Thande

Donor
And so the Paramountain crumbles...

GW466H197


Certainly a dramatic end to the Trial of the Century.
 
and you say you hate lucas arrogance, but well, only hope next journey of the force to bomb hard, that would be hilarous
 
Thought something like that might happen. Excellent conclusion to the POD.

You're from Orange County? I'm typing this right now from one of the few places in Irvine that isn't owned by the Irvine Company.
Yep, grew up in La Habra and Fullerton.

Is that still there? I have fond memories of seeing the Snoopy-themed area there in 1992.
Sure is. Locally it's much more popular than Disneyland because of affordability and better rides.
 
Another cracking update !

A 1980s where financial regulation is going to be tightened rather than relaxed is going to be very different to OTL.

And Lucas has won all the resources he needs to achieve his artistic vision. The sequel will no doubt feature Jedi Master Jar-Jar on the planet of the Ewoks :eek: .

Cheers,
Nigel
 
I believe Ewoks, and to a lesser extent Binks and pod-racing, came about because IOTL Lucas' profit was from merchandise. So he kept trying to put things in his movies that would sell toys. Without that sort of temptation, who knows where the Star Wars sequels would have gone?
 
No, the Ewoks came to be because he wanted to use his idea of furry primitives fighting stormtroopers. Originally these would have been the Wookiees but during the evolution of the script the role of the Wookiees was severly reduced and only Chewbacca remained. For Episode VI he revived the idea and turned the Wookiees into Ewoks. But his original ideas was used in Episode III.
 
Thank you all for your patience in awaiting this latest update, and for your many enthusiatic responses after it was posted! As many of you surmised, this update was very much a turning point, and marks the beginning of the end (only three more cycles to go!). I myself haven't posted in this thread for a while, so before I reply to your responses, I hope you don't mind if I clear out the backlog first.

And all thanks to Mrs Ball, Gene Roddenberry, the Cast, Crew, and all the fans!
She went by Miss Ball, actually, even when she was married to Desi. Check out her wardrobe credit on I Love Lucy for proof ;)

I remember the 30th anniversary, I was in Canada and bought a book/extended magazine thing on the subject which was full of really tenuous "Canadian Connections" to Star Trek as it put them :p
That comes as absolutely no surprise to me; the Canadian media is notoriously parochial. Of course, Star Trek does have legitimate "Canadian Connections" through the casting of both William Shatner and James Doohan, but something tells me that those alone weren't nearly enough to fill the magazine :p (I have no doubt that Genevieve Bujold was mentioned, for one.)

Sure am! Although as an Orange County resident there's also the disillusionment one gets by being so near to the Disney colossus. But there's always Knott's.
Look on the bright side - at least you don't live in Orlando! :eek:

And, yes, I really should have said "early '60s," I'm probably used to family stories where they didn't get a color TV till 1970 or so. I know on the Hogan's Heroes DVDs, the start of the show says, "CBS presents this program in color." Which may have spurred some people to go out and buy color TVs, if they did that with a lot of shows.
They did do that with a lot of shows. The promotion of colour television was at least as ubiquitous in its day as stereo and HD would be in the generations that followed. I submit to you this famous ident which, among other things, opened every episode of Star Trek (IOTL and ITTL, as fortunately they kept using it in various capacities well past 1971).

As the timeline winds to a close, just a thought. What are your plans after this? You intend to go back to that "Harry Potter on the Small Screen." idea you had a few years ago, or do you plan on writing a new timeline? Just asking.
Other than returning to Harry Potter and the Small Screen, I'm not going to commit to anything else upon completing TWR for the time being. Thanks for your interest, though :)

I'm surprised at how impressive these images are! Very well done compositing by Acosta, and it really speaks to how bustling and vibrant the sets were.

Some interesting opinions about Rodenberry and Leonard Maizlish there. I can only hope that ITTL Gene does not fall to bottle or worse- though his interest in Trek seems to have died off by the 80's anyway.
Some intriguing speculation here, and you will have answers, at least as regards Roddenberry's future in television, in the coming updates.

I just finish reading over 50 pages of That Wacky Redhead. My life in the real world has limited the time I have to follow your timeline over the past 9 months or so. I glad to see that it is still at the high level that it was when I last read it.
Glad you're still reading, unclepatrick, and thank you for the compliments! :)

unclepatrick said:
I have one question. On your List of Senators, I don't see Howell Heflin? Instead I find George Wallace, I know you said that Wallace did not get shot in this timeline, why would he have decided to run for the Senate?
Rather than run for a fifth term for Governor in 1978, Wallace decided to appoint himself to the Senate upon the death of James Allen, since he had a loyal party apparatus behind him and he would be leaving the gubernatorial seat to a trusted lieutenant to serve as proxy (following the example of Huey Long in Louisiana in the 1930s). The seat that Heflin ran for and won IOTL instead went to ADP Rep. Walter Flowers, a "promotion" for his loyalty and service to Wallace. Our thinking was that Heflin himself would remain in state government, perhaps staying on the judicial bench or filling the void left by Wallace in the state executive. Either way, he would switch parties back to the (National) Democrats in the early 1980s.

unclepatrick said:
He bore things like the SNL joke and the National Enquirer headline that call him one of Ten Members of Congress who were really Aliens with his own Humor.
Speaking of his sense of humour, I felt compelled to share this delightful quote I found which is attributed to Heflin:
Upon seeing photos in the National Enquirer showing U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy copulating with an unknown woman on the deck of Kennedy's boat, he was said to have noted that he was glad Senator Kennedy had "changed his position on offshore drilling".
---

It was worth the wait. :)
Thank you, Mr Teufel! :)

You almost feel bad for Paramount in this TL, for all the failures they endure.
Considering everything they've done IOTL, I can't say I feel terribly sorry for them, which is one reason why I set them up to take the fall.

To quote a man who more than likely doesn't exist ITTL: WOO-HOO!
I appreciate your enthusiasm, Clorox, though surely Homer Simpson was not the first or only person in pop culture history to utter "Woo-Hoo!" :p

Don't feel sorry for Paramount.

Feel sorry for every other Hollywood studio looking at this precedent and their own operations.
Very observant, drakensis. And to add to that: those studios which are more able to adapt to the new situation are more likely to be successful going forward. And those studios which are more able to adapt will also be those which are less ossified and bureaucratic, with strong, innovative leadership at the helm. Does that sound familiar to any of you? :cool:

And so the Paramountain crumbles...

GW466H197


Certainly a dramatic end to the Trial of the Century.
And a fitting epilogue to my post. Thanks for finding that image, Thande, it's just perfect :D

And it makes for a good segue to a link I'd like to share with all of you. IOTL, Star Wars famously opens with the 20th Century Fox fanfare, easily the most iconic sound bite from all the Golden Age studios (excepting perhaps Leo the Lion's roar). Here's how it looked upon the 1977 release IOTL. However, ITTL, since Paramount distributes Journey of the Force, the fanfare used will instead look and sound like this - with the "A LUCASFILM LIMITED Production" card tacked onto the end, as it is for Star Wars IOTL. (If anyone has the video editing skills to make that happen, I would be most obliged.)

Bravo Brainbin. Big wham episode. Was right that Bluhdorn was gonna bite the dust when the hammer dropped.
Indeed you were, though I wonder if you were aware of when he died IOTL, and whether that might have influenced your prediction...

and you say you hate lucas arrogance, but well, only hope next journey of the force to bomb hard, that would be hilarous
No, that would not hilarous. It would be typical.
There's no reason it couldn't be both!

George Lucas may evolve into Darth Vader slowly but surely.
Well, that is what happened IOTL... ;)

I love that, all this time after the PoD, the Paramount and Desilu lots are finally united after all.
In the most perfectly ironic of ways...
Very ironic. We can put that up on the Tv Tropes page.
Thought something like that might happen. Excellent conclusion to the POD.
I'm glad you've all honed in on something I've been planning for a very long time - in fact, ever since before I even started posting the timeline.

It's a shame somewhat- after all, it was from a book [...] that I found out that Paramount had such a long history.
As did all of the film studios from the Golden Age of Hollywood - the problem was that there were too many of them to survive in the long term after the collapse of the studio system (and indeed, one of them - RKO - didn't even make it to the 1960s, though that was due in large part to gross mismanagement by Howard Hughes). Just as IOTL, there would have to be casualties.

Another cracking update !
Thank you, Nigel!

NCW8 said:
A 1980s where financial regulation is going to be tightened rather than relaxed is going to be very different to OTL.
True - but then again, this is already a 1980s without Reaganomics or Thatcherism (or rather, neoliberalism in general), so I might as well follow through, right?

NCW8 said:
And Lucas has won all the resources he needs to achieve his artistic vision. The sequel will no doubt feature Jedi Master Jar-Jar on the planet of the Ewoks :eek:.
Now those sound like pretty bad ideas to me. We'll just have to hope that George has someone who can talk him out of those bad ideas!

I believe Ewoks, and to a lesser extent Binks and pod-racing, came about because IOTL Lucas' profit was from merchandise. So he kept trying to put things in his movies that would sell toys. Without that sort of temptation, who knows where the Star Wars sequels would have gone?

No, the Ewoks came to be because he wanted to use his idea of furry primitives fighting stormtroopers. Originally these would have been the Wookiees but during the evolution of the script the role of the Wookiees was severly reduced and only Chewbacca remained. For Episode VI he revived the idea and turned the Wookiees into Ewoks. But his original ideas was used in Episode III.
Let's not beat around the bush - the Ewoks were a lot more "toyetic", and that's why the Forest Moon of Endor was populated with them instead of Wookiees (because there's no reason it couldn't have been Wookiees), right down to their name being an approximate anagram of "Wookiee". It's quite remarkable, really, how much Return of the Jedi was a dress rehearsal for The Phantom Menace (although the former wasn't quite as heavily merchandised as the latter, because no film in the history of the medium was as heavily merchandised as The Phantom Menace).
 
Let's not beat around the bush - the Ewoks were a lot more "toyetic", and that's why the Forest Moon of Endor was populated with them instead of Wookiees (because there's no reason it couldn't have been Wookiees), right down to their name being an approximate anagram of "Wookiee". It's quite remarkable, really, how much Return of the Jedi was a dress rehearsal for The Phantom Menace (although the former wasn't quite as heavily merchandised as the latter, because no film in the history of the medium was as heavily merchandised as The Phantom Menace).
And both are the worst movies of the series.
The second half of Episode VI was a remake of the battle of Episode IV in combination with an unused idea for Episode IV.
Episode I had other problems (Jar-Jar Binks and the Gungans was only one of them).

And no, Lucas could not use the Wookiees for the final battle because they are no primitives (which they were in the original concept, but both Chewbacca being a superb mechanic and the non-canon Holyday Special which showed Kashyyy made that impossible). So he had to create a new species of furry primitives.
 
Episode I had other problems (Jar-Jar Binks and the Gungans was only one of them).

You're right of course, but I have to admit that I enjoyed BRIAN BLESSED's portrayal of Boss Nass.


And no, Lucas could not use the Wookiees for the final battle because they are no primitives (which they were in the original concept, but both Chewbacca being a superb mechanic and the non-canon Holyday Special which showed Kashyyy made that impossible). So he had to create a new species of furry primitives.

Having a group of primitives defeat a more technically advanced and powerful enemy does have something of a resonance with the Vietnam War. I wonder how much the Battle of Endor was influenced by the Seventies films of that conflict - which won't have been made ITTL.


Cheers,
Nigel.
 

Thande

Donor
That comes as absolutely no surprise to me; the Canadian media is notoriously parochial. Of course, Star Trek does have legitimate "Canadian Connections" through the casting of both William Shatner and James Doohan, but something tells me that those alone weren't nearly enough to fill the magazine :p (I have no doubt that Genevieve Bujold was mentioned, for one.)
They actually described Genevieve Bujold as a "Canadian Dis-Connection". Seriously. :D
And a fitting epilogue to my post. Thanks for finding that image, Thande, it's just perfect :D
I trawled around for a while finding one, I was thinking that with their recent custom ones they might have one with the mountain falling into ruin or looking like Mordor, but the 'worst' I could find was a horror film where it was dyed blood red, so I just went with 'The End' - which has the advantage of looking more appropriate for the era we're talking about.
And it makes for a good segue to a link I'd like to share with all of you. IOTL, Star Wars famously opens with the 20th Century Fox fanfare, easily the most iconic sound bite from all the Golden Age studios (excepting perhaps Leo the Lion's roar). Here's how it looked upon the 1977 release IOTL. However, ITTL, since Paramount distributes Journey of the Force, the fanfare used will instead look and sound like this - with the "A LUCASFILM LIMITED Production" card tacked onto the end, as it is for Star Wars IOTL. (If anyone has the video editing skills to make that happen, I would be most obliged.)
I might be able to achieve that, though not right now as video editing takes a large investment of time.

Other than returning to Harry Potter and the Small Screen, I'm not going to commit to anything else upon completing TWR for the time being.
Very sensible...

Now my opinions of the Star Wars films seems to be a bit different to most, I think because I saw them so relatively late in life--the first time I had ever seen any Star Wars (except a vague memory of the opening chase of the original film being on telly in Wales on a holiday in 1987ish before someone changed the channel) was when the original film's Special Edition was released as "Episode IV: A New Hope" (very confusing for me at the time, though I now know that subtitle had been added to previous re-releases too) in 1997. Actually, I tell a lie, I had seen a vague glimpse of the three films when they were previewed at the start of a VHS tape I bought advertising upcoming releases, so that would've been when the trilogy was first released on VHS. Remember when you could actually fast forward through previews? But I digress.

Anyway, because of this I had a different experience. I rate the original Star Wars trilogy as Return of the Jedi - Empire Strikes Back - original (A New Hope) in descending order of awesome. When I first went to see the Special Edition of A New Hope in 1997, I found it very underwhelming. It was partly that I had seen a lot of ripoffs and 'inspired by' things before the original (e.g. "Battle Beyond the Stars", "The Last Starfighter", and the 80s Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers series). So the original looked kind of...generic by comparison. I lost interest in Star Wars until I got a technical manual for research and got into the Expanded Universe, then got Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi out of the video rental place on VHS to watch. Because that technical manual happened to never mention that Vader was Luke's father, that was a genuine surprise to me at the time--in those days when the internet was still flashing green Courier New text on a black background (and was obsessed with the X-Files to the exclusion of all else), I had somehow managed to miss that spoiler.

Anyway, I really enjoyed Empire Strikes Back - it is certainly the strongest 'middle part of a fake trilogy' film I've seen (a fake trilogy is where somebody makes one self-contained film, it's popular, so he makes two more and pretends it was always intended to be a trilogy when in fact only the second two were written to be deliberately interconnected--see also The Matrix for another example). But to my mind the climax of a story is always the best part unless it is hopelessly disappointing and fails to live up to the potential of what came before (see also, er, The Matrix again). And I don't think Return of the Jedi fails that test. Everyone who talks about it just seems to keep banging on about the Ewoks. And yes, the Ewoks are silly. They are also restricted to a rather unimportant third front of a big awesome three-way battle that also involves one of the best space battles ever filmed (probably the best at the time) and the fantastic dramatic lightsaber fight between Vader and Luke with the great pathos moment when Luke sees that Vader also has an artificial hand and that he is treading the same path as his father. I really do not care that it occasionally cuts away to teddy bears throwing rocks at AT-STs. It makes me raise my eyebrows when people make comparison to The Phantom Menace. The Phantom Menace had silly things (not always just Jar Jar Binks) thrown in your face front and centre from start to finish. To my mind, judging Return of the Jedi based on the Ewoks is like judging, for instance, The Dark Knight poorly because the mayor seems to be wearing eyeliner in one scene. Anyway, that's just my opinion. Put it this way, Return of the Jedi was the only one I unsuccessfully attempted to pirate with a double VHS recorder so I could watch it over and over again :p
 
I think Lucas had always intended to make a series, at least one of the earlier scripts refers to a sequel and gives a bit of a teaser.
Of course it's a teaser that bears no resemblance whatsoever to any of the later films, so, especially given how the basic plot of the original was largely unchanged from the start, it's probable that he just wanted to make a sequel, and only started actually planning it after the film was a success.
 
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