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Post by Finarvyn on Feb 16, 2015 14:05:32 GMT -6
I love the original Star Trek series (known as TOS, or The Original Series) from the 1960's. It's my favorite of all of the Star Trek TV shows. One thing I find frustrating, however, is how disorganized TOS materials are.
(1) If you watch the DVD (or remastered DVD) series, you notice that the episodes are all on the disks in airdate order instead of how they filmed the episodes. I think that the "best" viewing order is one that follows the actual development of the series because of some of the changes that occurred as the series developed. This means that I have to continually eject disks and search around for the next one to view. This is particularly annoying through early parts of season one, which are some of my favorites.
(2) The same thing can be said about the James Blish books, which are short stories based on some pre-shooting draft of the episodes. (My understanding is that he couldn't get final scripts for some reason.) As with the DVDs, if I want to read the TOS short stories "in order" I have to hop around from book to book. For example, yesterday I decided to read "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and finally found it in the book called Star Trek 8.
Anyone else have this frustration?
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Post by Stormcrow on Feb 16, 2015 15:38:53 GMT -6
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Post by geoffrey on Feb 16, 2015 16:05:50 GMT -6
If you watch the DVD (or remastered DVD) series, you notice that the episodes are all on the disks in airdate order instead of how they filmed the episodes. I think that the "best" viewing order is one that follows the actual development of the series because of some of the changes that occurred as the series developed. I am fortunate to own the 40 Star Trek disks published in 40 boxes that look like this:  These 40 disks have the episodes in the order they were filmed. |
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Post by Falconer on Feb 17, 2015 10:39:32 GMT -6
I have these: And I share the frustration of having to switch discs (and having to reference a list in order to know which one is next) in order to have to watch the series in production order. But, no doubt DVDs are mostly becoming obsolete, as you can stream them from Amazon Prime or whatever. Though I like owning the discs as a backup because it means they can be watched anytime, anywhere, no matter what. |
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Post by Finarvyn on Feb 17, 2015 16:37:09 GMT -6
It just puzzles me that airdate order is so different from production order, especally since airdate order creates discontinuities that production order eliminates. (Reminds me of the morons who aired Firefly in semi-random order so that characters would appear and vanish without explanation. Bizarre.) Falconer, I have both the set you show (DVD) as well as the remastered set. I like the remastered one better (the images really pop more, the exterior planet and ship scenes look more impressive, etc.) but it took me years to convince myself to take the plunge and buy the remastered ones. They are also out of order, but becasue they have fewer episodes per disk they mess me up all over again. (Same order but I had to redo my "which disk is it" list.) Once you see the remastered one, you might never go back!  One oddity of the remastered ones is that they really dropped the ball on the credits sequence. Shat's voice is waaaaay softer than the music. Dunno why they couldn't balance the two audio tracks better or something. Ugh. |
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Post by Falconer on Feb 17, 2015 16:45:58 GMT -6
Well, if I buy another set it will be the Blu-ray, though it’s very expensive. From what I understand, on the Blu-ray you can turn the remastered effects on or off. Also, of course, it’s high-definition.
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Post by geoffrey on Feb 17, 2015 18:12:33 GMT -6
Even production order has some strangeness:
Dr. Chapel is on the Enterprise with no explanation in "The Naked Time". She is then introduced in an episode produced later: "What Are Little Girls Made Of?"
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Post by Falconer on Feb 17, 2015 19:37:09 GMT -6
I dunno, I figured she enlisted for the five-year mission knowing that a check-up on Korby was part of the itinerary (Kirk: “I’m told you gave up a career in bio-research to sign on this starship.”) That makes her earlier (and later) appearance(s) perfectly logical. Even aside from this episode (though it’s a shame she never again mentions the loss of her fiancé), IMO her character is the most developed in the series, beyond the big four.
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Post by Finarvyn on Feb 18, 2015 5:39:44 GMT -6
Even production order has some strangeness: Dr. Chapel is on the Enterprise with no explanation in "The Naked Time". She is then introduced in an episode produced later: "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" Remember that the actress who played Chapel was also "Number One" in the first pilot and the NBC folks didn't want her to return to the series. Perhaps Roddenberry snuck her into "The Naked Time" and when none of the suits objected he gave her a proper intro in "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" Or, more likely, they were working on both simultaneously. |
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Post by Stormcrow on Feb 18, 2015 8:33:51 GMT -6
Chapel wasn't introduced in "What Are Little Girls Made Of"; her backstory and her lost fiance were.
You guys are thinking of this in modern, whole-season-planned-out-ahead-of-time concepts. This just wasn't the case back then.
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Post by coffee on Feb 18, 2015 9:20:44 GMT -6
Also Majel Barrett (Nurse Chapel) was the voice of the Enterprise computer. (And, later, Mrs. Gene Roddenberry.) So she was around from the beginning, and could be put into an episode with minimal interference from the studio or network.
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Post by Falconer on Feb 18, 2015 15:37:48 GMT -6
Majel Barrett dyed her hair blond for the role of Christine Chapel (created for “The Naked Time”) so that NBC execs wouldn’t recognize her as the actress from the pilot whom they already fired. The story has it that they did recognize her anyway, but just shrugged and assumed she must have been sleeping with someone (which she was)!
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Post by geoffrey on Feb 18, 2015 17:06:36 GMT -6
Am I right in remembering that Chapel's hair was silver in "The Naked Time"?
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Post by Falconer on Feb 18, 2015 21:58:36 GMT -6
That’s true… Ah well, hazy recollections and all that. |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 19, 2015 1:39:01 GMT -6
Chapel wasn't introduced in "What Are Little Girls Made Of"; her backstory and her lost fiance were. You guys are thinking of this in modern, whole-season-planned-out-ahead-of-time concepts. This just wasn't the case back then. This. Freakin' this. Roddenberry was working 20 hour days 7 days a week just to get the scripts out. It was written the way Gary and Dave developed D&D: "They made up some $*** they thought would be fun." |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 19, 2015 1:40:14 GMT -6
Also, as far as why Blish couldn't get shooting scripts, the scripts were literally changed daily or more often, and they didn't save everything like is done nowadays. This was all done with typewriters and paper.
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Post by Falconer on Feb 19, 2015 8:25:59 GMT -6
You guys are thinking of this in modern, whole-season-planned-out-ahead-of-time concepts. This just wasn't the case back then. Actually, I think everybody knows that. In fact, I’m quite sure that even modern shows tend to be pretty seat-of-the-pants, even when writers would love for you to believe otherwise. The reason we prefer production order is not because we expect some coherent, sweeping, character-intensive meta-plot. Of course TOS is episodic and each story is almost completely stand-alone. We just prefer to watch them in the order they were shot because, for starters, then you’re watching the actors develop their roles as they created them. You’re watching the visual design (costumes, for example) develop over time rather than incoherently skipping around. To watch “Where No Man Has Gone Before” after a few episodes of the regular season is a particularly egregious of how jarring this can be, when all of a sudden everyone is wearing Pike-era uniforms, Sulu is in the Astrosciences Department, and no sign of McCoy (not to mention it comes right after “Charlie X” which is basically the same story). |
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Post by Falconer on Feb 19, 2015 8:30:45 GMT -6
Another point is that, even if the show was not completely planned out ahead of time, it’s still fun (and useful, if you’re prepping a game) to look back at the completed show and try to make sense of it.
It’s like how you don’t plot out a D&D session (I hope), but after it has been played, you can write a recap, and a story emerges.
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Post by Stormcrow on Feb 19, 2015 19:35:27 GMT -6
My wife had never really watched any Star Trek, so I showed all the episodes to her. I showed them in the order of "which one do I feel like watching tonight?" We skipped around like crazy. Occasionally she would remark, "Oh, this is an early one," and that was it. It wasn't jarring; there was no reason the episodes can't be enjoyed just as much this way.
The only problem I ever had with the order the episodes were originally aired was that they chose a sucky one as the very first.
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