The sound department tells us they are having considerable difficulty with footsteps on the bridge and throughout our vessel. Is it possible to rubber-sole or otherwise deaden the sound coming from the boots our people wear?
Whenever the camera angle did not reveal their feet, the sound men wanted Captain Kirk and Mister Spock to wear rubber booties over the real booties, in the interest of quiet.
McEveety wrapped production at 6:20 p.m., one day over. Robert Justman’s production notes read: “One day over schedule -- children.”
Vincent McEveety was pleased by the work. He said, “I think, if we have one obligation as so-called ‘creative people’ in this business, in the function of writing, producing and directing, it’s to entertain. By entertain, I mean moving the audience. If you can move somebody, change somebody, give somebody a change of heart, have them look at something different than they may have in the past, provide some kind of introspection to themselves and have them walk away saying, ‘Wow,’ then I think you’ve done what you set out to do. I think ‘Miri’ fit it perfectly.” (117-1)
Post-Production
August 31 through October 17, 1966. Music score: Tracked.
Film Editor Fabien Tordjmann received high praise from Gene Roddenberry for this, his third Star Trek assignment. “Atta-boys” were also sent to Jack Hunsaker of the long-suffering sound department and music editors Joseph Soroken and Robert Raff, as well as Bill Heath, the post-production executive. The memo from Roddenberry to all involved read:
The excellent post-production on “Miri,” starting with the editing, and then through Sound, Music, and Dubbing, added immeasurably to the quality of the final product. The director, Vince McEveety, was particularly pleased and asked that his compliments be passed on to all who contributed. Thank you very much for this hard work and high creativity. (GR11-5)
Cinema Research Corporation was brought in to handle the opticals. This was already the fourth post optical house to contribute to the new series. The company had opened their doors in the early 1960s and just completed work on a small sci-fi film called Wizards of Mars. Other than presenting a cloudless planet Earth, the effects are excellent.
Included in the optical work was the series titles, and this was the last episode to list John D.F. Black as associate producer, even though he had already contributed to the next few scripts. Also in those titles, “Miri” marked the first listing of Gene L. Coon as producer.
The tab for Coon’s first Trek was $206,815 ($1.5 million in 2013), over budget by more than 13 grand. The First Season deficit was now up to $21,387.
Release / Reaction
Premiere air date: 10/27/66. NBC repeat broadcast: 6/29/67.
October 27, 1966 was the night that the Peanuts TV special “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” premiered. Below is a sampling of two separate reports from A.C. Nielsen, the first counting households, the second factoring “ratings points,” with an estimate of the percentage of U.S. TVs in use. From a vantage point of 47 years later, it is easy to expect that no other show was going to beat this particular “Charlie Brown” special in the ratings.
RATINGS / Nielsen National report for Thursday, October 27, 1966:
A.C. Nielsen believed over 19 million households tuned in for “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” Star Trek did respectable business, in second place and attracting over 12.3 million families of its own. When the Peanuts special cleared the air, a great deal of channel surfing raised Star Trek’s audience (from a 25.4% audience chare to one of 28.3%). More channel knobs were turned from CBS to the competition on ABC, however, resulting in a fairly close race, with a 3.3% spread between Star Trek, at the bottom, and Bewitched at the top. Snug in the middle was the movie on CBS: the television premiere of the 1961 comedy All in a Night’s Work, starring Dean Martin, Shirley MacLaine, and Cliff Robertson.
Nielsen was not the only service counting noses.
Home Testing Institute, A.C. Nielsen’s competitor, had a survey of its own called TVQ. For the month of October, which “Miri” closed out, TvQ prepared a Top 10 list and ranked Star Trek as being in a four-way tie for the fifth most popular series on TV, under Bonanza, I Spy, Walt Disney, and Red Skelton. The other three shows tied for fifth place were Mission: Impossible, Family Affair and the NBC Saturday Night Movie. The Time Tunnel, and Gomer Pyle were at nine and ten, respectively.
“Miri” was a well-liked Star Trek episode, not only by the fans, but by those responsible for making it. However, when ranking all of the episodes of Star Trek in a special November 1994 issue of Entertainment Weekly, the magazine’s writers rightfully said: “The annoying ‘Bonk, bonk on the head’ kid should be sent to military school pronto!”
Memories
Adrian Spies commented, “[‘Miri’] looks good. It had a kind of sincerity to it. Gene was dealing with all the causes of the time in a very thoughtful and intelligent manner. I have only good things to say about Trek and my experience on it. I just wasn’t into very much science fiction at that point.” (164-1)
Vincent McEveety said, “A wonderful love story. It had touching performances. And it’s another example how a good story can take place 200 years in the past or 200 years in the future, and the time frame doesn’t matter as long as we are moved by the characters. ‘Miri’ was one of my absolute favorite films. I thought it was very special.” (117-4)
18
Deadlines, Breakdowns, and Replacements
Grace Lee Whitney, shipping out (NBC publicity photo, courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
August 28, 1966. Five episodes were left to produce for the initial order of 16. But following the completion of “Miri,” Star Trek took a two-week break from filming. Shatner and Nimoy were needed to promote the premiere, now just a week away. Roddenberry and Justman, unbeknownst to their stars, were concerned that there might not be a premiere.
Virtually all aspects of Star Trek were behind schedule and over budget. Except for the second pilot, no episodes were ready to be turned over to NBC. The biggest bottleneck was the photographic effects. Nothing had been delivered.
This time bomb had started ticking back in April. As the series was preparing to film, a complex and fragile system for handling the post-production was devised. Bill Heath, Head of Post Production at Desilu, was the liaison between Star Trek and The Howard Anderson Company. His job: Make sure Roddenberry didn’t go over budget (as he had with the pilot films) by keeping the editing and optical effects under control. The arrangement, as Heath worked it out, was that the Andersons had four weeks to create, photograph, process and tinker with the opticals needed for each episode. With as many as four episodes overlapping, this was an unworkable schedule, sure to dismantle the house of cards Heath had built.
Roddenberry was worried from the start. In the entire history of film production, the effects he needed had never before been produced on such a scale. As early as April 7, he wrote a memo to Robert Justman, intentionally sending copies to Herb Solow, the Howard Anderson Company and Bill Heath, saying:
We are very concerned that even Anderson’s present estimated time of four weeks to completion may put us in serious trouble in getting our first two or three shows finished in time to do the audience tests which NBC insists on.
Bill Heath was unconcerned.
By mid-June, the first assembly edit of “The Corbomite Maneuver” was delivered to the Andersons. By the first week of July, two more episodes had been delivered. The deadline for “Corbomite” to be completed and returned to the Star Trek production offices had already passed.
Filming the Enterprise one frame at a time at the Howard Anderson Company, 1966 (Courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
Sensing a lack of interest from Heath, Roddenberry recruited Justman to play the part of “The Mole.” The associate producer/spy was dispatched to pay a friendly visit to Darrell Anderson and unofficially monitor how the work was progressing. Justman returned with grim news. He told Roddenberry how the Andersons had been struggling to c
reate the photographic effects never seen before in movies and television. They were filming the stationary 11-foot, 2-inch Enterprise model in front of a blue screen by use of a camera dolly on metal tracks -- a camera that would inch toward the front of the ship, away from the back and, for flybys, dolly past it, sideways. It was a meticulously slow process.
“We had no motion control for the track,” Howard Anderson, Jr. explained. “We [used] stop-motion [photography], one frame at a time.” (2-2)
The slow hard work continues at the Howard Anderson Company (Courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
Motion was one problem. Lighting was another. Anderson recalled, “We had to constantly stop shooting after a short while because the lights would heat up the ship.” (2-2)
Anderson and his team would turn the lights on to find their exposure levels and balance the giant arc lights to illuminate the main body of the ship, and then turn the lights off and wait for the model to cool down. Twenty minutes later, the lights went back on, allowing a few frames of film to be exposed. And then the lights went off again. The model needed to cool. Anderson said, “It wasn’t until later that someone developed fiber optics and ‘cold lights’ and other useful miniature lighting tools that are common today.” (2-2)
Photographing the ship was only one part of the effect. In 1966, with no computers to streamline the job, the illusion of moving stars was created through the combination of three separate “star plates.” One of these plates was stationary. A second would either move toward or away from the first plate -- and the camera -- creating an illusion of a closer star field moving at a slow speed. A third plate, which advanced toward the camera at a faster pace, was able to show a grouping of stars speeding by. All three backgrounds were then composited with the footage of the moving Enterprise. The slightest jiggle during one single shot would render an entire day’s filming unusable.
The stage at the Howard Anderson Company. Note the tracks leading up to the 11-foot, 2-inch model of the Enterprise, using for dolly shots (Courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
Another month came and went. On July 14, with several episodes now delivered to the Andersons, Roddenberry had yet to see any completed work. The premiere of Star Trek was just seven weeks away. NBC needed the episodes sooner for inspection and advance test screening. Roddenberry sent another memo, this time to Darrell Anderson, writing:
The purpose of this note is a friendly reminder that you and I have agreed that every basic stage and component of optical work will be shown to us for comment and approval. As such, if we should turn down a fully composited optical on which I have not had the opportunity to see the component parts, I would regretfully be placed in the position of having to refuse payment for the cost of making it.
A copy of this latest memo was again sent to Bill Heath. It was Heath’s job to make sure the work was completed on schedule -- a schedule which had already been breached.
According to Justman, Anderson didn’t respond. Heath, however, did. Justman said, “We were told not to worry. We were told the optical effects would be delivered with time to spare. Of course, there was no time to spare at the time we were told this. We pointed this out. And we were told not to worry.” (94-1)
Also overdue was the footage needed for the opening title sequence. That triggered a domino effect of tardiness.
Hoping to be inspired by the amazing visuals, the Andersons were preparing, Roddenberry delayed writing the 30-second introduction needed for the opening title sequence. Alexander Courage was hoping to be inspired, too. He needed to compose the series theme music, but had no visuals to set his music to. He was also working on the score for “The Man Trap” and “The Naked Time” with no opticals to guide him. Fred Steiner needed to score “The Corbomite Maneuver” and “Mudd’s Women,” but he, too, had no effects to view.
Courage and Steiner proceeded as best they could. And, under increased pressure from Robert Justman, Roddenberry finally stopped waiting on Anderson, stopped rewriting scripts, and began sketching ideas for the narration needed for Star Trek’s title sequence. The soon to be famous intro was actually a collaboration between himself, John D.F. Black and, indirectly, Samuel A. Peeples. Roddenberry’s first draft read:
This is the adventure of the United Space Ship Enterprise. Assigned a five-year galaxy patrol, the bold crew of the giant starship explores the excitement of strange new worlds, uncharted civilizations and exotic people. These are its voyages and its adventures.
Later that day, Black did a rewrite:
Space ... the final frontier. This is the story of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Its mission ... a five-year patrol to seek out and contact alien life ... to explore the infinite frontier of space ... where no man has gone before.
And with that, Sam Peeples had made his contribution, without even being in the room. He had written those last six words a year earlier.
On August 10, Roddenberry took a look at Black’s version and then typed the three most famous sentences of his entire writing career (containing the most famous split infinitive in television history):
Space ... the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission ... to explore strange new worlds ... to seek out new life and new civilizations ... to boldly go where no man has gone before.
William Shatner was immediately pulled from the set of “Dagger of the Mind” to record a voiceover. John D.F. Black dispelled other tales told by others of how Shatner managed to rush across the Desilu lot to the facility where the sound recordings were made and, without being short on breath, nail the opening narration in one take.
“We took him in a golf cart,” Black said. “Bill was in good shape. But so was the golf cart. And it is true that he got it in one take. Except we didn’t. There was a bump in the recording. So Bill did it a second time. And that was the one we used.” (17)
On August 19, “Sandy” Courage was sent into a recording studio to conduct an orchestra, producing Star Trek’s opening and closing theme music as well as all the music for “The Man Trap.” It was Courage’s choice to use the eerie electric violin, featured so prominently in the score of “The Man Trap,” for the opening title theme. At the recording session for “The Corbomite Maneuver,” the tenth episode to air on NBC, the theme was rerecorded by Fred Steiner, and used for the balance of Season One.
Courage was still working blind. Fred Steiner worked blind, as well, while composing the excellent score for “Charlie X” a few days later, on August 29. He had only his imagination to rely on ... and a final draft shooting script.
The 12 foot, 2 inch model, lit for filming, on the Howard Anderson Company stage, Desilu lot (Courtesy Bob Olsen)
Roddenberry and Justman turned their focus back to The Howard Anderson Company. And, with Star Trek now less than three weeks away from its network premiere, Roddenberry’s temper finally blew. It was the first time Solow had witnessed Star Trek’s creator in a fit of rage. He later described it as being a “sobering sight.” (161-3)
Solow quickly called Heath; Heath quickly called Howard Anderson, Jr.; Anderson quickly arranged for a screening. Roddenberry and Justman were present, as was Darrell Anderson. Heath was not. Two minutes into the screening, it was all over. The Star Trek men had seen every foot of film the Andersons had shot. According to Justman, out of those two minutes there were, perhaps, “six good shots” and a few others that were “passable.”
The lights in the screening room came up. Someone finally asked, “Where’s the rest?” Justman remembered that Darrell Anderson began to shake and then jumped to his feet, shouting that Star Trek would never make its first air date. As tears came to his eyes, Anderson ran from the room. Roddenberry appeared to be in shock and remained still in his seat. Justman reacted differently. He chased after Anderson, who remained hysterical. He and his brother had been working day and night for months and all they had to show for their labors were two minutes of footage, most of which was dismal.
“By the time I caught up with him,
he was weeping uncontrollably,” Justman said. “I finally just grabbed hold of him and hugged him to me. I said, ‘That’s okay, Darrell, that’s okay.’” (94-8)
That night Roddenberry and Justman slaved away at a Moviola, salvaging whatever scraps of film they could from the Andersons’ two-and-a-half months of work. They also stole shots from the first two pilot films.
“We really put that main title together from nothing,” Justman said. “Literally from garbage, trims and rejects.” (94-8)
They also set aside enough footage of the Enterprise to satisfy the needs of “The Man Trap,” the episode with which NBC had, as expected, opted to launch the series.
Justman said, “We got lucky, and we kind of disproved the old notion that you can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. Still, this near disaster left Gene with a real hard-on against Bill Heath.” (94-8)
The next day Darrell Anderson left for Palm Springs. He was in no condition to continue working. Justman later learned that this was his third nervous breakdown as a result of Star Trek. The first came during work on “The Cage.” The second was a result of the long hours spent laboring over “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” and the third, now, as a result of “The Corbomite Maneuver.” Each time Darrell Anderson took on a job for Star Trek, he’d worked himself right into a hospital bed.
Things had to change. Star Trek needed another staff member -- someone to oversee the production and delivery of the optical effects, someone besides Bill Heath. The only person Roddenberry could think of who might be able and willing to help was Ed Milkis, an assistant film editor from The Lieutenant. Milkis remembered, “One afternoon [Gene] called and wanted to talk to me. I agreed to see him the next day and Gene said, ‘No, no, I mean now! Tonight!’” (119-1)
These Are The Voyages, TOS, Season One Page 50
