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Is Star Trek Tiki???? |
Cammo
Tiki Socialite
Joined: May 18, 2006
Posts: 1804
From: San Diego
|  Posted: 2009-05-11 1:36 pm Permalink
Lets get to it.
Star Trek was created by Roddenberry back in 1964.
He based it on the incredibly imaginative retro-noir Outer Limits’ episode “Nightmare”, about the international crew of a spaceship being held hostage by a pointy-eared alien and being tortured by unreal visions of personal horrors.
It turns out that the entire “Nightmare” episode was a training lesson. The pointy-eared alien turns out in the end to be more human and compassionate (he privately opposes the torture) than the actual U.S. military men in charge of it, a snap ending that still hits hard.
This aired on December 2, 1963. You can still get it and the entire Outer Limits series on DVD. It’s probably the most influential Sci-Fi show of all time; Harlan Ellison wrote 2 episodes he later sued James Cameron over, Cameron having used them as the obvious basis for “Terminator”. To this day Ellison’s name must legally appear on the Terminator movies as the creator of the characters, a little detail that the producers often overlook.
Roddenberry liked the episode so much he wrote a quick script about the international crew of a spaceship being held hostage by big headed aliens and being tortured by unreal visions of personal horrors, and started shopping it around. The script stank. Two years later he was given the green light, and hired the brilliant director and co-directors (Byron Haskin and Bob Justman) of Outer Limits, the makeup shop and even some of the stars of other Outer Limits episodes suggested by Justman for the pilot episode. (Shatner and Nimoy were Outer Limits alumni.) Byron Haskin was especially important to the pilot, with his special effects experience going back to the silent film days. It was he who invented the whole new idea of making a giant working spaceship, filming it against a bluescreen, and moving the camera around it, instead of moving the ship. In this way, incredibly detailed footage could be controlled carefully and smoothly, and reused over different backgrounds.
But it was Bob Justman who made Star Trek good. He was a sci-fi fan and beatnik, a talented, imaginative writer/director who took Roddenberry’s script and flipped it upside down, into a social statement. He also created the concept of Star Trek actually taking place in the future’s past; the adventures were being recounted from some future date as a series of log entries in the ship’s computer. The scripts would become ‘player pianos’; they were so easy to write they wrote themselves…
When the network saw the pilot show, they in fact LOVED it. Never had such a young, interesting and totally realistic crew ran what looked like a photo-real ship to the farthest reaches of the universe. They thought it was too good, in fact. They thought the show would get low ratings, as it would fly right over the heads of the young target audience they were aiming at. Their advice was to have more action, more gunfights, less talking.
They were right. Star Trek was a dismal failure, of course. It was trashed in TV Guide, got low ratings, the budget was cut and cut again, and was cancelled after three seasons. Five seasons was needed to successfully show in reruns, the thinking was. A three season show was basically thrown in the garbage now and forever.
It came back in reruns, and the long story of Star Trek emerging as an entertainment force has gone on to legend.
But they’ve never actually made a sequel, see.
All the later iterations of the series deleted the dayglo colors, the Vulcans, the cute red miniskirts, the action, the whole dynamic and the wonder of the original first season episodes. It just got worse and worse…
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little lost tiki
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Jun 12, 2006
Posts: 7457
From: Orange,CA-right near the Circle!
| Posted: 2009-05-11 3:49 pm Permalink
Can you shorten these posts down to a few key sentences.Cammo?
I have a hard time keeping awake for a whole one!
wake me when you cover the Ewoks....
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Unga Bunga
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Jun 06, 2003
Posts: 5734
From: CaliTikifornia
| Posted: 2009-05-11 4:03 pm Permalink
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Cammo
Tiki Socialite
Joined: May 18, 2006
Posts: 1804
From: San Diego
| Posted: 2009-05-11 4:54 pm Permalink
"wake me when you cover the Ewoks...."
Ok.
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dogbytes
Grand Member (8 years) 
Joined: Mar 24, 2002
Posts: 2240
From: seattle, wa
| Posted: 2009-05-11 6:00 pm Permalink
cammo: maybe no one would go with you, because you insisted on wearing your starfleet uniform.
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MadDogMike
Grand Member (3 years) 
Joined: Mar 30, 2008
Posts: 6389
From: The Anvil of the Sun
| Posted: 2009-05-11 6:31 pm Permalink
Well written (as always) and very interesting reading Cammo, but you still haven't answered the question - "Is Star Trek tiki?"
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"And now, from the clay of the ground, the Lord God formed man" Genesis 2:7
Pirate Ship Tree House
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Cammo
Tiki Socialite
Joined: May 18, 2006
Posts: 1804
From: San Diego
| Posted: 2009-05-11 6:31 pm Permalink
Star Trek fans go way back to the show’s original days. A huge fan campaign (organized behind the scenes by Roddenberry) kept the show alive for its final season, and eventually constructed a national event, a fan meeting, a convention, in New York.
Most of these first fans were classic Sci-Fi buffs, who watched the show because their favorite writers were doing the scripts.
Eventually, though, a growing number of very strange people became fans. They were on the fringes of society. They identified with Spock, the half-human alien. Some of them were under prescription medications, which in the 1970’s were pretty strong stuff. Few had children.
And the strange part is, the new fans didn’t want to discuss the writers, directors or extra careers of the principal actors. In fact, they didn’t want to acknowledge that the shows were written at all. They sort of wanted to believe that the shows were real glimpses of the future. They mostly dressed up in later versions of the show, not the 1966 costumes. And acting loud and obnoxious at the growing fan festivals was becoming their all consuming hobby. People had to treat them nicely for once in their lives, because they were part of the fan club.
They were … TREKKIES!
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GROG
Grand Member (first year) 
Joined: Jun 21, 2006
Posts: 6170
From: Tujunga
| Posted: 2009-05-11 6:41 pm Permalink
Saw the movie today, and liked it. Looking forward to the next one.
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leleliz
Grand Member (first year)
Joined: Sep 02, 2008
Posts: 1981
From: NorCal
| Posted: 2009-05-11 7:25 pm Permalink
Quote:
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On 2009-05-11 18:31, Cammo wrote:
They were … TREKKIES!
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Yup..these are the men who were at the theater the other night.
::shudders::
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MadDogMike
Grand Member (3 years)
Joined: Mar 30, 2008
Posts: 6389
From: The Anvil of the Sun
| Posted: 2009-05-11 8:26 pm Permalink
I'm waiting.....
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woofmutt
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Mar 26, 2002
Posts: 2584
From: Seattilite Telstar
| Posted: 2009-05-11 10:17 pm Permalink
Why'd yuh post a pic from last year's Oasis...Oh, wait...Oh! OK, now I see the Star Trek Tiki connection.
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Attribution is the sincerest form of flattery.
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Unga Bunga
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Jun 06, 2003
Posts: 5734
From: CaliTikifornia
| Posted: 2009-05-11 10:25 pm Permalink
WOOF!
high vulcan five
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Mai Tai
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Mar 21, 2004
Posts: 1429
From: Exotic Isle of Alameda
| Posted: 2009-05-12 12:09 am Permalink
Quote:
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On 2009-05-09 17:19, filslash wrote:
So is Star Wars, Tiki?
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It is Margaritaville. Especially Return Of The Jedi.
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lucas vigor
Tiki Socialite
Joined: May 12, 2004
Posts: 3453
From: "I've chopped my way through real jungle
| Posted: 2009-05-12 09:28 am Permalink
Trekkies are pretty hip, but NOTHING beats THIS guy!!!!
http://www.geekitude.com/Pictures/Linucon2004/Ex45TronUpCloseRot.jpg
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Cammo
Tiki Socialite
Joined: May 18, 2006
Posts: 1804
From: San Diego
| Posted: 2009-05-12 10:11 am Permalink
“What do you mean you don’t wanna go?”
“I mean it’s a nerdy movie. Trekkies are going to be there. They’ll be taking up the seats, two seats to a Trekkie, they’ll be hogging down popcorn and arguing about what kind of fucking phaser Kirk is supposed to be using. The whole thing sucks. The movie is going to suck.”
“Nah, I saw the previews, it looks really good. They did advance screenings for the L.A. critics and they were all blown aw…”
“Are there or are there NOT going to be Trekkies there?”
“Well, yeah, sure, but…”
“So I’m not going.”
“Why not? They’re not going to attack you or anything! They’re harmless! And how many Trekkies are there in San Diego County? Like, a few hundred at most?”
“Look, buddy, you got no idea. There are thousands. Tens of thousands.”
“Nah!”
“Yeah! I did a DJ gig once and only once for the Comi-Con and it was a fucking mess. They all crowded around the stage yelling at me to play the theme tracks for one of those Star Trek movies, man, they started coming behind the speakers and yelling at me…”
“Did you have any of those songs?”
“Are you kidding me? I’ve got a song library of like 30,000 right now, you think even one of them is the Borg theme from Star Trek fucking Fifteen?”
My friend Greg is about 6’ 2”, a loudmouth from St. Louis. A vision of him backed up against a giant speaker cabinet, being charged by a herd of angry Trekkies was pretty funny.
“What are you laughing about? It wasn’t funny!”
“What did you end up playing?”
“Oh. Um, some TV themes. That settled ‘em down. But they can’t dance so there was nothing to play. One of them handed me a CD of some soundtrack and I played the whole thing. Charged the Convention Center two grand for playing somebody else’s CD. It was a joke.”
Greg would NOT GO.
I tried calling up other people, and basically had the same conversation over and over and over, more than a dozen times. The answer was the same each time; NO. Everybody I talked to had somewhere, sometime run into these obnoxious annoying Trekkies who had made their day miserable. It was burned into their psyche so strong they simply would not even THINK of going to any Star Trek event, good or not.
Finally, I called a friend who had two kids. These kids are totally out of control 24 hours a day. He was the last guy on my list. The kids, if they came along, would sit on the other side of him. When I got through I could hear them, screaming in the background.
But the answer was the same. It turned out that he had taken these kids to a Star Trek convention, for fun, in Las Vegas. The various Trekkies, badly dressed in Klingon outfits, had scared the children so badly that he now used them as warnings. If the kids didn’t do ask he told them , the Trekkies Would Come And Get Them.
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