I won't clog up the thread,
Robot Powered by Rat Neurons. This blog is a more appropriate place for me to witter about original series Trek and acting-styles.
Over the past months, Jeff has brought our attention to the influence of film on fiction writing. I agree with him that the modern reader of the pot-boiler has not the patience to read material in the style of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad, or any novelist in their tradition.
I like the original series of
Star Trek mainly for two reasons. The first reason is that Roddenberry, for all his faults in his private life, and the secularism of his message, was trying to deal with difficult social issues of the 1960s on national television in the disguise of science fiction. If you doubt me, try watching
Plato's Stepchildren and remember that Shirley Temple's
Little Colonel couldn't be broadcast on television in many southern states because in one scene her little girl character tapped-danced up a staircase holding the hand of the black butler. NBC executives agonized whether to broadcast the
Stepchildren episode for fear of the backlash it might cause. And that is only one of many controversial episodes which came out of the three years in which Trek was made. Roddenberry dealt with racism, arms proliferation, the threat of communism, the cult of death, pacifism, and a variety of other themes.
I think as Christian writer we are now doing something similar. I think we are trying to present an alternative to the secular perception of the universe, a Christian view in which human beings are intended to have a personal relationship with their Creator, where sin abounds and mankind stumbles constantly, and where there is the abiding hope of redemption. There are plenty of areas for a Christian science fiction treatment of social issues (the use of human body tissues being one of them), or the fantasy fiction version of a battle we Christians know we wage daily within ourselves, our society, and our world.
Until the original series came along, visual sci fi--either in the cinema or in television--was pretty juvenile. Educated grown-ups never took it seriously. Roddenberry made science fiction respectable, and the original series paved the way.
The second reason I like original series Trek is for the acting. Elsewhere on this board people have commented how over-done the acting seems to modern eyes, but for me, that is half the pleasure of watching the episodes.
The sets are simple, primitive even. The props and special effects by modern standards are clumsy. It is the actors who persuade you that tricorders work, that the ship moves at warp speed, that 23rd century medicine can cure a rainy day.
James Doohan, who played Scotty, and William Shatner, who played Kirk, were both stage-trained actors who came to television and cinema only after their theatre training. Watch the way they move (turn off the audio) and you will see two men as though on a stage in a large theatre, who are determined that their actions will be seen by whole audience, even by those who sit in the back row, high in the gods.
Their movements aren't natural, they are deliberately artificial, but they aren't hammy. It's because they move like that, using that acting technique, that they can be seen from the cheap seats 'way in the back. It is the artificiality that makes it work. Try using naturalistic movements in a huge theatre, and the immediacy of the characters vanishes into some weird visual mush.
Some of you may know I spent many years in London before coming back to the States. I became involved in the Arts Festival movement there. I learned a lot from the drama teachers and examiners who were part of the festivals. What was fascinating to observe was that as time passed, RADA started training young actors for television, and not the stage. The body does not require the control and centering for a camera on set that live theatre requires. As a result, the RADA graduates today, when they perform in a company like the RSC, look badly outclassed by the actors trained in more conventional drama schools like LAMDA.
I mention this because there is a huge difference between live theatre and television.
With a microphone, an actor doesn't need any diaphragm control to produce intelligible sound. Try that with a stage production in a provincial theatre where there is no microphone to help the actors' voices, and you'll get nowhere. Those elliptical pauses William Shatner used not only gave dramatic emphasis, they give the cheap seats a chance for the echo of his words to stop bouncing off the walls of the of the auditorium, so that they could hear the next line of dialogue. Most people have no idea how difficult it is to learn how to project a voice, even a naturally strong voice, in a large room filled with people.
By contrast, many of the current television (and cinema) actors have naturalistic movements which make no demands of them. As a result they serve up any old body language without thinking. They often look angular and clumsy when they turn or gesture. I want to turn away from watching them because I don't feel I am looking at a human being. Their very naturalism, counter intuitively, fails to convince me this is anything other than an actor in a costume. I feel lied to by this kind of acting. It is a rip-off of reality.
When I watch Shatner, I'm watching live theatre. And oddly enough, I feel I'm experiencing a story just as the audience might have experienced a Shakespearean story at the Globe Theatre. I'm not saying the scripts are Shakespearean, but many of the themes are. The
Trek episodes don't rely on props or special effects. I am forced to pay attention to the story, and feel my emotional response to the story, precisely because there is a unmistakable element of artifice, of art, about the presentation.
Somehow, I think good writing is a lot like that. Real lovers don't usually jump through the hoops set up for Miss Bennett and Mr. Darcy, but where would be the story without them? Real robots (rat brains or no rat brains) aren't ever going to become altruistic, not ever ever, but
I, Robot is still a great story tackling the ever-growing complexity of human beings living with, and relying on, machines.
So that's why I'm a fan. I wish there were more such shows to watch. And as I write, I'll take Jeff's
Tip to heart. The one about thinking of myself as a filmmaker rather than a storyteller. And you can guess the kind of film I'll have in mind.