I attended a free screening of “The Man Trap” at the Air & Space Museum earlier tonight with Rod Roddenberry and John & Bjo Trimble in attendance. They played the episode on the giant full-sized Imax screen and started it at exactly 8:30. I was slightly disappointed that it was the “remastered” version with the cgi effects and not the original version, but it still looked and sounded absolutely amazing. I happened to sit next to a truly OG fan just old enough to remember seeing it when it first aired, and as we discussed on the way out, the changes were at least merely cosmetic and didn’t alter the story a la Greedo shooting first.
Rod was interviewed beforehand and provided an introduction. The Trimbles joined in afterword for a Q and A. There were plenty of great anecdotes. Did you know Gene had to fight the tobacco companies and NBC to keep Spock from smoking a special green cigarette? Oh, and this was coming from a three-pack-a-day smoker.
Rod told a story, one that got me unexpectedly emotional, about how as a kid he came home one day with a drawing he’d done of his dad. When Gene saw the drawing and noticed the cigarette and smoke coming from his head, he decided he was going to quit cold turkey. Majel Barrett said he was difficult to live with for the three or so months that followed, but he kept to his decision. “No intelligent person should be slave to a little stick,” Gene said.
Speaking of Majel Barrett, apparently Lwaxana Troi was a fairly accurate reflection of how she was in real life. They didn’t write the character so much as cast her in the role and let her play herself.
If you’re wondering why I’m writing this at such an ungodly hour (aside from my sleeping schedule being kinda fucked), they were doing a Trek movie marathon on Syfy and First Contact just ended. Man, that ending with the Vulcans still gets me all teary-eyed. I’ve got vivid memories of seeing that movie on opening night in November of '96 while my mom and sister saw Jingle All The Way (starring, yup, Jake Lloyd). Meanwhile, I was seeing John Knoll’s vfx work. Watching it again just now brought me back to seeing it with that audience, their reactions to all the great moments. I still remember that very Final Frontier esque closing shot panning up from the forest as Jerry Goldsmith’s music swelled and the audience burst into applause.
I stepped outside to meet up with my mom and sister. “Oh, there was a trailer before Jingle All The Way. Apparently they’re putting the Star Wars movies back out in theaters early in the new year.”
And so it began…