Martin Freeman b. 1971 (The Hobbit, The World's End)
Thomas Kretschmann b. 1962 (King Kong)
Air date of first episode
Star Trek, 1966
No disrespect to either Mr. Freeman or Herr Kretschmann, but today is the 47th anniversary of the words "Space, the final frontier..." being spoken, and in science fiction history, that is indeed a Big Damn Deal. If someone in 1966 predicted that Star Trek would be the most important TV show Desilu Studios ever produced, that person would have been called mad. Star Trek could never eclipse I Love Lucy in the history of television, right?
Well, that's at least partly right. Star Trek left the small screen and became a movie franchise or more accurately, three movie franchises, the original cast, the Next Generation cast and now, the reboot.
Many happy returns to Mr. Freeman and Herr Kretschmann, and here's hoping the reboot series can get around to making a good movie instead of just successful ones.
Prediction: In August 1999, the telepathic Martians begin to sense the thoughts of Second Expedition. When the four men land, they are assumed to be figments of the imagination of some insane individual, one of the aspects of insanity on Mars.
Predictor: Ray Bradbury in The Martian Chronicles
Reality: I didn't read The Martian Chronicles when I was a lad. I did read Bradbury's Golden Apples of the Sun and R is for Rocket. I think if I had read this one back then, I would have soured on Bradbury completely. This is a really depressing work.
Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!
There have been several interruptions of our regularly scheduled features over the past few Monday, but tomorrow we get another prediction from the pages of Popular Mechanics.
Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!
After serving a year in the brown water navy in Viet Nam I was assigned to the carrier Coral Sea. On our year's tour in '69 - '70 on Yankee Station we had closed circuit TV and only two franchises which ran over and over, Star Trek and Mission Impossible with Peter Graves and Greg Morris. I became a Trekkie trivia nerd by default and had a permanent earworm of the Lalo Schifrin theme.
ReplyDeleteWow. Kinda sounds like torture today, or should I say "enhanced interrogation techniques". But if you were only going to get two TV shows, you could do a lot worse than those two.
DeleteSchifrin's style of jazz is so iconic and typical of soundtrack music of the era, though it's probably fair to say the true progenitor was Henry Mancini's theme for Peter Gunn.
nice choice of the digitally remastered image of teh Grey Lady, but given you are calling back to the first time the show aired, I might have gone with one of the original effects shots.
ReplyDeleteTo me, the thing I find interesting about that is that the effects, sets, costumes and everything were typical of the TV series of the time; and especially the effects were bootstrapped and jury-rigged.
Nobody ever expected the show to last fifty years; they were struggling to get the next season on the air. The modelwork and the effects were never intended to hold up under repeated viewings, still-frames, or HD. Where now we see hammy acting, plywood sets, and cheap makeup tricks, was 'good enough' for the times.
Which makes it all the more remarkable that it has stuck around the way it has.
It is remarkable that people still care. Shows that struggled like Star Trek and The Twilight Zone are the modern representatives of 1960s TV while huge hits like Bonanzaand The Beverly Hillbillies are barely part of the conversation.
DeleteThis blog exists because science fiction went from cult status to mainstream. No matter how cheesy we find the work of Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas, they are the one-two punch that made the huge cultural difference.
Oh, I remember Peter Gunn and the music. I was a jr. high kid who wanted the smooth cool of Craig Stevens and the sound track got me into jazz for the rest of my life.
ReplyDeleteOh, I remember Peter Gunn and the music. I was a jr. high kid who wanted the smooth cool of Craig Stevens and the sound track got me into jazz for the rest of my life.
ReplyDelete"If someone in 1966 predicted that Star Trek would be the most important TV show Desilu Studios ever produced, that person would have been called mad."
ReplyDeleteUh, no, actually. If you check history, you would find that any second show from Desilu would have been the most important they ever produced, since they at that time needed to have a second show on the air to be able to convince A Certain Company to buy them.
That the show happened to feature a Canadian dentist and a man who loves taking pictures of zaftig women (and there's nothing wrong with that, not to mention that he is [or was] good at it) is just a side benefit.
I take your point, Mr. Houghton, but all they needed was a series that would last a few years, which is what they got. That it is now a more important cultural touchstone than I Love Lucy is not something even Gene Roddenberry would have said out loud in 1966, even after a bottle of Jameson's.
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