Don’t forget tomorrow starts Beatles Week and we will have some great guest hosts. The Star Trek posts will continue.
Today I’m guest hosting Dave’s site with Turntable Talk…about the one and only Jimi Hendrix.
I’ve always liked this song with its garage band sound. The Outsiders were a band from Cleveland Ohio that had a hit with this song in 1965. They had 4 top 40 songs. Time Won’t Let Me peaked at #5 on the Billboard 100 and #5 in Canada in 1966. It does get played occasionally on oldie radio stations. Jimmy Fox, who was the drummer on the Outsiders’ first album, later formed The James Gang with Joe Walsh.
The Outsiders formed in Cleveland, Ohio, and were a continuation of the rock band The Starfires. The members of the Outsiders at this time included Tom King (rhythm guitar, vocals), Sonny Geraci (vocals), Mert Madsen (bass, harmonica), Al Austin (lead guitar), Ronnie Harkai (drums), John Madrid (scream trumpet, and Gayle Guhde (keyboards). The lineup has been very fluid over the years.
They were signed by Capitol Records on the strength of Time Won’t Let Me. A&R man Roger Karshner became the group’s manager. Lead sing Sonny Geraci credits Karshner as the key to the band’s breakout success.
The Outsiders recorded three more Top 40 singles but never had another huge hit like Time Won’t Let Me. The band broke up after their fourth album, Happening Live!, was released in 1967.
Mert Madsen (bass player): “It all started in 1958 when I joined Tom in his new band called The Starfires, which started a few months before I joined the band in late 58. It took us seven hard-working years to get to the time in the fall of 1965 where we cut ‘Time Won’t Let Me’ at the “Cleveland Recording” studio.”
“We could sense that this was not just any tune, but a tune with great hit potential,” Mert continues: “So we got hold of the East Coast Manager for Capitol Records, Roger Karhsner, and played the master record for him over the phone. He said right away, ‘Hold on, I do believe you guys got a hit on your hands, but I am coming to Cleveland in a few days, and then we will defiantly talk some more.’ The rest is history – all the guys on the record made up their own parts music ways, and I arranged the background singers. — The horns were added on afterwards.”
Time Won’t Let Me
I can’t wait forever Even though you want me to I can’t wait forever To know if you’ll be true Time won’t let me Time won’t let me Time won’t let me wait too long
Can’t you see I’ve waited too long to love you To hold you in my arms Time won’t let me Time won’t let me Time won’t let me aw Oh
I can’t wait forever Even though you want me to I can’t wait forever To know if you’ll be true Time won’t let me Time won’t let me Time won’t let me wait that long It won’t let me wait that long (Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait that long) (Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait that long) (Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait that long) (Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait that long) (Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait that long) (Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait that long) (Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait that long)
On Friday, March 10, 2023, my blog will be blessed…it will be guest hosted by many of you wonderful bloggers out there. I asked some bloggers to write about their favorite Beatles song or somewhere along those lines. In the next week or so that is what we will have.
I truly appreciate all of them writing on this subject. I admire all of them for their writing abilities and having fantastic sites. I’m calling it Beatles Week but in truth, it WILL go longer than a week. If it does so be it…I’m not going to rename it to Beatles 8 or more days… I think “week” has a certain ring to it.
We will have one post a day BUT…I will still have my Star Trek posts to work in on Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday. Now…if any of you reading this would want to write about a favorite Beatle song…just tell me and I’ll get you in…although I’ll need to know by Friday. I so appreciate all of my readers and it’s been a joy working with all of these different bloggers. We do have a great community here on WordPress.
If you want to see where we are…and you missed a few…HERE is a list of the episodes in my index located at the top of my blog.
This show was written by gene Roddenberry and Paul Schneider
This is one of the lighter episodes of Star Trek. That doesn’t mean it isn’t good…quite the opposite. It shows intellect without discipline and power without a constructive purpose go nowhere.
The star of this episode is not a crew member but is actor William Campbell who plays Trelane. Trelane can seemingly do anything he wishes. He can get people off of the Enterprise in a second. William Campbell is over the top in this episode and it fits perfectly!
I’ve always thought Trelane was a forerunner of the Q character, from the Next Generation series, and it is impossible to re-watch this episode without making comparisons. Many of them are favorable to actor William Campbell who played Trelane as if the role had been written for him.
Trelane appears to have stumbled upon an eighteenth-century decor but he gets so many things wrong such as the food with no taste. He’s stuck in space and he’s lonely. He wants the Enterprise crew for the company…but they all have work to do….and don’t have time to keep him entertained. They don’t have much of a choice though when they see how powerful he is.
Leonard Nimoy intrigues Trelane. He’s studied the earth, but he’s only gotten as far as the 18th century. A Vulcan like Spock is something he can’t account for. The very serious-minded Spock has no time to deal with what Captain Kirk and the rest realize is an immature mind. But a very powerful one who can change matter to energy and back simply at will.
The ending was amusing and sad when the revelation regarding Trelane’s story is revealed… I won’t give it away here.
From IMDB
The costume worn by Campbell as Trelane was rented from the Western Costume company. Almost two weeks after it was seen worn by Campbell on Star Trek, the same costume appeared in the Gilligan’s Island third season episode “Lovey’s Secret Admirer” worn by actor Jim Backus. A short time later, it was again re-used and worn by actor Michael Nesmith in The Monkees episode “The Prince and the Pauper”
William Campbell has said that the part of Trelane was really written for Roddy McDowall. The reason why it was eventually decided not to use him was that it was feared that the mannerisms of the character combined with McDowall’s look would make the character appear gay. Campbell was chosen because his supposedly “huskier look/build” would offset the foppish mannerisms of the character. However, he is not noticeably huskier than McDowell. In the fact, Campbell’s higher-pitched voiced and greater penchant for theatricality are more likely to appear gay than McDowell’s. The result is that Trelane’s over-the-top manner is (possibly deliberately) somewhat camp.
n an interview on the Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) Season 7 DVD, John de Lancie said he believed that Gene Roddenberry, whether consciously or subconsciously, was channeling Trelane when he created Q.
William Campbell, who plays Trelane, would later play Captain Koloth in Star Trek: The Trouble with Tribbles (1967).
Barely visible before Trelane vaporizes it with the phaser is a strange bird-like creature with striped legs that is also in a display niche. It was the reuse of the humanoid bird creature costume, fleetingly and partially seen in the Talos zoo in Star Trek: The Cage (1966).
An M-113 creature is among the trophies on display in Trelane’s castle. When Dr. McCoy (the creature’s last defender in Star Trek: The Man Trap (1966)) sees it, he does a double-take. During the scene, the howling music theme from that episode is heard. It is possible that Trelane had observed Planet M-113 with his telescope at some point.
According to an interview with William Campbell in “The World of Star Trek”, in his fight with William Shatner in the forest, he fell down and dislocated his shoulder. Fortunately, as he flung his arm up in his instinctive reaction to the excruciating pain, the shoulder popped back into its socket. Due to Campbell’s injury, shooting finished in seven filming days, one day over schedule. Campbell can be seen favoring the injured shoulder, hold the arm limp.
The exact century in which Star Trek was set had not been determined during the filming of the original series. Kirk refers to people and events of the 18th and 19th century as being nine hundred years in the past, which could have placed the series in the 27th century or later. De Forest Research, Inc., the company who reviewed scripts for clearances and other related matters, noted in their commentary on the line “Then you’ve been looking in on doings nine hundred years past”: “Other scripts have placed it c. 200 years in the future, e.g. Star Trek: Shore Leave (1966). That places this reference in the 13th century.”
In his book Q-Squared, author Peter David related that Trelane was an adolescent Q entity. Trelane’s nature may seem inconsistent with Q lore, but David uses creative speculation to explain away any questions that may arise.
William Campbell recalled the part of Trelane as “It was just a great role. It was sensational. I’ll never forget it.” and “It would be very easy for any actor who had any training to play the Squire of Gothos. The character was so well written and, of course, it was the show”.
Summary
When Kirk and Sulu vanish into thin air from the bridge of the Enterprise, Spock sends a landing party to the planet below to locate them. What they find is an 18th century castle and a rather foppish man, Trelane, who seems to know a great deal about the Earth – even if it is the wrong time period. If truth be told, Trelane acts like a spoiled little boy and it’s obvious Kirk and the others have become his playthings. They soon realize that if they are to overcome Trelane and free themselves, they must locate and destroy his power source
CAST
William Shatner … Captain James Tiberius ‘Jim’ Kirk Leonard Nimoy … Mister Spock William Campbell … Trelane DeForest Kelley … Doctor Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy Richard Carlyle … Jaeger Nichelle Nichols … Lieutenant Nyota Uhura George Takei … Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu James Doohan … Lieutenant Commander Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott Michael Barrier … DeSalle Venita Wolf … Yeoman Teresa Ross Barbara Babcock … Trelane’s Mother (voice) (uncredited) Bill Blackburn … Lieutenant Hadley (uncredited) Frank da Vinci … Lt. Brent (uncredited) Carey Foster … Enterprise crewmember (uncredited) Bart La Rue … Trelane’s Father (voice) (uncredited) Eddie Paskey … Lieutenant Leslie (uncredited)
If you want to see where we are…and you missed a few…HERE is a list of the episodes in my index located at the top of my blog.
This show was written by Oliver Crawford, Shimon Wincelberg, and Gene Roddenberry
This was the first episode that was centered around Spock and not Captain Kirk. Spock is in control of the shuttle that is stranded on a planet. The special effects people did a great job with the shuttle taking off into space. You would see this again in Star Wars a decade later.
Spock is in charge of the space shuttle Galileo. Spock and the others aboard the shuttlecraft… crash land on an unexplored planet. With no sensors to find their crewmen, the Enterprise must figure out a way to locate the Galileo before its duty to deliver the medical supplies forces it to leave the crewmen for dead. Spock and company must survive on the planet’s surface, fending off the giant creatures that live there.
As the story plays out, the crew is not enamored of Spock’s logical based decisions. It highlights the personality of Spock and shows us how Spock thinks. I can see why the crew would have problems with Spock. When one crewman is killed, they must take off in a hurry but the crew wants to bury the man first. Spock doesn’t see the logic in putting everyone at risk to do that…but in the end, allows it anyway. I can totally see his side but it seemed rather cold-blooded…or green-blooded in Spock’s case.
Spock’s rationale for wanting to leave a crew member behind to save others was the first instance in the series of his use of the Vulcan axiom regarding the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few or the one. Spock’s ever calm logical manner does grate on the nerves of Dr. McCoy more than usual as well as crewman Don Marshall. DeForest Kelley’s scenes with Nimoy have even more bite than usual, not to mention an almost mutinous Marshall.
At the end of the episode… we are led to believe that Spock’s final action while in charge was an act of emotion rather than logic. For me… it seemed the most logical act of the episode.
From IMDB:
After this episode was filmed, no new shots of the shuttlecraft miniature were taken. All shuttlecraft model shots used in the series were stock footage from this episode, sometimes matted into different backgrounds. The shuttle craft was built by AMT in exchange for them gaining the rights to make the plastic model kit version.
It has been noted that the behavior of some of the personnel, particularly Lt. Boma, was grossly insubordinate to Spock for a quasi-military organization like Starfleet. By contrast, Spock’s act of jettisoning the fuel and igniting it, in hopes of the USS Enterprise detecting, it is perfectly keeping with military procedures and a completely logical decision under the dire circumstances the crew was facing.
The story was partly drawn from Spock’s break-out popularity that had already occurred early on in the show’s run. According to Leonard Nimoy, as a result, one writer simply suggested a story in which Spock was seen commanding a vessel.
To make the creatures look larger than they really were, small spear and shield props were made for Robert ‘Big Buck’ Maffei to fling at the crew. The one that is dropped near the three men is fairly small in size, but in the next shot, it is much larger.
The producers liked Don Marshall’s performance as Boma, and intended to bring the character back. However, by that time, Marshall was already signed with Irwin Allen to co-star in Land of the Giants (1968) (which began filming in 1967, but only premiered a year later).
The black rectangular instrument with the round face on the aft bulkhead of the shuttlecraft is actually a Foxboro controller, a device used in the wastewater industry to control the level of sewage in holding tanks.
The basic premise of “The Galileo Seven” is that a small ship is forced down onto an alien planet inhabited by giant humanoids. Don Marshall, who plays Lt. Boma, would soon star in another show called Land of the Giants (1968) where he plays the co-pilot of a small ship that is forced down onto an alien planet inhabited by giant humanoids.
Summary
A shuttlecraft under Mr. Spock’s command is forced to land on a hostile planet. His emotionless approach to command does not sit well with some crew members, particularly Mr. Boma who challenges Spock at every opportunity. The Enterprise and Captain Kirk meanwhile have only a short time to find the lost shuttlecraft as they must deliver urgent medical supplies to Markus III in only a few days
CAST
William Shatner … Captain James Tiberius ‘Jim’ Kirk
Leonard Nimoy … Mister Spock
Don Marshall … Boma
DeForest Kelley … Doctor Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy
James Doohan … Lieutenant Commander Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott
George Takei … Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu
Nichelle Nichols … Lieutenant Nyota Uhura
John Crawford … Commissioner Ferris
Peter Marko … Gaetano
Phyllis Douglas … Yeoman Mears
Rees Vaughn … Latimer
Grant Woods … Kelowitz
Robert ‘Big Buck’ Maffei … Creature (as Buck Maffei)
David L. Ross … Transporter Chief (as David Ross)
Majel Barrett … Enterprise Computer (voice) (uncredited)
Bill Blackburn … Lieutenant Hadley (uncredited)
Frank da Vinci … Lt. Brent (uncredited)
Eddie Paskey … Lieutenant Leslie (uncredited)
Ron Veto … Crewman (uncredited)
If you want to see where we are…and you missed a few…HERE is a list of the episodes in my index located at the top of my blog.
This show was written by Theodore Sturgeon and Gene Roddenberry
The crew of the Enterprise is worn out. They all need to take some leave and this episode covers that. Several well-known future movies like Westworld, Ghostbusters, IT, and TV show Fantasy Island took their cue from the premise of this episode. Here, we get to really see them relax, converse and work together to figure out this planet’s puzzle…the strong narrative is a mystery again, of sorts, and the audience is along for the ride as the crew seeks to unravel a very bizarre series of events which some have a decidedly amusing flavor to them.
This one is a bit of a light/funny episode though at the same time a bit of a fantasy suspense thriller which is part of what makes the episode fun. The light/funny is not a negative at all. There are a bunch of things just appearing out of nowhere, Like McCoy was seeing a giant White Rabbit and Alice, and then more strange things happen.
Kirk was stressed out from the missions they had been on and wasn’t going to beam down to the planet to relax but Spock tricked him into it. He did beam down reluctantly and strange things started to happen to him.
One thing that did disappoint me about this episode. Emily Banks who plays Yeoman Tonia Barrows was terrific in this role but this is the only episode she was in. The part was written for Yeoman Janice Rand but she had been written out of the series. I will talk about that in the Season 1 review. Fans loved her and wanted her back for the movies.
It’s a playful, fun episode. It’s not a good episode to introduce someone who is new to Star Trek… but great once you know what the original series is all about. If I say too much more I will spoil it for someone if I haven’t already.
From IMDB:
The episode was being rewritten as it was being shot. Cast members recalled Gene Roddenberry sitting under a tree, frantically reworking the script to keep it both under budget and within the realms of believability. As a result the filming went over schedule and took seven days instead of the usual six.
William Blackburn (a professional ice skater in real life), who played the White Rabbit, got the costume from Ice Capades for free. The claustrophobic Blackburn had a really painful time wearing it, especially as costume designer William Ware Theiss had originally sewn the Rabbit head to the suit. After nearly suffocating, Blackburn tore off the head, for which Theiss became very mad at him. Finally, they negotiated and Theiss put the head back with Velcro. Afterwards, Blackburn had no problem with the costume. He also commented that wearing the Gorn head in Star Trek: Arena (1967) was “even worse.”
A chained tiger is brought in to appear in the episode, and never directly interacts with any of the performers. William Shatner had originally hoped to wrestle it, but was persuaded that it would not be a wise decision.
This is the only episode in which the U.S.S. Enterprise is seen orbiting a planet from right to left. The shot was deliberately reversed in post-production because the shape of the Eastern United States and the Caribbean sea could clearly be seen on the globe used as a model for the planet.
The script called for an elephant to appear in the episode. An elephant was indeed “hired” by the production staff and brought to the set, but, due to running over time and other difficulties during shooting, the animal never made it before the cameras, which made associate producer Robert H. Justman (who was not on the set at the time and couldn’t oversee production) truly angry. Later, production staff members often jokingly asked assistant director Gregg Peters, “Say – when do you get to use your elephant?”
The original script featured Yeoman Rand as part of the landing party, but, as the character was written out of the series, she was changed to Yeoman Tonia Barrows. Also, in Theodore Sturgeon’s original script, the Yeoman had a share of close scenes with Kirk. In the rewrites, Gene L. Coon and Gene Roddenberry changed these to feature Doctor McCoy instead and introduced Kirk’s old Academy flame Ruth to the story. (In the Oct 3, 1966 draft, one incidence of “Yeoman Rand” is still present on page 58.)
When Rodriguez and Angela see a WWII air battle, the first plane seen is an American Vought F4U Corsair. It is then attacked by a Japanese Mitsubishi A6M “Zero.” The only time the two planes are seen together is a brief shot following the line “Come on!”
Gene Roddenberry deemed that Theodore Sturgeon’s original script contained too much fantasy and lacked credibility. Gene L. Coon was assigned to re-write it. However,, Coon misinterpreted the task and his draft turned out to be even more of a pure fantasy. Roddenberry then began to heavily re-write the script, but, since the production team had run out of time, Roddenberry had to do so while the episode was being filmed.
The preview of this episode shows Yeoman Barrows being accosted by Don Juan while she was wearing her princess costume. This scene was not used in the final cut.
Actress Emily Banks, who played Yeoman Tonia Barrows in her only appearance on the series, was interviewed by Entertainment Weekly for an all-Star Trek issue in 1994. Banks said that her most vivid memory of the appearance was that she seemed to be running all the time – or as she described it, she told the producers, “You don’t want actors – you want Olympic athletes!” Unused to that much sprinting, Banks said that her legs were stiff and sore for several days after the shooting wrapped.
Summary
The past three months have left the crew of the Enterprise exhausted and in desperate need of a break, but does this explain McCoy’s encounter with a human-sized white rabbit or Kirk crossing paths with the prankster who plagued his days at Starfleet Academy?
CAST
William Shatner … Captain James Tiberius ‘Jim’ Kirk
Leonard Nimoy … Mister Spock
Emily Banks … Yeoman Tonia Barrows
Oliver McGowan … Caretaker
Perry Lopez … Rodriguez
DeForest Kelley … Doctor Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy
George Takei … Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu
Bruce Mars … Finnegan
Barbara Baldavin … Angela
Nichelle Nichols … Lieutenant Nyota Uhura
Marcia Brown … Alice
Sebastian Tom … Warrior
Shirley Bonne … Ruth
Paul Baxley … Black Knight (uncredited)
Bill Blackburn … White Rabbit (uncredited)
John Carr … Guard (uncredited)
Frank da Vinci … Lt. Brent (uncredited)
Jim Gruzalski … Don Juan (uncredited)
Jeannie Malone … Yeoman (uncredited)
Eddie Paskey … Lieutenant Leslie (uncredited)
It all started with a cracked single of the song Eleanor by The Turtles when I was a kid. I was hooked on this band and soon got the greatest hits. They had some nice pop songs in their catalog. If you ever get a chance to see Flo and Eddie…go see them. I saw them on July 20, 1987, with many more bands…though not many original members, Flo and Eddie were there though. They kicked off the concert with Bon Jovi’s Shot Through The Hot…and said…”No no…we don’t play that crap…we play this crap” and proceeded to start playing their songs. I saw them at the local minor league baseball team’s stadium…they played at the end of the game.
This song was written by Gary Bonner and Alan Gordon…the same two who wrote their biggest hit…Happy Together.
The band was formed by Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan. They were saxophone players who did whatever was trendy in order to make a living as musicians. They were also in the choir together in high school.
They played surf-rock mostly at the time. They also played backup for The Coasters, Sonny And Cher, and The Righteous Brothers when they came through. After a while, Howard and Mark gave up the sax and became singers. They signed a deal with White Whale Records as The Crosswind Singers. When British groups took over America, they tried to pass themselves off as British singers and renamed themselves The Turtles.
Like The Byrds, The Turtles recorded a Bob Dylan song for their first single It Ain’t Me Babe and it was a hit. In 1967 they released Happy Together which peaked at #1. She’s Rather Be With Me was the follow-up single. Not a bad song to follow up the massive hit. This song peaked at #1 in Canada, #3 on the Billboard 100, #8 in New Zealand, and #4 in the UK in 1967. The two songs were on their album Happy Together. It peaked at #25 in the Billboard Album Charts…which is peculiar with you think about it…having two singles hit #1 and #3 off of that album but they were more of a singles band.
The Turtles recorded for a small record company named White Whale. They broke up in 1970 and part of the reason was to get away from their manager…who was also their first manager that got the job again.
Volman and Kaylan were very smart. When White Whale’s master recordings were sold at auction in 1974, the duo won the Turtles’ masters, making them the owners of their own recorded work. When the 80s came around and CDs were sold…they made the money and not their old record company. They also hosted some radio shows in the 70s and 80s and recorded soundtrack music for children’s shows like the Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake.
They became known as Flo (Phlorescent Leech) and Eddie. Kaylan and Volman joined Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention as Flo and Eddie because of contractual restrictions of their record company. Kaylan and Volman sang backing vocals on several recordings by T. Rex, including their worldwide 1971 hit “Get it On (Bang A Gong). Later they did the backup vocals on Bruce Springsteen’s Hungry Heart.
If you are in any way interested in watching band documentaries… watch The Turtles doc! It is hilarious. I will include the full doc above the song.
Here is the documentary…watch it if you have time. What they did to their last manager (who was also their first) is classic! Now…I hope if you didn’t read most of this…READ NOW…if you don’t do anything else today…on the video below…their documentary… GO TO 1:12:46 and listen (or just click the link)…it’s very funny and very sad…this happened all of the time. Of course they were gullible…that helped! It is only a couple of minutes and starts with them talking about their 8 managers.
She’d Rather Be With Me
Some girls
Love to run around
Love to handle everything they see
But my girl
Has more fun around
And you know she’d rather be with me
Me oh my (me oh my, I’m a lucky guy)
Lucky guy is what I am
Tell you why, you’ll understand
She don’t fly although she can
Some boys (some boys)
Love to run around
They don’t think about the things they do
But this boy (this boy)
Wants to settle down
And you know he’d rather be with you
Me oh my (my)
Lucky guy is what I am (my)
Tell you why, you’ll understand (my)
She don’t fly although she can (my)
Some girls (some girls)
Love to run around
Love to handle everything they see
But my girl (my girl)
Has more fun around
And you know she’d rather be with
Yeah, she’d rather be with
You know she’d rather be with me
You know she’d rather be with me
You know she’d rather be with me
You know she’d rather be with me
Dave at A Sound Day gave writers a question to write about. If you could safely go back in time and move about for one day, what one concert or live performance would you choose to go to?
Well, that narrows it down to me because there are two cities that come to mind after he asked that. Now…if this was a baseball question I would go to New York in the twenties and see who I think was the best baseball player ever…Babe Ruth. But it’s music so the two cities are Hamburg and Liverpool…the Star Club in Hamburg or the Cavern in Liverpool…and I shouldn’t have to name the band.
I’m going to pick Hamburg…and the reason is The Beatles would play 6-8 hours a night compared to lunchtime sessions at the Cavern so to Germany I go! From everything I’ve read the performances there were off the charts. They played loud sweaty rock and roll there and accumulated way past 1000 hours playing there in a 3-year stretch from 1960 to 1962. It’s not a stretch to say at that time they could have had more hours on a stage than any other rock band.
The Beatles played over 250 nights in the seedy red-light district of Hamburg. If you average 6 hours a show that would be 1500 hours…that is why they could play so well with a wall of screaming in their ears later on. They would get to know the gangsters who would buy them champagne, the barmaids who would sell or give them Preludin (a type of diet pill speed so they could play all night…”prellies”), and the prostitutes who would take them in and befriend them. They also met Little Richard, Billy Preston, and Gene Vincent there.
They slowed down in 1962 and didn’t play as long of sets but at the end they had Ringo. I would want to see them in 1960-61 when Stuart Sutcliffe was on bass and Pete Best was drumming. Other bands from England started to come over but none of them had the impact of the Beatles. They lived off of prellies and beer when they played and would go have an English breakfast when they could afford it. There are pictures of them holding a Preludin metal tube (what they came in) and grinning manically.
They would write a few songs but mostly played covers through this period of learning. They caused all kinds of trouble and there were rumors of John Lennon urinating off of a balcony on nuns…but that has been disproven…no he did urinate off of balconies but left the nuns alone. He once appeared with a real toilet seat around his head on stage after being angered and ripping it off a toilet. George was booted out of the country for being underaged and Paul and Pete were accused of trying to burn down a cinema. Stuart Sutcliffe found his true love there Astrid Kirchherr. He would die in 1962 of a brain hemorrhage at 22.
When they came back from Hamburg in 1960 to Liverpool…people were amazed and at first thought, they were a German band with their all leather clothes. They were a sensation because they played like no one else. Without Hamburg…there would probably be no Beatles. After they got back they started to play the Cavern regularly and the promoters were wary of them because of their reputation but soon knew they would make them a lot of money. They were NOT the grinning moptops that the world came to love. They were rough and tough growing up in Liverpool with further education in Hamburg. Often after shows in Liverpool, they would have to fight because of the rough audiences being jealous of their girlfriends who were fawning over them.
Well, that was long-winded…but Hamburg in 1961… is where I want Dave’s time machine to take me. I might hijack it and make another trip to the Cavern if Dave is not watching. So what is the saying about rock music? Sex, drugs, and Rock and Roll? This probably helped that saying along.
There are some low-fi recordings of them in Hamburg in 1962 with Ringo drumming which shows how stripped down and raw they were.
If you want to see where we are…and you missed a few…HERE is a list of the episodes in my index located at the top of my blog.
This show was written by Paul Schneider and Gene Roddenberry
Before we get to the review and story…this is Grace Lee Whitney’s last episode with Star Trek. There are two stories about why she was let go. I will cover it when I do the First Season review in a few weeks…it’s not good and should not have happened. She would not appear again until the first movie came out in 1979.
Excellent Episode! This episode starts off with an attempted marriage on the Enterprise with Kirk about to lead the ceremony. When everyone was ready… a distress call came and everyone went back to their posts. Romulans are attacking a space post and the Enterprise is going to investigate.
This episode is confined to the Enterprise and this is amazing because an episode just on the Enterprise could easily have been static and dull. But, because the writing was so fantastic and the main characters written and acted so well. Overall it’s very tense and exciting. For all of you die-hard Star Trek fans you will recognize Mark Lenard as the same actor who later played Spock’s father.
The Romulans and Vulcans descend from the same ancestor species…both have the same ears and some of the same traits. The writers lay down a not-so-subtle sub-text involving racial prejudice and bigotry. It’s clever that they do this by involving two alien races (Vulcans and Romulans), instead of those we are so generally used to, black and white, North and South, Semitic/anti-Semitic. It helps one to step outside the box of common stereotypes to question why one race, religion, or nationality is any better or worse than another.
Roddenberry was really well ahead of the curve on this, and he would do it again in future episodes. Rod Serling was doing the same thing through SciFi on the Twilight Zone. It looks like some of this bigotry was possibly inspired by the very vivid fear American and Russian citizens had at the time that either nation might be able to destroy the other with nuclear weapons.
Kirk takes a huge chance (a bluff) in this one…which teaches Spock about a game that he doesn’t know…poker. The acting, writing, and yes effects are all very good.
From IMDB:
Network restrictions at the time forbade the tackling of any contentious subjects such as the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement and the rise of feminism. “Star Trek”, under the guise of science fiction, boldly flouted these rules. This story, for example, openly deals with the subject of racism, as reflected through Lieutenant Stiles’ opposition to Mr Spock.
Budgetary and time constraints prevented the make-up and costuming departments from dressing up each Romulan in Vulcan ears as it was such a lengthy process applying them. So they hit on the idea of giving the lesser Romulans helmets, which were manufactured by Wah Chang. Mr. Chang was responsible for creating many iconic Star Trek hand props.
Mark Lenard plays the Romulan Commander, an apparent enemy of the Enterprise and its crew. However, later in his career, he played the famed role of Spock’s father, Sarek, and also played a Klingon in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), making him the first actor to portray the three major alien races (Vulcan, Romulan, Klingon) in the Star Trek franchise.
When Leonard Nimoy held out for a better contract after the first season, Mark Lenard and Lawrence Montaigne were the two leading candidates to replace him as Spock. Nimoy eventually got a raise from $1250 to $2500 per episode.
Two actors who played Romulans in this episode returned in later episodes as Vulcans: Mark Lenard, the Romulan Commander, played Spock’s father, Sarek, in Star Trek: Journey to Babel (1967) (and several return appearances) and Lawrence Montaigne, Decius, played Spock’s rival, Stonn, in Star Trek: Amok Time (1967).
Final TOS appearance (in airing order) of Yeoman Janice Rand, who will not appear again until Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).
Mark Lenard said, “The Romulan Commander was one of the best roles I ever had on TV”. Comparing the part with that of Sarek, Lenard elaborated, “In many ways, I did enjoy that role [Sarek], but I think the more demanding role and the better acting role was the Romulan Commander”.
Summary
The Enterprise answers a distress call from Federation Outpost #4, a monitoring station on the Federation side of the neutral zone with the Romulan Empire. The outposts were established over a century ago and no one has actually seen a Romulan. The Romulan vessel seems to have some type of high-energy explosive device as well as a cloaking device to make the ship invisible. When it appears that Romulans bear a strong resemblance to Vulcans, Kirk must deal with a rebellious crew member. He must also engage in a dangerous cat-and-mouse game with a very intelligent Romulan commander.
CAST
William Shatner … Captain James Tiberius ‘Jim’ Kirk
Leonard Nimoy … Mister Spock
Mark Lenard … Romulan Commander
Paul Comi … Stiles
Lawrence Montaigne … Decius
DeForest Kelley … Doctor Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy
Grace Lee Whitney … Yeoman Janice Rand
George Takei … Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu
James Doohan … Lieutenant Commander Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott
Nichelle Nichols … Lieutenant Nyota Uhura
Stephen Mines … Tomlinson
Barbara Baldavin … Angela
Garry Walberg … Hansen
John Warburton … The Centurion
John Arndt … Ingenieur Fields (uncredited)
Bill Blackburn … Lieutenant Hadley (uncredited)
Robert Chadwick … Romulan Scanner Operator (uncredited)
Frank da Vinci … Crewman (uncredited)
Walt Davis … Romulan Crewman (uncredited)
Vince Deadrick Sr. … Romulan Crewman (uncredited)
Jeannie Malone … Yeoman (uncredited)
John Hugh McKnight … Crewman (uncredited)
Sean Morgan … Brenner (uncredited)
Eddie Paskey … Lieutenant Leslie (uncredited)
Anthony Larry Paul … Crewman (uncredited)
Ron Veto … Crewman (uncredited)
If you want to see where we are…and you missed a few…HERE is a list of the episodes in my index located at the top of my blog.
This show was written by Barry Trivers and Gene Roddenberry
This episode starts off with Captain Kirk and his friend Dr. Thomas Leighton watching a performance of Macbeth by a Shakespearean acting troupe. The Doctor is sure that the actor that played Macbeth, who goes by Anton Karidian, is really “Kodos the Executioner” who was responsible for 4,000 deaths.
The episode involves the hunt for Kodos, a governor who apparently ordered the execution of half his settlement in order to assure that the rest could survive famine. And, the worst of it is after the executions, help unexpectedly arrived. After all of this is explained…you are not in love with Kodos but you see that his execution orders had a reason. It wasn’t just madness but against what Kirk believed in…exhausting every means of knowledge and know-how and never giving up.
Anton Karidian (Kodos?) has a daughter. The beautiful Barbara Anderson who plays Lenore Karidian goes right after the Captain’s attention and yes she gets it. Yes, Kirk is falling for her but he is also collecting information and digging for information. He makes this very personal after his friend Dr. Thomas Leighton was killed. He keeps it from his crew but Spock wants to know what is going on. Kirk makes it clear that he wants Spock to mind his own business.
Kirk is a double agent in this episode. Yes, he is entranced by Anton Karidian but he is using her for information also. While this is going on, the people who were witnesses to Kodo’s deed, are dying…or more truthfully getting killed. Kirk is one of those witnesses.
This is a solid episode and features some eye-catching set design. Injecting some Shakespeare into a science-fiction setting turns out to be a pretty interesting touch, showing that classics will never go out of style, even centuries later.
A quote from Karidian is interesting…and relevant now when Kirk was examining him to see if he was Kodos. “ I find your use of the word mercy strangely inappropriate, Captain. Here you stand, the perfect symbol of our technical society. Mechanized, electronicized, and not very human. You’ve done away with humanity, the striving of man to achieve greatness through his own resources.”
I think we as a society can relate to that quote in the era of technology we live in.
From IMDB:
Barbara Anderson developed a fever blister/cold sore on her lip during filming. Besides using makeup to partially disguise it, she was often filmed with part of her lower face in shadow.
When Kirk goes to the Leighton dinner party and comes out to meet Lenore, you can hear a very slow jazz version of the series’ theme song. This is the first time it has been played as “source music”. The other times this occurs in the original series is later in the episode when Kirk is speaking to Lenore in Karidian’s cabin, when Areel Shaw enters the bar in Star Trek: Court Martial (1967), and when Kirk, McCoy, and Tonia Barrows run to Sulu’s position in Star Trek: Shore Leave (1966).
This episode contains Star Trek’s first direct reference to eugenics, although there is an oblique reference in Star Trek: What Are Little Girls Made Of? (1966). Spock tells McCoy that Kodos applied his own theories of eugenics when sentencing certain colonists to death, causing McCoy to note that Kodos unfortunately wasn’t the first. Two seasons later, the concept of eugenics resurfaced prominently in Star Trek: Plato’s Stepchildren (1968) when Philana informs Spock that the Platonians are the result of a successful mass eugenics program.
Barbara Anderson (Lenore Karidian) shares the record (with Ricardo Montalban and Joan Collins) for the most costumes worn in a single Trek episode by a guest star (six). She wears a maroon-colored dress for her Lady Macbeth costume, a blue dress with a veil at the party thrown by the Leightons, a fur mini-skirt dress when arriving on the Enterprise, a greenish multicolored mantle on the observation deck, a black and red evening dress when Kirk visits the Karidians in their quarters, and, finally, her yellow and lavender Ophelia costume. It could even be argued that the veil she wears while walking with Kirk just before discovering Tom Leighton’s body could be considered a seventh costume.
In the scene where security guards are searching for Kevin Riley in the corridors, rectangular seams are visible in the floor. This is where the grates visible in Star Trek: Charlie X (1966) and other early episodes were eliminated and filled in with the corridor floor material.
One of the few Original Star Trek episodes in which no-one from the USS Enterprise (even the red-shirts) is killed, although there is an almost successful poisoning.
This is the first of a long line of Star Trek productions which feature scenes, quotes, or references to William Shakespeare. In this case, the title comes from “Hamlet” (Act II, Scene 2). Scenes from Hamlet and Macbeth are acted out, and there is a paraphrase of “Julius Caesar” (Act 1, Scene 2): “Caesar, beware the Ides of March”.
Summary
Captain Kirk is informed by his old friend, Dr. Thomas Leighton, that the head of a Shakespearean acting troupe (known as Anton Karidian) was once known as “Kodos the Executioner”. Having seized power as Governor of Tarsus IV, Kodos had 50% of his colony (4000+ people) killed when the food supply was destroyed by an infestation, rather than have so many starve, not knowing that help was en route. Of the nine witnesses who could potentially identify Karidian as Kodos, only Kirk, Leighton, and a young crewman on the USS Enterprise, Kevin Riley (whose family was killed on Tarsus IV), survive. Kirk dismisses Leighton’s accusations until the latter turns up murdered, and Riley almost dies of poisoning while alone in an engineering sector where no one else is present, which Riley and others view as some sort of punishment although it was really Kirk’s misguided attempt to protect Riley. The other eyewitnesses have all died. Spock tells Bones that on each occasion the acting troupe was in close proximity. When finally challenged directly by Kirk, Karidian dramatically declines to confirm or deny anything but never asks who Kodos was and seems aware, although there is no reason he should be, of the details of what happened on Tarsus IV. Complicating things are Karidian’s beautiful daughter, Lenore, an actress in the troupe. And who’s really behind the murders
CAST
William Shatner … Captain James Tiberius ‘Jim’ Kirk
Leonard Nimoy … Mister Spock
Arnold Moss … Anton Karidian
Barbara Anderson … Lenore Karidian
DeForest Kelley … Doctor Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy
Grace Lee Whitney … Yeoman Janice Rand
Nichelle Nichols … Lieutenant Nyota Uhura
William Sargent … Dr. Thomas Leighton
Natalie Norwick … Martha Leighton
David Somerville … Larry Matson (as David-Troy)
Karl Bruck … King Duncan
Marc Grady Adams … Hamlet (as Marc Adams)
Bruce Hyde … Kevin Riley
Tom Anfinsen … Crewman (uncredited)
John Astin … Capt. John Daley (voice) (uncredited)
Majel Barrett … Enterprise Computer (voice) (uncredited)
Bill Blackburn … Lieutenant Hadley (uncredited)
Frank da Vinci … Crewman (uncredited)
Robert H. Justman … Security Guard (voice) (uncredited)
Jeannie Malone … Yeoman (uncredited)
Eddie Paskey … Lieutenant Leslie (uncredited)
Ron Veto … Security Guard (uncredited)
If you want to see where we are…and you missed a few…HERE is a list of the episodes in my index located at the top of my blog.
This episode was written by Gene Roddenberry
How much do The Talosians want Pike back? How much does his former first officer want to help him? What lengths will Spock go to free Pike from his confinement? The planet that Spock was trying to take the Captain is called Talos IV. Starfleet had given strict orders not to go to that planet and the punishment was the death penalty.
The second part of this wonderful two-parter episode has a great payoff. It’s interesting seeing Captain Kirk on the screen watching his predecessor Captain Pike at the helm of the Enterprise. Regular cast members don’t get that much to do. As we find out, Pike had been taken prisoner by the Talosian people, a species that has mastered the art of illusion. It’s how they continue to survive. And they have a plan in store for Pike, as well as for the lovely Vina (Susan Oliver), the sole survivor of a previous expedition.
We get to see an Orion slave girl…who is described as vicious, animal-like, and irresistible to any man. She is in one of the many illusions Captain Pike has been thrust into. This is the first appearance of an Orion Slave Girl in Star Trek not counting The Cage because it wasn’t aired until the 80s.
I really like The Cage, but this story inserted into that one makes it that much better and more well-rounded. If you want to start watching the original Star Trek…these two are not a bad place to start.
At the end of the episode, you have Spock, whose closing exchange with Kirk is a thoughtful dialog on the topic of emotionalism versus logic. It would set the stage for future episodes, many of which would have to be dealt with on the basis of sound reasoning instead of irrational fear or succumbing to the unknown. Quite a remarkable accomplishment for a show more than 50 years old… the stories growing richer and more vibrant with the passage of time.
From IMDB:
In the script, McCoy and Scott have a scene in which they explain to Kirk how they figured out which computer bank Spock tampered with to lock the ship on course. They took perspiration readings on all banks, and since Spock’s sweat has copper in it, traces of copper were found. This scene isn’t shown.
When Number One and Yeoman J.M. Colt transport to the planet, Vina states that Capt. Pike would be better reproducing with a computer than Number One. Majel Barrett provided the standard Federation computer voice throughout the various Star Trek series.
The Talosian “Keeper” alien was actually played by a woman – Meg Wyllie, as were all Talosians. The voice was dubbed by Malachi Throne, who portrays Commodore Jose Mendez. In order to differentiate the ‘Talosians’ voice from the Commodores, Throne’s voice as the Talosian was slightly sped up.
Spock uses the term “hyperdrive” instead of warp drive. Hyperdrive was the propulsion mechanism for the United Planets Cruiser C-57D featured in Forbidden Planet (1956), a movie which Gene Roddenberry used as a source for many other Star Trek elements.
In the images of the Enterprise of the past, the crew prepares for departure from Talos IV. Pike signals the crew by saying “engage”. This is another characteristic of Captain Pike that Picard borrows in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987), along with referring to the First Officer as “Number One”.
Sean Kenney took over the role of Pike from Jeffrey Hunter. Kenney also appeared as DePaul in TOS Season 1. Because Malachi Throne was cast as Commodore Mendez, it was necessary to re-dub The Keeper’s dialogue by altering the pitch of the actor’s voice. Throne later played Romulan Senator Pardek in Star Trek: The Next Generation: Unification I (1991) and Star Trek: The Next Generation: Unification II (1991).
Summary
Spock’s court-martial board views the video stream from Talos IV of Captain Pike’s imprisonment 13 years earlier and of the Enterprise’s attempts to rescue him. The Talosians, using their powers of mind-reading and illusion, place Pike in worlds from both his memory and his imagination. The one constant is Vina, the beautiful blonde survivor of a crashed Earth ship (the other half of a Talosian plan for a captive Adam and Eve). Number One’s attempts to liberate Pike result in her and Yeoman Colt’s capture (additional breeding stock for the Talosian plan), but when the humans and Talosians learn more of each other, the situation takes a turn neither side expects. As the Enterprise approaches Talos IV once again, Kirk and the court watch the past unfold and learn the real reason for Spock’s mutiny.
CAST
William Shatner … Captain James Tiberius ‘Jim’ Kirk
Leonard Nimoy … Mister Spock
Jeffrey Hunter … Captain Christopher Pike (archive footage)
Susan Oliver … Vina (archive footage)
Malachi Throne … Commodore José Mendez
Majel Barrett … Number One / Enterprise Computer (archive footage) (as M. Leigh Hudec)
Peter Duryea … Lt. José Tyler (archive footage)
John Hoyt … Dr. Phil Boyce (archive footage)
Adam Roarke … C.P.O. Garrison (archive footage)
DeForest Kelley … Doctor Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy
James Doohan … Lieutenant Commander Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott
Nichelle Nichols Nichelle Nichols … Lieutenant Nyota Uhura
Sean Kenney … Christopher Pike
Hagan Beggs … Lt. Hansen
Julie Parrish … Miss Piper
Bill Blackburn … Lieutenant Hadley (uncredited)
Tom Curtis … Jon Daily (uncredited)
Frank da Vinci … Guard (uncredited)
Brett Dunham … Guard (uncredited)
Sandra Lee Gimpel … Third Talosian (archive footage) (uncredited)
James Holt … Starfleet Officer (uncredited)
Clegg Hoyt … Transporter Chief Pitcairn (archive footage) (uncredited)
Anthony Jochim … Third Survivor (archive footage) (uncredited)
Bob Johnson … First Talosian / Transporter Chief Pitcairn (voice) (uncredited)
Jon Lormer … Dr. Theodore Haskins (archive footage) (uncredited)
Tom Lupo … Security Guard (uncredited)
Ed Madden … Enterprise Geologist (archive footage) (uncredited)
Leonard Mudie … Second Survivor (archive footage) (uncredited)
Eddie Paskey … Lieutenant Leslie (uncredited)
Jan Reddin … Enterprise Court Recorder (uncredited)
Serena Sande … Second Talosian (archive footage) (uncredited)
George Sawaya … Chief Humboldt (uncredited)
Georgia Schmidt … First Talosian (archive footage) (uncredited)
Meg Wyllie … The Keeper (archive footage) (uncredited)
I hope you enjoy this Byrds cover by Tom Petty. One of the best B-side songs I can think of.
I posted The Waiting not long ago and talked about the similarities between The Byrds and Tom Petty. This Byrds song fits Tom Petty perfectly but the original song was not sung by McGuinn but by its writer…Gene Clark. Clark wrote this song in the mid-sixties when a girl he was seeing started to bother him. He also co-wrote Eight Miles High.
Although the song was the B side to The Byrd’s song All I Realy Want To Do, it gained a lot of promotion from Columbia Records and a lot of radio air time. It also became a classic rock standard, with dozens of artists giving their versions of the song.
This song was on Tom Petty’s solo album Full Moon Fever in 1989. The original name of the album was Songs From the Garage. It would have been an appropriate name for it. They worked on this album mostly in Heartbreaker Mike Campbell’s garage. This album caused a riff in The Heartbreakers. The other members thought Tom was going to leave the band. He kept reassuring them but they were not sure.
What’s unbelievable about it is, MCA rejected the album because they didn’t hear a single. This album would have 5 singles released from it.
Tom was absolutely stunned and depressed. He went back and added Feel A Whole Lot Better and the song Alright For Now and presented MCA with basically the same album again. There had been a regime change at MCA and this time they loved it. Ah…record companies…sometimes they are the spawn of Satan.
Although the album was released in 1989…Petty recorded it back in 1987 and 1988. MCA caused much of the delay when they rejected it.
Gene Clark of the Byrds: “There was a girlfriend I had known at the time, when we were playing at Ciro’s. It was a weird time in my life because everything was changing so fast and I knew we were becoming popular. This girl was a funny girl, she was kind of a strange little girl and she started bothering me a lot. And I just wrote the song, ‘I’m gonna feel a whole lot better when you’re gone,’ and that’s all it was, but I wrote the whole song within a few minutes.”
Tom Petty:“I didn’t see much of the Heartbreakers during that period, Mike I kept in touch with, of course, because he was working on Full Moon Fever with me. I never thought of leaving. And I kept reassuring them that I wasn’t going to leave. But I think there was some doubt in their mind.”
Feel A Whole Lot Better
The reason why, oh, I can’t say
I had to let you go, baby, and right away
After what you did, I can’t stay on
And I’ll probably feel a whole lot better when you’re gone
Baby, for a long time, you had me believe
That your love was all mine and that’s the way it would be
But I didn’t know that you were putting me on
And I’ll probably feel a whole lot better when you’re gone
Oh, when you’re gone
Now I gotta say that it’s not like before
And I’m not gonna play your games any more
After what you did, I can’t stay on
And I’ll probably feel a whole lot better when you’re gone
Yeah, I’ll probably feel a whole lot better when you’re gone
Oh, when you’re gone
Oh, when you’re gone
Oh, when you’re gone
Usually, I don’t like covers better than the original but with this song I do. John Lennon sounds demented and he pushed his vocals over the edge. Lennon has said he screamed the lyrics more than sang them but it worked. He provided the power to this song with just his vocals. The Beatles didn’t have monitors live…no one else at this time didn’t either so they had to sing loud to be heard. Author Mark Lewisohn called it “arguably the most stunning rock and roll vocal and instrumental performance of all time.”
This is probably close to sounding like they did live in Hamburg and The Cavern. This session took place on February 11, 1963, at EMI Studios in London, which was later renamed Abbey Road Studios. The Beatles did 10 songs that day, nine of which ended up on Please Please Me, their first UK album. Think about that for a minute… in one day they recorded their debut album except for the song Please Please Me which was recorded later.
When The Beatles played the Royal Command Performance with the Queen watching. During the introduction to this song, John Lennon famously said,“For the people in the cheaper seats, clap your hands and the rest of you, if you’d just rattle your jewelry.” He told Brian Epstein that he was going to say “rattle your fu**ing jewelry” and Epstein was on pins and needles worried that John would go through with that…but he didn’t. John wasn’t a fan of playing at these functions.
They actually did two takes of the song and kept the first one. John was sick with a cold and had stripped off his shirt to let himself sweat it out, but he pulled it off. The next day…February 12, 1963 – The Beatles played two shows, one at the Azena Ballroom in Yorkshire and another at the Astoria Ballroom in Lancashire. No rest for the weary.
This was the first song ever written by Bert Burns. He went on to write, Piece of My Heart, Here Comes the Night, Hang on Sloopy, Cry to Me and Everybody Needs Somebody to Love to name just a few. He signed Van Morrison to his first solo deal with Bang Records. Unfortunately, he died at 38 of a heart attack in 1967. Phil Medley did get a co-writing credit on the song.
The song peaked at #2 on the Billboard 100, #5 in Canada, and #1 in New Zealand in 1964. The Beatles version was not done yet. In the film, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in 1986, the song was used and charted again. It peaked at #23 on the Billboard 100 and #16 in Canada.
The Isley Brothers’ version is great and there have been many other charting versions of it.
Norman Smith engineer: “Someone suggested they do ‘Twist and Shout’ with John taking the lead vocal. But by this time all their throats were sore; it was 12 hours since we had started working. John’s, in particular, was almost completely gone so we really had to get it right the first time. The Beatles on the studio floor and us in the control room. John sucked a couple more Zubes (a brand of throat lozenges), had a bit of a gargle with milk and away we went.”
Twist and Shout
Well, shake it up, baby, now Twist and shout Come on, come on, come, come on, baby, now Come on and work it on out Well, work it on out, honey You know you look so good You know you got me goin’ now Just like I knew you would
Well, shake it up, baby, now Twist and shout Come on, come on, come, come on, baby, now Come on and work it on out You know you twist, little girl You know you twist so fine Come on and twist a little closer now And let me know that you’re mine, woo
Ah, ah, ah, ah, wow Baby, now Twist and shout Come on, come on, come, come on, baby, now Come on and work it on out You know you twist, little girl You know you twist so fine Come on and twist a little closer now And let me know that you’re mine Well, shake it, shake it, shake it, baby, now Well, shake it, shake it, shake it, baby, now Well, shake it, shake it, shake it, baby, now Ah, ah, ah, ah
If you want to see where we are…and you missed a few…HERE is a list of the episodes in my index located at the top of my blog.
This show was written by Gene Roddenberry
My star rating system goes to 5…but this one…I would give a 12 if I could…that includes Part 1 and Part 2. I point this episode out to people who have never seen the original series before. This two-parter would be a great place to start. It gives you some history of the crew, especially Spock and Captain Pike from the unseen pilot at the time.
Spock charged with mutiny and court marshal? Has the world gone mad? This is part one of a two-parter. They used the unseen pilot (The Cage) to make this one. It takes place 13 years after the episode The Cage that had Captain Pike.
You don’t know how Spock will not be in trouble for all the chaos he has caused. When Spock turns himself into Bones to be arrested…the shock of all the crew around them is priceless. When Kirk tries to pry the Enterprise from Spock’s control he fails. Spock has thought this out down to every single detail.
I have to give Roddenberry a lot of credit for writing this one. He took the pilot and developed this fantastic story around it and got to use the pilot’s footage that the network rejected. It could have been easily a patch job all the way around but it’s a great episode. Even some of the plot holes were explained. While watching the video screen of detailed past events, Kirk remarked that the Enterprise didn’t keep that good of video records but it was explained.
We learn that Vulcans are fiercely loyal, and seeing that Spock served under Captain Pike for over 11 years it would make sense that he still feels a sense of loyalty to his old Captain. Even though Pike rejects Spock’s plan with a series of beeps (Pike cannot talk) Spock still takes Pike against his will with good intentions. We also learn that Vulcans cannot lie, but it certainly appears that Spock did indeed lie in this episode, which seems impossible until Bones acknowledges that Spock is only half-human.
I remember first watching this episode in the 1980s. I totally bought the plot and still do. You are thinking, why is Spock risking everything, his career, and life, against his old Captain’s wishes? Kirk trusts Spock and is shocked when he finds out Spock has taken over the ship. You can see the hurt and confusion in the character. Good acting all the way around. Part II is just as good and has the payoff.
From IMDB
Although scenes from Star Trek: The Cage (1966) feature Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike, he was unavailable and unaffordable for the framing story into which the scenes were to be inserted. Sean Kenney, an actor who resembled Hunter, was used instead. He plays the mute, crippled Captain Pike, now wheelchair-bound after an accident.
According to James Doohan, Gene Roddenberry originally wanted to sell the failed pilot as a theatrical film. However, it needed to be expanded with additional material to reach the feature length. Roddenberry planned to film the crash of the Columbia on Talos IV, because it didn’t require Jeffrey Hunter, who was neither available nor affordable to reprise his role as Captain Pike. However, plans for the feature release were soon abandoned.
The “frame” story of Captain Pike’s injury and abduction to Talos IV was necessitated because the producers’ inability to use the original pilot Star Trek: The Cage (1966) in its unedited form. Normally, series producers count on being able to use the pilot as an episode of the season, despite possible minor changes from the regular series, such as differences in uniform styles, terminology, and props; the second pilot, Star Trek: Where No Man Has Gone Before (1966), was used despite such discrepancies. But the differences between the series and the original pilot were too stark to be used unaltered – without the elaborate “frame” placing it 13 years in the past.
This episode was the first Star Trek material to be officially released by Paramount on any home video format in the United States, first in 1980 on VHS and Betamax, followed by a RCA SelectaVision CED videodisc release in 1981, and a US Laserdisc release in 1984.
The novel “Burning Dreams” establishes that the subspace message summoning Enterprise to Starbase 11 was not a fabrication by Spock, but instead an illusion by the Talosians making Spock think he actually did receive a message. The Talosians then spoke telepathically to Spock, making him aware of Pike’s condition and asking him to bring Pike to Talos IV. The novel also establishes that at the end of the teaser, when Spock tells Pike, “I have no choice,” their conversation continued with Spock telling Pike that the Talosians were aware of his condition and wanted to give him a chance for a better life than what he had and that Spock actually asked Pike for permission to try to help him.
Jeffrey Hunter accepted the lead role of Captain Christopher Pike in “The Cage”, the first pilot episode of Star Trek, but declined to film a second Star Trek pilot, requested by NBC in 1965, deciding to concentrate on films. Footage from the original pilot was subsequently adapted into a two-part episode called “The Menagerie” and screened in 1966. It wasn’t until 1988 that it was screened intact as a filler episode in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) due to a writers’ strike.
There have been many reasons given for Jeffrey Hunter not continuing as the captain. The one that rings most true is from Shatner’s book, where he relates that Hunter’s wife was a constant irritant to the production staff, with never-ending demands for how Hunter was to be handled and treated. Other books say that his wife came to a screening pitch for the pilot and declared that he wasn’t interested because he “was a movie star”. It seems likely the second story is a cover for the first and the first is the closest to the truth. Roddenberry decided that he wanted to be rid of Hunter, his wife, and their demands, and so never actually offered him a contract to continue.
It seems the nation of Cuba still exists in the 23rd century. During the court-martial scene, if you look carefully (to the right of where Captain Kirk is seated), you can see a flag stand in the back of the room. The flag hanging on it has the blue stripes and red triangle, which are part of the Cuban flag.
Summary
The Enterprise is summoned to Starbase 11 only to learn that no one there sent a message to them. The base is home to Fleet captain Christopher Pike, Kirk’s predecessor as Captain of the Enterprise. Unfortunately, Pike has recently had a serious accident, rendering him unable to speak and confining him to an automated chair. The base Commander, Commodore Mendez, begins to suspect Mr. Spock but Kirk defends his friend. That is until Spock takes command of the Enterprise and heads to Talos IV, a planet for which all Federation personnel are forbidden to visit under the sentence of death. Kirk and Mendez catch up with the Enterprise in a space shuttle at which time Mr. Spock is arrested. At his trial, he pleads guilty and offers mitigating circumstances in the form of detailed video logs recounting the time the Enterprise visited Talos IV 13 years before with Pike in command and Spock as its science officer.
CAST
William Shatner … Captain James Tiberius ‘Jim’ Kirk
Leonard Nimoy … Mister Spock
Jeffrey Hunter … Captain Christopher Pike (archive footage)
Susan Oliver … Vina (archive footage)
Malachi Throne … Commodore José Mendez
Majel Barrett … Number One / Enterprise Computer (archive footage) (as M. Leigh Hudec)
Peter Duryea … Lt. José Tyler (archive footage)
John Hoyt … Dr. Phil Boyce (archive footage)
Adam Roarke … C.P.O. Garrison (archive footage)
DeForest Kelley … Doctor Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy
James Doohan … Lieutenant Commander Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott
Nichelle Nichols Nichelle Nichols … Lieutenant Nyota Uhura
Sean Kenney … Christopher Pike
Hagan Beggs … Lt. Hansen
Julie Parrish … Miss Piper
Bill Blackburn … Lieutenant Hadley (uncredited)
Tom Curtis … Jon Daily (uncredited)
Frank da Vinci … Guard (uncredited)
Brett Dunham … Guard (uncredited)
Sandra Lee Gimpel … Third Talosian (archive footage) (uncredited)
James Holt … Starfleet Officer (uncredited)
Clegg Hoyt … Transporter Chief Pitcairn (archive footage) (uncredited)
Anthony Jochim … Third Survivor (archive footage) (uncredited)
Bob Johnson … First Talosian / Transporter Chief Pitcairn (voice) (uncredited)
Jon Lormer … Dr. Theodore Haskins (archive footage) (uncredited)
Tom Lupo … Security Guard (uncredited)
Ed Madden … Enterprise Geologist (archive footage) (uncredited)
Leonard Mudie … Second Survivor (archive footage) (uncredited)
Eddie Paskey … Lieutenant Leslie (uncredited)
Jan Reddin … Enterprise Court Recorder (uncredited)
Serena Sande … Second Talosian (archive footage) (uncredited)
George Sawaya … Chief Humboldt (uncredited)
Georgia Schmidt … First Talosian (archive footage) (uncredited)
Meg Wyllie … The Keeper (archive footage) (uncredited)
If you want to see where we are…and you missed a few…HERE is a list of the episodes in my index located at the top of my blog.
This episode was written by Jerry Sohl and Gene Roddenberry
This was a really good episode. It’s a very dramatic and suspenseful episode. Kirk is seen as a commander worthy of the title as this episode shows his skills quite well. The Enterprise wanders into a part of space where they are warned to turn back and proceed no further…but that is not part of the 5-year mission.
A mysterious alien attacker claims to be able to destroy the ship with no risk of anything stopping him, and therefore grants the crew ten minutes…but they didn’t count on Captain Kirk pulling victory out of defeat. I love the look of the alien as his image gets transmitted to the Enterprise… a very handsome young man.
Kirk has a lot of boldness in this episode. He is risking the ship on a bluff but he didn’t have many options at that point. I have to say, the most disturbing thing to me was the episode’s final reveal of Balok. His appearance and the ship’s interior design, mixed with the incongruous voice really had an uncomforting effect. The episode offers a good look at the political climate of the Cold War.
The ending of this episode will throw you. You will not see it coming. I watched this one for the first time in years a few weeks ago…and yes I completely forgot about the ending. Great episode.
From IMDB
Although the script instructed Leonard Nimoy to emote a fearful reaction upon his first sight of Big Balok, director Joseph Sargent suggested to Nimoy that he ignore what the script called for and instead simply react with the single word “Fascinating.” The suggestion of this response helped refine the Spock character and provide him with a now-legendary catchphrase.
McCoy says “What am I, a doctor or a moon shuttle conductor?” which can be considered the first of the “doctor not a” quotes. In later days, the quote would have been phrased “I’m a doctor, not a moon shuttle conductor!”
James Doohan’s wartime injury to his right hand (incurred at Normandy on D-Day) is briefly visible in the conference room scene when he passes a coffee thermos. Generally this was carefully hidden off-camera, but it can also be seen when he’s holding a phaser in Star Trek: Catspaw (1967), as he carries a large bundle of tribbles in Star Trek: The Trouble with Tribbles (1967), as he reverses the probe polarity in Star Trek: That Which Survives (1969) and very briefly in freeze-frame when he’s reaching into the box to restrain the evil dog in Star Trek: The Enemy Within (1966).
This episode was originally scheduled to air much earlier than it did, but the large amount of visual effects took several months to complete. The producers had to delay the planned airdate twice, before eventually broadcasting it as the tenth episode of the season.
Both in terms of its order on the production schedule, and its order of televised broadcast, this episode marks the very first time that the Enterprise fires its phasers. The actual burst that the ship fires at the warning buoy is unique to this episode.
Summary
In a section of unexplored space, the Enterprise comes across a marker of sorts that will not let it pass. They destroy the marker and move on but soon find themselves in conflict with an unknown alien who accuses them of trespassing and tells them they have only 10 minutes to live. Kirk decides it’s time to play a little poker and literally bluff his way out of the situation by telling the alien that the Enterprise has a device on board that will destroy the alien as well as the Enterprise. The bluff works but the alien turns out to be something quite unexpected.
CAST
William Shatner … Captain James Tiberius ‘Jim’ Kirk Leonard Nimoy … Mister Spock Anthony D. Call … Dave Bailey (as Anthony Call) Clint Howard … Balok DeForest Kelley … Doctor Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy Grace Lee Whitney … Yeoman Janice Rand George Takei … Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu James Doohan … Lieutenant Commander Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott Nichelle Nichols … Lieutenant Nyota Uhura Majel Barrett … Nurse Christine Chapel (voice) (uncredited) Bill Blackburn … Lieutenant Hadley (uncredited) Ted Cassidy … Balok’s Puppet (voice) (uncredited) Frank da Vinci … Crewman (uncredited) Walker Edmiston … Balok (voice) (uncredited) Jeannie Malone … Yeoman (uncredited) Sean Morgan … Crewman (uncredited) Eddie Paskey … Lieutenant Leslie (uncredited) Eddie Smith … Crewman (uncredited) Ron Veto … Crewman (uncredited)
If you want to see where we are…and you missed a few…HERE is a list of the episodes in my index located at the top of my blog.
This show was written by Shimon Wincelberg and Gene Roddenberry
This episode is excellent. Morgan Woodward played Dr. Simon van Gelder and did a superb job. He stated that the part of Van Gelder was perhaps the most physically and emotionally exhausting role he played…and it affected him for weeks. James Gregory as Dr. Tristan Adams turned in a nice performance as the sadistic doctor that has been corrupted by his power over the patients. James Gregory had a long successful career. He played on Barney Miller and many other shows.
Marianna Hill as Helen Noel did a great job as well but I felt she was underutilized in the row. She played a psychologist who knew Kirk in the past and helps save him in this episode. Her character is independent, strong, and viral. She holds her own throughout the episode and displays a strong female, not usually common, for 1960s television.
This episode also shows Spock doing the first mind meld in the series with a distraught Dr. Simon van Gelder. Provocative, intriguing, and intelligent, with some good tension with some great acting, makes this one a must. This episode is a pure human drama that explores the consequences of not only experimentation on humans but also of the need for past experiences to define us.
From IMDB
In several interviews, Morgan Woodward noted that his work on the episode greatly affected him on both a personal and professional level. Woodward felt the part of Van Gelder was perhaps the most physically and emotionally exhausting role he played. He also stated his experience in playing the part resulted in his being in a largely anti-social state of mind for a few weeks following. However, Woodward, who would later play Captain Tracey in Star Trek: The Omega Glory (1968), credits his work on Star Trek in helping him to finally break away from his being typecast in Western roles.
James Doohan and George Takei do not appear in this episode. Scotty appeared in the original script, operating the transporter in the first scene, when Van Gelder is beamed aboard. His appearance was nixed by Robert H. Justman, who saw this as a way of saving costs by eliminating Doohan, who would have been paid $890 for the episode, and replacing him with a random performer (Anthony Larry Paul, playing Lieutenant Berkeley), hired for a much lower salary.
A shipping label produced for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993) shows that a (now elderly) Dr. Van Gelder is still in charge of the Tantalus Penal Colony in the 2370s. TBF More likely to be the son or even grandson of the original Dr. Van Gelder given he would have to be at least 153 years old by the time of DS9.
This episode marks the first appearance of the Vulcan mind meld. The final shooting draft of this script had Spock placing his hands on Van Gelder’s abdomen while performing the mind meld. According to The Making of Star Trek, the mind meld was developed as an alternative to the scripts use of hypnosis to stabilize Van Gelder. They did not want to inaccurately depict hypnosis as a medical technique. Nor did they want to shoehorn into the script a pretext that Spock was qualified to act as a hypnotist in a medical capacity. Lastly, they did not want to risk accidentally hypnotizing viewers at home.
During filming of this episode, William Shatner was pulled away from the sound stage and rushed to a recording studio where, in 2 takes, he recorded the famous “Where No Man Has Gone Before” monologue, which had been re-written several times by different writers (mostly John D.F. Black). He read the first take flawlessly, but associate producer Robert H. Justman felt it should have a subtle echo, so he had the sound engineer create it for the second take. Since most of the effects sequences of the Enterprise were late and not yet been completed for the series debut, the opening credits were hurriedly assembled from existing shots from Star Trek: The Cage (1966) and Star Trek: Where No Man Has Gone Before (1966).
Summary
After a psychologically disturbed patient from the Tantalus penal colony, Dr. Simon Van Gelder manages to escape to the Enterprise, Dr. McCoy begins to suspect that something is amiss on the colony. Captain Kirk and Dr. Helen Noel beam down to the planet to investigate.
CAST
William Shatner … Captain James Tiberius ‘Jim’ Kirk Leonard Nimoy … Mister Spock James Gregory … Dr. Tristan Adams DeForest Kelley … Doctor Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy Morgan Woodward … Dr. Simon van Gelder Marianna Hill … Helen Noel Nichelle Nichols … Lieutenant Nyota Uhura Susanne Wasson … Lethe John Arndt … First Crewman Ed McCready … Inmate Eli Behar … Therapist Frank da Vinci … Lt. Brent (uncredited) Walt Davis … Tantalus (uncredited) Louie Elias … Inmate Guard (uncredited) Ron Kinwald … Tantalus Inmate (uncredited) John Hugh McKnight John Hugh McKnight … Inmate Guard (uncredited) Eddie Paskey … Lieutenant Leslie (uncredited) Anthony Larry Paul … Crewman (uncredited)
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