Star Trek trivia question I would not have known!
 

As a person who grew up watching the original Star Trek series and who has occasionally watched the episodes through the 40 years since, I thought I had seen all of the original episodes.

One of our local independent TV stations shows original episodes at 8pm on Saturday nights. While waiting for my wife to finish getting dressed to go out for dinner, I decided to see what episode was on. To my surprise, it was one that I didn't recall ever seeing before. It was "Assignment Earth".

OK, it was pretty well done for 40 years ago, but then the real surprise came. A character appeared on the show, a young woman playing a character named Roberta Lincoln. A closer look revealed her to be.......Teri Garr! :sigh:

She would have been about 23 or 24 at the time and was easily recognizeable. Of course, the voice alone would have told you it was her.

If I had been on the "Millionaire" show and the question was "Was Teri Garr ever in an episode of Star Trek", I would have lost!

It was fun to see her there. An internet search also revealed that she was in an episode of "Batman" in 1967.

Who knew?

Fun episode.
 

They were testing the waters for a new series with this one. Too bad they didn't pick it up. It would have been good fun.

Yes, when I researched the episode, I saw that. That would have been an interesting series.

One has to wonder what effect it would have had on Teri Garr's career?

I have a customer who just loves Teri Garr. I don't think I noticed her until she was in Young Frankenstein.

It was just very interesting to see a Star Trek episode that I had not seen before!

I always liked the guy who played Terri's boss/the "heavy" in that episode, too. One of the few "Treks" where Shatner was/allowed himself to be upstaged, I thought.

That's SEVENTEEN THOUSAND posts, Sandy...holy moly Batman!

Just caught that episide last night! The guy who played Garr's boss, Gary Seven, was Robert Lansing.

I kinda remembered seeing this episode MANY years ago, only because Lansing's character had a cat he carried around, "Isis". The only specific I had recalled was that the cat turned into a woman - which it did right at the end.

Terri Garr's Book is pretty good. I is her biography and deals with her struggle with MS. I think the title is "There's Always a Speed bump" . or something along that line.

Terri Garr
 

You discovered her late. 1964, I was 11 - she was in about five Elvis movies and a regular on the Sonny and Cher show. Find Terri in Pajama Party:

Teri Garr was quite the cutey in her younger days. I had a crush on her.

Ditto. Serious ditto.
Plus a good comic actress.

Martin Mull had a line about her, I think it went "most guys hold a special place for her... usually right up front".

Terri reminds me of a girl I dated in high school. Still have dreams about her...

:music:

Since the first time I saw her, she has been a favorite. :yes:

I loved her in "Young Frankenstein".

Gene Wilder: "My, what knockers!"

Love that part in the movie.:naughty:

Teri always reminded me of your best friend's WAY TOO HOT sister...The one you wanted SO badly, but she was kinda off limits 'cause she was yr best bud's sister 'n' all...

Teri was always adorable in the many roles she played. But all you lust monkeys should find her particularly delectable in "One From The Heart." A little seen movie (and financial disaster for directer Coppola) with a great cast and excellent soundtrack.

Almost 40 years old!
 

Speaking of the original Star Trek episodes, as mentioned before, my local CW station shows one every Saturday at 8:00 pm.

I was watching this week and even my wife (as she walked by) agreed that the quality of the picture was fantastic!

I recently went to HD service from TimeWarner and the feed from the HD DVR to the Phillips Plasma is HDMI. I am amazed at how good this picture looks for a show that was filmed in 1969 or earlier.

This week's episode was Requiem for Methuselah, which I had seen before, but I was mesmerized by the quality of the picture!

That's because those are the original ST episodes digitally remastered with new, digitally generated Enterprise shots and matte paintings replacing the original "moving model" shots. If you really want to be blown away, keep an eye out for the episode THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE. They really went all-out in that one.
Oh, and all the remasters also got the original mono soundtrack pumped to Dolby 5.1 stereo. Paramount decided to do this (remaster) in 2006 as a 40th anniversary celebration of the first run.

Cool!
I've always been a Star Trek fan. That show was way ahead of its time. "City On The Edge Of Forever" by Harlan Ellison is probably my favorite of them all. Joan Collins was hot in that episode. Great story, too!

I saw a couple of days ago that Mr. Zulu married a younger guy....

I LOVE all the Treks, but I must admit that looking at the props in the original series, & comparison to one of the later series, some of the original show's props look SO cheesy & $1.98-ish...But we sure thought they were Hot Stuff way back when...

I must have read a different rule book than you.

The only thing mine said was "Not in her house!"

:D

She really doesn't look that good with no clothes on.

Betcha Sulu would agree.

Steve

....and Shatner was the only living Trek cast member not invited to the wedding.

I am usually not one for messing with a legacy and I love the old Trek, warts and all. But I must admit these remasterings look pretty good for the most part.

I agree, but there is an issue about them that irks the everloving piss out of me: They aren't the "as originally aired, uncut" versions. They clip some pieces of dialog out - usually (but not exclusively) part of the little "funnies" at the end. Instead of the original 44 minute running time, these STR episodes are more like 41 to 42 minutes so the local carriers can cram extra commercials in.:thumbsdn:

BTW, speaking of uncut, did anyone catch the ST Special edition run that SciFi Channel did a few yrs back? I still have all of them on VHS.

True enough. Read somewhere a while back about how NBC and Paramount kept slashing the budget for the show. This includes sets, props, special effects and writers for scripts - which were certainly best in the earlier episodes of the show (though even the final season had a gem or two). Ever notice how most of the final season's episodes were on board the ship? That's because those sets were already bought and paid for.

They moved it finally at some point to 10:00 PM Saturday night. Kind of a death blow to what was intended to be a family show.

A great case of the network having no idea what they really had.

I think a number of these episodes are available for download now from Apple's ITunes site, including Doomsday Machine.

Trying to get the future "right"
 

Remembering that these episodes were shot in 68 or 69, it was probably pretty hard to look so far into "the future".

The computers certainly look cheesy now, almost 40 years later. :no:

But some things they had right. In the episode I saw Saturday Night, Requiem for Methuselah, there was a large flat viewing screen, not very unlike the Plasma TV that I was watching it on!

I love the original series. Years & YEARS ago I bought almost every episode on VHS and still have them. I also have every season of TNG on DVD. Kirk and Picard are the best. All other spin off's do not interest me. It would be real funny If I said the other spinoff's were to bizarre.....
c-ya
ToddG

I'm so glad that George Lucas didn't get his hands in the remastering... Oh the humanity!

Been catching those remastered reruns on the weekends as well. The updates are tastefully understated and stay true to the spirit of the originals.

During all of the reruns of the 1970s, I managed to miss "Mirror Mirror", which I finally saw around 1989. Just a kick-ass story.

Hard to believe a thread on Trek (okay, and Teri Garr) could generate so much interest!

I hear ya Todd. I'm another hopeless geek that has the entire DVD set of TNG. The wife and I sit down and watch it fairly regularly. She is a converted fan now too.

Assignment Earth was always one of my favorites, I never knew they were thinking of making an entire series based upon it, I wish they had, it would have been good. And I had hoped they would explain about that cat that turned into a girl but they never did.

You now can watch all the Star Trek you want for free on cbs.com, I was happy to find it online, because as much as I like Star Trek (the originals), I could never bring myself to buy the full seasons on DVD because of the high price. With all the tv available on the internet for free (cbs also has the twilight zone, perry mason, hawaii-5-0, nbc has some as well, and something called hulu.com is also full of old tv shows: bewitched, rockford, hitchcock, buck rogers, lost in space,...) I wonder if the change to digital isn't just going to be the end of over-the-air tv. Already (except for 1 uhf channel I like, 56) all of the tv I watch is either from DVDs or over the internet. I'm still undecided as whether to even bother getting one of those converter boxes.

Star Trek, like Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Art Deco, Worlds Fair 1964, Shea Stadium, Bauhaus, etc, was their vision of the future at that time. The result is that all these shows or art forms, now look like the past even though they were predicting stuff that has yet to come. Ironically, the future becomes the past before it happens. Its funny when you think the Trek looks "dated" yet it has not happened yet.:scratch2:

And yea, I noticed that widescreen tv for the first time myself. Add it to cell phones, stealth technology, desktop computers, cds and blackberries to things that Star Trek predicted or inspired in pop culture.

Now, what would be the best version of TOS to own for home viewing?

If you have a player, season 1 is available on HD DVD. I believe its the only version of the remastered shows available. Absolutely fantastic looking.
Jack
EDIT: The first season is combo discs, so it will play on any player. The remastered second season is coming out soon on DVD.

Those people are called 'geezers'. But that's ok, because you're in good company. I've probably seen all the episodes. I wish I could stumble across an episode that I haven't seen.

What was slick about the episode you mentioned is that it related the show to the audience of the 60's.

Briefly on the subject of Terri Garr for a moment: Did anyone ever see that utterly bizarre film HEAD? With The Monkees? Terri has a small part in that one.

Anyway, I forgot to mention THIS. Pretty much anything you might want to know about Star Trek straight from the "horse's mouth" as it were (Paramount).

And if anyone here thinks they are ST geeks, you guys (gals?) have NOTHING on the folks who set up these websites!

Ex Astris Scientia

Daystrom Institute Technical Library

Memory Alpha (This one is actually a Wiki-powered ST site).

You know, there are probably more similar sites out there, but I haven't found them; for that matter, I haven't looked for them. As much a fan of the ST universe as I am, I'm not a Spock-eared, home-made-uniform-wearing, spend-all-my-money-on-anything-even-remotely-linked-to-Star Trek obsessive fan.

Star Trek New Voyages, anyone?
 

I swear I'm not trying to one-up ya, man. But check these guys out:

http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/

These guys built replica TOS sets and costumes, wrote their own stories, shot them, and added spectacular special effects. On top of that, the stories are really, really great. In fact I think the episode "In Harm's Way" would fit at the top of the TOS heap, as it weaves in and out of three TOS episodes. Best of all, you can download them all for free; a copyright arrangement allows them to use all the original trademark stuff as long as they don't profit from it. Last I checked you could get the Windows media version, or an iso image to burn to a DVD to play on your TV.

Here's more from an article in Wired magazine: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.12/startrek.html

If you're a real Trek fan, give them a try. I think you may be pleasantly surpised.

And most of these guys still live in their mom's basement, and have not been on a dat with a real woman in years... :D