Who are the alien species on Star Trek, across all series, that were obviously created on days where the makeup department completely just phoned it in?
I was just watching an episode of Deep Space Nine featuring the Yaderans, whose costume is comprised entirely of just a white robe, a funny hat, and beads around their necks and draped over their heads.
There was an episode of Voyager (I think, kinda, maybe?) I watched a while ago where the aliens just had purple lace tied around their heads like a bandana and that was it.
What other Star Trek aliens were clearly the result of the entire alien makeup department calling in sick?
Take a look at the original 1966-1969 version. On many shows the aliens were human. Usually there was a tiny tweak from the wardrobe department (The Squire of Gothos had exactly one alien - and he wore 18th century clothes), while in two episodes (Assignment Earth and Tomorrow is Yesterday) they just sent the Enterprise back to present-day Earth and everyone just wore street clothes and military uniforms.
I had a poster years ago of Spock in front of a shuttlecraft holding a phaser and his ear points were a different color than the rest of his ears. You could see where they were glued on. Poster had to go.
I’m a Star Trek fan (not a complete nerd) who has read quite a bit over the last two years. In many of the iterations of Star Trek, they were under significant financial pressures. TOS to be sure was forced to produce year two and three under less money than they had previously, while at the some time having to pay actors who had become stars. The bottle shows increased accordingly. TNG appeared to be the one exception of a Star Trek serious that by and large had the money that they needed.
That shouldn’t give them a complete pass perhaps, but I think they did the best they could with what they had. The producers and crew wanted the best product that they could create.
Hrm. Hard to know how to do this question, if you include TOS. The budget was simply small, and production standards of the time were what was expected. The various, “Western gear” was as good as the costumes for Bonanza or the Rifleman or The Lone Ranger.
How about this: Elaan of Troyius – France Nuyen wears a simple, revealing costume, yet she’s “dressed up” in her stilted accent. She brought her costume with her. And they do it again, for Ilya from the movie, which was based on a character that was supposed to be an early reboot of the series, that then became the character of Deanna Troi for next-gen. Same deal, we dress you reveling, you talk stilted, instant alien.
Truly, I had no idea Marina Sirtis was a British actress of some renown – I really thought she was a foreign actress who didn’t speak American English well. She could’ve been France Nyguen’s daughter for all I knew.
OK, in before everyone else, not that I was complaining about the costumes.
How about this, the Orion slave girl makeup for Yvonne Craig. Again, not complaining about the costume – but as she dances, you see some unpainted skin. It kinda took me out of the suspension of disbelief, even as a kid. Paint her everywhere (oh, grow up) or fix the costume to cover where you can’t paint (sigh, grow up) or don’t have her move so much (cut.it.out.) Its just a lack of dedication to the Star Trek alien meme they were trying to create.
The ***TOS ***budget was so low, they had to farm out wardrobe duties to independent seamstresses in order to avoid Union costs. The costumes were smuggled into the studio early each morning, before anyone else was around. The staff referred to this as “the Star Trek sweatshop.”
They’ve been showing this series on Channel 11 in the afternoon for the last month or so. I watched the pilot and the first couple of regular episodes, and just couldn’t take it anymore.
It may be a classic series, but I simply can’t believe how gawdawful **bad **it is. “Putrid” doesn’t begin to describe it. Clearly my tastes have evolved since I was in fifth grade. :smack:
Kind of off-topic, but there’s a funny story in “The Making Of Star Trek” about the test shots they did for the Orion slave girl. They’d send test footage out to be developed, and it would come back looking normal. They’d do another test shot, send it off to the lab, it would come back normal. After a few rounds of this someone went to the lab to find out WTF was going on. It seems the lab kept getting these test shots of someone who kept showing up green on the film, and they thought the film was messed up, so they’d adjust the print to make her normal colored.
