The fact that one of his crewmen got killed right in front of him isn't reason enough for him to be upset?
Missed opportunities in the (TOS) movies?
- Thread starter Commander Kielbasa
- Start date
I thought that too, but an entire movie of them renegades before TVH..something along the lines of Blakes 7:
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/star-trek-iv-kirks-7.251566/#post-9956203
What we must remember when critiquing Robin Curtis: she was hand selected by ST III director, Leonard Nimoy, as exactly what he wanted from a Spock protegé. In the scene where David's death is being announced by an emotionless Saavik, Nimoy kept telling her "Colder, say it colder." Curtis had not seen ST II and Nimoy barred her from using Alley's performance as a reference. Nimoy saw Saavik as full Vulcan. The scripted half-Vulcan stuff, that had been left on the ST II cutting room floor (after only being seen in the long presentation trailer made for ShoWest).
Why Nimoy seemed so opposed to Alley's return is a mystery. I do recall that newszines of the day were reacting to Spock's death with sentiments such as, "We are sad that Spock is dead but, hey, we've got this new great Saavik character.
The only indication that things between Alley and the cast in ST II were not harmonious was a cryptic line that Paul Winfield told me in our interview (in Australia, before ST II was released). "I can tell you that the relationship between Saavik and Kirk is the opposite of their onstage relationship." [Paraphrasing.] At the time - and even at the premiere - we weren't really sure what Winfield meant. When the extended TV version turned up on US TV, the fans finally saw that Kirk and Saavik were flirting with each other in the bonus scenes not screened in cinemas. And then, with ST III, Paramount offered Alley less for ST III than she received for ST II, so her agent counter offered with a ridulously high amount, they never heard back, Alley accepted a stage role, and her contractual obligation was fulfilled (ie. she had to at least be be offered the chance to reprise the role.)
Yes, I don't dislike Curtis' performance, but it is lamentable that Nimoy encouraged a purely Vulcan performance rather than having any shades of a struggle with Romulan emotion. Curtis' portrayal in TNG showed a decent mix of logic and emotion. she can do it for sure.
I prefer Curtis to Catrall, the latter of whom portrayed far too much emotion without even a pretext. I think this shows that Meyer didn't favour 'emotionless' performances. Nimoy directed an excellent portrayal of a Vulcan; I just wanted a half-Romulan. Hell, in Star Trek V they could even have linked her origins to the Planet of Galactic Peace in some way. She remains a character that is ripe for development.
It does parallel Tasha's fate but it would have been cool if TOS had got there first. Most 60s -80s dramas only killed main female characters about 5 minutes after they'd married our heroes. I mean seriously, that happened a LOT.
I prefer Curtis to Catrall, the latter of whom portrayed far too much emotion without even a pretext. I think this shows that Meyer didn't favour 'emotionless' performances. Nimoy directed an excellent portrayal of a Vulcan; I just wanted a half-Romulan. Hell, in Star Trek V they could even have linked her origins to the Planet of Galactic Peace in some way. She remains a character that is ripe for development.
While not the only woman to die in TOS, Thompson's death did shock me as a child, possibly because years of watching Tarzan had conditioned me to expect the black dude to die and leave the white folks to save the day. Making the Yeoman into Janice would have intensified those feelings for the audience and for Kirk to an awesome degree. They did something similar in Serenity to great effect - and in Spooks actually,
It does parallel Tasha's fate but it would have been cool if TOS had got there first. Most 60s -80s dramas only killed main female characters about 5 minutes after they'd married our heroes. I mean seriously, that happened a LOT.
Didn't say it wasn't, but that would add a depth/different layer to it.
Well, there's Roddy McDowell as Cornelius in the original PLANET OF THE APES movies, but, what with the heavy ape makeup, I'm not sure the average moviegoer even realized that a different actor played Cornelius in BENEATH.
And, yeah, I still wish Saavik (preferably played by Alley) had been the traitor, too. That would have been much more dramatic.
And, honestly, as much as I like Nimoy's movies, it still seems a shame that, after WRATH OF KHAN, we had had to wait so long for Nicholas Meyer to get another crack at directing a Trek movie. (Although, of course, he contributed to TVH, which is still my second-favorite Trek movie after KHAN.)
That's an excellent point. Curtis was obviously giving the director the performance he wanted.
I wonder if there was some degree of professional jealousy in Nimoy's recasting of Saavik and directing Curtis to play the character as 100% emotionless. Alley's Saavik was an instant hit with audiences from what I understand, I can see Nimoy being reluctant to come back to the franchise if they had a young, beautiful, replacement half-Vulcan character all ready to go. So he didn't make a great effort to get Alley back, cast someone where he could shape her performance more, and interpreted the role as a 100% emotionless Vulcan rather than the much more interesting--and volatile--half-Vulcan/half-Romulan combo.
Personally, I doubt that Harve Bennett would have been so quick to write Saavik out in STIV if Alley had returned to the role in the previous film.
Now there's a scene I'm happy stayed on the cutting room floor. A Kirk/Saavik flirtation would've just made TWOK too overstuffed. When you think about it, it's really weird that there are deleted scenes of Saavik flirting with both Kirk and his son. You'd think they would have settled on one or the other during shooting.
But in the end, I'm happy that they went with neither.
Supposedly the counteroffer that Alley's people made was more than DeForest Kelley was receiving for the film (Not that they had any way of knowing that, of course).
Maggie the Cat in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. On Broadway, IIRC.
That's another thing that's easy to forget in today's age of actors being tied up for years in multi-film contracts. They made each ST film with the assumption that it could very possibly be the last one, so everyone renegotiated with each new sequel. That must have made things rather nerve-wracking for the studio.
Getting Meyer back to co-write and direct for VI was a stroke of genius. From what I understand of the favored nations clause in Shatner & Nimoy's contracts, Shatner could have demanded to direct a second film the way Nimoy had. The director of the successful and well-regarded STII returning allowed Shatner to save face. If it had been anyone else taking over, it probably would have looked pretty humiliating.
JM Dillard provides some brief Valeris backstory in her STVI novelization. IIRC, her name was of Klingon origin?
Memory Beta lists how other writers added to her backstory.
http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Valeris
I don't know. That maybe makes sense in some sort of platonic realm outside space and time, but, in the real world, who's to say how a TMP-style trilogy would have been received back in the eighties, commercially and/or critically? Would we have even gotten to a fourth movie if Harve Bennett and Nicholas Meyer had not been recruited to make a course correction? And how long would Nimoy have stuck around if Bennett hadn't promised him a big death scene in KHAN, and if Nimoy hadn't found KHAN more rewarding and enjoyable to film than TMP.
And in that alternate universe, where we got two more TMP movies, it's unlikely that the stars would have aligned to give us the same WOK/SFS/TVH trilogy nine years later, with the same people involved. Would Roddenberry just surrender control to Bennett at that point? Would Kirstie Alley even be available? Or Ricardo Montalban?
It's like letting Edith Keeler live. You go the TMP route for two more movies and you erase the actual sequels from the timeline.
Personally, I'm not willing to trade KHAN and the whale movie for two hypothetical TMP films.
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Los Angeles.
As Bjo Trimble explained it at an Australian convention at the time, ST II was Alley's first role in Hollywood. The offer of a lead part in an LA stage play at this point in her career was a much smarter move than reprising Saavik for less money in ST III.
"August 11 - September 25, 1983, CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF played at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, California. In this play by Tennessee Williams, James Morrison played the role of Brick. Kirstie Alley played Maggie, and Pat Hingle played Big Daddy."
http://www.lifeofanactor.com/Cat1983.htm
"Maggie is not the 'cat' (read 'bitch') many actresses make of her. She is the most honest member of the family and most honorable. Her momentarily unrequited love for Brick echoes Big Mama's enduring affection for Big Daddy. And as Brick will surely become Big Daddy, Maggie will become Big Mama. These qualities are beautifully defined by Kirstie Alley as a richly realized survivor trying to rise above being an 'ex-Cotton Queen' and struggling out of lifelong poverty. She almost comprehends Brick's torment but wouldn't admit it if she didn't.
"You wouldn't guess Alley is a stage novice. 'I see Maggie somewhat differently than other people see her. Maggie's cat-like quality comes out of her persistence and desperation. As opposed to being "catty" just for the sake of being "catty". Or just being sexy for the sake of being sexy. She has a good reason for being sexy because she's trying to seduce her husband, who has turned away from her.'
"The role of Maggie is the professional stage debut for Ms. Alley, who is best known as the half-Vulcan, half-Romulan character, Lt. Saavik, in STAR TREK II."
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What's interesting from my perspective is that the events of TMP can be viewed in a myriad of ways.
One could interpret it as the character piece that subtly explains Kirk and Spock's charcters in WoK; the former perhaps overcompensating for his former obsession of captaining the Enterprise by believing he's too old for it now, the latter's wisdom coming from the rejection of pure logic and experience with V'Ger.
Or you could see TMP as what if story; one possible outcome of the Enterprise crew's life after the five year mission and where Starfleet and the Federation went as organizations in the time period. As Greg Cox noted, further films in that mold seem like they would have taken the series in a much different direction then the Genesis trilogy did.
While I completely understand why someone would easily enjoy TMP and WoK as back to back stories, I'll admit I find it more fascinating to view as two branching paths from TOS, with one that happened to continue far longer than the other.
One could interpret it as the character piece that subtly explains Kirk and Spock's charcters in WoK; the former perhaps overcompensating for his former obsession of captaining the Enterprise by believing he's too old for it now, the latter's wisdom coming from the rejection of pure logic and experience with V'Ger.
Or you could see TMP as what if story; one possible outcome of the Enterprise crew's life after the five year mission and where Starfleet and the Federation went as organizations in the time period. As Greg Cox noted, further films in that mold seem like they would have taken the series in a much different direction then the Genesis trilogy did.
While I completely understand why someone would easily enjoy TMP and WoK as back to back stories, I'll admit I find it more fascinating to view as two branching paths from TOS, with one that happened to continue far longer than the other.
And it is Nimoy's nuanced performance in ST II, III and IV as this "new, improved Spock" to allow viewers to recall his V'ger encounter without hitting us over the head with it.
As much as I enjoyed the Mirror Universe episodes of DS9, I do wonder how a film sequel to Mirror, Mirror with either the TOS or TNG crews could have gone. The benefits are fairly obvious:
-Continuation of a beloved episode. but easily recapable in story
-Simple concept for a casual film audience
-Chance for the cast (especially Next Gen's non Data/Picard members) to do something interesting acting wise
Considering how 3/4 TNG films turned out, in hindsight they could have done worse than tossing some royalties to Diane Duane and adapting parts of Dark Mirror.
-Continuation of a beloved episode. but easily recapable in story
-Simple concept for a casual film audience
-Chance for the cast (especially Next Gen's non Data/Picard members) to do something interesting acting wise
Considering how 3/4 TNG films turned out, in hindsight they could have done worse than tossing some royalties to Diane Duane and adapting parts of Dark Mirror.
Legally, I'm not sure they'd even be obliged to pay Duane anything (although that would certainly be a nice gesture). STAR TREK novels are written on a work-for-hire basis, as are all tie-in novels. All rights are owned by the copyright holder, not the authors, since we're just playing with their toys.
Meanwhile, I'm still amazed that the TNG movies never brought Q back, given how popular he is.
And, like the Mirror Universe, not too hard a concept to explain to general audiences: an all-powerful, god-like prankster with a history of messing with Picard and the Enterprise.
I mean, if the Borg movie worked, why not bring back Q next time around--or after Insurrection disappointed?
Back in high school, when STV was still unmade, my fantasy version of a fifth Star Trek movie was an invasion from the Mirror Universe (owing more than a little to the Mike W. Barr post-STIII storyline in the DC Trek comic). My planned title was Star Trek V: The Other Side.
Often thought an ideal time to do a Mirror Universe movie wouldve been instead of Insurrection (they seemed at abit of a loss what to do after a crossover movie then the borg movie). also could've been worked into the end of FC - something goes wrong with Geordis conveniently created wormhole which results in them entering the MU (also creating more of a ST234 link for TNG movies)
the cover for this comic could've been the poster!
http://www.treknews.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/star-trek-tng-mirror-broken-cover.jpg
Like doing MU instead of Insurrection, that too would've been preferable to ST5 (great title btw)
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True. Diane Duane would not need to be credited but... Jerome Bixby loosely based the TOS episode on his own short story "One Way Street", and I seem to recall a "Starlog" interview in which he claimed not to have been properly compensated for the sequels to "Mirror, Mirror". He was angry that there had been no interest in sequel ideas from him. He passed away in 1998. DS9 made "Crossover" in 1994. And that episode spawned four follow-up episodes, three of them airing during Bixby's lifetime.
I think the problem relates back to ST II. That Khan sequel was written with no thought as to whether Ricardo Montalban was free or even wanted to return. Then, happily, he did. To develop a movie script featuring Q would put John de Lancie in a powerful position. He's not going to sign for a major motion picture without seeing a script first and, once the script is written, his agent can hold out for mega bucks as fans wouldn't accept a replacement actor.
I seem to recall John himself saying this at Australian appearances, but maybe I dreamed it.
