alternatehistory.com

I had this idea going in circles in my head and decided to put it in writing, I'm not sure if it's plausible but I hope you like anyway, even if just for the mental image of Bela Lugosi saying "Warp speed!". :D

Star Trek (1956)

Branded as "worst movie of all time" by professional critics but beloved by B-Movie fans, Star Trek will forever be remembered as a famous cinematic turkey.
It features dodgy special effects, scenes that shift from nigth to day time (and vice versa), appalling acting and continuty, and yet it seems do exude a kind of camp, manic charm. Even today fans will post clips of Bela Lugosi's infamous lines such as "Warp speed! Warp speed!" and "Conquer... the universe!" on the internet and sit down with beer and buckets of microwaved popcorn for bad movie nigths.

The origin of this cult classic can be traced to a meeting between its creator, Edward D. Wood Jr, and the man who provided him with the inspiration, Gene Roddenberry. As luck would have it, they happened to sit close to each other at a Californian bar in a summer evening, and small talk turned into a long conversation about writing, creativity, movies and television. They would never meet again but the seeds of "Star Trek" had been sown as Roddenberry talked about one of his ideas for a science fiction story, as Wood would insist later on, "Yes, I made the movie, but the idea that got things going was Gene's all along,".

With the inspiration for what he would call "THE movie" burning in his mind, Wood set out to find financial backers and shoot the story of an encounter between the flying saucers of two rival galactic powers over the planet Rigel 6 which turns a state of war into peace and mutual respect. The rest, as they say, it's history...

Trivia:

It is the longest movie ever and the biggest budget (but still a shoestring effort by Hollywood standards) from Ed Wood and he often called it his favorite. The money would come from a motley collection of financial backers including Wood's grocer and two baptist ministers.

"Star Trek" would also prove to be Bela Lugosi's final appearance on screen, according to those close to him, the project helped to lift his spirits immensily and his health improved for a time, sadly it would not be enough and he would pass away shortly after the movie's release. Because of that it has always had a special place among Lugosi's fans.

Neither one of the rival spaceship captains is mentioned by name during the film, they are always referred as "sir" or "captain" for Bela Lugosi and "master" for Tor Johnson. In the credits they appear only as "Federation captain" and "Klingon warlord".

Also the words "Star Trek" are never said together in the movie, but the Federation crew does speak of their "journey" or "trek" a couple of times.

Whenever someone writes an article or makes documentary that touches the subject of b-movies or 1950's science fiction a particular image of a man in a dark uniform with a cape, a peaked hat in his hand and a small sword at his side will probably show up, that is naturally, Bela Lugosi in his role as a starship captain.

Likewise, the image of Tor Johnson sitting on the throne at his starship's bridge with a tankard at his side and an eye patch has been reproduced or posted on the internet time and again, and as any fan will tell you, the eye patch did add it's little contribution to make the movie's continuity a little shakier, as it switches from a eye to another a couple of times.

Wood enlisted the the cast and crew's creativity to create the sets for the interior of his spaceships, people were encouraged to bring whatever "science-ish" objects they would stumble upon to fill "control panels" and walls. Likewise the cast would end up handling the fishing rods when the time came to put the flying saucer "miniatures" (actually hubcaps) in front of the camera.

Stock footage would help a lot in the creation of the scenes at the planet's surface, continuity suffered however, leading to the (in)famous nigth\day (and vice versa) switches.

Roddenberry always denied that there was any kind of conflict between him and Wood over the use of his ideas, indeed he wasn't even aware that that night had ever led to anything until the movie became known as a cult classic much later on. Likewise he would deny rumors that Wood had taken an outline or documents from him, as he would put it, "We were just drinking and rambling, shooting half-baked ideas, the actual work is all his.".

The idea of the crew of "troubleshooters" patrolling and exploring the galaxy never left Roddenberry's mind and eventually he would turn it into on of the most famous sci-fi franchises of all time, that is of course, "Andromeda".



That's it folks. Thoughts? Ideas? Anyone out there with alternate Star Treks of their own?
Top