45 Years Ago!

[Osmium Steele]

My smartphone is already similar to the Tri-corder with the exception of physically analyzing items external to it, and I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't "an app for that" soon.

Image and video analyzing apps are already available and are only in their infancy.

Sometimes the world amazes...

[razark]

Originally Posted by danasan

Nowadays, while watching some of old episodes, I ask myself: "What did they smoke while they were making those episodes?"

I've been going through the box set of the first season lately. I've had a few moments just like that. I've also had a few moments of "Wow! I can't believe I never noticed that before!"

Amazing how much of the show inspired the future. Also fun to see how much more advanced the world is now than it was in the 1960's future.

[danasan]

Well, I don't think there is an English version of " " available... Just watch the you tube... That was our answer It's the same age.

[mako88sb]

Originally Posted by Growler

Never got a chance to get into DS9, though I'm given to understand that I'm missing something pretty good.

Watching Voyager again with the missus, thanks to Netflix. Going to have to see if DS9 is available there.

I found it took a couple of seasons for DS9 to really click with me, but after that, wow! What a great series. The Jem'Hadar episodes are some of my favorite Trek shows ever. The only problem I had with the series is the Ferengi focused shows. I just find them irritating and hard to watch those episodes. The main guy Quark, however, eventually did grow on me.

According to IMDB, DS9 will be available on Netflix in October.

[Growler]

Originally Posted by mako88sb

I found it took a couple of seasons for DS9 to really click with me, but after that, wow! What a great series. The Jem'Hadar episodes are some of my favorite Trek shows ever. The only problem I had with the series is the Ferengi focused shows. I just find them irritating and hard to watch those episodes. The main guy Quark, however, eventually did grow on me.

According to IMDB, DS9 will be available on Netflix in October.

Thanks for the heads-up! Between catching up on DS9 once it's available, Torchwood, Sherlock Holmes (the version with Martin Freeman) and the remainder of Voyager, what limited TV time I use has been spoken for until about 2020.

[Buddahaid]

Watching 'The Man Trap' tonight in respect.

[vienna]

BTW....I doubt I ever missed an episode of DS9 a fantastic show that didn't get as much recognition as it deserved.

Agreed. I was never a fan of the original series (found it hard to get around my dislike of Shatner). Liked Next Gen and Voyager much more. I really, really liked Deep Space 9. The whole premise of a station somewhere out on the fringe of the Federation, like some Old West fort far out on the frontiers, facing who knows what was extremely appealing. The fact the station was manned and commanded by personnel who really didn't want to be there but were there because of some twist of fate or another really added to the tension and darkness of the series. The never knowing who was really friend or foe, the having to deal with complex moral decisions of life and death, duty and conscience, marality and necessity gave DS9 a grit the other series never really approached. There was an episode were the captain had to decide wether to allow another character to use overly harsh torture methods to extract extremely vital information during interrogation of a prisoner that resonates in today's ethical arguments over prisoner treatment. All in all, perhaps a better series than the others and their rather self-righteous morality plays...

BTW, regarding Shatner: when I was younger and before I moved to Los Angeles, my family used to go to L.A. for summer vacation. I would wander off on my own and one day I found myself in Hollywood at the old Desilu Studios (now part of the Paramount Studio complex). Star trek was fillmed at Desilu at the time and fans would leave scrawled grafitti messages on the exterior walls, Most were the usual fan writings. "I Grok Spock", "Star Trek Forever", "Live Long and Prosper", etc. Some were personal messages of admiration for specific actors/characters. Oddly, there were none for Shatner or Kirk, that is except for one message written in large, block letters that read "Dump Shatner!!"; to this day, when I think of that scrawl, I wonder if Shatner ever had to walk past it on his way in or out of the studio and I wonder which member of the cast may have written it...

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by vienna

BTW, regarding Shatner: when I was younger and before I moved to Los Angeles, my family used to go to L.A. for summer vacation. I would wander off on my own and one day I found myself in Hollywood at the old Desilu Studios (now part of the Paramount Studio complex). Star trek was fillmed at Desilu at the time and fans would leave scrawled grafitti messages on the exterior walls, Most were the usual fan writings. "I Grok Spock", "Star Trek Forever", "Live Long and Prosper", etc. Some were personal messages of admiration for specific actors/characters. Oddly, there were none for Shatner or Kirk, that is except for one message written in large, block letters that read "Dump Shatner!!"; to this day, when I think of that scrawl, I wonder if Shatner ever had to walk past it on his way in or out of the studio and I wonder which member of the cast may have written it...

LOL

[Sailor Steve]

It's funny, I'm just the opposite. I was a teenager when the original aired, and since I was at that time an avid reader of science fiction I loved that show. I've never figured out what all the negativity over William Shatner was. I saw him in a few other shows at the time and thought he was okay, but I thought Kirk was the perfect action hero for the time...well, along with Jim West, but that's another story. I've found Shatner to be the only one of the original cast who actually shows a sense of humor about himself, and he's been more than willing to play the fool as well as the hero or villain.

On the other hand, I didn't like Next Generation at all. The actors were fine, but the writing always seemed to me like they were trying so hard to make a better Trek that they forgot what science fiction was supposed to be about. There were a few really good stories, but for the most part I thought they were overbearing and preachy. I gave DS9 a chance but it was more of the same for me. Of course that meant that I didn't stick around for the later years that everyone praises so highly. Maybe someday I'll check it out again, but not today.

[vienna]

The knock against Shatner is long and storied. An old drinking buddy of mine worked at Paramount Studios on the shooting of the "Next Genration" series and the other Star Trek projects and was wealth of inside stories and spoliers regarding that series and the behind the scenes dramas of the Trek businesses in general. Shatner had made such a pest of himself, the producers of the series and the movies wanted no part of him and have continued to avoid all matters Shatner. The anomosity was/is so deep, the producers even had an inside joke at Shatner's expense in the DS9 episode "Trials and Tribble-ations". There is a scene where the DS9 crew, travelling back in time to the TOS Enterprise, are very keen to meet the legendary crew. A couple of the DS9 characters go into the Enterprise's lounge and look around for Kirk. One of them catches sight of someone seated at a tble and asks the other DS9 character "Is that Kirk?" The camera shot changes to show an overweight, older man with an obviously bad hairpiece.

Shatner's problem is an old one in Hollywood: stars begin to believe their own P.R. Even after the critical and fan panning of the Shatner-directed "Star Trek V", Shatner conttinued to insist he wanted to direct more Trek films, wanted to "write" (his actual writng contributions are questionaable, and he wanted (as he did on TOS) all stories and scripts to be fully centerd on him. At one point, he even started to demand casting approval and other "rights" reserved for the producers and the studios. The producers responded by just cutting him out of all things Trek. That is why other TOS cast members appeared in the later series as guest stars and Shatner didn't; he is conspicuous in his absence.

If you can find it, there is a book titled "The City on the Edge of Forever" where the legendary battle between SF writer Harlan Ellison, Shatner, and Roddenberry over the TOS episode of the same name. It is quite a good read. Ellison worte the original screenplay for the episode, only to have Shatner and Roddenberry gut the script to basically accomodate Shatner's ego. I once had the opportunityto hear Elllison spek on the matter and he relates a very telling story of his meeting with Shatner, at Ellison's home, to have Shatner read the script. The whole event was a shambles from start to finish, capped off when Shatner, having just finished reading the script, paused, quitely. Ellison thought Shatner was letting the story sink in when Shatner re-opened the script and ran his fingers over the pages, counting as he went. Ellison then realized Shatner was counting the number of Kirk's lines in the script to see if any other character had more lines than Kirk. From there things went really downhill...

There is a ton of Shatner stories around Hollywood and, unfortunately for Shatner, not a lot of them are glowing. I even had a converstaion with a limo driver who drove Shatner around and he told me Old Bill was one strange handful...

[Torplexed]

Originally Posted by vienna

There is a ton of Shatner stories around Hollywood and, unfortunately for Shatner, not a lot of them are glowing. I even had a converstaion with a limo driver who drove Shatner around and he told me Old Bill was one strange handful...

Shatner's giant ego takes offense.

Originally Posted by jimbuna

BTW....I doubt I ever missed an episode of DS9 a fantastic show that didn't get as much recognition as it deserved.

DS9 was the only Series that I hadn't seen a lot of, it never aired, fortunately for me I found a way to watch it so I've been going through the episodes from the beginning and it is a pretty awesome series.

[Sailor Steve]

Interesting points about Shatner's ego, and the reasons he didn't guest star on any of the other series. I don't doubt that the stories are true.

On the other hand, I have a game-designer friend who worked with Paramount back in the early '70s on the very first Star Trek game project. He met the cast and even got to talk to them a few times, and his take was that William Shatner was the only one he would ever care to go drinking with. He thought Shatner was the only one of the group who didn't take himself over-seriously, or was remotely interesting to talk to.

[geetrue]

Star Trek came out 45 years ago and my first look at Star Trek was on my first patrol 43 years ago on the Ethan Allen SSBN 608 blue.

We always had the latest series for Star Trek movies every patrol along with Mission Impossible and Clint Eastwood movies we were able to pass the 90 days with a movie every night.

I hear they have screens in their bunks now ... no telling what they are watching now lol

[vienna]

On the other hand, I have a game-designer friend who worked with Paramount back in the early '70s on the very first Star Trek game project. He met the cast and even got to talk to them a few times, and his take was that William Shatner was the only one he would ever care to go drinking with. He thought Shatner was the only one of the group who didn't take himself over-seriously, or was remotely interesting to talk to.

On a one-to-one, Shatner is known to be capable of being charming; his problem is when it comes to the business side of Hollywood. The fact there are so many memoirs and biographies by former cast members, other production personnel, and other assorted associates of Shatner that paint a somewhat less than flattering picture of him is more than ample evidence he has alienated more than a few of the people with whom he has he has worked.

As far as the rest of the original cast, they have had to deal with the pains of type-casting and the inability to be really taken seriously as actors in other roles. It should also be noted that the producers and administrators of the Trek franchise (films, TV series, computer games, internet media, etc) have not exactly been generous in either their recognition of the original cast or financial dealings; this was especially true after the passing of Roddenberry when the management became even more "corporate" in mindset and practice. Various cast members have been kmown to have expressed dissatisfaction with their compensation, either in terms of respect/recognition or financially. I won't name names but my friend from Paramount told me of one rather acrimonious battle between a Trek cast member and the management that nearly scuttled a project; in the end, it boiled down to how the person was treated in past dealing more than anything having to do with a current situation. The "exile" of Shatner is really more of a matter of the management no longer wanting to deal with someone whose demands and requirements could not be reconciled with their goals.