I was watch this episode the other night (DAMN Space HIPPIES!), and I noticed something odd. The (still) shot of Capt. Kirk (after Dr. Severin exits the shuttle) is reversed (look at the insignia). It looks as if it is from an earlier episode in the series. Does anyone one recognize it? They reused stuff so often that it might be difficult to find the correct episode.
Anomaly in "The Way to Eden"
- Thread starter Harrison Bergeron
- Start date
I think it was shot for "Eden," but the director inadvertently had Shatner looking in the wrong direction, so the film editor flipped it. This happened more than once in the series to Shatner reaction shots, if I recall. But maybe three times at the most.
The makers would sometimes flip a film neg if it was realized that a character was looking the wrong direction. The EDEN episode's incident is the most infamous but prior examples existed. Not many, but EDEN's stands out as sorely as Adam's flower tattoo.
It's a shame really. It's one of my favourite late third-season episodes. I especially like the theme of Eden and how its something we may strive for, but can never attain. But those poor shots, along with the Tholian model reworking, are a reminder of the series' budget, and dedication, beginning to come to an end.
Flip shot-wise, I know of Omega Glory when the landing party are being held prisoners. I know there are others, but can't remember at the moment...
Flip shot-wise, I know of Omega Glory when the landing party are being held prisoners. I know there are others, but can't remember at the moment...
I suspect less people would notice Kirk looking the wrong way in a close up (with no surrounding scenery) than notice his insignia was obviously on the wrong side of his shirt. During the next remaster, maybe they'll fix the stupid mistakes. Also, I found it very distracting that Kirk's shirt didn't even have an insignia in The Enemy Within. Maybe evil-Kirk was a right side incarnation while good-Kirk was a left side incarnation...
"Eden" sported some great themes, even if it was less than the sum of its parts.
Eden was in the middle of enemy territory, which is arguably an allusion but to what?
An alien planet would undoubtedly have food that would very well be toxic. It's strange that Adam would go in so plainly to eat the first thing bobbing from a tree.
Dr Severin was a bit of a snake... (unlike "The Apple", "Eden" took more time in making an allegory with metaphor instead of the old cut'n'paste trick with a handful of words.)
The idea of technology causing problems toxic to life may have been superficial, but it's interesting nonetheless.
Even the synthococcus novae, an interesting bit of Treknobabble if any were to be concocted for a division outside Engineering, might otherwise hint at "superbugs" or any disease with origins due to an oopsie in a petri dish, but now I know I'm reading into the story way too much, and a few decades late to boot.
There's always idealism in going back to "the basics". But the one thing forgotten is that technology was made to get around limitations in nature that was constraining to life. Without aqueducts one has to live very close to water. Life could only exist in a narrow temperate zone. Plenty of diseases like pneumonia, gangrene, and others led to horrible, early deaths as well. The hippies were idealistic but were not thinking of the flip side of their dreamland mirage.
Was the one hippie (in the dark brown outfit) that was a starfleet officer in "The Galileo Seven" the same person?
And the hippies themselves, who sing of fun in the sun and being nice seem quick to be hostile, though at least Adam and Irina question events whereas Rad is just acting pompous. How much of their attitudes are driven and reined by Sevrin versus any other factors, would they really survive very long the moment they had to deal with big issues - such as Romulans arriving on the planet and using their weapons? (The episode doesn't even begin to address this, one of many possible outcomes.) If this episode encapsulates the hippie movement, which it doesn't - not fully, we needed to see more of the peace signs or a better allegory of (the "one" with an egg with infinity sign within is not bad, but doesn't go as far as it could.)
The Tholian ship with nacelles glued on from the spare Klingon ship kitbash was a bit much. Even taking a twinkie, spraypainting it gray and brush in some tiny black windows glowing ultraviolet, and using two bendy-straws also painted gray might have worked better. Which reminds me, have you ever tried roasting a twinkie over a fire the way one does for marshmallows?
Still, that song's lyrics are pretty cool:
It's said Charles Napier wrote the lyrics. His other shows show he's got quite a range as an actor, but those lyrics were pretty spot-on regarding the issues of the time. Imagine Spears and Bieber doing a cover of that?
His hair is still a giveaway as it parts at an angle.
GREAT point about The Enemy Within and the lack of insignia (interesting production gaffe to help remind everyone which scene and which Kirk it was?
)OK, Thanks.
The flip shots even happen in TAS!!! So what's their excuse? 
JB
JB
They happened as recently as the 2009 movie. If you watch at the very start when Captain Robau sits down, his insignia vanishes for a shot. Why? The scene was flipped, they noticed it looked weird and removed the badge with CG (perhaps the budget didn't cover moving it across to the correct side)
Left Handed animators?The flip shots even happen in TAS!!! So what's their excuse?
JB
I'm not going to check the movie, but is it possible that the actor's badge was actually missing from his costume for that shot?
Kirk's famously missing insignia in "The Enemy Within" might have happened because a costumer mistakenly gave Shatner the tunic meant for his body double-- the "Kirk" whose back would be seen while Shatner faced the camera later in the episode. And the show was still new enough that somehow nobody noticed it; the uniforms were not well-established in their minds yet, like we now take for granted.
Filmation was cheap.The flip shots even happen in TAS!!! So what's their excuse?
No, they actually removed the Starfleet insignias before they washed the uniforms, because the uniforms shrunk when they washed them. They forgot to sew it back on before those shots.
Eyelines are really important, and Kirk looking screen left after Severin exited screen right would make it seem the good Captain was looking away. Likewise they flopped shots on the planet in "The Enemy Within" so that that characters exiting from in one direction don't enter the subsequent shot from the opposite direction, albeit TOS-R "fixed" this and broke the directional continuity.
"No"? You have documented proof that your explanation is the correct one? Because I just said "might be."
In any case, what the show got right was that the missing insignia on the planet set was still missing for the Transporter Room scene. So that's a plus.
That explanation has been given in several behind the scenes books on TOS. Normally, I'd look up which ones and directly quote from one of them for you, but since your response was so rude... Nope. Do your own research.
Excuse the hell out of me for trying to inject facts into the conversation.
The director of Eden seemed to bumble his way through some scenes. I remember Walter Koenig complained about the segment with Irina in the lounge because his left ear dominated his over-the-shoulder shots.
I remember reading that supposition in Phil Farrand's Nitpickers Guide
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