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Where the name Talos came from

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ZapBrannigan

ZapBrannigan

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I was just watching Jason and the Argonauts (1963), and it just occurred to me that that's where Gene Roddenberry got the idea for the name of Talos IV in 1964. The giant Titan statue of Talos in the movie. GR must have seen it at the show, and it came back to him when he was thinking about his own band of travelers going ashore and encountering strange dangers.

Jason and the Argonauts is a film I haven't seen before (I'm 50 minutes into it), but it's starting to look like "Star Trek in a toga"! Much like Horatio Hornblower or Master and Commander in their period costumes.

When Hercules won't leave the Titan's island, and the crew don't want to sail without him, Jason asks the goddess Hera to decide, and she speaks to the crew through her beautiful figurehead on the ship's bow. That's basically Kirk getting orders from Starfleet Command. I wonder if the whole movie will play out as a Star Trek analog. I can't finish it tonight.
 
Yes, Jason and the Argonauts! Another film combining the talents of producer Charles H. Schneer and special effects master Ray Harryhausen. Cool!

P.S. The film also has TOS guest stars Nancy Kovack and Patrick Horgan it.

P.S.S. The Enemy Within director Leo Penn plays the bad guy in this movie.
 
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I don't recall Patrick Horgan in it, My Lord? And Gary Raymond was the bad guy in the film as Acastus! Apart from Nancy Kovack it also had John Crawford as Polydeuces! Now say that after a night on the tiles! :lol:
JB
 
johnnybear said:
I don't recall Patrick Horgan in it, My Lord? And Gary Raymond was the bad guy in the film as Acastus! Apart from Nancy Kovack it also had John Crawford as Polydeuces! Now say that after a night on the tiles! :lol:
JB
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You are correct, JB! I guess I got my Deputy Fuhrers confused. It was Gary Raymond, and Nancy Kovack’s voice was dubbed by some other actress for some strange reason.
 
Yeah, Talos is an ancient Greek mythological character thousands of years old, Gene didn't need to see Argonauts to know about him.
 
Talos the giant statue in the film wasn't the same Talos as in the original mythology though! In one he was a bronze automaton that was to protect Europa in Crete from pirates and invaders! The other depicts him as the son of Idaea and Zeus and that he became the father of Hephaestus! The third says he was a gift from Hephaestus to Minos and that he was in the form of a Bull!!! And there are many other of these stories as well! :rofl:
JB
 
BK613 said:
Or he encountered it reading up on Greek myths: Talos
Which is very possible, given the amount of Greek references that we see on TOS (Apollo, Plato's stepchildren, etc.)
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Forbin said:
Yeah, Talos is an ancient Greek mythological character thousands of years old, Gene didn't need to see Argonauts to know about him.
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I'm university educated and culturally alert, and I had never heard of Talos outside of Star Trek. It's not one of the bigger names for most of us. And somehow I don't picture Gene Roddenberry sitting around actually reading Greek mythology. Going to a fantasy-adventure, big-fx movie on the other hand, I can see him doing. And the Talos name isn't just spoken, it's engraved on the side of the Titan's pedestal in big letters, and very-well featured on camera.

And the timing is noticeable: relatively speaking, he would have seen Jason and the Argonauts shortly before (or possibly during) putting early drafts of Star Trek on paper, especially the homemade ideas that a writer might start with before there are any dated studio drafts. It just seems to me.

So, along with Forbidden Planet and Horatio Hornblower (the Gregory Peck one, plus the very popular books), I now suspect that Jason was one of Star Trek's grandparents.
 
Strange to think that Todd Andrews who played Jason was dubbed as well as Nancy Kovack as Medea! :techman:
JB
 
I was introduced to the name Talos at an early age by the great D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths which described him as a "robot."

Perhaps inspired by the metal man defending Crete by throwing rocks at any ships that approached, the US Navy had a surface-to-air missile named Talos in the '60s and '70s. They had a ram jet intake in the front with the warhead (including nuke variants) nosecone in the center. They were quite large and required two big radar systems (one target tracking, one missile guiding) so were only used on cruisers, but I believe they did score a few shoot-downs in Vietnam.
 
I wonder if there are any memos somewhere that address the name change from Sirius to Talos.

Kor
 
Kor said:
I wonder if there are any memos somewhere that address the name change from Sirius to Talos.

Kor
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There is a transcript of the call
JUSTMAN: Surely it's not called "Sirius"?
RODDENBERRY: Okay, we'll changed it to "Talos". And don't call me Shirley!
 
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