Thursday 18 February 2016

Roddenberry Vault: Week 6 - Opening words

Throughout 2016 the Roddenberry Facebook page will be posting artefacts from their archives, including behind the scenes documents, production artwork, and photos. Dubbed the Roddenberry Vault, there will be new posts every day, some times multiples. To make sure you don't miss any of these insightful glimpses into the production of Star Trek, I will be posting weekly summaries.

In the sixth week's worth of posts the highlight was a look at the evolution of the opening monologue, perhaps one of the most iconic bits of scripting in media history! Continue below for that and more.

The week started with a three-day run of slide images, the red toned stills from the episodes. Day thirty-six was Spock and the Horta, followed by a shot of Sulu, and then Scotty, on days thirty-seven and thirty-eight.

Day thirty-nine explored another character, in two posts: There was a nice behind the scenes shot of Leonard Nimoy on set from the production of The Cage, plus an interview with Nimoy, discussing how he deals with Spock's emotions.


Day forty was also brought two posts, with the first and second drafts of the iconic opening narration.



The final draft then followed on day forty-one, and really polished up rather nicely!


The last post from week six gives a great insight into the production of the series, a letter regarding the failure of actor John Drew Barrymore to arrive for production of The Alternative Factor. The letter lays out the costs to the production as a result. Barrymore was subsequently suspended from the Screen Actors Guild for six months, and was replaced in the role as Lazarus by Robert Brown.


Make sure you follow the Roddenberry Facebook page to catch posts as they come out each day. And be sure to click through to the original posts to check out more images and join the discussions. The Roddenberry page is pretty active on other fronts too, so if you want to find your way back to previous Vault posts, then scanning back through my weekly summary articles might be a bit easier; you can find all of them under my Roddenberry Vault label.



1 comment:

Chris said...

This stuff is great. I absolutely love it. It remonds me of the book Herb Solow and Robert Justman wrote, "Inside Star Trek". A fantastic behind the scenes read about the original series for anyone who hasn't read it.

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