Chapter One: The Pilots
"The Cage" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before"
Fred B. Phillips watched carefully from the shadows behind a camera on Desilu's Sound Stage 16 at the studio in Culver City as the first take of the day, Scene 15 in the transporter room of the Enterprise, was about to begin. Already in position on the transporter pads, Captain Pike, Mr. Spock, Tyler, and Boyce were waiting to beam down to the surface of Talos IV in response to a distress call from a science vessel that had crashed years earlier. Fred Phillips, the head of makeup for what he and the show's creator, Gene Roddenberry, hoped would become a regular series, looked at the characters for any beads of sweat under the hot lights. Phillips was especially concerned about the pointed ears on the actor Leonard Nimoy, who was playing Spock, the alien on the bridge crew whose makeup was particularly critical to the look of the new show. Even a hint that the appliances on his ears were slipping, a seam between the rubber and the glue, would be enough to ruin the entire shot. But the scene went on, Pike and his team rematerialized on the surface of Talos IV, and the first scenes of Star Trek were laid down on film.
What was unfolding before the eyes of the cast and crew on the day after Thanksgiving, November 27, 1964, was something brand-new, a type of science fiction that owed more to the television adult Westerns of the late 1950s and C. S. Forrester's Horatio Hornblower novels than to the action-adventure science fiction shows of early television. The genre had been popular throughout the 1950s, evolving into The Outer Limits in the early 1960s, which set a standard for the look of otherworldly creatures, bizarre aliens, and odd-looking props.
Critical to Roddenberry's vision of the future was the look of his characters' the costuming and the equipment they carried, and the makeup design of the aliens. From the very start, Roddenberry wanted one of the regular characters on the Enterprise bridge crew to be an alien, part his concept for a multi-ethnic, multispecies future of humanity. The alien on the bridge, humanlike in many respects but definitely an extraterrestrial, was a Vulcan Starfleet officer named Spock, whose makeup would go through several transformations before the show finally found its way onto the airwaves.
In creating Spock, Roddenberry wanted to reinforce the notion that there is always an alien presence on the show. But at the heart of the matter, Roddenberry wanted a different perspective, that of an outsider looking in, a "stranger in a strange land." Makeup was vital to the creation of Spock's character because it was important that Spock not only act different, but look different, without being bizarre or monstrous. Also, Spock had to represent a clean break from 1950s science fiction features; no skintight space suits or oversized helmets. Spock was a real character and not a piece of alien comic relief.
Accordingly, the artistry of makeup and hair would be an essential component of Spock, as well of the other Star Trek aliens. But it was the early 1960s, and what Roddenberry was asking for was difficult to accomplish given the shooting schedule of an episodic television series and the types of makeup and appliances available at that time. Even a short time spent watching reruns of The Outer Limits episodes from the early 1960s will reveal the kinds of makeup devices typically used to create an otherworldly look for alien characters. Roddenberry wanted Spock to be able to amalgamate into the rest of the bridge crew yet stand out just enough to be recognized as an alien. And Spock's character had to have the same range of movement as the human characters. This was a challenge.
In Roddenberry's first description of Spock in the show's bible, he wrote:
The First Lieutenant. The Captain's right-hand man, the working-level commander of all the ship's functions -- ranging from manning the bridge to supervising the lowliest scrub detail. His name is Mr. Spock. And the first view of him can be almost frightening -- a face so heavy-lidded and satanic you might almost expect him to have a forked tail. Probably half Martian, he has a slightly reddish complexion and semi-pointed ears. But strangely -- Mr. Spock's quiet temperament is in dramatic contrast to his satanic look. Of all the crew aboard, he is the nearest to Captain April's equal, physically and emotionally, and as a commander of men. His primary weakness is an almost catlike curiosity over anything the slightest "alien."
Spock was originally conceived as a red-skinned alien, according to Samuel A. Peeples, the author of Star Trek's second pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before." In an interview in The Star Trek Interview Book Peeples recalls that Spock had fiery ears and a plate in the middle of his stomach. He didn't eat or drink, but he fed upon any form of energy that struck this stomach plate. Peeples told Roddenberry that in his opinion this effectively destroyed Spock as an interesting character, because he was no longer a recognizable human being. It was Peeples's idea, he told the interviewer, that Spock should be half human and have problems resulting from both sides of his character and personality.
Roddenberry took Peeples's advice and brought Spock back to a more human look. He was also being realistic, because the makeup budget didn't allow for the re-creation of exotic designs that would reinvent the makeup industry. They had to use what they had, rely on the resources of the studio as well as outsource to companies that could work on very tight budgets. The budget restrictions also meant that, as much as possible, conventional makeup would have to define the look of aliens. The fundamental differences between aliens and humans would be best represented by different habits and conventions that would be translated into story. As Roddenberry wrote in the show's bible:
Alien Life. Normal production casting of much of this alien is made practical by the SIMILAR WORLDS CONCEPT To give continual variety, use will, of course, have to be made of wigs, skin coloration, changes in noses, hands, ears, and even the occasional addition of tails and such.
As exciting as physical differences, and often even more so, will be the universe's incredible differences in social organizations, customs, habit, nourishment, religion, sex, politics, morals, intellect, locomotion, family life, emotions, etc.
Also for Roddenberry, the look of aliens and strange new worlds on Star Trek was defined by the still infant technology of broadcasting a show in color. A majority of household television sets were still black-and-white. NBC was one of the first networks to have a color television series, gambling that the popularity of Bonanza would sell the concept of color television to America's growing television audience. But by 1964 there was still a lot of uncertainty as to how well television would pick up subtle color skin tones.
Makeup artist Frank Westmore was one of the early explorers in the field of makeup for color television. He was hired by Paramount, where Bonanza was filmed, to run a series of color makeup tests to see how full-color makeup transmitted. His experiment also had to determine the colors most compatible with black-and-white so that broadcasting in color didn't make the images on a black-and-white set look so indistinct that it turned away viewers. For example, if an artist applied a fantasy makeup using bright reds, greens, or blues, they could look indistinguishable on a black-and-white set. So the television production studios needed a color-compatibility chart. Frank Westmore devised a chart, which quickly became a benchmark for color to black-and-white compatibility.
First, Gene Roddenberry had to convince his network that Star Trek had to be in color. NBC was reluctant to make a commitment to color in 1964 because of the expense and the lack of an audience for the new show. Roddenberry explained to the network that one of the most important premises of the show's artistic and makeup design was color. He explained that it would make no sense for the Enterprise to visit strange new worlds only to find that the atmosphere looked the same shades of gray. By the simple use of color filters and lighting gels, the blue sky of Earth would become the red sky of Mars without expensive set design. Color would solve a multitude of production issues.
Color was not only a more effective way to deliver the show's premise, Roddenberry argued, it added a dimension of believability to the series that could not be conveyed in black-and-white. Without color, how could he show the distinction between aliens and humans without expensive and bizarre makeup appliances? If Mr. Spock was redtoned, how would that show up in gray? And how could Vina, the green-skinned yet otherwise perfectly human Orion slave girl, appear to be an exotic alien when she was only a deeper shade of gray in black-and-white? When NBC agreed to finance a color production, Roddenberry moved on to the next issues, the casting and final makeup of Mr. Spock.
After selecting Leonard Nimoy to play Spock, Roddenberry had to work the look of the alien into something believable within the restrictions of his budget. He hired Lee Greenway, the creator of the monster in Howard Hawks's 1951 film The Thing, as the production company's makeup artist, whose first assignment was the design of the alien Mr. Spock. Leonard Nimoy and Greenway had worked together before, in a small feature called Kid Monk Baroni years earlier. Greenway first tried to manipulate some papier-mâché, and then literally poured liquid latex over Nimoy's ears. With no budget and no time to prepare, the prefabricated appliances that Greenway would have liked to create just weren't available. He had to build this character on the spot from scratch.
Pressing on, Greenway next covered up the outer half of Nimoy's eyebrows with mortician's wax and began the painstaking process of gluing a new eyebrow, this time slanted up toward the pointed ears. Then came the deep-reddish-tint skin dye, and Spock was ready for his first screen makeup test. The test was shot on the set of The Lucy Show, which was being taped later that evening. As the cameras rolled film, Nimoy turned his head to the left and right, capturing as many angles of the alien makeup as possible for this first test, which would tell the producers if they'd achieved the alien look they were after.
But this first stab at alien makeup didn't work. On the color monitors the makeup looked passable, but for the majority of homes that still had black-and-white televisions, Leonard Nimoy looked like he was wearing pasty Halloween makeup. Roddenberry decided that the color base had to be changed for the next screen test. He also wanted other changes to make the character look less like he was a human being wearing funny appliances and more like a humanoid whose features were just different enough to make it clear that he was not of this Earth. Oscar Katz, the president of Desilu, wrote a memo to Roddenberry that read:
EAR: Tone down the pointed ear. It should be cupped more so as to create a more natural look.
HAIR: Should have a bowl shaped haircut with a frayed or jagged look.
EYEBROWS: Should be shaped so as to lead up toward the ears.
Roddenberry next memoed his production team that they needed to find a permanent makeup man with experience in network television series and an ability to create designs for alien characters in a science fiction series. "Is it possible," Roddenberry wrote, "to get a blend of these two qualities?"
Robert Justman, recently hired by Roddenberry as the assistant director and associate producer for "The Cage," knew you needed someone who understood the intricacies of television production but appreciated the complexities of special makeup. Justman also understood that Star Trek needed someone with experience in other science fiction television shows who was capable of setting up his own shop within the production unit, because Desilu Studios had no makeup department. All makeup, except for Lucille Ball's makeup, was done on portable tables right on the set. The new makeup director had to establish what amounted to his own department.
Bob Justman chose Fred Phillips to take over makeup, in part because the two of them had worked together on The Outer Limits, and Justman knew that Fred Phillips understood the genre of science fiction and the importance of not having his extraterrestrials look like the aliens of 1950s B movies. Phillips had also developed a series of prosthetics and appliances that could be mixed and matched and that helped manage a makeup and effects budget that could have gotten out of control.
Time was very tight as the Star Trek team approached the first day of shooting for the pilot. Spock's makeup had to be fixed, and Phillips had another major test to perform. It was on the character of Vina transformed by the Talosians into the green-skinned Orion slave girl. This was an especially important test, almost as important as Spock, because the appearance of the slave girl had to sell the tension of the scene by shaking the reserve of Captain Pike, who must refuse to succumb to the intense sexuality of the mate selected for him by his keepers, the Talosians. As the script described Vina:
Wild! Green skin, glistening as if oiled. Her fingertips are long gleaming razor-edge scimitars, her hair not unattractive but suggesting a wild animal mane. She is moving out to the open rectangle in front of the table, eyes wild. We feel she's larger than before, immensely strong. The female slaves have hurried off, frightened. But one is slower and Vina suddenly pivots with a CAT SOUND, bars a frightened female slave's escape.
This was a critical test of how the green would look in color as well as black-and-white. However, because actress Susan Oliver had not yet been selected to play the role, the only woman on the set was the actress playing Captain Pike's first officer, Number One, Majel Barrett. She agreed to be the stand-in for the test.
In those days of early color television, the processing of the film could make colors read very differently from the way they were shot. As a result, the early television makeup artists went through much the same processes as their feature-film counterparts did in the early days of Technicolor. But for Gene Roddenberry and Fred Phillips, this was a first. No one had ever tried to make an actress green on television before, and not even Fred Phillips was sure how it would turn out.
Phillips applied several different shades of green greasepaint to Majel's face and arms before she was set up on Stage 15, where she was to be photographed in front of a neutral gray backdrop. Then, in test after test, they shot footage of Majel at different exposures and with different changes to the lighting on the set. They experimented with different angles to see how the green would register under a variety of conditions, especially because of the dance sequence. Then they wrapped for the day and waited. And the next morning, the dailies arrived from the lab.
As a shocked production team watched the footage in the Desilu screening room, a beige flesh-toned Majel Barrett showed off her invisible pigment to the camera. There was no green at all. What had gone wrong? Maybe it was the Eastman negative film, Justman thought, that couldn't replicate the color green. But Phillips knew it had to be something else, something in the makeup. But he couldn't figure out what it could be. Why wouldn't standard green greasepaint show up on this film the way it had shown up in scores of Westerns for the past ten years?
Gene Roddenberry said the pigment was probably too light and asked Fred to use a deeper value of green for the next day's test. But, although Fred saturated the greasepaint with deeper and deeper shades of green on the next day's test, the dailies still came back beige the following morning. And the same thing happened on the third day of testing, even though Fred tried as many combinations of green pigment as he could think of. As green as Majel was painted, she looked normal in the next morning's dailies. It simply made no sense.
In frustration, Roddenberry finally called the color lab to see what kinds of filters he could use or different arrangements of lighting and gels to get the green skin color he wanted.
"You mean she was supposed to be green?" one of the lab technicians asked. "We thought the cinematographer had the camera settings all wrong so we retimed the print so the actress would look regular. We were up half the night correcting for the green."
With the problem of the Orion slave girl's skin tone settled, Fred Phillips turned to Spock's skin tone. The red tint had been abandoned, because on black-and-white screens Nimoy's face was jet black against his black hair. Instead, Phillips ordered "Chinese" makeup from Max Factor, a yellowish green that made Spock look alien on a color monitor and slightly off-gray in black-and-white. His eyebrows, now fashioned out of handlaid yak hair, were working out, and the bowl-shaped haircut and pointed sideburns made him look different from the rest of the crew. But the ears were still a problem.
Fred Phillips didn't think that Projects Unlimited, the company commissioned by Desilu for all the props and alien costumes, was capable of fabricating a finely crafted set of ear appliances. So, rather than spend the two or three days before the first shooting day fighting with the studio, he threw out the latest set of ears from Projects Unlimited and called Charlie Schram at MGM, asking whether the master appliance designer could figure out how to make a pair of foam latex Peter Pan ears in less than two days. Schram said he needed Leonard's ears to work on, so Fred took him over to MGM, where Schram made a cast of Nimoy's ears and fitted them with perfectly formed tips.
By the first day of shooting, Phillips was fitting the new appliances to Leonard Nimoy's ears and gluing them into place with Max Factor spirit gum to blend the edge of the appliance on to the skin. Leonard's ear points still stuck out too far, so before he got him onto the set, Phillips used double-sided toupee tape on the backside edges of Leonard's ears to affix them to the side of his head. That way the pointed ears looked normal -- normal for an alien.
Phillips watched as Pike, Spock, and the rest of the team completed the scene in the transporter room. His creation, Spock, had finally come together. His skin tone and ears made it possible for Spock to blend with the rest of the bridge crew as if he had always been there. In a sense, it allowed the audience to accept an extraterrestrial as a hero instead of a monster. But even as the morning's shooting ended, Phillips's next project would be already heading over to Desilu for the makeup test. It was the Talosians, Meg Wyllie, Georgia Schmidt, and Selena Sande, a novel experiment in casting and makeup.
Originally, the Talosians had been described in the treatment as crablike creatures. But as the script evolved from the treatment it became obvious that crab creatures, even if they didn't look like throwbacks to 1950s B horror movies, lacked the credibility and mobility to deliver the subtle message of the story and would be too expensive given the amount of stage time and interaction with the other characters that they required. The Talosians had to be humanoid without being human; more alien than Mr. Spock, but not too alien to look incongruous as a rescuer and then keeper of Vina. Also, the aliens had to have a perceived weakness that would challenge and even frustrate Christopher Pike until he found the key to their undoing.
During preproduction, Roddenberry and his director, Robert Butler, came up with the idea of casting women as unisex aliens. Women brought a delicacy and fragility that went beyond makeup and wardrobe. Now the trick was to create a makeup that would make the Talosians seem ominous even though they were smaller and much less physically formidable than Captain Pike. Accordingly, Roddenberry decided to give them enormous bald heads with minute ears. This allowed the characters to remain diminutive and almost non-threatening because of their size, but still inspire an otherworldly fear because they looked alien.
The Talosians were the creation of Projects Unlimited chief designer and partner Wah Ming Chang, one of the most legendary makeup and prop designers in Hollywood. Wah Chang, who would later design some of the most famous aliens on the Star Trek series, had already been designing alien creatures and monsters for The Outer Limits when he was hired to fabricate the huge foam latex heads for the Talosians. Part of Wah's genius was the development of what would become known as the "bladder effect," which was essentially a makeup prop that turned the thought communication of the Talosians into a visual effect.
To create a piece of stage business as a visual counterpart to the Talosian dialogue, Roddenberry needed an effect to show that the Talosians were actually doing something when they projected their thoughts into the minds of their subjects. Wah Chang accomplished this by creating a rubber bladder device that looked like a large vein just beneath the skin on the Talosian's forehead. The bladder was controlled by means of a flexible tube that ran down the back of the appliance neck and underneath the loosely flowing costume to a long tube that was connected to a rubber squeeze bulb held by Bob Justman below the camera. Keeping time with the dialogue, Justman squeezed the bulb, which expanded the vein in the Talosian's forehead and gave the illusion of a pulsating vein as the Talosian's thoughts were projected into the brains of its captives.
The final lead role was filled when Susan Oliver was cast to play Vina. Phillips quickly discovered that making a person's face green was a lot easier than making up a whole body. Greasepaint creases and cracks as it folds upon itself. After the first few setups, Susan began to streak, and then she turned blotchy. Phillips had to have her retouched before every new setup so the makeup would stay even.
Later on in the episode Susan Oliver went through another, equally famous, makeup change. The Talosians revealed to Christopher Pike the true appearance of Vina, a badly wrinkled, maimed, scarred, and deformed accident victim whose injuries were beyond the Talosian medical expertise to repair. The beautiful young woman who had wooed Pike was only an illusion. How to not only create the look of a twisted and mangled victim but to achieve the transformation right on camera? That was the challenge that faced Fred Phillips and the production team.
The first step was to shoot a few feet of film of beautiful Susan as a "lock-down" shoot, a camera in a fixed position so there'd be no indication that the actor had moved during the transformation. Susan herself was "locked" into position by a head brace that prevented any movement from shot to shot. In other words, each time she returned with new makeup she'd be photographed in exactly the same position as the previous shot. After the initial footage of the alluring Vina, Susan left the set -- a "hot set" on which nothing was allowed to be touched -- for a makeup change. Fred stippled liquid latex onto Susan's eyelids, which were stretched down to prevent the latex from sticking to itself during the application. Then a coating of powder was applied to her eyelids to prevent them from sticking when they were released. All of this created a wrinkled, drooping effect, making her look tired, sick, and in pain. When Fred Phillips added shading to her eyes and shadows to her face, she looked drawn and old -- the antithesis of the vital young woman Captain Pike thought she was.
With the first stage of her new makeup applied, Susan was returned to the set, where she was again put into the head brace. Now a few more feet of film were shot and she went back to the makeup chair. This time Fred molded a broken nose for the actress out of latex, more shadows were applied, the faintest outlines of a scar were applied across her forehead, and a device was inserted into the left side of her mouth to draw it down. Then it was back to the set for a few more feet of film before she was returned for the next phase of the makeup.
Now, Vina's scars were deepened and, with the insertion of a prosthetic foam hump device beneath her costume, her body looked broken. Back to the set and then back to the chair for a larger hump to complete the physical disfiguration, the application of latex growths on her face to make her truly grotesque without becoming bizarre, and more discoloration to complete the effect. By the time she was returned to the lock-in position on the set for the final piece of photography, she had become something pitiable and monstrous at the same time. When the transformation footage was edited, the result was about fifteen seconds of one dissolve after another in one of the most memorable sequences in all of Star Trek.
But for all that work, and all that money, NBC rejected the final version of "The Cage." "Too cerebral," they called it, and they still didn't buy the character of Spock. They felt his pointed ears would offend religious members of the television audience. Moreover, they were unhappy with a female Number One who, they said, didn't relate to the mostly male test audience. Men found her too threatening, the network said; they actually hated the character.
However, the network was so impressed with the concept of Star Trek that they gave Roddenberry the green light for another pilot, provided that he stayed with a substantially reduced budget and turned in three new scripts prior to shooting the second pilot. There would be no new sets, because of the expense involved in creating the first Enterprise and Talos IV, and the network capped Roddenberry's production budget at $300,000.
Roddenberry submitted "Where No Man Has Gone Before," by Samuel A. Peeples, the script that would become the second pilot; "The Omega Glory," which Roddenberry wrote himself; and "Mudd's Women," the teleplay by Stephen Kandel from a story by Roddenberry. While innovative, "Mudd's Women" was more of a cerebral comedy and not science fiction enough for the network. "Omega Glory" carried too much backstory for a pilot episode. Of the three scripts, "Where No Man Has Gone Before" was a straight-line science fiction adventure, which was exactly what the network was looking for.
Roddenberry's first battle with the network was over the character of Spock. Fighting hard, he got the network to agree with him that Mr. Spock was vital: he embodied the very essence of the new science fiction that Star Trek represented, an alien presence amid a crew of humans in a century where extraterrestrial creatures were part of a greater galactic society. As part of the bargain, Roddenberry surrendered Number One and transferred her cold, logical demeanor to Spock. Roddenberry also agreed to keep Spock in the background, not give him too many lines, and transform him into more of a visual presence than a critical member of the crew. As a result, the Mr. Spock of the second pilot emerges as just the first officer. The second pilot also featured the arrival of William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk, the new captain of the Enterprise.
Fred Phillips was not available to do the second pilot, so Robert Dawn was hired. He set to work on a new set of ears for Spock and a more conventional bowl haircut. The result was a more human and moderate-looking Spock. Dawn also had to do his job on a sharply reduced budget. Roddenberry and Dawn were working hard against the clock because the network wanted a fast production of the pilot even on the reduced budget. As a result, and building on what he had learned on "The Cage," Roddenberry came up with a new set of guidelines for how he wanted the makeup team to work. In his "Department and Crew Comments" memo, he wrote:
8. MAKEUP
a. Construction of makeup room
Considerable time was lost here. We need white walls and ceilings, hot and cold running water, adequate lights, hair dryer, shampoo basin and any other equipment usual for complicated makeup and hairstyling jobs. If at all possible, the makeup man should supervise the construction and furnishing of the makeup room. Very important, he would be allowed to supervise the placement of all lights. The actor must be made up for a lit stage rather than for a poorly lit makeup room. The difference was quite apparent when making up characters such as the Talosians. Makeup too often had to be corrected on the stage due to the difference in lighting.
b. Unusual hand makeup jobs
Avoid involved hand makeup jobs such as six fingers, glass hands, et cetera. It takes two to three times longer than regular makeup jobs.
c. Use of actresses
Whenever doing a time-consuming episode, we should limit the use of females. Since other aspects of the show can be very time-consuming, we cannot often afford the forty-five minutes per actress lost each day in hairstyling time. Also, whenever possible, avoid hiring actresses with very long hair, as a great deal of time consumed in creating workable hairstyles. It also eats up time each time the hair has to be restyled to match a previous day's scene.
d. Unusual face makeup
On any makeup job involving complex face makeup such as enlarged faces, distorted features, lack of eyes, etc., have a mold make of the actor's face. Using the mold, the makeup man can, without the use of the actor, experiment with different forms of makeup appliances. The use of the mold serves two purposes. One, it eliminates the need of calling the actor in for makeup tests, and secondly, it allows the makeup man time before actual production to perfect his makeup.
e. Use of a makeup laboratory
Whenever planning to manufacture items such as the Talosian heads, use of a makeup laboratory should be explored. While the initial cost may be twice that of a prop shop, the money and time saved in the makeup room and on the stage will more than compensate for the increased cost. By having the Talosian heads manufactured by a makeup laboratory they would be designed and constructed using a human model having the same dimensions as that of the actor. This permits the technician to make the head, using an animate model, and allowing him to compensate for the quick movements normally made by a human head. When in actual use, instead of taking two and a half hours, the head could be affixed and made up on the working actor in less than twenty-five minutes. Over a period of days, the head will more than pay for itself.
Roddenberry's guidelines for "Where No Man Has Gone Before" became working procedures for the ensuing series and for the series that followed. Even on today's Star Trek: Voyager, while there have been almost quantum leaps in the types of materials used for makeup and appliances, molds of performers' heads are still the basis for applying makeup quickly and experimenting with different variations of makeup.
"Where No Man Has Gone Before" featured glowing eyes of two crew members struck with a mysterious beam. Lt. Gary Mitchell and Dr. Elizabeth Dehner are transforming into alien beings, ultimately endowed with supernatural powers, shown by the strange glowing light that emanates from their eyes. For middle-1960s technology, before the days of custom-designed and soft contact lenses, glowing eyes were quite an achievement. Bob Justman tracked down an optician, John Roberts, who fabricated the silver-colored contact lenses. Justman explained the effect he was trying to create, and the optician asked for the weekend to see what he could come up with.
Although there was an initial misunderstanding about whether the actors were to be able to see through the lenses, by the time actors Gary Lockwood and Sally Kellerman were fitted with the lenses, they were ready to shoot the episode. Sally Kellerman's lenses fit fine, However, Gary Lockwood's lenses were not fitted properly, and he found that in order to see, he had to raise his head and look down through the openings in the lenses. Although this was awkward at first, this gave his performance an attitude of superiority, as if he were looking down at the rest of mortal humanity, and provided hi the pilot with an aspect of reality that couldn't have been planned.
In addition to the silver lenses, Robert Dawn and hairstylist Hazel Keats gradually colored Gary Lockwood's hair progressively more at the temples as he mutated into more of a demonic creature bent on destroying Kirk and reducing his shipmates to slaves. Stage blood, glycerin-based stage sweat, and other effects were also used during the climactic fight scene between Kirk and Mitchell before Dehner came to Kirk's rescue by sacrificing herself.
"Where No Man Has Gone Before" did not have a large prop budget. However, the communicators, tricorder, and phasers created by artist Wah Ming Chang have become cultural icons. For the second pilot, Chang created the design for the chaser rifle, an obvious modification of the hand phaser.
What is most astounding about the first two Star Trek pilots is that despite what modern audiences would call a primitive look, both the makeup and the props were among the most advanced for any series on television. Within the strict constraints of budget, the Star Trek production team utilized almost everything it had developed for "The Cage," and was innovative in the one effect that set both Mitchell and Dehner apart from the rest of the crew. Also, Wah Chang's ability to turn common hardware-store and household items into components of futuristic weapons and communicators helped the producers stay within budget. The use of everyday items -- manual-typewriter keys for control studs on the phaser and wire mesh for the communicator -- is exactly what was done for all the ensuing Star Trek television series. Wah Chang's concept of reutilizing the everyday designs and materials for diffee design for the chaser rifle, an obvious modification of the hand phaser.
What is most astounding about the first two Star Trek pilots is that despite what modern audiences would call a primitive look, both the makeup and the props were among the most advanced for any series on television. Within the strict constraints of budget, the Star Trek production team utilized almost everything it had developed for "The Cage," and was innovative in the one effect that set both Mitchell and Dehner apart from the rest of the crew. Also, Wah Chang's ability to turn common hardware-store and household items into components of futuristic weapons and communicators helped the producers stay within budget. The use of everyday items -- manual-typewriter keys for control studs on the phaser and wire mesh for the communicator -- is exactly what was done for all the ensuing Star Trek television series. Wah Chang's concept of reutilizing the everyday designs and materials for different props was still the practice for the property masters on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek: Voyager.
Wah Ming Chang prided himself on his ability to recognize special qualities of materials, even the most mundane types of materials, to incorporate them into "alien" devices. Partly, Chang has explained, it was the function of the object that defined the look, and that was how the prop was created. A hand phaser had to look like a gun first. The design for the communicator came from the handheld toy walkie-talkies that were common in the 1950s. Wah's creation of the flip wire mesh, however, turned the device into a design that echoes today's cell phones.
"Where No Man Has Gone Before" was a streamlined and elegant production far ahead of what other television series were even attempting to accomplish in 1965. Roddenberry's concept of an alien crew member as the first officer, women as equal members of the crew, and the story of ultimate power ultimately corrupting the human spirit made the second pilot a successful beginning for the longest-running television franchise in history. Of course, no one would know the outcome of the network's decision until more than seven months after shooting. In February 1966, Star Trek was finally green-lighted for the fall season.
Fred Phillips
Fred Phillips was not only the godfather of Mr. Spock but the artist who designed the looks of the first Klingons, Andorians, Romulans, and Tellarites. Fred came to Hollywood in 1911 with his family after his father Festus Phillips, was persuaded by D. W. Griffith to become a silent-film actor. Soon, however Festus Phillips found himself in demand by other actors who liked the way he had applied his own makeup. Festus became a makeup artist and taught the skill to his sons William and Fred. Fred developed his skill working in such silent-film classics as Ben Hur and King of Kings and was also known for his work on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. On television, Phillips helped develop the look of the bizarre characters on The Outer Limits where he met and collaborated with Wah Ming Chang. Fred Phillips died in 1993.
Robert Dawn
Robert Dawn, who died in 1983, was the son of Jack Dawn, the Director of Makeup at MGM. After World War 11, Robert returned to Hollywood to apprentice under his father at MGM, where he remained until 1954. In addition to conventional makeup techniques, Robert became skilled in tab work, which was in great demand during the 1950s and '60s. Dawn's work was seen in The Creature from the Black Lagoon and This Island Earth where he worked with Bud Westmore. On This Island Earth, Dawn assisted in the creation of the huge brain-exposed head for the extraterrestrial mutant who threatens the human survivors as they make their way back toward Earth in the alien spaceship. In television, Dawn worked on the early horror series Thriller, and Wagon Train before he did the second pilot for Star Trek.
Wah Ming Chang
By the time he was only eight years old, Wah Chang was described as an artistic prodigy by the New York Times for the critical praise his art exhibits had gathered. A native of Hawaii, Wah found early work in pictures at Wait Disney Studios in the effects and model departments, where he worked on Fantasia, Pinocchio, and Bambi. In 1960, Wah Chang shared the Academy Award for his design and manufacture of George Pal's vision of the H. G. Wells time machine. By 1963 he was working on The Outer Limits. However it was his prop designs -- communicator, phaser, and tricorder -- as well as some of his aliens in the original series episodes of Star Trek, that have become his most famous work.
Copyright © 2000 by Paramount Pictures.
