Star Trek (1964) [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: Star Trek (1964) [pdf]

#31

Post by gsatic » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 2:59 AM UTC

dmix wrote: post #18

temporallobe wrote: post #16

This is pure gold. The basic premise of many of those episode ideas at the top turned into actual episodes.

This is why they always tell startup founders to study how Hollywood pitches are done. Putting together a good collection of these would be valuable to founders. Not just for tech startups by anyone selling ideas... Writers selling novels, governments pitching policy ideas, lawyers defending clients, corporate workers pitching new ideas internally, etc etc

Thats all startup founders (and for that matter most Americans who want to succeed) end up studying. Beyond being great salespeople with great stories there is nothing else interesting going on in the mind.

Re: Star Trek (1964) [pdf]

#32

Post by neilv » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 3:01 AM UTC

djbusby wrote: post #29

neilv wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like they were Lost . ("Lost" was an extremely promising SF show that claimed to have a plan, but was revealed not to. Which is unforgivable when the attraction of the show was figuring out the mystery. My own theory is that the wildly successful first season led to the writers purchasing too much celebratory cocaine, and subsequently just phoning it in, while the business people were happy to milk it like a s…

Lost had a plan. Then management wanted to drag out the phenomenon. So the story had to expand, it's how all those arcs that never resolved started. Then suddenly, the fad was over and it needed a quick close. Kinda like how GoT fell off in the last season.

I suppose that happens in tech startups a lot.

(One of the main reasons a side startup of mine fizzled a few years ago was because neither of us wanted to be the CEO, and we didn't know how to find one we'd trust not to kill the magic that would get us the users in the first place.)

Re: Star Trek (1964) [pdf]

#33

Post by jcrawfordor » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 3:06 AM UTC

akamaka wrote: post #20

jcrawfordor wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In '64, this might have been reproduced on a Xerographic photocopier, although it's also possible it was reproduced photographically (to produce offset plates) if they were making a large number. Either way I suspect it's most likely the "Star Trek" lettering was done by hand, but another possibility would be pressure transfer lettering.

I think you’re right about the pressure transfer lettering. Letraset was introduced in 1961, and it looks like their “Brush Script” font. This would have been cutting edge graphic design when Roddenberry wrote it!

Yeah, that makes a lot more sense. Thinking about it more it would be surprising to me if a commercial artist or draftsperson worked on this document and did nothing but the header lettering... there's a reason technical reports from this period with hand lettering or diagrams usually also have an illustrated cover. It's in for a penny, in for a pound on having a commercial artist involved.

Re: Star Trek (1964) [pdf]

#34

Post by techdragon » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 3:10 AM UTC

nelox wrote: post #28

techdragon wrote: post #23

I'm surprised at how jarring the math and background on page 2 feels. It really feels reflective of a different era, coming from a modern perspective Id never dare include something like that, with a big "scary looking formula" that needed explanation text, in the first half dozen pages. I wouldn't trust the reader to care enough to keep reading one word past the formula if I didn't already have them reasonably inves…

I wonder, how has the calculation changed based on current knowledge?

Well given how much we have learned about exoplanets, I'd say that at least one number of the assumptions are rather moot. The "how many stars even have planets" can be assumed to be basically "all of them" statistically speaking. ( https://www.nature.com/articles/nature10684 ) and while we can't yet say much about the specifics of their composition (a spectroscopy of the light passing through earth sized exoplanet atmospheres is at the cutting edge of research, with people mostly still working on new instruments, and trying to find lucky candidates where we can get any reading at all with current instruments) but we can definitely impact the lower bounds a bit here since based on current data, about 1 in 5 stars is suspected to have an earth sized planet. ( https://arxiv.org/abs/1311.6806 )

So the "... if only one in a billion of these stars is a sun with a planet... ... and only one in a billion of these is of earth size--" is now " 1 in every 5 stars has an earth sized planet and if only X% are earth like"

Re: Star Trek (1964) [pdf]

#35

Post by sircastor » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 3:12 AM UTC

neilv wrote: post #27

cwillu wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cylons did not, in fact, have a plan.

Sounds like they were Lost . ("Lost" was an extremely promising SF show that claimed to have a plan, but was revealed not to. Which is unforgivable when the attraction of the show was figuring out the mystery. My own theory is that the wildly successful first season led to the writers purchasing too much celebratory cocaine, and subsequently just phoning it in, while the business people were happy to milk it like a s…

I watched a video wherein Damon Lindelof talks about how they wanted to end the show after 3 seasons. With its success, ABC wanted the show to go on for 10. Apparently the network kept negotiating, not understanding the creators weren’t playing hardball, they wanted to end the show.

There has been plenty of hit shows prior to Lost, but I think it was one of the forerunners of the modern TV show, where the producers were planning on making something complete rather than just an infinite ratings monster.

Re: Star Trek (1964) [pdf]

#36

Post by DonHopkins » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 3:13 AM UTC

cheschire wrote: post #4

Ronald D Moores “series bible” for battlestar galactica is also quite a fun read for fans. A copy is available from the same site, so clearly this person enjoys their sci fi. http://leethomson.myzen.co.uk/Battlestar_Galactica/Battlesta...

>“series bible” for battlestar galactica

You mean the Book of Mormon?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolob#Kolob_as_the_inspiration...

https://www.beliefnet.com/entertainment/movies/2005/05/born-...

https://www.deseret.com/2014/11/22/20553208/mormon-creator-o...

https://www.millennialstar.org/battlestar-galactica-and-morm...

http://www.mormonthink.com/glossary/battlestargalactica.htm

https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-Mormon-themes-in-Battles...

Re: Star Trek (1964) [pdf]

#37

Post by shadowgovt » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 3:15 AM UTC

ArtWomb wrote: post #5

Awesome collection! Pitch bible from He-Man Masters of the Universe is solid gold ;) "Beyond the farthest galaxies viewed by the greatest telescopes on Earth. Beyond the limits of our universe lies another place - a place of magic, myth, sorcery and science. Through the cosmic clouds spins a solar system with a type three star twinkling in the ether of interstellar space. About the star rotate worlds inconceivable to…

The D&D "Deities and Demigods" supplement was published in 1980; first ep of He-Man was '83.

I can't help but wonder if that phrasing was an instance of simple alliterative coincidence or if the He-Man showrunners were tabletop nerds.

Re: Star Trek (1964) [pdf]

#38

Post by Maursault » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 3:16 AM UTC

akamaka wrote: post #8

Not a Star Trek related question, but I noticed that the title is printed in a special cursive font, while the rest of the document is typewritten. What kind of machine would have been used in 1964 to print a custom font for a one-off document?

Though I doubt the document was typeset (because it appears typed by a typewriter), before desktop publishing, and before typesetting computer systems, there was phototypesetting.[1] Because this is only a minor element on one page, I doubt it was phototypeset and instead merely pasted up with type tape... literally rolls of clear tape for every font with one letter on it repeated over and over in all point sizes. Lots and lots of these rolls of tape in production art areas. You cut off the letter from that roll of tape, stick it to the paste up, get the next letter from the next roll, stick it next to the first letter, find the roll for the lower case "a," cut it, trim it with an exacto knife, and place it, find the roll with the lowercase "r" in that font and point size, and so on and so forth. The tape was mostly used for last minute corrections, typos in the photostat type, wasn't really for typesetting a lot of copy, but using 8 letters or more of type tape wasn't out of the ordinary.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phototypesetting

Re: Star Trek (1964) [pdf]

#39

Post by morder » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 3:16 AM UTC

techdragon wrote: post #23

I'm surprised at how jarring the math and background on page 2 feels. It really feels reflective of a different era, coming from a modern perspective Id never dare include something like that, with a big "scary looking formula" that needed explanation text, in the first half dozen pages. I wouldn't trust the reader to care enough to keep reading one word past the formula if I didn't already have them reasonably inves…

If i recall right (from a documentary or interview with roddenberry) is that he made up the equation (though he knew of the drake equation) to justify that aliens exist to the people he was pitching to. I guess they just didn't believe that many aliens would exist.

Re: Star Trek (1964) [pdf]

#40

Post by shadowgovt » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 3:17 AM UTC

soferio wrote: post #12

The very last plot idea, “infestation“, seems to predate and be kinda similar to the Alien franchise.

It ended up manifested, sort of, in "Lights of Zetar" (or, you could make the argument, slumbered in the concept space all the way to Strange New Worlds' "All Who Wander").