Breathe In The “This Side Of Paradise” Preview

| July 27, 2007 | By: Anthony Pascale 48 comments so far

The Remastered "This Side Of Paradise" airs this weekend…preview courtesy of STARTREK.COM

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Fairly interesting episode. Probably not much for CBS D to do.

What? No CGI’ed hearts a’ flutterin’ from Spock’s chest? If you read this CBS-D, be sure they’re green-colored, due to Spock’s Vulcan blood. ;-)

“… for the first time in my life, I was happy.”

After seeing how much Paramount/CBS plans to charge for the upcoming TOS-R DVD set, I’m suprised they are not charging us loyal fans just to watch this preview!!!

Mike :o

PS: Even Quark would be embarrassed to sell the new TOS-R DVD sets at $200 a copy!!

What makes this episode so memorable to me is the wonderful music soundtrack. It’s quite beautiful and really sets the tone and mood. It’s especially effective in those scenes where Spock has been infected with the plant “spores”.

I think Star Trek TOS has one of the best music and special effects soundtracks ever made for a television show. Sadly, music takes a much less prominent role in the later spinoff series.

A good soundtrack really adds to the storyline and Star Trek TOS was full of great musical cues.

I always liked this episode. Looking forward to seeing it again, even though there won’t be much in the way of new effects to observe.

One of my all-time faves.

Agreed on the music, great soundtrack, esp this episode.

And unless my screen (or the preview) is playing tricks, looks like they may have added some Berthold Rays to the planet! Maybe it won’t be just another Earth clone!

Also one of my favourites.

THIS is the reason Kirk would never stay in the nexus lol He rejected fake paradise. He should have been the one dragging old baldy out of it.

I wish CBS could digitally remove the two awful stuntmen in the fight scene between Kirk and Spock. The one as Spock looks more like Frankenstien and you even see the face of the guy whos Kirk for a long time. It’s almost as bad as the ones used for Kirk VS Khan.

Yeah, this episode has the worst example of Obvious Stuntman Syndrome – or at least is tied with “Court-Martial”.

The Obvious Stuntman Syndrome is one of the few things that I dislike about this otherwise bittersweet episode, guest starring the late Jill Ireland.
Also guest starring in this episode is Frank Overton, who also played General Bogan in the Sidney Lumet masterpiece “Fail Safe”.
The music is wonderful and heartwarming, making this one a good “date episode” to share with your special someone, BTW.

O.S.S. indeed!
http://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=50&pos=300

The name of the episode should be changed to…

“The Leslie Mutiny”

Leslie made the trailer!!! Eddie Paskey RULES!!!

#9- Dalek-
Good point, I never thought about that before. Kirk did seem like a wuss in the Nexus in “Generations,” and This Side of Paradise does show the character of the real Kirk, rejecting a false paradise. It’s all just another example, along with the awful way they handled Kirk’s death, of Berman & Company turning gold into, oh, I don’t know, stainless steel?

Tinfoil

Oh my, Jill Ireland what a lovely lady she was!

-cs™

The OSS still reminds me, this is before the third season when the transporter room turned groovy purple.
Cool episode. Great moments from Uhura and McCoy.
Mrs. Charles Bronson in her farmer green jeans… yum.

Hi, Gary Seven.

There’s every chance Berman never saw this story, as the man who ran the later Star Trek franchise for 15 years openly admits he never bothered to watch all of them!

Well, to be fair, Kirk Did say in Generations “I think the Universe owes me one!”. Even heroes deserve a day off I spose. True, it was very un-Kirkian but hey… if you got offered fake paradise every time you turned around, wouldn’t you be tempted to try it just once?

The Synication Editors better NOT cut Lesie’s Line dammit, it’s like the only time he ever got to say something !

– W –
* Really *

#1- Not much for CBS D to do?

I Totally agree with #9

I appreciate them fixing the Big E and the planets and the occasional Phaser fire, but every once and a while something in these eps just sits up and yells FIX ME!

(the problem was not only Treks- Some of Irwin Allen’s stuff also has this problem when seen on DVD)

I don’t know if the technology is available to fix these shorts of stunt man shots- but it would be great if they at least thought about it

If Left unfixed, viewing it in HD may make the issue more pronounced.

I could never figure out why sometimes they had stuntmen and other times Shatner really was drop-kicking, which is probably one of the most dangerous fighting moves to do since it involves you landing on your own ass. Sometimes the stuntmen are performing rather ordinary stunts – simple stage punches and such. I just don’t get it. Shatner’s stunt timing especially was very good, Nimoy, not so much.

On some behind-the-scenes stunt show back in the stuntacular 70s, I recall some stunt pros saying that fights are much more dangerous than other more dangerous-looking things like falls and such. Those guys said they dreaded doing fights with actors, because actors don’t know how to pull their punches.

In the first season it did seem like they used stunt men an awful lot, and weren’t too good at concealing it with clever camera work. In the second and third season, it seemed like the actors did a lot more of it, or at least they covered it up better. One first season sequence that always astonishes me that they obviously DIDN’t use stunt men for Kirk and Spock was the bombardment of Cestus III in Arena — doesn’t Shatner claim that was the show where he got his terrible tinnitus from being too close to an explosion?

Scott B. out.

steve623, Come in steve623 – –

Have seen the Remastered episode. Not much going on FX wise this week. Until you reach the very end of the segment. A New Orbital Shot just before the ship departs. Then when the ship does leave orbit we once again have a nice “looking through the Warp Nacelles” rear view of the receding planet. Finally a shot of the planet on the left side of the screen as the Enterprise passes in an already established flyby.

The real punch for this week is the New Transfer, Jill Ireland and the sad fact that Frank Overton would be dead soon in real life.

23. Kirk’s Girdle – July 28, 2007

I would think they used professional stunt ment to save time. If you have an hour show and limited production time do you want to spend countless hours/days training actors (regulars and guests) the moves. Or, can you get a crew that is used to working together that can, if necessary, run a “canned” fight sceen.

yes “25”…..
…, sadly Frank Overton, of “12 O’CLOCK HIGH” fame died of a massive heart attack… just 3 days after completing this very episode of Star Trek.

:-(

#27 Yes, I remember him also as the Sheriff in “To Kill a Mockingbird”.

Just saw it too. One thing that I thought was nice is the planet. They subtly show the Berthold rays by the green glow near the north and south poles. Especially nice as you see it on the dark side of the planet too.

One odd edit is when Kirk beams back to the ship after talking to the possessed Spock and Sandoval, they edited it oddly by adding a ship orbit scene when it should show an empty bridge right before he gets out of the turbo lift.

I think CBS or the editing contractor goofed here. Or they needed to do this as a dissolve made the original shot impossible. I will have to review the original.

Yep, just checked the DVD, it was a mistake, after Kirk walks out of the house, the scene cuts from there to an empty bridge. Here they added the ship in orbit shot and cut out a lot of the scene on the bridge. Likely for time. It was definitely wrong, either by mistake or deliberate.

Hope the HD DVD’s won’t have this goof!

Maybe Anthony can ask the remaster folks if he sees them at Comic Con.

It’s funny, back when I was a kid watching the show I never noticed the stuntment. Now, being so extremely familiar with Shatner and Nimoy’s movements and bodies, they stand out really obviously!

Did they add some kind of glow to parts of the planet in the long range shots? Those shots look weird. Anyone else notice that?

Is that the rays effect on the planet?

#32 – “Did they add some kind of glow to parts of the planet in the long range shots?”

#29 Nelson thinks that is meant to show Berthold Rays and I believe that was probably CBS Digital’s intent. The Planet has this glow at the poles throughout the episode.

PS For those watching the developments of the Next Movie – – if McCoy is anywhere near the film – – remember his statement in this episode – – “It accurately recorded my lack of tonsils [recall, those grew back by the end of the episode] and those TWO BROKEN RIBS I had once.” – – there’s a story there. How did this injury occur and when? It would be a nice touch to weave stated events like this into the next movie’s story.

Right about the ribs, Greg – the way DeForest Kelley delivers the line, the inference is that McCoy expects Kirk to remember when he broke those ribs.

As far as the show, not too much to change this week, although the Berthold rays addition was a nice tough and not overdone. This was an episode that benefited enormously from being shot on location, not unlike “Shore Leave”, with a location beautiful enough that you could believe people leaving behind the luxuries of the 23rd century to live there.

One subtextural aspect of this episode that I always thought was interesting was the inference one could draw from the set decoration – the old-fashioned dwellings and barn, the fences, the rustic decor, the farming implements – were the colonists settling on Omicron Ceti III trying to recreate a lifestyle from the past that no longer existed, perhaps in deliberate rejection of modern life? I realize from a practical production standpoint, it was just making good use of standing sets and available set dressing, but it gives rise to an interesting idea that could have been explored a bit.

#34 – “perhaps in deliberate rejection of modern life?”

Agreed – – almost an “Amish” culture or [gasp] the “One” concept from “The Way to Eden”.

I feel you’re right about the McCoy line delivery also – – McCoy does expect Kirk to know all about his injury.

## 34 & 35:

That line about the broken ribs is another example of the care taken by all concerned on TOS to create a credible universe. Even though the show was set in the future and the crew met all manner of improbable happenings, people were still people with all kinds of hints to a backstory we never were meant to see.

This is similar to Dr. Watson’s injury from a jezail bullet suffered during his Indian service. The reader is given a tantalizing hint about Watson’s past, but we are charged with filling in the blanks.

As for the rustic set design, it was yet a further example of Star Trek expecting the audience to contribute something. To pick up on the Amish example, no one in 21st century America would require an explanation for the lack of electricity or presence of horse-drawn carriages in an Amish community, and it would ring false if a character in a story set in such a place would comment directly on the anachronism. Star Trek had that kind of faith in its viewers, that they would connect the dots.

This was a key to the success of the show, the recognition that the future had to be treated as commonplace. As Roddenberry noted, Joe Friday never explained the workings of a .38 Special; thus, Spock would never describe how a phaser worked.

As a side note, it is interesting that Robert Picard’s digs were equally quaint and that he apparently shared the Sandoval party’s mistrust of contemporary amenities.

#29 -30:

Kirk’s entrance onto the empty bridge has been edited out of the syndicated version of the episode since the late eighties. In fact, many of the cuts people have complained about during this remastered project were initially made to the syndication package of the unremastered episodes during that time period. To my eye, those cuts look to be the basis of the cuts made to the currently syndicated remastered eps. They do occasionally tweak the cuts a bit more; for example, the remastered version of “The Menagerie” part one put back some material that had been cut in the mid-eighties, but cut different material.

In the eighties edits (seen from about 1987 to Sci-Fi getting the shows in the late nineties), the editing approach seemed to be:

a.) to remove many establishing shots/Enterprise fly-by’s in the middle of the episodes, then

b.) to remove “extraneous” Captain’s Log entries from the middle of episodes, then finally:

c.) to remove lines of dialogue – or even entire scenes – to bring them down to the new running times.

The syndicated remasters seem to follow the same editing approach.

Do the plants still act as a suppository? LOL

Thanks Donald- However, it seemed odd that they added a shot of the Enterprise in orbit, instead of a straight scene change from Sandoval’s house to the empty bridge of the Enterprise, they added the orbit shot in between!

stunning……simply stunning orbital shots

Just wondering…but when the remastered eps are released on CD…for what, something like $2000!!!, will the edited for syndication scenes be restored?

For that price, you should be getting full length eps.

Does anyone know?

#41:

Yes, episodes will be full length. In fact, you can get full length episodes now on iTunes (but they have only 11 of them).

Thanks tronnei…before I take out a second mortgage on my house to finance this purchase, it’s nice to know what I’m getting!

:))

Your father was a COMPUTER! And your mother an ENCYCLOPEDIA!!!!

I love that line :)

wheres the episode review screen shots..etc?

need my tos fix!

I would think that one of the big fixes they’d want to do with this episode would the obviously antiquated (even by today’s standards) computer innards underneath whichever bridge console they’re fiddling with to make the anti-spore sonics. I doubt “real” Duotronics would look much like transistors on circuit boards.
I can understand why the original set designers didn’t bother to make the effort to “futurize” the computer innards. In the ’60s, anything electronic already seemed futuristic to the layperson.

About the comparison of Kirk in this episode with Kirk in Generations, I don’t think that is analogous.
In “This Side of Paradise”, Kirk is in the prime of his career, commanding his beloved starship, and making a difference in the galaxy. In Generations, he’s retired, his starship and its replacement long gone, feels useless and lacks direction (two common symptoms of retirement), and has a lot more regrets and emotional baggage. Temptation would be a whole lot stronger for older Kirk.
Kirk probably knew Picard was right from the start, but didn’t want to admit it to himself at first. I always thought he convinced too easily to really want to stay in the Nexus.

#36:

“As a side note, it is interesting that Robert Picard’s digs were equally quaint and that he apparently shared the Sandoval party’s mistrust of contemporary amenities. ”

And look what it got him: Himself, his wife, and his son killed in a fire (STAR TREK: GENERATIONS).

#45:

I hope they haven’t forgotten. You know, with the whole ComicCon and everything.