A behind-the-scenes look at Star Trek's special effects, from photon torpedos to 24th-century bras.
Star Trek Night 2001
BBC2 Broadcast
Sunday 16th September 2001
More Information Here:
https://space-doubt.blogspot.com/2015/05/star-trek-on-bbc-2000-to-2007.html
Copyright Disclaimer: under section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research.
Star Trek Night 2001
BBC2 Broadcast
Sunday 16th September 2001
More Information Here:
https://space-doubt.blogspot.com/2015/05/star-trek-on-bbc-2000-to-2007.html
Copyright Disclaimer: under section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research.
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FunTranscript
00:01Part of Star Trek's charm is that it's unmistakable.
00:04From the utterly unforgettable design of the ship,
00:07to all those rubber aliens and the occasionally cheesy special effects
00:11you always know when you're in Star Trek land.
00:13Tonight, we go behind the scenes to check out the reality of dressing up space.
00:18Make it so.
00:32When we started to make it, history wasn't a subject.
00:35It's not like it hurts or anything.
00:38It's just that you can't touch your face.
00:42You're much more attractive than the average strong.
00:44It's a corset.
00:48It was the era of the miniskirt. Everybody wore miniskirts.
01:07I will tell you this.
01:08When we negotiate our contracts,
01:10Paramount's company line is that the ship is in fact the star of the show.
01:18All hands!
01:19Raise your hands!
01:20advancement back!
01:21Now!
01:22Now!
01:23Now!
01:24Now!
01:32Now!
01:33For 35 television years and millions of light years, the Federation's Starfleet have been
01:48roaming through space in ships that, in design terms, have changed very little from the mother
01:53of all starships, USS Enterprise NCC-1701. Yes, even in space you need a license number.
02:00Almost any design they would have chosen would have become the institutional vision, and
02:13even if you didn't like it initially, you'd grow accustomed to it and then expect it and
02:17then feel cheated if you didn't have it.
02:21Whatever we came up with had to be instantly recognizable, and to sell the speed it would
02:26probably have to start in the distance as a tiny speck of light and enlarge and come
02:31right by your head or go the other way.
02:34So in that couple of seconds you have to be able to recognize it.
02:39I spent a lot of money on old Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon comic books.
02:47And I pinned all of that up on the board and said, that I will not do.
02:52No fins or rockets.
02:58And it began to fence me in a little bit.
03:00I needed fencing at that point.
03:05She was a ship based on the reality of a Navy ship, with all the Navy's very familiar rules,
03:14regulations and sections.
03:16Bridge, engineering, port and starboard, and of course, a captain and his crew.
03:21In this forward-thinking universe, a starship without an alien officer would be as adventurous
03:35as boiled cabbage.
03:37But back in the days when glue was really glue and rubber was something harvested from
03:41a tree, it all started with two tiny appendages.
03:44And even they were a hard graft.
03:45What do you call those?
03:48I call them ears.
03:49You're trying to be funny.
03:51It's a painful process.
03:53Not putting the ears on, not gluing them on, but getting them unglued is very painful and
03:59Leonard's ears hurt him all the time.
04:01And so he came to me and said, Bob, can we do something about those ears?
04:05I said, I know what we can do.
04:07I've got a surgeon friend who can operate and make your ears pointy and you'll have that
04:17for the length of the series.
04:20Bob wanted this to happen so badly.
04:22He wanted so much so that he believed me for a few seconds.
04:29Be watchful of young men in their velvet prime.
04:34The one thing they didn't have on the original series was time and they didn't have a lot
04:49of money.
04:50We still don't have a lot of time and a lot of money, but we've learned how to budget it
04:54quicker.
04:55I actually have laboratory here on the lot at Paramount where we build, manufacture, paint,
05:01and put it all together.
05:03The old series, Fred literally made things at home.
05:07We made Spock's ears at home in the kitchen.
05:12With me it's easy.
05:13It was all established.
05:14It's a matter of sculpting up the new ears, pouring the rubber, and it just slipped right
05:18over the actor's ears, blend it off on the edges and away you go.
05:27Four series in and the population of Star Trek extraterrestrials has exploded.
05:32Klingons, Cardassians, Bajorans, Borg, Ferengi, to name but a few, all with an unquenchable
05:38appetite for rubber.
05:40Nowadays it's the exception rather than the rule for an actor to find themselves without
05:44so much as a nose job.
05:48I would say 99% of the actors do not have a problem with rubber.
05:51It's all part of what they signed on to do.
05:54So they knew that they had to do that coming in.
05:58The rubber really doesn't get hot.
06:00It doesn't get uncomfortable.
06:02What it does do, it makes you have to come in at 4 o'clock in the morning for makeup and
06:07it means when everybody else has gone home you're still sitting here getting it taken off.
06:12So it does mean a lot of time in the makeup chair.
06:14I'm the urban spaceman baby, I've got speed, I've got everything I need, I'm the urban spaceman
06:27maybe I can't, I'm a supersonic guy.
06:34Borg makeup was very tough.
06:36It was very tough.
06:37It's, you know, a whole rubber head and neck and the first part of your chest and your ears
06:44are covered.
06:45There's a laser over one eye.
06:47There's, you know, other rubber glued to your head and different places where tubes come
06:51in and out and airbrush everywhere.
06:54It took five hours the first day that we did the makeup.
06:56They got it down to two and a half or three eventually.
07:00But it's tough.
07:01And after, you know, working an 18 hour day and then you have to sit in the chair and
07:04look for another hour and a half to get out of the makeup when everyone else is going
07:07home.
07:08That's, that's when it really becomes tough.
07:14Was that good for you?
07:22The first whole day that I spent in the ball suit started very early.
07:30I guess I left home at two o'clock in the morning and got to my little trailer.
07:35Oh, eight hours later, and I said to the first assistant director, I have to go to the bathroom.
07:42Forty-five minutes later, they got me back into my suit, which was the most expensive
07:49pee in the history of Star Trek.
07:51An entire crew had been waiting for me.
07:55And later in the day, Mike Westmore said to me, you know, I once made a bright pink skin
08:02tight latex suit for an actress that we had to roll onto her.
08:07And we solved the bathroom problem by making slits in the soles of her suit and she stood
08:11on a drain and peed in the suit.
08:13We could do the same for you.
08:15And I said, no, thank you.
08:16I just won't drink anything.
08:18And so I didn't.
08:19We two are on a quest to batter ourselves, evolving toward a state of perfection.
08:25Forgive me, but the Borg do not evolve.
08:29They conquer.
08:31By assimilating other beings into our collective, we are bringing them closer to perfection.
08:38Somehow, I question your motives.
08:42That is because you haven't been properly stimulated yet.
08:49Behind every alien is a background alien.
08:52And Quark's bar, the social hub of Deep Space Nine, required a few regulars.
08:57One of the original nine heads, new heads that we designed for Deep Space Nine, it was a character
09:05called Morn.
09:06And when he walked in and the director looked at him and said, I want that one, put him
09:10at the bar.
09:11And he sat at the bar for the next seven years.
09:13Evening.
09:14Hello, Morn.
09:15We called him Morn, almost like Norm on Cheers.
09:18And the same man played it for the entire seven years.
09:22The funny part was, the scripts would come out and there would be lines for him.
09:25And then by the time we got done shooting it, the lines were gone.
09:29So he never spoke in the seven years.
09:31Well, no, I don't want to hear it.
09:35Not one word.
09:37Decking out the nonhumans was one thing.
09:39But what about the costumes for everyone else?
09:41What would 23rd century women wear?
09:46The costume designer from the original series, Bill Tice, had one theory.
09:5023rd century women would wear anything, so long as it looked like it might, just might.
09:54Fall off.
09:55Oiling my traps, darling.
09:57Oiling my traps.
09:58Oiling my traps, darling.
09:59All four fingers!
10:02All four fingers!
10:03The soundtrack of the movie.
10:04You can see where the costumes are, you know, all four fingers?
10:06No, no, no.
10:07If you were a female crew member, the final part of the movie will be seen as well.
10:08All four fingers!
10:09and three fingers!
10:10All four fingers!
10:11All four fingers!
10:12All four fingers!
10:13All four fingers!
10:14All four fingers!
10:15All four fingers!
10:16All five fingers!
10:17and if you were a female crew member the final frontier was about three inches below the waist
10:31it's really for the best captain
10:33i thought the costumes were pretty were very appropriate for the time because it was the
10:41era of the miniskirt and um and uh i i thought it was the the that bill tice did a pretty good job
10:51except for the ruffles around the guy's pants didn't like the ruffles around the guy's pants
10:59it amazes me that people still make some remark about the revealing you know being revealing
11:05revealed nothing and long black stockings on and boots up to my uh knees and the skirts and panties
11:14on and the skirt that gave you freedom to move in and uh so what
11:23i guess we weren't sufficiently entertaining
11:31what we inherited from the original show was of course my cosmic cheerleader outfit in the very
11:39first episode it was you know can we get marina skirt any shorter than this fortunately they decided
11:45that that that uh outfit didn't suit my character and we lost it by the second episode i was thrilled
11:52when i got my regulation star star fleet uniform or the regulation space suit as we call it
11:57because um first of all it covered up my cleavage and consequently i got all my brains back because
12:04when you have a cleavage you can't have brains in hollywood so i got all my brains back and i was
12:09allowed to do things that i hadn't been allowed to do for five or six years i went on away teams i was
12:14in charge of stuff i had my pips back i had phases i had all the equipment again and it was fabulous
12:19yeah i was thrilled the only good thing about the show coming to an end after seven years that i was
12:26finally able to breathe out because those costumes were really tight you know you had a great for
12:32lunch and it showed and i watched the episodes now and i can see you know the ones where i had gained
12:37two two or three pounds or when i'd lost two or three pounds it's mortifying it's absolutely
12:43mortifying my hat goes off to jerry ryan i have to say because she manages to maintain this perfect
12:49silhouette and unfortunately i didn't i have allocated three hours 20 minutes for the task
12:55and an additional 17 minutes for ensign kim's usual conversational digressions
12:59i am scheduled to take a nutritional supplement of 1500 hours engaged in one hour of cardiovascular
13:05activity then i intend to review a text the doctor recommended entitled a christmas carol
13:10he believes it will have educational value and log it looks very simple it looks just like a unitard
13:17but it really was a feat of engineering on bob blackman's part to design this costume um there's
13:22a corset one piece undergarment which you know had a very cinched in waist and it's a corset it's
13:29constricting and it's it's not comfortable it needed to be more than just a catsuit it seemed as if we
13:34were pandering um to the audience which we were but we need to have had a have a way that we could
13:41i could jerry could we could also to walk around and go well yeah it's a it's a fit garment but
13:49what do you see you just see her silhouette which was what i wanted to do and that was my notion which
13:56is we find a way to contour her quite remarkable body we did parenthetically we did nothing to
14:03either minimize or extend her bodily shape that is her from top to bottom and it's a remarkable
14:11figure when you see her in that uniform one of the things that you get that is a sense of provocative
14:17is that the bust is actually undercut you go under rather than going from the high point down
14:23it actually scoops under and then comes back to her rib cage and that's a series of hooks that you
14:30know the whole thing is rigged to this underpinning and god bless her to go for four years wearing
14:35that thing if it's a great character of course i'd be willing to do that you do it whatever it takes
14:39to play a wonderful rich role as an actor um and the overt sexiness of the costume i had no problem
14:46with i had no problem with because of the way the character was written if she was written the way
14:52everybody sort of thought she was going to be when they saw pictures of her initially then yeah i would
14:57i had a big problem playing that character that was not something i had any interest in doing
15:00but she was brilliant she's a brilliant character she was strong she was a wonderful role model
15:06i didn't realize you had such a strong scientific curiosity not curiosity desire desire
15:15omega is infinitely complex yet harmonious
15:19to the borg it represents perfection i wish to understand that perfection the borg's holy grail
15:29captain never mind i'll see you in an hour
15:34i loved my costume from day one i loved it i mean i'm a an odd duck because i'm um i don't like
15:47glamour i don't like being touched and fussed with can't bear it i love to act this other bit
15:52missed me somehow um so shucking myself into that suit every day was an absolute pleasure
15:58really was they could have done something a little more enhancing with the suit
16:02for those of us with figures like 14 year old boys but um the sheer delight of its ease
16:08it was compact it was simple streamlined loved it loved it
16:12that you could nap in it was heaven
16:14the magnetic field is collapsing the hole is depolarizing
16:23but for the first female captain of a star fleet starship life wasn't quite as uncomplicated
16:31as it might otherwise seem
16:32emergency force fields inoperative
16:35everybody else go go go i love to see how men deal with their deepest anxieties right
16:42about will this franchise succeed or will it not with this woman at the helm
16:46illogical illogical they were so concerned that they had actually hired a woman to play the role
16:53that they couldn't quite get to it on a real level
16:57so they targeted the symbol which was the hair let's find something that we can all busy ourselves
17:04with to such distraction that we go mad it was the hair they changed it five times in the first season
17:09two three times in the second my message to patrick stewart is lucky devil i mean it was just
17:16constantly a source of anxiety for them and of course it had nothing to do with the reality
17:23he should have just left it alone
17:25he may be bald and a man but patrick stewart didn't have it all easy either
17:31the costumes were redesigned after the first or second season
17:36and we were taken out of the spandex and put into wool
17:40and one of the reasons was that we were all of us beginning to suffer
17:44uh sort of skeletal problems from the pressures of the spandex
17:48the suits we wore were actually made a couple of sizes too small
17:52so that they would be very very form-fitting
17:54but what they did was to put pressure like this on you everywhere
17:58so you were continually having to push against the pressure of the spandex
18:01i was told by my uh chiropractor that if i didn't get out of this costume
18:06i would do permanent lasting damage to my body
18:08so we told this to the studio and that was all they needed to redesign the costumes
18:12and then we got sensible two-piece costumes that moved with you
18:16instead of costumes that you had to fight on a daily basis
18:19status of shields
18:22back to 48 percent captain
18:24miss laforge i may have to take us out of the nebula
18:26i want all the power you can give me
18:28we must be upwind from the antigens
18:32of course sir
18:34the annals of star trek are awash with the weird and the wonderful
18:38but it's not just about costume and makeup
18:40the third dimension of star trek magic is visual effects
18:44making space a place
18:46often with little more than tuppence hypenny and a bag of string
18:49guess what you can do with this
18:51this is the material for a mylar cheerleaders pom-pom
18:56and i stumbled upon this in a dry goods store
19:00and this was in just about every episode of star trek the next generation
19:05and many episodes of the subsequent series
19:08one of its greatest uses is this is the federation force field
19:13and by shaking it and having a 45 degree angle mirror underneath so you can see its kind of random patterns
19:25it gives a wonderful non-repetitive organic sparkle
19:28by putting this on with a black sweatsuit and a little black hood over my face
19:36and being able to see the original scenes with the actors
19:39i was able to using tai chi motions
19:41just kind of float this thing around
19:43and in compositing doing a very soft
19:46out of focus version for a glow
19:48and then a more in focus hotter core
19:50and it worked out very well
19:51and i could do all the animation in a morning
19:53rather than over a period of weeks
19:55i need an emergency medical team down here
20:03on our way captain
20:04the transporter effect of course one of our most famous effects on star trek
20:09was originally basically created by a person taking little tiny bits of aluminum foil
20:17and i think some aluminum perchlorate which is sort of a powdery version of aluminum
20:22and then just sprinkling them and letting them fall through the air
20:25against a black piece of cardboard
20:28illuminating that from the side with a very bright light
20:31and then photographing that
20:33and when when the characters were filmed walking into the transporter
20:38they would step on the pads
20:39captain kirk would give the order to energize
20:41the actors would then step off
20:43but in the lab after the film was developed
20:46they would superimpose
20:48the actors fading out
20:50and this this fluttering aluminum you know
20:52fading in
20:54and that's what created the transporter
20:55it was a very simple practical optical effect
20:58over 35 years technology has of course improved
21:07in particular computer generated imagery cgi has helped starfleet go where no one has gone before
21:14i had one sequence that was all about effects
21:24and that of course was her astounding entry
21:28the very first time one saw her
21:30and that was not actually green screen
21:33what they did was that they used a motor control camera head
21:36what happened was that i was put in a little cradle
21:40that was lashed to a crane
21:43and i was horizontal
21:45and they had stuck the prosthetic neck
21:48and that metallic spine
21:51to me here
21:52so i was horizontal and the neck hung down
21:56and they took me 30 feet up in the air
21:58and they brought me down slowly
22:00and deposited me on a little x
22:02oh i was wrapped in blue screen cloth
22:05and then i and the crane and the blue screen cloth were removed
22:08and they reshot it
22:09on the empty set
22:11or the set as it was without us in it
22:13and then they married those two images together
22:16in the computer
22:17and likewise for the moment where her her head locks into her torso
22:22and she walks over to data
22:23i am the beginning
22:29the end
22:30the one who is many
22:33i am the borg
22:48but no matter how high or low tech the visual effects
22:52they would all count for nothing
22:53if it were not for that little extra
22:55without which star trek just wouldn't be star trek
22:58cisco to defy it
22:59cisco to defy it
23:01cisco to defy it
23:06and although sound in space doesn't actually happen
23:25a silent photon torpedo fight just wouldn't
23:28well it just wouldn't
23:30photon torpedoes fire
23:31wow
23:41wow indeed
23:43you earth people are most unusual
23:53most stimulating
23:55this time
23:57this time
23:58this time
23:59cap
24:00that