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Dec. 3rd, 2019 11:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynWatched "Errand of Mercy" on Netflix Streaming last night. I take back everything I ever said during the early days of NextGen about how ridiculous the crab-foreheaded Klingons looked, because crab-foreheaded or no, at least they weren't John Colicos in shoe polish and visibly drawn eyeliner facial markings.
Oh, God, the shoe polish fascist Klingons. I don't know which was more painful, the Early Installment Weirdness depiction of Klingon society as imperialist-with-regulations-out-the-yinyang, the facial hair that had apparently been stolen from a Ming the Merciless screen test and slapped onto Mr. Colicos with spirit gum, or the Random Klingon Guys In Shiny Pants And Absolutely No Effort Made At Making Them Look Like Anything Other Than White Guys In Shoe Polish.
.... yeah, it was the last one. I don't remember the Klingons in Day of the Dove or The Trouble With Tribbles being that bad; do they improve as the series goes on or did the Suck Fairy get every single Original Series appearance of the species?
Having said that, I kind of want to have been there at the casting call for the Organian parts. "Okay, we need older men who can look wise, act vaguely fluff-headed, display the apparent spine of Jell-o, and then get so mad at violence that they turn into all powerful lightbulbs and disappear."
Oh, God, the shoe polish fascist Klingons. I don't know which was more painful, the Early Installment Weirdness depiction of Klingon society as imperialist-with-regulations-out-the-yinyang, the facial hair that had apparently been stolen from a Ming the Merciless screen test and slapped onto Mr. Colicos with spirit gum, or the Random Klingon Guys In Shiny Pants And Absolutely No Effort Made At Making Them Look Like Anything Other Than White Guys In Shoe Polish.
.... yeah, it was the last one. I don't remember the Klingons in Day of the Dove or The Trouble With Tribbles being that bad; do they improve as the series goes on or did the Suck Fairy get every single Original Series appearance of the species?
Having said that, I kind of want to have been there at the casting call for the Organian parts. "Okay, we need older men who can look wise, act vaguely fluff-headed, display the apparent spine of Jell-o, and then get so mad at violence that they turn into all powerful lightbulbs and disappear."
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Date: 2019-12-05 01:16 am (UTC)Kommander Kool
Date: 2020-03-09 02:34 pm (UTC)Day of the Dove had Michael Ansara as the Klingon baddie. Nothing more was required: Stage makeup - your “shoe polish” - notwithstanding, the result was so definitive that they brought him back for one of the new series', circa 1990.
[Remember that color television was new, cutting-edge, to where networks made a point of it (“The following program is brought to you in Living Color,” NBC peacock and all) and studios were still adapting, learning. Thus DeForrest Kelley's blue eye-shadow. Plus, those sets were so brilliantly lit - and consequently so hot! - that it might well have been actual shoe polish! What works is good - “… And… Action!”
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Date: 2020-03-09 02:42 pm (UTC)“Errand of Mercy” has one of the bloopers that they just shrugged, heck with it: John Colicos’ lieutenant is caught on camera standing, waiting for his cue to step out and go striding down the corridor to deliver his report.
No time to re-shoot, and as was famously said, it was just a TV show, for cryin’ out loud.