The program is solid evidence but anything could have happened to change the schedule. And reprinting would have been impossible at that time.
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The program is solid evidence but anything could have happened to change the schedule. And reprinting would have been impossible at that time.
Thank you. Your memory jives, more or less, with an NBC press release dated 9/9/66 that says an episode (singular) was given special screening at the Cleveland convention.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
It may have been the account I read, though I recall reading it elsewhere, maybe on this site.
Not really solid evidence. "The Time Tunnel" also premiered at Tricon but where is it mentioned in the program?
Agree with you, however, about the difficulties of reprinting back then!
A fanzine I just read (Degler in 9-66?) said two eps were shown. But I don't know if he saw them or if he was just quoting from the program.
I don't think "Time Tunnel" could have premiered at Tricon -- Ted White lambasted it in the Yandro preceding Tricon. Remember, Trek didn't premiere at Tricon either (it premiered at Westercon in July).
@Harvey's dug into this more. There are some memos which make it appear the second pilot was probably a print that had been previously loaned to Harlan Ellison to screen at a July con in San Diego, and there's another memo about only a black and white print of "The Cage" being available, etc. etc. We're gonna dig into this more before commenting further.
Yes, it was previewed, my mistake. But it's still not in the Tricon program, which is my point.
Yep. And your point?
ETA: A pilot was previewed at Westercon. Let's keep the vernacular consistent.
Looking forward to this!
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The first here has the statement "Allen spent more than 00,000 to create the pilot". hahaha
Just noting what you did--preview/=premiered.
Specifically, WNMHGB (I believe the pilot, not the aired version).
What was this Westercon? Is it possible that's where Allan Asherman saw WNMHGB followed by a b&w print of "The Cage"? That would leave Tricon free to have shown both films in color.
Thinking that "The Cage" was b&w just isn't the kind of thing that would come in as a false memory. The color palette was too vivid.
Eh, I'm pretty sure I have false memories like that, and my memory is comparatively remarkable.
Westercon was the July San Diego con @Maurice mentioned. I read something in a '66 zine about it (no, I don't remember which one, but you're welcome to plow through FANAC for it
)They specifically just mentioned the one ep, not both.
As an aside, did Westercon become Comicon at some point, or perhaps be supplanted by it? Or were they not connected?
Westercon 19 was held July 1–4, 1966 at the Stardust Motor Hotel and Country Club in San Diego, California, two months before TriCon, and thousands of miles away.
He sounds like a proper science fiction fan. We've got two science fiction book shops in the city I live in and they don't stock Star Trek books and only have limited Star Wars stuff.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.
I don't understand the hate towards early Lost in Space. At the beginning I thought it was fairly serious science fiction for TV. Later on when Smith and the Robot took over I can understand. I even liked that back then. When I see it now my main issues are the logic of leaving your son all day with a grown man also one who previously tried to kill you all and would put Will in between himself and danger.
Probably because it's not a very good show.
By 60's standards, the first episodes were a decent example of space adventure for the common audience. Laughable perhaps for devotees of serious SF, but it was still a solid adventure.
Maybe about 8 episodes in, it began to wobble. Halfway through the season, Batman premiered directly opposite and it all went to hell.
But those early formative episodes produced without screen credit by Buck Hougton are excellent. Again, for 60's network TV sci-fi.
I gave it a try. I found it really dull.
Here's what @Harvey and I have concluded so far re...
TRICON & THE PILOTS
The story begins when Roddenberry reportedly planned to screen both pilots and give a talk at the Science Fiction Writer's Association Banquet on March 11th, 1966. 24th World Science Fiction Convention chairman Ben Jason had gotten word of this from Ellison, and wrote Roddenberry on February 21st to ask if he would bring this same presentation to TriCon. Jason indicates Ellison had described both shows as “handsomely-mounted, in color.”
A fanzine from late 1966 indicates that on the July 4th weekend Ellison brought Pilot #2 to Westercon 19 in San Diego, CA. More on this below. We found a transcript of a talk Ellison gave at that con and he mentions Trek (but not the pilot film he reportedly brought).
An August 24th Roddenberry memo stated his intention to take 16mm color prints of Pilots #1 and #2 to TriCon and makes mention that The Time Tunnel was to be screened as well. (This would also explain why the TriCon program says the two episodes are color.)
An August 26th memo explained to Roddenberry that because a 16mm internegative of Pilot #1 was never made, the studio had only a black and white print of Pilot #1 in 16mm (prints were delivered to NBC in 35mm). It stated that the only 16mm color print of Pilot #2 was loaned to Harlan Ellison (referencing a July 7 memo we've not seen to this effect from Roddenberry) and that only once they obtain the print from him could they provide it to Roddenberry.
Various audience accounts of TriCon in Cleveland indicate that both pilots were screened in the order of #2 then #1. Some claim they asked Roddenberry if he had anything else to show after #2 screened, but the paper trail makes plain that the plan to screen both pilots was in the works over six months earlier.* That Pilot #1 was in black & white comports with Allan Asherman's account, and any reports indicating Pilot #1 was in color are likely either misremembrances or a false recollections based on the convention program which indicates—as per Roddenberry's original plan—that both Trek segments would be in color.
Two items we can't knowledgeably comment on are:
TRICON & THE PILOTS
The story begins when Roddenberry reportedly planned to screen both pilots and give a talk at the Science Fiction Writer's Association Banquet on March 11th, 1966. 24th World Science Fiction Convention chairman Ben Jason had gotten word of this from Ellison, and wrote Roddenberry on February 21st to ask if he would bring this same presentation to TriCon. Jason indicates Ellison had described both shows as “handsomely-mounted, in color.”
A fanzine from late 1966 indicates that on the July 4th weekend Ellison brought Pilot #2 to Westercon 19 in San Diego, CA. More on this below. We found a transcript of a talk Ellison gave at that con and he mentions Trek (but not the pilot film he reportedly brought).
An August 24th Roddenberry memo stated his intention to take 16mm color prints of Pilots #1 and #2 to TriCon and makes mention that The Time Tunnel was to be screened as well. (This would also explain why the TriCon program says the two episodes are color.)
An August 26th memo explained to Roddenberry that because a 16mm internegative of Pilot #1 was never made, the studio had only a black and white print of Pilot #1 in 16mm (prints were delivered to NBC in 35mm). It stated that the only 16mm color print of Pilot #2 was loaned to Harlan Ellison (referencing a July 7 memo we've not seen to this effect from Roddenberry) and that only once they obtain the print from him could they provide it to Roddenberry.
Various audience accounts of TriCon in Cleveland indicate that both pilots were screened in the order of #2 then #1. Some claim they asked Roddenberry if he had anything else to show after #2 screened, but the paper trail makes plain that the plan to screen both pilots was in the works over six months earlier.* That Pilot #1 was in black & white comports with Allan Asherman's account, and any reports indicating Pilot #1 was in color are likely either misremembrances or a false recollections based on the convention program which indicates—as per Roddenberry's original plan—that both Trek segments would be in color.
Two items we can't knowledgeably comment on are:
- If Ellison's first look at both pilots in color and that proposed March 11th Science Fiction Writer's Association Banquet screening (if it happened) were of 35mm prints. If so, that could explain why Roddenberry in August '66 assumed he could take color prints of both pilots to TriCon, not realizing there was no color 16mm print of Pilot #1.
- Whether Roddenberry ever considered bringing series production episodes to TriCon instead of the pilots is probably unknowable. If he ever did, the reality that the first shows were so close to the wire for delivery likely disabused him of this notion.
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Sure, but the operative words there are "for TV." Back then, unlike today, science fiction conventions were mainly for fans of prose SF, and from their perspective, TV and movie sci-fi was dumbed-down and entry-level. Even today, most screen sci-fi is a pale reflection of prose SF, rarely approaching its intelligence or range of ideas and tending to lag a decade or two behind its innovations (except for the series that directly adapt prose SF/fantasy, like The Expanse or The Magicians). This was even more the case in the 1960s-70s. If Asimov and Heinlein were fancy restaurant dining, TV sci-fi was a greasy-spoon diner. People who ate at a greasy-spoon diner every day might like it, but a restaurant critic would probably find it unpalatable.
Early Lost in Space wasn't bad as a family adventure show, but it was a children's show, and it was literally just The Swiss Family Robinson dressed up with a superficial, fanciful space-opera facade. It wasn't genre-literate or scientifically plausible, didn't engage with the kind of concepts and conjectures you'd find in prose science fiction. Hardly anything on TV did, except The Twilight Zone and to an extent The Outer Limits. That's why SF fans, and writers like Ellison before his "City on the Edge" experience soured him, were so excited by Star Trek -- it was the first time they'd seen something recognizable as real, intelligent science fiction in a non-anthology TV series, as opposed to Flash Gordon-y space opera aimed at children.
Back in the day, we just took these reference books at face value. Since they were, more or less, authorized, we trusted the authors without needing to see reprints or scans of memos and things. I still felt Asherman was prone to hyperbole ("we came close to lifting Gene Roddenberry upon our shoulders and carrying him out of the room"), but didn't have reason to doubt his version of the viewing of the first pilot.
Now I doubt everything and I appreciate the work @Maurice and @Harvey do to get to the truth. I still love the Compendium for what it was: the (I think) first serious, detailed look at the series on an episode by episode basis. I prefer the first edition to the later printings.
Now I doubt everything and I appreciate the work @Maurice and @Harvey do to get to the truth. I still love the Compendium for what it was: the (I think) first serious, detailed look at the series on an episode by episode basis. I prefer the first edition to the later printings.
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