News Introducing Fact Trek

[publiusr]

I don’t remember the narration….

Interestingly, the pitch document proposed a couple of other money-saving options that TOS ultimately didn't use. One was writing scripts to take advantage of "current studio construction," e.g. if there was an Ancient Egypt movie about to wrap, they could write an Egyptian-planet episode to use its sets before they tore them down. Paramount didn't have a lot of sci-fi in its library, but maybe they could've gotten some useful footage from Crack in the Earth or Robinson Crusoe on Mars, say.

A shame they didn’t use those…maybe an additional season might have seen the use of those…

Now, there is one clip from The Incredible Hulk’s PROMETHEUS which showed missile bays in flames…also in Battlestar Galactica…I think someone said that was movie footage of an attack on underground V-2s…Operation Crossbow:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Crossbow_(film)

Here is the shot:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aYm1pOc-jF4/VIbrdA_a26I/AAAAAAAAa8w/sNikRCzEPRw/s1600/Op.Crossbow1.jpg

-from:
http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/2014/12/magicians-of-miniature.html?m=1

Now, having miniatures from different theme movies in juxtaposition could have made for an interesting episode. Shades of “Close Encounters,” having a sailing ship on a moonscape would be awesome

 

[Maurice]

Yesterday @Harvey and I spent four hours Zoom chatting former Desilu casting director Joe D'Agosta, going over almost his entire career, and only tangentially touching on Star Trek. We'll be asking about Trek in a follow-up call. He told us great stories about both Irwin Allen and Lucille Ball. As we were chatting he made a quick call to his ex wife Barbara [Baldavin], whom Trekkies know from "Balance of Terror," "Shore Leave" and "Turnabout Intruder," so we heard her over the speakerphone.

Joe is working on a memoir and we're gonna help him by giving him the research Harvey put together, including images like these. Joe is in the lower left photo for Strange Lovers, with Walter Koenig in the pic above.
View attachment 28071

View attachment 28070

@Harvey and I spent another two+ hours Zooming with Star Trek casting director Joe D'Agosta yesterday. Does that raconteur have Hollywood stories! That makes something like 6.5 hours of interview thus far, and we've comparatively barely touched on Star Trek. We stopped just shy of our main Trek questions, and will wrap those up next time...hopefully in the next two weeks.

 

[MGagen]

I am so glad you are doing this. So many of the old hands are beaming out to other worlds as time goes on...

Thanks for saving these precious memories.

You might approach our own board member TrekACE, if you can get him to respond. Things he has posted over the years have led me to the conclusion he was involved as a young man in some behind the scenes capacity. Possibly working under Finnerman. I have approached him with questions before, but he's never responded. But you guys have obviously established credentials as archivists, so maybe he would reply to you.

M.

 

[Maurice]

I spent the day with Andreea Kindryd nee Richardson, Gene Coon’s production secretary at Desilu and Universal. She showed me a copy of the limited edition memoir she’ll be making available at the big Trek 56 Year Mission con next week, which @Harvey and I assisted in a small way over the pandemic.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

I forgot about the first season Hulk's. Yeah, they did have a lot of stock in a couple of them.

But the idea of the episode being "built around" the footage is erroneous; I've seen the original scripts for those (and many) TIH episodes, and there were solid, full stories that could have been accomplished sans stock footage.

Eventually they stopped doing that and did a "clip show" here and there, but tried to bring something new to the storyline (McGee discovering that someone transforms into the Hulk for example).

Yes--the "Mystery Man" two-parter. The great thing about TIH was that clips from earlier episodes always had a meaning for the new story it was applied to--usually a reference to Banner's past, or his trials as the Hulk, making use of the footage anything but a clip show, and as anyone knows, TIH's drama was based on Banner's never-ending tragedies, or what brought him to that point in time.

Or remake episodes as Bewitched did later on (which probably didn't seem as obvious at the time).

Some 60s local TV guides mentioned a few episode retreads, but the interesting thing about Bewitched was Elizabeth Montgomery thought the other Screen Gems magical series--I Dream of Jeannie was ripping off season one Bewitched scripts, but a few years down the line, Bewitched lifted plots from the "ripoff."

 

[Maurice]

Busy day FACT TREKking and I wasn't even supposed to be.

First, Trekmovie

TrekMovie.com
@TrekMovie
OTD 1966: At the World Science Fiction convention in Cleveland, Gene Roddenberry screens #StarTrekTOS's "Where No Man Has Gone Before." It went so well that he then showed them a black-and-white print of "The Cage."

Except...well...

...the intention from the start was to show two episodes. I dunno what the claim about "The Cage" being a black & white print is based on. We have no idea which episodes Gene might have planned to show, but contemporary accounts make clear it was the pilots that were screened.
EDIT 9 SEPT 2022: #FactTrekCorrection. For answers to the strikethroughs see this post (link).

Then @Ryan Thomas Riddle sent me his photo of a slideshow before a TWOK screening today.
Even TCM gets it wrong! *sigh*No, it wasn't a script for TWOK, it was a treatment by Roddenberry. And while Kennedy is in it, the story didn't concern his assassination...other than that restoring history would doom him.


Finally, Nick Meyer tweeted concerning a not-wholly accurate article Star Trek: 10 Facts You Didn't Know About The Wrath Of Khan on Screenrant (link), writing:

Nicholas Meyer
@NicholasMQ
Another stab at facts you didn't know about #TheWrathOfKhan... some truths and non-truths...

My reply:

The sword fight is there in Jack B. Sowards' first draft of "The Omega System" script dated 2-20-81. Elements of that story and the later "The Genesis Project" provided some DNA for what
@NicholasMQ reinvented into #thewrathofkhan.

 

[Ssosmcin]

...the intention from the start was to show two episodes. I dunno what the claim about "The Cage" being a black & white print is based on. We have no idea which episodes Gene might have planned to show, but contemporary accounts make clear it was the pilots that were screened.

Perhaps Allan Asherman's Star Trek Compendium. His first person account of the con, written in the 1981 first edition, matches TrekMovie blurb. That's where I first read it and it's been repeated in reference books ever since. That doesn't make it true, just the first time I read of it. He engages in hyperbole a bit much for my comfort.

Later, a group of us asked Roddenberry if he had brought any other Trek film to the convention. Gene did have something else with him; the first Trek pilot that NBC had previously rejected. It wasn't in color, he explained; never mind, we assured him, we wanted to see it. Shortly afterward, "The Cage" was screened.
- The Star Trek Compendium by Allan Asherman. Page 11

 

[Maurice]

Perhaps Allan Asherman's Star Trek Compendium. His first person account of the con, written in the 1981 first edition, matches TrekMovie blurb. That's where I first read it and it's been repeated in reference books ever since. That doesn't make it true, just the first time I read of it. He engages in hyperbole a bit much for my comfort.

Later, a group of us asked Roddenberry if he had brought any other Trek film to the convention. Gene did have something else with him; the first Trek pilot that NBC had previously rejected. It wasn't in color, he explained; never mind, we assured him, we wanted to see it. Shortly afterward, "The Cage" was screened.
- The Star Trek Compendium by Allan Asherman. Page 11

Ah yes. And it's Asherman's story is the one that claims they asked Roddenberry if he had anything else to show them, even though the program lists two segments, so that's one grain of salt.

 

[Christopher]

Ah yes. And it's Asherman's story is the one that claims they asked Roddenberry if he had anything else to show them, even though the program lists two segments, so that's one grain of salt.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was just Roddenberry being a showman; they always planned to show both pilots, but he pretended to need the audience to talk him into it in order to get them fired up for it. It's a pretty standard performer's conceit, to pretend to need the audience to convince them to do what they were going to do anyway.

 

[Indysolo]

You're missing the other goof. TrekMovie tweeted yesterday, September 4, but the program clearly states it was September 5.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Perhaps Allan Asherman's Star Trek Compendium. His first person account of the con, written in the 1981 first edition, matches TrekMovie blurb. That's where I first read it and it's been repeated in reference books ever since. That doesn't make it true, just the first time I read of it. He engages in hyperbole a bit much for my comfort.

Later, a group of us asked Roddenberry if he had brought any other Trek film to the convention. Gene did have something else with him; the first Trek pilot that NBC had previously rejected. It wasn't in color, he explained; never mind, we assured him, we wanted to see it. Shortly afterward, "The Cage" was screened.
- The Star Trek Compendium by Allan Asherman. Page 11

Thank you, Scott. I couldn't remember where I'd read that passage, and you had it.

Also, I believe Asherman. "The Cage" that day was more than likely GR's personal, 16mm b&w print. How did it get so beat-up before Paramount harvested it for the 1986 hybrid edition? Travel, and a rough showing "on the road."

 

[Ssosmcin]

I wouldn't be surprised if it was just Roddenberry being a showman; they always planned to show both pilots, but he pretended to need the audience to talk him into it in order to get them fired up for it. It's a pretty standard performer's conceit, to pretend to need the audience to convince them to do what they were going to do anyway.

I wouldn't put it past him, but Asherman phrases it so it sounds like he and a small group of fans approached Roddenberry after a the first showing. I believe the end result was the same, but the journey is in doubt.

 

[Maurice]

I wouldn't put it past him, but Asherman phrases it so it sounds like he and a small group of fans approached Roddenberry after a the first showing. I believe the end result was the same, but the journey is in doubt.

That's the problem with Human Memory™.

 

[alchemist]

According to @Neopeius, it was reported in a fanzine that a black and white print of "The Cage" was shown the day after "WNMHGB."

 

[mb22]

It's possible that the color print was announced, but Rodenberry brought the black and white one instead.

 

[Neopeius]

Per Al Jackson:

"I went to the World Science Fiction convention in Cleveland in 1966. Gene Roddenberry came to that convention and showed two pilots for Star Trek. I remember the audience was a bit surprised and quite enthused, since no one had done any adult space opera since Forbidden Planet.

I remember, at least from what I had read and Dallas BNF Tom Reamy, who came to Tricon, knew, there was no hint that a TV pilot would be shown, but then Houston and Dallas were always on the outer circle of fanish grapevines.

I asked a friend of mine here in Houston who was also at Tricon what he remembered.

We both thought the Star Trek pilots were screened on Sunday but the pocket program says Monday, so seems that was so.

We both remember that Roddenberry was an amiable man and kind of soft spoken but had a knowledge of modern science fiction. Roddenberry gave a short introduction and told us there were two pilots, saying ,without any explanation, NBC wanted a 2nd pilot. My friend says "Where No Man Has Gone Before" was shown first and "The Cage" shown second, I remember it the other way around. Both were in color.

I remember the fan response was very positive, there just had not been much SF on TV and the 1965 Lost in Space was considered very juvenile and not very good*.

At Tricon on Saturday there was a screening of Fantastic Voyage, a clunker of a ‘SF’ film. Shown in a Cleveland theater nearby on Saturday. I remember Harlan Ellison and Isaac Asimov, in the audience, doing a not so muted MST3K number on the film. Later Asimov did a novelization and fixed up a lot goofy stuff in that movie.

Next day, I was walking in a hallway at the hotel, in an alcove, there was Roddenberry standing by a model of the Enterprise. Nobody was talking to him! So I went over and he asked me what I thought, I said I was very pleased and saw a lot in those pilots that looked very familiar to a science fiction fan. Roddenberry was really pleased with that and launched into a long story about when he was in the Pacific in WWII he used to read Astounding Science Fiction magazine. He always wanted to do an adult TV space opera, so he borrowed all the nomenclature and settings from the page and used those in Star Trek. He said he could not do any better than the writers, picking up FTL, matter transmitters, ‘tunable’ hand weapons (set either to blaster or stun), energy projection weapons , other techno-stuff like that... also ideas like a ‘Federation’ of planets.... Lots of ideas that had been common currency in prose SF since the 1930s. He was enthusiastic and knowable of modern SF on the page. (Well some prose SF was adapted for the TV show.) I wish I had asked him about Forbidden Planet.

In later years, I saw him at cons, but could not get within 10 feet of him such were the crowds. I did talk to D C Fontana , story editor for the show, in later years, she was nice and knowledgeable too."

Obviously, verify against known facts. At the very least, that will help determine the accuracy of Al's memory.

 

[Christopher]

"At Tricon on Saturday there was a screening of Fantastic Voyage, a clunker of a ‘SF’ film. Shown in a Cleveland theater nearby on Saturday. I remember Harlan Ellison and Isaac Asimov, in the audience, doing a not so muted MST3K number on the film. Later Asimov did a novelization and fixed up a lot goofy stuff in that movie."

Wow, Jackson had a harsh assessment of that film. It's got it's fanciful aspects, sure, but it's a fun movie and one of the great FX films of the '60s. And it's got Raquel Welch... 'nuff said.

Asimov's novelization was actually published six months before the film's release to generate advance buzz, something unimaginable in our spoiler-phobic age. This has led many to mistakenly assume the film was an adaptation of the novel instead of the reverse.

"Next day, I was walking in a hallway at the hotel, in an alcove, there was Roddenberry standing by a model of the Enterprise. Nobody was talking to him! So I went over and he asked me what I thought, I said I was very pleased and saw a lot in those pilots that looked very familiar to a science fiction fan. Roddenberry was really pleased with that and launched into a long story about when he was in the Pacific in WWII he used to read Astounding Science Fiction magazine. He always wanted to do an adult TV space opera, so he borrowed all the nomenclature and settings from the page and used those in Star Trek. He said he could not do any better than the writers, picking up FTL, matter transmitters, ‘tunable’ hand weapons (set either to blaster or stun), energy projection weapons , other techno-stuff like that... also ideas like a ‘Federation’ of planets.... Lots of ideas that had been common currency in prose SF since the 1930s. He was enthusiastic and knowable of modern SF on the page. (Well some prose SF was adapted for the TV show.) I wish I had asked him about Forbidden Planet."

Well, that's fascinating. I'd always figured that was the case, but I don't think I've ever heard it spelled out so specifically.

 

[Neopeius]

And here's a copy of the Tricon program for 9-5-66. Note that it was pre-announced that there would be two episodes of Trek in color:

 

[alchemist]

Per Al Jackson:

"I went to the World Science Fiction convention in Cleveland in 1966. Gene Roddenberry came to that convention and showed two pilots for Star Trek. I remember the audience was a bit surprised and quite enthused, since no one had done any adult space opera since Forbidden Planet.

I remember, at least from what I had read and Dallas BNF Tom Reamy, who came to Tricon, knew, there was no hint that a TV pilot would be shown, but then Houston and Dallas were always on the outer circle of fanish grapevines.

I asked a friend of mine here in Houston who was also at Tricon what he remembered.

We both thought the Star Trek pilots were screened on Sunday but the pocket program says Monday, so seems that was so.

We both remember that Roddenberry was an amiable man and kind of soft spoken but had a knowledge of modern science fiction. Roddenberry gave a short introduction and told us there were two pilots, saying ,without any explanation , NBC wanted a 2nd pilot. My friend says "Where No Man Has Gone Before" was shown first and "The Cage" shown second, I remember it the other way around. Both were in color.

I remember the fan response was very positive, there just had not been much SF on TV and the 1965 Lost in Space was considered very juvenile and not very good*.

At Tricon on Saturday there was a screening of Fantastic Voyage, a clunker of a ‘SF’ film. Shown in a Cleveland theater nearby on Saturday. I remember Harlan Ellison and Isaac Asimov, in the audience, doing a not so muted MST3K number on the film. Later Asimov did a novelization and fixed up a lot goofy stuff in that movie.

Next day, I was walking in a hallway at the hotel, in an alcove, there was Roddenberry standing by a model of the Enterprise. Nobody was talking to him! So I went over and he asked me what I thought, I said I was very pleased and saw a lot in those pilots that looked very familiar to a science fiction fan. Roddenberry was really pleased with that and launched into a long story about when he was in the Pacific in WWII he used to read Astounding Science Fiction magazine. He always wanted to do an adult TV space opera, so he borrowed all the nomenclature and settings from the page and used those in Star Trek. He said he could not do any better than the writers, picking up FTL, matter transmitters, ‘tunable’ hand weapons (set either to blaster or stun), energy projection weapons , other techno-stuff like that... also ideas like a ‘Federation’ of planets.... Lots of ideas that had been common currency in prose SF since the 1930s. He was enthusiastic and knowable of modern SF on the page. (Well some prose SF was adapted for the TV show.) I wish I had asked him about Forbidden Planet.

In later years, I saw him at cons, but could not get within 10 feet of him such were the crowds. I did talk to D C Fontana , story editor for the show, in later years, she was nice and knowledgeable too."

Obviously, verify against known facts. At the very least, that will help determine the accuracy of Al's memory.

What about this link where you said "The first one shown was "Where no Man has Gone Before" followed the next day by a black and white print of "The Cage"."? Where did this come from and is it correct? The statement implies that Roddenberry showed only one episode the first day and lends support to Asherman's account.

 

[Neopeius]

What about this link where you said "The first one shown was "Where no Man has Gone Before" followed the next day by a black and white print of "The Cage"."? Where did this come from and is it correct? The statement implies that Roddenberry showed only one episode the first day and lends support to Asherman's account.

Since that sentence isn't a quote, I imagine I got it from the same place as everyone else -- the air. Based on what I got from Jackson, I'd now be more inclined to think they were both in color.

But it was also a year ago, so I don't remember.

ETA: My memory is I had the same story other folks cite: Roddenberry had only planned to show one episode but there was fan demand so he showed the b&w print of The Cage the next day. That runs counter to the program.

EATA: Here's a link to one of the accounts

He actually did show "The Cage" at the convention after overwhelming response to "Where No Man Has Gone Before" - it was one of his famous B&W work prints.

It may have been the account I read, though I recall reading it elsewhere, maybe on this site.