The sfx on TOS were not cheap in that they weren’t inexpensive to create, and they didn’t look cheap in that at the time nobody who watched the show ever thought they did. I grew up watching the show in syndication in the 70s and the effects never looked cheap until something that was better came along (i.e. Star Wars).
In fact, TOS used a lot of extremely advanced and expensive effects for the Enterprise exterior scenes like motion control, traveling mattes and optical printing. Compare that to the Jupiter 2 from Lost in Space in which everything was an in-camera, physical effect (i.e. hung on wires in front of christmas tree lights while spraying a CO[sub]2[/sub] fire extinguisher!)
Another reason that TOS had such tight budgets was that the shows were a Desilu production, which was Lucille Ball & Desi arnez’s production company. Unfortunately, the money wasn’t rolling in like it used to, and on at least 2 occasions, 1 being A Piece of the Action, the other being Patterns of Force, the writers literally went through the wardrobe dept until they found costumes that they could write a script around.
Hey, don’t dis the Space Nazi’s!! They have spooky powers!
I sort of miss the random Earth-like planet of the week episodes of TOS, i guess that is why they keep having the Holodeck malfunction.
Producer#1: Let’s have the holodeck malfunction in an Irish town! Producer#2: Cool, Paramount has all these costumes left over from some terrible Irish movies!! Go with it!! Producer#1: Thank goodness, with the money we save, we can make an even tighter costume for Seven!!!
Interesting you should bring up that episode. IIRC, it was one of the more expensive ones (though not excessively so as Roddenberry later claimed). The reason was that 1930s props like clothing and cars were not part of Trek’s usual inventory and additional money was needed to obtain them.
Spiffier effects are not the only things that can cost more money.
And the tale is told, that originally they did want them for salt shakers, until somebody pointed out that you’d have to establish on-screen what they were (As in: “pass me THAT SALT SHAKER” “sure, here, have A SALT SHAKER” ) because the small size and mod styling made them hard to recognize visually.
Really, the “cheap” thing was more a question of very limited budgets. But they were not unsophisticated, for their time. It was what there was.
And I join Tars in looking fondly on “contrived parallel to an earth culture in space” eps – specially the TOS ones, those were a riot (Space Native Americans? Comms and Yanks? Space Flower Children?? Oh yeah, I “reach”, Herbert… )
TOS was actually better than it’s successors in having non-humanoid aliens. If they could do it, if Star Wars could do it, then TNG had absolutely no excuse at all. For shame!
As I’ve mentioned before, in TOS at least half the time the “enemy ship” was just a blip on the sceen- though oddly enough that is what a computer-generated display would show if there wasn’t enough data to make out the ship’s configuration.
I’ll have to nominate the “Alien Planets” used in most of Star Trek’s incarnations. About 70% of them are either Griffith Park, or that damned “Rocky Tunnel” set. (I really hate that last one) I don’t know if I could do any better if I was the one picking the filming locations on a TV budget, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it.
After that, the fact that the Defiant in DS9 never had it’s registry number’s prefix upgraded from “NX” to “NCC,” as they couldn’t afford to re-shoot the stock footage of the ship’s exterior.
If I was in charge, there’d be a new freaky alien each week!! tubs of goo, walking rocks, aliens who communicate by puking, aliens that are just a floating foot, brains in a jar that have a hand for smacking people, sock puppet aliens, a head on wheels, two inch tall aliens, and a chimp serving on the bridge!
some of TOS’s battle scenes are some of the best in the series, even thought they couldn’t afford to show more than the Enterprise suddenly veering left. Kirk on the bridge shouting orders, and the dialog between several characters describing the battle, made it very exciting. Probably my imagination of what was happening made it better than what it actually looked like.
I’ve just been to the library, and read a related article in a magazine I’d never seen called – perhaps – Technology Review.
It talked about the amount of digital special effects being done today. Practically all effects are now digital. And all the major companies are in California. They become so common that directors will take entire movies and have them digitally processed. Digital is still neither as sharp or as vibrantly colored as film. It’s still too expensive to use the highest digital resolution available for an entire film, except a rare few that absolutely depend on detail.
What was disappointing is that the 3D software mentioned most was Maya, which is anything but cheap. Howsoever they have a “learner” version which is entirely free!
McCoys White noise heart beat masking device in “The Court Marshall” Even DeForrest Kelley looked a little embarassed putting a plain microphone up to people’s chests.
I’m Sure in 1966 that hand mike looked futuristic to someone. Unfortunately within a year we saw Roger Daltry doing his darndest at wiping out the sound of the Woodstock crowd’s hearts with his copy of the same thing.
I’ve heard this story before and I wonder about it. Why would you have to have a character verbally identify a salt shaker? All you’d have to do is instruct the actor to pick one up and make shaking motions over his food. A child could see that the funny-looking thing was either a salt shaker or a pepper shaker (or that it held some kind of alien condiment).
Sometimes, I think Roddenberry over-thought things.
There was one TNG episode…Picard is working with Troi on the language of the aliens he’s supposed to greet. They’re very picky, an insect-like humanoid, and one mispronunciation set back diplomatic relations 50 years or something. Picard gets trapped on the holodeck, and escapes just in time to greet the aliens on the bridge in their mother tongue.
WE NEVER SEE THE ALIENS!!
BTW, astro, I think the most expensive TNG episode is the one where Data, Troi, and O’Brien are taken over by alien ghosts who were imprisoned on a storm-wracked planet. They took everyone hostage in Ten Forward. No cite, of course, just something I heard somewhere. I may be wrong on that one.
Harlan Ellison’s book “City on the Edge of Forever” (White Wolf, September 1996) contains the original treatments and teleplays for that episode along with extensive comments.
On page 62 there is a handwritten list of first-season budget totals. I can’t find any mention of who compiled this list.
In that season, the most expensive episode was “Balance of Terror” at $229k. The least expensive was “Naked Time” at $172k. “Menagerie” comes in at $212k. This seems a little high to me because of the simplicity of the footage they needed to shoot (framing the edited pilot), even allowing for a two-part episode.
“The City on the Edge of Forever” isn’t on this list, but other sources cited say it was about $257k. I’d guess “A Piece of the Action” would cost just as much for the same reasons: period sets, costumes, props, and lots of extras.
For the curious, all various Star Trek animation and particle effects these days are done in Lightwave 6.O.
I was at a 3D animation symposium with a guy named Michael Okuda (probably butchering his name) who did a lot of the design work for DS9. He said he cringes when he sees the models from early episodes because he can’t help but see all the disposible razors, cassette tape spools, toy airplane parts, etc. used in them.
I have before me my dog-eared copy of “The Making Of Star Trek, by Stephen E. Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry”.
I am looking at close up photographs of the medical props.
Larger and Smaller version of same device, ID’d as" Heals w/o stitches, bandages, etc".
Small plastic spray bottle, a la windex bottle !!
4 small and 2 tall salt shakers, marked “scalpels”.
One real curved Hemostat.
One UniDirectional Microphone ( tee hee ) labelled " Heartbeat Reader"
Hypo- an old-style stainless steel syringe .
Spray Healer close-up on next page shows a metal cylinder, gnurled with a hole at the bottom. Looks just like a Nitro Glycering pill holder.
“Reader Tube for field use”. Custom made tube, with little colored squares glued onto it.
Earpiece electronic recievers- used by Uhura. It looks like a small sound baffle, with a real earpiece- the type used for an IFB on television by anchors, etc. glued onto one end.
Universal Translator. Aluminum cylinder, gnurled bits, small switch.
That’s about it. I adored the props, and attempted to make some out of cardboard, wood, plastic, tape, whatever I could use and spray paint. The Phasers were made to lock together. Although rarely shown as such, there were small hand held phasers, rounded rectangles. These FIT INTO the pistol phasers that were used.
As mentioned elsewhere, it all lays down before the written word. You can take a very thin set, and fill it with astonishing words. I mean admit it, 12 Angry Men is a big boring conference room. We are transported by the ideas, and IDEALS held within. IMHO, such was the case with the original Star Trek. We believed, or wished to believe, that the salt shaker could cut flesh, and so it did.
Suspension of belief is the stock in trade of all creatives. It is why I loved Star Trek, just as I love dance, writing, photography, etc.
And, not for nothing, but Nichelle Nichols is one stunning woman.
Note that ST2 was coincident with “TRON” in pioneering big-screen CGI FX. Also, the cost of the “Genesis” sequence was amortized over the next two movies, when it was seen in video flashbacks. In fact, in ST4, you get to see the FX money-shot of Enterprise blowing up in ST3 again.
Of course, ST2 also recycled the “space dock” scenes from TMP.
And I’m pretty sure the Bird of Prey exploding in “Generations” is the same one from ST6.
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