Lucy & Desi were a special case—they practically invented the TV production process as we know it, where everything is filmed in advance instead of performed live and then forgotten
4 Likes
But it has some of the greatest examples of Kirk-Fu!
14 Likes
I’d forgotten how slow the damn thing was. Probably the actor in that suit couldn’t see well and they had to choreograph it all very carefully, plus have Shatner vocalizing to indicate his location.
7 Likes
I had thoughts about these dinofolk. I figured they are not smart enough to develop the tech they have but appropriated it from the worlds they conquered. Like the Borg but with an all you can eat buffet. 
3 Likes
Revisionism is not necessarily a bad thing if later plots have characters recognize what’s being revised. In fact, it could be damn good and fun to watch, one example being the “Carbon Creek” episode in Star Trek: Enterprise 
In the episode “Carbon Creek”, T’Pol tells Captain Archer and Commander Tucker a story about the Vulcans’ real first contact with humanity on Earth in the 1950s. T’Mir (T’Pol’s great grandmother) was involved in a survey mission when her spacecraft crash landed on Earth in 1957. She and two other Vulcan crew members were forced to live among humans for several months in a small American mining town called Carbon Creek, hiding their Vulcan identity. During her stay, T’Mir provided a patent office with a revolutionary material (Velcro), in order to raise college tuition money for a human teenager whom she had befriended in town. T’Pol kept her great-grandmother’s purse.
4 Likes
Gorn!
What’s gorn dear?
Nothing, nothing, I just like the word, it gives me confidence. Gorn…gorn. It’s got a sort of woody quality about it. Gorn. Gorn. Much better than ‘newspaper’ or ‘litterbin’.
4 Likes
4 Likes
Oh yeah, don’t get me wrong - I’m more than happy to have series stomp all over continuity and then set fire to the remains if it serves any sort of creative purpose - e.g. is just sufficiently entertaining. I roll my eyes at the continuity nerds who angrily point out every element that changes in a series. But Star Trek and Star Wars both keep going back to the same familiar elements because fanservice and nostalgia are safe strategies for maintaining revenue, and/or they’re too timid to actually advance things with new stories/characters/elements. When it’s a prequel doing it, the whole thing is already usually driven by nostalgia, but then they still can’t help themselves but also throw in anachronistic fanservice.
5 Likes
That was the OTHER monster that scared me out of me trapdoor jammies!
3 Likes
45 years later, and they’re still at it.
11 Likes
Jeeze you two, get a room
5 Likes
When I have to be at work (and not telecommuting), I invariably pass by Vasquez Rocks, a location where the Gorn episode and a few other ST episodes were filmed. The site cannot be missed from the freeway; the rocks are right there. For me, eight years of the Gorn and homemade cannons popping into my head whenever I make the trip. God Damn.
9 Likes
That one, and this one, I always tried to skip when I was flipping through the pictures in the “Making of Star Trek” book.
8 Likes
That TOS episode seems likely to be the complete inspiration for the first Predator film, no?
1 Like
“This week our heroes are forced to fight monsters in the Pit of Doom” is hardly original or unique to Star Trek, or even to that episode of Star Trek
1 Like
There is indeed a lot of low-hanging humor fruit in the Trek franchise. I’ll be sure to check out Lower Decks … once I convince my lovely wife that we need Paramount+ for at least a little while.
1 Like
I’ll point out there’s only an 8-year gap between The events in Strange New Worlds and Kirk’s encounter, and it was referred to as an “unknown vessel”, only being identified by a surviving gorn captive. They never saw what the actual Gorn looked like and because of the state of the Enterprise from the initial attacks (and events in the episode), gathered precious little information about them during the encounter.
As retcons go, this was a pretty good one.
5 Likes
Didn’t the Gorn appear in “Enterprise” in at least one episode as well, though? (I had stopped watching the show before that point, as it often felt like a rehash of TNG plotlines.) From what I read, they seem to be retreading a lot of familiar material in the various prequel series in general.
1 Like
In a mirror universe episode, the mirror universe presumably helping the writers avoid breaking continuity.
2 Likes
