Now that Star Trek (the original series) has returned to TV via TVLAnd, what inconsistencies have you noticed? I don’t mean spots of bad acting, I mean mistakes from one episode to the next. I assume the early episodes of Season One have the most as the show was developing the characters and the lingo.
For example, what became Sick Bay had a different name in “Where No Man Has Gone Before”. But, I forget the name. (Perhaps a SharpDoper can help me recall.) Also, Kirk’s Middle initial appears as “R” on a tombstone, but later it is “T”. Being pickier, early on, Kirk makes supplemental log entries without saying any introductory words, like “Captain’s Log Supplemental…”. Last, Kirk will not always says “Kirk out” or “acknowledged” or something for goodness sakes when completing a communication.
As an honorable mention, I think it was wrong of Roddenberry to make the pilot episode start off with Captain Pike griping he’s tired of being the captain and longs for home! Already, he’s thinking of resigning! What a weenie!
There are a LOT of inconsistencies when one compares the first few episodes with the rest of the series. To me, one of the biggest is the frequent references to “Earth Outpost Such-And-Such” in the early episodes. It is clear to me that this is a great example of how the ideas which gave birth to a show get fleshed out and refined once the first episodes have actually been produced. In this example, the Earth Outposts matured into the concept of the Federation rather soon, but not soon enough to get into those first episodes.
Technically, this could be called an inconsistency, but it seems to me that most fans are more than willing to overlook it, because of the nature of maturing series.
In sharp contrast, your citation of Kirk’s middle initial is NOT overlooked by fans. That one has nothing to do with a concept which got improved by the producers and writers, but is a real error.
I’ve just never held Star Trek TOS to the same standards of continuity that I would other, more recent shows. It was very episodic, and in that respect minor inconsistancies tend to not detract from the story and/or fabric of space/time.
I agree. I’m just introducing our ten-year-old son to the remastered episodes as they’re aired weekly, and he’s digging 'em. Yes, he giggles at the lame special effects now and then, but the power of the stories and the characterization has him hooked. Far better than most of the Star Wars stuff he’s seen up to now.
TOS was broadcast in the 60s. No one cared about consistency and would have thought you were nuts if you pointed out foolish inconsistencies from episode to episode.
But no one cared. There’s one – perhaps apocryphal – account that the Romulans were supposed to be Klingons, but the writer forgot what they were called and guessed wrong.
Remember – a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, and Kirk’s middle initial is about as foolish a consistency you can name.
Presumably, the Federation finally realized that First Contact situations went a lot more smoothly when the word “probe” was avoided. Universal Translator technology being what it was, during those early years, misunderstanding were inevitable. Some historians believe this may have been a major contributing factor to the longstanding Klingon hostility toward the Federation.
The one that always stands out for me is how much Spock yells in the early episodes. Guess they hadn’t worked out the whole “unemotional Vulcans” thing yet. Favorite example: “The women!”
That can’t be right, since the Romulans were introduced (“Balance of Terror”, original airdate 15 December 1966) before the Klingons (“Errand of Mercy”, original airdate 23 March 1967).
I don’t worry about that sort of minutia, since the point was that one alien was confused with another and no one cared. My point still stands, no matter which comes first, and pointing that out does nothing to refute what I said.
What, precisely, makes an inconsistency “foolish” has yet to be established. In fact, the word “foolish” seems oddly applied.
Perhaps it’s because Emerson was talking about people who foolishly think the same way and do the same things all the time, like our humble President, and the quote is entirely inapplicable with regards to the internal consistency of a fictional universe.
You say your point still stands, but I fail to see where you made one…
Heh. I think this is perhaps the most explicit example of 1960s culture rearing its ugly head in the series (well, this and Janice Rand’s uniform/hairdoo).
Actually, no. The Klingons and Romulans were never confused and what you are probably thinking of the Romulans using D-7 cruisers, a Klingon design that had yet to debut, in The Enterprise Incident which was due to either budgetary constraints (they had a lot of money invested in the ship and wanted to get all the money they could out of it) or the Bird of Prey model used in *Balance of Terror *either being damaged or misplaced, depending upon which account you want to believe.
I’ll go with the Spores getting everyone high and causing them to stick it to the man and Spock and Jill Ireland having their nature lovefest and hanging from trees while trippy piccolo music plays in the background.