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Giant Poster Book three: celebrating Trek’s funny side
The Star Trek Giant Poster Books were the first professionally published Trek magazines. Seventeen issues were produced between September 1976 and April 1978, plus a 1979 “Collectors Issue” devoted to The Motion Picture. Each delivered six pages of content plus the cover and back cover and folded out into a large poster.
I own the complete set and will cover each issue. The story of the magazine’s genesis is told here.
Here are highlights from issue three, published in November 1976, plus a scan of the magazine.
This issue was devoted to “the humor of Star Trek” and that was a good choice. The show did funny really well, even though Gene Roddenberry famously did not want his creation to concentrate on jocularity. That is understandable in the context of the 1960s: science fiction in general and Star Trek in particular were struggling to be taken seriously, and pop sci-fi often did not help.
David Gerrold, writing in 1973 in his The Trouble with Tribbles book, said that as early as 1966 he did not want Star Trek to “fall into the same trap of fantasy and pseudo-science fiction that had claimed—oh, say…Lost in Space. Lost in Space was a thoroughly offensive program. It probably did more to damage the reputation of science fiction as a serious literary movement than all the B-movies about giant insects ever made.”
But if Star Trek had to avoid becoming a full-on sitcom, it is also true that the funniest episodes — notably The Trouble with Tribbles and A Piece of the Action — are among the best loved. And this Poster Book focuses on both episodes, plus giving readers a set of screencaps from the blooper reels, in the days before you could just watch them online.
How to play fizzbin
Writer Anthony Fredrickson takes Captain Kirk’s line about fizzbin — “On Beta Antares Four, they play a real game.” — and builds a fanciful story about Saint Fizzbin and how the Antarians evolved the game to “earn the favor of the gods and win health, wealth, and longevity. Fizzbin is a way of settling debts, public and private. It is the basis of the Antarian court system [and] the most skillful Fizzbin players occupy Beta Antares highest government posts.” It’s a silly bit but suited to an article about an impossible game in an issue devoted to humour.
Fredrickson set out to write playable rules and did a good job of building some structure on Kirk’s improvisation, but you still can’t really play the game, and the text here is not quite perfect. In the episode, Kirk says that each player gets six cards, except for the player on the dealer’s right, who gets seven, but the magazine version has that as “except the dealer and the player to the dealer’s right, who get seven.”
Here is the dialogue from the episode, so you can compare the screened “rules” to Fredrickson’s version.
KIRK: Of course, the cards on Beta Antares Four are different, but not too different. The name of the game is called fizzbin.
KALO: Fizzbin?
KIRK: Fizzbin. It’s not too difficult. Each player gets six cards, except for the dealer, uh, the player on the dealer’s right, who gets seven.
KALO: On the right.
KIRK: Yes. The second card is turned up, except on Tuesdays.
KALO: On Tuesday.
KIRK: Oh, look what you got, two jacks. You got a half fizzbin already.
KALO: I need another jack.
KIRK: No, no. If you got another jack, why, you’d have a sralk.
KALO: A sralk?
KIRK: Yes. You’d be disqualified. No, what you need now is either a king and a deuce, except at night of course, when you’d need a queen and a four.
KALO: Except at night.
KIRK: Right. Oh, look at that. You’ve got another jack. How lucky you are! How wonderful for you. Now, if you didn’t get another jack, if you’d gotten a king, why then you’d get another card, except when it’s dark, when you’d have to give it back.
KALO: If it were dark on Tuesday.
KIRK: Yes, but what you’re after is a royal fizzbin, but the odds in getting a royal fizzbin are astro… Spock, what are the odds in getting a royal fizzbin?
SPOCK: I have never computed them, Captain.
KIRK: Well, they’re astronomical, believe me. Now, for the last card. We’ll call it a kronk. You got that?
KALO: What?
Watching the show as a kid, it always struck me that Kirk tells Kalo that a third jack would disqualify him but, when Kalo is dealt a third jack, Kirk says “How lucky you are! How wonderful for you.” What? I figured the captain was just making it up so it didn’t matter, but the script (at least the October 30, 1967 Final Draft) shows William Shatner flubbed the line. As written, Kalo was dealt a nine, and was told another nine would disqualify him. His next cards were two sixes, and Kirk says “That’s excellent.”
It appears Shatner improvised about half of his lines, but you can’t blame him, considering the script.
This is a fun article that by itself is worth the price of the magazine.
Critiquing Tribbles
Fredrickson opens his episode analysis with an interesting statement: “Don’t search for any ulterior motives deep in the meat of The Trouble with Tribbles next time you see it, it’s strictly a “fun” episode…” That opinion would surely have disappointed David Gerrold, who conceived the story as a commentary on invasive species. He told an interviewer in September 2016:
I thought, “We’re not going to recognize the danger with every alien we meet. The ones who are going to be the most dangerous are the ones we’re not going to realize are dangerous until it’s too late.” So I came up with the idea of these cute little fuzzy creatures. I was always fascinated by ecology, and I was inspired by the case of rabbits in Australia, this whole idea that they became predators because there weren’t any predators already there.
The last article is meant to be an examination of humour in Star Trek but it’s really just an “and then this happened” list of dialogue. If you’ve watched the show, you can skip this piece.
The issue closes with a pretty good trivia quiz, an ad for the Star Fleet Technical Manual and the Star Trek Blueprints ($6.95 and $5, including shipping!) and a description of Spock’s station on the bridge. Interestingly, the names assigned to the instruments are taken from the Technical Manual; they are never stated on screen.
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Is the Enterprise bridge rotated 36 degrees?
On-screen evidence can sometimes be tricky. Take the orientation of the bridge on the original-series Enterprise. The turbolift runs up the “neck” that connects the primary and secondary hulls, so the doors on the lift must be at the back of the bridge, relative to the centreline of the ship. That would locate them directly behind the command chair.
But that’s not what we see on screen. Instead, the doors are behind but over to the left of the command chair. This decision was made for camera angles and dramatic shots, but how do we square it with the “real world” of the Enterprise? There are two explanations.
Theory one: Joseph’s offset
Franz Joseph’s Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual, first printed in 1975 and beloved of a generation of trekkers, offers an elegant and mathematically sound solution: the bridge is rotated 36 degrees to port from the centreline. This accounts for the location of the lift relative to the command chair.
But that means the crew is not facing forward as the ship speeds towards Earth Outpost Four, or wherever. I had no problem with that when I got my first copy of the manual; I was just thrilled to have the diagram of the bridge and the rotation seemed a fine explanation. After all, the viewscreen is not a window that has to point forward. Also, the crew would not feel odd travelling at a 36-degree offset to their perceived direction as the ship must have technology that compensates for speed and direction changes. Otherwise, the jump to warp speed would liquify the crew. (This technology is the inertial dampeners but I believe that term was not used on-screen until The Next Generation.)
Theory two: the lift-car storage area
Some fans could not accept this explanation, so there is an alternative: a turbolift car arriving at the top of the shaft would jog to the left a little before the doors opened. We know the cars travel horizontally as well as vertically, and this little bit of lateral travel eliminates the need for the offset.
The theory also suggests there are multiple cars in the lift system, and there is a small “parking area” along the outer edge of the saucer, with cars waiting for passengers.
This explains how, in The Alternative Factor, Lazarus can exit the bridge and then a security guard can step into a different car a few seconds later.
Theory two is correct. Here’s the evidence
The Cage opens with proof that the lift cars take a quick sidestep just before the doors open on the bridge. This scene shows that the lift tube is located behind the command chair, while the doors are a number of degrees over. The cars must traverse that short distance.
I am afraid that Franz Joseph, brilliant though he was, got this detail wrong.
And there is one more piece of evidence. When the Enterprise encounters sudden resistance, the crew is thrown directly forward — as if the bridge is oriented along the ship’s centreline. For example, in The Immunity Syndrome the crew lurches towards the viewscreen as the ship first enters the body. Scotty staggers in from the right going in a different direction and then everyone starts flying all over the place (especially that poor guy tipping over the railing near the end) but it’s fair to say that the intent of the scene is that the bridge is oriented in line with the ship’s forward motion.
The remastered version of this episode does a good job of explaining this by showing the Enterprise being buffeted in different directions as soon as it penetrates the boundary, but I am an original effects guy.
This forward motion is more clearly visible in The Wrath of Khan, but as some people pointed out (notably Mark Farinas, @trekcomic on
TwitterX) that bridge could have been reconfigured during the refit. (It’s fun to note that all the crew lurch forward except for Kirk. It looks like Shatner wanted his character to appear especially unmovable in this moment.)The Cage and The Immunity Syndrome present the best evidence that the bridge is not rotated off the centreline. And that confirms Kirk is looking directly towards where his ship will go during his “Out there. Thataway” gesture at the end of The Motion Picture.
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Stephen Hawking said warp drive is possible — but scientists aren’t working on it
I own about 160 Star Trek books but I must admit I have not read them all. One in that category is The Physics of Star Trek by professor Lawrence M. Krauss. I pulled it out of a storage box recently and spotted Stephen Hawking’s name on the cover. The famous physicist wrote the foreword — and that was worth checking out.
Before we get to what Hawking wrote, I should say that I kept reading after his bit and was drawn into the book. Krauss knows his Trek: the book opens with an imagined scene aboard the USS Defiant just before the interphase begins in The Tholian Web. I was impressed, and the book is very approachable and full of Trek content.
Back to Hawking. The foreword is brief but he does make an interesting statement about warp drive.
One thing that Star Trek and other science fiction have focused attention on is travel faster than light. Indeed, it is absolutely essential to Star Trek’s story line. If the Enterprise were restricted to flying just under the speed of light, it might seem to the crew that the round trip to the center of the galaxy took only a few years, but 80,000 years would have elapsed on Earth before the spaceship’s return. So much for going back to see your family!
Fortunately, Einstein’s general theory of relativity allows the possibility for a way around this difficulty: one might be able to warp spacetime and create a shortcut between the places one wanted to visit. Although there are problems of negative energy, it seems that such warping might be within our capabilities in the future. There has not been much scientific research along these lines, however, partly, I think, because it sounds too much like science fiction… The physics that underlies Star Trek is surely worth investigating. To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.
My Starfleet-wannabe heart beat a little faster as I read that because, as Hawking said, faster-than-light propulsion is required for the adventures we see on screen — and for the adventures we all dream of living. We don’t want to set course and arrive in a couple of years. We want to set course, play a little 3D chess, lunch on a chicken sandwich and coffee, spend the evening at a Christmas party in the science lab, and wake up just before we drop out of warp near a strange new world.
It’s nice to think that only some scientific effort stands between us and the Phoenix, but Hawking also wrote that public priorities often get in the way: “Imagine the outcry about the waste of taxpayers’ money if it were known the National Science Foundation were supporting research on time travel.”
Sci-fi author and professor Adam Roberts also sees this problem, and he blames futuristic TV and movies for making real space travel seem dull. Roberts wrote in the book Boarding the Enterprise that:
It is the very success and popularity of science fiction itself that finished off the Space Race… SF is too good at what it does. Why should people bother with real space flight when fictional space flight is so much better in every way — more exciting, more engaging, more satisfying (and with a better view)? The idea of traveling to the stars is something that touches the souls of most human beings, but why should they invest emotionally and intellectually — and therefore financially — in actual space technology when they can get so much more from fictionalized space flight?
It’s a valid point but I hope Hawking’s opinion that it is worth investigating these possibilities eventually takes hold, and that “some kind of star trek” will inspire scientists. We’ll know in about four decades.
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The Cage had been cut to pieces, so how could Paramount release the episode?
Paramount Home Video began selling Star Trek episodes on video tapes and laserdiscs in the mid-1980s and the company wanted The Cage to be part of that package. There was a lot of interest in this lost voyage of the Enterprise.
But there was a problem: no complete colour version existed. The film from the episode, shot in 1964, had been literally cut up in 1966 so that some scenes could be used in Gene Roddenberry’s envelope episode, The Menagerie. The rest of the footage had been lost. Roddenberry did have a copy of the complete episode but it was a black-and-white workprint, with a rough soundtrack.
So Paramount took the only option available: it released a hybrid, using the workprint and then cutting in the colour segments that had appeared in The Menagerie. That version was released in 1986 and I bought the VHS immediately. I watched that tape over and over, because the story is great but also because the alternating colour and monochrome scenes give real insight into how The Menagerie was constructed.
Here is a clip that shows these transitions. And while this hybrid version is also available on later DVDs and the Blu-ray set, the videos in this article are all pulled from that original 1986 VHS tape. The quality is not as good but it is fun to experience the episode as home audiences did back then.
Interestingly, the transitions are not always accurate, as some scenes that are in black-and-white were present in The Menagerie, and so should be in colour. Here is an example, first from The Cage and then The Menagerie. Look at Captain Pike interacting with Tango.
Another great reason to watch The Cage is the inclusion of a line that was really risqué for 1964, and which is not in The Menagerie. Here is the original scene and then its reuse in 1966.
“I have to wear something — don’t I?” Excellent.
That line does not appear in the October 6, 1964 revised script but is present in the draft of November 20, 1964 — in a slightly different form. And here, the captain’s name is James Winter, although an inserted page states that is to be changed to Christopher Pike.
And we got to hear from the Great Bird
That 1986 production also gave us an intro and outro from Gene Roddenberry, and it is great to see Star Trek’s creator talking about his first voyage. Again, it’s available in slightly higher quality on optical disks.
Roddenberry talked often about the freedom science fiction gave him to address issues that were not permitted under the TV norms of the 1960s. Roddenberry says here that he realised The Cage:
…was a chance to do the kind of drama I’d always dreamed of doing… Perhaps I could use this as an excuse to…talk about love, war, nature, God, sex, all those things that go to make up the excitement of the human condition, and maybe the TV censors would let it pass because it all seemed so make-believe.
That is vintage Roddenberry. His first episode would, of course, be about a man offered the ultimate sexual fantasy. Vina tells Pike “I can become anything, any woman you’ve ever imagined. You can have anything you want in the whole universe. Let me please you.”
The Roddenberry segment and the hybrid episode are important additions to any collection, and I am glad I kept my VHS tape, even though I own the same content on DVD and Blu-ray.
Postscript
A full colour version of The Cage was broadcast in 1988 and later released on home video after the missing film pieces were found by archivist Bob Furmanek. He wrote on a message board in 2008:
In 1987, I found the original 35mm color negative trims from The Cage in a rusty, un-marked can in a Hollywood film lab. It was in a vault of old, unclaimed material that was supposed to be destroyed. I approached Roddenberry’s office at Paramount and arranged for him to acquire the material.
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Enjoy the intros that almost were
Dedicated Star Trek fans know that the famous “Space, the final frontier…” opening narration was not the first version written. The intro went through a number of revisions, some of which were not great.
The iterations were penned by Gene Roddenberry, Bob Justman and John D.F. Black, with a big assist from Sam Peeples who had written the phrase “where no man has gone before” one year earlier.
But even if you know that story, you probably have not heard William Shatner perform those alternate takes. That’s about to change, thanks to the Star Trek 25th Anniversary Audio Collection. The four CD set from 1981 presents three (abridged) Star Trek novels: Enterprise: the First Adventure, Strangers from the Sky, and Final Frontier. The books are read by William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, James Doohan and George Takei, and include an introduction by Shatner.
And it is that introduction that gives us the opening narrations that could have been, in Captain Kirk’s own voice. Here is that audio:
The versions Shatner read, plus a few more, are detailed in Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, by Herbert F. Solow and Robert H. Justman. Shatner’s performances above includes two versions by Black and then Roddenberry’s original take on the words.
The actual writing process kicked off on August 2, 1966, following an urgent memo from Justman.
At least five iterations were then written the next day by Roddenberry, Justman and Black. Here they are, as presented by Solow and Justman.
Another urgent memo, this one on August 10, prompted the recording that afternoon of the famous final version.
Justman wrote about that recording session.
On the afternoon of August 10, 1966, literally minutes after Gene finished his final version, I phoned Bill Shatner on stage, where he was working on “Dagger of the Mind,” our ninth episode to be filmed. I told him “drop everything,” and then I ran across the street to the dubbing stage. Bill raced to meet me and arrived a minute later, slightly out of breath. We rehearsed the dialogue several times and made a take. Due to Bill’s classical training, his delivery was excellent–but the narration sounded too contemporary. There was something lacking; it didn’t seem to “ring out.”
I asked the sound mixer to add reverberation to Shatner’s voice. We made another take and the results were perfect. Bill had become Captain Kirk, the adventurous commander of a spacecraft of the future…
Oddly, Marc Cushman in These are the Voyages, Season One, supplies different versions. Here is an excerpt from that book:
So, hit play on the above audio file again but close your eyes this time and imagine the Enterprise whooshing past to those words instead.
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Journalists kept ruining Spock’s death in ST II
Spock’s death at the end of The Wrath of Khan was a punch to the gut, and it would have been even more effective if the entertainment media had not repeatedly outed the surprise or — weirdly — denied that there was a surprise coming.
For example, The Kansas City Star blabbed the news a couple of weeks before the movie premiered, writing “Spock — the green-blooded alien stoically played by Leonard Nimoy — dies.” I pasted that article into my scrapbook in the spring of 1982, before I saw the movie.
The Toronto Star also addressed the spoiler in the pages of its Starweek TV-guide magazine. The April 24 to May 1, 1982, issue included an interview with William Shatner, fresh off the movie sound stages and about to return to the set of T.J. Hooker. Writer Eirik Knutzen told readers:
Though no amount of money would make Shatner do Star Trek as a television series again, he would love to make the feature film versions forever. “I think this film, which comes out in June, is so good that the possibilities are endless. I’m not contracted for any more of them, but I’ll do them if asked. So will Leonard Nimoy (putting to rest rumors that the pointy-eared Vulcan has been killed off) because we had a grand time.”
So those fans who had not yet heard the rumour about Spock were now saying, “Wait, what?”
I can’t figure out why Paramount would show the movie at a convention two weeks before its premiere (as detailed in the article linked above), and maybe Shatner’s comment about Nimoy was an attempt to fight the stories that were already flying around — but the writer made sure readers weren’t fooled.
Building buzz around a film is important but surely the point of a big plot surprise is to have it be a surprise. I know that Gene Roddenberry himself leaked the news of Spock’s fate because he had been locked out of the film’s production (and that made the simulation fake-out at the beginning really clever), but this is not that: this is the studio and the media wrecking the big reveal. Baffling.
The rest of the Shatner interview is standard fare, except there is a good bit in which he talks about how important the show was for some fans. And reading this piece did make me think I should revisit Hooker. It’s been a long time.
Postscript
And here are the TVs we would have watched T.J. Hooker on back in 1982, from the back cover of Starweek.
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An old Scottish ballad inspired the iconic song in Charlie X
Time spent reading a Star Trek script often rewards you with a real gem. For example, I had forgotten that Uhura’s teasing song about Spock and then Charlie in Charlie X was based on an old Scottish folk song. But it’s right there in the script.
The final draft script, dated July 5, 1966, includes this note in the recreation-room scene:
Spock “clearly wanting to offer amends, he thinks…strikes a chord…in Uhura’s key…a song she knows… (the tune is: “CHARLIE IS MY DARLING”) (Public Domain) (Lyrics by Gene Roddenberry).”
Click for larger imagesCharlie is my Darling is an old Scottish folk song, or really a few related songs, which tells of the arrival of the pretender Charles Edward Stuart to the Scottish highlands in the mid 1700s. Here is what Wikipedia says about the song:
All known versions of the song refer to the figure of Bonnie Prince Charlie of Scotland (Charles Edward Stuart).
The earlier versions focus on Charles as a patriotic hero of Scotland during the Jacobite revolts of the 18th century, and it describes the arrival of Charles, referred to as “the Young Chevalier,” to the Highlands… A later version of the song by Robert Burns contains lyrics that mean to poke fun at Charles’ womanizing reputation. Burns’ version of the lyrics are, in comparison to the earlier ones, considered to be fairly risqué for the times, with a narrative that alludes to the amorous adventures of Charles with the Scottish women of the towns he visits during his battles.
You can read Robert Burns’ words here.
And here are some renditions of Charlie is my Darling: a well-known version by Eddi Reader, a traditional version by Ewan MacColl, and a fun version by Rita and the Runaways
And here is the Star Trek take on the tune.
I think it is fair to characterise Uhura’s version as “loosely based” on the original, but you can certainly hear the influence of the bonnie old Scottish song. And Gene Roddenberry’s interpretation of it gave us one of the best moments of the original series.
Postscript
The bare bones of the idea that became Charlie X appeared in Gene Roddenberry’s 1964 Star Trek is… pitch. The story was called The Day Charlie Became God. His idea: “The accidental occurrence of infinite power to do all things in the hands of a very finite man.”
Then, according to the fine folks at Fact Trek, Roddenberry worked up two outlines called Charlie Is God in April and August of 1964 and further revised the idea in April 1966. Dorothy Fontana took over the project and created two treatments and two draft teleplays. Fontana was credited for the teleplay and Roddenberry for the story.
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Enjoy vintage 1960s commercials
I love vintage Star Trek commercials. I recently digitized a VHS tape of old Trek content owned by fan David Penn. I’ve written about the blooper reels and a Star Trek V phone game from that tape. Today’s post offers up four commercials from 1966 — and an odd story about NBC’s promotional tactics.
The first two commercials are previews, telling viewers about this great new NBC show. The network promised Star Trek would be “The first adult space adventure” — a clear contrast to Lost in Space, which hit the airwaves one year earlier.
These are the promo spots people endured almost 60 years ago, as they waited to get back to Bonanza, The Virginian, and Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color.
Coming to Fridays this fall
Galaxy premiere, September 15, 1966
Wait, September 15? Yes, sort of. Scroll down for an explanation.
“Trackless journey” season promo
Next Voyage: Where No Man Has Gone Before
A story of two premiere dates
The second video above promised Star Trek would premiere on September 15, but we all know the first Trek episode aired in America on September 8, 1966, right? (And two days earlier in Canada.) Yes, that’s correct. But so is the September 15 date, sort of.
NBC held what it called NBC Week beginning on Saturday, September 10. That’s when its new shows first aired, and an ad in TV Guide promoted Star Trek‘s “Galaxy Premiere!” on September 15.
Also, an article in the Boston Herald promised that “Star Trek, an hour-long drama…will debut Thursday, Sept. 15, at 8:30 p.m.”
Article from the site WendyLovesJesus
So what gives? The Man Trap was on screens one week earlier, and it was Trek’s second episode, Charlie X, that aired September 15. And here is the proof, from the Northern California edition of TV Guide. (Click on pics for bigger versions.)
It seems NBC called the broadcast of Charlie X the show’s premiere, even though it simply wasn’t. The page above from September 8 uses the term “Advance Premiere” for The Tammy Grimes Show and That Girl, and I guess Star Trek was in the same category.
But in addition to “advance premiere” being an oxymoron, this seems an odd way to build buzz for a new show. NBC bought promo space to convince viewers to watch Star Trek on September 15, and those people who listened to the network’s own statements would have missed the first episode. I bet many did.
At least the network paid for some nice artwork.
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Janos Prohaska chased Woody Allen in Take the Money and Run
Janos Prohaska was a talented costume designer and stuntman who played a number of iconic characters in the original series, but his untimely death in a plane crash in 1974 meant he never got to meet fans and sign photos at the conventions that were just then starting. So his autograph is exceedingly rare.
Prohaska was born in Hungary in 1919 and made a living in Hollywood by creating and performing in a series of alien and animal costumes. He was featured in Star Trek in The Cage, The Devil in the Dark, A Private Little War, and The Savage Curtain.
I recently interviewed Star Trek collector Gerald Gurian for an article on his excellent book Autographs of the Final Frontier. Gurian shared with me a real rarity: Prohaska’s signature on a contract for the 1968 Woody Allen comedy Take the Money and Run. Prohaska is on-screen for only a few seconds, for which he received the day rate of $350 plus first-class airfare between San Francisco and LA.
Here is the scene from the movie:
Prohaska’s first scheduled day on set, June 26, 1968, was a few months before he filmed his last Star Trek appearance, as Yarnek in The Savage Curtain, in December of that year.
Gurian also shared these images with me: a scan of a 4 x 5-inch transparency from The Cage that was once part of Matt Jefferies’ Desilu photo collection and a behind-the-scenes image of clapper loader Bill McGovern with Prohaska as the Mugato.
These images are posted here with Gurian’s permission. Thank you, Gerald.
Postscript
Prohaska was once well known for playing the Cookie Bear from 1969 to 1971 on The Andy Williams Show, although his Hungarian accent meant his lines were spoken by someone else.
Here is a brief interview with Janos Prohaska:
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Read the Nazi-themed script that almost got made
I recently watched the season two episode Patterns of Force with my good friends Rob Sawyer and Carolyn Clink. We had not seen it in a while and, as we do, we had an interesting discussion about its message and its place in the Trek canon.
I marvelled again that the idea of the Enterprise visiting an actual Nazi planet was ever greenlit, and especially in the way Star Trek handled it. While the Second World War was a common topic for TV and cinema in the 1960s, sitcoms like Hogan’s Heroes and movies like The Dirty Dozen and The Great Escape focused solely on the combat, soldiers fighting soldiers. They ignored the death camps. Star Trek chose instead to address the Holocaust head on, presenting a story about the planet Ekos’ genocidal “final solution” to eliminate the people of neighbouring planet Zeon.
But even more surprising than the production of a Holocaust-themed episode is that Patterns of Force was actually the second such story Star Trek commissioned. The first, titled Tomorrow the Universe and written by Paul Schneider, progressed all the way to a revised second draft script in June of 1967. That same month, TOS producer John Meredyth Lucas submitted his story outline for Patterns of Force, and it was chosen over Schneider’s work. And while the two stories had some differences, they marched over much of the same ground.
Read the rejected script
I have a PDF of Schneider’s first draft script, and you can get your own copy at the download link.
The story opens with the Enterprise visiting the planet Spurlos to retrieve a Federation cultural-exchange team. The inhabitants call themselves “Rikes” and I do not know if that was a deliberate rendering or a misspelling of Reich.
The crew beams down and finds Federation data tapes belonging to team leader Dr. Alana Steele, a prominent astro-sociologist. Spock discovers the tapes cover “ten Earth years: nineteen thirty three to forty three…one of Dr. Steele’s special fields of scholarship.” We learn those dates are no coincidence, as the Nazi connections then really start to kick in.
The temple-like roof of the monument is adorned with a large photograph…DeSalle shakes his head uncertainly, as he gazes at the strangely recognizable face — the visor of the high-peaked cap shading the pinched features, the balefully glaring eyes, the precise little moustache, under the sharp nose.
DESALLE(trying to recall)
Familiar face – but I can’t place it…
KIRK
(frowning deeply)
Think of your Earth history, Mr. DeSalle. A figure from its darkest chapter…
CROWD VOICES (o.s.)
(in deafening unison)
Sieg – heil! Sieg – heil! Sieg – heil!
…
KRIEG’S VOICE
Security units are ordered to bring all prisoners and remaining classes of persons to the Nazi Party Rally! Any refusing to attend will be liquidated!
As in Patterns of Force, the Holocaust is front and centre here. Soldiers wearing SS uniforms goose step into the square with a group of prisoners called “Undermen” — the English translation of the Nazi term “Untermensch.”
Kirk and the landing party are soon chatting with Hitler himself, or at least a wannabe Spurlos version. These local fascists believe Earth’s Hitler won the war and the Nazis formed a world government that became the blueprint for the Federation and Starfleet.
“Hitler” summons Dr. Steele and we learn she is using Spurlos as a large social experiment; she has introduced Nazism to examine “the deepest causes of aggressive behavior in human society.” The planet is her test lab, and she will trigger the death of countless people so she can observe how fascism plays out in her new home.
The same basic idea is used in Patterns of Force: cultural observer Professor John Gill introduced Nazism to Ekos because he admired the efficiency of fascist Germany.
I won’t relate how Tomorrow the Universe ends; read the script if you’re curious. I will say it falters in acts three and four, with Spock pulling a deus out of the machina and — as in Patterns of Force — the misguided Federation representative broadcasting a public admission of wrongdoing.
Ultimately, Tomorrow the Universe is an okay script but Patterns of Force is better. Schneider’s take is a little too on the nose, with a leader who looks and acts like Hitler and even goes by that name. It is like a dour take on A Piece of the Action, in that it depicts an imitative culture but one that is horrifying where A Piece of the Action is funny. Lucas’ story leaned into Nazism as an allegory about evil, while Schneider settled for dressing up a cardboard bad guy in a Nazi uniform.
Both stories also suffer from the unrealistic idea that one person saying at the end “I was wrong and Nazism is bad” would turn around an entire society that had devoted its resources and ideology to victimising its neighbours.
No credit where it’s due
But you have to give Schneider props for coming up with many of the basic story beats first — although he received no actual credit on Patterns of Force. That is despite the many similarities: that Nazism being attractive was not a one-off occurrence, an attack in space as the Enterprise approaches, and of course a Federation representative bringing 1930s fascism to a distant planet.
Paul Schneider himself was surprised and hurt by how this all played out. And angry, I’m sure.
Picture this: he is sitting at home in early February of 1968 and he sees a “Next week on Star Trek” promo for a Nazi-themed episode, and he figures this must be his script. In a letter to Roddenberry, he wrote: “I assumed this to be the production on my third teleplay for ‘Star Trek’ — finished in early 1967. Not an unnatural assumption, I think — since my ‘Tomorrow the Universe’ concerned precisely the same situation.”
He then watched the premiere of Patterns of Force on February 16, 1968. His letter is dated the next day. He continues to Roddenberry:
Yesterday I viewed the segment — now titled ‘Patterns of Force’ — and was flabbergasted to see the credit listed as ‘written by John Meredyth Lucas.’ …Not a clue can I find to the process of reasoning which excluded me from all credit participation — even down to story. I’ve gone over my own original story and two script versions; by no stretch would I deny that changes were made; nor, by the same stretch, could I deny that much remains essentially the same.”
He adds “Of course, the issue must now go to the Guild for arbitration.” Absolutely it must.
Roddenberry sent a reply, dated February 20, 1968, pointing out that he is now acting as Executive Producer only and “confining myself to policy decisions and staying away from the details of day-to-day line production.” He added “One thing I think both of us know for sure is that neither Gene Coon nor John Meredyth Lucas is in the habit of stealing from their fellows.”
I do not think Schneider knew that at all. He had reworked his script over the first half of 1967, with the revised second draft dated June 1. Lucas’ first story outline was dated June 7.
Eight days after his reply to Schneider, Gene Roddenberry sent Gary Ellingsworth at the Writers Guild of America West a copy of Schneider’s first draft script and Lucas’ final draft, and told Ellingsworth:
I double checked with both John Lucas and Gene Coon (who was producing the show at that time) and they assure me that John never read Paul Schneider’s story or script, and in fact John Lucas was only lately aware that Schneider had written a Nazi script.
On the other hand we are all anxious to be fair to Paul Schneider if we have somewhere along the line violated any rules, regulations, or ethical practices. Gene Coon informed me that having paid Paul Schneider full price for the script, he presumed we owned the “Nazi idea” but felt that since he was not using Schneider’s story he had no obligation to clear Lucas’ assignment elsewhere.
I do not have a copy of the Guild’s response, but it sided with Roddenberry — and Schneider then decided to apologise to Roddenberry for his complaint. He wrote on May 23, 1968:
I’ve been told about the Guild-arbitration on judgement that the ‘Patterns of Force’ script for ‘Star Trek’ was strictly by John Meredyth Lucas.
Obviously I was wrong — and I mis-read the situation — and I owe apologies to you and Mr. Lucas.
I think business considerations and not contrition prompted the note. Schneider penned the season one episodes Balance of Terror and The Squire of Gothos, and had been paid for his work on Tomorrow the Universe. Perhaps it was best to swallow the slight here in the hope of future commissions. And, indeed, he contributed The Terratin Incident to the animated series a few years later.
However, the timing of the drafts and the plot similarities make me think it likely Lucas had in fact read Schneider’s script.
In either case, the producers and the network were brave to directly address the Holocaust so soon after the war, in either script. Both takes on the Nazis raise uncomfortable issues and that was, of course, the goal.
Collecting Trek
A TOS collection 40 years in the making
Collecting Trek 