Havok wrote:Once again I accidentally stumbled onto a remastered Star Trek episode. So now I get to check out the original pilot and crew without the the second TOS crew being intercut.
Thoughts and observations:
-Giant communicators again. In clear this time.
Wah Chang's original communicator prop. Actually a bit of clever design with the perspex main body to the device.
-Time Warp Factor 7
I've always liked that bit of terminology —reinforced when Tyler is telling the shipwreck survivors how they wouldn't believe how fast they'd get back to Earth now that "the time barrier's been broken. Our new ships can—" Suggests a slightly different mechanism to the FTL drive.
-Holy... A SPACE FAX!!
Actually just a printer, but it could be used as such. Yes, they still used hardcopy on Pike's
Enterprise —you also notice his yeomen handing him ringbound notebooks with the reports for him to sign off on at a couple points in the episode.
-"Space vehicle Enterprise from a stellar group on the other side of the galaxy"
In early
Star Trek there's the clear implication that the missions of the
Enterprise are actually galaxy-spanning. The original cut for "Where No Man Has Gone Before" puts this forward in Kirk's original extended log entry (and of course has the ship probing out beyond the periphery of the galaxy proper as a plot-point).
-Was there a cultural fascination with ESP and telepathy at the time that anyone was aware of? Both pilots feature them heavily.
There had already been a few B-grade SF movies from the late 50s which featured aliens using telepathy on humans for both communication and mind-control. But yes, there was actually quite a bit of public fascination with ESP in that time and some degree of scientific investigation into the alleged phenomenon.
-It's interesting that the "moral" is that illusions can lead to the downfall of a civilization in the pilot for TOS and the holodeck was one of the "cool new" technologies in TNG.
"But they found that it's a trap. Like a narcotic. Because when dreams become more important that reality, you give up travel, building. You even forget how to repair the machines left behind by your ancestors. You just sit, living and reliving other lives left behind in the thought-records."
One of my favourite lines in the whole episode.
It is a very pretty point, the difference in attitude toward illusions in the two series and how much they reflect the cultures that produced them. The actual moral of the story was encapsulated in Dr. Boyce's statement that "a man either lives life as it comes, meets it head-on, or he starts to wither away", but the dilemma of the Talosians is of course that whole point writ large, as the Talosians were indeed withering away. Whereas today, in our own world, we seem to be living in a culture which the writer Neil Postman would argue is steadily amusing itself to death.
-The portable phaser canon. Probably phased out due to it being more believable and less noticeable to the viewer to reuse footage of phaser blasts from the Enterprise in orbit than them trying to reuse the footage from the pilot and make it look fresh and new. Plus it would be one less set piece to keep around. That or just a lack of stories that called for it.
The laser cannon is actually a rather bulksome prop to keep around. It's not surprising that it was never used again in an episode, as it's cheaper to do an orbital bombardment, effects-wise. ("A Piece Of The Action")
-Mr Spock calls the engines the Hyperdrive and says to "initiate warp". The Enterprise also apparently has emergency backup rockets that can be used to blast it out of orbit.
Keep in mind that in the 60s, the terminology was quite fluid regarding FTL propulsion. All Gene Roddenberry had to go by as a description for the ship's propulsion was a vague reference to "a space warp". The backup rockets, of course, would be the ship's impulse engines as referred to later in the series proper.
-Still using lasers at this point? Pike refers to the side arm he gets from #1 as a laser.
This was of course before the beam weapon became a sort of swiss-army knife device. You also notice that it's a brute-force weapon used to burn or blast, not disintegrate a target in a funky physics-defying manner.
-Man, the Doctor had U.S.S. Enterprise on his scrubs/uniform and above it an emblem of Earth and something written around it, but I couldn't make out what the hell it said.
The insignia on the scrubs was based upon the UN sigil, with Earth surrounded by clusters of oak leaves (interestingly though, the globe depicts only the western hemisphere). Below it was the legend "USS Enterprise". I think this was going to be depicted as the insignia for the United Earth Space Probe Agency before it was dropped.
-Apparently the Telosians, while super advanced and possesing great power, are retarded. Instead of rebuilding the girl Vena, so that she, y'know, had the same looking body that they do, they put a giant mound of flesh and whatever on her shoulder.
This was covered, the plot-point of how the Talosians had lost their technology and did the best they could with what they had left. Also, Vina was apparently horribly injured in the crash, far beyond the point of normal reconstructive surgery.
-Damn, that red headed Yeoman would have been my Eve for sure!
Yeoman Colt was decidedly yummy, alright.
