Based on the original post, I'm guessing this is what he's picking up on.
What is it about TOS that makes it look so distinctly 1960s?
- Thread starter Captain Al
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On the contrary. If anything, the concept of a doomsday weapon would've been far easier for '60s audiences to comprehend, because they lived every day under the threat of global nuclear annihilation, and the concept of a doomsday device as a last resort was commonplace in the popular fiction of the day (see Dr. Strangelove and The Bionic Woman's "Doomsday is Tomorrow"), and probably in actual nuclear strategizing as well. It was Dr. McCoy's 23rd-century perspective that rendered the concept cryptic to him.
But not ALL....
Exactly.
The thing that makes me giggle now watching Trek in HD is when there's a scene between a guy and a beautiful woman. We get a close shot of the dude and it's so crystal clear you can see his pores. Cut to a close shot of the woman, and it's all filtered and hazy and looks ridiculous. I love it.
Thank you for the link to that article, and also, thanks everyone for the replies. Now it all makes sense. It wasn't just one aspect, it was a combination of aspects (as GSchnitzer says above) that made Star Trek what it was.
It took me close to an hour to read that article, but it was fascinating. I never would have connected the Minimalism movement with Star Trek, even though I learned about it in college theater. Makes perfect sense.
But here's the question: who decided Star Trek would be a minimalistic show? I mean, minimalism was a distinct 1960s style that showed up in art and theater especially, but why a TV show? Why make the sets so stark and basic, with bright key lighting, music chords, "masks" with aliens, and even "winding corridors?"
Was it out of the need to make Star Trek as cheaply as possible? Was that the sole reason? And whose choice was it? Was that Gene Roddenberry's original vision? (GR: "Star Trek is "Wagon Train to the Stars, plus it's going to incorporate our modern minimalism movemnent. It'll be totally groovy that way.")
And the author of the article really nails it about William Shatner's facial acting ability, and how he was the "antithesis" of the 1960s television hero. One of the reasons I disliked Enterprise, even though I so very much wanted to like it, was Scott Bacula's bland, wooden acting. It seems now that Bacula was portraying the starship captain as we would expect. Sort of like Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Pike. From the article:
It took me close to an hour to read that article, but it was fascinating. I never would have connected the Minimalism movement with Star Trek, even though I learned about it in college theater. Makes perfect sense.
But here's the question: who decided Star Trek would be a minimalistic show? I mean, minimalism was a distinct 1960s style that showed up in art and theater especially, but why a TV show? Why make the sets so stark and basic, with bright key lighting, music chords, "masks" with aliens, and even "winding corridors?"
Was it out of the need to make Star Trek as cheaply as possible? Was that the sole reason? And whose choice was it? Was that Gene Roddenberry's original vision? (GR: "Star Trek is "Wagon Train to the Stars, plus it's going to incorporate our modern minimalism movemnent. It'll be totally groovy that way.")
And the author of the article really nails it about William Shatner's facial acting ability, and how he was the "antithesis" of the 1960s television hero. One of the reasons I disliked Enterprise, even though I so very much wanted to like it, was Scott Bacula's bland, wooden acting. It seems now that Bacula was portraying the starship captain as we would expect. Sort of like Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Pike. From the article:
Bacula was the opposite of Kirk, more like Captain Pike. I guess I always wanted Kirk back, and now I know why.
I think cost is the primary driver. If you have straight corridors, you can see that they are, in fact, no longer than a soundstage--or they would have to figure out a way of making them really, really long like the ship is supposed to be. (How would you even do that? A matte shot at the end of the corridor? You could do it that way--like TNG did, or like the bottom of the Engineering room warp core when viewed from above.) But if you curve them, you can hint at how huge the deck is in circumference without having to show it; the view is blocked.
But fewer decoations also mean there would be fewer doo-dads to make the show dated. When you put all kinds of 70's stuff in the movie "Logan's Run,' years later it looks like it's from the 70's. But if you don't put *anything* in as decorations (like in TOS), then it looks like, well, like it's not representative of *any* particular time. So it ends up looking timeless. (44 years of holding the public's interest and still and counting.)
I think Art Design was generally a joint decision with Matt Jeffereies, Bob Justman, and Gene Roddenberry. And I really do think that the minimalism was not done to make it "cool" but to avpoid having it look immediately dated.
Straight corridors would be in the secondary hull or the 'neck.' I conjure the circular corridors were used in those cases near Engineering because lack of funds dictated it.
*Hotgirl Kirk appreciation Detector activated*
L
Lord Garth
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Everything looks like a product of its time. If you had three shows that took place in the year 3000 that were made in 1965, 1985, and 2005 respectively, you could tell which one was which.
The hair, the clothing, the music, the writing, the effects, the production values, the societal values, what was considered important, what was considered forward-thinking. Even if I didn't know TOS was made in 1966-1969, I could pin it down the second half of the 1960s.
TMP had that leisure '70s feeling to it. Then it looked like TWOK brought Star Trek into the Reagan era.
TNG had a late-'80s/early-'90s "The Cold War is over, the future is bright!" feeling to it. VOY has the late-'90s tech boom written all over it. ENT, with its blue jumpsuits, less futuristic-looking future, and Earth looking like the Maverick Cowboy (not to mention the Xindi attack), looks like the Bush era. ST XI with its younger, flashier, higher-tech look, brings Star Trek into the Obama era. We also have two people (Kirk and Obama) at the helm who didn't have a lot of experience before getting their positions, but got put in there over a lot of other people.
So Star Trek generally reflects when it was made. The only Star Trek series that doesn't reflect its time is DS9. DS9 was produced in the '90s but, in a historic sense, resembles the '40s.
The hair, the clothing, the music, the writing, the effects, the production values, the societal values, what was considered important, what was considered forward-thinking. Even if I didn't know TOS was made in 1966-1969, I could pin it down the second half of the 1960s.
TMP had that leisure '70s feeling to it. Then it looked like TWOK brought Star Trek into the Reagan era.
TNG had a late-'80s/early-'90s "The Cold War is over, the future is bright!" feeling to it. VOY has the late-'90s tech boom written all over it. ENT, with its blue jumpsuits, less futuristic-looking future, and Earth looking like the Maverick Cowboy (not to mention the Xindi attack), looks like the Bush era. ST XI with its younger, flashier, higher-tech look, brings Star Trek into the Obama era. We also have two people (Kirk and Obama) at the helm who didn't have a lot of experience before getting their positions, but got put in there over a lot of other people.
So Star Trek generally reflects when it was made. The only Star Trek series that doesn't reflect its time is DS9. DS9 was produced in the '90s but, in a historic sense, resembles the '40s.
The color palette has a great deal to do with it, and this is most strongly seen in Theiss's costuming. That avocado gold used for the command outfits, for example, is something you saw in various shades in the late 1960s through the mid 1970s and has since fallen way, way out of style (largely because it's unflattering on most people). There was a particular rust-orange used in many costumes that's similarly dated.
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I think you misunderstood what I was saying.
When I posed the question "why?", I wasn't trying to make it out that McCoy was baffled by the notion of a doomsday machine, but somehow 60's audiences weren't. I was suggesting that, unlike the 1960's in which TOS was made, we now live in a world where horrific things happen and people have, to a degree, stopped asking "why?" to try to understand the motivation behind the latest bad news.
That's one of the things that makes the 1960's a world apart from today, and it looks to me like we lost something more than just our perceived "innocence".
Oh, one more very positive and very period-specific feature of TOS:
Language - here was a prime-time network hourlong drama that, with very few exceptions, stuck to a genuinely G-rated vocabulary for whole episodes. If I'm not mistaken, you could go months on end and hear no profanity from any of the characters. Proof positive they really don't make 'em like they used to!
Language - here was a prime-time network hourlong drama that, with very few exceptions, stuck to a genuinely G-rated vocabulary for whole episodes. If I'm not mistaken, you could go months on end and hear no profanity from any of the characters. Proof positive they really don't make 'em like they used to!
I'm a little baffled as to why this is a good thing. Or do you never swear?
TV censorship was a whole lot stricter back then. In fact, the only “profanity” (if you can call it that) in all of TOS was when Kirk uttered the famous line “Let's get the hell out of here” at the end of “City on the Edge of Forever.” And it was a bit of a battle with network censors to keep that in.
Two words: Belly buttons!
That's because Kirk is DA MAN!
TOS presented a world of officers and gentlemen. It may have been idealized, but it was romantic. Kirk and McCoy may have become more realistic when they started using "goddamn" and "ass" in the movies, but they also became less mythic. Less the stuff of legend - or of storybook, if you prefer.
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