Random Star Trek discussion

From a costume creating perspective the design is fairly simple and probably patterned. I am assuming there have been designs saved in computers for a long time. Why create a new designe when you could simply just use the old one and save the work? Given modern machines they might even have it designed so a machine can spit it out.

I tried to get a platypus dick tattoo, but I wasn't precise enough with my syntax, and now I can only date zoologists.

Speaking of reused uniforms, T'Pol's brown catsuit was used from the same material as the one Adult Molly wore in "Time's Orphan". It's easy to miss since Molly spends most of the episode crouching and bent over but the pattern is unmistakable.

Hm ... what are the most iconic scenes in Star Trek?

Turns out the guy who played Tom Paris works cheap.

As does Kirk's love interest from the whale movie.

So it's Cameo but not?

Probably a better deal than a generic convention meet and greet that lasts a few seconds.

Damn... I think I'm even more in love with Emily Coutts

I love Detmer.

I've never understood the appeal of services like Cameo. Don't get me wrong, I'd consider it as a gift for someone else if they were mentally challenged, senile, or terminally ill, but it feels to me like a weirder sadder form of prostitution.

This deserves to be here

What is the hand gesture for reading poetry?

"Unnatural Selection" is on H&I.

Hey, whatever happened to styrolite?

Anyone remember styrolite?
It was Trek's answer to carbonite, but it was clear.
Lotta times on Voyager styrolite would've been handy.

I mean, the real production answer is actors didn't like being molded in a clear shell, and the effects guys probably didn't like making the things, but...story wise...where did it go?
With today's CGI, they could totally bring styrolite back.
It could gloop on like the jelly from Galaxy Quest.

"The Dauphin" is on H&I.

Yep, TNG is special edition, the shapeshifter morphs have been re-done as smooth morphs instead of jittery painted animation.

There's a Kryptionian memory crystal from Superman '78 on Picard's desk.

Yeah, H&I (and BBC America?) runs the remastered TNG. Many of the effects shots like that are much improved, but sometimes the CGI Enterprise doesn't look so good.

Never noticed that before.

Well....the new H&I schedule sucks cheesey horse cock.

Walker Texas Ranger runs from 6 to 9.

Now TOS is gone, and TNG is the first one followed by DS9, VOY, ENT, and then TOS is supposed to come on (bad enough it's so late), and it almost does come on, they play the transporter room animation buffer thingy, but then Law & Order SVU snaps on instead, which is probably the local affiliate cutting in.

Fuck you, Walker.
Catering to the fucking MAGA crowd.
Thanks a lot, H&I.

Well, I've seen TOS so much, I've pretty much almost got it memorized, and I've got 'em on DVD, so I'm never gonna be aching in starvation for TOS.
It's just the principle of the thing, dammit.
"All Star Trek" means all Star Trek.
Godammit.

After many TNG rewatches, one of the most amusing things is when you can tell they ran out of money and couldn't afford to give dialogue to any more actors, even when the result is sort of ridiculous. Like this exchange from "Phantasms":

Picard: Ensign Gates, set course for Starbase 219, Warp 6. Engage.
Ensign Gates: (silently hits some buttons)
Ship: (doesn't go anywhere)
Picard: Engage.
Ensign Gates: (silently hits some buttons)
Picard: Bridge to Engineering. Mister La Forge, why isn't my ship moving?​

Apparently it’s a thing with being an extra. If you don’t get any speaking roles you can continue being an extra. I guess it’s for people who don’t want to pursue an acting career, but want to be extras in movies and television. If you’re given dialogue, you might not get to be an extra anymore. I saw this at TBBS, but I don’t remember where.

Sounds like some stupid SAG rule. On one hand I like unions because they protect workers, on the other hand when they get to big they tend to ruin things for everyone. There is always GA.

That makes sense, since Memory Alpha does list a bunch of times when Gates is heard saying "aye, sir" off camera and it says her voice was provided by an unnamed actress.

I wonder why they chose to put somebody who wanted to remain an extra at Conn for those scenes and not somebody who could say a few lines. They seemed conscious of the weirdness (in that scene, for instance, the director set it up so that Picard was over Gates' shoulder and could see that she was trying to go to warp). Maybe that's where the money comes in -- there was only enough budget for N.D. extras?

She’s attractive, she’s black, the “aye sir”could have been some intern or someone that they didn’t have to credit or pay, she had a decent smile, budget constraints, Gene liked her, they wanted to maintain continuity, all of the above, some of the above.

That was something Disco did very right... hired a permanent set of background crew, even for non speaking roles.

the short answer here though (based on my own extra experiences of the time) is that yeah, your pay went up substantially for even a non credit speaking role. Base pay (non ACTRA/SAG) was about 15/hr x 6 in '88 and time and a half after that for the next 6. Speaking bits would start at over $400 for the day.

It drove me nuts that the Voyager producers never had the foresight to do that. I remember some seventh season episode where a cute young ensign on the night shift is flirting with Harry, and it took me half a second to be confused and annoyed. Like was Chakotay letting tweens join the Maquis?

My understanding is that union or non-union if you have a speaking part, you get paid more $. On some shoots, if you're non-union you cannot have a speaking part. Period, paragraph. If you're somebody who doesn't know if they've got what it takes to be a professional actor, and you get a day job paying you $100 (or so), it's not really worth the extra money to join SAG or one of the other unions. I also think that you might have to have X number of parts as an extra before you can join the union, but I could be wrong about this.

Another one of the things that BSG largely managed to do well.

It is fun to play "count how many different crew members Voyager has" over the seven seasons, but also was largely unavoidable. They were filming pretty much full time for seven years, it would need the extras to be dedicated to Trek for that entire time period.

would it though?

I mean, you'll never need all of them at once or for every episode. But you do want to see one of the same two or three people operating the transporter, or a few regular faces in main engineering to create continuity. Recurring work for a BG actor is pretty much a dream come true as it has the potential to become a recurring bit part.