Star Trek, the Last Voyage

In 1976, just at the end of their first season, the cast did an extended Star Trek skit which few people will remember. It’s remarkable in multiple ways. First, of course, it features John Belushi as Captain Kirk, with Chevy Chase as Spock and Dan Aykroyd playing McCoy. Given that, we know we’ve got great talent on the stage.

 

The first thing that’s so striking is the combination of their age and weight. Both Aykroyd and Belushi were relatively svelte in contrast to the way they both overindulged over the ensuing seasons. And the audience is appreciative but hardly wild about their entrances on set. It’s just the first season, after all.

Then comes the skit itself, clocking in at 12 minutes in length – wonderfully over-written! And evocative of a different era when long dialog and single camera shots were the norm. This whole thing would’ve been a tight 5:30 had it run even ten years ago.

What we get, though, is a very apparent set of building blocks that become the bones of those SNL years. Belushi has somehow rallied himself into clear enough consciousness to do a bang-up job impersonating William Shatner, complete with the intensity, over-enunciation and attitude, blowing through a hugely wordy script in a single, fluid take with nary a flub.

Chevy is truly funny as Spock and Aykroyd struts his deadpan attitude with doctoral style. And it’s wonderful watching them work together, with our advance knowledge of their future careers arcs. Chase will leave for big screen shenanigans. Akyroyd will partner with Belushi for the Blues Brothers and the HOUSE of Blues and Belushi will, sadly and shockingly, go out in a drug overdose his cohorts must have feared, at the peak of his short career.

As to the skit, no story spoilers here. Just an appreciation of some of the earliest iterations of the extraordinary SNL juggernaut. Enjoy!

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War of the Worlds

No, not red vs blue, think bigger! In 1898 HG Wells, one of the founding fathers of the Sci-Fi genre “gifted” us with some incredibly imaginative thinking about an alien invasion, bringing a whole new (ahem) alien concept into sharp focus and leaving us howling at whatever planet suited our fancy.

It took the genius of Orson Wells to turn that story into a radio drama in 1939, when his troop of players, the Mercury Theater, performed a live version of it on the air. This time, it was far more realistic. Using cutting edge tech – radio broadcast – and cutting edge techniques – sound effects, live orchestra, inspired performances – he simulated an invasion of Earth by wicked, up-to-no-good Martian invaders, whose advanced weaponry promptly flattened our puny defenses, dispatching with great swaths of humanity, as on-scene reporters, bystanders and military brass helplessly intoned the bad news in real time. 

One of the coolest concepts that gave the show a more believable bent was to use a small live orchestra, whose job was to play insipid dance music, simulating a normal evening radio broadcast, only to be repeatedly interrupted with breathless reports uttering “We interrupt this broadcast to bring you this special bulletin” or even more convincing: “We now return to our program of evening music…” at which point the (really awful) dance music midst would be cut back into.

The effect was electrifying, so much so that it caused actual panic in the streets, with people spilling out of their homes, armed with guns and pitchforks. Heady stuff.

Now comes the latest iteration of the show (which was redone as  2005 Spielberg feature with Tom Cruise), a War of the Worlds OPERA (!) staged by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, based on the Mercury Theater broadcast, based on the book. The company has gone so far as to schedule not only the premier performance at Disney Hall in downtown LA, but a simulcast at three additional yet-to-be-announced outdoor public spaces, where a live actor will take to a makeshift stage and perform along with the live show. This will be done via loudspeakers mounted on poles built to hold the original 50-year old air raid sirens that were installed back in the days of the Red Scare. Quaint!

Just bought tickets (including the $14 per ticket convenience charge) and can’t wait to go next week. Stay tuned for broadcast interruptions.

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We’re All Voice-Over Stars

I’ve been involved in the VO world for decades and have watched it change dramatically, then become commercially disrupted and change again, then socially and change again.

In the entirely different world of the 1960’s and 70’s voice-over artists were a neat little boutique extension of the entertainment business, who worked mostly out of three cites: New York (by far the largest market), Chicago and LA. 

To be a VO talent was to be represented by a union talent agency and be a card-carrying SAG and AFTRA member. Your agent brought you into their offices several times per week to record demos of radio and TV commercial copy, then the tape operator edited several auditions together onto a reel-to-reel tape and messengered it over to the advertising agency for review and hopefully, a booking.

There were stars in the voice-over world, quite different from any other types. They were only known to the agencies and each other and enjoyed both the faceless anonymity of being regular people in the outside world, but also made gobs of money with ongoing campaigns that could pay residuals as high as a quarter million per year, per campaign. Which, if you were really hot, could be one of a dozen you’d nabbed and could go on for years. I recently met the woman who played Charley Tuna’s girlfriend for Starkist Tuna, back in the 70’s. That gig netted a house and a college education for her kids.

By the 1980’s, voice-over got a suddenly glitzier with the advent of major TV and screen stars landing million-dollar contracts to become the voice of big and luxury brands. It gave the brand a sheen to be associated with a premier voice and it gave the VO business a deep and fearful shudder to see a significant portion of its rank and file actors being shunted aside for in the name of glamor.

By 2000, digital recording made it possible to record from casually constructed home recording setups, then submit via the internet to your agency, which would assemble a digital link to send off to the client, now anywhere on earth.

And by 2010, entirely digital agencies had established such an internet stronghold, that many traditional agencies dried up, replaced by direct-to-client business models via digital handshake, repeated thousands of times per day.

Today, with something like 500 hours of video getting posted online per minute, voiceover is anyone making a smartphone video and talking over the picture. It’s turned the cultural tonality of voice recording into a much more casual overall style and created dozens of sub-genres, ubiquitous on a web that seems second only to the infinitely expanding universe out there in space.

Where outer-worlders are undoubtedly listening.

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The Guns of Sci Fi

They shoot colored beams of light, in streams, lines and glowy balls. Interestingly, they all shoot slowly, to better illustrate the path they are taking and show off said balls. They're various forms of deadly, depending on the weapon. Some just stun their target, some flame and spark on the clothing of their intended victim as he/she/it stares at the wound incredulously.

Size: Star Trek phasors were quaint compared to most modern scifi weaponry. Your basic sidearm is a big damn thing designed to make you look important, impressive and just plain scary. Gun barrels are 4 inches in diameter, the better to pack a bright flash. Handles barely fit in demure human hands, barrels run from 8 inches to a foot and a half and we're talking side-arms here. Magically, they are lightweight and easily maneuverable. THAT'S a good thing.

Bigger armaments -- handheld rifles, repeaters, bazookas and the like. Them's some POWERFUL colorful light-balls, brah... They'll blow holes in the interior wall of a ship’s hallways, but not to worry, your outer hull always stays intact. Lightweight, easy to run with, big guns use fine-quality scifi materials designed for minimal impediment and maximal explosive appeal. Right on.

Now: Accuracy. The count-onable anomaly of scifi gunmanship.  The law of scifi gunfights -- say it with me is: Good guys hit, Bad guys miss. Simple as that, and think about it, could it be any other way and if it were, would you really be willing to deal with the consequences? There are obvious conclusions long drawn on this principle. Good guys have had access to the finest marksmanship training and munitions schooling in the galaxy. Bad guys have, for the most part, had to deal with aiming at zero-grav space garbage or landfill smeer cans for practice. No wonder they can't hit the broad side of a shuttlecraft.

This is a good thing. It preserves the balance, saves the day, makes for happier endings and indemnifies the genre for future generations. So support your local third act and be thankful for the balance of handheld weaponry in space. It's a simple ecosystem that errant mutants are gunning to change, but good luck with that, sucker. Take your best shot.

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Dark Blather

This series cancellation brought to you by I-Former, the app that sorts out your past life and keeps mostly the best parts. Purchase a one-year membership and get two months of memories free.

Click here for clone reconstruction. When you choose TablaSordidum, you're in charge of your future destiny -- for a while… Act now and get a fast pass one-way Marauder ride to Zairon and a free android tune-up at any authorized Ferrous Port. Offer limited to oxygen-breathers whose social security numbers have not been breached within the past 30 microns.

Side-effects may include envy, deceit, hallucinations, visions of grandeur, insane gunfights with aliens, random character number switching, intense personality shifts and home gravity envy. 

Employ nanites for self preservation. Blink Drive not included.

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Keepin' Up With the Jetsons

What's it gonna be like to run with the fast crowd in the year 2400? Will we still be waiting at rope lines to get into the coolest zero-grav clubs? Dropping big bucks on magnums of GoThereJuice and sporting the latest pomp-doos?

I wrote this song to give myself a little tour of what money could buy 383 years out. Or whatever money's called by then. Maybe retinal scans will be so retro you'll just need to think’n’pay... Jet packs, vacation planets, fetching androids, textured ultra-beats, flying cars! Oh, it's ALL comin' baby. 

The twist in the song is about being able to AFFORD it. You think you can join in on a piddling salary? Honey, if you have to ask... So my avatar in this one is bound and determined to be a playa, even though he has no business being there. His FOMO runs so deep, he's about run through his second mortgage hangin' in, and those beautiful people he's running with? Every now and then one whispers to another: Wait, WHO'S this guy again?

You know the type, the sad wanna-be who's just so doggone determined, he'd be cute if it weren't for how hard he was trying to be someone else. Give the dude a nod for tryin', but without the scratch (or whatever slang it'll be then) it ain't gonna happen. With this crowd? You gotta be bad, beautiful or filthy rich -- pick three.

But thanks for playin' our game, and damn, look’it the time. Gotta jet!

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The Orville

Cool CGI, big music underscoring, shiny interiors and costumes that look like everyone is about to get in formation and march down the football field playing an arrangement of the latest Taylor Swift tune.

The Orville (Fox, Sundays) made its debut last night with Seth McFarlane doing what he does best – starring Seth – and opening with a pretty funny bit about spousal cheating when it’s about getting caught in bed with a panic-stricken alien. This one, a blue-hue guy who splooshes when scared.

Let’s be sure we understand this is a Star Trek-type spinoff comedy series, meant to, like, disrupt, outer space, that place that’s always been fraught with peril and discovery and drama. And that no one ought to be more qualified to do so than Mr. Family Guy, who looks cute in his marching suit.  The challenge comes from pushing the envelope every which way until it’s no longer mailable.

McFarlane, the show’s writer, dances between what he seems to want to portray as legit dramatic saga combined with silly pizza party jokes, and illustrates how you really can’t have it both ways. The movie “Airplane!” is the perfect example of a serious soap opera genre going rogue, leaving us with a permanent joke about gladiators and filling every 20 seconds with another pratfall. That was funny, because funny was what the producers aimed squarely to be.

The problem with Orville is that it tries to go both ways, dipping its characters into ostensibly real danger, running around to neutralize it, then relaxing back into goofy characterizations to frame the after-jokes that no longer fit with the seriousness of what was just supposed to have been being portrayed (self-editor: woah, interesting sentence construction).

The net result is a show that doesn’t seem to know what it is. Is it middling SciFi drama lurching boldly forward or is it cartoon shtick, portraying frat-party humor in the 24^th century? Keep on eye on your main screen to see how warped things get.

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