives you a bigger perspective. Notably, if you line up where Trek was development-wise against what else was going on at NBC you get a bigger picture: that the 1st pilot was rejected just around the time NBC would have had to give the series order for I Spy. Now, if NBC was okay with greenlighting a series with a black as a co-billed co-equal co-star in early 1965, they sure as heck weren't going to balk at casting minorities in Trek's 2nd pilot months later, let alone the series.
Context is king.
What I believe the Addendum demonstrates is that a broader historical context lets you weed out falsehoods. Looking at more than one source gives you a bigger perspective. Notably, if you line up where Trek was development-wise against what else was going on at NBC you get a bigger picture: that the 1st pilot was rejected just around the time NBC would have had to give the series order for I Spy. Now, if NBC was okay with greenlighting a series with a black as a co-billed co-equal co-star in early 1965, they sure as heck weren't going to balk at casting minorities in Trek's 2nd pilot months later, let alone the series.
Context is king.
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I know you guys are probably already peppered with reuquests and questions, but I would love to know if it's possible to conclusively debunk (or support) the "windsock dipped in cement" thing regarding the creation of the planet killer. I know fans and model buolders have done speculative research, but would be interested to see if there's any real info on the creation of the model. Cuz, I don't buy the windsock thing.
IDK
From this inteview with Norman Spirad:
https://www.startrek.com/article/doomsday-more-with-norman-spinrad-part-1
That's what GR told him.
No, that's what he thought he remembered GR telling him when giving an interview 45 years later. That's far from reliable.
In this thread a few years back, we came to the consensus that it's evidently covered in wrinkled cellophane, foil, or lighting gels held together by adhesive tape, possibly around some kind of wire armature (maybe a cone of chicken wire?).
That's what he said GR told him. It makes for a fun story and we all know GR wasn't a bastion of truthfullness. Hey, if it's true, it's true. I just can't picture "dippng a windsock in cement" to create the model. Windsocks aren't exactly stiff. You'd have to reinforce it to keep its shape. It's too simple an dglib an answer.
Ninja'd by @Christopher
Anyways, Cushman used the same anecdote as a source, so that's doubly duobtful.
There's very little documentation on the production side of things outside the scriptwriting. A lot of decisions were made in production meetings and not written down formally.
As to the Planet Killer, Spinrad's memory is not to be trusted. Several claims he's made about the script aren't supported by the actual story outlines and script drafts. Heck, he even sketched something on one of the scripts that basically is just what we see in the finished episode when looking down the thing's throat. Caveat emptor where Spinrad is concerned.
This is not FACT TREKual, but Trevanian and I discussed the Planet Killer miniature years ago, and we both think Daren Docterman's idea—that is was largely composed of foil (possibly black foil, used in lighting) and gels—is very plausible. We don't think Daren was correct about it being built around a light source for various reasons. Trevanian suggested the underlying structure might be a wire tomato cage, which are conical and dirt cheap.
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BTW, re The Martian Within blog post, at the suggestion of @BK613 we decided to add to the post some antecedents to the whole doppelgänger idea, one going waaaaay back. See Other Antecedents in the blog here (LINK). And even an animated sequence!
Yeah, that aspect seems (to me, anyway) more likely to be a simple optical mask and insert of some "animated" effect.
Yeah, the light source here seems to be coming from the front, not from inside, as there's a shadow across part of the inner surface. In the head-on shot, it also looks frontlit, and the heart is clearly a moire animation effect composited in.
Based on its paper and Scotch tape exterior, the planet killer was surely the most fragile and short-lived miniature of the franchise. Solid neutronium, it wasn't. 
Except for the shot where it turns every single shot of the Planet Killer is a still that being moved, probably on an Oxberry animation stand. The machine is very blue looking in many shots which leads me to suspect the model and stills were either not shot against a bluescreen for matting or that its actual color wasn't so bluish as it appears (perhaps tinted more a bit bluer at the optical printing stage). They could have created a hand-drawn black mask matte since it's usually just a still, but that, too, would have had to have been shot on the same animation stand.
I'd almost forgotten this, but some years ago at a cafe it hit me the machine miniature might've had no internal structure at all, an idea I immediately explored by rolling a napkin into a cone and folding the opening back around itself. It held its shape surprisingly well, and the same thing made out of heavy lighting foil would be pretty rigid...unless you pushed on it. Behold, the Croissant Killer!
I'd almost forgotten this, but some years ago at a cafe it hit me the machine miniature might've had no internal structure at all, an idea I immediately explored by rolling a napkin into a cone and folding the opening back around itself. It held its shape surprisingly well, and the same thing made out of heavy lighting foil would be pretty rigid...unless you pushed on it. Behold, the Croissant Killer!
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I had the vague thought looking at pictures of it earlier, "Would it really need a support framework? Is there even room for one between the foil layers?" So now that you say this, I'm just about convinced you're right. The uneven way it tapers to the back and the irregular cross section do suggest there's nothing inside. If it were a tomato frame as someone suggested, it would be a more regular cone.
The more I learn about the Planet Killer, the more I realize how incredibly crude its construction was, yet it was still amazingly effective.
Umm, while we're at it, what exactly is "lighting foil"? Is it for making reflectors, or is it a lining around stage lights, or what? And what does it normally look like?
"Lighting foil" was my non-industry way of saying "blackwrap" "black foil" or "cinefoil", which is a black, non-reflective heavy aluminum foil, usually C-47*ed (clothespinned) to a light and then bent around to shape the light. It's a really basic tool because it's lightweight, and you can literally adjust and readjust in seconds.
I have a roll of it right here.
*—On a film set a clothespin is a C-47, and when you turn it upside down it's a C-74.
I have a roll of it right here.
*—On a film set a clothespin is a C-47, and when you turn it upside down it's a C-74.
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Okay, thanks. So I guess the next step would be to try to make a Planet Killer replica out of black foil and tape, take photos, and compare them to the "Doomsday Machine" footage.
I don't really want to make this topic all about a tangent like the Planet Killer, but to button this off here's an image of some effects elements before the starfield has been matted in. You can really see the clear covering (tape?) over the rougher underlying cone, especially when you click/tap the inage to zoom in.
EDIT TO ADD: Bottom just left of center you can see a bit of what is probably the stand for the model.
EDIT TO ADD: Bottom just left of center you can see a bit of what is probably the stand for the model.
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